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Obama as neocon in foreign policy bulletin, 2015

 

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[Dec 01, 2017] Neocon Chaos Promotion in the Mideast

Highly recommended!
It's interesting to reread this two years article by
Here is an extremely shred observation: "I lived in the USSR during the 1970s and would not wish that kind of restrictive regime on anyone. Until it fell apart, though, it was militarily strong enough to deter Wolfowitz-style adventurism. And I will say that – for the millions of people now dead, injured or displaced by U.S. military action in the Middle East over the past dozen years – the collapse of the Soviet Union as a deterrent to U.S. war-making was not only a "geopolitical catastrophe" but an unmitigated disaster.
Notable quotes:
"... how Paul Wolfowitz and his neoconservative co-conspirators implemented their sweeping plan to destabilize key Middle Eastern countries once it became clear that post-Soviet Russia "won't stop us." ..."
"... the neocons had been enabled by their assessment that -- after the collapse of the Soviet Union – Russia had become neutralized and posed no deterrent to U.S. military action in the Middle East. ..."
"... the significance of Clark's depiction of Wolfowitz in 1992 gloating over what he judged to be a major lesson learned from the Desert Storm attack on Iraq in 1991; namely, "the Soviets won't stop us." ..."
"... Would the neocons – widely known as "the crazies" at least among the remaining sane people of Washington – have been crazy enough to opt for war to re-arrange the Middle East if the Soviet Union had not fallen apart in 1991? ..."
"... The geopolitical vacuum that enabled the neocons to try out their "regime change" scheme in the Middle East may have been what Russian President Vladimir Putin was referring to in his state-of-the-nation address on April 25, 2005, when he called the collapse of the Soviet Union "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [past] century." Putin's comment has been a favorite meme of those who seek to demonize Putin by portraying him as lusting to re-establish a powerful USSR through aggression in Europe. ..."
"... Putin seemed correct at least in how the neocons exploited the absence of the Russian counterweight to over-extend American power in ways that were harmful to the world, devastating to the people at the receiving end of the neocon interventions, and even detrimental to the United States. ..."
"... I lived in the USSR during the 1970s and would not wish that kind of restrictive regime on anyone. Until it fell apart, though, it was militarily strong enough to deter Wolfowitz-style adventurism. And I will say that – for the millions of people now dead, injured or displaced by U.S. military action in the Middle East over the past dozen years – the collapse of the Soviet Union as a deterrent to U.S. war-making was not only a "geopolitical catastrophe" but an unmitigated disaster. ..."
"... "We should have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein. The truth is, one thing we did learn is that we can use our military in the Middle East and the Soviets won't stop us. We've got about five or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet client regimes – Syria, Iran (sic), Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us." ..."
"... the scene was surreal – funereal, even, with both Wolfowitz and Lieberman very much down-in-the-mouth, behaving as though they had just watched their favorite team lose the Super Bowl. ..."
"... In her article, entitled "Israel Backs Limited Strike Against Syria," Rudoren noted that the Israelis were arguing, quietly, that the best outcome for Syria's (then) 2 ½-year-old civil war, at least for the moment, was no outcome: ..."
"... In September 2013, shortly after Rudoren's article, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, then a close adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told the Jerusalem Post that Israel favored the Sunni extremists over Assad. ..."
"... "The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc," Oren said in an interview . "We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren't backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran." He said this was the case even if the "bad guys" were affiliated with Al-Qaeda. ..."
"... In June 2014, Oren – then speaking as a former ambassador – said Israel would even prefer a victory by the Islamic State, which was massacring captured Iraqi soldiers and beheading Westerners, than the continuation of the Iranian-backed Assad in Syria. "From Israel's perspective, if there's got to be an evil that's got to prevail, let the Sunni evil prevail," Oren said. ..."
"... That Syria's main ally is Iran with which it has a mutual defense treaty plays a role in Israeli calculations. Accordingly, while some Western leaders would like to achieve a realistic if imperfect settlement of the Syrian civil war, others who enjoy considerable influence in Washington would just as soon see the Assad government and the entire region bleed out. ..."
"... As cynical and cruel as this strategy is, it isn't all that hard to understand. Yet, it seems to be one of those complicated, politically charged situations well above the pay-grade of the sophomores advising President Obama – who, sad to say, are no match for the neocons in the Washington Establishment. Not to mention the Netanyahu-mesmerized Congress. ..."
"... Speaking of Congress, a year after Rudoren's report, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tennessee, who now chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, divulged some details about the military attack that had been planned against Syria, while lamenting that it was canceled. In doing so, Corker called Obama's abrupt change on Aug. 31, 2013, in opting for negotiations over open war on Syria, "the worst moment in U.S. foreign policy since I've been here." Following the neocon script, Corker blasted the deal (since fully implemented) with Putin and the Syrians to rid Syria of its chemical weapons. ..."
"... Wolfowitz, typically, has landed on his feet. He is now presidential hopeful Jeb Bush's foreign policy/defense adviser, no doubt outlining his preferred approach to the Middle East chessboard to his new boss. Does anyone know the plural of "bedlam? ..."
Apr 15, 2015 | antiwar.com
Former Washington insider and four-star General Wesley Clark spilled the beans several years ago on how Paul Wolfowitz and his neoconservative co-conspirators implemented their sweeping plan to destabilize key Middle Eastern countries once it became clear that post-Soviet Russia "won't stop us."

As I recently reviewed a YouTube eight-minute clip of General Clark's October 2007 speech, what leaped out at me was that the neocons had been enabled by their assessment that -- after the collapse of the Soviet Union – Russia had become neutralized and posed no deterrent to U.S. military action in the Middle East.

While Clark's public exposé largely escaped attention in the neocon-friendly "mainstream media" (surprise, surprise!), he recounted being told by a senior general at the Pentagon shortly after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 about the Donald Rumsfeld/Paul Wolfowitz-led plan for "regime change" in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.

This was startling enough, I grant you, since officially the United States presents itself as a nation that respects international law, frowns upon other powerful nations overthrowing the governments of weaker states, and – in the aftermath of World War II – condemned past aggressions by Nazi Germany and decried Soviet "subversion" of pro-U.S. nations.

But what caught my eye this time was the significance of Clark's depiction of Wolfowitz in 1992 gloating over what he judged to be a major lesson learned from the Desert Storm attack on Iraq in 1991; namely, "the Soviets won't stop us."

That remark directly addresses a question that has troubled me since March 2003 when George W. Bush attacked Iraq. Would the neocons – widely known as "the crazies" at least among the remaining sane people of Washington – have been crazy enough to opt for war to re-arrange the Middle East if the Soviet Union had not fallen apart in 1991?

The question is not an idle one. Despite the debacle in Iraq and elsewhere, the neocon "crazies" still exercise huge influence in Establishment Washington. Thus, the question now becomes whether, with Russia far more stable and much stronger, the "crazies" are prepared to risk military escalation with Russia over Ukraine, what retired U.S. diplomat William R. Polk deemed a potentially dangerous nuclear confrontation, a "Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse."

Putin's Comment

The geopolitical vacuum that enabled the neocons to try out their "regime change" scheme in the Middle East may have been what Russian President Vladimir Putin was referring to in his state-of-the-nation address on April 25, 2005, when he called the collapse of the Soviet Union "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [past] century." Putin's comment has been a favorite meme of those who seek to demonize Putin by portraying him as lusting to re-establish a powerful USSR through aggression in Europe.

But, commenting two years after the Iraq invasion, Putin seemed correct at least in how the neocons exploited the absence of the Russian counterweight to over-extend American power in ways that were harmful to the world, devastating to the people at the receiving end of the neocon interventions, and even detrimental to the United States.

If one takes a step back and attempts an unbiased look at the spread of violence in the Middle East over the past quarter-century, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Putin's comment was on the mark. With Russia a much-weakened military power in the 1990s and early 2000s, there was nothing to deter U.S. policymakers from the kind of adventurism at Russia's soft underbelly that, in earlier years, would have carried considerable risk of armed U.S.-USSR confrontation.

I lived in the USSR during the 1970s and would not wish that kind of restrictive regime on anyone. Until it fell apart, though, it was militarily strong enough to deter Wolfowitz-style adventurism. And I will say that – for the millions of people now dead, injured or displaced by U.S. military action in the Middle East over the past dozen years – the collapse of the Soviet Union as a deterrent to U.S. war-making was not only a "geopolitical catastrophe" but an unmitigated disaster.

Visiting Wolfowitz

In his 2007 speech, General Clark related how in early 1991 he dropped in on Paul Wolfowitz, then Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (and later, from 2001 to 2005, Deputy Secretary of Defense). It was just after a major Shia uprising in Iraq in March 1991. President George H.W. Bush's administration had provoked it, but then did nothing to rescue the Shia from brutal retaliation by Saddam Hussein, who had just survived his Persian Gulf defeat.

According to Clark, Wolfowitz said: "We should have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein. The truth is, one thing we did learn is that we can use our military in the Middle East and the Soviets won't stop us. We've got about five or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet client regimes – Syria, Iran (sic), Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us."

It's now been more than 10 years, of course. But do not be deceived into thinking Wolfowitz and his neocon colleagues believe they have failed in any major way. The unrest they initiated keeps mounting – in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Lebanon – not to mention fresh violence now in full swing in Yemen and the crisis in Ukraine. Yet, the Teflon coating painted on the neocons continues to cover and protect them in the "mainstream media."

True, one neocon disappointment is Iran. It is more stable and less isolated than before; it is playing a sophisticated role in Iraq; and it is on the verge of concluding a major nuclear agreement with the West – barring the throwing of a neocon/Israeli monkey wrench into the works to thwart it, as has been done in the past.

An earlier setback for the neocons came at the end of August 2013 when President Barack Obama decided not to let himself be mouse-trapped by the neocons into ordering U.S. forces to attack Syria. Wolfowitz et al. were on the threshold of having the U.S. formally join the war against Bashar al-Assad's government of Syria when there was the proverbial slip between cup and lip. With the aid of the neocons' new devil-incarnate Vladimir Putin, Obama faced them down and avoided war.

A week after it became clear that the neocons were not going to get their war in Syria, I found myself at the main CNN studio in Washington together with Paul Wolfowitz and former Sen. Joe Lieberman, another important neocon. As I reported in "How War on Syria Lost Its Way," the scene was surreal – funereal, even, with both Wolfowitz and Lieberman very much down-in-the-mouth, behaving as though they had just watched their favorite team lose the Super Bowl.

Israeli/Neocon Preferences

But the neocons are nothing if not resilient. Despite their grotesque disasters, like the Iraq War, and their disappointments, like not getting their war on Syria, they neither learn lessons nor change goals. They just readjust their aim, shooting now at Putin over Ukraine as a way to clear the path again for "regime change" in Syria and Iran. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Why Neocons Seek to Destabilize Russia."]

The neocons also can take some solace from their "success" at enflaming the Middle East with Shia and Sunni now at each other's throats – a bad thing for many people of the world and certainly for the many innocent victims in the region, but not so bad for the neocons. After all, it is the view of Israeli leaders and their neocon bedfellows (and women) that the internecine wars among Muslims provide at least some short-term advantages for Israel as it consolidates control over the Palestinian West Bank.

In a Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity memorandum for President Obama on Sept. 6, 2013, we called attention to an uncommonly candid report about Israeli/neocon motivation, written by none other than the Israel-friendly New York Times Bureau Chief in Jerusalem Jodi Rudoren on Sept. 2, 2013, just two days after Obama took advantage of Putin's success in persuading the Syrians to allow their chemical weapons to be destroyed and called off the planned attack on Syria, causing consternation among neocons in Washington.

Rudoren can perhaps be excused for her naïve lack of "political correctness." She had been barely a year on the job, had very little prior experience with reporting on the Middle East, and – in the excitement about the almost-attack on Syria – she apparently forgot the strictures normally imposed on the Times' reporting from Jerusalem. In any case, Israel's priorities became crystal clear in what Rudoren wrote.

In her article, entitled "Israel Backs Limited Strike Against Syria," Rudoren noted that the Israelis were arguing, quietly, that the best outcome for Syria's (then) 2 ½-year-old civil war, at least for the moment, was no outcome:

"For Jerusalem, the status quo, horrific as it may be from a humanitarian perspective, seems preferable to either a victory by Mr. Assad's government and his Iranian backers or a strengthening of rebel groups, increasingly dominated by Sunni jihadis.

"'This is a playoff situation in which you need both teams to lose, but at least you don't want one to win - we'll settle for a tie,' said Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli consul general in New York. 'Let them both bleed, hemorrhage to death: that's the strategic thinking here. As long as this lingers, there's no real threat from Syria.'"

Clear enough? If this is the way Israel's leaders continue to regard the situation in Syria, then they look on deeper U.S. involvement – overt or covert – as likely to ensure that there is no early resolution of the conflict there. The longer Sunni and Shia are killing each other, not only in Syria but also across the region as a whole, the safer Tel Aviv's leaders calculate Israel is.

Favoring Jihadis

But Israeli leaders have also made clear that if one side must win, they would prefer the Sunni side, despite its bloody extremists from Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. In September 2013, shortly after Rudoren's article, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, then a close adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told the Jerusalem Post that Israel favored the Sunni extremists over Assad.

"The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc," Oren said in an interview. "We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren't backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran." He said this was the case even if the "bad guys" were affiliated with Al-Qaeda.

In June 2014, Oren – then speaking as a former ambassador – said Israel would even prefer a victory by the Islamic State, which was massacring captured Iraqi soldiers and beheading Westerners, than the continuation of the Iranian-backed Assad in Syria. "From Israel's perspective, if there's got to be an evil that's got to prevail, let the Sunni evil prevail," Oren said.

Netanyahu sounded a similar theme in his March 3, 2015 speech to the U.S. Congress in which he trivialized the threat from the Islamic State with its "butcher knives, captured weapons and YouTube" when compared to Iran, which he accused of "gobbling up the nations" of the Middle East.

That Syria's main ally is Iran with which it has a mutual defense treaty plays a role in Israeli calculations. Accordingly, while some Western leaders would like to achieve a realistic if imperfect settlement of the Syrian civil war, others who enjoy considerable influence in Washington would just as soon see the Assad government and the entire region bleed out.

As cynical and cruel as this strategy is, it isn't all that hard to understand. Yet, it seems to be one of those complicated, politically charged situations well above the pay-grade of the sophomores advising President Obama – who, sad to say, are no match for the neocons in the Washington Establishment. Not to mention the Netanyahu-mesmerized Congress.

Corker Uncorked

Speaking of Congress, a year after Rudoren's report, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tennessee, who now chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, divulged some details about the military attack that had been planned against Syria, while lamenting that it was canceled. In doing so, Corker called Obama's abrupt change on Aug. 31, 2013, in opting for negotiations over open war on Syria, "the worst moment in U.S. foreign policy since I've been here." Following the neocon script, Corker blasted the deal (since fully implemented) with Putin and the Syrians to rid Syria of its chemical weapons.

Corker complained, "In essence – I'm sorry to be slightly rhetorical – we jumped into Putin's lap." A big No-No, of course – especially in Congress – to "jump into Putin's lap" even though Obama was able to achieve the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons without the United States jumping into another Middle East war.

It would have been nice, of course, if General Clark had thought to share his inside-Pentagon information earlier with the rest of us. In no way should he be seen as a whistleblower.

At the time of his September 2007 speech, he was deep into his quixotic attempt to win the Democratic nomination for president in 2008. In other words, Clark broke the omerta code of silence observed by virtually all U.S. generals, even post-retirement, merely to put some distance between himself and the debacle in Iraq – and win some favor among anti-war Democrats. It didn't work, so he endorsed Hillary Clinton; that didn't work, so he endorsed Barack Obama.

Wolfowitz, typically, has landed on his feet. He is now presidential hopeful Jeb Bush's foreign policy/defense adviser, no doubt outlining his preferred approach to the Middle East chessboard to his new boss. Does anyone know the plural of "bedlam?"

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He is a 30-year veteran of the CIA and Army intelligence and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). McGovern served for considerable periods in all four of CIA's main directorates.

Reprinted with permission from Consortium News.

[Aug 13, 2016] Hillary was a foreign policy disaster who killed thousands

Notable quotes:
"... BTW Pat Buchanan says that if the R establishment tries to coalesce around Rubio or Cruz then Trump will simply choose one of them as his running mate and end of story. That's assuming Trump does in fact maintain his poll lead with actual votes. ..."
"... It's our foreign policy that is fubar and it's been fubar for awhile. This idea that Clinton somehow was the worst Secretary of State is revisionism. Was she bad? Yes. Was she worse than Condeleeza "I ignored a memo that said AQ was determined to attack" Rice? That is incredibly debatable. ..."
"... I'm less for her being the fall guy for ME policies that have been a disaster for at least as long as I've been alive(and let's face it installing the Shah, trading hostages for arms, etc, etc there's been ALOT of mistakes there) ..."
"... As soon as one subordinates themselves, they become the agent to a principal, whether that principal be a natural person, a class, an identity group, or an old piece of paper with happy horse dung written all over it. Given the choice between downward mobility and schizophrenia, most choose compartmentalization as an imperfect but effective coping mechanism to help workers stay sane and maintain their identity in the ever more grueling workplace. ..."
"... Hmm. You're saying that split consciousness screws up principal-agent relationships, not metaphoricallly, but literally? That's a really interesting argument, a new way to think about elites ("know your enemy"). ..."
"... Does anybody really believe that the Clinton who takes off the Secretary of State hat and puts on the Clinton Foundation hat, or who takes off the Clinton Foundation hat and puts on the Campaign hat, is not the same Hillary Clinton? She'd have to be a sociopath to keep her mind and heart that compartmentalized, no? But if we accept the Clinton Dynasty's "attitude toward public service," as we put it, that's what we'd have to believe. I don't believe it. ..."
"... So, either Clinton is a sociopath (the "compartmentalization") or deeply corrupt. Which is it to be? ..."
"... If you're saying that split consciousness makes for split loyalties, I'd agree. It's part of what makes that compartmentalized "workaday me" role slightly corrosive to community and citizenship. ..."
"... According to people who were there it was Clinton who pushed for regime change in Libya while Obama was reluctant. The French were pushing for it as well but within the administration she was the advocate. She also favored regime change in Syria although US actions there are murkier. ..."
"... So Trump and Cruz were quite justified in what they said. She also favored the surge in Afghanistan while Biden opposed. She has compared Putin to Hitler and presumably fully supports the confrontation with Russia. ..."
"... Condi on the other hand was just a functionary for policies being made by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the neocons. It was a very different situation. ..."
"... Whatever one thinks of Trump it's quite possible he'd be a less dangerous choice than Hillary when it comes to foreign policy. The Dems don't see it this way because so many of them agree with her–particularly the Democrats' wealthy backers. ..."
www.nakedcapitalism.com
Carolinian

Cruz–Trump's mini-me–has apparently also been claiming lately that Hillary was a foreign policy disaster who killed thousands. This is what Sanders hasn't been saying forever. Libertarian Raimondo gives his take on the debate and says Rand Paul had a big night.

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2015/12/16/gop-debate-triumph-isolationism/

BTW Pat Buchanan says that if the R establishment tries to coalesce around Rubio or Cruz then Trump will simply choose one of them as his running mate and end of story. That's assuming Trump does in fact maintain his poll lead with actual votes.

cwaltz

Sanders doesn't mention Hillary by name (probably because she isn't the primary problem. It wasn't like Condeleeza Rice was a stellar Secretary of State or there weren't indictments under the Reagan Secretary of State.) However, he has been saying that our foreign policy is part of the problem which is the REAL problem. Clinton is just a symptom.

Steven D.

I thought you were going pin the blame on Barry O since he was Hillary's boss. The system doesn't cut it as a target. It excuses the actors. Nobody has agency? Clinton had and has a lot of power. She has had options. She has chosen her path.

cwaltz

Clinton's behavior was similar to her predecessors which was similar to her predecessors and so on and so on.

It's our foreign policy that is fubar and it's been fubar for awhile. This idea that Clinton somehow was the worst Secretary of State is revisionism. Was she bad? Yes. Was she worse than Condeleeza "I ignored a memo that said AQ was determined to attack" Rice? That is incredibly debatable. I'm all for Hillary being held accountable.

I'm less for her being the fall guy for ME policies that have been a disaster for at least as long as I've been alive(and let's face it installing the Shah, trading hostages for arms, etc, etc there's been ALOT of mistakes there)

Steven D.

Who makes foreign policy? People do. There are institutional prerogatives but she didn't have to be so damned good at being so bad.

hunkerdown

As soon as one subordinates themselves, they become the agent to a principal, whether that principal be a natural person, a class, an identity group, or an old piece of paper with happy horse dung written all over it. Given the choice between downward mobility and schizophrenia, most choose compartmentalization as an imperfect but effective coping mechanism to help workers stay sane and maintain their identity in the ever more grueling workplace.

So who's the principal?

Lambert Strether Post author

Hmm. You're saying that split consciousness screws up principal-agent relationships, not metaphoricallly, but literally? That's a really interesting argument, a new way to think about elites ("know your enemy").

I said something similar - OK, "interesting" could mean confirming my priors - here:

Does anybody really believe that the Clinton who takes off the Secretary of State hat and puts on the Clinton Foundation hat, or who takes off the Clinton Foundation hat and puts on the Campaign hat, is not the same Hillary Clinton? She'd have to be a sociopath to keep her mind and heart that compartmentalized, no? But if we accept the Clinton Dynasty's "attitude toward public service," as we put it, that's what we'd have to believe. I don't believe it.

So, either Clinton is a sociopath (the "compartmentalization") or deeply corrupt. Which is it to be?

Nose- or rather brain-bleeds at the commanding heights….

different clue

Sociocorruptopath.

hunkerdown

Split attribution enables screwed-up principal-agent relationships. Think sex workers, used-car salesmen, fresh-out-of-Harvard Democratic strategists, other agents who loyally if resignedly carry out what the mainstream deems inhospitable and/or dirty work to the benefit of their principals, yet share no interest apart from the engaged work.

Cultivating a straw self-identity or group-identity, or maybe role, for the purpose of attribution is an effective though problematic way to keep the evil from sticking to one's self-definition.

If you're saying that split consciousness makes for split loyalties, I'd agree. It's part of what makes that compartmentalized "workaday me" role slightly corrosive to community and citizenship.

Carolinian

According to people who were there it was Clinton who pushed for regime change in Libya while Obama was reluctant. The French were pushing for it as well but within the administration she was the advocate. She also favored regime change in Syria although US actions there are murkier.

So Trump and Cruz were quite justified in what they said. She also favored the surge in Afghanistan while Biden opposed. She has compared Putin to Hitler and presumably fully supports the confrontation with Russia.

In Honduras she covertly supported the coup government at the urging of her crony Lanny Davis and the Honduran children who are fleeing to the United States can be chalked up as another of HIllary's little missteps. Whether or not she was the worst Sec State ever she's up there.

Condi on the other hand was just a functionary for policies being made by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the neocons. It was a very different situation.

Whatever one thinks of Trump it's quite possible he'd be a less dangerous choice than Hillary when it comes to foreign policy. The Dems don't see it this way because so many of them agree with her–particularly the Democrats' wealthy backers.

Lambert Strether Post author

Clinton really believes that stuff. She's not pandering. Well, I mean, she's pandering too, of course, but from a base of conviction, not political posturing.

Steven D.

You give her too much credit. Like Lyndon Johnson, she's afraid of the Republicans getting too much to her right on foreign policy. It's purely reactive. If she believes anything, it's probably that Democrats need to be hawkish to avoid being portrayed as pansies. A fruit of her McGovern experience in 1972.

different clue

Then she may be misreading that experience. My brain keeps circling back to Hunter S. Thompson's argument that McGovern didn't start falling badly until he was seen visibly seeking to appease the Establishment Democrats that his campaign had just beaten. If Thompson't analysis is correct, McGovern betrayed his own campaign and everyone who worked in it.

But of course the Clintons just saw "evil workers supporting Nixon against our beloved McGovern". I still wonder how much of Clinton's support for NAFTA was driven by a desire for revenge against the working class which voted against his beloved McGovern? Revenge being a dish best served cold, and so forth.

Carolinian

You are probably right, which just makes it worse. No dissuading a fanatic.Hillary doesn't seem like the type who is inclined to admit to mistakes.

Ted Rall says that for once Trump's "s-bombs" are justified.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/15/in-defense-of-trumps-name-calling/

Steven D.

The Honduran coup was a crime that disqualifies her.

[Dec 24, 2015] Obama s foreign policy goals get a boost from plunging oil prices

Notable quotes:
"... At a time of tension for U.S. international relations, cheap oil has dovetailed with some of the Obama administration's foreign policy goals: pressuring Russian President Vladimir Putin, undermining the popularity of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and tempering the prospects for Iranian oil revenue. At the same time, it is pouring cash into the hands of consumers, boosting tepid economic recoveries in Europe, Japan and the United States. ..."
The Washington Post

Plunging crude oil prices are diverting hundreds of billions of dollars away from the treasure chests of oil-exporting nations, putting some of the United States' adversaries under greater stress.

After two years of falling prices, the effects have reverberated across the globe, fueling economic discontent in Venezuela, changing Russia's economic and political calculations, and dampening Iranian leaders' hopes of a financial windfall when sanctions linked to its nuclear program will be lifted next year.

At a time of tension for U.S. international relations, cheap oil has dovetailed with some of the Obama administration's foreign policy goals: pressuring Russian President Vladimir Putin, undermining the popularity of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and tempering the prospects for Iranian oil revenue. At the same time, it is pouring cash into the hands of consumers, boosting tepid economic recoveries in Europe, Japan and the United States.

"Cheap oil hurts revenues for some of our foes and helps some of our friends. The Europeans, South Koreans and Japanese - they're all winners," said Robert McNally, director for energy in President George W. Bush's National Security Council and now head of the Rapidan Group, a consulting firm. "It's not good for Russia, that's for sure, and it's not good for Iran."

... ... ...

In Iran, cheap oil is forcing the government to ratchet down expectations.

The much-anticipated lifting of sanctions as a result of the deal to limit Iran's nuclear program is expected to result in an additional half-million barrels a day of oil exports by the middle of 2016.

But at current prices, Iran's income from those sales will still fall short of revenue earned from constrained oil exports a year ago.

Moreover, low prices are making it difficult for Iran to persuade international oil companies to develop Iran's long-neglected oil and gas fields, which have been off limits since sanctions were broadened in 2012.

"Should Iran come out of sanctions, they will face a very different market than the one they had left in 2012," Amos Hochstein, the State Department's special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs, said in an interview. "They were forced to recede in a world of over $100 oil, and sanctions will be lifted at $36 oil. They will have to work harder to convince companies to come in and take the risk for supporting their energy infrastructure and their energy production."

Meanwhile, in Russia, low oil prices have compounded damage done by U.S. and European sanctions that were designed to target Russia's energy and financial sectors. And when Iran increases output, its grade of crude oil will most likely go to Europe, where it will compete directly with Russia's Urals oil, McNally said.

Steven Mufson covers the White House. Since joining The Post, he has covered economics, China, foreign policy and energy.

[Dec 24, 2015] Obama's foreign policy goals get a boost from plunging oil prices

Notable quotes:
"... At a time of tension for U.S. international relations, cheap oil has dovetailed with some of the Obama administration's foreign policy goals: pressuring Russian President Vladimir Putin, undermining the popularity of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and tempering the prospects for Iranian oil revenue. At the same time, it is pouring cash into the hands of consumers, boosting tepid economic recoveries in Europe, Japan and the United States. ..."
The Washington Post

Plunging crude oil prices are diverting hundreds of billions of dollars away from the treasure chests of oil-exporting nations, putting some of the United States' adversaries under greater stress.

After two years of falling prices, the effects have reverberated across the globe, fueling economic discontent in Venezuela, changing Russia's economic and political calculations, and dampening Iranian leaders' hopes of a financial windfall when sanctions linked to its nuclear program will be lifted next year.

At a time of tension for U.S. international relations, cheap oil has dovetailed with some of the Obama administration's foreign policy goals: pressuring Russian President Vladimir Putin, undermining the popularity of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and tempering the prospects for Iranian oil revenue. At the same time, it is pouring cash into the hands of consumers, boosting tepid economic recoveries in Europe, Japan and the United States.

"Cheap oil hurts revenues for some of our foes and helps some of our friends. The Europeans, South Koreans and Japanese - they're all winners," said Robert McNally, director for energy in President George W. Bush's National Security Council and now head of the Rapidan Group, a consulting firm. "It's not good for Russia, that's for sure, and it's not good for Iran."

... ... ...

In Iran, cheap oil is forcing the government to ratchet down expectations.

The much-anticipated lifting of sanctions as a result of the deal to limit Iran's nuclear program is expected to result in an additional half-million barrels a day of oil exports by the middle of 2016.

But at current prices, Iran's income from those sales will still fall short of revenue earned from constrained oil exports a year ago.

Moreover, low prices are making it difficult for Iran to persuade international oil companies to develop Iran's long-neglected oil and gas fields, which have been off limits since sanctions were broadened in 2012.

"Should Iran come out of sanctions, they will face a very different market than the one they had left in 2012," Amos Hochstein, the State Department's special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs, said in an interview. "They were forced to recede in a world of over $100 oil, and sanctions will be lifted at $36 oil. They will have to work harder to convince companies to come in and take the risk for supporting their energy infrastructure and their energy production."

Meanwhile, in Russia, low oil prices have compounded damage done by U.S. and European sanctions that were designed to target Russia's energy and financial sectors. And when Iran increases output, its grade of crude oil will most likely go to Europe, where it will compete directly with Russia's Urals oil, McNally said.

Steven Mufson covers the White House. Since joining The Post, he has covered economics, China, foreign policy and energy.

[Dec 19, 2015] The Exception

Notable quotes:
"... "Our government has become incompetent, unresponsive, corrupt, and that incompetence, ineptitude, lack of accountability is now dangerous Carly won the sound bite of the century award with that one! ..."
"... I voted for this turd because you Rightwingnut Fuckheads gave me the option of McCain the first time and Romney the second time. ..."
Zero Hedge

FireBrander

I expect the lies....but the level of lies when it comes to "fighting ISIS" is off-the-fucking-charts!...and no one calls him on it!

>The USA/NATO Created ISIS.

>The USA/NATO is using ISIS to oust ASSAD because he's too friendly with Russia/Iran.

>The USA/NATO FUNDS ISIS via Turkey.

Obama: "ISIS is a seriously threat, they are contained and we will destroy ISIS"

Bill Clintons' mouth has got to be gaping; and I'm sure thoroughly impressed that Obama could tell a whopper like that without question...NOT ONE REPUBLICAN at the debate even called Obama on ISIS!

Neil Patrick Harris

You gotta wonder how much money they promised him when he leaves office.

Peter Pan

Unfortunately Obama is beyond being a threat. He ( and whoever is pulling on his strings) is an actual attack on America.

FireBrander

"Our government has become incompetent, unresponsive, corrupt, and that incompetence, ineptitude, lack of accountability is now dangerous" Carly won the sound bite of the century award with that one!

..and the new budget bill will fully fund ALL OF IT's desires....

FireBrander

I voted for "this turd" because you Rightwingnut Fuckheads gave me the option of McCain the first time and Romney the second time.

You're welcome for my vote saving you from those fuckheads...McCain would have nuked the planet by now and Romney would have handed the country to his VC friends and you'd be living in a "dorm" putting together iPhones.

Romney criticised Obama in one of the debates because "The number of battleships in our fleet is the lowest since the 50's"...battleships? Romney, you stupid fuck, it's 20xx you moron...battleships are pretty irrelevent in today's "theater of war"...Obama held it together and replied, I give the Admirals EVERYTHING THEY ASK FOR...and Romney dropped it.

Great ZH piece on Romney; what a piece of shit:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-17/rip-truman-show-bubble-finance-...

[Dec 17, 2015] US militarism is Alice in Wonderland

economistsview.typepad.com
anne, December 17, 2015 at 11:50 AM
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/17/world/asia/navy-seal-team-2-afghanistan-beating-death.html

December 16, 2015

Navy SEALs, a Beating Death and Complaints of a Cover-Up
By NICHOLAS KULISH, CHRISTOPHER DREW and MATTHEW ROSENBERG

U.S. soldiers accused Afghan police and Navy SEALs of abusing detainees. But the SEAL command opted against a court-martial and cleared its men of wrongdoing.

ilsm said in reply to anne...

Too much training to send to jail.

While E-4 Bergdahl does in captivity what several hundred officers did in Hanoi and gets life!

US militarism is Alice's Wonderland!

[Dec 17, 2015] The Rubes are mad at the state of the economy and blame Obama first but also believe that the GOP establishment has sold them down river

Notable quotes:
"... The Rubes are mad at the state of the economy and blame Obama first but also believe that the GOP establishment has sold them down river. The squishy economy has caused the GOP elites to lose out to Trump and his antiestablishment we are not winning pitchfork toting mob. ..."
economistsview.typepad.com
bakho said in reply to pgl, December 16, 2015 at 06:06 PM
Could have been worse. Could have been shutdown or new round of austerity. GOP intransigence is coming back to bite them. The Rubes are mad at the state of the economy and blame Obama first but also believe that the GOP establishment has sold them down river. The squishy economy has caused the GOP elites to lose out to Trump and his antiestablishment "we are not winning" pitchfork toting mob.

The Dems need to get in front of this parade before the General.

Billy Joe said...

I am hearing, adding on to Bakho's point above, this was a 2 way deal. The Fed begins its modest tightening schedule with Congress beginning a modest fiscal loosening.

This is not a accident. It comes from a second hand source related to a Republican Congressmen. Basically, Yellen told Congress, if they loosen fiscal policy, they will raise rates. That is what happened.......on a small scale.

Ben Bernanke was and is a big supporter.

[Dec 13, 2015] US military spending is currently $738.3 billion

Notable quotes:
"... military spending is currently $738.3 billion. ..."
"... Defense spending was 60.3% of federal government consumption and investment in July through September 2015. ..."
"... Defense spending was 23.1% of all government consumption and investment in July through September 2015. ..."
"... Defense spending was 4.1% of Gross Domestic Product in July through September 2015. ..."
economistsview.typepad.com

Economist's View

anne said...

http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/in-paris-talks-rich-countries-pledged-0-25-percent-of-gdp-to-help-poor-countries

December 13, 2015

In Paris Talks, Rich Countries Pledged 0.25 Percent of GDP to Help Poor Countries

In case you were wondering about the importance of a $100 billion a year, * non-binding commitment, it's roughly 0.25 percent of rich country's $40 trillion annual GDP (about 6 percent of what the U.S. spends on the military). This counts the U.S., European Union, Japan, Canada, and Australia as rich countries. If China is included in that list, the commitment would be less than 0.2 percent of GDP.

* http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/world/europe/climate-change-accord-paris.html

-- Dean Baker

anne said in reply to anne...
"...about 6 percent of what the U.S. spends on the military...."

I do not understand this figure since currently defense spending is running at $738.3 billion yearly or which 6% would be $44.3 billion:

http://www.bea.gov/iTable/iTableHtml.cfm?reqid=9&step=3&isuri=1&904=2014&903=5&906=q&905=2015&910=x&911=0

anne said in reply to anne...
Correcting Dean Baker:

http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/in-paris-talks-rich-countries-pledged-0-25-percent-of-gdp-to-help-poor-countries

December 13, 2015

In Paris Talks, Rich Countries Pledged 0.25 Percent of GDP to Help Poor Countries

In case you were wondering about the importance of a $100 billion a year, * non-binding commitment, it's roughly 0.25 percent of rich country's $40 trillion annual GDP (about 7.4 percent ** of what the U.S. spends on the military). This counts the U.S., European Union, Japan, Canada, and Australia as rich countries. If China is included in that list, the commitment would be less than 0.2 percent of GDP.

* http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/world/europe/climate-change-accord-paris.html

** http://www.bea.gov/iTable/iTableHtml.cfm?reqid=9&step=3&isuri=1&904=2014&903=5&906=q&905=2015&910=x&911=0

-- Dean Baker

anne said in reply to anne...
Dean Baker clarifies:

http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/in-paris-talks-rich-countries-pledged-0-25-percent-of-gdp-to-help-poor-countries

December 13, 2015

In Paris Talks, Rich Countries Pledged 0.25 Percent of GDP to Help Poor Countries

In case you were wondering about the importance of a $100 billion a year, * non-binding commitment, it's roughly 0.25 percent of rich country's $40 trillion annual GDP (about 6 percent of what the U.S. spends on the military). This counts the U.S., European Union, Japan, Canada, and Australia as rich countries. If China is included in that list, the commitment would be less than 0.2 percent of GDP.

(I see my comment on military spending here created a bit of confusion. I was looking at the U.S. share of the commitment, 0.25 percent of its GDP and comparing it to the roughly 4.0 percent of GDP it spends on the military. That comes to 6 percent. I was not referring to the whole $100 billion.)

* http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/world/europe/climate-change-accord-paris.html

-- Dean Baker

djb said in reply to anne...
100,000,000,000/0.06 = 1.67 trillion
anne said in reply to djb...
$100 billion a year, ........about 6 percent of what the U.S. spends on the military

100,000,000,000/0.06 = 1.67 trillion

[ This is incorrect, military spending is currently $738.3 billion. ]

anne said in reply to djb...
http://www.bea.gov/iTable/iTableHtml.cfm?reqid=9&step=3&isuri=1&904=2014&903=5&906=q&905=2015&910=x&911=0

January 15, 2015

Defense spending was 60.3% of federal government consumption and investment in July through September 2015.

(Billions of dollars)

$738.3 / $1,224.4 = 60.3%

Defense spending was 23.1% of all government consumption and investment in July through September 2015.

$738.3 / $3,200.4 = 23.1%

Defense spending was 4.1% of Gross Domestic Product in July through September 2015.

$738.3 / $18,064.7 = 4.1%

djb said in reply to djb...
oh never mind I get it

.25 % is 6 percent of the percent us spends on military

the 40 trillion is the gdp of all the countries

got it

anne said in reply to djb...
"I get it:

.25 % is 6 percent of the percent US spends on military."

So .25 percent of United States GDP for climate change assistance to poor countries is 6 percent of the amount the US spends on the military.

.0025 x $18,064.7 billion GDP = $45.16 billion on climate change

$45.16 billion on climate change / $738.3 billion on the military = 0.61 or 6.1 percent of military spending

anne said in reply to anne...
United States climate change assistance to poor countries will be .25 percent of GDP or 6% of US military spending.
anne said in reply to anne...
What the United States commitment to climate change assistance for poor countries means is spending about $45.2 billion yearly or .25 percent of GDP. Whether the President can convince Congress to spend the $45 billion yearly will now have to be answered.
anne said in reply to djb...
"I get it:

.25 % is 6 percent of the [amount] US spends on military."

[ This is correct. ]

anne said in reply to djb...
http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/in-paris-talks-rich-countries-pledged-0-25-percent-of-gdp-to-help-poor-countries

December 13, 2015

In Paris Talks, Rich Countries Pledged 0.25 Percent of GDP to Help Poor Countries

In case you were wondering about the importance of a $100 billion a year, * non-binding commitment, it's roughly 0.25 percent of rich country's $40 trillion annual GDP (about 6 percent of what the U.S. spends on the military). This counts the U.S., European Union, Japan, Canada, and Australia as rich countries. If China is included in that list, the commitment would be less than 0.2 percent of GDP.

(I see my comment on military spending here created a bit of confusion. I was looking at the U.S. share of the commitment, 0.25 percent of its GDP and comparing it to the roughly 4.0 percent of GDP it spends on the military. ** That comes to 6 percent. I was not referring to the whole $100 billion.)

* http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/world/europe/climate-change-accord-paris.html

** http://www.bea.gov/iTable/iTableHtml.cfm?reqid=9&step=3&isuri=1&904=2014&903=5&906=q&905=2015&910=x&911=0

-- Dean Baker

anne said in reply to djb...
http://www.bea.gov/iTable/iTableHtml.cfm?reqid=9&step=3&isuri=1&904=2007&903=5&906=q&905=2015&910=x&911=0

January 15, 2015

Defense spending was 4.1% of Gross Domestic Product in July through September 2015.

$738.3 / $18,064.7 = 4.1%

ilsm said in reply to anne...
UK is the only NATO nation beside the US that spend the suggested 2% of GDP. The rest run about 1.2%.

Small wonder they need US to run their wars of convenience.

More telling US pentagon spending is around 50% of world military spending and has not won anything in 60 years.

[Dec 13, 2015] Hillary Clinton Is Whitewashing 2008 Financial Collapse

Notable quotes:
"... Can you list all of the pro- or anti- Wall Street reforms and actions Bill Clinton performed as President including nominating Alan Greenspan as head regulator? Cutting the capital gains tax? Are you aware of Greenspan's record? ..."
"... The Tax Policy Center estimated that a 0.1 percent tax on stock trades, scaled with lower taxes on other assets, would raise $50 billion a year in tax revenue. The implied reduction in trading revenue was even larger. Senator Sanders has proposed a tax of 0.5 percent on equities (also with a scaled tax on other assets). This would lead to an even larger reduction in revenue for the financial industry. ..."
"... Great to see Bakers acknowledgement that an updated Glass-Steagall is just one component of the progressive wings plan to rein in Wall Street, not the sum total of it. Besides, if Wall Street types dont think restoring Glass-Steagall will have any meaningful effects, why do they expend so much energy to disparage it? Methinks they doth protest too much. ..."
"... Yes thats a good way to look it. Wall Street gave the Democrats and Clinton a lot of campaign cash so that they would dismantle Glass-Steagall. ..."
"... Slippery slope. Ya gotta find me a business of any type that does not protest any kind of regulation on their business. ..."
"... Yeah, but usually because of all the bad things they say will happen because of the regulation. The question is, what do they think of Clintons plan? Ive heard surprisingly little about that, and what I have heard is along these lines: http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/08/investing/hillary-clinton-wall-street-plan/ ..."
"... Hillary Clinton unveiled her big plan to curb the worst of Wall Streets excesses on Thursday. The reaction from the banking community was a shrug, if not relief. ..."
"... There is absolutely NO question Bernie is for real. Wall Street does not want Bernie. So theyll let Hillary talk as big as she needs to . Why should we believe her when an honest guy like Barry caved once in power ..."
"... Perhaps too often we look at Wall Street as monolithic whether consciously or not. Obviously we know its no monolithic: there are serious differences ..."
"... This all coiled change if Bernie surges. How that happens depends crucially on New Hampshire. Not Iowa ..."
"... I believe Hillary will be to liberal causes after she is elected as LBJ was to peace in Vietnam. Like Bill and Obomber. ..."
Dec 12, 2015 | Economist's View

RGC said...

Hillary Clinton Is Whitewashing the Financial Catastrophe

She has a plan that she claims will reform Wall Street-but she's deflecting responsibility from old friends and donors in the industry.

By William Greider
Yesterday 3:11 pm

Hillary Clinton's recent op-ed in The New York Times, "How I'd Rein In Wall Street," was intended to reassure nervous Democrats who fear she is still in thrall to those mega-bankers of New York who crashed the American economy. Clinton's brisk recital of plausible reform ideas might convince wishful thinkers who are not familiar with the complexities of banking. But informed skeptics, myself included, see a disturbing message in her argument that ought to alarm innocent supporters.

Candidate Clinton is essentially whitewashing the financial catastrophe. She has produced a clumsy rewrite of what caused the 2008 collapse, one that conveniently leaves her husband out of the story. He was the president who legislated the predicate for Wall Street's meltdown. Hillary Clinton's redefinition of the reform problem deflects the blame from Wall Street's most powerful institutions, like JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, and instead fingers less celebrated players that failed. In roundabout fashion, Hillary Clinton sounds like she is assuring old friends and donors in the financial sector that, if she becomes president, she will not come after them.

The seminal event that sowed financial disaster was the repeal of the New Deal's Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which had separated banking into different realms: investment banks, which organize capital investors for risk-taking ventures; and deposit-holding banks, which serve people as borrowers and lenders. That law's repeal, a great victory for Wall Street, was delivered by Bill Clinton in 1999, assisted by the Federal Reserve and the financial sector's armies of lobbyists. The "universal banking model" was saluted as a modernizing reform that liberated traditional banks to participate directly and indirectly in long-prohibited and vastly more profitable risk-taking.

Exotic financial instruments like derivatives and credit-default swaps flourished, enabling old-line bankers to share in the fun and profit on an awesome scale. The banks invented "guarantees" against loss and sold them to both companies and market players. The fast-expanding financial sector claimed a larger and larger share of the economy (and still does) at the expense of the real economy of producers and consumers. The interconnectedness across market sectors created the illusion of safety. When illusions failed, these connected guarantees became the dragnet that drove panic in every direction. Ultimately, the federal government had to rescue everyone, foreign and domestic, to stop the bleeding.

Yet Hillary Clinton asserts in her Times op-ed that repeal of Glass-Steagall had nothing to do with it. She claims that Glass-Steagall would not have limited the reckless behavior of institutions like Lehman Brothers or insurance giant AIG, which were not traditional banks. Her argument amounts to facile evasion that ignores the interconnected exposures. The Federal Reserve spent $180 billion bailing out AIG so AIG could pay back Goldman Sachs and other banks. If the Fed hadn't acted and had allowed AIG to fail, the banks would have gone down too.

These sound like esoteric questions of bank regulation (and they are), but the consequences of pretending they do not matter are enormous. The federal government and Federal Reserve would remain on the hook for rescuing losers in a future crisis. The largest and most adventurous banks would remain free to experiment, inventing fictitious guarantees and selling them to eager suckers. If things go wrong, Uncle Sam cleans up the mess.

Senator Elizabeth Warren and other reformers are pushing a simpler remedy-restore the Glass-Steagall principles and give citizens a safe, government-insured place to store their money. "Banking should be boring," Warren explains (her co-sponsor is GOP Senator John McCain).
That's a hard sell in politics, given the banking sector's bear hug of Congress and the White House, its callous manipulation of both political parties. Of course, it is more complicated than that. But recreating a safe, stable banking system-a place where ordinary people can keep their money-ought to be the first benchmark for Democrats who claim to be reformers.

Actually, the most compelling witnesses for Senator Warren's argument are the two bankers who introduced this adventure in "universal banking" back in the 1990s. They used their political savvy and relentless muscle to seduce Bill Clinton and his so-called New Democrats. John Reed was CEO of Citicorp and led the charge. He has since apologized to the nation. Sandy Weill was chairman of the board and a brilliant financier who envisioned the possibilities of a single, all-purpose financial house, freed of government's narrow-minded regulations. They won politically, but at staggering cost to the country.

Weill confessed error back in 2012: "What we should probably do is go and split up investment banking from banking. Have banks do something that's not going to risk the taxpayer dollars, that's not going to be too big to fail."

John Reed's confession explained explicitly why their modernizing crusade failed for two fundamental business reasons. "One was the belief that combining all types of finance into one institution would drive costs down-and the larger institution the more efficient it would be," Reed wrote in the Financial Times in November. Reed said, "We now know that there are very few cost efficiencies that come from the merger of functions-indeed, there may be none at all. It is possible that combining so much in a single bank makes services more expensive than if they were instead offered by smaller, specialised players."

The second grave error, Reed said, was trying to mix the two conflicting cultures in banking-bankers who are pulling in opposite directions. That tension helps explain the competitive greed displayed by the modernized banking system. This disorder speaks to the current political crisis in ways that neither Dems nor Republicans wish to confront. It would require the politicians to critique the bankers (often their funders) in terms of human failure.

"Mixing incompatible cultures is a problem all by itself," Reed wrote. "It makes the entire finance industry more fragile…. As is now clear, traditional banking attracts one kind of talent, which is entirely different from the kinds drawn towards investment banking and trading. Traditional bankers tend to be extroverts, sociable people who are focused on longer term relationships. They are, in many important respects, risk averse. Investment bankers and their traders are more short termist. They are comfortable with, and many even seek out, risk and are more focused on immediate reward."

Reed concludes, "As I have reflected about the years since 1999, I think the lessons of Glass-Steagall and its repeal suggest that the universal banking model is inherently unstable and unworkable. No amount of restructuring, management change or regulation is ever likely to change that."

This might sound hopelessly naive, but the Democratic Party might do better in politics if it told more of the truth more often: what they tried do and why it failed, and what they think they may have gotten wrong. People already know they haven't gotten a straight story from politicians. They might be favorably impressed by a little more candor in the plain-spoken manner of John Reed.

Of course it's unfair to pick on the Dems. Republicans have been lying about their big stuff for so long and so relentlessly that their voters are now staging a wrathful rebellion. Who knows, maybe a little honest talk might lead to honest debate. Think about it. Do the people want to hear the truth about our national condition? Could they stand it?

http://www.thenation.com/article/hillary-clinton-is-whitewashing-the-financial-catastrophe/

Peter K. said in reply to EMichael...
Can you list all of the pro- or anti- Wall Street "reforms" and actions Bill Clinton performed as President including nominating Alan Greenspan as head regulator? Cutting the capital gains tax? Are you aware of Greenspan's record?

Yes Hillary isn't Bill but she hasn't criticized her husband specifically about his record and seems to want to have her cake and eat it too.

Of course Hillary is much better than the Republicans, pace Rustbucket and the Green Lantern Lefty club. Still, critics have a point.

I won't be surprised if she doesn't do much to rein in Wall Street besides some window dressing.

sanjait said in reply to Peter K....
"Can you list all of the pro- or anti- Wall Street "reforms" and actions Bill Clinton performed..."

That, right there, is what's wrong with Bernie and his fans. They measure everything by whether it is "pro- or anti- Wall Street". Glass Steagall is anti-Wall Street. A financial transactions tax is anti-Wall Street. But neither has any hope of controlling systemic financial risk in this country. None.

You guys want to punish Wall Street but not even bother trying to think of how to achieve useful policy goals. Some people, like Paine here, are actually open about this vacuity, as if the only thing that were important were winning a power struggle.

Hillary's plan is flat out better. It's more comprehensive and more effective at reining in the financial system to limit systemic risk. Period.

You guys want to make this a character melodrama rather than a policy debate, and I fear the result of that will be that the candidate who actually has the best plan won't get to enact it.

likbez said in reply to sanjait...

"You guys want to make this a character melodrama rather than a policy debate, and I fear the result of that will be that the candidate who actually has the best plan won't get to enact it."

You are misrepresenting the positions. It's actually pro-neoliberalism crowd vs anti-neoliberalism crowd. In no way anti-neoliberalism commenters here view this is a character melodrama, although psychologically Hillary probably does has certain problems as her reaction to the death of Gadhafi attests.

The key problem with anti-neoliberalism crowd is the question "What is a realistic alternative?" That's where differences and policy debate starts.

RGC said in reply to EMichael...
"Her argument amounts to facile evasion"

Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to RGC...

'The majority favors policies
to the left of Hillary.'

Nah. I don't think so.

No, Liberals Don't Control the Democratic Party http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/02/no-liberals-dont-control-the-democratic-party/283653/
The Atlantic - Feb 7, 2014

... The Democrats' liberal faction has been greatly overestimated by pundits who mistake noisiness for clout or assume that the left functions like the right. In fact, liberals hold nowhere near the power in the Democratic Party that conservatives hold in the Republican Party. And while they may well be gaining, they're still far from being in charge. ...

Paine said in reply to RGC...

What's not confronted ? Suggest what a System like the pre repeal system would have done in the 00's. My guess we'd have ended in a crisis anyway. Yes we can segregate the depository system. But credit is elastic enough to build bubbles without the depository system involved

Peter K. said...

http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-and-cracking-down-on-wall-street

Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Cracking Down on Wall Street
by Dean Baker

Published: 12 December 2015

The New Yorker ran a rather confused piece on Gary Sernovitz, a managing director at the investment firm Lime Rock Partners, on whether Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton would be more effective in reining in Wall Street. The piece assures us that Secretary Clinton has a better understanding of Wall Street and that her plan would be more effective in cracking down on the industry. The piece is bizarre both because it essentially dismisses the concern with too big to fail banks and completely ignores Sanders' proposal for a financial transactions tax which is by far the most important mechanism for reining in the financial industry.

The piece assures us that too big to fail banks are no longer a problem, noting their drop in profitability from bubble peaks and telling readers:

"not only are Sanders's bogeybanks just one part of Wall Street but they are getting less powerful and less problematic by the year."

This argument is strange for a couple of reasons. First, the peak of the subprime bubble frenzy is hardly a good base of comparison. The real question is should we anticipate declining profits going forward. That hardly seems clear. For example, Citigroup recently reported surging profits, while Wells Fargo's third quarter profits were up 8 percent from 2014 levels.

If Sernovitz is predicting that the big banks are about to shrivel up to nothingness, the market does not agree with him. Citigroup has a market capitalization of $152 billion, JPMorgan has a market cap of $236 billion, and Bank of America has a market cap of $174 billion. Clearly investors agree with Sanders in thinking that these huge banks will have sizable profits for some time to come.

The real question on too big to fail is whether the government would sit by and let a Goldman Sachs or Citigroup go bankrupt. Perhaps some people think that it is now the case, but I've never met anyone in that group.

Sernovitz is also dismissive on Sanders call for bringing back the Glass-Steagall separation between commercial banking and investment banking. He makes the comparison to the battle over the Keystone XL pipeline, which is actually quite appropriate. The Keystone battle did take on exaggerated importance in the climate debate. There was never a zero/one proposition in which no tar sands oil would be pumped without the pipeline, while all of it would be pumped if the pipeline was constructed. Nonetheless, if the Obama administration was committed to restricting greenhouse gas emissions, it is difficult to see why it would support the building of a pipeline that would facilitate bringing some of the world's dirtiest oil to market.

In the same vein, Sernovitz is right that it is difficult to see how anything about the growth of the housing bubble and its subsequent collapse would have been very different if Glass-Steagall were still in place. And, it is possible in principle to regulate bank's risky practices without Glass-Steagall, as the Volcker rule is doing. However, enforcement tends to weaken over time under industry pressure, which is a reason why the clear lines of Glass-Steagall can be beneficial. Furthermore, as with Keystone, if we want to restrict banks' power, what is the advantage of letting them get bigger and more complex?

The repeal of Glass-Steagall was sold in large part by boasting of the potential synergies from combining investment and commercial banking under one roof. But if the operations are kept completely separate, as is supposed to be the case, where are the synergies?

But the strangest part of Sernovitz's story is that he leaves out Sanders' financial transactions tax (FTT) altogether. This is bizarre, because the FTT is essentially a hatchet blow to the waste and exorbitant salaries in the industry.

Most research shows that trading volume is very responsive to the cost of trading, with most estimates putting the elasticity close to one. This means that if trading costs rise by 50 percent, then trading volume declines by 50 percent. (In its recent analysis of FTTs, the Tax Policy Center assumed that the elasticity was 1.5, meaning that trading volume decline by 150 percent of the increase in trading costs.) The implication of this finding is that the financial industry would pay the full cost of a financial transactions tax in the form of reduced trading revenue.

The Tax Policy Center estimated that a 0.1 percent tax on stock trades, scaled with lower taxes on other assets, would raise $50 billion a year in tax revenue. The implied reduction in trading revenue was even larger. Senator Sanders has proposed a tax of 0.5 percent on equities (also with a scaled tax on other assets). This would lead to an even larger reduction in revenue for the financial industry.

It is incredible that Sernovitz would ignore a policy with such enormous consequences for the financial sector in his assessment of which candidate would be tougher on Wall Street. Sanders FTT would almost certainly do more to change behavior on Wall Street then everything that Clinton has proposed taken together by a rather large margin. It's sort of like evaluating the New England Patriots' Super Bowl prospects without discussing their quarterback.

Syaloch said in reply to Peter K....

Great to see Baker's acknowledgement that an updated Glass-Steagall is just one component of the progressive wing's plan to rein in Wall Street, not the sum total of it. Besides, if Wall Street types don't think restoring Glass-Steagall will have any meaningful effects, why do they expend so much energy to disparage it? Methinks they doth protest too much.

Peter K. said in reply to Syaloch...

Yes that's a good way to look it. Wall Street gave the Democrats and Clinton a lot of campaign cash so that they would dismantle Glass-Steagall. If they want it done, it's probably not a good idea.

EMichael said in reply to Syaloch...

Slippery slope. Ya' gotta find me a business of any type that does not protest any kind of regulation on their business.

Syaloch said in reply to EMichael...

Yeah, but usually because of all the bad things they say will happen because of the regulation. The question is, what do they think of Clinton's plan? I've heard surprisingly little about that, and what I have heard is along these lines: http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/08/investing/hillary-clinton-wall-street-plan/

"Hillary Clinton unveiled her big plan to curb the worst of Wall Street's excesses on Thursday. The reaction from the banking community was a shrug, if not relief."

pgl said in reply to Syaloch...

Two excellent points!!!

sanjait said in reply to Syaloch...

"Besides, if Wall Street types don't think restoring Glass-Steagall will have any meaningful effects, why do they expend so much energy to disparage it? Methinks they doth protest too much."

It has an effect of shrinking the size of a few firms, and that has a detrimental effect on the top managers of those firms, who get paid more money if they have larger firms to manage. But it has little to no meaningful effect on systemic risk.

So if your main policy goal is to shrink the compensation for a small number of powerful Wall Street managers, G-S is great. But if you actually want to accomplish something useful to the American people, like limiting systemic risk in the financial sector, then a plan like Hillary's is much much better. She explained this fairly well in her recent NYT piece.

Paine said in reply to Peter K....

There is absolutely NO question Bernie is for real. Wall Street does not want Bernie. So they'll let Hillary talk as big as she needs to . Why should we believe her when an honest guy like Barry caved once in power

Paine said in reply to Paine ...

Bernie has been anti Wall Street his whole career . He's on a crusade. Hillary is pulling a sham bola

Paine said in reply to Paine ...

Perhaps too often we look at Wall Street as monolithic whether consciously or not. Obviously we know it's no monolithic: there are serious differences

When the street is riding high especially. Right now the street is probably not united but too cautious to display profound differences in public. They're sitting on their hands waiting to see how high the anti Wall Street tide runs this election cycle. Trump gives them cover and I really fear secretly Hillary gives them comfort

This all coiled change if Bernie surges. How that happens depends crucially on New Hampshire. Not Iowa

EMichael said in reply to Paine ...

If Bernie surges and wins the nomination, we will all get to watch the death of the Progressive movement for a decade or two. Congress will become more GOP dominated, and we will have a President in office who will make Hoover look like a Socialist.

Syaloch said in reply to EMichael...

Of course. In politics, as they say in the service, one must always choose the lesser of two evils. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4PzpxOj5Cc

pgl said in reply to EMichael...

You should like the moderate Democrats after George McGovern ran in 1972. I'm hoping we have another 1964 with Bernie leading a united Democratic Congress.

EMichael said in reply to pgl...

Not a chance in the world. And I like Sanders much more than anyone else. It just simply cannot, and will not, happen. He is a communist. Not to me, not to you, but to the vast majority of American voters.

pgl said in reply to EMichael...

He is not a communist. But I agree - Hillary is winning the Democratic nomination. I have only one vote and in New York, I'm badly outnumbered.

ilsm said in reply to Paine ...

I believe Hillary will be to liberal causes after she is elected as LBJ was to peace in Vietnam. Like Bill and Obomber.

pgl said in reply to ilsm...

By 1968, LBJ finally realized it was time to end that stupid war. But it seems certain members in the State Department undermined his efforts in a cynical ploy to get Nixon to be President. The Republican Party has had more slime than substance of most of my life time.

pgl said in reply to Peter K....

Gary Sernovitz, a managing director at the investment firm Lime Rock Partners? Why are we listening to this guy too. It's like letting the fox guard the hen house.

[Dec 12, 2015] Guyenot Who are the Neocons

Notable quotes:
"... The American Neocons are Zionists (Their goal is expanding political / military power. Initially this is focused on the state of Israel.) ..."
"... Obviously , if Zionism is synonymous with patriotism in Israel, it cannot be an acceptable label in American politics, where it would mean loyalty to a foreign power. This is why the neoconservatives do not represent themselves as Zionists on the American scene. Yet they do not hide it all together either. ..."
"... He points out dual-citizen (Israel / USA) members and self proclaimed Zionists throughout cabinet level positions in the US government, international banking and controlling the US military. In private writings and occasionally in public, Neocons admit that America's war policies are actually Israel's war goals. (Examples provided.) ..."
"... American Jewish Committee ..."
"... Contemporary Jewish Record ..."
"... If there is an intellectual movement in America to whose invention Jews can lay sole claim, neoconservatism is it. It's a thought one imagines most American Jews, overwhelmingly liberal, will find horrifying . And yet it is a fact that as a political philosophy, neoconservatism was born among the children of Jewish immigrants and is now largely the intellectual domain of those immigrants' grandchildren ..."
"... Goyenot traces the Neocon's origins through its influential writers and thinkers. Highest on the list is Leo Strauss. (Neocons are sometimes called "the Straussians.") Leo Strauss is a great admirer of Machiavelli with his utter contempt for restraining moral principles making him "uniquely effective," and, "the ideal patriot." He gushes over Machiavelli praising the intrepidity of his thought, the grandeur of his vision, and the graceful subtlety of his speech. ..."
"... believes that Truth is harmful to the common man and the social order and should be reserved for superior minds. ..."
"... nations derive their strength from their myths , which are necessary for government and governance. ..."
"... national myths have no necessary relationship with historical reality: they are socio-cultural constructions that the State has a duty to disseminate . ..."
"... to be effective, any national myth must be based on a clear distinction between good and evil ; it derives its cohesive strength from the hatred of an enemy nation. ..."
"... deception is the norm in political life ..."
"... Office of Special Plans ..."
"... The Zionist/Neocons are piggy-backing onto, or utilizing, the religious myths of both the Jewish and Christian world to consolidate power. This is brilliant Machiavellian strategy. ..."
"... the "chosen people" myth (God likes us best, we are better than you) ..."
"... the Holy Land myth (one area of real estate is more holy than another) ..."
"... General Wesley Clark testified on numerous occasions before the cameras, that one month after September 11th, 2001 a general from the Pentagon showed him a memo from neoconservative strategists "that describes how we're gonna take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia and Sudan and finishing off with Iran". ..."
"... Among them are brilliant strategists ..."
"... They operate unrestrained by the most basic moral principles upon which civilization is founded. They are undisturbed by compassion for the suffering of others. ..."
"... They use consciously and skillfully use deception and "myth-making" to shape policy ..."
"... They have infiltrated the highest levels of banking, US military, NATO and US government. ..."
Peak Prosperity

Mememonkey pointed my to a 2013 essay by Laurent Guyenot, a French historian and writer on the deep state, that addresses the question of "Who Are The Neoconservatives." If you would like to know about that group that sends the US military into battle and tortures prisoners of war in out name, you need to know about these guys.

First, if you are Jewish, or are a GREEN Meme, please stop and take a deep breath. Please put on your thinking cap and don't react. We are NOT disrespecting a religion, spiritual practice or a culture. We are talking about a radical and very destructive group hidden within a culture and using that culture. Christianity has similar groups and movements--the Crusades, the KKK, the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, etc.

My personal investment: This question has been a subject of intense interest for me since I became convinced that 9/11 was an inside job, that the Iraq war was waged for reasons entirely different from those publically stated. I have been horrified to see such a shadowy, powerful group operating from a profoundly "pre-moral" developmental level-i.e., not based in even the most rudimentary principles of morality foundational to civilization.

Who the hell are these people?!

Goyenot's main points (with a touch of personal editorializing):

1. The American Neocons are Zionists (Their goal is expanding political / military power. Initially this is focused on the state of Israel.)

Neoconservativism is essentially a modern right wing Jewish version of Machiavelli's political strategy. What characterizes the neoconservative movement is therefore not as much Judaism as a religious tradition, but rather Judiasm as a political project, i.e. Zionism, by Machiavellian means.

This is not a religious movement though it may use religions words and vocabulary. It is a political and military movement. They are not concerned with being close to God. This is a movement to expand political and military power. Some are Christian and Mormon, culturally.

Obviously , if Zionism is synonymous with patriotism in Israel, it cannot be an acceptable label in American politics, where it would mean loyalty to a foreign power. This is why the neoconservatives do not represent themselves as Zionists on the American scene. Yet they do not hide it all together either.

He points out dual-citizen (Israel / USA) members and self proclaimed Zionists throughout cabinet level positions in the US government, international banking and controlling the US military. In private writings and occasionally in public, Neocons admit that America's war policies are actually Israel's war goals. (Examples provided.)

2. Most American Jews are overwhelmingly liberal and do NOT share the perspective of the radical Zionists.

The neoconservative movement, which is generally perceived as a radical (rather than "conservative") Republican right, is, in reality, an intellectual movement born in the late 1960s in the pages of the monthly magazine Commentary, a media arm of the American Jewish Committee, which had replaced the Contemporary Jewish Record in 1945. The Forward, the oldest American Jewish weekly, wrote in a January 6th, 2006 article signed Gal Beckerman: "If there is an intellectual movement in America to whose invention Jews can lay sole claim, neoconservatism is it. It's a thought one imagines most American Jews, overwhelmingly liberal, will find horrifying. And yet it is a fact that as a political philosophy, neoconservatism was born among the children of Jewish immigrants and is now largely the intellectual domain of those immigrants' grandchildren".

3. Intellectual Basis and Moral developmental level

Goyenot traces the Neocon's origins through its influential writers and thinkers. Highest on the list is Leo Strauss. (Neocons are sometimes called "the Straussians.") Leo Strauss is a great admirer of Machiavelli with his utter contempt for restraining moral principles making him "uniquely effective," and, "the ideal patriot." He gushes over Machiavelli praising the intrepidity of his thought, the grandeur of his vision, and the graceful subtlety of his speech.

Other major points:

4. The Zionist/Neocons are piggy-backing onto, or utilizing, the religious myths of both the Jewish and Christian world to consolidate power. This is brilliant Machiavellian strategy.

[The]Pax Judaica will come only when "all the nations shall flow" to the Jerusalem temple, from where "shall go forth the law" (Isaiah 2:1-3). This vision of a new world order with Jerusalem at its center resonates within the Likudnik and neoconservative circles. At the Jerusalem Summit, held from October 12th to 14th, 2003 in the symbolically significant King David Hotel, an alliance was forged between Zionist Jews and Evangelical Christians around a "theopolitical" project, one that would consider Israel… "the key to the harmony of civilizations", replacing the United Nations that's become a "a tribalized confederation hijacked by Third World dictatorships": "Jerusalem's spiritual and historical importance endows it with a special authority to become a center of world's unity. [...] We believe that one of the objectives of Israel's divinely-inspired rebirth is to make it the center of the new unity of the nations, which will lead to an era of peace and prosperity, foretold by the Prophets". Three acting Israeli ministers spoke at the summit, including Benjamin Netanyahu, and Richard Perle.

Jerusalem's dream empire is expected to come through the nightmare of world war. The prophet Zechariah, often cited on Zionist forums, predicted that the Lord will fight "all nations" allied against Israel. In a single day, the whole earth will become a desert, with the exception of Jerusalem, who "shall remain aloft upon its site" (14:10).

With more than 50 millions members, Christians United for Israel is a major political force in the U.S.. Its Chairman, pastor John Haggee, declared: "The United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God's plan for both Israel and the West, [...] a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation, and Second Coming of Christ".

And Guyenot concludes:

Is it possible that this biblical dream, mixed with the neo-Machiavellianism of Leo Strauss and the militarism of Likud, is what is quietly animating an exceptionally determined and organized ultra-Zionist clan? General Wesley Clark testified on numerous occasions before the cameras, that one month after September 11th, 2001 a general from the Pentagon showed him a memo from neoconservative strategists "that describes how we're gonna take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia and Sudan and finishing off with Iran".

Is it just a coincidence that the "seven nations" doomed to be destroyed by Israel form part of the biblical myths? …[W]hen Yahweh will deliver Israel "seven nations greater and mightier than yourself […] you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them."

My summary:

[Dec 12, 2015] Hillary Clinton is a rubinite neoliberal

Notable quotes:
"... If memory serves me correctly the last time CNBC did a millionaires poll Hillary won. She is not a populist, barely a liberal. Two political parties, zero candidates I can vote for. Yuck. ..."
"... Rubinite neo liberal. She is also popular with PNAC and the Kagan's neocon favorite she would hire Wolfowitz ... Management in big war profiteer firms is not afraid of Hillary as they suspect the Donald. ..."
"... Rubinite neoliberal is a very good definition of what Hillary actually represent politically. Third Way is another term close in meaning to your Rubinite neoliberal term. ..."
"... But unlike the Third Way term your term captures an additional important quality of Hillary as a politician: On foreign policy issues she is a typical neocon and would feel pretty comfortable with most of Republican candidates foreign policy platforms. Her protégé in the Department of State Victoria Nuland was a close associate of Dick Cheney. ..."
"... Very true. Brad has been moving left for a couple years or more. It's now obvious. He lets krugman lead the way but he follows. Notice Summers too has moved left . Is this for real or just to cut the wind out of Bernie sails ? ..."
"... One thing is certain: the old Rubinite toxic line is no longer dominant in the. big D party top circles. We can call that progress if we need to ..."
"... Is this for real or just to cut the wind out of Bernie sails ? Even if it's the second, it legitimates Bernie's views and critique. Also DeLong here is criticizing Brookings and other centrist organizations specifically for working with AEI. ..."
"... Can you list all of the pro- or anti- Wall Street reforms and actions Bill Clinton performed as President including nominating Alan Greenspan as head regulator? Cutting the capital gains tax? Are you aware of Greenspan's record? ..."
"... I won't be surprised if she doesn't do much to rein in Wall Street besides some window dressing. ..."
Economist's View

Links for 12-12-15

Tom aka Rusty -> Peter K....

If memory serves me correctly the last time CNBC did a "millionaires poll" Hillary won. She is not a populist, barely a liberal. Two political parties, zero candidates I can vote for. Yuck.

Syaloch -> Tom aka Rusty...

Your memory serves you correctly:

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/10/marco-rubio-the-top-gop-choice-among-rich-cnbc-survey.html

(Rubio was the top GOP choice, but Clinton still beat Rubio by a 21% margin.)

Syaloch -> EMichael...

Well, here are the issues millionaires indicated as being most important to them, and presumably candidates of choice are based on their positions on these issues. Make of it what you will.

http://dwc.cnbc.com/eXucl/index.html

Fred C. Dobbs -> Tom aka Rusty...

HRC proclaims herself a progressive occasionally, but when pressed states she is a moderate/centrist.

Clinton Finally Admits She Is A Moderate-Centrist! https://youtu.be/LTL767hKxHo - Sep 11

Since she intends to be the Dem nominee, progressives expect she must be one of them. Only when necessary. As someone has said, 'Run from
the left, rule from the center.' Always, always, run from the left.

ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs...

Rubinite neo liberal.

She is also popular with PNAC and "the Kagan's" neocon favorite she would hire Wolfowitz and spend more trillions protecting the Saudis from their rising victims.

Clinton has said: Iran is the enemy.

She will keep fighting Iran while Sunni terrorists fund ISIS!

Trump is merely less nuanced in insanity.

Management in big war profiteer firms is not afraid of Hillary as they suspect the Donald.

likbez -> ilsm...
"Rubinite neo liberal. She is also popular with PNAC and "the Kagan's" neocon favorite she would hire Wolfowitz ... Management in big war profiteer firms is not afraid of Hillary as they suspect the Donald."

Exactly --

"Rubinite neoliberal" is a very good definition of what Hillary actually represent politically. Third Way is another term close in meaning to your "Rubinite neoliberal" term.

But unlike the "Third Way" term your term captures an additional important quality of Hillary as a politician: On foreign policy issues she is a typical neocon and would feel pretty comfortable with most of Republican candidates foreign policy platforms. Her protégé in the Department of State Victoria Nuland was a close associate of Dick Cheney.

She is probably more warmongering candidate then Jeb! and a couple of other republican candidates.

But at the same time she does not look like completely out of place as an establishment candidate from Dems, which are actually are "Democrats only by name" -- a typical "Third Way" party. From Wikipedia

=== quote ===

In politics, the Third Way is a position akin to centrism that tries to reconcile right-wing and left-wing politics by advocating a varying synthesis of right-wing economic and left-wing social policies.[1][2] The Third Way was created as a serious re-evaluation of political policies within various centre-left progressive movements in response to international doubt regarding the economic viability of the state; economic interventionist policies that had previously been popularized by Keynesianism and contrasted with the corresponding rise of popularity for economic liberalism and the New Right.[3] The Third Way is promoted by some social democratic and social liberal movements.[4]

Major Third Way social democratic proponent Tony Blair claimed that the socialism he advocated was different from traditional conceptions of socialism. Blair said "My kind of socialism is a set of values based around notions of social justice ... Socialism as a rigid form of economic determinism has ended, and rightly".[5] Blair referred to it as "social-ism" that involves politics that recognized individuals as socially interdependent, and advocated social justice, social cohesion, equal worth of each citizen, and equal opportunity.[6] Third Way social democratic theorist Anthony Giddens has said that the Third Way rejects the traditional conception of socialism, and instead accepts the conception of socialism as conceived of by Anthony Crosland as an ethical doctrine that views social democratic governments as having achieved a viable ethical socialism by removing the unjust elements of capitalism by providing social welfare and other policies, and that contemporary socialism has outgrown the Marxian claim for the need of the abolition of capitalism.[7] Blair in 2009 publicly declared support for a "new capitalism".[8]

It supports the pursuit of greater egalitarianism in society through action to increase the distribution of skills, capacities, and productive endowments, while rejecting income redistribution as the means to achieve this.[9] It emphasizes commitment to balanced budgets, providing equal opportunity combined with an emphasis on personal responsibility, decentralization of government power to the lowest level possible, encouragement of public-private partnerships, improving labour supply, investment in human development, protection of social capital, and protection of the environment.[10]
=== end of quote ===

ilsm -> likbez...

H. Clinton is as likely to keep US out of the wrong quagmire as LBJ in 1964. Except, LBJ may have actually changed his mind after he was elected.

Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs...

(Yes, There Will Be Triangulating. This is not a great example of it.)

Hillary Is Already Triangulating Against Liberals
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/11/hillary_clinton_triangulates_against_bernie_sanders.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_top
via @slate - Nov 18

The Hillary Clinton presidential campaign has begun using an odd new line of attack against upstart Democratic primary rival Sen. Bernie Sanders: He's too liberal on taxes and universal health insurance. Why is she doing this? After returning to the position in which she entered the race-as the near-certain nominee-she seems to be setting herself up for the general election. But it's strange to see her now, after the previously shaky ship has been steadied, attacking a candidate whose supporters she'll need in any general election campaign over an issue that his supporters care about very deeply.

Triangulating against Sanders (and, by proxy, the left wing of the Democratic Party) with conservative attacks does make some sense. For one, she is a Clinton, and this is what they do.

At issue is Sanders' support for a single-payer universal health care system, which he and others brand as "Medicare for all." A single-payer bill he introduced in 2013 would have levied a 2.2 percent tax on individuals making up to $200,000 or couples making up to $250,000, and progressively increased that rate to 5.2 percent for income beyond $600,000. It also would have tacked an extra 6.7 percent payroll tax on the employer side, at least some of which employers would likely pass on to workers.

The Clinton campaign is suddenly quite upset about that proposal and wants everyone to know. She has committed to the same (policy-constricting) pledge that President Obama took in 2008 and 2012, ruling out tax increases on individuals making less than $200,000 per year or joint filers making less than $250,000. This neatly positions her camp to say, by contrast, that the bug-eyed socialist Bernie Sanders wants to take all of your money. ...

(Where HRC will get a lot of votes & contributions will be among those in the $250K & below set, so no need to antagonize THEM. Not when she can
practically smell the nomination.)

Paine -> Peter K....

Very true. Brad has been moving left for a couple years or more. It's now obvious. He lets krugman lead the way but he follows. Notice Summers too has moved left . Is this for real or just to cut the wind out of Bernie sails ?

One thing is certain: the old Rubinite toxic line is no longer dominant in the. big D party top circles. We can call that progress if we need to

Peter K. -> Paine ...

"Is this for real or just to cut the wind out of Bernie sails ?" Even if it's the second, it legitimates Bernie's views and critique. Also DeLong here is criticizing Brookings and other "centrist" organizations specifically for working with AEI.

Syaloch -> Paine ...

Just as the revolution within the Republican party was the result of the undue influence of an out-of-touch elite, the Democratic coalition has been threatened by the influence of the Brookings-Third Way wing which seems, for example, to imagine that they can sell to the base cuts to Social Security, an elite priority that has nothing to do with the reasons working-class people vote Democrat.

http://www.thirdway.org/case-study/entitlement-reform

"We supported and helped pass into law the Simpson-Bowles commission that came close to securing the bipartisan grand bargain budget agreement for which we fought. We proposed our own Social Security fix plan that combined tax increases on upper income earners with benefit cuts on well-to-do seniors and benefit increases to poor seniors. We first proposed then brought Democrats and Republicans together on a Social Security Commission plan that remains the only bipartisan legislation to fix Social Security. We became the lead center-left organization to promote chain weighted CPI and eventually counted President Obama as one of our supporters."

http://thehill.com/policy/finance/198815-obama-abandons-cut-to-social-security

"Yielding to pressure from congressional Democrats, President Obama is abandoning a proposed cut to Social Security benefits in his election-year budget...

"Democrats on Capitol Hill had pleaded with Obama to reverse course on the chained consumer price index (CPI), fearing it could become a liability for the party in the upcoming midterm elections, which typically bring high turnout among older voters.

"More than 100 House Democrats wrote to Obama on Wednesday urging him to drop the chained CPI proposal, following a similar letter from 16 Senate Democrats that was led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)."

RGC said...
Hillary Clinton Is Whitewashing the Financial Catastrophe

She has a plan that she claims will reform Wall Street-but she's deflecting responsibility from old friends and donors in the industry.

By William Greider
Yesterday 3:11 pm

Hillary Clinton's recent op-ed in The New York Times, "How I'd Rein In Wall Street," was intended to reassure nervous Democrats who fear she is still in thrall to those mega-bankers of New York who crashed the American economy. Clinton's brisk recital of plausible reform ideas might convince wishful thinkers who are not familiar with the complexities of banking. But informed skeptics, myself included, see a disturbing message in her argument that ought to alarm innocent supporters.

Candidate Clinton is essentially whitewashing the financial catastrophe. She has produced a clumsy rewrite of what caused the 2008 collapse, one that conveniently leaves her husband out of the story. He was the president who legislated the predicate for Wall Street's meltdown. Hillary Clinton's redefinition of the reform problem deflects the blame from Wall Street's most powerful institutions, like JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, and instead fingers less celebrated players that failed. In roundabout fashion, Hillary Clinton sounds like she is assuring old friends and donors in the financial sector that, if she becomes president, she will not come after them.

The seminal event that sowed financial disaster was the repeal of the New Deal's Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which had separated banking into different realms: investment banks, which organize capital investors for risk-taking ventures; and deposit-holding banks, which serve people as borrowers and lenders. That law's repeal, a great victory for Wall Street, was delivered by Bill Clinton in 1999, assisted by the Federal Reserve and the financial sector's armies of lobbyists. The "universal banking model" was saluted as a modernizing reform that liberated traditional banks to participate directly and indirectly in long-prohibited and vastly more profitable risk-taking.

Exotic financial instruments like derivatives and credit-default swaps flourished, enabling old-line bankers to share in the fun and profit on an awesome scale. The banks invented "guarantees" against loss and sold them to both companies and market players. The fast-expanding financial sector claimed a larger and larger share of the economy (and still does) at the expense of the real economy of producers and consumers. The interconnectedness across market sectors created the illusion of safety. When illusions failed, these connected guarantees became the dragnet that drove panic in every direction. Ultimately, the federal government had to rescue everyone, foreign and domestic, to stop the bleeding.

Yet Hillary Clinton asserts in her Times op-ed that repeal of Glass-Steagall had nothing to do with it. She claims that Glass-Steagall would not have limited the reckless behavior of institutions like Lehman Brothers or insurance giant AIG, which were not traditional banks. Her argument amounts to facile evasion that ignores the interconnected exposures. The Federal Reserve spent $180 billion bailing out AIG so AIG could pay back Goldman Sachs and other banks. If the Fed hadn't acted and had allowed AIG to fail, the banks would have gone down too.

These sound like esoteric questions of bank regulation (and they are), but the consequences of pretending they do not matter are enormous. The federal government and Federal Reserve would remain on the hook for rescuing losers in a future crisis. The largest and most adventurous banks would remain free to experiment, inventing fictitious guarantees and selling them to eager suckers. If things go wrong, Uncle Sam cleans up the mess.

Senator Elizabeth Warren and other reformers are pushing a simpler remedy-restore the Glass-Steagall principles and give citizens a safe, government-insured place to store their money. "Banking should be boring," Warren explains (her co-sponsor is GOP Senator John McCain).
That's a hard sell in politics, given the banking sector's bear hug of Congress and the White House, its callous manipulation of both political parties. Of course, it is more complicated than that. But recreating a safe, stable banking system-a place where ordinary people can keep their money-ought to be the first benchmark for Democrats who claim to be reformers.

Actually, the most compelling witnesses for Senator Warren's argument are the two bankers who introduced this adventure in "universal banking" back in the 1990s. They used their political savvy and relentless muscle to seduce Bill Clinton and his so-called New Democrats. John Reed was CEO of Citicorp and led the charge. He has since apologized to the nation. Sandy Weill was chairman of the board and a brilliant financier who envisioned the possibilities of a single, all-purpose financial house, freed of government's narrow-minded regulations. They won politically, but at staggering cost to the country.

Weill confessed error back in 2012: "What we should probably do is go and split up investment banking from banking. Have banks do something that's not going to risk the taxpayer dollars, that's not going to be too big to fail."

John Reed's confession explained explicitly why their modernizing crusade failed for two fundamental business reasons. "One was the belief that combining all types of finance into one institution would drive costs down-and the larger institution the more efficient it would be," Reed wrote in the Financial Times in November. Reed said, "We now know that there are very few cost efficiencies that come from the merger of functions-indeed, there may be none at all. It is possible that combining so much in a single bank makes services more expensive than if they were instead offered by smaller, specialised players."

The second grave error, Reed said, was trying to mix the two conflicting cultures in banking-bankers who are pulling in opposite directions. That tension helps explain the competitive greed displayed by the modernized banking system. This disorder speaks to the current political crisis in ways that neither Dems nor Republicans wish to confront. It would require the politicians to critique the bankers (often their funders) in terms of human failure.

"Mixing incompatible cultures is a problem all by itself," Reed wrote. "It makes the entire finance industry more fragile…. As is now clear, traditional banking attracts one kind of talent, which is entirely different from the kinds drawn towards investment banking and trading. Traditional bankers tend to be extroverts, sociable people who are focused on longer term relationships. They are, in many important respects, risk averse. Investment bankers and their traders are more short termist. They are comfortable with, and many even seek out, risk and are more focused on immediate reward."

Reed concludes, "As I have reflected about the years since 1999, I think the lessons of Glass-Steagall and its repeal suggest that the universal banking model is inherently unstable and unworkable. No amount of restructuring, management change or regulation is ever likely to change that."

This might sound hopelessly naive, but the Democratic Party might do better in politics if it told more of the truth more often: what they tried do and why it failed, and what they think they may have gotten wrong. People already know they haven't gotten a straight story from politicians. They might be favorably impressed by a little more candor in the plain-spoken manner of John Reed.

Of course it's unfair to pick on the Dems. Republicans have been lying about their big stuff for so long and so relentlessly that their voters are now staging a wrathful rebellion. Who knows, maybe a little honest talk might lead to honest debate. Think about it. Do the people want to hear the truth about our national condition? Could they stand it?

http://www.thenation.com/article/hillary-clinton-is-whitewashing-the-financial-catastrophe/

EMichael -> RGC...
"She claims that Glass-Steagall would not have limited the reckless behavior of institutions like Lehman Brothers or insurance giant AIG, which were not traditional banks."

Of course this claim is absolutely true. Just like GS would not have affected the other investment banks, whatever their name was. And just like we would have had to bail out those other banks whatever their name was.

Peter K. -> EMichael...
Can you list all of the pro- or anti- Wall Street "reforms" and actions Bill Clinton performed as President including nominating Alan Greenspan as head regulator? Cutting the capital gains tax? Are you aware of Greenspan's record?

Yes Hillary isn't Bill but she hasn't criticized her husband specifically about his record and seems to want to have her cake and eat it too.

Of course Hillary is much better than the Republicans, pace Rustbucket and the Green Lantern Lefty club. Still, critics have a point.

I won't be surprised if she doesn't do much to rein in Wall Street besides some window dressing.

[Dec 11, 2015] The Constitution requires inequality

Notable quotes:
"... Sanders says he is for "having a government which represents all people, rather than just the wealthiest people, which is most often the case right now in this country." But what that misses is the extent to which that has always been the case, and not by happenstance. ..."
"... Mortified by the threat to their wealth and power, the elite sought to reconfigure the government more to their liking, and to ensure that such an outburst of popular sentiment couldn't happen again. ..."
"... The main purpose of the new Constitution, then, was to preserve inequalities among individuals and the inequalities in the distribution of property among them. "Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society," Madison observes. Ever had it been, and ever under the Constitution would it be. The division of wealth and political power, between the haves and the have-nots, between (as the new Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan has put it) the makers and the takers, was to be carefully maintained. For Madison, in Federalist No. 10, the question was how to do so while at least nominally "preserv[ing] the spirit and the form of popular government." ... ..."
December 13, 2015 | bostonglobe.com

Conventional political wisdom says that Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, however popular in certain corners, can't possibly win election to the White House. Too radical, goes the thinking. Inspiring, common-sense ideas, perhaps, but come Election Day, a majority of American voters won't back the redistribution of wealth implicit in his proposals. Why is that?

Believe it or not, one place to look for an answer is the Constitution, crafted by the richest and most powerful Americans of their day to perpetuate their own control over the government and economy.

Sanders says he is for "having a government which represents all people, rather than just the wealthiest people, which is most often the case right now in this country." But what that misses is the extent to which that has always been the case, and not by happenstance.

In late 1786, a farmer and veteran of the Revolution named Daniel Shays led an armed insurrection of debtors and veterans in the hills of Western Massachusetts. Objecting to an onerous regime of taxes and confiscations the state imposed to pay its creditors, the rebels marched through the countryside, threatening the new federal arsenal at Springfield and shutting down courthouses to stop foreclosure proceedings. Bankers and merchants in Boston - the same parties who owned the state's debt - lent Massachusetts more money to put the insurrection down.

In October of that year, General Henry Knox, secretary of war, summarized the rebels' philosophy: "Their creed is 'That the property of the United States has been protected from the confiscations of Britain by the joint exertions of all, and therefore ought to be the common property of all. And he that attempts opposition to this creed is an enemy to equity and justice, and ought to be swept off the face of the earth.' "

Mortified by the threat to their wealth and power, the elite sought to reconfigure the government more to their liking, and to ensure that such an outburst of popular sentiment couldn't happen again.

As schoolchildren learn - and adults often forget - the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was only tasked with amending the Articles of Confederation, the document that had governed the breakaway Colonies since 1781. The convention wasn't supposed to rewrite them entirely. The progressive historian Charles Beard, whose influential "An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution" was the first work to reveal the class-based nature of our founding charter, stated the matter plainly when he called it a coup d'etat.

Contrary to what many assume, the Constitution was never subjected to a popular referendum, but to the votes of state ratifying conventions that were themselves largely elected by only white propertied males; indeed, only about 150,000 Americans elected delegates, out of a population of some 4 million. With the goal of persuading New Yorkers to elect pro-Constitution delegates to the state's convention, James Madison, with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, wrote a series of 85 essays under the pseudonym Publius that were published in local papers between November 1787 and August 1788 under the title, The Federalist. Madison's most famous contribution, Federalist No. 10, is widely acclaimed for its idea that factions of citizens with disparate interests should be balanced against one another in order to create a republic that would neither succumb to what John Adams called "tyranny of the majority" nor lose its responsiveness to the people as it grew larger in stature and scale.

Yet despite the attention Federalist No. 10 has received from political scientists, it ought to be much better known among all who favor a more equal distribution of wealth, because it explains how our political system, often described as rigged, has in fact been rigged from the start.

"Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens," Madison writes near the beginning of the essay, gesturing, as he does throughout The Federalist, to the fallout from Shays' Rebellion, "that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority."

That majority, it slowly becomes clear, are the debtors and small landowners, those more recently designated the 99 percent. "The diversity in the faculties of men," Madison explains, leads to different "rights of property," and this difference represents "an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests" in the political community. "The protection of these faculties is the first object of government," he adds.

The main purpose of the new Constitution, then, was to preserve inequalities among individuals and the inequalities in the distribution of property among them. "Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society," Madison observes. Ever had it been, and ever under the Constitution would it be. The division of wealth and political power, between the haves and the have-nots, between (as the new Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan has put it) the makers and the takers, was to be carefully maintained. For Madison, in Federalist No. 10, the question was how to do so while at least nominally "preserv[ing] the spirit and the form of popular government." ...

(Richard Kreitner is the archivist of the The Nation magazine.)

[Dec 10, 2015] Christopher Hitchens -- Speaking Honestly About Hillary Clinton

Notable quotes:
"... life simply because she was married to a President like he would like us to believe. If that was the case there would've been more first ladies running for office. She was a political animal from the start and was involved in every political decision her husband made and shaped his policies dating back to Arkansas. She came in as first lady and immediately announced she was not going to be like other first ladies. I think Hitchens is sort of being lazy with his analysis on how the Clintons attain power and how they've cultivated the path to their success in the political arena ..."
"... I'm sure Hitch would have some very colourful remarks to make about Mrs. Clinton's e-mail shenanigans were he still with us. ..."
"... The woman is remarkably despicable and I hate to have such a jaded view of the average American voter but I'm afraid she is going to get the Presidency based in large part because of the potential for the first female President. ..."
YouTube

nomibe2911 2 weeks ago

What he failed to realize is how is she reaching these platforms to try and reach the highest office in the land. Did she get where she is in life simply because she was married to a President like he would like us to believe. If that was the case there would've been more first ladies running for office. She was a political animal from the start and was involved in every political decision her husband made and shaped his policies dating back to Arkansas. She came in as first lady and immediately announced she was not going to be like other first ladies. I think Hitchens is sort of being lazy with his analysis on how the Clintons attain power and how they've cultivated the path to their success in the political arena

juicer67 2 months ago

I'm sure Hitch would have some very colourful remarks to make about Mrs. Clinton's e-mail shenanigans were he still with us. He was irreplaceable.

michael davis 1 month ago

+juicer67 And a lot more to say about Benghazi as well. The woman is remarkably despicable and I hate to have such a jaded view of the average American voter but I'm afraid she is going to get the Presidency based in large part because of the potential for the first female President. From my experience with chatting with people before the 2008 election, many were voting for Obama in large part because he had a chance to be the first black President - people were excited about that regardless of his stances. I'm afraid the same will happen with Clinton and she likely knows it too. Its sad that people vote in that way.

[Dec 04, 2015] The Neoconservative Movement is Trotskyism

"... Kristol argues in his book The Neoconservative Persuasion that those Jewish intellectuals did not forsake their heritage (revolutionary ideology) when they gave up Communism and other revolutionary movements, but had to make some changes in their thinking. America is filled with such former Trotskyists who unleashed an unprecedented foreign policy that led to the collapse of the American economy. ..."
"... Noted Australian economist John Quiggin declares in his recent work Zombie Economics that "Ideas are long lived, often outliving their originators and taking new and different forms. Some ideas live on because they are useful. Others die and are forgotten. But even when they have proved themselves wrong and dangerous, ideas are very hard to kill. Even after the evidence seems to have killed them, they keep on coming back. ..."
"... These ideas are neither alive nor dead; rather…they are undead, or zombie, ideas." Bolshevism or Trotskyism is one of those zombie ideas that keeps coming back in different forms. It has ideologically reincarnated in the political disputations of the neoconservative movement. ..."
"... As soon as the Israel Lobby came along, as soon as the neoconservative movement began to shape U.S. foreign policy, as soon as Israel began to dictate to the U.S. what ought to be done in the Middle East, America was universally hated by the Muslim world. ..."
"... In that sense, the neoconservative movement as a political and intellectual movement represents a fifth column in the United States in that it subtly and deceptively seeks to undermine what the Founding Fathers have stood for and replace it with what the Founding Fathers would have considered horrible foreign policies-policies which have contributed to the demise of the respect America once had. ..."
"... For example, when two top AIPAC officials-Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman-were caught passing classified documents from the Pentagon to Israel, Gabriel Schoenfeld defended them. ..."
"... Israel has been spying on the United States for years using various Israeli or Jewish individuals, including key Jewish neoconservative figures such as Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, who were under investigation for passing classified documents to Israel. ..."
January 22, 2013 | Veterans Today

Kristol argues in his book The Neoconservative Persuasion that those Jewish intellectuals did not forsake their heritage (revolutionary ideology) when they gave up Communism and other revolutionary movements, but had to make some changes in their thinking. America is filled with such former Trotskyists who unleashed an unprecedented foreign policy that led to the collapse of the American economy.

We have to keep in mind that America and much of the Western world were scared to death of Bolshevism and Trotskyism in the 1920s and early 30s because of its subversive activity.

Noted Australian economist John Quiggin declares in his recent work Zombie Economics that "Ideas are long lived, often outliving their originators and taking new and different forms. Some ideas live on because they are useful. Others die and are forgotten. But even when they have proved themselves wrong and dangerous, ideas are very hard to kill. Even after the evidence seems to have killed them, they keep on coming back.

These ideas are neither alive nor dead; rather…they are undead, or zombie, ideas." Bolshevism or Trotskyism is one of those zombie ideas that keeps coming back in different forms. It has ideologically reincarnated in the political disputations of the neoconservative movement.

... ... ...

As it turns out, neoconservative think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute are largely extensions of Trotskyism with respect to foreign policy. Other think tanks such as the Bradley Foundation were overtaken by the neoconservative machine back in 1984.

Some of those double agents have been known to have worked with Likud-supporting Jewish groups such as the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, an organization which has been known to have "co-opted" several "non-Jewish defense experts by sending them on trips to Israel. It flew out the retired general Jay Garner, now slated by Bush to be proconsul of occupied Iraq."

Philo-Semitic scholars Stephen Halper of Cambridge University and Jonathan Clarke of the CATO Institute agree that the neoconservative agendas "have taken American international relations on an unfortunate detour," which is another way of saying that this revolutionary movement is not what the Founding Fathers signed up for, who all maintained that the United States would serve the American people best by not entangling herself in alliances with foreign entities.

As soon as the Israel Lobby came along, as soon as the neoconservative movement began to shape U.S. foreign policy, as soon as Israel began to dictate to the U.S. what ought to be done in the Middle East, America was universally hated by the Muslim world.

Moreover, former secretary of defense Robert Gates made it clear to the United States that the Israelis do not and should not have a monopoly on the American interests in the Middle East. For that, he was chastised by neoconservative Elliott Abrams.

In that sense, the neoconservative movement as a political and intellectual movement represents a fifth column in the United States in that it subtly and deceptively seeks to undermine what the Founding Fathers have stood for and replace it with what the Founding Fathers would have considered horrible foreign policies-policies which have contributed to the demise of the respect America once had.

... ... ...

Israel has been spying on the United States for years using various Israeli or Jewish individuals, including key Jewish neoconservative figures such as Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, who were under investigation for passing classified documents to Israel.

The FBI has numerous documents tracing Israel's espionage in the U.S., but no one has come forward and declared it explicitly in the media because most political pundits value mammon over truth.

For example, when two top AIPAC officials-Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman-were caught passing classified documents from the Pentagon to Israel, Gabriel Schoenfeld defended them.

In the annual FBI report called "Foreign Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage," Israel is a major country that pops up quite often. This is widely known among CIA and FBI agents and U.S. officials for years.

One former U.S. intelligence official declared, "There is a huge, aggressive, ongoing set of Israeli activities directed against the United States. Anybody who worked in counterintelligence in a professional capacity will tell you the Israelis are among the most aggressive and active countries targeting the United States.

They undertake a wide range of technical operations and human operations. People here as liaisons… aggressively pursue classified intelligence from people. The denials are laughable."

[Dec 03, 2015] On That Video Where Some Egyptians Allegedly Say Obama Is Insane And On Drugs And Should Be Removed From Office

EconoSpeak

An old and close, but very conservative and increasingly out of touch with reality friend of mine posted a video some days ago on Facebook. He indicated that he thought it was both funny and also insightful. It seemed highly suspicious to me, so I googled it and found that the person who uploaded it onto you tube stated in the comments on it that it is a spoof. Here is a link that discusses why it is known it is a spoof as well as linking to the video itself and its comments. It has reportedly been widely distributed on the internet by many conservatives who think it is for real, and when I pointed out it is a spoof, my friend defriended me from Facebook. I am frustrated.

So, for those who do not view it, it purports to show a talk show in Egypt where a brief clip of Obama speaking last May to graduating military officers about how climate change is and will be a serious national security issue, something the Pentagon has claimed. He did not say it was the most serious such issue, and at least in the clip he said nothing about Daesh/ISIS/ISIL, although of course he has said a lot about it and not only has US drones attacking it but reportedly we have "boots on the ground" now against them in the form of some Special Ops.

So, the video then goes back to the supposed talk show where they are speaking in Arabic with English subtitles. According to these subtitels, which are partly accurate translations but also wildly inaccurate in many places (my Arabic is good enough that I have parsed out what is what there) the host asks, "Is he insane?" A guest suggests he is on drugs. Another claims he just does what Michelle says and that his biceps are small. Finally a supposed retired general pounds the table and denounces him over Libya policy (that part is for real, although his name is never mentioned) and suggests that Americans should act to remove him from office. Again, conservative commentators have found hilarious and very insightful, with this even holding among commenters to the video aware that it is a mistranslated spoof. Bring these guys on more. Obviously they would be big hits on Fox News.

So, I would like to simply comment further on why Egyptians would be especially upset about Libya, but that them being so against the US is somewhat hypocritical (I also note that there is reason to believe that the supposed general is not a general). Of course Libya is just to the west of Egypt with its eastern portion (Cyrenaica under Rome) often ruled by whomever was ruling Egypt at various times in the past. So there is a strong cultural-historical connection. It is understandable that they would take Libyan matters seriously, and indeed things in Libya have turned into a big mess.

However, the move to bring in outside powers to intervene against Qaddafi in 2011 was instigated by an Egyptian, Abu Moussa. This was right after Mubarak had fallen in the face of massive demonstrations in Egypt. Moussa was both leader of the Arab League and wanting to run for President of Egypt. He got nowhere with the latter, but he did get somewhere with getting
the rest of the world to intervene in Libya. He got the Arab League to support such an intervention, with that move going to the UN Security Council and convincing Russia and China to abstain on the anti-Qaddafi measure. Putin has since complained that those who intervened, UK and France most vigorously with US "leading from behind" on the effort.went beyond the UN mandate. But in any case, Qaddafi was overthrown, not to be replaced by any stable or central power, with Libya an ongoing mess that has remained fragmented since, especially between its historically separate eastern and western parts, something I have posted on here previously.

So, that went badly, but Egyptians blaming the US for this seems to me to be a bit much, pretty hypocritical. It happens to be a fact that the US and Obama are now very unpopular in Egypt. I looked at a poll from a few months ago, and the only nations where the US and Obama were viewed less favorably (although a few not polled such as North Korea) were in order: Russia, Palestinian Territories, Belarus, Lebanon, Iran, and Pakistan, with me suspecting there is now a more favorable view in Iran since the culmination of the nuclear deal. I can appreciate that many Egyptians are frustrated that the US supported an election process that did not give them Moussa or El-Baradei, but the Muslim Brotherhood, who proceeded to behave badly, leading to them being overthrown by an new military dictatorship with a democratic veneer, basically a new improved version of the Mubarak regime, with the US supporting it, if somewhat reluctantly.

Yes, this is all pretty depressing, but I must say that ultimately the Egyptians are responsible for what has gone down in their own nation. And even if those Egyptian commentators, whoever they actually are, are as angry about Obama as they are depicted as being, the fact is that Obama is still more popular there than was George W. Bush at the same time in his presidency, something all these US conservatives so enamored of this bizarre video seem to conveniently forget.

Addenda, 5:10 PM:

1) The people on that video come across almost like The Three Stooges, which highlights the comedic aspect that even fans of Obama are supposed to appreciate, although it does not add to the credibility of the remarks of those so carrying on like a bunch of clowns.

2) Another reason Egyptians may be especially upset about the situation in Libya is that indeed Daesh has a foothold in a port city not too far from the Egyptian border in Surt, as reported as the top story today in the NY Times.

3) Arguably once the rest of the world got in, the big problem was a failure to follow through with aiding establishing a central unified government, although that was always going to be a problem, something not recognized by all too many involved, including Abu Moussa. As it was once his proposal got going, it was then Sec. of State Hillary Clinton who was the main person leading the charge for the US to get in over the reluctance of Obama. This was probably her biggest mistake in all this, even though most Republicans think the irrelevant sideshow of the unfortunate incident in Benghazi is the big deal.

4) Needless to say, Republican views at the time of the intervention were just completely incoherent, as symbolized at one point by Senator Lindsey Graham, who within the space of a single sentence simultaneously argued for the US to do nothing and also to go in full force with the proverbial "boots on the ground."

Further Addendum, 7:10 PM:

One of the pieces of evidence given that supposedly shows that the video is a spoof is that the supposed retired Brigadier General Mahmoud Mansour cannot be found if one googles his name, except in connection with this video. There are some other Egyptians named Mansour who show up, but this guy does not. However, it occurs to me that he might be for real, but simply obscure. After all, Brigadier is the lowest rank of General, one star, with Majors being two star, Lieutenants being three star (even though Majors are above Lieutenants), and with four and five star not having any other rank assigned to them. Furthermore, Egypt has a large military that has run the country for decades, so there may well be a lot of these Brigadier Generals, with many of them amounting to nothing. So, if he is for real, his claim to fame will be from jumping up and down, pounding on a table and calling for the overthrow of the POTUS.

Barkley Rosser

[Dec 02, 2015] When it comes to Wall Street buying our democracy you just need to follow the money

Notable quotes:
"... Let's compare donations from people who work at Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs to Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Hillary Clinton, has received $495,503.60 from people who work on Wall Street Bernie Sanders, has received only $17,107.72. Hillary Clinton may have Wall Street, ..."
"... The false promise of meritocracy was most disappointing. It basically said that meritocracy is hard to do, but never evaluates whether it is the right thing to do. Hint - it isn't enough. We need to worry about (relative) equality of outcome not just (relative) equality of opportunity. An equal chance to starve is still an equal chance. ..."
"... Making economies games is how you continued rigged distribution apparatus. Question all "rules"! ..."
economistsview.typepad.com

RGC, December 02, 2015 at 05:55 AM

Bernie's latest pitch:

When it comes to Wall Street buying our democracy, you just need to follow the money. Let's compare donations from people who work at Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs to Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Hillary Clinton, has received $495,503.60 from people who work on Wall Street Bernie Sanders, has received only $17,107.72. Hillary Clinton may have Wall Street, But Bernie has YOU! Bernie has received more than 1.5 million contributions from folks like you, at an average of $30 each.

pgl -> RGC, December 02, 2015 at 05:58 AM
$17,107.72? Jamie Dimon spends more than that on his morning cup of coffee. Go Bernie!
EMichael -> RGC, December 02, 2015 at 06:03 AM
To be fair, don't you think we should count donations for this election cycle for Clinton?

Y'know, she was the Senator from New York.

pgl -> EMichael,
Some people think anyone from New York is in bed with Wall Street. Trust me on this one - not everyone here in Brooklyn is in Jamie Dimon's hip pocket. Of course those alleged liberals JohnH uses as his sources (e.g. William Cohan) are in Jamie Dimon's hip pocket.
EMichael -> pgl,
I hate things like this. No honesty whatsoever. This cycle.

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/contrib.php?cycle=2016&id=N00000019

RGC -> EMichael,
How is there no honesty whatsoever?

The total for Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan and Bank of America is $326,000.
That leaves Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs to contribute $169,000.

EMichael -> RGC,
I stand corrected, somewhat.

Let me know how much comes from those organizations PACs.

reason said,
The false promise of meritocracy was most disappointing. It basically said that meritocracy is hard to do, but never evaluates whether it is the right thing to do. Hint - it isn't enough. We need to worry about (relative) equality of outcome not just (relative) equality of opportunity. An equal chance to starve is still an equal chance.
ilsm -> reason,

Making economies games is how you continued rigged distribution apparatus. Question all "rules"!

von Neumann should have been censored.

[Dec 01, 2015] US Intervention Before And After

Zero Hedge
WhackoWarner

Before death in Libya....Ghadaffi's crime was in "not playing along and selling out". Kinda like Iraq and all. They all should just hand over everything and say thanks...but they did not . There is disinfo on both sides, But the "madman" and people who actually live there never seem to make the NYTimes.

"For 40 years, or was it longer, I can't remember, I did all I could to give people houses, hospitals, schools, and when they were hungry, I gave them food. I even made Benghazi into farmland from the desert, I stood up to attacks from that cowboy Reagan, when he killed my adopted orphaned daughter, he was trying to kill me, instead he killed that poor innocent child. Then I helped my brothers and sisters from Africa with money for the African Union.

I did all I could to help people understand the concept of real democracy, where people's committees ran our country. But that was never enough, as some told me, even people who had 10 room homes, new suits and furniture, were never satisfied, as selfish as they were they wanted more. They told Americans and other visitors, that they needed "democracy" and "freedom" never realizing it was a cut throat system, where the biggest dog eats the rest, but they were enchanted with those words, never realizing that in America, there was no free medicine, no free hospitals, no free housing, no free education and no free food, except when people had to beg or go to long lines to get soup.

No, no matter what I did, it was never enough for some, but for others, they knew I was the son of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the only true Arab and Muslim leader we've had since Salah-al-Deen, when he claimed the Suez Canal for his people, as I claimed Libya, for my people, it was his footsteps I tried to follow, to keep my people free from colonial domination - from thieves who would steal from us.

Now, I am under attack by the biggest force in military history, my little African son, Obama wants to kill me, to take away the freedom of our country, to take away our free housing, our free medicine, our free education, our free food, and replace it with American style thievery, called "capitalism," but all of us in the Third World know what that means, it means corporations run the countries, run the world, and the people suffer. So, there is no alternative for me, I must make my stand, and if Allah wishes, I shall die by following His path, the path that has made our country rich with farmland, with food and health, and even allowed us to help our African and Arab brothers and sisters to work here with us, in the Libyan Jamahiriya.

I do not wish to die, but if it comes to that, to save this land, my people, all the thousands who are all my children, then so be it.

Let this testament be my voice to the world, that I stood up to crusader attacks of NATO, stood up to cruelty, stood up to betrayal, stood up to the West and its colonialist ambitions, and that I stood with my African brothers, my true Arab and Muslim brothers, as a beacon of light. When others were building castles, I lived in a modest house, and in a tent. I never forgot my youth in Sirte, I did not spend our national treasury foolishly, and like Salah-al-Deen, our great Muslim leader, who rescued Jerusalem for Islam, I took little for myself...

In the West, some have called me "mad", "crazy", but they know the truth yet continue to lie, they know that our land is independent and free, not in the colonial grip, that my vision, my path, is, and has been clear and for my people and that I will fight to my last breath to keep us free, may Allah almighty help us to remain faithful and free.

Kirk2NCC1701
"they hate us for our freedoms"

No, "They hate us for our freebombs" that we keep delivering.

Suppose you lived in a town that was run by a ruthless Mafioso boss. Sure he was ruthless to troublemakers and dissenters, but if you went about your business (and paid your taxes/respects to him), life was simple but livable, and crime was negligible.

Now imagine that a crime Overlord came from another country and decided to wreck the town, just to remove your Mafioso Don. In the process, your neighborhood and house were destroyed, and you lost friends and family.

Now tell me that YOU would not make it YOUR life's mission to bring these War Criminals to justice -- by any and all means necessary. And tell me that these same Criminals could not have foreseen all this. Now say it again - but with a straight face. I dare you. I fucking double-dare you!

Max Cynical
US exceptionalism!
GhostOfDiogenes
The worst one, besides Iraq, is Libya.

The infrastructure we destroyed there is unimaginable.

Sure Iraq was hit the worst, and much has been lost there....but Libya was a modern arab oasis of a country in the middle of nothing.

We destroyed in a few days what took decades to build.

This is why I am not proud of my country, nor my military.

In fact, I would like to see Nuremberg type trials for 'merican military leaders and concentration gulags for the rest of enlisted. Just like they did to Germany.

Its only proper.

GhostOfDiogenes
The USA did this murder of Libya and giving ownership to the people who did '911'? What a joke. http://youtu.be/aJURNC0e6Ek
Bastiat
Libya under Ghadaffi: universal free college education, free healthcare, free electricity. interest free loans. A very bad example of how a nation's wealth is to be distributed!
CHoward
The average American has NO idea how much damage is being done in this world - all in the name of Democracy. Unbelivable and truly pathetic. Yet - most sheeple still believe ISIS and others hate us because of our "freedoms" and i-pods. What bullshit.
Bioscale
Czech public tv published a long interview in English with Asad, it was filmed in Damascus some days ago.Very unusual thing, actually. Terrorism being transported by US, Turkey and France to Syria is being openly debated. http://www.ceskatelevize.cz/ct24/svet/1628712-asad-pro-ct-rebelove-jsou-...

Overfed

Compare and contrast Assad, giving an interview very well in a second language, with O'bomb-a, who can't even speak to school children without a teleprompter. Sad.

Razor_Edge

Along with President Putin, Dr al Assad is consistently the most sane, rational and clearly honest speaker on the tragedy of Syria. By contrast, our satanic western leaders simply lie outrageously at all times. How do we know? Their lips are moving. They also say the most absurd things.

We in the west may think that at the end of the day, it's not going to harm us, so why discomfort ourselves by taking on our own elites and bringing them down. But I believe that an horrific future awaits us, one we richly deserve, because we did not shout stop at this ocean of evil bloodshed being spilt in our names. We pay the taxes that pay for it, or at least in my countrys case, (traditional policy of military neutrality), we facilitate the slaughter (troop transports through Shannon airport), or fail to speak out for fear it may impact FDI into Ireland, (largest recipient of US FDI in the world).

We are our brothers keepers, and we are all one. It is those who seek to separate us to facilitate their evil and psychopathic lust for power and money, who would have us beieve that "the other" is evil. Are we really so simple minded or riven by fear that we cannot see through the curtain of the real Axis of Evil?

Demdere

Israeli-neocon strategy is to have the world's economy collapse at the point of maximum war and political chaos.

Then they can escape to Paraguay. Sure as hell, if they stay here, we are going to hang them all. Treasonous criminals for the 9/11 false flag operation.

By 2015, every military and intelligence service and all the think tanks have looked at 9/11 carefully. Anyone who looks at the evidence sees that it was a false flag operation, the buildings were destroyed via explosives, the planes and evil Arab Muslims were show. Those agencies reported to their civilian leaders, and their civilian leaders spread the information through their societies.

So all of the politically aware people in the world, including here at home, KNOW that 9/11 was a false flag operation, or know that they must not look at the evidence. Currently, anyone who disagrees in MSM is treated as invisible, and I know of no prominent bloggers who have even done the bits of extention of 'what it must mean' that I have done.

But it certainly means high levels of distrust for the US and for Israel. It seems to me that World Domination is not possible, because the world won't let you, and the means of opposition are only limited by the imaginations of the most creative, intelligent and knowledgable people. We don't have any of those on our side any more.

L Bean

In their farcical quest to emulate the Roman empire...

Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant - Tacitus

They plunder, they slaughter, and they steal: this they falsely name Empire, and where they make a wasteland, they call it peace.

[Nov 28, 2015] Remaking the Middle East: How the US Grew Tired and Less Relevant

Notable quotes:
"... In reality, this perception is misleading; not that Kerry is a warmonger on the level of George W. Bush's top staff, such as Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. The two were the very antithesis of any rational foreign policy such that even the elder George H. W. Bush described them with demeaning terminology , according to his biographer, quoted in the New York Times . Cheney was an "Iron-ass", who "had his own empire … and marched to his own drummer," H.W. Bush said, while calling Rumsfeld "an arrogant fellow" who lacked empathy. Yet, considering that the elder Bush was rarely a peacemaker himself, one is left to ponder if the US foreign policy ailment is centered on failure to elect proper representatives and to enlist anyone other than psychopaths? ..."
"... comparing the conduct of the last three administrations, that of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, one would find that striking similarities are abundant. In principle, all three administrations' foreign policy agendas were predicated on strong militaries and military interventions, although they applied soft power differently. ..."
"... In essence, Obama carried on with much of what W. Bush had started in the Middle East, although he supplanted his country's less active role in Iraq with new interventions in Libya and Syria. In fact, his Iraq policies were guided by Bush's final act in that shattered country, where he ordered a surge in troops to pacify the resistance, thus paving the way for an eventual withdrawal. Of course, none of that plotting worked in their favor, with the rise of ISIS among others, but that is for another discussion. ..."
"... In other words, US foreign policy continues unabated, often guided by the preponderant norm that "might makes right", and by ill-advised personal ambitions and ideological illusions like those championed by neo-conservatives during W. Bush's era. ..."
"... The folly of W. Bush, Cheney and company is that they assumed that the Pentagon's over $1.5 billion-a-day budget was enough to acquire the US the needed leverage to control every aspect of global affairs, including a burgeoning share of world economy. ..."
"... The Russian military campaign in Syria, which was halfheartedly welcomed by the US. has signaled a historic shift in the Middle East. Even if Russia fails to turn its war into a major shift of political and economic clout, the mere fact that other contenders are now throwing their proverbial hats into the Middle East ring, is simply unprecedented since the British-French-Israeli Tripartite Aggression on Egypt in 1956. ..."
"... It will take years before a new power paradigm fully emerges, during which time US clients are likely to seek the protection of more dependable powers. In fact, the shopping for a new power is already under way, which also means that new alliances will be formed while others fold. ..."
November 14, 2015 | original.antiwar.com
US Secretary of State, John Kerry, is often perceived as one of the "good ones" – the less hawkish of top American officials, who does not simply promote and defend his country's military adventurism but reaches out to others, beyond polarizing rhetoric.

His unremitting efforts culminated partly in the Iran nuclear framework agreement in April, followed by a final deal, a few months later. Now, he is reportedly hard at work again to find some sort of consensus on a way out of the Syria war, a multi-party conflict that has killed over 300,000 people. His admirers see him as the diplomatic executor of a malleable and friendly US foreign policy agenda under President Obama.

In reality, this perception is misleading; not that Kerry is a warmonger on the level of George W. Bush's top staff, such as Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. The two were the very antithesis of any rational foreign policy such that even the elder George H. W. Bush described them with demeaning terminology, according to his biographer, quoted in the New York Times. Cheney was an "Iron-ass", who "had his own empire … and marched to his own drummer," H.W. Bush said, while calling Rumsfeld "an arrogant fellow" who lacked empathy. Yet, considering that the elder Bush was rarely a peacemaker himself, one is left to ponder if the US foreign policy ailment is centered on failure to elect proper representatives and to enlist anyone other than psychopaths?

If one is to fairly examine US foreign policies in the Middle East, for example, comparing the conduct of the last three administrations, that of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, one would find that striking similarities are abundant. In principle, all three administrations' foreign policy agendas were predicated on strong militaries and military interventions, although they applied soft power differently.

In essence, Obama carried on with much of what W. Bush had started in the Middle East, although he supplanted his country's less active role in Iraq with new interventions in Libya and Syria. In fact, his Iraq policies were guided by Bush's final act in that shattered country, where he ordered a surge in troops to pacify the resistance, thus paving the way for an eventual withdrawal. Of course, none of that plotting worked in their favor, with the rise of ISIS among others, but that is for another discussion.

Obama has even gone a step further when he recently decided to keep thousands of US troops in Afghanistan well into 2017, thus breaking US commitment to withdraw next year. 2017 is Obama's last year in office, and the decision is partly motivated by his administration's concern that future turmoil in that country could cost his Democratic Party heavily in the upcoming presidential elections.

In other words, US foreign policy continues unabated, often guided by the preponderant norm that "might makes right", and by ill-advised personal ambitions and ideological illusions like those championed by neo-conservatives during W. Bush's era.

Nevertheless, much has changed as well, simply because American ambitions to police the world, politics and the excess of $600 billion a year US defense budget are not the only variables that control events in the Middle East and everywhere else. There are other undercurrents that cannot be wished away, and they too can dictate US foreign policy outlooks and behavior.

Indeed, an American decline has been noted for many years, and Middle Eastern nations have been more aware of this decline than others. One could even argue that the W. Bush administration's rush for war in Iraq in 2003 in an attempt at controlling the region's resources, was a belated effort at staving off that unmistakable decay – whether in US ability to regulate rising global contenders or in its overall share of global economy.

The folly of W. Bush, Cheney and company is that they assumed that the Pentagon's over $1.5 billion-a-day budget was enough to acquire the US the needed leverage to control every aspect of global affairs, including a burgeoning share of world economy. That misconception carries on to this day, where military spending is already accounting for about 54 percent of all federal discretionary spending, itself nearly a third of the country's overall budget.

However, those who are blaming Obama for failing to leverage US military strength for political currency refuse to accept that Obama's behavior hardly reflects a lack of appetite for war, but a pragmatic response to a situation that has largely spun out of US control.

The so-called "Arab Spring", for example, was a major defining factor in the changes of US fortunes. And it all came at a particularly interesting time.

First, the Iraq war has destroyed whatever little credibility the US had in the region, a sentiment that also reverberated around the world.

Second, it was becoming clear that the US foreign policy in Central and South America – an obstinate continuation of the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which laid the groundwork for US domination of that region – has also been challenged by more assertive leaders, armed with democratic initiatives, not military coups.

Third, China's more forceful politics, at least around its immediate regional surroundings, signaled that the US traditional hegemony over most of East and South East Asia are also facing fierce competition.

Not only many Asian and other countries have flocked to China, lured by its constantly growing and seemingly more solid economic performance, if compared to the US, but others are also flocking to Russia, which is filling a political and, as of late, military vacuum left open.

The Russian military campaign in Syria, which was halfheartedly welcomed by the US. has signaled a historic shift in the Middle East. Even if Russia fails to turn its war into a major shift of political and economic clout, the mere fact that other contenders are now throwing their proverbial hats into the Middle East ring, is simply unprecedented since the British-French-Israeli Tripartite Aggression on Egypt in 1956.

The region's historians must fully understand the repercussions of all of these factors, and that simply analyzing the US decline based on the performance of individuals – Condoleezza Rice's hawkishness vs. John Kerry's supposed sane diplomacy – is a trivial approach to understanding current shifts in global powers.

It will take years before a new power paradigm fully emerges, during which time US clients are likely to seek the protection of more dependable powers. In fact, the shopping for a new power is already under way, which also means that new alliances will be formed while others fold.

For now, the Middle East will continue to pass through this incredibly difficult and violent transition, for which the US is partly responsible.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is a media consultant, an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father was A Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press).

[Nov 23, 2015] Tell me how Trump doesn't win the Republican nomination

Notable quotes:
"... By far the most important thing GOP voters are looking for in a candidate is someone to "bring needed change to Washington." ..."
"... He's very strong in several of the early states right now including NH, NV and SC. And he could do very well on "Super Tuesday" with all those southern states voting. I can't see anyone but Trump or Carson winning in Georgia right now, for example, most likely Trump. ..."
"... And as for the idea of the GOP establishment ganging up on him and/or uniting behind another candidate like Rubio, that's at least as likely to backfire as to work. And even if it works, what's to stop Trump from then running as an independent? ..."
"... Indeed. You have a party whose domestic policy agenda consists of shouting "death panels!", whose foreign policy agenda consists of shouting "Benghazi!", and which now expects its base to realize that Trump isn't serious. Or to put it a bit differently, the definition of a GOP establishment candidate these days is someone who is in on the con, and knows that his colleagues have been talking nonsense. Primary voters are expected to respect that? ..."
"... ... with Trump in the race, all of those states-which are more red than they were in '08-are likely out for Democrats. Swing states like Colorado and Virginia are clear toss-ups. There are few states that Romney or McCain won where Trump, as the Republican nominee, wouldn't be in the running, and an analysis of other key states shows that Trump's in far better position than his detractors would like to admit. If Trump were to win every state that Romney won, Trump would stand today at 206 electoral votes, with 55 electoral votes up for grabs in Pennsylvania, Colorado, Nevada, Wisconsin, Iowa, and New Hampshire. Similarly, Trump does not necessarily lose in a single toss-up state versus Hillary Clinton and, in fact, is seemingly competitive in many. ..."
"... Which all means that the election comes down to Florida and Ohio, two states where Trump has significant advantages. In Florida (29 electoral votes), he is a part-time resident and is polling better than the state's former governor and sitting U.S. senator. ... ..."
"... A brokered convention, maybe? Even Romney would have a shot. ..."
"... Top-tier presidential campaigns are preparing for the still-unlikely scenario that the nomination fight goes all the way to the 2016 Republican National Convention. ..."
"... There hasn't been a brokered convention since 1976, but the strength of the GOP field, when coupled with the proliferation of super PACs, increases the chances that several candidates could show up in Cleveland next July with an army of delegates at their backs ..."
"... Since the November 13 attacks, every poll-in Florida, two in New Hampshire, and three nationwide-shows Trump maintaining or expanding his lead against his primary opponents. Poor Ben Carson, only recently Trump's chief rival, is losing energy like, well, you know who. In the Fox NH poll, it's Trump at 27, Rubio 13, Cruz 11, and Carson down there at 9 percent alongside Jeb! ..."
"... Play it out: an outsider who's dismissed by his party's elite, comes into the race and overwhelms a large, much more experienced group of candidates in a series of state primaries, both increasing his margins and improving as a candidate as he goes long. All the time riding a crisis that seems made for his candidacy. Does that sound like a sure loser? ... ..."
"... While the investigation into US bombing waste is keyed on who padded the figures rather than the ineptitude of bombing in any use other than taking out property owners to get the greedy to say uncle . The shame of Paris is attributable to the US war machine and every issue requires more money for the pentagon. ..."
"... No shit, sherlock, and it's because of you and the most vile mass murderer of all time, the CIA (and DIA, and NSA, and FBI, etc.), but predominantly the CIA and the Pentagon, that ISIS and such exists today! Whether it was Allen Dulles coordinating the escape of endless number of mass murderering Nazis, who would end up in CIA-overthrown countries, aiding and abetting their secret police (Example: Walter Rauff, who was responsible for at least 200,000 deaths, ending up as an advisor to Augusto Pinochet's secret police or DINA) or the grandson of the first chairman of the Bank for International Settlements, Richard Helms and his MKULTRA, you devils are to blame. ..."
"... The Devil's Chessboard ..."
Nov 23, 2015 | economistsview.typepad.com
Fred C. Dobbs said... November 23, 2015 at 06:49 AM
(!Trump watch.)

Thinking About the Trumpthinkable
http://nyti.ms/1jeD39I
NYT - Paul Krugman - Nov 22

Alan Abramowitz reads the latest WaPo poll and emails:

'Read these results (#) and tell me how Trump doesn't win the Republican nomination? I've been very skeptical about this all along, but I'm starting to change my mind. I think there's at least a pretty decent chance that Trump will be the nominee.

Here's why I think Trump could very well end up as the nominee:

1. He's way ahead of every other candidate now and has been in the lead or tied for the lead for a long time.

2. The only one even giving him any competition right now is Carson who is even less plausible and whose support is heavily concentrated among one (large) segment of the base-evangelicals.

3. Rubio, the great establishment hope now, is deep in third place, barely in double digits and nowhere close to Trump or Carson.

4. By far the most important thing GOP voters are looking for in a candidate is someone to "bring needed change to Washington."

5. He is favored on almost every major issue by Republican voters including immigration and terrorism by wide margins. The current terrorism scare only helps him with Republicans. They want someone who will "bomb the shit" out of the Muslim terrorists.

6. There is clearly strong support among Republicans for deporting 11 million illegal immigrants. They don't provide party breakdown here, but support for this is at about 40 percent among all voters so it's got to be a lot higher than that, maybe 60 percent, among Republicans.

7. If none of the totally crazy things he's said up until now have hurt him among Republican voters, why would any crazy things he says in the next few months hurt him?

8. He's very strong in several of the early states right now including NH, NV and SC. And he could do very well on "Super Tuesday" with all those southern states voting. I can't see anyone but Trump or Carson winning in Georgia right now, for example, most likely Trump.

9. And as for the idea of the GOP establishment ganging up on him and/or uniting behind another candidate like Rubio, that's at least as likely to backfire as to work. And even if it works, what's to stop Trump from then running as an independent?'

Indeed. You have a party whose domestic policy agenda consists of shouting "death panels!", whose foreign policy agenda consists of shouting "Benghazi!", and which now expects its base to realize that Trump isn't serious. Or to put it a bit differently, the definition of a GOP establishment candidate these days is someone who is in on the con, and knows that his colleagues have been talking nonsense. Primary voters are expected to respect that?

#- Washington Post-ABC News poll, Nov. 16-19, 2015
https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/politics/washington-post-abc-news-poll-nov-16-19-2015/1880

Dan Kervick -> pgl... November 23, 2015 at 10:42 AM

My guess is that if people dug deeper into the support for Trump, they would find that there is a certain percentage of Republicans who have supported Trump because he was a business man - the only one in the pack - not because they wanted another crazy xenophobic racist wingnut. Now that Trump has gone full wingnut, they are frustrated with the mess they have created for themselves.

Fred C. Dobbs -> Dan Kervick...

Here's Why Donald Trump
Really Could Be Elected President http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/10/donald-trump-could-be-president via @VanityFair
David Burstein - October 22

... with Trump in the race, all of those states-which are more red than they were in '08-are likely out for Democrats. Swing states like Colorado and Virginia are clear toss-ups. There are few states that Romney or McCain won where Trump, as the Republican nominee, wouldn't be in the running, and an analysis of other key states shows that Trump's in far better position than his detractors would like to admit. If Trump were to win every state that Romney won, Trump would stand today at 206 electoral votes, with 55 electoral votes up for grabs in Pennsylvania, Colorado, Nevada, Wisconsin, Iowa, and New Hampshire. Similarly, Trump does not necessarily lose in a single toss-up state versus Hillary Clinton and, in fact, is seemingly competitive in many.

Virginia is trending blue, but could be a toss-up, particularly given the tale of Dave Brat, whose success in 2014 could be read as a harbinger of Trump. Colorado will have high Republican turnout, given that it is home to what's likely to be one of the country's most contested Senate races-which could make it more competitive than it should be, considering Trump's comments about Latinos. Depending on how well Trump shows in the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries, they too could be in play. In two of the remaining states, Wisconsin and Nevada, any Democratic nominee will have an upper hand-particularly Clinton.

But Trump will be able to effectively contest, particularly in a place like Wisconsin, with working-class white voters who elected Scott Walker three times in four years. Finally, Pennsylvania, which has been leaning ever-more blue and will likely go blue this year, will nonetheless require Clinton to spend some resources and time there-taking away from her efforts in other swing states.

Which all means that the election comes down to Florida and Ohio, two states where Trump has significant advantages. In Florida (29 electoral votes), he is a part-time resident and is polling better than the state's former governor and sitting U.S. senator. ...

Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs...

Long time, still, from now to the GOP convention. (Curiously, less every week, however.)

Some GOPsters (including Bush, Rubio, various others) know in their hearts that eventually Trump & Carson will fade, or be dumped, and *their* star will ascend. Sure.

A brokered convention, maybe? Even Romney would have a shot.

NH primary poll puts non-candidate Romney first http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/11/21/gop-voters-would-prefer-romney/WiU9f86jd19UkXYQfb2yxM/story.html?event=event25 via @BostonGlobe - Nov 22

Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs...
Could the GOP Really See a Brokered Convention
in 2016? http://natl.re/CLXxxf via @NRO
Joel Gehrke - May 14, 2015

Ask around and you'll hear a consistent theme from political strategists in the Republican party: The 2016 primary is wide open. "It is by far the most interesting presidential year since I've been involved [in Republican politics]," says Steve Munisteri, a senior adviser to Senator Rand Paul.

How interesting? Top-tier presidential campaigns are preparing for the still-unlikely scenario that the nomination fight goes all the way to the 2016 Republican National Convention.

There hasn't been a brokered convention since 1976, but the strength of the GOP field, when coupled with the proliferation of super PACs, increases the chances that several candidates could show up in Cleveland next July with an army of delegates at their backs. "It's certainly more likely now than it's been in any prior election, going back to 1976," Thor Hearn, the general counsel to George W. Bush's 2004 reelection campaign, tells National Review. "I don't put it as a high likelihood, but it's a much more realistic probability than it's been in any recent experience." ...

Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs...

Believe It: Trump Can Defeat Hillary
http://www.thenation.com/article/believe-it-trump-can-defeat-hillary/
The Nation - Leslie Savan - November 20, 2015

The Paris attacks have made the demagogue even stronger.

Tt hurts to put these words in print, but… Ann Coulter may be right. Shortly after the Paris attacks began last Friday, she tweeted, "They can wait if they like until next November for the actual balloting, but Donald Trump was elected president tonight."

Stephen Colbert agrees. He told us this week to get used to saying "President Trump"-and led his studio audience to repeat the words in unison and then pretend to barf.

Yes, it's hard to stomach. America's most entertaining demagogue winning the GOP primaries and then the general? It can't happen here, can it?

Democrats have been expressing absolute incredulity at the possibility, and quietly chuckling to themselves about the Clinton landslide to come if Donald is his party's nominee. The Huffington Post has banned Trump from its politics section and relegated him to Entertainment, as if there he'd be no more than a joke.

The problem is that our liberal incredulity mirrors that of the Republican establishment, which refuses to believe that their front-runner of five straight months could possibly win their nomination. Now even after the carnage in Paris, Beltway pundits are telling themselves that the base will sober up and turn toward "experienced" pols like Rubio or Bush and away from the newbie nuts. As the always-wrong Bill Kristol said of this latest terrorism crisis, "I think it hurts Trump and Carson, honestly."

But, honestly, it's only strengthened Trump. Since the November 13 attacks, every poll-in Florida, two in New Hampshire, and three nationwide-shows Trump maintaining or expanding his lead against his primary opponents. Poor Ben Carson, only recently Trump's chief rival, is losing energy like, well, you know who. In the Fox NH poll, it's Trump at 27, Rubio 13, Cruz 11, and Carson down there at 9 percent alongside Jeb!

It's easy to laugh at GOPers in denial, but progressives who pooh-pooh Trump's chances of beating Hillary may be whistling past the graveyard of American democracy.

A post-Paris Reuters/Ipsos poll asked 1,106 people which candidate, from the entire 2016 field, could best tackle terrorism, and respondents put Trump and Clinton on equal footing, at 20 percent each.

Not good-when it comes to taking on terrorists, a reality-show "carnival barker" who's never served in the military nor held elected office is tied with a decidedly hawkish former secretary of state?

Play it out: an outsider who's dismissed by his party's elite, comes into the race and overwhelms a large, much more experienced group of candidates in a series of state primaries, both increasing his margins and improving as a candidate as he goes long. All the time riding a crisis that seems made for his candidacy. Does that sound like a sure loser? ...

ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs...

Media hype, more Americans died, most did not want to, from gun violence this past weekend......

While the investigation into US bombing waste is keyed on "who padded the figures" rather than the ineptitude of bombing in any use other than taking out property owners to get the greedy to say "uncle". The shame of Paris is attributable to the US war machine and every issue requires more money for the pentagon.

847328_3527
But they're still ... "jealous of our freedom" right?
sgt_doom

"I dealt with terrorists in South America in the 1970s, but they never attacked innocent women and children indiscriminately," he said.

No shit, sherlock, and it's because of you and the most vile mass murderer of all time, the CIA (and DIA, and NSA, and FBI, etc.), but predominantly the CIA and the Pentagon, that ISIS and such exists today!

Whether it was Allen Dulles coordinating the escape of endless number of mass murderering Nazis, who would end up in CIA-overthrown countries, aiding and abetting their secret police (Example: Walter Rauff, who was responsible for at least 200,000 deaths, ending up as an advisor to Augusto Pinochet's secret police or DINA) or the grandson of the first chairman of the Bank for International Settlements, Richard Helms and his MKULTRA, you devils are to blame.

Recommended reading (to better understand why the USA is known as the Great Satan):

The Devil's Chessboard, by David Talbot

http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=the+devil%27s+chessboard&tag=googhydr-20&index=stripbooks&hvadid=78875381302&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=2565125617248777980&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=e&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_34lcz93rcf_e_p4

logicalman
Funny how these fucks can come out and say this kind of shit and get away with it. The fucker's basically pleading guilty to murder, FFS.
Ms No
They didn't kill anybody in South America my ass.... The school of Americas, Operation Condor, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Guatamala, El Salvador .... who the hell are they kidding? The CIA has always been covered and nobody ever cared.
Perimetr Perimetr's picture
"If there's blame to be put. . ."

It's on the CIA for running its global terrorist operations, funded by the $1 trillion dollars a year coming from its Afghanistan heroin operation.

Noplebian

US Gives Their Proxy Army ISIS 45 Minute Warning Before Air Strikes......

http://beforeitsnews.com/conspiracy-theories/2015/11/us-gives-their-prox...

blindman

sirs and madams,
.
"Christmas celebration this year is going to be a charade because the whole world is at war. We are close to Christmas. There will be lights, there will be parties, bright trees, even Nativity scenes – all decked out – while the world continues to wage war.

It's all a charade. The world has not understood the way of peace. The whole world is at war. A war can be justified, so to speak, with many, many reasons, but when all the world as it is today, at war, piecemeal though that war may be-a little here, a little there-there is no justification.

What shall remain in the wake of this war, in the midst of which we are living now? What shall remain? Ruins, thousands of children without education, so many innocent victims, and lots of money in the pockets of arms dealers."

Francis I
.
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2015/11/here-is-british-banned-...

Dinero D. Profit

Ladies and gentlemen of ZH.

In history, what must be, will be.

The discovery of America by Europe had to happen. The savages had to be eliminated and The Revolutionary War had to happen. Slavery had to begin, and after it, segregation had to begin, but, what must be, will be, slavery and segregation had to end. Old School colonization of poor nations had to happen. The Boer War had to happen. The Spanish American War had to happen. The Main had to be sunk. WWI had to happen. Calvary charges had to end. Totalitarian Communism had to happen. Germany's 20's depression had to happen, reactionary jingoism had to happen, and Kristallnacht and the Reichstag fire had to happen. The Allies had to win WWII, Hiroshima and Nagasaki had to be publicity stunts, and the Cold War had to begin. JFK had to be wacked, the Vietnam War had to happen, the FED still was happening. Civil Rights laws had to be passed. Recognition of China had to happen, going off the gold standard had to happen, and Nixon had to be kicked out of office. Corporate Globalization had to begin. After Carter an actor had to be President. Unions had to be stifled. Perestroika and glasnost had to happen. The Berlin Wall had to come down. The MIC had to find another enemy, and suddenly 9/11 had to happen. …

Over population has to happen, poisoning the environment has to happen, and the NWO has to happen.

Ladies and gentlemen, the NWO is here, and there is nothing you can do, and nothing you could have done to stop it.

Edit. I see none of our supposed enemies 'truth bombing' 9/11, 7/7, and the 13th Paris attacks. I see no trade embagoes, I see no arguments in the Security Council over the illegality of US/Nato bombing in Syria.

blindman

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/jimmy-carter-is-correct-t_b_79...
Jimmy Carter Is Correct That the U.S. Is No Longer a Democracy
Posted: 08/03/2015 11:48 am EDT
.
On July 28, Thom Hartmann interviewed former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and, at the very end of his show (as if this massive question were merely an afterthought), asked him his opinion of the 2010 Citizens United decision and the 2014 McCutcheon decision, both decisions by the five Republican judges on the U.S. Supreme Court. These two historic decisions enable unlimited secret money (including foreign money) now to pour into U.S. political and judicial campaigns. Carter answered:

It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it's just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or being elected president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. Senators and congress members. So, now we've just seen a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over. ... At the present time the incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody that is already in Congress has a great deal more to sell." ...
.
it is the money "system", man.

blindman

corporations and hoodwink powers ride on the indifference of the damned, the silence of the dead and doomed.

Dinero D. Profit

The Satus Quo can rely upon the loyalty of their employees, Congress, the military, the military industrial contractors, their workers and family members, the crime control establishment, all Uniersity professors and employees, and every employee of all publically traded companies, and every person employed by the MSM.

The dead and doomed are irrelevant. If you have an establishment job, you'll obey and ask no vital questions.

Dick Buttkiss
Sunnis and Shiites hate each other far more than they hate Christians, Jews, or anyone else. If it weren't for oil, the USG wouldn't give a flyiing fuck if they anihilated each other. Instead, it conspires with them in ways far beyond its ability to comprehend, much less navigate. Thus is the US ship of state heading for the shoals of its destruction, the only question being how much of the country and the outside world it takes down with it.
ross81
thats bullshit Western propaganda that Shiites hate Sunnis and vice versa. In the same way that the Brits stirred up Protestant hatred of Catholics in Ulster for centuries, the US/Israel/Saudi does the same with Sunnis vs Shiites on a much bigger scale in the Middle East. Divide and Conquer.
geno-econ
This is getting scary in that one or two more attacks will result in travel freezes, flow of Middle East oil and result in huge increase in military as well as Homeland security costs. A depression or economic collapse a real possibility Perhaps time for a Peace Conference of all interested parties. The US started this shit and should be the first to call for a Peace Conference. Macho talk will only make things worse.
moonmac
We can print trillions out of thin air at the drop of a hat but we can't kill a small group of terrorists. Got it!
sgt_doom
Or, we pour billions of dollars every year into the CIA, NSA, and DIA, and only a poor old fart such as myself can figure out that Bilal Erdogan is the ISIS connection to oil trading (Turkish president, Erdogan's son) and Erdogan's daughter is with ISIS?
GRDguy
Ex-CIA boss gets it wrong, again.

"When you have a small group of people who are willing to lose their lives and kill anyone they can, we're all vulnerable."

should be:

"When you have a small group of financial sociopaths willing to lie-to, steal-from and kill anyone they can, we're all vulnerable."

and you'll probably be punished, jailed or shot for tryin' to protect yourself and your family.

Ban KKiller
War profiteer. That is it. Along wth James Comey, James Clapper, Jack Welch and the list is almost endless...
BarnacleBill
"When you have a small group of people who are willing to lose their lives and kill anyone they can, we're all vulnerable."

Simply take out the word "their", and the description perfectly fits the CIA, MI6 and their like. For them, it's all a business deal, nothing more - a massive slum-clearance project. Destroy people's houses, provide accommodation and food, ship them somewhere else; do it again and again until the money-printing machine conks out. It's money for old rope.

http://barlowscayman.blogspot.com/2015/11/slum-clearance-on-massive-scale.html

And, yes, we're all vulnerable. The man got that right.

Duc888
"You get the politicians you deserve."

CIA types are appointed, not elected.

Duc888
I do not know if there are any Catherine Austin Fitts fans on this web site but this is definitely worth the time. The FEDGOV came after her non stop for 6 years when she worked for HUD under Bush Sr. If nothing else this lady is tenacious. In this presentation she uncorks exactly HOW the deep black budgets are paid for...and it ain't your tax dollars. What she uncovered while at HUD was simply amazing..... and she made an excellent point. At the top... it's NOT "fraud" because that's how it was all deigned right from the get go after wwII. It brings to mind the funny computer saying....."it's a feature, not a bug". She digs right into how the CIA was funded... Truly amazing stuff. ...of course the dick head brigade will come along here and deride her because of the conference she is speaking at.... well, who the fuck cares, her presentation is excellent and filled with facts. Yes it is 1 hour 20 minutes long but imho it is well worth the watch...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0mimIp8mr8

Dragon HAwk
After reading all these posts my only question is why does the CIA allow Zero Hedge to Exist ?

except of course to collect names...

[Nov 23, 2015] The Crisis of World Order

It's the same PNAC propaganda all over again.
Notable quotes:
"... From the man who brought you the Iraq war and the rise of ISIS--how to solve the ISIS crisis. ..."
"... Youd think ppl who brought the Iraq war, the best recruiters of ISIS, would be nowhere to be seen; but no, are telling how to deal w/ISIS. ..."
"... Narrative is the foundation of their skewed analysis. Their object is to sell perpetual war using super high tech, exquisitely expensive, contractor maintained versions of WW II formations to expired resources eternally for the profits they deliver. They starve the safety net to pay for their income security. ..."
"... ... In July of last year, the New York Times ran two pieces tying Clinton to the neoconservative movement. In "The Next Act of the Neocons," (*) Jacob Heilbrunn argued that neocons like historian Robert Kagan are putting their lot in with Clinton in an effort to stay relevant while the GOP shies away from its past interventionism and embraces politicians like Senator Rand Paul: ..."
"... And the thing is, these neocons have a point. Mrs. Clinton voted for the Iraq war; supported sending arms to Syrian rebels; likened Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, to Adolf Hitler; wholeheartedly backs Israel; and stresses the importance of promoting democracy. ..."
"... It's easy to imagine Mrs. Clinton's making room for the neocons in her administration. No one could charge her with being weak on national security with the likes of Robert Kagan on board ..."
"... Kagan served on Clinton's bipartisan foreign policy advisory board when she was Secretary of State, has deep neocon roots. ..."
"... A month before the Heilbrunn piece, the Times profiled Kagan ( ..."
"... ), who was critical of Obama's foreign policy, but supported Clinton. "I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy," Kagan told the Times. "If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue … it's something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that." ... ..."
"... Are Neocons Getting Ready to Ally With Hillary Clinton? http://nyti.ms/1qJ4eLN ..."
"... Robert Kagan Strikes a Nerve With Article on Obama Policy http://nyti.ms/UEuqtB ..."
"... doublethink has become synonymous with relieving cognitive dissonance by ignoring the contradiction between two world views – or even of deliberately seeking to relieve cognitive dissonance. (Wikipedia) ..."
Nov. 20, 2015 | WSJ

...Europe was not in great shape before the refugee crisis and the terrorist attacks. The prolonged Eurozone crisis eroded the legitimacy of European political institutions and the centrist parties that run them, while weakening the economies of key European powers. The old troika-Britain, France and Germany-that used to provide leadership on the continent and with whom the U.S. worked most closely to set the global agenda is no more. Britain is a pale shadow of its former self. Once the indispensable partner for the U.S., influential in both Washington and Brussels, the mediator between America and Europe, Britain is now unmoored, drifting away from both. The Labor Party, once led by Tony Blair, is now headed by an anti-American pacifist, while the ruling Conservative government boasts of its "very special relationship" with China.

... ... ...

There is a Russian angle, too. Many of these parties, and even some mainstream political movements across the continent, are funded by Russia and make little secret of their affinity for Moscow. Thus Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary has praised "illiberalism" and made common ideological cause with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In Germany, a whole class of businesspeople, politicians, and current and former government officials, led by former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, presses constantly for normalized relations with Moscow. It sometimes seems, in Germany and perhaps in all of Europe, as if the only person standing in the way of full alliance with Russia is German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Now the Syrian crisis has further bolstered Russia's position. Although Europeans generally share Washington's discomfort with Moscow's support for Mr. Assad and Russia's bombing of moderate Syrian rebels, in the wake of the Paris attacks, any plausible partner in the fight against Islamic State seems worth enlisting. In France, former President Nicolas Sarkozy has long been an advocate for Russia, but now his calls for partnership with Moscow are echoed by President François Hollande, who seeks a "grand coalition" with Russia to fight Islamic State.

Where does the U.S. fit into all this? The Europeans no longer know, any more than American allies in the Middle East do. Most Europeans still like Mr. Obama. After President George W. Bush and the Iraq war, Europeans have gotten the kind of American president they wanted. But in the current crisis, this new, more restrained and intensely cautious post-Iraq America has less to offer than the old superpower, with all its arrogance and belligerence.

The flip side of European pleasure at America's newfound Venusian outlook is the perception, widely shared around the world, that the U.S. is a declining superpower, and that even if it is not objectively weaker than it once was, its leaders' willingness to deploy power on behalf of its interests, and on behalf of the West, has greatly diminished. As former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer recently put it, the U.S. "quite obviously, is no longer willing-or able-to play its old role."

Mr. Fischer was referring specifically to America's role as the dominant power in the Middle East, but since the refugee crisis and the attacks in Paris, America's unwillingness to play that role has reverberations and implications well beyond the Middle East. What the U.S. now does or doesn't do in Syria will affect the future stability of Europe, the strength of trans-Atlantic relations and therefore the well-being of the liberal world order.

This is no doubt the last thing that Mr. Obama wants to hear, and possibly to believe. Certainly he would not deny that the stakes have gone up since the refugee crisis and especially since Paris. At the very least, Islamic State has proven both its desire and its ability to carry out massive, coordinated attacks in a major European city. It is not unthinkable that it could carry out a similar attack in an American city. This is new.

... ... ...

In 2002, a British statesman-scholar issued a quiet warning. "The challenge to the postmodern world," the diplomat Robert Cooper argued, was that while Europeans might operate within their borders as if power no longer mattered, in the world outside Europe, they needed to be prepared to use force just as in earlier eras. "Among ourselves, we keep the law, but when we are operating in the jungle, we must also use the laws of the jungle," he wrote. Europeans didn't heed this warning, or at least didn't heed it sufficiently. They failed to arm themselves for the jungle, materially and spiritually, and now that the jungle has entered the European garden, they are at a loss.

With the exercise of power barely an option, despite what Mr. Hollande promises, Europeans are likely to feel their only choice is to build fences, both within Europe and along its periphery-even if in the process they destroy the very essence of the European project. It is this sentiment that has the Le Pens of Europe soaring in the polls.

What would such an effort look like? First, it would require establishing a safe zone in Syria, providing the millions of would-be refugees still in the country a place to stay and the hundreds of thousands who have fled to Europe a place to which to return. To establish such a zone, American military officials estimate, would require not only U.S. air power but ground forces numbering up to 30,000. Once the safe zone was established, many of those troops could be replaced by forces from Europe, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, but the initial force would have to be largely American.

In addition, a further 10,000 to 20,000 U.S. troops would be required to uproot Islamic State from the haven it has created in Syria and to help local forces uproot it in Iraq. Many of those troops could then be replaced by NATO and other international forces to hold the territory and provide a safe zone for rebuilding the areas shattered by Islamic State rule.

At the same time, an internationally negotiated and blessed process of transition in Syria should take place, ushering the bloodstained Mr. Assad from power and establishing a new provisional government to hold nationwide elections. The heretofore immovable Mr. Assad would face an entirely new set of military facts on the ground, with the Syrian opposition now backed by U.S. forces and air power, the Syrian air force grounded and Russian bombing halted. Throughout the transition period, and probably beyond even the first rounds of elections, an international peacekeeping force-made up of French, Turkish, American and other NATO forces as well as Arab troops-would have to remain in Syria until a reasonable level of stability, security and inter-sectarian trust was achieved.

Is such a plan so unthinkable? In recent years, the mere mention of U.S. ground troops has been enough to stop any conversation. Americans, or at least the intelligentsia and political class, remain traumatized by Iraq, and all calculations about what to do in Syria have been driven by that trauma. Mr. Obama's advisers have been reluctant to present him with options that include even smaller numbers of ground forces, assuming that he would reject them. And Mr. Obama has, in turn, rejected his advisers' less ambitious proposals on the reasonable grounds that they would probably be insufficient.

This dynamic has kept the president sneering at those who have wanted to do more but have been reluctant to be honest about how much more. But it has also allowed him to be comfortable settling for minimal, pressure-relieving approaches that he must know cannot succeed but which at least have the virtue of avoiding the much larger commitment that he has so far refused to make.

The president has also been inclined to reject options that don't promise to "solve" the problems of Syria, Iraq and the Middle East. He doesn't want to send troops only to put "a lid on things."

In this respect, he is entranced, like most Americans, by the image of the decisive engagement followed by the victorious return home. But that happy picture is a myth. Even after the iconic American victory in World War II, the U.S. didn't come home. Keeping a lid on things is exactly what the U.S. has done these past 70 years. That is how the U.S. created this liberal world order.

In Asia, American forces have kept a lid on what had been, and would likely be again, a dangerous multisided conflict involving China, Japan, Korea, India and who knows who else. In Europe, American forces put a lid on what had been a chronic state of insecurity and war, making it possible to lay the foundations of the European Union. In the Balkans, the presence of U.S. and European troops has kept a lid on what had been an escalating cycle of ethnic conflict. In Libya, a similar international force, with even a small American contingent, could have kept the lid on that country's boiling caldron, perhaps long enough to give a new, more inclusive government a chance.

Preserving a liberal world order and international security is all about placing lids on regions of turmoil. In any case, as my Brookings Institution colleague Thomas Wright observes, whether or not you want to keep a lid on something really ought to depend on what's under the lid.

At practically any other time in the last 70 years, the idea of dispatching even 50,000 troops to fight an organization of Islamic State's description would not have seemed too risky or too costly to most Americans. In 1990-91, President George H.W. Bush, now revered as a judicious and prudent leader, sent half a million troops across the globe to drive Iraq out of Kuwait, a country that not one American in a million could find on a map and which the U.S. had no obligation to defend. In 1989, he sent 30,000 troops to invade Panama to topple an illegitimate, drug-peddling dictator. During the Cold War, when presidents sent more than 300,000 troops to Korea and more than 500,000 troops to Vietnam, the idea of sending 50,000 troops to fight a large and virulently anti-American terrorist organization that had seized territory in the Middle East, and from that territory had already launched a murderous attack on a major Western city, would have seemed barely worth an argument.

Not today. Americans remain paralyzed by Iraq, Republicans almost as much as Democrats, and Mr. Obama is both the political beneficiary and the living symbol of this paralysis. Whether he has the desire or capacity to adjust to changing circumstances is an open question. Other presidents have-from Woodrow Wilson to Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton-each of whom was forced to recalibrate what the loss or fracturing of Europe would mean to American interests. In Mr. Obama's case, however, such a late-in-the-game recalculation seems less likely. He may be the first president since the end of World War II who simply doesn't care what happens to Europe.

If so, it is, again, a great irony for Europe, and perhaps a tragic one. Having excoriated the U.S. for invading Iraq, Europeans played no small part in bringing on the crisis of confidence and conscience that today prevents Americans from doing what may be necessary to meet the Middle Eastern crisis that has Europe reeling. Perhaps there are Europeans today wishing that the U.S. will not compound its error of commission in Iraq by making an equally unfortunate error of omission in Syria. They can certainly hope.

Mr. Kagan is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of "Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order" and, most recently, "The World America Made."

Selected Skeptical Comments
anne said... , November 22, 2015 at 05:50 AM
https://twitter.com/BrankoMilan

Branko Milanovic ‏@BrankoMilan

From the man who brought you the Iraq war and the rise of ISIS--how to solve the ISIS crisis.

Strobe Talbott @strobetalbott

A clarion call by @BrookingsFP's Bob Kagan. Hope (& bet) POTUS has read it. Would-be successors should as well. http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-crisis-of-world-order-1448052095

9:03 AM - 21 Nov 2015

anne said in reply to anne... , November 22, 2015 at 05:50 AM

https://twitter.com/BrankoMilan/status/668114578866221056

Branko Milanovic‏ @BrankoMilan

You'd think ppl who brought the Iraq war, the best recruiters of ISIS, would be nowhere to be seen; but no, are telling how to deal w/ISIS.

ilsm said in reply to anne...

Narrative is the foundation of their skewed analysis. Their object is to sell perpetual war using super high tech, exquisitely expensive, contractor maintained versions of WW II formations to expired resources eternally for the profits they deliver. They starve the safety net to pay for their income security.


Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to anne...

Neoconservativism Is Down But Not Out of the 2016 Race

http://bloom.bg/1EpwSou
via @Bloomberg - February 18, 2015

... In July of last year, the New York Times ran two pieces tying Clinton to the neoconservative movement. In "The Next Act of the Neocons," (*) Jacob Heilbrunn argued that neocons like historian Robert Kagan are putting their lot in with Clinton in an effort to stay relevant while the GOP shies away from its past interventionism and embraces politicians like Senator Rand Paul:

'Other neocons have followed Mr. Kagan's careful centrism and respect for Mrs. Clinton. Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted in the New Republic this year that "it is clear that in administration councils she was a principled voice for a strong stand on controversial issues, whether supporting the Afghan surge or the intervention in Libya."

And the thing is, these neocons have a point. Mrs. Clinton voted for the Iraq war; supported sending arms to Syrian rebels; likened Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, to Adolf Hitler; wholeheartedly backs Israel; and stresses the importance of promoting democracy.

It's easy to imagine Mrs. Clinton's making room for the neocons in her administration. No one could charge her with being weak on national security with the likes of Robert Kagan on board.'

(The story also notes, prematurely, that the careers of older neocons like Wolfowitz are "permanently buried in the sands of Iraq.")

Kagan served on Clinton's bipartisan foreign policy advisory board when she was Secretary of State, has deep neocon roots. He was part of the Project for a New American Century, a now-defunct think tank that spanned much of the second Bush presidency and supported a "Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity." PNAC counted Kagan, Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, William Kristol, and Jeb Bush among its members. In 1998, some of its members-including Wolfowitz, Kagan, and Rumsfeld-signed an open letter to President Bill Clinton asking him to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

A month before the Heilbrunn piece, the Times profiled Kagan (#), who was critical of Obama's foreign policy, but supported Clinton. "I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy," Kagan told the Times. "If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue … it's something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that." ...

*- Are Neocons Getting Ready to Ally With Hillary Clinton? http://nyti.ms/1qJ4eLN

#- Robert Kagan Strikes a Nerve With Article on Obama Policy http://nyti.ms/UEuqtB

Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs...

(I may be a HRC supporter but Neocons still make me anxious.)

'doublethink has become synonymous with relieving cognitive dissonance by ignoring the contradiction between two world views – or even of deliberately seeking to relieve cognitive dissonance.' (Wikipedia)


[Nov 23, 2015] The Crisis of World Order

It's the same PNAC propaganda all over again.
Notable quotes:
"... From the man who brought you the Iraq war and the rise of ISIS--how to solve the ISIS crisis. ..."
"... Youd think ppl who brought the Iraq war, the best recruiters of ISIS, would be nowhere to be seen; but no, are telling how to deal w/ISIS. ..."
"... Narrative is the foundation of their skewed analysis. Their object is to sell perpetual war using super high tech, exquisitely expensive, contractor maintained versions of WW II formations to expired resources eternally for the profits they deliver. They starve the safety net to pay for their income security. ..."
"... ... In July of last year, the New York Times ran two pieces tying Clinton to the neoconservative movement. In "The Next Act of the Neocons," (*) Jacob Heilbrunn argued that neocons like historian Robert Kagan are putting their lot in with Clinton in an effort to stay relevant while the GOP shies away from its past interventionism and embraces politicians like Senator Rand Paul: ..."
"... And the thing is, these neocons have a point. Mrs. Clinton voted for the Iraq war; supported sending arms to Syrian rebels; likened Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, to Adolf Hitler; wholeheartedly backs Israel; and stresses the importance of promoting democracy. ..."
"... It's easy to imagine Mrs. Clinton's making room for the neocons in her administration. No one could charge her with being weak on national security with the likes of Robert Kagan on board ..."
"... Kagan served on Clinton's bipartisan foreign policy advisory board when she was Secretary of State, has deep neocon roots. ..."
"... A month before the Heilbrunn piece, the Times profiled Kagan ( ..."
"... ), who was critical of Obama's foreign policy, but supported Clinton. "I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy," Kagan told the Times. "If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue … it's something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that." ... ..."
"... Are Neocons Getting Ready to Ally With Hillary Clinton? http://nyti.ms/1qJ4eLN ..."
"... Robert Kagan Strikes a Nerve With Article on Obama Policy http://nyti.ms/UEuqtB ..."
"... doublethink has become synonymous with relieving cognitive dissonance by ignoring the contradiction between two world views – or even of deliberately seeking to relieve cognitive dissonance. (Wikipedia) ..."
Nov. 20, 2015 | WSJ

...Europe was not in great shape before the refugee crisis and the terrorist attacks. The prolonged Eurozone crisis eroded the legitimacy of European political institutions and the centrist parties that run them, while weakening the economies of key European powers. The old troika-Britain, France and Germany-that used to provide leadership on the continent and with whom the U.S. worked most closely to set the global agenda is no more. Britain is a pale shadow of its former self. Once the indispensable partner for the U.S., influential in both Washington and Brussels, the mediator between America and Europe, Britain is now unmoored, drifting away from both. The Labor Party, once led by Tony Blair, is now headed by an anti-American pacifist, while the ruling Conservative government boasts of its "very special relationship" with China.

... ... ...

There is a Russian angle, too. Many of these parties, and even some mainstream political movements across the continent, are funded by Russia and make little secret of their affinity for Moscow. Thus Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary has praised "illiberalism" and made common ideological cause with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In Germany, a whole class of businesspeople, politicians, and current and former government officials, led by former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, presses constantly for normalized relations with Moscow. It sometimes seems, in Germany and perhaps in all of Europe, as if the only person standing in the way of full alliance with Russia is German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Now the Syrian crisis has further bolstered Russia's position. Although Europeans generally share Washington's discomfort with Moscow's support for Mr. Assad and Russia's bombing of moderate Syrian rebels, in the wake of the Paris attacks, any plausible partner in the fight against Islamic State seems worth enlisting. In France, former President Nicolas Sarkozy has long been an advocate for Russia, but now his calls for partnership with Moscow are echoed by President François Hollande, who seeks a "grand coalition" with Russia to fight Islamic State.

Where does the U.S. fit into all this? The Europeans no longer know, any more than American allies in the Middle East do. Most Europeans still like Mr. Obama. After President George W. Bush and the Iraq war, Europeans have gotten the kind of American president they wanted. But in the current crisis, this new, more restrained and intensely cautious post-Iraq America has less to offer than the old superpower, with all its arrogance and belligerence.

The flip side of European pleasure at America's newfound Venusian outlook is the perception, widely shared around the world, that the U.S. is a declining superpower, and that even if it is not objectively weaker than it once was, its leaders' willingness to deploy power on behalf of its interests, and on behalf of the West, has greatly diminished. As former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer recently put it, the U.S. "quite obviously, is no longer willing-or able-to play its old role."

Mr. Fischer was referring specifically to America's role as the dominant power in the Middle East, but since the refugee crisis and the attacks in Paris, America's unwillingness to play that role has reverberations and implications well beyond the Middle East. What the U.S. now does or doesn't do in Syria will affect the future stability of Europe, the strength of trans-Atlantic relations and therefore the well-being of the liberal world order.

This is no doubt the last thing that Mr. Obama wants to hear, and possibly to believe. Certainly he would not deny that the stakes have gone up since the refugee crisis and especially since Paris. At the very least, Islamic State has proven both its desire and its ability to carry out massive, coordinated attacks in a major European city. It is not unthinkable that it could carry out a similar attack in an American city. This is new.

... ... ...

In 2002, a British statesman-scholar issued a quiet warning. "The challenge to the postmodern world," the diplomat Robert Cooper argued, was that while Europeans might operate within their borders as if power no longer mattered, in the world outside Europe, they needed to be prepared to use force just as in earlier eras. "Among ourselves, we keep the law, but when we are operating in the jungle, we must also use the laws of the jungle," he wrote. Europeans didn't heed this warning, or at least didn't heed it sufficiently. They failed to arm themselves for the jungle, materially and spiritually, and now that the jungle has entered the European garden, they are at a loss.

With the exercise of power barely an option, despite what Mr. Hollande promises, Europeans are likely to feel their only choice is to build fences, both within Europe and along its periphery-even if in the process they destroy the very essence of the European project. It is this sentiment that has the Le Pens of Europe soaring in the polls.

What would such an effort look like? First, it would require establishing a safe zone in Syria, providing the millions of would-be refugees still in the country a place to stay and the hundreds of thousands who have fled to Europe a place to which to return. To establish such a zone, American military officials estimate, would require not only U.S. air power but ground forces numbering up to 30,000. Once the safe zone was established, many of those troops could be replaced by forces from Europe, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, but the initial force would have to be largely American.

In addition, a further 10,000 to 20,000 U.S. troops would be required to uproot Islamic State from the haven it has created in Syria and to help local forces uproot it in Iraq. Many of those troops could then be replaced by NATO and other international forces to hold the territory and provide a safe zone for rebuilding the areas shattered by Islamic State rule.

At the same time, an internationally negotiated and blessed process of transition in Syria should take place, ushering the bloodstained Mr. Assad from power and establishing a new provisional government to hold nationwide elections. The heretofore immovable Mr. Assad would face an entirely new set of military facts on the ground, with the Syrian opposition now backed by U.S. forces and air power, the Syrian air force grounded and Russian bombing halted. Throughout the transition period, and probably beyond even the first rounds of elections, an international peacekeeping force-made up of French, Turkish, American and other NATO forces as well as Arab troops-would have to remain in Syria until a reasonable level of stability, security and inter-sectarian trust was achieved.

Is such a plan so unthinkable? In recent years, the mere mention of U.S. ground troops has been enough to stop any conversation. Americans, or at least the intelligentsia and political class, remain traumatized by Iraq, and all calculations about what to do in Syria have been driven by that trauma. Mr. Obama's advisers have been reluctant to present him with options that include even smaller numbers of ground forces, assuming that he would reject them. And Mr. Obama has, in turn, rejected his advisers' less ambitious proposals on the reasonable grounds that they would probably be insufficient.

This dynamic has kept the president sneering at those who have wanted to do more but have been reluctant to be honest about how much more. But it has also allowed him to be comfortable settling for minimal, pressure-relieving approaches that he must know cannot succeed but which at least have the virtue of avoiding the much larger commitment that he has so far refused to make.

The president has also been inclined to reject options that don't promise to "solve" the problems of Syria, Iraq and the Middle East. He doesn't want to send troops only to put "a lid on things."

In this respect, he is entranced, like most Americans, by the image of the decisive engagement followed by the victorious return home. But that happy picture is a myth. Even after the iconic American victory in World War II, the U.S. didn't come home. Keeping a lid on things is exactly what the U.S. has done these past 70 years. That is how the U.S. created this liberal world order.

In Asia, American forces have kept a lid on what had been, and would likely be again, a dangerous multisided conflict involving China, Japan, Korea, India and who knows who else. In Europe, American forces put a lid on what had been a chronic state of insecurity and war, making it possible to lay the foundations of the European Union. In the Balkans, the presence of U.S. and European troops has kept a lid on what had been an escalating cycle of ethnic conflict. In Libya, a similar international force, with even a small American contingent, could have kept the lid on that country's boiling caldron, perhaps long enough to give a new, more inclusive government a chance.

Preserving a liberal world order and international security is all about placing lids on regions of turmoil. In any case, as my Brookings Institution colleague Thomas Wright observes, whether or not you want to keep a lid on something really ought to depend on what's under the lid.

At practically any other time in the last 70 years, the idea of dispatching even 50,000 troops to fight an organization of Islamic State's description would not have seemed too risky or too costly to most Americans. In 1990-91, President George H.W. Bush, now revered as a judicious and prudent leader, sent half a million troops across the globe to drive Iraq out of Kuwait, a country that not one American in a million could find on a map and which the U.S. had no obligation to defend. In 1989, he sent 30,000 troops to invade Panama to topple an illegitimate, drug-peddling dictator. During the Cold War, when presidents sent more than 300,000 troops to Korea and more than 500,000 troops to Vietnam, the idea of sending 50,000 troops to fight a large and virulently anti-American terrorist organization that had seized territory in the Middle East, and from that territory had already launched a murderous attack on a major Western city, would have seemed barely worth an argument.

Not today. Americans remain paralyzed by Iraq, Republicans almost as much as Democrats, and Mr. Obama is both the political beneficiary and the living symbol of this paralysis. Whether he has the desire or capacity to adjust to changing circumstances is an open question. Other presidents have-from Woodrow Wilson to Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton-each of whom was forced to recalibrate what the loss or fracturing of Europe would mean to American interests. In Mr. Obama's case, however, such a late-in-the-game recalculation seems less likely. He may be the first president since the end of World War II who simply doesn't care what happens to Europe.

If so, it is, again, a great irony for Europe, and perhaps a tragic one. Having excoriated the U.S. for invading Iraq, Europeans played no small part in bringing on the crisis of confidence and conscience that today prevents Americans from doing what may be necessary to meet the Middle Eastern crisis that has Europe reeling. Perhaps there are Europeans today wishing that the U.S. will not compound its error of commission in Iraq by making an equally unfortunate error of omission in Syria. They can certainly hope.

Mr. Kagan is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of "Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order" and, most recently, "The World America Made."

Selected Skeptical Comments
anne said... , November 22, 2015 at 05:50 AM
https://twitter.com/BrankoMilan

Branko Milanovic ‏@BrankoMilan

From the man who brought you the Iraq war and the rise of ISIS--how to solve the ISIS crisis.

Strobe Talbott @strobetalbott

A clarion call by @BrookingsFP's Bob Kagan. Hope (& bet) POTUS has read it. Would-be successors should as well. http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-crisis-of-world-order-1448052095

9:03 AM - 21 Nov 2015

anne said in reply to anne... , November 22, 2015 at 05:50 AM

https://twitter.com/BrankoMilan/status/668114578866221056

Branko Milanovic‏ @BrankoMilan

You'd think ppl who brought the Iraq war, the best recruiters of ISIS, would be nowhere to be seen; but no, are telling how to deal w/ISIS.

ilsm said in reply to anne...

Narrative is the foundation of their skewed analysis. Their object is to sell perpetual war using super high tech, exquisitely expensive, contractor maintained versions of WW II formations to expired resources eternally for the profits they deliver. They starve the safety net to pay for their income security.


Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to anne...

Neoconservativism Is Down But Not Out of the 2016 Race

http://bloom.bg/1EpwSou
via @Bloomberg - February 18, 2015

... In July of last year, the New York Times ran two pieces tying Clinton to the neoconservative movement. In "The Next Act of the Neocons," (*) Jacob Heilbrunn argued that neocons like historian Robert Kagan are putting their lot in with Clinton in an effort to stay relevant while the GOP shies away from its past interventionism and embraces politicians like Senator Rand Paul:

'Other neocons have followed Mr. Kagan's careful centrism and respect for Mrs. Clinton. Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted in the New Republic this year that "it is clear that in administration councils she was a principled voice for a strong stand on controversial issues, whether supporting the Afghan surge or the intervention in Libya."

And the thing is, these neocons have a point. Mrs. Clinton voted for the Iraq war; supported sending arms to Syrian rebels; likened Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, to Adolf Hitler; wholeheartedly backs Israel; and stresses the importance of promoting democracy.

It's easy to imagine Mrs. Clinton's making room for the neocons in her administration. No one could charge her with being weak on national security with the likes of Robert Kagan on board.'

(The story also notes, prematurely, that the careers of older neocons like Wolfowitz are "permanently buried in the sands of Iraq.")

Kagan served on Clinton's bipartisan foreign policy advisory board when she was Secretary of State, has deep neocon roots. He was part of the Project for a New American Century, a now-defunct think tank that spanned much of the second Bush presidency and supported a "Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity." PNAC counted Kagan, Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, William Kristol, and Jeb Bush among its members. In 1998, some of its members-including Wolfowitz, Kagan, and Rumsfeld-signed an open letter to President Bill Clinton asking him to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

A month before the Heilbrunn piece, the Times profiled Kagan (#), who was critical of Obama's foreign policy, but supported Clinton. "I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy," Kagan told the Times. "If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue … it's something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that." ...

*- Are Neocons Getting Ready to Ally With Hillary Clinton? http://nyti.ms/1qJ4eLN

#- Robert Kagan Strikes a Nerve With Article on Obama Policy http://nyti.ms/UEuqtB

Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs...

(I may be a HRC supporter but Neocons still make me anxious.)

'doublethink has become synonymous with relieving cognitive dissonance by ignoring the contradiction between two world views – or even of deliberately seeking to relieve cognitive dissonance.' (Wikipedia)


[Nov 22, 2015] The Political Aftermath of Financial Crises Going to Extremes

Notable quotes:
"... The typical political reaction to financial crises is as follows: votes for far-right parties increase strongly, government majorities shrink, the fractionalisation of parliaments rises and the overall number of parties represented in parliament jumps. ..."
"... In the light of modern history, political radicalization, declining government majorities and increasing street protests appear to be the hallmark of financial crises. As a consequence, regulators and central bankers carry a big responsibility for political stability when overseeing financial markets. Preventing financial crises also means reducing the probability of a political disaster. ..."
"... If you look at the Republican Party and, especially, Republican candidates, now it is not the question of radicalization, but the question of sanity that arises. They are so completely detached from reality that Marxists look like "hard core" realists in comparison with them. ..."
"... The whole party looks like an extreme and bizarre cult that intends to take over the country: another analogy with Marxists. Like Marx quipped: History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. ..."
"... Democrats are not that different either. With Sanders representing probably the only candidates which can be classified as "center-left" in European terms. For all practical reasons Hillary is a center-right, if not far-right (and as for foreign policy agenda she is definitely far right) candidate. ..."
"... So the key question is about sanity of the US society under neoliberalism, not some form of "radicalization". ..."
Nov 22, 2015 | Economist's View

mrrunangun:

Given that honesty in politics and government is relative, I wonder if relatively honest politics and relatively honest regulation of financial systems prevents financial crises.

pgl

Hillary Clinton hedges on a key issue:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/hillary-clinton-break-up-big-banks

She says she would break up the mega banks ... if needed. It is needed - so no hedging on this issue.

JohnH -> pgl...

Once again pgl shows how gullible he is...believing what Hillary says not what she has done. What has she done? Well, Wall Street made her a millionaire.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/13/investing/hillary-clinton-wall-street/

Second, she announced her run for Senator from New York (Wall Street) immediately after Bill did Wall Street the mother of all favors...ending Glass-Steagall. In his naivete, pgl certainly believes that there was no quid pro quo!!!

Third, lots of people doubt whether she can be trusted to rein in Wall Street.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/us/politics/wall-st-ties-linger-as-image-issue-for-hillary-clinton.html?_r=0

Of course, pgl believes lots of silly things...like his claim that Obama never proposed and signed off on austerity in 2011...or that he has proposed cutting Social Security...or that trickle down monetary policy hasn't overwhelmingly benefited the 1%.

I wonder when somebody will finally get to sell him the Brooklyn Bridge [better act now, pgl, get a really cheap loan while you still can!!!]

JohnH -> JohnH...

pgl thinks that Obama NEVER proposed cutting Social Security's! What a rube!

anne:

http://www.voxeu.org/article/political-aftermath-financial-crises-going-extremes

November 21, 2015

The political aftermath of financial crises: Going to extremes
By Manuel Funke, Moritz Schularick, and Christoph Trebesch

Implications

The typical political reaction to financial crises is as follows: votes for far-right parties increase strongly, government majorities shrink, the fractionalisation of parliaments rises and the overall number of parties represented in parliament jumps. These developments likely hinder crisis resolution and contribute to political gridlock. The resulting policy uncertainty may contribute to the much-debated slow economic recoveries from financial crises.

In the light of modern history, political radicalization, declining government majorities and increasing street protests appear to be the hallmark of financial crises. As a consequence, regulators and central bankers carry a big responsibility for political stability when overseeing financial markets. Preventing financial crises also means reducing the probability of a political disaster.

anne -> anne...

What strikes me, is that the political response to the short-lived international financial crisis but longer lived recession was quite restrained in developed countries. Leadership changes struck me as moderate, even moderate in beset Greece as the political stance of Syriza which looked to be confrontational with regard to the other eurozone countries quickly became accepting.

European developed country governments have been and are remarkably stable. Japan has been stable. There is political division in the United States, but I do not attribute that to the financial crisis or recession but rather to social divisions.

The essay is just not convincing.

likbez said...

"What strikes me, is that the political response to the short-lived international financial crisis but longer lived recession was quite restrained in developed countries"

If you mean that the goal of the state is providing unconditional welfare for financial oligarchy (which actually is true for neoliberalism), then I would agree.

But if you use any common sense definition of "restrained" this is a joke. Instead of sending criminals to jail they were awarded with oversized bonuses.

I think the authors are way too late to the show. There is no much left of the New Deal anyway, so radicalization of the US society was a fait accompli long before crisis of 2008.

If you look at the Republican Party and, especially, Republican candidates, now it is not the question of radicalization, but the question of sanity that arises. They are so completely detached from reality that Marxists look like "hard core" realists in comparison with them.

The whole party looks like an extreme and bizarre cult that intends to take over the country: another analogy with Marxists. Like Marx quipped: History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

Democrats are not that different either. With Sanders representing probably the only candidates which can be classified as "center-left" in European terms. For all practical reasons Hillary is a center-right, if not far-right (and as for foreign policy agenda she is definitely far right) candidate.

So the key question is about sanity of the US society under neoliberalism, not some form of "radicalization".

[Nov 21, 2015] US Congresswoman Introduces Bill To Stop Illegal War On Assad; Says CIA Ops Must Stop

Nov 21, 2015 | Zero Hedge
Last month, US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard went on CNN and laid bare Washington's Syria strategy.

In a remarkably candid interview with Wolf Blitzer, Gabbard calls Washington's effort to oust Assad "counterproductive" and "illegal" before taking it a step further and accusing the CIA of arming the very same terrorists who The White House insists are "sworn enemies."

In short, Gabbard all but tells the American public that the government is lying to them and may end up inadvertently starting "World War III."

For those who missed it, here's the clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHkher6ceaA

[Nov 14, 2015] Iraqi warmonger Ahmad Chalabi dies

Notable quotes:
"... Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi politician accused of providing false information that led to the United States toppling longtime dictator Saddam Hussein in the 2003 invasion, died on Tuesday of a heart attack, state television and two parliamentarians said. ..."
"... "The neo-cons wanted to make a case for war and he [Chalabi] was somebody who is willing to provide them with information that would help their cause," Ali Khedery, who was the longest continuously-serving American official in Iraq in the years following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, told Al Arabiya News. ..."
Nov 03, 2015 | Al Arabiya News

Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi politician accused of providing false information that led to the United States toppling longtime dictator Saddam Hussein in the 2003 invasion, died on Tuesday of a heart attack, state television and two parliamentarians said.

Attendants found the controversial lawmaker, 71, dead in bed in his Baghdad home, according to parliament official Haitham al-Jabouri.

... ... ...

During his heyday, the smooth-talking Chalabi was widely seen as the man who helped push the U.S. and its main ally Britain into invading Iraq in 2003, with information that Saddam's government had weapons of mass destruction, claims that were eventually discredited.

... ... ...

Chalabi had also said Saddam - known for his secularist Baathist ideology - had ties with al-Qaeda.

After Saddam's fall by U.S.-led coalition forces, Chalabi returned from exile in Britain and the United States. Despite having been considered as a potential candidate for the powerful post of prime minister in the immediate aftermath of Saddam's 24-year reign, the politician never managed to rise to the top of Iraq's stormy, sectarian-driven political landscape.

His eventual fallout with his former American allies also hurt his chances of becoming an Iraqi leader.

"The neo-cons wanted to make a case for war and he [Chalabi] was somebody who is willing to provide them with information that would help their cause," Ali Khedery, who was the longest continuously-serving American official in Iraq in the years following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, told Al Arabiya News.

[Nov 14, 2015] Why The Neocons Hate The Donald

Notable quotes:
"... The President, as commander in chief, shapes US foreign policy: indeed, in our post-constitutional era, now that Congress has abdicated its responsibility, he has the de facto power to single-handedly take us into war. Which is why, paraphrasing Trotsky , you may not be interested in politics, but politics is certainly interested in you. ..."
"... PAUL: … How is it conservative to add a trillion dollars in military expenditures? You can not be a conservative if youre going to keep promoting new programs that youre not going to pay for. ..."
"... Here, in one dramatic encounter, were two worldviews colliding: the older conservative vision embodied by Rand Paul, which puts domestic issues like fiscal solvency first, and the internationalist stance taken by what used to be called Rockefeller Republicans , and now goes under the neoconservative rubric, which puts the maintenance and expansion of Americas overseas empire – dubbed world leadership by Rubios doppelganger, Jeb Bush – over and above any concerns over budgetary common sense. ..."
"... Rubios proposed military budget – $696 billion – represents a $35 billion increase over what the Pentagon is requesting ..."
"... Pauls too-clever-by-half legislative maneuvering may have effectively exposed Rubio – and Sen. Tom Cotton, Marcos co-pilot on this flight into fiscal profligacy – as the faux-conservative that he is, but it evaded the broader question attached to the issue of military spending: what are we going to do with all that shiny-new military hardware? Send more weapons to Ukraine? Outfit an expeditionary force to re-invade Iraq and venture into Syria? This brings to mind Madeleine Albrights infamous remark directed at Gen. Colin Powell: Whats the point of having this superb military youre always talking about if we cant use it? ..."
"... Speaking of Trumpian hot air: Paul showed up The Donald for the ignorant blowhard he is by pointing out, after another of Trumps jeremiads aimed at the Yellow Peril, that China is not a party to the trade deal, which is aimed at deflecting Beijing. That was another shining moment for Paul, who successfully juxtaposed his superior knowledge to Trumps babbling. ..."
"... If Putin wants to go and knock the hell out of ISIS, I am all for it, one-hundred percent, and I cant understand how anybody would be against it. ..."
"... Trump, for all his contradictions, gives voice to the isolationist populism that Rubio and his neocon confederates despise, and which is implanted so deeply in the American consciousness. Why us? Why are we paying everybodys bills? Why are we fighting everybody elses wars? Its a bad deal! ..."
"... This is why the neocons hate Trumps guts even more than they hate Paul. The former, after all, is the frontrunner. What the War Party fears is that Trumps contradictory mixture of bluster – bigger, better, stronger! – and complaints that our allies are taking advantage of us means a victory for the dreaded isolationists at the polls. ..."
"... its election season, the one time – short of when were about to invade yet another country – when the American people are engaged with the foreign policy issues of the day. And what we are seeing is a rising tide of disgust with our policy of global intervention – in a confused inchoate sense, in the case of Trump, and in a focused, self-conscious, occasionally eloquent and yet still slightly confused and inconsistent way in the case of Sen. Paul. Either way, the real voice of the American heartland is being heard. ..."
"... Trump has rocked the boat and raised some issues and viewpoints that none of the other bought and paid for candidates would ever have raised. Has he changed the national discussion on these issues? At least he woken some people up. ..."
"... The sentence of We relied on the stupidity of the American voter resonates. ..."
"... What you did, was you fell for the oldest press trick in the book. Its called: out of context . Thats is where they play back only a segment of what someone says, only a part of what they want you to hear, so you will draw the wrong conclusion. What Trump said {had you listened to ALL of what he said} was that he was going to TAKE ISILS OIL. Oil is the largest source of revenue for them {then comes the CIA money}. If you were to remove their oil revenues from them, they would be seriously hurting for cash to fund their machine. I dont have a problem with that. ..."
"... The thing about understanding the attack on The Donald is understanding what he is NOT. Namely he is not CFR connected ..."
"... The attacks on Trump have been relentless yet he is still maintaining his position in the polls. ..."
"... The goal is to have a CFR candidate in both the GOP and Dem fold. Although Hillary is not a CFR member ostensibly Slick Willie has been for more than 20 years and his Administration was rife with them...Hello Rubin and Glass Steagal!!..as is Chelsea... a newly elected member. ..."
"... [American exceptionalism] is a reaction to the inability of people to understand global complexity or important issues like American energy dependency. Therefore, they search for simplistic sources of comfort and clarity. And the people that they are now selecting to be, so to speak, the spokespersons of their anxieties are, in most cases, stunningly ignorant. ..."
"... Yes, I have also seen the new golden boy regaled in the media. Lets see where he goes. I wonder if anyone represents the American people any better than the corrupt piece of dried up persimmon that is Hillary? ..."
"... With JEB polling in single digits and hopelessly befuddled, Rubio is the Great Hispanic Hope of the establishment Republocrats. He is being well-pimped, is all. Paul is clearly more intelligent, more articulate, and more well-informed; Trump is more forceful and popular (but independent!). Neither suits an establishment that wants to hold the reins behind the throne. ..."
Nov 14, 2015 | Zero Hedge

Submitted by Justin Raimondo via Anti-War.com,

Most Americans don't think much about politics, let alone foreign policy issues, as they go about their daily lives. It's not that they don't care: it's just that the daily grind doesn't permit most people outside of Washington, D.C. the luxury of contemplating the fate of nations with any regularity. There is one exception, however, and that is during election season, and specifically – when it comes to foreign policy – every four years, when the race for the White House begins to heat up. The President, as commander in chief, shapes US foreign policy: indeed, in our post-constitutional era, now that Congress has abdicated its responsibility, he has the de facto power to single-handedly take us into war. Which is why, paraphrasing Trotsky, you may not be interested in politics, but politics is certainly interested in you.

The most recent episode of the continuing GOP reality show, otherwise known as the presidential debates, certainly gave us a glimpse of what we are in for if the candidates on that stage actually make it into the Oval Office – and, folks, it wasn't pretty, for the most part. But there were plenty of bright spots.

This was supposed to have been a debate about economics, but in the Age of Empire there is no real division between economic and foreign policy issues. That was brought home by the collision between Marco Rubio and Rand Paul about half way through the debate when Rubio touted his child tax credit program as being "pro-family." A newly-aggressive and articulate Rand Paul jumped in with this:

"Is it conservative to have $1 trillion in transfer payments – a new welfare program that's a refundable tax credit? Add that to Marco's plan for $1 trillion in new military spending, and you get something that looks, to me, not very conservative."

Rubio's blow-dried exterior seemed to fray momentarily, as he gave his "it's for the children" reply:

"But if you invest it in your children, in the future of America and strengthening your family, we're not going to recognize that in our tax code? The family is the most important institution in society. And, yes…

"PAUL: Nevertheless, it's not very conservative, Marco."

Stung to the quick, Rubio played what he thought was his trump card:

"I know that Rand is a committed isolationist. I'm not. I believe the world is a stronger and a better place, when the United States is the strongest military power in the world.

"PAUL: Yeah, but, Marco! … How is it conservative … to add a trillion-dollar expenditure for the federal government that you're not paying for?

"RUBIO: Because…

"PAUL: … How is it conservative to add a trillion dollars in military expenditures? You can not be a conservative if you're going to keep promoting new programs that you're not going to pay for.

(APPLAUSE)"

Here, in one dramatic encounter, were two worldviews colliding: the older conservative vision embodied by Rand Paul, which puts domestic issues like fiscal solvency first, and the "internationalist" stance taken by what used to be called Rockefeller Republicans, and now goes under the neoconservative rubric, which puts the maintenance and expansion of America's overseas empire – dubbed "world leadership" by Rubio's doppelganger, Jeb Bush – over and above any concerns over budgetary common sense.

Rubio then descended into waving the bloody shirt and evoking Trump's favorite bogeyman – the Yellow Peril – to justify his budget-busting:

"We can't even have an economy if we're not safe. There are radical jihadists in the Middle East beheading people and crucifying Christians. A radical Shia cleric in Iran trying to get a nuclear weapon, the Chinese taking over the South China Sea…"

If the presence of the Islamic State in the Middle East precludes us from having an economy, then those doing their Christmas shopping early this year don't seem to be aware of it. As for the Iranians and their alleged quest for nuclear weapons, IAEA inspectors are at this very moment verifying the complete absence of such an effort – although Sen. Paul, who stupidly opposed the Iran deal, is in no position to point this out. As for the fate of the South China Sea – if we could take a poll, I wonder how many Americans would rather have their budget out of balance in order to keep the Chinese from constructing artificial islands a few miles off their own coastline. My guess: not many.

Playing the "isolationist" card got Rubio nowhere: I doubt if a third of the television audience even knows what that term is supposed to mean. It may resonate in Washington, but out in the heartland it carries little if any weight with people more concerned about their shrinking bank accounts than the possibility that the South China Sea might fall to … the Chinese.

Ted Cruz underscored his sleaziness (and, incidentally, his entire election strategy) by jumping in and claiming the "middle ground" between Rubio's fulsome internationalism and Paul's call to rein in our extravagant military budget – by siding with Rubio. We can do what Rubio wants to do – radically increase military expenditures – but first, he averred, we have to cut sugar subsidies so we can afford it. This was an attack on Rubio's enthusiasm for sugar subsidies, without which, avers the Senator from the state that produces the most sugar, "we lose the capacity to produce our own food, at which point we're at the mercy of a foreign country for food security." Yes, there's a jihadist-Iranian-Chinese conspiracy to deprive America of its sweet tooth – but not if President Rubio can stop it!

Cruz is a master at prodding the weaknesses of his opponents, but his math is way off: sugar subsidies have cost us some $15 billion since 2008. Rubio's proposed military budget – $696 billion – represents a $35 billion increase over what the Pentagon is requesting. Cutting sugar subsidies – an unlikely prospect, especially given the support of Republicans of Rubio's ilk for the program – won't pay for it.

However, if we want to go deeper into those weeds, Sen. Paul also endorses the $696 billion figure, but touts the fact that his proposal comes with cuts that will supposedly pay for the hike. This is something all those military contractors can live with, and so everybody's happy, at least on the Republican side of the aisle, and yet the likelihood of cutting $21 billion from "international affairs," never mind $20 billion from social services, is unlikely to garner enough support from his own party – let alone the Democrats – to get through Congress. So it's just more of Washington's kabuki theater: all symbolism, no action.

Paul's too-clever-by-half legislative maneuvering may have effectively exposed Rubio – and Sen. Tom Cotton, Marco's co-pilot on this flight into fiscal profligacy – as the faux-conservative that he is, but it evaded the broader question attached to the issue of military spending: what are we going to do with all that shiny-new military hardware? Send more weapons to Ukraine? Outfit an expeditionary force to re-invade Iraq and venture into Syria? This brings to mind Madeleine Albright's infamous remark directed at Gen. Colin Powell: "What's the point of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it?"

In this way, Paul undermines his own case against global intervention – and even his own eloquent argument, advanced in answer to Rubio's contention that increasing the military budget would make us "safer":

"I do not think we are any safer from bankruptcy court. As we go further, and further into debt, we become less, and less safe. This is the most important thing we're going to talk about tonight. Can you be a conservative, and be liberal on military spending? Can you be for unlimited military spending, and say, Oh, I'm going to make the country safe? No, we need a safe country, but, you know, we spend more on our military than the next ten countries combined."

I have to say Sen. Paul shone at this debate. His arguments were clear, consistent, and made with calm forcefulness. He distinguished himself from the pack, including Trump, who said "I agree with Marco, I agree with Ted," and went on to mouth his usual "bigger, better, stronger" hyperbole that amounted to so much hot hair air.

Speaking of Trumpian hot air: Paul showed up The Donald for the ignorant blowhard he is by pointing out, after another of Trump's jeremiads aimed at the Yellow Peril, that China is not a party to the trade deal, which is aimed at deflecting Beijing. That was another shining moment for Paul, who successfully juxtaposed his superior knowledge to Trump's babbling.

This obsession with China's allegedly malign influence extended to the next round, when foreign policy was again the focus. In answer to a question about whether he supports President Obama's plan to send Special Operations forces to Syria, Ben Carson said yes, because Russia is going to make it "their base," oh, and by the way: "You know, the Chinese are there, as well as the Russians." Unless he's talking about these guys, Carson intel seems a bit off.

Jeb Bush gave the usual boilerplate, delivered in his preferred monotone, contradicting himself when he endorsed a no-fly zone over Syria and then attacked Hillary Clinton for not offering "leadership" – when she endorsed the idea practically in unison with him. Bush added his usual incoherence to the mix by averring that somehow not intervening more in the region "will have a huge impact on our economy" – but of course the last time we intervened it had a $2 trillion-plus impact in terms of costs, and that's a conservative estimate.

Oddly characterizing Russia's air strikes on the Islamic State as "aggression" – do our air strikes count as aggression? – the clueless Marie Bartiromo asked Trump what he intends to do about it. Trump evaded the question for a few minutes, going on about North Korea, Iran, and of course the Yellow Peril, finally coming out with a great line that not even the newly-noninterventionist Sen. Paul had the gumption to muster:

"If Putin wants to go and knock the hell out of ISIS, I am all for it, one-hundred percent, and I can't understand how anybody would be against it."

Bush butted in with "But they aren't doing that," which is the Obama administration's demonstrably inaccurate line, and Trump made short work of him with the now undeniable fact that the Islamic State blew up a Russian passenger jet with over 200 people on it. "He [Putin] cannot be in love with these people," countered Trump. "He's going in, and we can go in, and everybody should go in. As far as the Ukraine is concerned, we have a group of people, and a group of countries, including Germany – tremendous economic behemoth – why are we always doing the work?"

Why indeed.

Trump, for all his contradictions, gives voice to the "isolationist" populism that Rubio and his neocon confederates despise, and which is implanted so deeply in the American consciousness. Why us? Why are we paying everybody's bills? Why are we fighting everybody else's wars? It's a bad deal!

This is why the neocons hate Trump's guts even more than they hate Paul. The former, after all, is the frontrunner. What the War Party fears is that Trump's contradictory mixture of bluster – "bigger, better, stronger!" – and complaints that our allies are taking advantage of us means a victory for the dreaded "isolationists" at the polls.

As for Carly Fiorina and John Kasich: they merely served as a Greek chorus to the exhortations of Rubio and Bush to take on Putin, Assad, Iran, China, and (in Trump's case) North Korea. They left out Venezuela only because they ran out of time, and breath. Fiorina and Kasich were mirror images of each other in their studied belligerence: both are aspiring vice-presidential running mates for whatever Establishment candidate takes the prize.

Yes, it's election season, the one time – short of when we're about to invade yet another country – when the American people are engaged with the foreign policy issues of the day. And what we are seeing is a rising tide of disgust with our policy of global intervention – in a confused inchoate sense, in the case of Trump, and in a focused, self-conscious, occasionally eloquent and yet still slightly confused and inconsistent way in the case of Sen. Paul. Either way, the real voice of the American heartland is being heard.

Bumpo

Im not so sure. If you see it in context with Trump's other message to make Mexico pay for the border fence. If you take the Iraq war on the face of it - that is, we came in to rescue them from Saddam Hussein - then taking their oil in payment is only "fair". It's hard to tell if he is playing a game, or actually believes the US company line, though. I think he isn't letting on. At least I hope so. And that goes double for his "Support" of Israel.

Joe Trader

@greenskeeper we get it, you get butt-hurt extremely easily

The thing about Donald Trump and oil - is that a few years ago, he said all that Saudi Arabia had to do was start pumping oil, and down it would go to $25. Guess what sweet cheeks - His prediction is coming true and the presidency could really use a guy like him who knows what he's doing.

MalteseFalcon

Say what you like about Trump. 'He is a baffoon or a blowhard'. 'He can't be elected president'.

But Trump has rocked the boat and raised some issues and viewpoints that none of the other bought and paid for 'candidates' would ever have raised. Has he changed the national discussion on these issues? At least he woken some people up.

illyia

oh.my.gawd. a rational adult series of comments on zero hedge: There is hopium for the world, after all.

Just must say: Raimondo is an incredibly good writer. Very enjoyable to read. I am sure that's why he's still around. He make a clear, concise argument, presents his case with humor and irony and usually covers every angle.

I wonder about people like him, who think things out so well... versus, say, the bloviator and chief?

P.S. don't blame me, i did not vote for either of them...

Oracle of Kypseli

The sentence of "We relied on the stupidity of the American voter" resonates.

TheObsoleteMan

What you did, was you fell for the oldest press trick in the book. It's called: "out of context". That's is where they play back only a segment of what someone says, only a part of what they want you to hear, so you will draw the wrong conclusion. What Trump said {had you listened to ALL of what he said} was that he was going to TAKE ISIL'S OIL. Oil is the largest source of revenue for them {then comes the CIA money}. If you were to remove their oil revenues from them, they would be seriously hurting for cash to fund their machine. I don't have a problem with that.

palmereldritch

The thing about understanding the attack on The Donald is understanding what he is NOT. Namely he is not CFR connected:
https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2015/08/24/trump-catches-attention-of...

The attacks on Trump have been relentless yet he is still maintaining his position in the polls.

I expected a take out on Ben Carson, his next closest competitor to move up a CFR-aligned Globalist like Shrubio or Cruz given their fall-back JEBPNAC is tanking so bad...but not this early. They must be getting desperate...so desperate they are considering Romney?!

If it becomes 'Reagan/Bush Redux' again with Trump/Cruz, I hope The Donald has enough sense to say NO! or, if elected, be very vigilant knowing you are Reagan and you have the GHW Bush equivalent standing there to replace you...and we know how that unfolded early in Reagan's first term...NOT GOOD

EDIT: The goal is to have a CFR candidate in both the GOP and Dem fold. Although Hillary is not a CFR member ostensibly Slick Willie has been for more than 20 years and his Administration was rife with them...Hello Rubin and Glass Steagal!!..as is Chelsea... a newly elected member.

So that red vote I just got...was that you Hill?

Pure Evil

The point is Justin seems to believe the Iranians have no intention of building a nuclear bomb ever. I've read a lot of this guy's writing ever since he first came out on his own website and when he wrote for AsiaTimesOnline. He's always had the opinion that the Iranians are not building a nuclear bomb and have no intention to do so. He spews the same talking points about how they've never attacked anyone in over two hundred years.

Well that's because previously they were under the control of the Ottoman empire and that didn't break up until after WW1. I think he's got a blind spot in this regard. You can't tell me that even the Japanese aren't secretly building nuclear weapons since China is becoming militarily aggressive. And, stop being a prick. Your micro-aggressing against my safe place LTER and I'm gonna have to report you for "hurtful" speech.

Raymond_K._Hessel

You ignorant slut.

https://theintercept.com/2015/03/02/brief-history-netanyahu-crying-wolf-...

20 years plus of this accusation. Cia and dia both said no mil program.

If you have evidence summon it. Offering your suspicion as evidence is fucking absurd.

And if the israelis werent hell bent on taking the rest of palestine and brutalizing the natives (which, by and large, they actually are) that would sure wet some of the anti isrsel powder.

But no / they want lebensraum and years of war for expansion and regional total hegemony.

Thrn they can ethnically cleanse the historical inhabitants while everyones busy watching white european christisns kill each other, and muslims, as isis keeps not attacking israel or even isrseli interests.

Youre not dumb, you just reached conclusions that are very weakened of not refuted by evidence you wont even consider.

https://theintercept.com/2015/03/02/brief-history-netanyahu-crying-wolf-...

Bazza McKenzie

If you examine the policy detail Trump has provided, there is more substance there than any of the others. Add to that he has a long record of successful management, which none of the others have.

You don't manage successfully without self control. The persona he presents in politics at present may give the impression of a lack of self control, yet that persona and the policies which are/were verboten to the political class have quickly taken him to the top of the pack and kept him there.

If you apply to Trump the saying "judge people by what they do, not what they say", his achievements out of politics and now in politics show he is a more capable person than any of the others and that he is successful at what he sets out to do.

As the economy for most Americans continues to worsen, which is baked in the cake, who is going to look to the public a more credible person to turn it around, Clinton? Trump? one of the others? The answer is pretty obvious.

European American

"I cannot take Trump seriously."

It's not about Trump as President, a year from now. Who knows if he'll even be in the picture by then. It's ALL about Trump, RIGHT NOW. He's exposing the underbelly of a vile, hideous Z-creature that we, here at ZH have seen for some time, but the masses, those who haven't connected enought dots, yet, are getting a glimpse of something that has been foreign in politics, up until now. Everytime Trump is interviewed, or tweets or stands at the debates, another round is shot over the bow, or beak, of the monster creature that has been sucking the life out of humanity for decades, centuries, eons. As long as he's standing and he can pull it off, that is what this phenomenon is all about...one day at a time....shedding light where the stench of darkness has been breeding corruption for the last millenium.

MASTER OF UNIVERSE

Neocons hate because their collective ethos is that of a single misanthrope that crafted their existence in the first place. In brief, neocons are fascist narrow minded automatons not really capable of a level of consciousness that would enable them to think critically, and independently, of the clique orthodoxy that guides their myopic thinking, or lack thereof. Neocons have no history aside from Corporatism, and Fascism.

Escrava Isaura

American Decline: Causes and Consequences

Grand Area (after WW-2) to be under US control: Western Hemisphere, the Far East, the former British empire - including the crucial Middle East oil reserves - and as much of Eurasia as possible, or at the very least its core industrial regions in Western Europe and the southern European states. The latter were regarded as essential for ensuring control of Middle East energy resources.

It means: Africa resources go to Europe. Asia resources go to Japan. South America resources go to US.

Now (2019) the Conundrum: Where will China get the resources needed for its survival? And Russia is not Africa.

"[American exceptionalism] is a reaction to the inability of people to understand global complexity or important issues like American energy dependency. Therefore, they search for simplistic sources of comfort and clarity. And the people that they are now selecting to be, so to speak, the spokespersons of their anxieties are, in most cases, stunningly ignorant." ? Zbigniew Brzezinski

Bazza McKenzie

Through either ignorance or malice the author repeats Rand Paul's statement about Trump's comments re China and the TPP.

Trump explicitly said the TPP provides a back door opportunity for China, thus noting he understands China is not an initial signatory to TPP.

The backdoor opportunity occurs in 2 ways. The ability for TPP to expand its signatory countries without going back to the legislatures of existing signatory countries AND the fact that products claiming to be made in TPP countries and eligible for TPP arrangements don't have to be wholly made in those countries, or perhaps even mainly made in those countries. China will certainly be taking advantage of that.

The fact that Paul does not apparently understand these points, despite being a Senator, displays an unfortunate ignorance unless of course he was just attempting to score a political point despite knowing it to be false.

Paul at least made his comment in the heat of the moment in a debate. Raimondo has had plenty of time to get the facts right but does not. How much of the rest of his screed is garbage?

socalbeach

I got the impression Trump thought China was part of the trade deal from this quote:

"Yes. Well, the currency manipulation they don't discuss in the agreement, which is a disaster. If you look at the way China and India and almost everybody takes advantage of the United States - China in particular, because they're so good. It's the number-one abuser of this country. And if you look at the way they take advantage, it's through currency manipulation. It's not even discussed in the almost 6,000-page agreement. It's not even discussed."

If China isn't part of the agreement, then what difference does it make whether or not currency manipulation is discussed? Your answer is that Trump meant they could be added to the agreement later, as in this previous quote of his:

"The TPP is horrible deal. It is a deal that is going to lead to nothing but trouble. It's a deal that was designed for China to come in, as they always do, through the back door and totally take advantage of everyone."

If that's the case, Trump didn't explain himself well in this instance.

Johnny Horscaulk

Johnny Horscaulk's picture

http://www.vdare.com/articles/why-so-much-jewish-fear-and-loathing-of-do...

Neocons should not be used as a synonym for 'militarist.'

That subset was absolutely a Jewish-Zionist movement originating at the U of Chicago whether you know the history or not. Its also obvious just verboden to discuss. Not because its false, but because its true.

Neocons aren't conservative - they are zioglobalists with primary concern for Israel.

There are several groups of militarists in the deep state, but the Israel Firster faction is predominant.

Fucking obviously.

Arthur

Gee I guess we should back Iran and Isis. Must be some great jewish conspiricy that keeps you impovrished, that or maybe you are just a moron.

Johnny Horscaulk

Idiot, the us, and israel ARE backing isis. Go back to watching fox news - this is all way over your willingness to spend time reading about. You clearly have an internet connection - but you utter palpable nonsense.

OldPhart

Arthur

When/where I grew up I'd never met a jew. I think there was one black family in the two hundred fifty square miles of the town, population 2,200 in 1976. I knew jackshit other than they were greased by nazis back in WWII.

Moved out of the desert to Orlando, Flawed?-Duh. Met a lot of regular jews. Good people, best man's dad and mom had tattoo'd numbers on thier arms. To me, their just regular people that have some other sort of religion that christianity is an offshoot from.

What I've learned is that Zionism is lead by a relative few of the jewish faith, many regular jews resent it as an abomination of jewish faith. Zionists are the self-selected political elite and are in no way keepers of the jewish faith. They are the equivalent, in Israel, to the CFR here. Oddly, they also comprise many of the CFR seats HERE.

Zionists do not represent the jews any more than Jamie Diamond, Blythe Masters, Warren Buffet, or Bill Gates represent ordinary Americans. Somehow, over time, Zionists came to wield massive influence within our government and corporate institutions.

Those are the simple facts that I have been able to glean from piles of research that are massively biased in both directions.

It's not a jewish conspiracy that keeps many impoverished, it's the Zionists that keep many impoverished, at war, divided, ignorant, and given bread and circuses. Not jews.

Perhaps you should spend a few years doing a little independent research of your own before belittling something you obviously have no clue about.

Johnny Horscaulk

That rhetorical ballet aside, Israel has far far too much influence on us policy, and that is so because of wildly disproportionate Jewish... As such... Political, financial, media, etc power. And they - AS A GROUP -act in their in-group interests even when resulting policy is not in this country's interest - demanding, with 50 million Scoffield JudeoChristians that Israels interests be of utmost value...

And heres the kicker - as defined by an Israel under likud and shas, parties so odious they make golden dawn look leftist, yet get no msm criticism for being so.

Its never 'all' any group - but Israels influence is excessive and deleterious, and that is due to jewish power and influence, with the xian zios giving the votes. Framed this way, it isnt 'Zionism' - it is simply a powerful minority with deep loyalty to a tiny foreign state warping us policy - and media coverage.

MEFOBILLS

Arthur,

Iran is formerly Persia, and its people are predominantly Shia. Shia's are considered apostates by Sunni's. Isis is Sunni. Sunnis get their funding via the Petrodollar system.

Persians changed their name to Iran to let northern Europeans know they were Aryans. Persians are not Arabs.

Neo-Con's are Jewish and they have fellow travelers who are non jewish. Many of their fellow travelers are Sayanim or Zionist Christians. So, Neo-Con ideology is no longer specifically Jewish, but it certainly has Jewish antecedents.

Your comment is full of illogic, is misinformed, and then you have the laughable temerity to call out someone else as a moron.

I Write Code

The only place "neocons" still exist is at ZH. Whatever Wikipedia says about it, the term had virtually no currency in the US before 2001, and had pretty much ceased to have any influence by about 2005.

Is Rubio sounding like an interventionist? Yes. Does he really know what he's talking about? Unclear. Is Trump sounding like a non-interventionist? Yes. Does he really know what he's talking about? Almost certainly not. Trump is the non-interventionist who wants to bomb the shit out of ISIS.

Rand didn't do anything to embarass himself at the latest debate, but he also didn't stand out enough to make up for many past errors. Give him a few years, maybe he'll grow up or something.

But the harder question is, what *should* the US do about stuff? Should we cowboy on alone, or pull back because none of the other kids want to help us. Can't we make common cause with Russia and France at this point? I mean instead of Iran and Turkey? The biggest problem is of course Obama - whatever various national interests at this point, nobody in the world thinks they can trust Nobel boy as far as they can spit a rat. Would anyone want to trust Rubio or Trump? Would you?

Johnny Horscaulk

Nonsense - read this for background beginning with the philosopher Strauss. It has a fixed meaning that was subjected to semantic drift in the media. It came to be conflated with 'militarist' and the conservative thing was a misnomer they were communists who wanted to use American power for israel.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article178638.html

Only on zh is absolutely absurd to claim.

TheObsoleteMan

After listening to the press for the last week, I have come to a conclusion concerning Mr. Bush: The party big wigs have decided he can not win and are distancing their support for him.

Their new golden boy? Marco Rubio. The press in the last week has barely mentioned Bush, but every breath has been about "the young Latino". "He's rising in the polls".

I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard that on radio and the TV. They also had him on Meet The Press last Sunday. Just thought I'd mention it. I can't stand Rubio. When he ran for Senate down here a few years ago, he road to Washington on the Tea Party's back. As soon as he got there, he did what all good politicians do: Dumped their platform and forgot all about them. Scumbag.

neilhorn

Yes, I have also seen the new "golden boy" regaled in the media. Let's see where he goes. I wonder if anyone represents the American people any better than the corrupt piece of dried up persimmon that is Hillary?

Raymond_K._Hessel

Trump picks cruz as veep, offends moderate and lefty independents and latinos on the immigration stuff, kisses Likuds ass (2 million right wing batshit jews out of 8 million israeli voters in asia dominate us foreign policy via nutty, aipac, adl, jinsa, conf of pres, etc etc etc)

And he loses to hillary. The gop can not win this election. Sorry - but admit the direness of our situation - shitty candidates all and one of the very worst and most essentially disingenuous- will win because women and minorities and lefties outnumber right leaning white males.

This is super obviously the political situation.

So - how do we 'prepare' for hillary? She is more wars, more printing, more wall st, more israel just like everyone but sanders who is nonetheless a crazy person and arch statist though I respect his at least not being a hyperinterventionist mic cocksucker.

But fucking hillary clinton gets in.

What does it mean apart from the same old thing?

Red team blue team same thing on wars, banks, and bending the knee to batshit psycho bibi.

cherry picker

I don't think Americans are really ready for Bill to be the First Man, do you? I don't think Americans think about that aspect of Hillary becoming Pres.

Personally, I hope she doesn't get in. There are many other women that are capable who could fit the bill, if the US is bound and determined to have a female president.

neilhorn

"indeed, in our post-constitutional era, now that Congress has abdicated its responsibility, he has the de facto power to single-handedly take us into war. Which is why, paraphrasing Trotsky, you may not be interested in politics, but politics is certainly interested in you."

The post-constitutional era is the present time. Congress is stifled by politics while the rest of us only desire that the rights of the people are protected. The President has never been granted the right to take our nation to war. Other presidents have usurped that power and taken the power to themseves. Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama have all taken on the right to kill anyone who defied the right of the presidency. However, when the people ever abrogated their right to wage war it was only in response to a police state being established that threatened those who opposed the power of the established authority. Congress, the representatives of the people, has the right to declare war. Congress is also obligated to represent the people who elected them. When will we find a representative who has the backbone to stop the suicidal tendencies of the structures of power?

Captain Obvious.

Don't set store by any politician. They were all sent as a group to suck Israeli dick. Yes, dear Donald too. They will tell you what they think you want to hear.

Raymond_K._Hessel

Ivanka converted to judaism and all - was that for the grooms parents or genuine? Or a dynastic thing?

Wahooo

Another hit piece today in Barrons:

"Donald Trump is trying hard to look presidential these days. Too bad he's using Herbert Hoover as a role model. Hoover, of course, is best remembered as having been president during the stock market crash of 1929 that presaged the Great Depression. What helped turn a normal recession into a global economic disaster was the spread of protectionism, starting with the Smoot-Hawley tariff, which resulted in retaliation even before Hoover signed the bill in 1930."

If I recall my history, in 1927 amidst what everyone knew was already bubble stock market, the Fed dropped rates substantially. This was done against the protests of President Coolidge, his secretary of treasury, and many other politicians and business tycoons at the time. It ushered in a stock market bubble of massive proportions and the coming bust. Protectionism had little to do with it.

Faeriedust

Right. The "protectionism" meme is a piece of corporate persiflage that's been duly trotted out every time someone suggests even SLIGHTLY protecting our decimated economy. According to Wiki: "the general view is that while it had negative results, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff was not one of the main causes of the Great Depression because foreign trade was only a small sector of the U.S. economy."

Faeriedust

Well, what REALLY caused the Depression were the bills from WWI. Every nation in Europe had spent years of GNP on the War through debt, all the debts were due, and nobody could afford to pay them. So they loaded the whole pile on Germany, and then screamed when Germany literally could NOT make its payments, and then played extend-and-pretend for a decade. Which eventually caused the Credit-Anstallt collapse, and then everything finally fell like a house of cards.

Very like today, but the current run of bills were run up by pure financial frivolity and corruption. Although one could say that fighting a war that killed 1/4 of all European males of fighting age was an exercise in frivolity and corruption on the part of Europe's senile ruling elites. Nobody was willing to divide a shrinking pie equitably; they all thought it would be better to try grabbing The Whole Thing. Rather like world powers today, again.

CAPT DRAKE

educated, responsible position in a fortune 200company, and yes, will be voting for trump. why? sick to death of the existing elites, and the way they run things. a trump vote is a protest vote. a protest against the neocons and all their types that have caused so much misery around the world.

NoWayJose

If Trump is the Republucan nominee, you can bet that he will point out a lot of things Hillary has done. You know several others in the field will say nothing bad about Hillary. (A la Romney).

Not sure why Rubio still has support - Rand clobbered him on spending, including his new entitlement, and add Rubio's position on amnesty.

Faeriedust

With JEB polling in single digits and hopelessly befuddled, Rubio is the Great Hispanic Hope of the establishment Republocrats. He is being well-pimped, is all. Paul is clearly more intelligent, more articulate, and more well-informed; Trump is more forceful and popular (but independent!). Neither suits an establishment that wants to hold the reins behind the throne.

thesoothsayer

The Military Industrial Complex became entrenched after Eisenhower left office and they murdered Kennedy. Since then, they have taken over. We cover the world to spread our seeds and enrich our corporations. Our government does not protect the people, it protects the corporations, wall street. That is the reality.

dizzyfingers

https://theintercept.com/2015/11/11/trump-was-right-about-tpp-benefitting-china

Trump Was Right About TPP Benefiting China

[Nov 04, 2015] Neoliberalism neofashism and feudalism

Notable quotes:
"... feudalism is a hierarchical system of distributed administration. A king is nominally in charge or "owns" a kingdom, but he has lords who administer its first primary division, the fiefdom. Lords in turn have vassals, who administer further subdivisions or, in the cases of smaller fiefs, different aspects of governance. Vassals may have their own captains and middle managers, typically knights but also clerks and priests, who in turn employ apprentices/novices/pages who train under them so as to one day move up to middle management. If this is starting to resemble modern corporate structure, then bonus points to you. ..."
"... Anyone in a position of vassalage was dependent upon the largess of his immediate patron/lord/whatever for both his status and nominal wealth. The lowest rungs of the administrative ladder were responsible for keeping the peasants, the pool of labor, in line either through force or through the very same system of dependence upon largess that frames the lord/vassal relationship. ..."
"... A CEO may resign in disgrace over some scandal, but that does little to challenge the underlings who carried out his orders. ..."
"... It's not that peasants can be vassals in the overall order so much as they are in the subject position, but without the attendant capacity to then lord it over someone beneath them. Lord/vassal in feudalism are also generic terms to describe members of a fixed relationship of patronage. It's confusing, because those terms are also used for levels of the overall hierarchy. ..."
"... I suspect that the similarity of medeavil fuedalism with the relationship between a large modern corporation and its employees is not properly appreciated because the latter, unlike the former, does not necessarily include direct control over living conditions (housing, land, rent), even though in the end there may be a similar degree of effective servitude (lack of mobility and alternatives, and so effective entrapment at low wages) . ..."
www.nakedcapitalism.com

Mussolini-Style Corporatism, aka Fascism, on the Rise in the US naked capitalism

Uahsenaa, November 3, 2015 at 11:26 am

I want to expand on the point about feudalism, since it's even more apt than the article lets on. It was not "rule by the rich," which implies an oligarchic class whose members are more or less free agents in cahoots with one another. Rather, feudalism is a hierarchical system of distributed administration. A king is nominally in charge or "owns" a kingdom, but he has lords who administer its first primary division, the fiefdom. Lords in turn have vassals, who administer further subdivisions or, in the cases of smaller fiefs, different aspects of governance. Vassals may have their own captains and middle managers, typically knights but also clerks and priests, who in turn employ apprentices/novices/pages who train under them so as to one day move up to middle management. If this is starting to resemble modern corporate structure, then bonus points to you.

This means feudalism found a way to render complicit in a larger system of administration people who had no direct and often no real stake in the produce of its mass mobilization of labor. Anyone in a position of vassalage was dependent upon the largess of his immediate patron/lord/whatever for both his status and nominal wealth. The lowest rungs of the administrative ladder were responsible for keeping the peasants, the pool of labor, in line either through force or through the very same system of dependence upon largess that frames the lord/vassal relationship. Occasionally, the peasants recognize that no one is below them in this pyramid scheme, and so they revolt, but for the most part they were resigned to the status quo, because there seemed to be no locus of power to topple. Sure, you could overthrow the king, but that would do nothing to deter the power of the lords. You could overthrow your local lord, but the king could just install a new one.

Transpose to the modern day. A CEO may resign in disgrace over some scandal, but that does little to challenge the underlings who carried out his orders. You might get your terrible boss fired for his tendency to sexually harass anyone who walks in the door, but what's to stop the regional manager from hiring someone who works you to the bone. Sometimes the peas–err, employees revolt and form a union, but we all know what means have been employed over the years to do away with that.

tl;dr – Feudalism: it's about the structure, not the classes


Lambert Strether, November 3, 2015 at 2:19 pm

Hmm. I don't think a serf can be a vassal. The vassals sound a lot like the 20%. The serfs would be the 80%. I'm guessing class is alive and well.

James Levy, November 3, 2015 at 2:38 pm

You wouldn't be a vassal (that was a very small percentage of the population) but you could have ties of patronage with the people above you, and in fact that was critical to all societies until the Victorians made nepotism a bad word and the ethic of meritocracy (however bastardized today) took shape. If you wanted your physical labor obligation converted into a money payment so you could spend more time and effort on your own holding, or you needed help in tough times, or the 99 year lease on your leasehold was coming due, or you wanted to get your son into the local priory, etc. you needed a friend or friends in higher places. The granting or refusal of favors counted for everything, and kept many on the straight and narrow, actively or passively supporting the system as it was.

Uahsenaa, November 3, 2015 at 2:39 pm

It's not that peasants can be vassals in the overall order so much as they are in the subject position, but without the attendant capacity to then lord it over someone beneath them. Lord/vassal in feudalism are also generic terms to describe members of a fixed relationship of patronage. It's confusing, because those terms are also used for levels of the overall hierarchy.

The true outliers here are the contemporaneous merchants, craftsmen, and freeholders (yeomen) who are necessary for things to run properly but are not satisfactorily accounted for by the overall system of governance, in part because it was land based. Merchants and craftsmen in particular tended not to be tied to any one place, since their services were often needed all over and only for limited periods of time. The primary administrative apparatus for craftsmen were the guilds. Merchants fell into any number of systems of organization and often into none at all, thus, according to the old Marxist genealogy, capitalism overthrows feudalism.

Peasants may have had something like a class consciousness on occasion, but I'm not entirely convinced it's useful to think of them in that way. In Japan, for instance, peasants were of a much higher social status than merchants and craftsmen, technically, yet their lives were substantially more miserable by any modern economic measure.

visitor, November 3, 2015 at 4:01 pm

I think that the article gets it seriously wrong about feudalism - an example of what Yves calls "stripping words of their meaning".

First of all, feudalism was actually an invention of an older, powerful, even more hierarchical organization: the Catholic Church.

The Church realized early on that imposing its ideal of a theocratic State ("city of God") led by the Pope upon the strong-headed barbarian chiefs (Lombards, Franks, Wisigoths and others) that set up various kingdoms in Europe was impossible.

Hence the second best approach, feudalism: a double hierarchy (worldly and spiritual). The populations of Europe were subject to two parallel hierarchical authorities with taxation, judicial and other economic powers (such as the right to determine when and for whom to work).

Second, there was a class of wealthy people which did not quite fit in the feudal hierarchy - in particular, they had no vassals, nor, despite their wealth, any fiefdom: merchants, financiers, the emerging burger class in cities. They were the ones actually lending money to feudal lords.

Third, the problem for underlings was never to overthrow the king (this was a hobby for princely families), and extremely rarely the local lord (which inevitably brought the full brunt of the feudal hierarchy to bear on the seditious populace).

Historically, what cities and rural communities struggled for was to be placed directly under the authority of the king or (Holy Roman Germanic) emperor. This entailed the rights to self-administration, freedom from most egregious taxes and corvées from feudal seigneurs, recognition of local laws and customs, and the possibility to render justice without deferring to local lords.

The king/emperor was happy to receive taxes directly from the city/community without them seeping away in the pockets of members of the inextricable feudal hierarchy; he would from time to time require troops for his host, hence reducing the dependency on troops from his vassal lords; and he would rarely be called to intervene in major legal disputes. Overall, he was way too busy to have time micromanaging those who swore direct allegiance to him - which was exactly what Basque communities, German towns and Swiss peasants wanted.

Therefore, an equivalence between feudalism and the current organizational make-up of society dominated by for-profit entities does not make sense.

Lambert Strether, November 3, 2015 at 4:11 pm

"the problem for underlings was never to overthrow the King"

Not even in the peasant revolts?

visitor, November 3, 2015 at 5:15 pm

If you look at this list, it appears that they were revolts directed against the local nobility (or church) because of its exorbitant taxation, oppressive judiciary, rampaging mercenaries and incompetent leadership in war against foreign invasions.

The French Jacquerie took place when there was no king - he had been taken prisoner by the English and the populace blamed the nobility for the military defeats and the massive tax increases that ensued.

During the Spanish Guerra de los Remensas, the revolted peasants actually appealed to the king and he in turn allied with them to fight the nobles.

During the Budai Nagy Antal revolt, the peasants actually asked the Hungarian king to arbitrate.

In other cases, even when the king/emperor/sultan ultimately intervened to squash the revolt, the insurrection was directed against some local elite.

Peasants revolts in 16th century Scandinavia were against the king's rule, but they were linked to reformation and took place when feudalism was on the wane and the evolution towards a centralized monarchical state well advanced.

Apparently, only the John and William Merfold's revolt explicitly called for the overthrow of the English king.

Jim Haygood, November 3, 2015 at 4:51 pm

'The populations of Europe were subject to two parallel hierarchical authorities with taxation, judicial and other economic powers (such as the right to determine when and for whom to work).'

Just as Americans are subject to two parallel hierarchical authorities with taxation and judicial powers, the states and the fedgov.

Before 1914, federal criminal laws were few, and direct federal income taxation of individuals was nonexistent. Today one needs federal authorization (E-verify) to get a job.

Now that the Fifth Amendment prohibition on double jeopardy has been interpreted away, notorious defendants face both federal and state prosecution. Thus the reason why America has the world's largest Gulag, with its slam-dunk conviction machine.


Uahsenaa, November 3, 2015 at 4:58 pm

Except, first off, there were non-Christian societies that made use of the system of warrior vassalage, and the manorial system that undergirded feudal distribution of land and resources, as least as far as Bloch is concerned, is a fairly clear outgrowth of the Roman villa system of the late empire. Insofar as the Late Roman empire was nominally–very nominally–Christian, I suppose your point stands, but according to Bloch, the earliest manorial structures were the result of the dissolution of the larger, older empire into smaller pieces, many of which were beyond meaningful administrative control by Rome itself. Second, bishoprics and monasteries, the primary land holdings of the clergy, were of the same order as manors, so they fit within the overall feudal system, not parallel to it.

If Bloch is not right about this, I'm open to reading other sources, but that's what my understanding was based on. Moreover, the basic system of patronage and fealty that made the manor economy function certainly seems to have survived the historical phenomenon we call feudalism, and that parallel was what I was trying to draw attention to. Lord/vassal relationships are fundamentally contractual, not just quid pro quo but organized around favors and reputation, and maybe the analogy is a bit strained, but it does point to the ways in which modern white collar work especially is about more than fixed pay for a fixed sum of labor output.

Thure Meyer, November 4, 2015 at 7:30 am

Isn't this rather off-topic?

This is not a discussion about the true and correct history of European feudalism or whether or not it applies to the situation at hand, but a dialogue about Global fascism and how it expresses itself in this Nation.

HarrySnapperOrgans, November 4, 2015 at 4:46 am

I suspect that the similarity of medeavil fuedalism with the relationship between a large modern corporation and its employees is not properly appreciated because the latter, unlike the former, does not necessarily include direct control over living conditions (housing, land, rent), even though in the end there may be a similar degree of effective servitude (lack of mobility and alternatives, and so effective entrapment at low wages) .

[Nov 04, 2015] Mussolini-Style Corporatism, aka Fascism, on the Rise in the US

Notable quotes:
"... The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name ..."
"... Similarly, even as authoritarianism is rapidly rising in the US and citizens are losing their rights (see a reminder from last weekend, a major New York Times story on how widespread use of arbitration clauses is stripping citizens of access to the court system *), one runs the risk of having one's hair on fire if one dares suggest that America is moving in a fascist, or perhaps more accurately, a Mussolini-style corporatist direction. Yet we used that very expression, "Mussolini-style corporatism," to describe the the post-crisis bank bailouts. Former chief economist of the IMF, Simon Johnson, was more stark in his choice of terms, famously calling the rescues a "quiet coup" by financial oligarchs. ..."
"... By Thom Hartmann, an author and nationally syndicated daily talk show host. His newest book is "The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America -- and What We Can Do to Stop It." Originally published at Alternet ..."
"... "The really dangerous American fascists," Wallace wrote, "are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. "With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power." ..."
"... If classical liberalism spells individualism, Fascism spells government. ..."
"... If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. … They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead. ..."
"... "Fascism is a worldwide disease," Wallace further suggest that fascism's "greatest threat to the United States will come after the war" and will manifest "within the United States itself." ..."
"... It Can't Happen Here ..."
"... There are two [political] parties, the Corporate and those who don't belong to any party at all, and so, to use a common phrase, are just out of luck! ..."
"... Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion. American fascists of this stamp were clandestinely aligned with their German counterparts before the war, and are even now preparing to resume where they left off, after 'the present unpleasantness' ceases. ..."
"... Fascists have an agenda that is primarily economic. As the Free Dictionary ( www.thefreedictionary.com ) notes, fascism/corporatism is "an attempt to create a 'modern' version of feudalism by merging the 'corporate' interests with those of the state." ..."
"... Thus, the neo-feudal/fascistic rich get richer (and more powerful) on the backs of the poor and the middle class, an irony not lost on author Thomas Frank, who notes in his book What's The Matter With Kansas ..."
"... The businesses "going out of business" are, in fascist administrations, usually those of locally owned small and medium-sized companies. As Wallace wrote, some in big business "are willing to jeopardize the structure of American liberty to gain some temporary advantage." ..."
"... Monopolists who fear competition and who distrust democracy because it stands for equal opportunity would like to secure their position against small and energetic enterprise [companies]. In an effort to eliminate the possibility of any rival growing up, some monopolists would sacrifice democracy itself. ..."
"... The symptoms of fascist thinking are colored by environment and adapted to immediate circumstances. But always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power. It is no coincidence that the growth of modern tyrants has in every case been heralded by the growth of prejudice. It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination… ..."
"... But even at this, Wallace noted, American fascists would have to lie to the people in order to gain power. And, because they were in bed with the nation's largest corporations – who could gain control of newspapers and broadcast media -- they could promote their lies with ease. ..."
"... "The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact," Wallace wrote. "Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy." ..."
"... They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection. ..."
"... Franklin D. Roosevelt, said when he accepted his party's renomination in 1936 in Philadelphia, "…out of this modern civilization, economic royalists [have] carved new dynasties…. It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction…. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man…." ..."
"... The Republican candidates' and their billionaire donors' behavior today eerily parallels that day in 1936 when Roosevelt said, "In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for." ..."
"... Amen -- I've always detested the weasel words "neoliberal" and "neoconservative". Lets just be honest enough to call ideologies and political behaviors by their proper name. ..."
"... Call Dems what they are – corrupt right wingers, ultra conservatives. ..."
"... Isn't it important to keep in mind that fascism, as it developed in Italy and Germany, were authentic mass based movements generating great popular enthusiasm and not merely a clever manipulation of of populist emotions by the reactionary Right or by capitalism in crisis. ..."
"... Authentic augmented by the generous application of force, I'd say. That I think is a very interesting discussion about just how freely fascism develops. I don't think Italy and especially Germany developed with a particularly genuine popular enthusiasm. ..."
"... Or to put it differently, I'd say the appearance of popular enthusiasm from a mass movement was the result of fascist control as much as the cause. That's what's so unnverving about the American context of 21st century fascism. It does not require a mass movement to implement this kind of totalitarianism. It merely requires the professional class to keep their heads down long enough for a critical mass to be reached by the power structure in hollowing out the back-office guts of democratic governance. ..."
"... Fascism was a counter revolution to Bolshevikism. The upper and upper-middle class was scared to death of what happen in Russia under Bolshevikism. They united with the military looking for someone to counter Bolshevikism and settled on Hitler and the Nazi's. The military thought they control him but they ended up being wrong. ..."
"... "Those who own America should govern it" ..."
"... Corporation in Italian has approximately the meaning of guild and has nothing to do with big enterprises ..."
"... Massinissa and lou strong are correct -- corporatism in Mussolini's Italy meant structuring the State and the legislative body around organizations representing specific professional or economic sectors. ..."
"... By the way: we should not forget another fascist State, Portugal, which during the entire Salazar regime officially defined itself as a "corporatist republic". ..."
"... besides for-profit corporations. ..."
"... elimination ..."
"... It is apparent that both corporate parties are increasingly incapable of properly deflecting and channeling the interests of the electorate. Whether you think of 2007-08 as simply another business cycle, one that was exacerbated by toxic assets, a product of increasing income and wealth disparity, etc. it seems that portions of the electorate have been shocked out of their confidence in the system and the steering capacity of economic and political elites. ..."
"... This might lead the parties, under the pressure of events, to might reformulate themselves as the political cover of a "government of national unity" that, depending on the extremity of the next downturn, impose a "solidarity from above," blocking the development of popular organizations in a variety of ways. I certainly see this as possible. But treating the parties, or the system itself, as fascist at this point in time is not only not helpful, it is fundamentally disorienting. ..."
"... Chamber of the Fascist Corporations ..."
"... My impression is that today Corporatism more closely represents the interests of multinational corporations and the people who hold executive leadership positions within those companies. What they have in common is a listing on NYSE. ..."
November 3, 2015 | nakedcapitalism.com

The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name. Confucius

One of the distressing things about politics in the US is the way words have either been stripped of their meaning or become so contested as to undermine the ability to communicate and analyze. It's hard to get to a conversation when you and your interlocutors don't have the same understanding of basic terms.

And that is no accident. The muddying of meaning is a neo-Orwellian device to influence perceptions by redefining core concepts. And a major vector has been by targeting narrow interest groups on their hot-button topics. Thus, if you are an evangelical or otherwise strongly opposed to women having reproductive control, anyone who favors womens' rights in this area is in your vein of thinking, to the left of you, hence a "liberal". Allowing the Overton Window to be framed around pet interests, as opposed to a view of what societal norms are, has allowed for the media to depict the center of the political spectrum as being well to the right of where it actually is as measured by decades of polling, particularly on economic issues.

Another way of limiting discourse is to relegate certain terms or ideas to what Daniel Hallin called the "sphere of deviance." Thus, until roughly two years ago, calling an idea "Marxist" in the US was tantamount to deeming it to be the political equivalent of taboo. That shows how powerful the long shadow of the Communist purges of the McCarthy era were, more than a generation after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Similarly, even as authoritarianism is rapidly rising in the US and citizens are losing their rights (see a reminder from last weekend, a major New York Times story on how widespread use of arbitration clauses is stripping citizens of access to the court system*), one runs the risk of having one's hair on fire if one dares suggest that America is moving in a fascist, or perhaps more accurately, a Mussolini-style corporatist direction. Yet we used that very expression, "Mussolini-style corporatism," to describe the the post-crisis bank bailouts. Former chief economist of the IMF, Simon Johnson, was more stark in his choice of terms, famously calling the rescues a "quiet coup" by financial oligarchs.

Now admittedly, the new neoliberal economic order is not a replay of fascism, so there is reason not to apply the "f" word wholesale. Nevertheless, there is a remarkable amount of inhibition in calling out the similarities where they exist. For instance, the article by Thom Hartmann below, which we've reposted from Alternet, is bold enough to use the "fascist" word in the opening paragraph (but not the headline!). But it then retreats from making a hard-headed analysis by focusing on warnings about the risks of fascism in America from the 1940s. While historical analysis is always enlightening, you'll see the article only selectively interjects contemporary examples. Readers no doubt can help fill out, as well as qualify, this picture.

By Thom Hartmann, an author and nationally syndicated daily talk show host. His newest book is "The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America -- and What We Can Do to Stop It." Originally published at Alternet

Ben Carson's feeble attempt to equate Hitler and pro-gun control Democrats was short-lived, but along with the announcement that Marco Rubio has brought in his second big supporting billionaire, it brings to mind the first American vice-president to point out the "American fascists" among us.

Although most Americans remember that Harry Truman was Franklin D. Roosevelt's vice-president when Roosevelt died in 1945 (making Truman president), Roosevelt had two previous vice-presidents: John N. Garner (1933-1941) and Henry A. Wallace (1941-1945).

In early 1944, the New York Times asked Vice-President Henry Wallace to, as Wallace noted, "write a piece answering the following questions: What is a fascist? How many fascists have we? How dangerous are they?"

Vice-President Wallace's answer to those questions was published in the New York Times on April 9, 1944, at the height of the war against the Axis powers of Germany and Japan.

"The really dangerous American fascists," Wallace wrote, "are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information.

"With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power."

In this, Wallace was using the classic definition of the word "fascist" -- the definition Mussolini had in mind when he claimed to have invented the word. (It was actually Italian philosopher Giovanni Gentile who wrote the entry in the Encyclopedia Italiana that said: "Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." Mussolini, however, affixed his name to the entry, and claimed credit for it.)

As the 1983 American Heritage Dictionary noted, fascism is, "A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."

Mussolini was quite straightforward about all this. In a 1923 pamphlet titled "The Doctrine of Fascism" he wrote, "If classical liberalism spells individualism, Fascism spells government." But not a government of, by, and for We The People; instead, it would be a government of, by, and for the most powerful corporate interests in the nation.

In 1938, Mussolini brought his vision of fascism into full reality when he dissolved Parliament and replaced it with the Camera dei Fasci e delle Corporazioni -- the Chamber of the Fascist Corporations. Corporations were still privately owned, but now instead of having to sneak their money to folks like Tom DeLay and covertly write legislation, they were openly in charge of the government.

Vice-President Wallace bluntly laid out in his 1944 Times article his concern about the same happening here in America:

If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. … They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead.

Nonetheless, at that time there were few corporate heads who'd run for political office, and in Wallace's view, most politicians still felt it was their obligation to represent We The People instead of corporate cartels.

"American fascism will not be really dangerous," he added in the next paragraph, "until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information…."

Noting that, "Fascism is a worldwide disease," Wallace further suggest that fascism's "greatest threat to the United States will come after the war" and will manifest "within the United States itself."

In Sinclair Lewis's 1935 novel It Can't Happen Here a conservative southern politician is helped to the presidency by a nationally syndicated radio talk show host. The politician, Buzz Windrip, runs his campaign on family values, the flag and patriotism. Windrip and the talk show host portray advocates of traditional American democracy as anti-American.

When Windrip becomes president, he opens a Guantanamo-style detention center, and the viewpoint character of the book, Vermont newspaper editor Doremus Jessup, flees to Canada to avoid prosecution under new "patriotic" laws that make it illegal to criticize the President.

As Lewis noted in his novel, "the President, with something of his former good-humor [said]: 'There are two [political] parties, the Corporate and those who don't belong to any party at all, and so, to use a common phrase, are just out of luck!' The idea of the Corporate or Corporative State, Secretary [of State] Sarason had more or less taken from Italy."

And, President "Windrip's partisans called themselves the Corporatists, or, familiarly, the 'Corpos,' which nickname was generally used."

Lewis, the first American writer to win a Nobel Prize, was world famous by 1944, as was his book. And several well-known and powerful Americans, including Prescott Bush, had lost businesses in the early 1940s because of charges by Roosevelt that they were doing business with Hitler.

These events all, no doubt, colored Vice-President Wallace's thinking when he wrote:

Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion. American fascists of this stamp were clandestinely aligned with their German counterparts before the war, and are even now preparing to resume where they left off, after 'the present unpleasantness' ceases.

Fascists have an agenda that is primarily economic. As the Free Dictionary (www.thefreedictionary.com) notes, fascism/corporatism is "an attempt to create a 'modern' version of feudalism by merging the 'corporate' interests with those of the state."

Feudalism, of course, is one of the most stable of the three historic tyrannies (kingdoms, theocracies, feudalism) that ruled nations prior to the rise of American republican democracy, and can be roughly defined as "rule by the rich."

Thus, the neo-feudal/fascistic rich get richer (and more powerful) on the backs of the poor and the middle class, an irony not lost on author Thomas Frank, who notes in his book What's The Matter With Kansas that, "You can see the paradox first-hand on nearly any Main Street in middle America -- 'going out of business' signs side by side with placards supporting George W. Bush."

The businesses "going out of business" are, in fascist administrations, usually those of locally owned small and medium-sized companies. As Wallace wrote, some in big business "are willing to jeopardize the structure of American liberty to gain some temporary advantage."

He added:

Monopolists who fear competition and who distrust democracy because it stands for equal opportunity would like to secure their position against small and energetic enterprise [companies]. In an effort to eliminate the possibility of any rival growing up, some monopolists would sacrifice democracy itself.

But American fascists who would want former CEOs as president, vice-president, House Majority Whip, and Senate Majority Leader, and write legislation with corporate interests in mind, don't generally talk to We The People about their real agenda, or the harm it does to small businesses and working people.

Instead, as Hitler did with the trade union leaders and the Jews, they point to a "them" to pin with blame and distract people from the harms of their economic policies.

In a comment prescient of Alabama's recent closing of every drivers' license office in every Alabama county with more than 75% black residents (while recently passing a law requiring a drivers' license or similar ID to vote), Wallace continued:

The symptoms of fascist thinking are colored by environment and adapted to immediate circumstances. But always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power. It is no coincidence that the growth of modern tyrants has in every case been heralded by the growth of prejudice. It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination…

But even at this, Wallace noted, American fascists would have to lie to the people in order to gain power. And, because they were in bed with the nation's largest corporations – who could gain control of newspapers and broadcast media -- they could promote their lies with ease.

"The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact," Wallace wrote. "Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy."

In his strongest indictment of the tide of fascism, the vice-president of the United States saw rising in America, he added:

They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.

This liberal vision of an egalitarian America in which very large businesses and media monopolies are broken up under the 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Act (which Reagan stopped enforcing, leading to the mergers & acquisitions frenzy that continues to this day) was the driving vision of the New Deal (and of "Trust Buster" Teddy Roosevelt a generation earlier).

As Wallace's president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, said when he accepted his party's renomination in 1936 in Philadelphia, "…out of this modern civilization, economic royalists [have] carved new dynasties…. It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction…. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man…."

Speaking indirectly of the fascists Wallace would directly name almost a decade later, Roosevelt brought the issue to its core:

These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power." But, he thundered, "Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power!

In the election of 2016, we again stand at the same crossroad Roosevelt and Wallace confronted during the Great Depression and World War II.

Fascism is again rising in America, this time calling itself "conservativism." The Republican candidates' and their billionaire donors' behavior today eerily parallels that day in 1936 when Roosevelt said, "In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for."

It's particularly ironic that the "big news" is which billionaire is supporting which Republican candidate. Like Eisenhower's farewell address, President Roosevelt and Vice-President Wallace's warnings are more urgent now than ever before.

_____
* In trying to find the New York Times story again, I simply Googled "arbitration," on the assumption that given that the article was both high traffic and recent that it would come up high in a search. Not only did the story not come up on the first page, although a reference to it in Consumerist did, but when I clicked on "in the news" link, it was again not in the first page in Google. If this isn't censorship, I don't know what is. The story was widely referenced on the Web and got far more traffic than the "news" story that Google gave preference (such as, of all things, a Cato study and "Arbitration Eligible Brewers

Brew Crew Ball-19 hours ago"). In fact, the NYT article does not appear on the first five pages of the Google news search, even though older and clearly lower traffic stories do. And when you find the first reference to the story on the news page, which is a Cato piece mentioning it, and you click through to the "explore in depth" page, again the New York Times story is not the prominent placement it warrants, and is listed fifth. Consider how many clicks it took to find it.

Crazy Horse, November 3, 2015 at 10:49 am

Amen -- I've always detested the weasel words "neoliberal" and "neoconservative". Lets just be honest enough to call ideologies and political behaviors by their proper name.

timbers, November 3, 2015 at 11:17 am

I agree!

Telling my friends Obama is "neoliberal" means nothing to 99% of them, they couldn't care less, it does not compute. So instead I tell them Obama is the most right wing President in history who's every bit un-hinged as Sarah Palin and at least as bat shit insame as John McCain, but you think that's totally OK because you're a Dem and Dems think that because Obama speaks with better grammar than Sarah Palin and is more temperate than John McCain. Them I tell them to vote Green instead of the utlra right wing Dems

Call Dems what they are – corrupt right wingers, ultra conservatives.

Barmitt O'Bamney, November 3, 2015 at 11:01 am

LOL. You get to take your pick between TWO fascist parties in 2016. Just like you did for the last several elections. I wonder if the outcome will be different this time – will Fascism grab the prize again, or will it be Fascism coming out ahead at the last minute to save the day?

David, November 3, 2015 at 11:04 am

Why didn't Wallace become President when Roosevelt died? From the St. Petersburg Times,

The Gallup Poll said 65 percent of the voting Democrats wanted Wallace and that 2 percent wanted Senator Truman. But the party bosses could not boss Wallace. They made a coalition with the Roosevelt-haters and skillfully and cynically mowed down the unorganized Wallace forces.

Take note Bernie fans.

washunate November 3, 2015 at 11:28 am

With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power

Such a concise and cogent explanation. The go-to policy advice of the fascist is to do moar of whatever he's selling.

susan the other November 3, 2015 at 12:18 pm

I was just going to say something like this too. There is a logical end to fascism and if it is blocked and prolonged then when it finally runs its course it ends in a huge mess. And even the fascists don't know what to do. Because everything they were doing becomes pure poison. Moar money and power have an Achilles Heel – there is an actual limit to their usefulness. So this is where we find ourselves today imo – not at the beginning of a fascist-feudal empire, but at the bitter and confused end. Our implosion took far longer than Germany's, but the writing was on the wall from 1970 on. And then toss in the wages of prolonged sin – neoliberalism's excesses, the planet, global warming.

TarheelDem November 3, 2015 at 1:02 pm

Yes. This.

One would think that Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and the killing of 1000 people by cops would be a clue. As would an understanding of the counter-New Deal that began to unfold in 1944, gained power in 1946, and institutionalized itself as a military and secret government in 1947. Or the rush to war after every peace, the rush to debt after every surplus, and perpetual inability of the IRS to collect taxes from the wealthiest.

Maybe not even a Franco-level fascist state or a fascist state with a single dictator, more like the state capitalism of the Soviet Union and current China without the public infrastructure. Just the oligarchs.

And yet it is in a state of failure, and inability to do anything but feather then nests of those who rule, all those King Midases.

participant-observer-observed November 3, 2015 at 1:49 pm

Also, the increase of censorship (GMO labels or fracking chemicals), and persecution of whistleblowers and political prisoners, incarceration of whole swathes of black population, along w execution w no due process, continuous wars abroad w no apparent tbreat to domestic security and the state of the nation is apparent.

participant-observer-observed November 3, 2015 at 2:56 pm

Whoops, almost forgot to include: mass surveillance.

Jim November 3, 2015 at 3:27 pm

Isn't it important to keep in mind that fascism, as it developed in Italy and Germany, were authentic mass based movements generating great popular enthusiasm and not merely a clever manipulation of of populist emotions by the reactionary Right or by capitalism in crisis.

The orthodox left made this mistake in the 1920s and early 1930s and in 2015 still appears wedded to this erroneous assumption.

washunate November 3, 2015 at 8:17 pm

Authentic augmented by the generous application of force, I'd say. That I think is a very interesting discussion about just how freely fascism develops. I don't think Italy and especially Germany developed with a particularly genuine popular enthusiasm. Very early on, the national socialists were arresting internal political opposition through parallel courts with explicit references to things like state security. Dachau, for example, was originally for German political prisoners. Jews and foreign nationals came later.

And of course there's the ultimate in false flags, the Reichstag Fire Decree. The whole point of that and the Enabling Act was to circumvent the checks and balances of democratic governance; Hitler himself certainly did not trust the German people to maintain the power he wanted of their own accord and discernment.

Or to put it differently, I'd say the appearance of popular enthusiasm from a mass movement was the result of fascist control as much as the cause. That's what's so unnverving about the American context of 21st century fascism. It does not require a mass movement to implement this kind of totalitarianism. It merely requires the professional class to keep their heads down long enough for a critical mass to be reached by the power structure in hollowing out the back-office guts of democratic governance.

Ishmael November 3, 2015 at 8:47 pm

Fascism was a counter revolution to Bolshevikism. The upper and upper-middle class was scared to death of what happen in Russia under Bolshevikism. They united with the military looking for someone to counter Bolshevikism and settled on Hitler and the Nazi's. The military thought they control him but they ended up being wrong.

You have to understand that after WW1 the allies kept a sea blockade on Germany and that resulted in over a million Germans starving to death. Then came depression followed by hyperinflation. Then there was the fear of Bolsheviks. The Nazi's showed up and things started working again. The Bolsheviks were driven from the street. The Nazi's started borrowing tons of money (yes they issued bonds) and started work programs. The economy started recovering. People had work and food and soon the Nazi's were furnishing free health care. After you had gone through hell this was heaven.

MathandPhysics November 3, 2015 at 10:18 pm

It's strange but 9/11 and the 3 steel frame buildings collapse into dust in few seconds isn't recognized by the masses as false flag Hitler style, then what do you expect ? Massmedia did what it could to confuse them all, only math and physics can help you to see the truth.

Jim November 3, 2015 at 11:23 pm

It would, indeed, be an extremely worthwhile discussion to analyze how freely fascism developed in Italy and Germany.

As a first step in that directkion, Washunate, you might take a look at studies like "Elections, Parties, and Political Traditions: Social Foundations of German parties and party systems.

In the July 1932 elections the SPD (Socialist Party) received 21.6 percent of the vote and was replaced by the NSDAP (Nazi party) as the countries largest political party (with 37.3% of the vote). with the KPD (the communists) capturing 14.5%of the vote.

It was at that time that the Nazi party become a true "people's party" with a support base that was more equally distributed among social and demographic categories than any other major party of the Weimar republic.

Tone November 3, 2015 at 11:42 am

The thing that troubles me most is that there are no leaders like Roosevelt or Wallace today. Where are the POPULAR politicians (Roosevelt was elected 4 times!) calling it like it is and publicly refuting conservative/fascist dogma? Sanders? Maybe. But he's trailing Clinton and certainly he's not a force in the Democratic party like Roosevelt was. At least not yet.

I agree with the "quiet coup" assessment, and I keep waiting for the next Roosevelt, the next Lincoln, the next Founding Father, to appear on the political stage and fight the battle against corporatist/fascist forces. Sadly, it hasn't happened yet.

Masonboro November 3, 2015 at 11:50 am

Unfortunately the next Founding Father to appear (or has appeared) will be John Jay (first Chief Justice among other roles) who was quoted as having said :

"Those who own America should govern it"

Jim

TarheelDem November 3, 2015 at 1:07 pm

Hank Paulson and George W. Bush prevented the situation in 2008 from forcing a Rooseveltian Congress. And the Congress went along with them. Then it was so easy for the do-nothings to argue for less and continue the austerity. And as in Roosevelt's era, racism helped prevent full change, which allowed the post-war rollback.

participant-observer-observed November 3, 2015 at 1:52 pm

Even among the corporatists in govt or business, there are no distinctive shining exemplars of leadership or competence !

Massinissa November 3, 2015 at 2:12 pm

Founding fathers?

Who do you think put the basis of rule by the rich into practice in the first place? A series of 'popular movements' like Shays Rebellion was what forced the founding fathers to make voting rights not dependent on owning land, not because the Founding Fathers were really nice people who luvved 'Democracy'.

Oregoncharles November 4, 2015 at 1:57 am

We just might have to be that "leader" ourselves.

Masonboro November 3, 2015 at 11:46 am

"on the rise" or firmly entrenched ? We already have Homeland Security, Justice Thomas, Donald Trump ,Ted Cruz, and the Koch Brothers (who are running ads in NC extolling recently passed changes in the tax code to continue shifting from income to consumption taxes). What is missing?

Jim

susan the other November 3, 2015 at 12:32 pm

I always think of the Kochs when the word fascist is used. They are ostensibly great environmentalists. Never mind that they operate some of the filthiest industries on the planet. They sponsor NOVA; one brother is a raving environmentalist (that's fine with me) and the other two tone it down. But their brand of conservative politix is as pointless as it is ignorant. That's an interesting topic – the hypocrisy of rich corporatist environmentalists. They are living a contradiction that will tear them apart. But at least they are agonizing over the problem.

lou strong November 3, 2015 at 11:56 am

Maybe my English is too bad, but it seems there's a misunderstanding about "corporatism" meaning, which is unfortunately reflected, as it seems again, in some American dictionaries. Corporation in Italian has approximately the meaning of guild and has nothing to do with big enterprises.

So, while there is no doubt that fascists took power in Italy as the armed wing of big capital, big finance and big landholders against the unrests of the low classes, the idea of corporatist state for them meant the refusal of the principle of class war in favor of the principle of class (guilds, "corporations" :both for employers and employees/trade unions) collaboration , and all of them as subservients to the superior interest of the state.Fascism agenda wasn't primarily economic. There wasn't either a specific agenda : until '29 the regime acted as deeply "neoliberal" with privatizations, deflationary policies to fix a strong lira smashing labor rights and purchase power etc etc , after the crisis it nationalized the failed enterprises and introduced some welfare state elements.

So at least the regime got the property of the failed banks/enterprises, much unlike current situation , where we see the mere socialization of losses and privatization of profits .

Massinissa November 3, 2015 at 2:23 pm

You are correct, I have read this before.

But English speakers either dont know or dont care. Ive seen people talk about "Mussolini Corporatism" like this for what, five years, and they never get corrected.

I dont think theres anything we can do to get people to stop using that term as if it means what they think it means.

visitor November 3, 2015 at 3:19 pm

Massinissa and lou strong are correct -- corporatism in Mussolini's Italy meant structuring the State and the legislative body around organizations representing specific professional or economic sectors.

By the way: we should not forget another fascist State, Portugal, which during the entire Salazar regime officially defined itself as a "corporatist republic".

Barmitt O'Bamney November 3, 2015 at 4:21 pm

You can direct them to the Wikipedia entry for corporatism, which is extensive, or to Michael Lind's 2014 article on the multiple historical meanings and recent misuse of this term. But the term has currency and traction today for reason neither article quite puts a finger on. Under Italian Fascism, the traditional meanings of corporative representation and bargaining were invoked but fused tightly under the auspices -or control- of the nation state, which of course was a single party state. The theoretical representativeness of corporatism was as a facade for political control of all institutions of Italian life by the Fascist Party. In the present time, with unions and guilds a fading memory, regions homogenized and classes atomized, with churches that are little more than money making enterprises as transparent as any multilevel marketing scheme, there are few non-government institutions in western life with any weight besides for-profit corporations. When people struggle to describe what seems wrong to them with our political life, the subservience of our government – and therefore everything else – to profit seeking corporations, they need a term that reflects neatly what has happened and where we are. Democracy of course is defunct both as a term and in reality. We don't have a state of decayed democracy (passive, negative), we have a state of corporate diktat (active, positive). "Corporatism" is an attractive and convenient verbal handle for the masses to latch onto, no matter how much this disappoints the learned. In English, when enough people "misuse" a term for a sufficiently long time, what happens is that the OED adds a new sub-entry for it reflecting its current usage.

Vatch November 3, 2015 at 4:46 pm

I've tried to correct people's misunderstanding of corporazione, but it's probably a losing battle:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/03/neo-liberalism-expressed-simple-rules.html#comment-1919832

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/05/tpp-fascism-issue.html#comment-2439813

run75441 November 4, 2015 at 7:47 am

Try "corpocracy"

Les Swift November 3, 2015 at 12:09 pm

Corporatism is indeed an old idea, feudalism re-branded as "fascism." After Hitler ruined the term, fascism remained, but underground, until it reemerged in the 1960s as what George Ball termed the "world company," which is better known as the system of global corporations. The same general idea, but under a new marketing slogan. Today we have globalization, the raft of "trade" treaties, the Austrian/Libertarian ideology, all of which ultimately push the world toward yet another replay of feudalism. The box says "new and improved," but inside it's the same old crap.

kevinearick November 3, 2015 at 1:01 pm

Clone Dreams

"The more people that transact with one another, the greater the division of labour and knowledge, the greater the ability to develop comparative advantage and the greater the productivity gains."

What could possibly go wrong?

In any empire, virtual or otherwise, you are always surrounded by communist thieves that think they are going to control your output with a competitive advantage illusion, which conveniently ignores opportunity cost. Government is just a derivative piece of paper, the latest fashion for communists, all assuming that the planet is here for their convenience, to exploit. Well, the critters have blown right through 45/5000/.75, and Canada was supposed to be the proving ground for the Silicon Valley Method. Now what?

"Don't panic : world trade is down….Don't bet against the Fed….BTFD." Expect something other than demographic variability, financial implosion, and war.

The communists are always running head first over the cliff, expecting you to follow. Labor has no use for cars that determine when, where and how you will travel, and the communists can't fix anything, because the 'fix' is already inside, embedded as a feature. America is just the latest communist gang believing it has commandeered the steamroller, rolling over other communist gangs.

The Bear isn't coming down from the North, China isn't selling Treasuries, and families are not moving away from the city by accident. Only the latest and greatest, new-world-order communists, replacing themselves with computers, are surprised that technology is always the solution for the problem, technology. Facebook, LinkedIn and Google are only the future for communists, which is always the same, a dead end, with a different name.

Remember that Honda of mine? I told the head communist thief not to touch that car while I was gone, told his fellow thieves and their dependents that I told him so, and even gave him the advantage of telling him what the problem was. How many hours do you suppose the fools spent trying to control that car, and my wife with it?

I don't care whether the communists on the other side of the hill or the communists on this side of the hill think they are going to control Grace, and through her my wife, and through her me. And there are all kinds of communist groups using pieces of my work to advance their AI weapons development, on the assumption that my work will not find itself in the end. Grace will decide whether she wants to be an individual or a communist.

The only way the communists can predict and control the future is to control children. That's what financialization is all about. And all communism can do is train automatons to follow each other, which is a problem-solution addressed by the planet every three generations. You don't have to do anything for communism to collapse, but get out of the way.

Technology is just a temporary tool, discarded by labor for the communists to steal, and stealing a hammer doesn't make anyone a carpenter, much less a King, which is why the Queen always walks through the wreckage, to a worthless throne. The story of Jesus was in fact the story of a king, who had no use for a worldly kingdom, other than as a counterweight, always surrounded by communists, like pigs at a trough. Jesus was no more and no less a child of God than you are.

Labor loses every battle because it doesn't participate, leaving the communists to label each other as labour and knowledge. And if you look, you will see that all their knowledge is real estate inflation, baked into everything, with oil as grease. The name, Robert Reich, didn't give you a hint; of course he knew all along, and like a good communist, changes sides on a regular basis.

You can't pick your parents or your children, or make choices for them, but you can love them without pissing your life away. Navy hasn't disappeared just because the US Navy chose to be a sunk cost, at the beck and call of Wall Street, trying to defend the status quo of communism, for communists on the other side of the pond. A marine is not always a Marine, and a flattop can be turned on a dime.

"The Muses doe attend upon your Throne, With all the Artists at your becke and call…"

If you want to show up at WWIII with a communist and a dc computer as a weapon, that's your business, but I wouldn't recommend doing so. Labor can mobilize far quicker than the communists can imagine, which isn't saying much. Be about your business until the laws of physics have been overthrown, and that hasn't happened yet.

You can count on communists to be at an intersection, creating a traffic jam, building a bigger toll booth, and voting for more of the same, thinking that they are taking advantage of each other, doing the wrong thing at the wrong time at the wrong place. Any intersection of false assumptions will do.

alex morfesis November 3, 2015 at 1:12 pm

let the merry breezes blow synthetic winds…

his name was hanz…or so I was told…we had acquired a lease from the NYC HPD from a parking lot/marina that was at the very north edge of Harlem River Drive at Dyckman (pronounced dikeman)….there is a school there now…he "came" with the lease…years later I would find out he was working with Carlos Lehder and helping arrange for cash payments to conveniently amnesiastic police officers who used the hardly functioning marina to go fishing…in the east river & the hudson…go figure…the more I tried to get rid of him…the more "problems" occurred…my father begged me stop poking around and just "leave it alone"…I don't think he ever really knew what "hanz" was doing or who he was…oh well…might explain how we lost a billion dollars in real estate (ok…it was not worth a billion back then…but it had not debt other than real estate taxes…it was not lost for simply economic reasons)

we as a nation were "convinced" to allow 50 thousand former nazis to enter this country after ww2…under the foolish notion that "the russians" (who have never killed too many americans if my history serves me right) were a "new danger" and only the folks who LO$T to the russians had the knowledge needed to save us from those "evil communists"…(evil communists who helped the Koch Family make their financial start…details details…)

those nazis, from my research have probably grown to a force of about 250 thousand who are the basic clowns (MIC…see you real soon…KEY…why, because we like you…) Ike was talking about in January of 1961…

but…as Ike mentioned when talking about the Koch dad and his John Birch nonsense…they are small and they are stupid…

the use of "coup" in the context of some of the strange happenings in our history these last 55 years is probably not a reasonable term…

I would say we have had "coupettes" where certain groups threatened MAD if they did not get their way or were not left alone…and then those wimps in power decided…better you than me…and turned a blind eye for 30 pieces of silver…coincidence and causality sometimes are not just mathematical anomalies…

there is no need to "take back" our country…it is ours and has always been ours…the reason "the clowns that be" worry so much is that for all the use of bernaze sause…they can hardly fake half the population into showing up to vote on "one of the chosen ones"…and that 50% that are not fully mesmerized are the fear factor for the clowns that be…

remember…try as "they" might…can "they" keep you watching the same tv show for ever…or get you to buy their useless "branded" product without coupons or advertising…

it is not as bad or scary as they would like you to believe…they would not be working this hard if they were comfortable in their socks…they do not sleep well at night…you are the "zombie apocalypse" they are afraid off…

pass the popcorn please…

and may our freedom

"bloom again" at "the end of the century"

(or sooner…)

happy trails…

Les Swift November 3, 2015 at 1:24 pm

Huh? Many of the things you brand as "communist" existed long before Communism was created. To blame it all on "communists" is a serious error which blinds you to much older evils, some of which Communism was at least nominally intended to correct. It is important to recognize that the "Red scares" have been used by forces in the West to bolster their own power. One can both disagree with Communism and disagree with the "Red menace" propaganda at the same time. The people who scare you with the threat of Communism are more of a threat than the Communists themselves.

kevinearick November 3, 2015 at 1:33 pm

Funny thing about words…under the law, they mean whatever the author intends them to mean.

kevinearick November 3, 2015 at 1:50 pm

not a big believer in evil, just stupid, willful ignorance, aggregated.

Gio Bruno November 3, 2015 at 10:37 pm

GWBush is evil and stupid. Dick Cheney is evil, stupid, and ignorant, aggregated.

Doug November 3, 2015 at 1:58 pm

Time to re-read The Moneysburg Address:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/07/the-moneysburg-address.html

Jim November 3, 2015 at 2:32 pm

When talking about the rise of fascism(especially if the US experiences another economic/financial meltdown in the next few years) it is so important to get the historical context as accurate as possible.

Mussolini began his political career as an exponent of a different type of socialism. One of his early followers was Antonio Gramsci and they both deplored the passivity of orthodox Marxists.

Mussolini was attracted to the theoretical framework of Sorel to offset traditional left passivity and the syndicalist focus on the importance of human will. He founded a journal in 1913 called Utopia and called for a revision of socialism in which he began referring to "the people" and not the proletariat, as well as stressing the importance of the nation. He attempted to bring nationalist and syndicalist streams of thought together.

After World War I Mussolini helped found a new political movement in Italy which brought together both nationalist and socialist themes. Its first program was anticapitalist, antimonarchical and called for an 8 hour day, minimum wages, the participation of workers' representatives in industrial management and a large progressive tax on capital.

By the early 1920s the Fasci of Mussolini gained a powerful base of support in rural Italian areas, advocating of program of peasant proprtietorship rather than endorsing the calls for the nationalization of property of the orthodox left.

By this time fascism presented itself as an opponent of "Bolshevism" and a guardian of private property while emphasizing the collective good and criticizing absentee landlords and "exploitative capitalists"

For an excellent discussion of the development of these ideas as well as the concrete steps toward corporatism that took place after 1922 see Sheri Berman "The Primacy of Politics"

A key point to keep in mind was that the fascism that eventually developed in Italy was willing to assert unconditionally the power of the state over the market.

participant-observer-observed November 3, 2015 at 2:37 pm

Relevant postbocer at Counterpunch too:

Not everybody just "wants what we have," as the common view here has it. In fact, from Bolivia, where the average person consumes perhaps 1/20th the total resources of her analogue in the US, comes the old-new idea of buen vivir (the good life): a life in which the health of your human community and its surrounding ecosystem are more important than the amount of money you make or things you own.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/11/03/the-browning-of-the-world-blame-the-greed-of-the-rich/

Jacob November 3, 2015 at 3:16 pm

"In this, Wallace was using the classic definition of the word fascist' -- the definition Mussolini had in mind when he claimed to have invented the word."

An Italian Jew by the name of Enrico Rocca is cited in "Roots of Hate: Anti-Semitism in Europe Before the Holocaust" as the founder of Roman fascism. This name is completely unknown in the U.S. A large number of Italian Jews were founders and members of the Italian fascist party prior to 1938 when anti-Semitism became official. "Among Mussolini's earliest financial backers were three Jews: Giuseppe Toeplitz of the Banca Commerciale Italiana, Elio Jona [?], and the industrialist Gino Olivetti. . . ." The banker Toeplitz was the main financier behind Mussolini's blackshirts, which served as union busters for big business and land owners (also see "Fascism and Big Business" by Daniel Guerin). Undermining organized labor in order to drive down wages was a central aim of fascism in Italy and later under Hitler in Germany. In 1933, roughly ten percent of Italian Jews were members of the fascist party. These facts are important to know because moderns are led to believe that fascism is inherently anti-semitic, but that wasn't the case in the early years of fascism in Italy, where it was founded.

Jim November 3, 2015 at 3:58 pm

It is also important to keep in mind, as Sheri Berman has argued, that social democracy, the fascism of Mussolini and National Socialism in Germany agree on a set of key assumptions.

1. All assume the primary importance of politics and cross-class cooperation. Edward Bermstein at the turn of the 20th century began attacking the main pillars of orthodox Marxism, historical materialism and class struggle while arguing for an alternative vision based on state control of markets–social democracy became the complete severing of socialism from Marxism.

2. For these same Social Democrats the primacy of the political meant using the democratic state to institutionalize policies and protect society from capitalism.

3. For fascists and national socialists using a tyrannical state to control markets was supposedly necessary–but, of course, this postion deteriorated into moves to ensure the hegemony of the modern State.

But is it the case, in 2015, taken the power of our contemporary Surveillance regime, that a democratic state still exists?

Do contemporary democratic socialists first have to first focus on how to restore democracy in the U.S. rather than assuming that the contemporary political structure just needs the right leadership–someone like Bernie Sanders–and the right credit policy– such as MMT?

hemeantwell November 3, 2015 at 4:31 pm

Hartmann draws from Mussolini the idea that the fascist state prioritizes and organizes corporate interests, but misses what Mussolini left out of his harmonistic definition, which was that in both Germany and Italy organized terror was to be used to destroy opposition to corporate interests. The systematic use of terror had major implications for the way the internal politics of the fascist state developed, for the weight given in its organizational structure and tactical options to the elimination of internal enemies. Along with this, both political orders were infused with a leadership ethos that, particularly in Nazi Germany, could attain strikingly absolute forms, demanding absolute obedience and sacrifice. This encouraged a strong tendency to subordinate any institution that might serve as a point of coalescence to interests opposed to the regime. The Fuhrer's picture had to be both on your wall and in your heart.

Hartmann misses this political knife edge of fascism and the leadership fascination that supports it. It is not wildly speculative to say that this is largely because the domestic enemies against which it was directed, primarily leftist trade unions, are not a threat in the US. No such organizations need to be wrecked, no such memberships need to be decimated, imprisoned, and dispersed. It is simply astonishing that Hartmann says nothing specifically about labor organizations as the prime instigating target of both fascists and the corporations who supported them. In this respect his analysis unwittingly incorporates the ideological suppression of the labor movement that mirrored the fascist onslaught.

It is also telling that although Hartmann references Wallace and Roosevelt he fails to note that they themselves have also been accused of corporatism, albeit one that involved the imposition of a Keynesian, welfarist orientation to capitalist interests that were, at least in some quarters, inclined to "liquidate, liquidate" their way into a revolution against themselves. Instead, he quotes Wallace and Roosevelt as they render fascism as a kind of power-hungry, antidemocratic urge on the part of some "royalists," thereby blurring out how the central issue was how to manage labor. He misses that Roosevelt offered the state as an organizer of conflict between capital and labor within a framework in which labor was guaranteed bargaining status. Roosevelt was thereby moved to attack capitalists who wanted to deny labor that status and risk both devastating hardship and insurrection. Hartmann falls for Roosevelt's broad democratic rhetoric against them, more exhortation than analysis, and so he himself ends up talking ethereally of threats to "freedom" and "American institutions."

We're not living under fascism and Hartmann, whose criticism is often very useful, is wrong in trying to use the term as a rallying orientation. I agree that the social order is corporatist, but its maintenance has not required the kind of direct oppression + totalitarian/personalized leadership cult that is a marker of fascism. Concepts the Frankfurt School have used such as "total administration" and the like are perhaps too anodyne, not to mention absolute in their own way, but they fit better with a situation in which explicit violence does not have to be generalized.

Robert Paxton's "The Anatomy of Fascism" is a useful backgrounder on this.

Jim November 3, 2015 at 6:30 pm

Heamtwell stated directly above that " We're not living under fascism…"

Some concepts/ questions which may begin to get at our potential propensity for moving in that direction might include the following:

Paxton, mentioned by Heamtwell above, isolated five stages of fascism.
(1) the initial creation of fascist movements
(2) their rooting as parties in a political system
(3) the acquisition of power
(4) the exercise of power
(5) their radicalization or entropy

Paxton has argued that Fascism can appear where democracy is sufficiently implanted to have aroused disillusion–a society must have known political liberty.

In regards to Paxtons first 2 stages and our situation in the US.

Are political fascists becoming rooted in political parties that represent major interests and feelings and wield major influence on our political scene?

Is our constitutional system in a state of blockage increasingly insoluble by existing authorities?

Is rapid political mobilization taking place in our society which threatens to escape the control of traditional elites to the point where they would be tempted to look for tough helpers in order to stay in charge?

hemeantwell November 3, 2015 at 7:16 pm

Is rapid political mobilization taking place in our society which threatens to escape the control of traditional elites to the point where they would be tempted to look for tough helpers in order to stay in charge?

I think that's the primary question, and it helps to define what we're facing with the current party system.

It is apparent that both corporate parties are increasingly incapable of properly deflecting and channeling the interests of the electorate. Whether you think of 2007-08 as simply another business cycle, one that was exacerbated by toxic assets, a product of increasing income and wealth disparity, etc. it seems that portions of the electorate have been shocked out of their confidence in the system and the steering capacity of economic and political elites.

This might lead the parties, under the pressure of events, to might reformulate themselves as the political cover of a "government of national unity" that, depending on the extremity of the next downturn, impose a "solidarity from above," blocking the development of popular organizations in a variety of ways. I certainly see this as possible. But treating the parties, or the system itself, as fascist at this point in time is not only not helpful, it is fundamentally disorienting.

Ron November 3, 2015 at 8:05 pm

F* is an ugly word as is all its close relatives, but your definitions are very interesting, and so maybe I've learned some things by reading them. However; by what contrivance did you manage to get any of these pages past the f* who own the internet? It seems I must suspend my disbelief to believe, Freunde von Grund

todde November 3, 2015 at 8:20 pm

I disagree.

In Fascism, corporations were subservient to the State. What we have is the State subservient to Corporations. Also Italian corporatism was more than just business, as a.corporation in Italy can have.non business functions.

tommy strange November 3, 2015 at 8:23 pm

Great post and great comments. Though I wonder why no one has brought up the only way to stop fascism. A militant class based libertarian left. Outside of the ballot box. If a liberal party still 'exists' they will then at least respond to the larger non party real left, just to nullify it's demands. Fascism has never been defeated by the ballot, only by a militant anarchist/socialist left. Or at the least, that 'left' fought back. Liberals rarely have fought back, and most often conceded. How do you do form such? Urban face to face organizing. With direct action and occupation and even organization towards workers' control of manufacturing.

Ishmael November 3, 2015 at 8:53 pm

tommy -Fascism has never been defeated by the ballot, only by a militant anarchist/socialist left.

I believe you should go re-look at history. Fascism has always defeated socialist left. Three examples -- Italy, Germany and Argentina. I welcome an example other wise and if it did how did it end.

visitor November 4, 2015 at 10:57 am

The paramount example is of course Spain, where all left-wing movements (communists, trotskists, anarchists, socialists) were ultimately defeated by fascists despite ferocious fighting.

Synoia November 3, 2015 at 9:48 pm

Mussolini-Style Corporatism, aka Fascism, on the Rise Well Established in the US

Set to Dominate World after TPP, TTIP and TISA ratified.

Keynesian November 3, 2015 at 11:03 pm

Much of Robert Paxton's work has focused on models and definition of fascism.

In his 1998 paper "The Five Stages of Fascism", he suggests that fascism cannot be defined solely by its ideology, since fascism is a complex political phenomenon rather than a relatively coherent body of doctrine like communism or socialism. Instead, he focuses on fascism's political context and functional development. The article identifies five paradigmatic stages of a fascist movement, although he notes that only Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy have progressed through all five:

1.Intellectual exploration, where disillusionment with popular democracy manifests itself in discussions of lost national vigor
2.Rooting, where a fascist movement, aided by political deadlock and polarization, becomes a player on the national stage
3.Arrival to power, where conservatives seeking to control rising leftist opposition invite the movement to share power
4.Exercise of power, where the movement and its charismatic leader control the state in balance with state institutions such as the police and traditional elites such as the clergy and business magnates.
5.Radicalization or entropy, where the state either becomes increasingly radical, as did Nazi Germany, or slips into traditional authoritarian rule, as did Fascist Italy.[4]

In his 2004 book The Anatomy of Fascism, Paxton refines his five-stage model and puts forward the following definition for fascism:

[quote]Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.[5][/quote]

Here is a more contemporary analysis of politics in America using Paxton's model.

[quote]Fascist America: Are We There Yet?
Friday, August 07, 2009 -- by Sara

In the second stage, fascist movements take root, turn into real political parties, and seize their seat at the table of power. Interestingly, in every case Paxton cites, the political base came from the rural, less-educated parts of the country; and almost all of them came to power very specifically by offering themselves as informal goon squads organized to intimidate farmworkers on behalf of the large landowners. The KKK disenfranchised black sharecroppers and set itself up as the enforcement wing of Jim Crow. The Italian Squadristi and the German Brownshirts made their bones breaking up farmers' strikes. And these days, GOP-sanctioned anti-immigrant groups make life hell for Hispanic agricultural workers in the US. As violence against random Hispanics (citizens and otherwise) increases, the right-wing goon squads are getting basic training that, if the pattern holds, they may eventually use to intimidate the rest of us.

Paxton wrote that succeeding at the second stage "depends on certain relatively precise conditions: the weakness of a liberal state, whose inadequacies condemn the nation to disorder, decline, or humiliation; and political deadlock because the Right, the heir to power but unable to continue to wield it alone, refuses to accept a growing Left as a legitimate governing partner." He further noted that Hitler and Mussolini both took power under these same circumstances: "deadlock of constitutional government (produced in part by the polarization that the fascists abetted); conservative leaders who felt threatened by the loss of their capacity to keep the population under control at a moment of massive popular mobilization; an advancing Left; and conservative leaders who refused to work with that Left and who felt unable to continue to govern against the Left without further reinforcement."

And more ominously: "The most important variables…are the conservative elites' willingness to work with the fascists (along with a reciprocal flexibility on the part of the fascist leaders) and the depth of the crisis that induces them to cooperate."[/quote]

hermes November 4, 2015 at 12:10 am

I think there is something missing from this analysis, having to do with the definition of corporatism itself. I think our contemporary definition of corporatism is rooted in neoliberalism and is actually a far cry from the definition used by the Fascists in forming the Chamber of the Fascist Corporations. Because to them corporatism wasn't simply business interests (which is how we know it today), but (from Wikipedia):

'[was] the sociopolitical organization of a society by major interest groups, or corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labour, military, patronage, or scientific affiliations, on the basis of common interests. It is theoretically based on the interpretation of a community as an organic body. The term corporatism is based on the Latin root word "corpus" (plural – "corpora") meaning "body".'

In other words, corporatism was not only made up of business interests, but all major (and competing) interests within society.

This is not to downplay the importance and absolute seriousness of confronting the increasing absolutism of ruling business interests. It is also not to downplay the historical truth of who ultimately held power in Fascist Italy. But I think it is also important to place Fascism in it's own historical context, and not try to blur historical lines where doing so may be misleading. When Fascists spoke of corporatism they had something else in mind, and it does not help us to blur the distinction.

hemeantwell November 4, 2015 at 8:35 am

Good point, and it raises this question: how can institutional organicity, with its ideological aura of community, partnership, and good old Volkishness, develop when we're talking about corporations that are multinational in scope as well as financialized and thereby even more rootless and and community indifferent? How can organicity develop in the sort of institutional setup foreshadowed by the TPP?

sd November 4, 2015 at 1:09 am

My impression is that today Corporatism more closely represents the interests of multinational corporations and the people who hold executive leadership positions within those companies. What they have in common is a listing on NYSE.

Oregoncharles November 4, 2015 at 1:09 am

Anyone heard from Naomi Wolf lately? She was the most prominent author calling out fascism during the Bush administration, got wide coverage at least on the left. She re-emerged during the Occupy movement, for a little while.

I ask that because, at the time, she said she'd go silent if it looked like people like her (that is, writers/journalists) were being persecuted. Haven't heard from her, at least on this topic, since Obama started prosecuting whistleblowers. Didn't see a farewell, either.

And that leads to a personal question: how safe are our bloggers feeling? Arguably, this site is an exercise in personal courage. Any ugly straws in the wind?

[Nov 02, 2015] Engineering of consent

Notable quotes:
"... "successful social and political management often depends on proper coordination of propaganda with coercion, violent or non-violent; economic inducement (including bribery); diplomatic negotiation; and other techniques." ..."
"... So beginning around the turn of the century, the scientific engineers of consent unleashed a Weltanschauungskrieg ("worldview war") on an unsuspecting public, Simpson argues, in which they sought "a shift in which modern consumer culture displaced existing social forms." ..."
"... Automobile marketers, for example, do not simply tout their products for their usefulness as transportation; they seek to convince their customers to define their personal goals, self-esteem, and values in terms of owning or using the product…. ..."
"... Ordinary people are to be kept voiceless, Simpson concludes, "voiceless in all fields other than selection of commodities." ..."
"... The interesting thing is that is also part and parcel of the cultural memes presently prevalent in the industrialized societies of wealthy western industrialized nations. These memes have been spreading throughout the world at a very rapid rate and it is MHO that this meme is spreading what amounts to a terminal cultural pathology. In other words it is a dead end with an expiration date. ..."
"... Technological shifts occurring now because of perfect storm of maturing technologies and the end of age of oil, are bringing us the Uberization of many facets of our civilization that we had taken for granted as almost eternal and immutable. "Like we all need a car to be free!" ..."
Oct 30, 2015 | Peak Oil Barrel

US Oil Production by State

Glenn Stehle,10/31/2015 at 9:15 am

So one is left wondering what is causing the downward mobility of most Americans. Is it caused by increasingly less abundant natural resources, making it more costly to exploit those that remain? Or is it caused by one group of humans which is more aggressively exploiting another group?

Most Americans seem to believe it's the latter. The Economist reports that:

The country faces a crisis of mutual resentment… Sharply-delineated voter blocs are alarmingly willing to believe that rival groups are up to no good or taking more than their fair share.
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21591180-americas-political-divisions-have-deeper-social-consequences-why-americans-are-so-angry

So Americans are mad as hell. And as they descend into an orgy of victimization, even rich white straight protestant men can be heard bellowing for victim status.

Where will it all lead, and especially if the politicians are no longer able to bring the bacon home?

I'm reading Christopher Simpson's the Science of Coercion where he notes that Harold Lawswell, one of the seminal "scientific engineers of consent" in the United States, claimed that "successful social and political management often depends on proper coordination of propaganda with coercion, violent or non-violent; economic inducement (including bribery); diplomatic negotiation; and other techniques."

So beginning around the turn of the century, the scientific engineers of consent unleashed a Weltanschauungskrieg ("worldview war") on an unsuspecting public, Simpson argues, in which they sought "a shift in which modern consumer culture displaced existing social forms."

"We have thought in terms of fighting dictatorships-by-force," Donald Slesinger noted of the new strategy and tactics, "through the establishment of dictatorship-by-manipulation."

As Simpson goes on to explain, for the scientific engineers of consent

the simple sale of products and services is not enough. Their commercial success in a mass market depends to an important degree on their ability to substitute their values and worldview for those previously held by their audience, typically through seduction and deflection of rival worldviews. Automobile marketers, for example, do not simply tout their products for their usefulness as transportation; they seek to convince their customers to define their personal goals, self-esteem, and values in terms of owning or using the product….

Ordinary people are to be kept voiceless, Simpson concludes, "voiceless in all fields other than selection of commodities."

So now, after a century of hammering the values and worldview of a mass consumer culture into the peoples' heads, how quickly can the public's worldview be turned around?

And if we remove "economic inducement" and "vocie in the selection of commodities" from the toolbox of the scientific engineers of consent, what's left? Propaganda; coercion (violent or non-violent); diplomatic negotiation; and "other techniques"?

Fred Magyar,10/31/2015 at 11:09 am
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the I'm reading Christopher Simpson's the Science of Coercion where he notes that Harold Lawswell, one of the seminal "scientific engineers of consent" in the United States, claimed that "successful social and political management often depends on proper coordination of propaganda with coercion, violent or non-violent; economic inducement (including bribery); diplomatic negotiation; and other techniques."

That sounds an awful lot like this crap!

organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind."
― Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda circa 1928

There is no doubt that this way of thinking is the basis of the so called capitalist infinite growth paradigm. Which only has a chance of working up until the point that physical limits of our finite planet are reached. Then the shit tends to hit the fan for all concerned.

The interesting thing is that is also part and parcel of the cultural memes presently prevalent in the industrialized societies of wealthy western industrialized nations. These memes have been spreading throughout the world at a very rapid rate and it is MHO that this meme is spreading what amounts to a terminal cultural pathology. In other words it is a dead end with an expiration date.

The good news is, that it isn't written stone that the current culture itself can not be deeply disrupted and profoundly changed.

Technological shifts occurring now because of perfect storm of maturing technologies and the end of age of oil, are bringing us the Uberization of many facets of our civilization that we had taken for granted as almost eternal and immutable. "Like we all need a car to be free!"

Well, a lot of young people are no longer buying into that world view. So the old guard and power brokers of the linear consumer society such as the Oil Majors, Automobile manufactures, and producers of unnecessary useless consumer goods are losing their grip on economic power to the new crop of digital entrepreneurs who are ushering in a totally new economic, political and social paradigm.

Technology is changing the way we interact and form connections within society.

This video a the end of my post might seem a bit off topic but to me it underscores how different this new world has the potential to be. I especially love the example of an expensive commercial failure of a consumer product that suddenly became cheap enough for use as a musical instrument in a computer orchestra and the fact that a thousand people can suddenly come together in a show of support by singing together… And If I could travel back in time, I'd murder Eduard Bernays.

Ge Wang:
The DIY orchestra of the future

https://www.ted.com/talks/ge_wang_the_diy_orchestra_of_the_future

We need to stop thinking linearly!

Glenn Stehle, 11/01/2015 at 9:12 am

Fred Magyar said:

The good news is, that it isn't written stone that the current culture itself can not be deeply disrupted and profoundly changed.

Technological shifts occurring now because of perfect storm of maturing technologies and the end of age of oil, are bringing us the Uberization of many facets of our civilization that we had taken for granted as almost eternal and immutable….

So the old guard and power brokers of the linear consumer society such as the Oil Majors, Automobile manufactures, and producers of unnecessary useless consumer goods are losing their grip on economic power to the new crop of digital entrepreneurs who are ushering in a totally new economic, political and social paradigm.

The idea of cultural transformation has been with us for a long time. It's very much part of the Christian evangelical tradition, and we can see how the idea played out in practice after Spain's and Portugal's conquest of the Americas.

Combining cultural revolution with technological transformation, however, seems to be a purely 20th-century innovation. And the idea has been no less appealing to left Hegelians than it has been to right Hegelians.

On the left, we see the notion of a combined cultural-technological revolution emerge first with the Russian nihilists. "Drawing heavily on the German materialists Jacob Moleschott, Karl Vogt, and Ludwig Buchner," Michael Allen Gillespie explains in Nihilism Before Nietzsche, "the nihilists argued that the natural sciences were preparing the way for the millennium."

"This turn to materialism was also bound up with the growth of atheism," Gillespie adds, which was "given a concrete reality by materialism, especially in combination with the Darwinism that became increasingly popular with the nihilists."

"We are witnesses of the greatest moment of summing-up in history, in the name of a new and unknown culture, which will be created by us, and which will also sweep us away," Sergey Diaghilev gushed in 1905.

This nihilist brand of Futurism, combining cultural revolution with technological revolution, was to prove highly attractive to the later Bolsheviks, even though the Russian avant-garde which occurred under Lennin would be quite different from the Socialist Realism which took place later under Stalin.

Anatoli Lunacharsky, Lennin's Commissar for Education and Enlightenment, wrote in 1917, "If the revolution can give art its soul, then art can endow the revolution with speech."

"There was a need to explain, encourage, teach and enthuse the masses," Victor Awars explains in The Great Russian Utopia. "Agit-Prop was to be the means."

In the catalogue for the Tenth State Exhibition organized by Lunacharsky in 1919, El Lissitzky wrote:

Technology…was diverted by the war from the path of construction and forced on to the paths of death and destruction. Into this chaos came Suprematism… We, on the last stage of the path to Suprematism blasted aside the old work of art… The empty phrase 'art for art's sake' had already been wiped out and in Suprematism we have wiped out the phrase 'painting for painting's sake.'

In May 1924 Vladimir Tatlin in his lecture "Material Culture and Its Role in the Production of Life in the USSR" offered a synoptic statement of what was still the task at hand:

…to shed light on the tasks of production in our country, and also to discover the place of the artist-constructor in production, in relation to improving the quality both of the manufactured product and of the organization of the new way of life in general."

The same sentiment is heard again a year later when Vladimir Maiakovskii declared that: "To build a new culture a clean sweep is needed. The sweep of the October revolution is needed."

What is happening is "the conversion of revolutionary effort into technological effort," is how Asja Lacis summed it up in 1927.

In this poster, one can see how the worker's revolution was melded with the technological revolution, all under the banner of the Russian Revolution.

Nikolai Dolgorukov
Transport Worker! Armed with a Knowledge of Technology.

[Oct 31, 2015] Congresswoman Calls US Effort To Oust Assad Illegal, Accuses CIA Of Backing Terroists

Neocon Wolf Blitzer against Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard
Notable quotes:
"... This is one incredible person, she stands in a league of her own. The only pol Ive heard in a decade that makes a bit of sense. I now despise only 534 members of CONgress. ..."
"... Former CIA director Allen Dulles ordered JFKs assassination because he was a threat to national security, a new book has claimed. ..."
"... Allen Dulles most certainly was involved with the murder of JFK, and ensuing coverup. Dulles was central in the Warren Commission whitewash as well ..."
"... Elected in 2012, she is the first American Samoan[3] and the first Hindu member of the United States Congress,[4] and, along with Tammy Duckworth, one of its first female combat veterans.[5] ..."
"... She has a lot of guts unlike the shitty little vile NeoCons like McCain and Lindsay Graham and the Neo-Zio-Libs like Feinstein and Schumer who are dual shit-i-zens. ..."
"... fighting against Islamic extremists. ..."
"... What the CIA, et alia, ..."
"... Islamic extremist groups, ..."
"... terrorism, ..."
"... uccessfulness ..."
"... insanities. ..."
"... AFGHAN OPIUM PRODUCTION INCREASES 35-FOLD SINCE U.S. INVASION ..."
"... http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/02/10/afghan-opium-produ... ..."
"... "Hoisted on their own petard" is an apt aphorism. ..."
"... Petard action happens at 6 minutes in, when Tulsi explains how if the U.S. repeats the same action as Iraq and Libya, the results will equal. ..."
"... That seed was already planted ..."
"... not a good interview for zio Wolfe ... ..."
Oct 31, 2015 | Zero Hedge
One point we've been particularly keen on driving home since the beginning of Russian airstrikes in Syria is that The Kremlin's move to step in on behalf of Bashar al-Assad along with Vladimir Putin's open "invitation" to Washington with regard to joining forces in the fight against terrorism effectively let the cat out of the proverbial bag.

That is, it simply wasn't possible for the US to explain why the Pentagon refused to partner with the Russians without admitting that i) the government views Assad, Russia, and Iran as a greater threat than ISIS, and ii) Washington and its regional allies don't necessarily want to see Sunni extremism wiped out in Syria and Iraq.

Admitting either one of those points would be devastating from a PR perspective. No amount of Russophobic propaganda and/or looped video clips of the Ayatollah ranting against the US would be enough to convince the public that Moscow and Tehran are a greater threat than the black flag-waving jihadists beheading Westerners and burning Jordanian pilots alive in Hollywood-esque video clips, and so, The White House has been forced to scramble around in a desperate attempt to salvage the narrative.

Well, it hasn't worked.

With each passing week, more and more people are beginning to ask the kinds of questions the Pentagon and CIA most assuredly do not want to answer and now, US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is out calling Washington's effort to oust Assad both "counterproductive" and "illegal." In the following priceless video clip, Gabbard accuses the CIA of arming the very same terrorists who The White House insists are "our sworn enemy" and all but tells the American public that the government is lying to them and may end up inadvertently starting "World War III."

Enjoy:

https://youtu.be/IHkher6ceaA

For more on how Russia and Iran's efforts in Syria have cornered the US from a foreign policy perspective, see "ISIS In 'Retreat' As Russia Destroys 32 Targets While Putin Trolls Obama As 'Weak With No Strategy'"

aint no fortunate son's

This is one incredible person, she stands in a league of her own. The only pol I've heard in a decade that makes a bit of sense. I now despise only 534 members of CONgress.

Paveway IV

"...Gabbard accuses the CIA of arming the very same terrorists who The White House insists are "our sworn enemy" and all but tells the American public that the government is lying to them and may end up inadvertently starting "World War III."..."

Oh, then you're saying that that's future PRESIDENT Gabbard...

Sergeiab

Damn, you might be right. Look: see the public opinion is totally shifting (Easy when you have access to all the comments of all medias, including the moderated ones). Find someone among the democrats who voice it. Give her/him "random" media exposure (she was on Bill Maher few days ago) "Sudden rise of an outsider". She's a soldier/veteran/surfer 32yo. "Incredible American story". And at some point, she says she's transgender. Instant POTUS. That fits. That fits the "change/let's do something wild for once" that everybody's craving for (Trump). And it can't be random that a dissident voice is given media exposure. And she's beyond democrat/gop... That's a lot.

Is there a closing date for the primaries?

If not, she/he might well be the 45th president.

Sergeiab

Actually she's gonna be 35 in 2016...

And she did it again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSnXtapv9oQ

G.O.O.D

Accuses CIA Of Backing Terroists.

She left out Mossad, mI6, Saudis, Turkey and how many other zionist controlled CUNTries.

Dick Buttkiss

"Accuses CIA Of Backing Terroists."

Backing terrorist? How about being terrorists?

dot_bust

I agree. Good point.

I'd like to add that President John F. Kennedy issued an NSAM forbidding the CIA from conducting an further paramilitary operations and turned those operations over to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

President Truman only intended the CIA to analyze data from the other U.S. intelligence agencies, not to engage in any field operations. Here's his original op-ed piece about that very subject: http://www.maebrussell.com/Prouty/Harry%20Truman's%20CIA%20article.html

In the op-ed, Truman said that the CIA had begun making policy instead of simply analyzing data. He also emphasized his discomfort with the idea of the Agency participating in cloak-and-dagger operations.

SWRichmond

Thanks for the link. Truman says:

I well knew the first temporary director of the CIA, Adm. Souers, and the later permanent directors of the CIA, Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg and Allen Dulles. These were men of the highest character, patriotism and integrity-and I assume this is true of all those who continue in charge.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3271482/Did-CIA-Director-Allen-D...

Former CIA director Allen Dulles ordered JFK's assassination because he was a 'threat to national security', a new book has claimed.

Bay of Pigs

Allen Dulles most certainly was involved with the murder of JFK, and ensuing coverup. Dulles was central in the Warren Commission whitewash as well. People forget he was dumped after the Bay of Pigs fiasco with JFK saying at the time that he would "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds".

Author David Talbot interviewed by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anYqrPRvhgo

km4

Lookout because Tulsi Gabbard has some impressive credentials

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

Elected in 2012, she is the first American Samoan[3] and the first Hindu member of the United States Congress,[4] and, along with Tammy Duckworth, one of its first female combat veterans.[5]

Military service (2004–present)

https://www.votetulsi.com/tulsi-gabbard

In 2004, when Tulsi's fellow soldiers from the 29th Brigade were called to war in Iraq, Tulsi volunteered to join them. She didn't need to put her life on the line. She could have stayed in the State House of Representatives, but in her heart, she felt it was more important to stand in solidarity with her fellow soldiers than to climb the political ladder.

Her two deployments to the war-torn and dangerous Middle East revealed both Tulsi's natural inclination to self-less service and her ability to perform well in situations demanding confidence, courage, and the ability to perform well as a member of a team. The same maturity and character that served Tulsi well in the Middle East makes her exceptionally effective in the political world.

Freddie

These banksters wars like all wars are total shit but I like her.

She is half Samoan and was a Catholic but became a Hindu.

She has a lot of guts unlike the shitty little vile NeoCons like McCain and Lindsay Graham and the Neo-Zio-Libs like Feinstein and Schumer who are dual shit-i-zens.

SWRichmond

Graham is the quintessential chickenhawk.

Radical Marijuana

While I agreed with your overview, WTFRLY, at the 1:25 mark I think she is seriously mistaken about the priority being fighting against Islamic extremists. The real enemy of the American People has been the international bankers, who have almost totally captured control over the government of the USA, through POLITICAL FUNDING ENFORCING FRAUDS.

Her basic opinion regarding 9/11 deliberately ignores that 9/11 was an inside job, false flag attack, which was aided and abetted by the Deep State Shadow Government. Everything that the USA has been doing has been actually carrying out the international bankers' agenda. The countries targeted for regime change were obstacles to the consolidation of the globalized hegemony of the international bankers, who are the best organized gangsters, the banksters, that have already captured control over all NATO governments, as is painfully obvious to anyone who thinks critically about how and why those governments ENFORCE FRAUDS by privately controlled banks.

What the CIA, et alia, having been doing, since the overthrow of the government of Iran back in 1953, has been creating "Islamic extremist groups," as the responses of the various Islamic countries having been controlled by the European invasions, and later American invasions, which were always directed at capturing control over the development of the natural resources, through maintaining the control over the monetary systems through which that was done.

The whole of human history has been the exponential growth of social pyramid systems based upon being able to back up lies with violence, becoming more sophisticated and integrated systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, which have become globalized systems of electronic money frauds, backed by the threat of force from atomic bombs. There is indeed a serious risk of NATO countries, already almost totally controlled by the international bankers, getting into conflicts with the national interests of various countries which no longer are so easy for the banksters to continue to control.

The banksters have been pushing through their agenda of wars based on deceits, in order to back up their debt slavery systems, and those were primarily the reasons for the series of regime changes, which appear to have stalled with respect to Syria. That Russia has decided that it is geopolitically able, along with the propaganda cover of fighting "terrorism," to step in with significant military support of the Syrian regime is indeed in severe conflict with the agenda of the international banksters, who are collectively a group of trillionaire mass murderers.

Human history has become the excessive successfulness of the application of the methods of organized crime to control governments, through the vicious spirals of POLITICAL FUNDING ENFORCING FRAUDS, to develop to the point of runaway criminal insanities. While the Congresswoman above provided more penetrating analysis than one is used to be presented on the mainstream mass media, and she did that fairly well, she still is presenting the political problems only on very superficial levels ...

JLee2027

When a Hindu women who rides a surfboard starts making more sense than the President, and the entire Democratic Party I become speechless.

scrappy

She is an example of integrity standing up for what is right. I see many people of heart doing the same as this unfolds. We are supposed to support the "Underdog" Remember?

UNDERDOG Cartoon Intro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHej4ZqZDwo&html5=1

WTFRLY

White House, Media Silent One Year After Murder of US Reporter Who Exposed Western Links to ISIS October 20, 2015

JustObserving

Heroin production up only 3500% since US invaded:

AFGHAN OPIUM PRODUCTION INCREASES 35-FOLD SINCE U.S. INVASION

http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/02/10/afghan-opium-produ...

MEFOBILLS

"Hoisted on their own petard" is an apt aphorism.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hoist_by_one%27s_own_petard

To be hurt or destroyed by one's own plot or device intended for another; to be "blown up by one's own bomb"

The beautiful Tulsi Gabbard excerpt from Wikipedia:

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

Her father is of Samoan/European heritage and is a practicing Catholic who is a lector at his church, but also enjoys practicing mantra meditation, including kirtan.[7] Her mother is of Euro-American descent and a practicing Hindu.[7] Tulsi fully embracedHinduism as a teenage

At 5 minutes in to video, Wolf B. mentions that Tulsi is a combat veteran. She is also on Senate Arms services committee.

The not so beautiful Wolf Blitzer:

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

Blitzer was born in Augsburg, Germany] the son of Cesia Blitzer (née Zylberfuden), a homemaker, and David Blitzer, a home builder. His parents were Jewish refugees from O?wi?cim, Poland, and Holocaust survivors… While at Johns Hopkins, Blitzer studied abroad at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he learned Hebrew.

Petard action happens at 6 minutes in, when Tulsi explains how if the U.S. repeats the same action as Iraq and Libya, the results will equal.

"Things that are being said right now about Assad, were said about Ghadaffi.., they were said about Saddam Hussein, by those who were advocating for the U.S. to intervene, to go overthrow those regimes and dictators. The fact is, if that happens here in Syria,….far worse situation, persecution of religious minorities and Christians."

Who advocated to start ME wars? Wolf then puts words in her mouth, suggesting that Hezbollah and Russians are doing the U.S. a favor.

To give Wolf full credit, he doesn't explode when Tulsi mentions persecution of the Christians, as said Christians MUST be his enemy and color Wolf's wordview, given his parents refugee history. Oh the web we weave, when we intend to deceive.

rejected

Well, she managed to get in the meme "We were attacked by Al Qaeda on 9/11". They push that meme every chance they get.

The spooks at the CIA know how to push propaganda. She will get all kinds of credibility appearing to oppose the spooks and very few will notice the 9/11 comment but the seed will be fertilized and grow stronger.

ebear

"....very few will notice the 9/11 comment but the seed will be fertilized and grow stronger."

I beg to differ. That seed was already planted. Why are we supporting the people who attacked us? - keeps it nice and simple. Turns the entire narrative against them.

One dragon at a time.

Omega_Man

not a good interview for zio Wolfe ...

I didn't like this girl before, but starting to like her.

She needs a security team... to protect her from the US Gov... no joke

[Oct 21, 2015] Andrew Bacevich A Decade of War

May 15, 2012 | YouTube

Qeis Kamran 1 year ago

I just love Prof. Bacevic. Nobody has more credit then him on the subject. Not only for his unmatched scholarship and laser sharp words, but moreover for the unimaginable personal loss. He is my hero!!!!

Boogie Knight 1 year ago

How many sons did the NeoCon-Gang sacrifice in their instigated Wars in foreign lands....? Not one. Bacevich lost his son who was fighting in Iraq in 2007 - for what?!

Yet the NeoCon warcriminals Billy Cristol, Wolfowitz and/or Elliott Abrams are all still highly respected people that the US media/political elite loves to consult - in 2014!

[Oct 21, 2015] The End of American Exceptionalism with Andrew J. Bacevich - November 7, 2013

An excellent explanation of the key postulates of Neoconservatism.
Notable quotes:
"... We need to reexamine what it means to be free. A moral reorientation of the country as Carter suggested in 1979. Bacevich says it isnt ever going to happen. ..."
Nov 7, 2003 | YouTube
Phil Anderson
Excellent as always. Lecture by Bacevich starts around 13:42.
Wendell Fitzgerald
We need to reexamine what it means to be free. A moral reorientation of the country as Carter suggested in 1979. Bacevich says it isn't ever going to happen.

[Oct 18, 2015] A Strong Press is the Best Defense Against Crony Capitalism

Oct 18, 2015 | Economist's View

Second Best, Sunday, October 18, 2015 at 12:28 PM

a strong press is the best offense in support of crony capitalism since there is no good guy with a press to defend against a bad guy with a press

Ignacio, Sunday, October 18, 2015 at 12:46 PM

"When the media outlets in any country fail to challenge power, not only are they not part of the solution, they become part of the problem."

That is the conclusion, unfortunately correct. Most media are part of the problem. Mary R marked another problem with media: Who are their clients? The advertisers or the readers/viewers?

Dan Kervick, Sunday, October 18, 2015 at 01:58 PM

"It is a corrupt form, in which incumbents and special-interest groups shape the rules of the game to their advantage, at the expense of everybody else: it is crony capitalism."

Well, maybe. But the alternative, idealized non-corrupt form has probably never existed in the actual world - ever.

Even if it did exist for a little while, it wouldn't last. You know what happens when people compete? Some people *win the competition*. And the winners acquire the power to make the rules, since there is no way of separating wealth from power. The tendency toward oligopoly, monopoly and the concentration of power is inherent in the normal functioning of capitalism. The ideal of maintaining some regulated perfect competition economy in which the playing field is perfectly level and none of the competitors has an institutional power advantage, is like trying to create a Monopoly game perpetually frozen in place at the first roll of the dice.

Even if we had a perfect, perpetual balanced competition economy, it wouldn't be great, because life is about more than the struggle for victory and domination. The laissez faire nostalgists are still working to fit a 18th and 19th century mentality and reality into a 21st century world. A society based on free-wheeling entrepreneurial innovation, competition and exploitation might have made sense in a world of a few hundred million people moving out into the open spaces to exploit a planet filled with resources that earlier technology had been unable to acquire or use. But in our tight, crowded and environmentally stressed world, that no longer makes sense. We're going to have to get more organized and less competitive.

Most intelligent people in the 20th century had gotten this. Then we in the US had a bit of a neoliberal holiday from history when we offshored industry elsewhere (along with its organized labor), and had a brief turbo period of high octane capitalism driven by financial games and services. But that era ended in 2008, and we're back to dealing with the inexorable crunch of history on a finite globe.

likbez said in reply to Dan Kervick, Sunday, October 18, 2015 at 02:56 PM

Great observation: "the alternative, idealized non-corrupt form has probably never existed in the actual world - ever."

In a way free press is an ideal which can temporary exists when there are two countervailing forces of equal political power. So in a way free press can exist temporary in a very unstable society. So some level of suppression of "free press" is a norm. That does not mean that it this suppression should not be challenged. But the political stability of society probably requires a certain level of brainwashing and thus "unfree press".

But existence of nation states with conflicting interests presuppose existence of some semblance, surrogate of "free press" coverage across the borders. like in court the testimony of each side should be given equal attention, for most people it can provide some minimal level of "alternative coverage" of major events.

I noticed that despite GB being a vassal of the USA, British press provides much better, more realistic picture of major problems in the USA society and even better, more realistic coverage of both foreign and some, less connected with GB geopolitical interests, internal events such as presidential elections. If you add to your menu the press from "less friendly" states such as Iran, China and Russia you probably can be dig out some real information about events despite for of disinformation of MSM. Coverage of MH17 tragedy is the most recent example were relying of the USA MSM coverage would be totally unwise. Even The Guardian is a better deal.

In the USSR Voice of America and BBC were great sources of information despite the fact people understand that they are government propaganda outlets. But since agenda of the USA and British government were different they still were valuable source of information about internal events and developments in the USSR.

And I would dare to say the level of propaganda in coverage of foreign events today that we see in the USA MSM would let Pravda propagandists blush.

Julio said in reply to likbez...

Good observations. My own experience is that coverage in other countries often has a different perspective, and I feel more informed after viewing it. Even CNN in Spanish often provides somewhat different viewpoints!

My favorite example is the runup to the Iraq war. To my surprise, the most balanced and informed articles I could find were in English versions of Iranian newspapers.

pgl said...

The ideal:

"Inquisitive, daring and influential media outlets willing to take a strong stand against economic power are essential in a competitive capitalist society. They are our defense against crony capitalism."

Our sad current situation:

"When the media outlets in any country fail to challenge power, not only are they not part of the solution, they become part of the problem."

Yes - many of the current media outlets are bought and paid for by the elites. That was his point!

cm said in reply to pgl, Sunday, October 18, 2015 at 05:27 PM

I suspect reliance on advertising revenue is the larger factor (and it is also a large factor in consolidation). Advertisers (and the corporate/business clients they represent) want to reach audiences likely to be convinced to buy the advertised products and services. This will work to suppress any "content" that is incompatible with ad placement or the ad's target audience, or not palatable to the ad client.

Even "progressive" outlets are subject to this and have to at least tone down the controversy, i.e. self-censorship.

Larry, Sunday, October 18, 2015 at 03:27 PM

A strong, independent press would be a fine thing. Looking at the huge crowd of journalists who are so far in the tank for Clinton, it isn't obvious to me that corporatism is that big an issue. Did you see that Cheryl Mills was working at State while negotiating a deal for NYU with Abu Dhabi?

Where is the press scrutiny/outrage over that? Journalism yawns!

anne said in reply to Larry... Sunday, October 18, 2015 at 04:34 PM

Do set down references:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/while-at-state-clinton-chief-of-staff-held-job-negotiating-with-abu-dhabi/2015/10/12/e847b3be-6863-11e5-8325-a42b5a459b1e_story.html

October 12, 2015

While at State, Clinton chief of staff held job negotiating with Abu Dhabi
By Rosalind S. Helderman

likbez

The first victim of war is truth. Similarly the first victim of neoliberalism (aka casino capitalism aka crony capitalism) is press.

This nice dream of "free press" is incompatible with reality of neoliberal society which, is its core is a flavor of corporatism. Under corporatism free press exists only for people who own it.


btg said... October 18, 2015 at 08:04 PM

The problem is the the media is no longer a variety of owners with integrity but an oligopoly of Wall Street conglomerates or mega-media corporations run by ideologues pushing the agenda (Murdock, talk radio, etc.) - so we get coverage that is either gutless because it tries to give equal time to patently absurd right wing ideas, is rabidly pro-business or actively pushing for the right.

Ben Groves said...

All capitalism is crony. From the beginning through the 400 years of dialectics since 1630's Amsterdam when the Iberian Sephardic Immigrants brought it there.


DeDude said... October 19, 2015 at 07:08 AM

A strong press, in contrast to a corporate press, can indeed be a critical part of the defense of our democracy. But it can also be an enemy of democracy and a tool for the plutocrats - try to turn on Fox if you need an example.

reason said...

There is a crucial word missing - independent.

[Oct 14, 2015] I do not take my mandate from the European people

Notable quotes:
"... when I asked the trade commissioner how she could continue her persistent promotion of the deal in the face of such massive public opposition, her response came back icy cold: "I do not take my mandate from the European people." ..."
Oct 13, 2013 | naked capitalism
"I didn't think TTIP could get any scarier, but then I spoke to the EU official in charge of it" [Independent].

When put to her, Malmström acknowledged that a trade deal has never inspired such passionate and widespread opposition. Yet when I asked the trade commissioner how she could continue her persistent promotion of the deal in the face of such massive public opposition, her response came back icy cold: "I do not take my mandate from the European people."

Those honest, blunt Brussels bureaucrats! So different from our own political class!

[Oct 07, 2015] US Ruling Circles Split On Use of Jihadists in Syria

"... Well, the United States and its allies are speaking gobbledygook, and Russia is speaking straight up plain international law truth. Theyve come to the aid of the recognized government of Syria, which is being attacked by proxies of other countries, the U.S., the Saudis, other Gulf states, and Turkey, in violation of international law. ..."
"... They are defending principles of international law. And the U.S. and its allies are violating international law, and the U.S. and its allies cannot draw some kind of red line around ISIS, the wayward jihadists that dont want to take orders, and expect the Russians to only discipline their little bad boys and leave the other jihadists alone. That only makes sense to idiots like the New York Times and CNN and the rest. ..."
"... in a way the Russian military intervention against the jihadists in Syria has given the Obama administration another chance to back off of that decades-long policy of using Islamic jihadists as footsoldiers for imperialism in the Muslim world. ..."
"... there was a growing split in the U.S. government in ruling circles, in the intelligence agencies, even three years ago. And there was a fear that the jihadists would have, were developing their own kind of agenda. And theres nothing that U.S. imperialists dislike more than people who have their own agenda. And we know now that in August of 2012, we know this because of a memo that came to light this year, that analysts for the Defense and Intelligence Agency were warning that the jihadists, the people who would become the Islamic State, were likely to declare their own caliphate. And that would mean that they would have their own policies and they would fight their own war, not the war that the United States wanted them to fight. ..."
"... And although that warning didnt cause the U.S. to reverse its long policy of supporting jihadists, it did I think make Obama much more cautious, and I think thats why he backed off from bombing Syria that same year. The same Defense Intelligence Agency analysts are now screaming that the top Pentagon brass are lying about the kinds of reports that theyve been given, reports about the growing strength of ISIS. And that argument in itself is signs of a real split in the intelligence agencies, a split in the U.S. military, a split in the Obama administration itself. A split that was evident when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. ..."
Oct 07, 2015 | therealnews.com
BALL: So what is going on here? It almost sounds like a neo-Cold War indirect conflict of superpowers vying for colonial control over their property, or a fight over whose anti-Assad allies should be supported. What is going on?

FORD: Well, the United States and its allies are speaking gobbledygook, and Russia is speaking straight up plain international law truth. They've come to the aid of the recognized government of Syria, which is being attacked by proxies of other countries, the U.S., the Saudis, other Gulf states, and Turkey, in violation of international law. And the Russians say that they are not just defending the government that they have had relations with for decades. They are defending principles of international law. And the U.S. and its allies are violating international law, and the U.S. and its allies cannot draw some kind of red line around ISIS, the wayward jihadists that don't want to take orders, and expect the Russians to only discipline their little bad boys and leave the other jihadists alone. That only makes sense to idiots like the New York Times and CNN and the rest.

BALL: But again, for those of us who have varying understandings of what's happening here, it would seem like the U.S. would not have a problem with Assad's territory being bombed, given that the U.S. and Obama's administration in particular is no fan of Bashar al-Assad and his leadership there in Syria. Why then are they having a problem with what Russia's doing, and to what extent are the problems that are claimed to be addressed there actually caused in their origin by the United States and its policies?

FORD: Well, the United States has, and Obama knows the United States has, problems that go beyond the Russian intervention. They have problems with their own policy, which has brought them to this state of affairs. And in a way the Russian military intervention against the jihadists in Syria has given the Obama administration another chance to back off of that decades-long policy of using Islamic jihadists as footsoldiers for imperialism in the Muslim world.

And the reason that I say another chance is because it was the Russians back in 2012 who gave President Obama a similar opportunity to re-think that jihadist 35-year-old policy when they proposed that the international community supervise the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons. That was back in 2012. And that allowed President Obama to back off from his threat to attack Syria, to bomb the Syrian government. I think that President Obama backed off on that threat not because of domestic or international opposition. The United States acts unilaterally all the time, I think he could have gotten away with it. I think that Obama was genuinely afraid of what would happen if the Syrian government collapsed. And make no mistake about it, if the United States had attacked the Syrian government directly the dynamic of the situation would have compelled the United States to keep on attacking until that government was totally destroyed, just like they did to Col. Gaddafi's government in Libya only one year before.

But it is very clear, now quite clear in hindsight but I think it was visible back then, that there was a growing split in the U.S. government in ruling circles, in the intelligence agencies, even three years ago. And there was a fear that the jihadists would have, were developing their own kind of agenda. And there's nothing that U.S. imperialists dislike more than people who have their own agenda. And we know now that in August of 2012, we know this because of a memo that came to light this year, that analysts for the Defense and Intelligence Agency were warning that the jihadists, the people who would become the Islamic State, were likely to declare their own caliphate. And that would mean that they would have their own policies and they would fight their own war, not the war that the United States wanted them to fight.

And although that warning didn't cause the U.S. to reverse its long policy of supporting jihadists, it did I think make Obama much more cautious, and I think that's why he backed off from bombing Syria that same year. The same Defense Intelligence Agency analysts are now screaming that the top Pentagon brass are lying about the kinds of reports that they've been given, reports about the growing strength of ISIS. And that argument in itself is signs of a real split in the intelligence agencies, a split in the U.S. military, a split in the Obama administration itself. A split that was evident when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state.

So the Russian intervention is now forcing Obama's hand. He's going to have to decide if he's going to continue this policy with the jihadists, or if he's going to go for some kind of containment or stabilization of the battle lines in Syria. We know it's quite obvious that Turkey and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states wanted an all-out offensive to take out the Assad government once and for all, but that has been checked definitively by the Russians. And that gives Obama another chance to cooperate with the people in the region, with Syria and with Iran, and with the government of Iraq, as well as with the Russians. He has that chance again, if he takes it.

[Oct 02, 2015] This is a War – pure and simple. The Global Informational War.

Lyttenburgh, October 2, 2015 at 12:19 pm

The fact that Mark Adomanis have completely devolved into shit (there is no other words to describe the last couple of his articles for his newest haunt – the "Russia! Magazine") had been the last straw for me. I realized once and for all that all those journos, op-ed authors, analytics and – most of all – legions of opinionated and well informed commenters (read – edgy teens and/or ignorant self-absorbed ignorant morons). I'm talking about the Western segment of the Net – knew that EuroUkrs and Russian Liberasts active in the Net are a lost cause and evolutionary dead-end long time ago. It's the citizens of the supposedly "Free World" sprouting lies, repeating them and then eagerly believing them – 'cause that's what they want to hear to confirm their long established biases – who were re-evaluated by me.

There is hardly any dialog possible or even exchange of opinions – not to mention this absolutely teeny-weeny and unimportant thing like actually listening to your opponents arguments and facts.

This is a War – pure and simple. The Global Informational War.

Reading some comments and articles made me realize (deep-deep inside) that Stalin's methods while dealing with the Enemies were way too humane and ineffective. Oh, no-no! Nope! Only Ivan Grozny – only hardcore! I still find morbidly amusing how Ivan IV executed either some monks or the dyak of the Posolskiy prikaz's who've screwed up big time by ordering them to be tied up to a powder keg and then blown up. And let's not forget that czar Ivan was most prolific writer of letters and perfected the now much valued art of trolling, dissing and flaming his opponents nearly 450 years ago!

I won't wax for a long time about any of such articles – I'll just comment on one of them which represent a true quintessence of the "Modern Western Journalism" ™.

Russian Airstrikes in Syria Could Last Four Months, Officials Say

Yes – this is The Vice News, a №1 choice for any opinionated and conscientious edgy teens, hipsters, San-Franciscan barefooters and Hikkies around the world when they want to learn about the world at large. For me – I think that the name is aptly chosen for this disgusting excuse for the "Modern Journalism". They do embody one of the Mortal Sins nearly perfectly, namely – the Sloth.

Article immediately plunges us into the convoluted and weed-brownies destroyed mind of the average VICE NEWS 'author':

"Russia's airstrikes in Syria could continue for three to four months, according to the head of the lower house of the Russian parliament's foreign affairs committee, as controversy continues over what Moscow's attacks are actually targeting."

Wow! What you say – "controversial", huh? Well, I'm a silly foreigner Not From the West, and English is not my first language. So I'm gonna to recheck what this "controversial" word means. Let's try Merriam-Webster, shall we?

"relating to or causing much discussion, disagreement, or argument: likely to produce controversy"

Oh, that! Well – there is no "controversy" about airstrikes in Russia. Soviet Federaciy voted unanimously for that. Russians (with the exception of delegated to the very Oblivion of a small bunch of the radical "patriots", chronic "putinslivshiks" and liberasts) are totally in favor of that. Who's disagreeing the most are the Western governments and the Free and Independent Western Media ™. But in that case the word "controversial" can (and should) be applied just to about everything. Honest and free-spirited journos are refraining from doing that when it doesn't suit theig agenda.

"Officials announced on Friday that airstrikes had been carried out for a third day in row and " that these hit 12 Islamic State (IS) targets."

I will just leave this sentence hanging here for a while – but I will return to it soon!

"Yet the US, which is leading its own air campaign against IS, says Moscow has been using its campaign as a pretext to hit other groups opposed to Russia's ally, President Bashar al-Assad.

Some of the groups that have been hit are supported by countries which oppose both Assad and IS, including at least one group that received training from the CIA"

Well, thank you VICE NEWS for this frankness and honesty! Oh, those vily Ruskies! Bombing poor and innocent "rebels", who are as pure as baby's tear!

"Russia's air campaign in a country already being bombed by a US-led coalition of Western and Arab countries means that the Cold War superpower foes Moscow and Washington are now flying combat missions over the same country for the first time since World War II.

Well, this is not quite true. In fact last time both Washington and Moscow flew combat missions over the same country was in… Vietnam, I think. Everybody remembers brave North Vietnamese ace Li Si Tzeen, right? ;)

"Russian Su-34, Su-24M, and Su-25 warplanes flew 18 sorties, hitting a command post and a communications center in the province of Aleppo as well as a militant field camp in Idlib, a Defense Ministry statement said. A command post in the province of Hama was also completely destroyed, it added."

Once again – I will just leave it here. And now this:

"The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict with a network of sources on the ground, said IS had no presence in the western and northern areas that were struck."

AH, YIISSSSS! Nary an article about Syria by the VICE now goes without referencing this august body of the first hand and reliable reporting of the Sacred Truth! Surely, we must trust it completely, folks! They are UK-based, after all!

But I will still ask this nagging ugly question – what the hell is this "Syrian Observatory for the Human Rights" which VICEers are so often quote (without providing links to the actual statements, naturally)?

Oh, you gonna love this! According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung article of 2012 this "SOHR" was the primarily source about the situation "on the ground" for all major Western propaganda outlets. The fact is… there is no such thing as "Syrian Observatory for the Human Rights". There is only one guy actually- some Osama Suleyman, living in Coventry, who have adopted the nom de plume Rami-Abdul-Rahman (http://www.timesofisrael.com/topic/rami-abdul-rahman/). According to his own words, Suleyman had been jailed 3 times in Syria for the "opposition activism" and then emigrated to Britain in 2000. In Coventry he and his wife own a clothing shop and now both of them are British naturalized citizens.

In short – the sort of people who absolutely 100500% can keep their arms on the pulse of the current events taking place in Syria and report with absolute accuracy only the Truth. Yay!

Well, as for the other claims, about "poor kids bombed by Ruskies", I'll just leave this picture here:

Also, as you have probably noticed by now, when the VICEers had to quote despicable Russian sources they all too often use such terms as "they claimed", "they stated" and "according to them". So we know from the starters – we should not trust them! They Russians! But is the source is some brave (and, doubtlessly, pro Western/Democracy/Moderate Islamist) they are to be trusted – they "say" and "tell". Charming fellows. Why should they lie?

And no – As Everybody Knows ™, the West doesn't employ propaganda. True story!

[Sep 28, 2015] Kunstler Rages Perhaps America Has Gotten What It Deserves

Sep 28, 2015 | Zero Hedge

Did Charlie Rose look like a fucking idiot last night on 60-Minutes, or what, asking Vladimir Putin how he could know for sure that the US was behind the 2014 Ukraine coup against President Viktor Yanukovych? Maybe the idiots are the 60-Minutes producers and fluffers who are supposed to prep Charlie's questions. Putin seemed startled and amused by this one on Ukraine: how could he know for sure?

Well, gosh, because Ukraine was virtually a province of Russia in one form or another for hundreds of years, and Russia has a potent intelligence service (formerly called the KGB) that had assets and connections threaded through Ukrainian society like the rhizomorphs of the fungus Armillaria solidipes through a conifer forest. Gosh, Charlie, it's like asking Obama whether the NSA might know what's going on in Texas.

And so there is Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, having to spell it out for the American clodhopper super-journalist. "We have thousands of contacts with them. We know who and where, and when they met with someone, and who worked with those who ousted Yanukovych, how they were supported, how much they were paid, how they were trained, where, in which country, and who those instructors were. We know everything."

The only thing Vlad left out of course was the now-world-famous panicked yelp by Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland crying, "Fuck the EU," when events in Kiev started getting out of hand for US stage-managers. But he probably heard about that, too.

Charlie then voice-overed the following statement: "For the record, the US has denied any involvement in the removal of the Ukrainian leader." Right. And your call is important us. And your check is in the mail. And they hate us for our freedom.

This bit on Ukraine was only a little more appalling than Charlie's earlier segment on Syria. Was Putin trying to rescue the Assad government? Charlie asked, in the context of President Obama's statement years ago that "Assad has to go."

Putin answered as if he were explaining something that should have been self-evident to a not-very-bright high school freshman: "To remove the legitimate government would create a situation which you can witness in other countries of the region, for instance Libya, where all the state institutions have disintegrated. We see a similar situation in Iraq. There's no other solution to the Syrian crisis than strengthening the government structure."

I guess Charlie and the 60-Minutes production crew hadn't noticed what had gone on around the Middle East the past fifteen years with America's program of toppling dictators into the maw of anarchy. Not such great outcomes.

Charlie persisted though, following his script: Was Putin trying to rescue Assad? Vlad had to lay it out for him as if he were introducing Charlie to the game of Animal Lotto: "What do you think about those who support the terrorist organizations only to oust Assad without thinking about what happens to the country after all the state institutions have been demolished…? Look at those who are in control of 60 percent of the territory of Syria."

Meaning ISIS. Al Nusra (formerly al Qaeda in Syria), i.e., groups internationally recognized as terrorist organizations.

Charlie Rose, 60-Minutes - and perhaps by extension US government agencies with an interest in propagandizing - seem to want to put over the story that Russia has involved itself in Syria only to aggrandize its role on in world affairs.

Forgive me for being so blunt, but what sort of stupid fucking idea is this? And are there any non-lobotomized adults left in the USA who can't see straight through it? The truth is that American policy in Syria (plus Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, Somalia, Afghanistan) is an impressive record of failure in terms of the one basic aim that most rational people might agree upon: stabilizing the region in a way that does not leave Islamic jihadi maniacs in charge.

Okay, so now the Russians will do what they can to try to stabilize Syria. They've had their failures, too (famously, Afghanistan). But Russian territory adjoins the Islamic lands and they clearly have stake in containing the virus of Islamic extremism near their borders. Is that not obvious?

Charlie made one other extremely dumb statement - he seems to prefer making assertions to asking straight-up questions - to the effect that Russia was misbehaving by deploying troops on its border with Ukraine.

Putin again seemed astonished by this credulous idiocy. The US had troops and nuclear weapons all over Europe, he answered. Did Charlie think that meant the US was attempting to occupy the nations of Europe now? Was it "a crime" for Russia to defend its own border with a neighboring state (formerly a province) that, he implied, the US had deliberately destabilized?

The Putin segment was followed by an sickening session with Donald Trump, a man who now - after a month or so of public exposure - proves incapable of uttering a coherent idea. I wonder what Vladimir Putin makes of this incomparable buffoon. Perhaps that America has gotten what it deserves.

[Sep 27, 2015] Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for Russian Foreign Ministry, grades Nuland's paper

September 16, 2015 | Fort Russ/Komsomolskaya Pravda

It is impossible to deal with cockroaches in one room while at the same time laying out little plates of bread crumbs on the other side of the wall.

Translated from Russian by Tom Winter

Translator's note: this press account is based on a post on Maria Zakharova's facebook page, and I have changed this account slightly in alignment with Zakharova's original text. It was not clear in KP what was Zakharova and what was KP. I think it is in this translation...

Head of the Information Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry wrote a "critical review" on the "Yalta speech" of the assistant US Secretary of State.

In Kiev, there was a conference "Yalta European Strategy". Already amazing. Yalta is in the Russian Crimea, and the "Yalta" conference was held in the Ukrainian capital. Well and good -- you couldn't miss that one!. But at this Yalta conference came the assistant US Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. Yes, the same one that passed out the cookies. But now, considered a shadow ruler of Ukraine, she points out to the Kiev authorities what to do. This time, Nuland said in a public speech:

- There should be no tolerance for those oligarchs who do not pay taxes. There must be zero tolerance for bribery and corruption, to those who would use violence for political ends.

And these words of the grande dame of the State Department could not be overlooked. Just think, Americans don't like it when their loans to Ukraine get stolen. And anti-oligarchic Maidan brought the very oligarchs to power, and corruption in the country has become even greater. Some of us have grown weary of this talk. But, let Nuland drone on ...

But then Russian Foreign Ministry official spokesman Maria Zakharova replied. So much so that not a stone was left on stone in the American's "Yalta speech":

"All this a little bit, just a little, looks like a lecture to the fox about how bad it is to steal chickens, but actually it surprised in other ways. As soon as Russian authorities began exposing the tax evasion, bribery, or corruption of the oligarchs, Victoria Nuland's office hastened to call zero tolerance "political repression" - Zakharova wrote on her facebook page.

It would be great to see the Department of State "show that same zero tolerance and inquire a bit about how the initial capital of the Russian (and Ukrainian would not hurt) oligarchs got started, those oligarchs who have been accused of corruption at home, but who, once in London, feel protected by the authorities, enjoying all the benefits of membership in the Club of Victims of Political Persecution" - continued Zakharova.

"It is impossible to deal with cockroaches in one room while at the same time laying out little plates of bread crumbs on the other side of the wall. Giving the green light to the dirty money from Russia and the former Soviet Union, the Western world is only boosting the zeal with which the domestic thieves shove their loot in foreign bins."

"Though perhaps," wonders the Foreign Minstiry spokesman "this is the actual purpose of the imaginary zero tolerance?"

"Why do people on Interpol's lists, by the decision of the Russian courts, prove their financial immorality, as they thrive in the Western capitals, and no alarm bells go off in the State Department?"

It turns out to be an interesting story: Taking fetid streams of notes, the West has just one requirement at the border crossing. Scream "victim of the regime." That's it! and you're in spades!

This calls to mind the old Soviet bribery password translated into modern American:

- In Soviet times, it was common phrase, revealing corrupt intent to proceed with plans insidious in varying degrees: "I'm from Ivan Ivanovich." Today the corresponding "Open Sesame" that opens the doors "in Europe and the best houses in Philadelphia," is the phrase "I'm running away from Vladimir".

Victoria, if you're going to start cleaning out the cockroaches, stop feeding them on your side.

[Sep 26, 2015] U.S. Billionaires Political Power Index

Notable quotes:
"... Billionaires: Reflections on the Upper Crust ..."
"... Billionaires: Reflections of the Upper Crust ..."
Sep 26, 2015 | Brookings Institution

In September 2014, Darrell West published a Billionaire Political Power Index based on his Brookings Institution Press book, Billionaires: Reflections on the Upper Crust. It examined the political influence individuals of great wealth, ranking their power based on a number of factors including campaign expenditures, activism through nonprofit organizations and foundations, holding public office, media ownership, policy thought leadership, and behind-the-scenes influence.

He has updated this index to account for billionaires' more recent election activism, campaign donations, and influence leading up to the 2014 midterms. There are several individuals who have moved up the list: Peter Thiel, Bob Mercer, Joe Ricketts, Paul Singer, Jim Simons, and David Geffen.

Others have seen their rankings drop: Penny Pritzker, Warren Buffett, Peter Peterson, Donald Trump, and Alice Walton.

Find out more about Billionaires: Reflections of the Upper Crust "

Hover Over a Billionaire's Photo to See More Details

# Names
1 Charles & David Koch
2 Michael Bloomberg
3 Tom Steyer
4 Sheldon Adelson
5 Rupert Murdoch
6 John "Joe" Ricketts
7 Robert "Bob" Mercer
8 Paul Singer
9 Peter Thiel
10 George and Jonathan Soros
11 John and Laura Arnold
12 Bill and Melinda Gates
13 Family of the late Peter Lewis
14 Mark and Priscilla Zuckerberg
15 Warren Buffett
16 Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos
17 Pierre and Pamela Omidyar
18 James "Jim" Simons
19 David Geffen
20 Penny Pritzker
21 Marc Andreessen
22 Peter Peterson
23 Donald Trump
24 Alice Walton

[Sep 26, 2015] Full text of Pope Francis speech before Congress

Notable quotes:
"... A political society endures when it seeks, as a vocation, to satisfy common needs by stimulating the growth of all its members, especially those in situations of greater vulnerability or risk. ..."
"... All of us are quite aware of, and deeply worried by, the disturbing social and political situation of the world today. Our world is increasingly a place of violent conflict, hatred and brutal atrocities, committed even in the name of God and of religion. ..."
"... We are asked to summon the courage and the intelligence to resolve today's many geopolitical and economic crises. Even in the developed world, the effects of unjust structures and actions are all too apparent. ..."
"... If politics must truly be at the service of the human person, it follows that it cannot be a slave to the economy and finance. ..."
"... At the risk of oversimplifying, we might say that we live in a culture which pressures young people not to start a family, because they lack possibilities for the future. Yet this same culture presents others with so many options that they too are dissuaded from starting a family ..."
Sep 26, 2015 | UPI.com

... ... ...

Each son or daughter of a given country has a mission, a personal and social responsibility. Your own responsibility as members of Congress is to enable this country, by your legislative activity, to grow as a nation. You are the face of its people, their representatives. You are called to defend and preserve the dignity of your fellow citizens in the tireless and demanding pursuit of the common good, for this is the chief aim of all politics. A political society endures when it seeks, as a vocation, to satisfy common needs by stimulating the growth of all its members, especially those in situations of greater vulnerability or risk. Legislative activity is always based on care for the people. To this you have been invited, called and convened by those who elected you.

... ... ...

All of us are quite aware of, and deeply worried by, the disturbing social and political situation of the world today. Our world is increasingly a place of violent conflict, hatred and brutal atrocities, committed even in the name of God and of religion. We know that no religion is immune from forms of individual delusion or ideological extremism. This means that we must be especially attentive to every type of fundamentalism, whether religious or of any other kind. A delicate balance is required to combat violence perpetrated in the name of a religion, an ideology or an economic system, while also safeguarding religious freedom, intellectual freedom and individual freedoms. But there is another temptation which we must especially guard against: the simplistic reductionism which sees only good or evil; or, if you will, the righteous and sinners. The contemporary world, with its open wounds which affect so many of our brothers and sisters, demands that we confront every form of polarization which would divide it into these two camps. We know that in the attempt to be freed of the enemy without, we can be tempted to feed the enemy within. To imitate the hatred and violence of tyrants and murderers is the best way to take their place. That is something which you, as a people, reject.

...We are asked to summon the courage and the intelligence to resolve today's many geopolitical and economic crises. Even in the developed world, the effects of unjust structures and actions are all too apparent. Our efforts must aim at restoring hope, righting wrongs, maintaining commitments and thus promoting the well-being of individuals and of peoples. We must move forward together, as one, in a renewed spirit of fraternity and solidarity, cooperating generously for the common good.

The challenges facing us today call for a renewal of that spirit of cooperation, which has accomplished so much good throughout the history of the United States. The complexity, the gravity and the urgency of these challenges demand that we pool our resources and talents, and resolve to support one another, with respect for our differences and our convictions of conscience.

In this land, the various religious denominations have greatly contributed to building and strengthening society. It is important that today, as in the past, the voice of faith continue to be heard, for it is a voice of fraternity and love, which tries to bring out the best in each person and in each society. Such cooperation is a powerful resource in the battle to eliminate new global forms of slavery, born of grave injustices which can be overcome only through new policies and new forms of social consensus.

...If politics must truly be at the service of the human person, it follows that it cannot be a slave to the economy and finance. Politics is, instead, an expression of our compelling need to live as one, in order to build as one the greatest common good: that of a community which sacrifices particular interests in order to share, in justice and peace, its goods, its interests, its social life. I do not underestimate the difficulty that this involves, but I encourage you in this effort.

... ... ...

The fight against poverty and hunger must be fought constantly and on many fronts, especially in its causes. I know that many Americans today, as in the past, are working to deal with this problem.

It goes without saying that part of this great effort is the creation and distribution of wealth. The right use of natural resources, the proper application of technology and the harnessing of the spirit of enterprise are essential elements of an economy which seeks to be modern, inclusive and sustainable. "Business is a noble vocation, directed to producing wealth and improving the world. It can be a fruitful source of prosperity for the area in which it operates, especially if it sees the creation of jobs as an essential part of its service to the common good" (Laudato Si', 129). This common good also includes the earth, a central theme of the encyclical which I recently wrote in order to "enter into dialogue with all people about our common home" (ibid., 3). "We need a conversation which includes everyone, since the environmental challenge we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all" (ibid., 14).

In Laudato Si', I call for a courageous and responsible effort to "redirect our steps" (ibid., 61), and to avert the most serious effects of the environmental deterioration caused by human activity. I am convinced that we can make a difference and I have no doubt that the United States – and this Congress – have an important role to play. Now is the time for courageous actions and strategies, aimed at implementing a "culture of care" (ibid., 231) and "an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time protecting nature" (ibid., 139). "We have the freedom needed to limit and direct technology" (ibid., 112); "to devise intelligent ways of . . . developing and limiting our power" (ibid., 78); and to put technology "at the service of another type of progress, one which is healthier, more human, more social, more integral" (ibid., 112). In this regard, I am confident that America's outstanding academic and research institutions can make a vital contribution in the years ahead.

... ... ...

...At the risk of oversimplifying, we might say that we live in a culture which pressures young people not to start a family, because they lack possibilities for the future. Yet this same culture presents others with so many options that they too are dissuaded from starting a family.

... ... ...

[Sep 26, 2015] Standing Before Congress, Pope Francis Calls Out the Industry of Death

Sep 26, 2015 | original.antiwar.com
Sep 26, 2015 | Antiwar.com

Pope Francis' address to Congress was almost certainly not what John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and other congressional leaders had in mind when they invited the pope to speak.

It probably wasn't what they were all thinking about during the last standing ovations. But here was Pope Francis, revered as the People's Pope, calling out war profiteers and demanding an end to the arms trade. Just as simple and as powerful as that.

... ... ...

"Being at the service of dialogue and peace also means being truly determined to minimize and, in the long term, to end the many armed conflicts throughout our world," the pope said. Then he asked the critical question: "Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society?"

He answered it himself: "Sadly, the answer, as we all know, is simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood. In the face of this shameful and culpable silence, it is our duty to confront the problem and to stop the arms trade."

Stop the arms trade. What a simple, clear call.

That means the ending things like the $60 billion arms deal the US made a few years back with Saudi Arabia, where those weapons are, in the pope's words, "inflicting untold suffering on individuals and society," especially in Syria and Yemen. It means ending things like the $45 billion in new military aid – mostly in the form of advanced new weapons – the Israeli government has requested from Washington between now and 2028. It means ending the provision of new arms to scores of unaccountable militias in Syria, where even the White House admits a nonmilitary solution is needed. And it means ending things like the $1.1 billion in arms sales the United States has made to Mexico this year alone.

And, of course, it means no longer diverting at least 54 cents of every discretionary taxpayer dollar in the federal budget to the US military.

Actually, members of Congress – so many of whom rely on huge campaign donations from arms manufacturers, and so many of whom refuse to vote against military procurement because often just a few dozen jobs connected to it might be in their district – really should have expected the pope to say exactly what he did.

It was only last May, after all, that Pope Francis told a group of schoolchildren visiting the Vatican that the arms trade is the "industry of death." When a kid asked why so many powerful people don't want peace, the pope answered simply, "because they live off wars!" Francis explained how people become rich by producing and selling weapons. "And this is why so many people do not want peace. They make more money with the war!"

The pope's speech to Congress was quite extraordinary on a number of fronts.

... ... ...

Phyllis Bennis is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and author of the forthcoming Understanding ISIS and the New Global War on Terror: A Primer. Manuel Perez-Rocha is an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. Reprinted with permission from Foreign Policy In Focus.

[Sep 18, 2015] Russian Insider article concerning the ever truthful and impartial BBC

"...You Tube clip BBC Propaganda, Lies, Bias & Cover-Ups posted by a commenter to this Russian Insider article concerning the ever truthful and impartial BBC (which is not state unded, of course) announcement that it is starting a special Russian language service to counter "Kremlin funded" RT "propaganda"
Moscow Exile, September 16, 2015 at 1:42 am
You Tube clip BBC Propaganda, Lies, Bias & Cover-Ups posted by a commenter to this Russian Insider article concerning the ever truthful and impartial BBC (which is not state funded, of course) announcement that it is starting a special Russian language service to counter "Kremlin funded" RT "propaganda:
marknesop, September 16, 2015 at 7:58 am
There was a very good clip in a comment to one of the Russia Insider articles yesterday, too, featuring that Russo-Spanish chap that Yalensis once posted here doing a report from Crimea, in which he mostly just walked around and pointed out the signs of normality and prosperity which were at odds with official reporting.

His new piece was called Mosaic of Facts; it was quite good. Miguel-Frances Santiago, yeah, that's it.

I believe he mentions his family is part-Russian, although he does not appear to speak it.

[Sep 13, 2015] Whoring one's talent

"... Surely, these two (and many others in their "field") know on which side their bread gets buttered (with occasional black caviar bonus for the "politically correct" reporting). And we can't call it "whoring one's talent", right? Right?"
Sep 13, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Lyttenburgh, September 12, 2015 at 5:27 am

Honest and Objective (to the point of extreme rukopozhatnost' and sincere nepolzhivost') Mark Adomanis of the former True/Slant fame have visited Kiev/Kyiv/al-Kuyabia and made some mind-blowing discoveries:

On the Streets of Kiev
______________________________________________________________________

"I've lost count of the number of headlines and articles which boldly proclaim that Kiev is "transformed." It's become one of those standby journalistic clichés: "transformed" Kiev is right there alongside wealthy London, brash New York, bleak, oppressive Moscow, and technologically-advanced Tokyo as short-hand. There has been such an unending sea of media comments that even people who have never set foot in Eastern Europe know all about the "new" Kiev.

[…]

"While there wasn't much in the way of change, there was even less evidence of "Europe" or "Europeanization." On the way from the airport I saw a sculpture that was intended to be the EU's insignia (I think it was actually of the Euro, but whatever) but that was pretty much the only physical manifestation of what was supposed to be a society-transforming change in consciousness. That doesn't mean the changes aren't real or that they haven't taken place, but it does mean that the daily rhythm of life seems fundamentally the same.

Indeed, the parking and driving habits on display still had a distinct note of Russianness about them: even on the block where the conference attendees were being housed (a rather posh part of downtown) cars were left haphazardly on the sidewalk. I even found an intersection where several Mercedes S-classes had been parked directly in the middle of a cross-walk. There are live-fire combat exercises that take less physical courage and skill than navigating that particular intersection.

[…]

It was frankly a relief that, at a time when Moscow is ever more consumed with hysterical politicization and when the economy is faring worse than any other time in recent memory, that everyday life in Kiev goes on much the same way it always has."
_______________________________________________________________________

I, and also the entirety of progressive humanity – all democratic journalists, kreakls, professional hipsters, Euro-Ukrs, gays and the Soviet era dissidents – shake hands of Mark Adomanis of the former True/Slant fame. Verily, verily – "the parking and driving habits on display still had a distinct note of Russianness about them". All signs of the centuries long oppression and forcible Russiphication of Proud and Culturally Superior Ukrs by Mongolo-Finno-Jewish-Ugrish Moscow's Khanate. The fact that Kievans/Kyivans/al-Kuyabia's citizens can't park a car properly points out either to their less then perfect ancestry or can be explained by actions of Kremlinite шпигуни and saboteurs. BTW – this is a universal explanation of everything happening in Ukraine and Mark must adopt it. Because how else can he explain that Ukraine's capital still doesn't look, smell and taste like Paris, London or New York?

marknesop, September 12, 2015 at 9:51 am
"It was frankly a relief that, at a time when Moscow is ever more consumed with hysterical politicization and when the economy is faring worse than any other time in recent memory, that everyday life in Kiev goes on much the same way it always has."

As always, Mark's core loyalty to western corporatism shines through at the end, and in his closing paragraph he manages to incorporate nostalgia for Kiev's success in maintaining its placid beauty as opposed to the "hysterical politicization" of Moscow, and encouragement for Washington's policy of squeezing the Russian economy until it breaks. Keep on with the sanctions, boys – success is within our grasp! Although both currencies have experienced a dramatic slide in exchange rate, one country has huge energy resources and large cash reserves while the other has none of either, but never mind!! Courage, comrades! Kiev is still beautiful!!

Lyttenburgh, September 12, 2015 at 9:51 pm

Mark, I admit – I'm bitter. What M.ADomanis and Galeotti have become is really unbearable for me.

Imagine someone, like writer, actor and/or musician whom you greatly admired some time ago, maybe even going so far as to claim "I grew up watching/reading/listening" this indivudual. And then he becomes Mel Gibson of today. That's what have become to Adomanis and Galeotti from my POV.

Now they are, like, different people. Surely, these two (and many others in their "field") know on which side their bread gets buttered (with occasional black caviar bonus for the "politically correct" reporting). And we can't call it "whoring one's talent", right? Right?

P.S. I wonder – what kind of conference (in Kiev of all places) did Mark Adomanis participated in?

Moscow Exile, September 12, 2015 at 9:59 am

The most obviously distinct note of "Russianness" amongst the vast majority of Ukrainians is, in my humble opinion, that they speak and understand Russian – and nobody is making them do it!

Lyttenburgh, September 12, 2015 at 9:55 pm

That', uh… a "Stockholm syndrome" on a national level! Yeah!

Whew! And for a moment I thought that I won't find a truly "svidomoje" explanation!

But Mark shows us that Ukraine is on a right track – "the Ukrainian flag was rather more prominently displayed in public places" and " [t]here might have been marginally more Ukrainian as opposed to Russian language signage since the last time I had visited".

Peremoga is imminent!

Pavlo Svolochenko, September 12, 2015 at 9:58 pm

Every peremoga is but a prelude to the next zrada.

Which is a prelude to the next peremoga.

День бабака.

Jen, September 12, 2015 at 2:58 pm
Reading Mark Adomanis' article, I get a sense of the conflict going on inside his mind as he tries to reconcile what he sees and hears on the ground with what he knows he's supposed to say. Hence you get expressions like "…. everyday life in Kiev goes on much the same way it always has" which are so ambiguous as to mean nothing at all; it seems Adomanis is counting on his readers to know little of what everyday life in Kiev has been like for a long time.

[Sep 13, 2015] Western "scientific publications on the Russian strategy" mean Putin=evil, Russian=scary; Putin + Russian = Mordor.

September 13, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Warren, September 13, 2015 at 5:35 am

Published on 10 Mar 2015
2014.gada 3.decembrī Latvijas Nacionālajā aizsardzības akadēmijā norisinājās otrā Drošības un stratēģiskās pētniecības centra starptautiskā akadēmiskā konference "Krievija un ģeopolitikas atgriešanās: Stratēģiskie izaicinājumi Rietumiem", kurā diskutēja par aktuālajiem drošības jautājumiem. Konferenci atklāja profesors Marks Galeoti no Ņujorkas Universitātes, kurš ir autors vairākām zinātniskām publikācijām par Krievijas stratēģiju.

Dec.3, 2014 the 2nd International Academic Conference "Russia and the Return of Geopolitics: Strategic Implications for the West" of the National Defence Academy of Latvia's Center for Security and Strategic Research took place in the National Defence Academy, where experts discussed international security issues. Conference was opened by professor Mark Galeotti from the New York University, who is is an author of numerous – scientific publications on the Russian strategy.

Vairāk informācijas / More information:
http://www.naa.mil.lv/Petnieciba/DSPC

Patient Observer, September 13, 2015 at 6:17 am

What is a "scientific publications on the Russian strategy"? Something like Putin=evil, Russian=scary; Putin + Russian = Mordor.

Jen, September 13, 2015 at 3:28 pm

The phrase "scientific publications on the Russian strategy" sound a lot like the Dutch Safety Board's forensic investigation of the MH17 disaster – only collect the evidence that supports an already existing narrative and ignore any other evidence until RT discovers it and films it.

Warren, September 13, 2015 at 6:16 pm

Make sure your publication is well referenced, preferably with plenty of footnotes from the likes of The Economist, Telegraph, Guardian, Henry Jackson Society, Freedom House, Peterson Institute, Atlantic Council and CEPA.

SmoothieX12, September 13, 2015 at 8:20 am
Excellent piece. The situation with military-political analysis re: Russia in the West is dire. Basically all "Soviet/Russian" studies complex in the US was solzhenitzified to the point of Russian history being unrecognizable. As per Falgenhauer–it is not that no one of position of power in Russian military and intelligence would talk to him (which they would not), it is the fact that even if they would it would do no good for a guy with degree in biology.

I never heard of any military officer (and I knew and know many) who went on to become brain surgeons, nor did I encounter brain surgeons who were specialists in Net Centric Warfare or Theory Of Operations (not the brain ones).

Information and knowledge are too very different things, most people do not recognize this critical difference.

[Sep 10, 2015] The Weaponization of Ignorance: the West's Go-To Experts by marknesop

September 9, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com

... ... ...

In order to be Doing The Right Thing, it is necessary for you to believe Russia is an isolated and reviled international pariah which has invaded its neighbor – Ukraine – with heavy armor, artillery and hundreds of thousands of uniformed soldiers in the country on state orders, and which shot down MH-17 so that it could blame it on innocent Ukraine (among other wild justifications). It is a country which makes nothing and is totally reliant on energy exports; backward, barbaric, uncultured and unlettered, deceitful and underhanded.

An excellent example to start off with is Forbes, featuring the clownish oaf Paul Roderick Gregory. Mr. Gregory was one of the first to latch on to the scoop that Russia had inadvertently published the figures of its dead in the "Eastern Ukrainian Campaign", in a small, innocuous business newspaper called Delovaya Zhizn (Business Life). Then, the story goes, the government frantically deleted the information, but not before some sharp-eyed truthseekers hasd pounced on it and exposed it to the world. Yahoo – staunchly Russophobic in its news content – jumped on it as well. Social media dismembered it in hours and revealed it as a fake, while the purported representative of Business Life claimed the site had been hacked from a Kiev-registered IP on August 22nd, and the bogus data inserted long enough to be captured, then erased. The excitement the story caused in the media was something to see, and the Twitter storm – led by luminaries like Michael McFaul drawing attention to it for all they were worth – was furious while it lasted. Once it was exposed as a fake, the story just kind of…went away. Nobody said sorry.

No western news story on Russia or Ukraine is complete without the insertion of the phrase "Russian aggression" like a trademark, and an assertion that Russia has large numbers of military troops in Ukraine although it cynically denies it. News sites regularly claim there is "pretty overwhelming evidence" that Russia and Putin are lying, but none of them ever cite any, and the United States refuses to release any satellite imagery confirming the purported troop movements or transit of armored columns. It must be sensitive about Putin's feelings, and is protecting him. Ha, ha.

... ... ...

CNN's "Banned! 10 Things You Won't Find in Russia" is, unsurprisingly, horseshit. The law forbidding "gay propaganda" does not "mean anyone campaigning for LGBT rights or equating straight and gay relationships can be prosecuted. " It is quite specific that it may not be pitched to minor children, but the United States has become so chuffed with itself over how gay-friendly it is that it seems to think nobody is too young to learn how to do it the gay way. How about three – is three too young, do you think? Thinking about sending your gender nonconforming three-year-old son to Crossdresser Camp? I wonder if the other boys in his class – when he's, say 12 – are going to be as supportive? Gay adults can do as they please in Russia, as they always could, and homosexuality was legal in Russia ten years before the USA got around to saying it was okay to be gay.

Anonymous blogs are illegal – oh, dear. That should be of great concern to the civil libertarians who are sharing their phone conversations with the NSA, have been for some time before it was revealed, and the NSA refuses to stop, while the government refuses to make them. National security, you know. Think about that next time you're discussing your hemorrhoids with your doctor on the telephone.

Western food is banned; quite a lot of it, anyway. Why is that, CNN, again? Because of sanctions imposed against Russia. Why? Well, because the Russians shot down MH-17, of course! And before anyone calls tit-for-tat sanctions "childish", yes, they are. But you're talking to the country that changed the name of the American street on which the Soviet Embassy was located to "Andrei Sakharov Street", just for spite. The Wall Street Journal called it "simple but inspired". They were half-right: it was simple. Stay tuned for the U.S. Embassy to be on "Edward Snowden Boulevard".

Foul language is banned from films and television. Oh, no. How could anyone sit through a movie in America if it was not non-stop swearing from start to finish…kind of like conversation is in the USA. Ridden a city bus lately? Honestly, America has become the proverbial caricature of itself, so obsessed with slagging off the Russians in an attempt to humiliate them that it portrays being The Sopranos from sea to shining sea as some kind of virtue.

Drug related websites. The mind reels. Where is I gonna get my hit on, iffen I can't fin' my on-line dealer? CNN….man, I just don't know. I used to think, when I still watched CNN, probably about 10 years ago, that Wolf Blitzer was the worst thing about it. But now you is on a ho' notha level. Freedom…is drug-related websites.

... ... ...

The Independent (owned by a Russian oligarch – oops! "Tycoon", I meant, which is how western newspapers sucked up to Poroshenko the Billionaire after he took over the presidency of Ukraine) reports, completely gratuitously, that Moscow is "the world's unfriendliest city"; so designated by a survey conducted among the readers of Travel & Leisure Magazine! Which had a total circulation, in 2011, of just under 971,000. Ha, ha!! Jesus, listen to yourselves, will you? More than twice as many people read Rolling Stone, Bon Appetit and Golf Digest as read Travel & Leisure. Take a flying leap at a rolling doughnut, Travel & Leisure! Who gives a toss what you think? We'll see all 971,000 of you in Galway, Ireland (rated the "friendliest" city), and you'd probably all fit.

Timothy Snyder, eminent historian and defender of the Maidan, tells whoever will listen that Kiev is the only bilingual capital in Europe. Mind you, he also says Ukraine is a country of 50 million people, when he's actually spotting them about 10 million. Ukraine lost around 3 million people in 2014 – and you know where they went – and the population currently stands at just under 43 million according to the state statistics service. But what's a couple of million more or less? We routinely hear how a million or two well-educated and talented people rush for the exits in Russia every year, but by some miracle the population is increasing! The babushkas must be knitting new Russians in the basement at night, like the Keebler elves.

There's no need to dissect Snyder's embarrassing knowledge deficit further – my colleague, Paul Robinson, does a wonderful job of that – but suffice it to say Kiev is far from the only bilingual capital in Europe. More importantly, Snyder is playing up the distinctive nature of Ukrainian as if being able to switch between Russian and Ukrainian is an accomplishment on a par with speaking French and English. Russian and Ukrainian are both East Slavic languages descended from a common root – the language of the medieval Kievan Rus – and are mutually intelligible; that is, the two have sufficient common elements that if you can speak one fluently, you will be able to understand much of the other.

Get the picture? Western leaders, through the western media, rely on feted "experts" who do not know if their ass is bored or punched, but who nonetheless blather whatever their paymasters want to hear – and what they want to hear, pretty consistently, is that Russia is barbaric, weak and surly, reeling from sanctions which are wringing its economy like a dishrag. They want to hear that its population is steadily declining, thanks to its increasingly unpopular and unstable president. Timothy Garton Ash regularly paints a bloodcurdling – if you're a Russian – picture of a tottering giant about to topple. Edward Lucas, narcissistic British bonehead, rails against Putin's non-existent determination to bring the Baltics under his dictatorial command. Craaazzzy Annie Applebaum, Mrs former-Polish-political-wunderkind, snaps at her own entrails in a Russophobic delirium. Julia Ioffe. Luke Harding. Shaun Walker and Roland Oliphant. Simon Ostrovsky of Vice News. Rainbow-Brite Hater Jamie Kirchik of The Daily Beast. Too many to name them all, each pumping out soporific smoke that reassures westerners of their ongoing moral superiority and perspicacious judgment. All of it totally manufactured nonsense, delivered with a straight face in an atmosphere in which nobody wishes to challenge their accuracy, because it just feels so good to let go and believe.

I'm not arguing this so the west will come to its senses and try to repair the damage it has done to international relationships, entirely owing to society's own myopic stupidity and epic eagerness to be fooled. It's much too late for that; Russia has reached the realization that it cannot be a partner to the west so long as Russia insists upon making its own decisions and following its own policies. Consequently, it is decisively turning away from the west and reordering its markets, its institutions and its partnerships. Some business relationships might recover, but the west will not be trusted again for a generation at least. Because you can't trust someone who will not listen to reason.

I'm arguing it because the rest of the world is looking aghast at the west as if it had gotten drunk at their kids' birthday party and made an ass of itself, and it's embarrassing.

et Al says: September 9, 2015 at 11:20 am

Well Mark, the torrent of b/s spouted by the self-proclaimed and good will only serve one function in the end – something for Western Screaming Heads (TM) to drown in as none of what they produce actually makes a damn worth of difference. There is no talent preaching to the converted, but much of these so called credibly western institutions have also lost credibility with their own citizens. It's a model case of the decline and fall of empire & power. It's only going to get funkier.

Meanwhile, as if on cue, the Brits are still playing at calling the shots:

Neuters: UK softens tone against Syria's Assad, moots transition period
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/09/09/uk-mideast-crisis-syria-hammond-idUKKCN0R91SF20150909

Britain could accept Syrian President Bashar al-Assad staying in place for a transition period if it helped resolve the country's conflict, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said on Wednesday, in what appeared to be a softening of tone on the Syrian leader….

…Reuters reported on Wednesday that Russian forces have begun participating in combat operations in Syria to help defend Assad's government, citing three Lebanese sources familiar with the political and military situation there.

Hammond told parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee that a political rather than military solution was needed and said Britain had made clear to Russia and Iran, Assad's principal international allies, that it would be prepared to discuss a plan which saw him stay on temporarily.

"If there is a sensible plan for transition that involves Assad remaining in some way involved in the process for a period of time we will look at that, we will discuss it. We are not saying he must go on day one," he said, adding that the transition could be a period of months….

…Hammond rejected Russia's suggestion Syria could hold snap parliamentary elections which could see Assad share power.

"That is not an acceptable position. The international community cannot in my view facilitate and oversee a set of elections in which somebody guilty of crimes of the scale that Assad has committed is able to run for office," he said…

####
We'll not hang you now Bashar, we'll hang you a bit later. Deal?

The Brits yet again speaking for the US. Who needs puppets when you can have a poodle? Woof!

marknesop , September 9, 2015 at 12:53 pm

That's the kind of stuff that makes me throw things. Jesus Q. Johnnycake, what is it with Britain and its conviction that the world is comprised of Britain, and her colonies, which she suffers to live only insofar as they conform to a standard of decorum bred in Whitehall? Poxy gits; "Britain could accept Syrian President Bashar al-Assad staying in place for a transition period if it helped resolve the country's conflict, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said on Wednesday". Is that so? What that has been instigated by the UK in the last decade would lead you to believe Britain's opinion was indispensable?

"…Hammond rejected Russia's suggestion Syria could hold snap parliamentary elections which could see Assad share power.

"That is not an acceptable position. The international community cannot in my view facilitate and oversee a set of elections in which somebody guilty of crimes of the scale that Assad has committed is able to run for office," he said…"

That's because he knows full well Assad would win in a landslide, and the appropabation of his people cannot be allowed to interfere with Britain railroading him for war crimes without a trial. War crimes! Jesus Christ! What the fuck does he think has been goinmg on in Ukraine?? There's a whole hell of a lot more evidence of what's going on there and who's responsible for it, but "the international community" could not care less.

I had to take a deep-breathing break. The important thing is to get some effort brought to bear on reversing ISIS and driving them back, and eventually, out. Then Russia will have a little more breathing room for Britain's case to collapse. I'm sure Russia would not preserve Assad only to see the British cart him off to The Hague.

I was just reading an old post, linked in another reply, and ran across some research I did on the position of General Secretary of the UN. Did you know that Bill Clinton and Tony Blair were nominated to run against Ban Ki-Moon? Blair was still PM at the time, and the UN General Secretary cannot be from any of the veto-wielding powers, so they were both ineligible – but can you imagine?

et Al , September 10, 2015 at 3:14 am

It's a particularly British skill putting other people's backs up. Today we call it trolling for that is surely what his PR team is aiming at. Why? Because they can and they enjoy it.

Of course, two can play at that game, but the Russians should, selectively do this also. It's not hard.

If only Philip Hammond had an actual talent apart from trolling that was valuable. Something like this:

Warren , September 9, 2015 at 11:26 am

Oddlots , September 9, 2015 at 5:23 pm

Out-fucking-standing. Finally we have been able to field an adult. This is EXACTLY what we need to hear.

Cheered me up no end.

et Al , September 10, 2015 at 3:40 am

He's a threat to the national security state. By hook, or by crook, professionals will try to make sure that he doesn't become Prime Minister. Assuming that he becomes Labor leader, these professionals have less than five years.

james , September 9, 2015 at 12:41 pm

thanks mark… "Nobody said sorry." that and the constant hypocrisy from the west via the msm, drives me fucking crazy.. lying and pushing for all the wrong reasons never really impressed me.. at bit part of me doesn't follow the msm for these reasons.. when the herd is going one way, i'm going to be going the other way.. fb – naw… msm – naw, living in a cave – yeah, lol.. i admire your work trying to dissect it all.. that is a constant uphill battle that isn't ever going to stop!

james@wpc , September 9, 2015 at 1:08 pm

Well said, Mark. I agree the road ahead looks bleak and is not about to get any better any day soon.

The reason for the eye-rolling of the rest of the world is that few in the West know how to think. Fewer still know that they have been deliberately taught not to think (through being ridiculed for asking questions and not being told the difference between Knowledge, Understanding and Wisdom) and to look to shills and idiots known as 'experts' to do their thinking for them.

This is not how we survived two million years. Oops, sorry, that should read 6000 years . . . . and never mind those dinosaur bones! Regardless, we will not survive a similar time span either way, or anything like it, into the future

Warren , September 9, 2015 at 1:18 pm

Published on 9 Sep 2015
An unsourced story originating on an Israeli website claimed Russia was about to deploy significant military assistance to Syria to fight Islamic State. This set the media aflame and had Washington issuing warnings. The story was not only unsourced, but also untrue. But it did reveal how the West frames its illegal war against Syria. CrossTalking with Eric Draitser, Danny Makki and Fawaz Gerges.

Lyttenburgh , September 9, 2015 at 4:18 pm

Another great article, Mark!

I've been arguing since… 2012, I think, that the West, it's media – both entertainment and news services – are beholden to what I call an "Ouroboros effect". There is one successful, time-tasted and profitable trademark, let's call it – "Russophobia". It sells. It sells really good. There is a constant demand for it and no shortage of supply.

But the most beatiful thing of all? "Ouroboros effect" is self sustaining! Clients demand more of what they like and are used to ("Russophobia"), and the producers are glad to oblige, supply them (and a few of uninitiated) with it, thus strengthening the clients perceptions on the topic in question and making them crave more of it.

Clients are fed basically the same stuff for decades with little or no variations in flavor or consistence – and they gladly swallow all of it and demand more.

And this "immortal, perfectly constructed animal" (Plato's words, not mine) has an in-built defense systems. Someone is suggesting that biting and sucking your own tail right next to a place where your feces come out is disgusting and there are more healthy things to eat around here? Why, it must paid Kremlin's propaganda, paid Kremlin-trolls, brainwashed serfs of the Regime or bullied by KGB poor and innocent souls. They are not to be trusted, for sure.

Someone said, that a true totalitarism is not the fact that a StateSec can come one day and take away some "undesirable". It's when the neighbors of these "undesirables" are ratting them away, or take part in lynching of the "Enemy", while policing each other for the slightest sign of sedition and calling it "Being Vigilant". Or something like that.

Currently there is no any meaningful dialog between the West and Russia. On any level. I'm speaking not only about governments here – I'm talking about every single level of possible communication. Ultimately, I'm talking about people. The West preaches that "when people from different ethnic and religious and cultural backgrounds come together it enriches learning and creativity". In fact, it actually means that everyone must adopt "universal" (read – Western) set of values to be successful and productive, and all other opinions are just "undesirable".

Right now, I don't see any way to change the Western narrative about Russia. Russophobia is a time-tested product in high demand. The West demands from Russia "conversion" to its superior "values" and is not interested in any compromises or even entertaining the mere thought that the Culturally Superior West might adopt something from Russia as well. And Russia for a change decided that it's fed up with this sanctimonious shit piled on it for decades and would rather have an independent policy, thank you very much.

Ouroboros will suck on its own tail. Maybe, when it stops this highly entertaining activity the whole wide world will experience the escape from the wheel of Sansara and unite in a humanity-wide Nirvana. Or the pigs will learn to fly.

et Al , September 10, 2015 at 8:12 am

What exquisite timing:

Financial Crimes: Russian group accused of hacking satellites
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/50b1ff84-571d-11e5-9846-de406ccb37f2.html?ftcamp=published_links/rss/googlenews/feed//product&google_editors_picks=true

One of the world's most sophisticated hacking groups, linked to the Russian government, has been accused of hijacking vulnerable commercial satellite communications, using hidden receiving stations in Africa and the Middle East to mask attacks on Western military and governmental networks.

The group, which operates Ouroboros - the virulent malware also known as "Snake" or "Turla" - was outed last year as having mounted aggressive cyber espionage operations against Ukraine and a host of other European and American government organisations over nearly a decade.

In a report released on Wednesday, digital security and intelligence firm Kaspersky Lab, which was among the first to analyse the Ouroboros hackers' activities in 2014, said it had identified a new "exquisite" attack channel being used by the group that was virtually untraceable…

…Western security officials have previously told the Financial Times they believe Ouroboros to be a Russian operation - a fact supported by the group's targets and clues in the coding of the malware itself.

Satellite operators are meanwhile powerless to prevent the hackers from routing requests through their networks - at least for the next few years. The only other way to do so, experts note, would be for them to encrypt all of their downstream communications - a process that would require the launch of entirely new satellite arrays.

####

This piece certainly ticks all the boxes of Fear Uncertainly & Doubt.

Two points:

1: Not only would new satellites have to be sent up, but satellite receiving equipment would have to be upgraded on the ground, though I would assume that these days is could be done through software;

2: But, bu, but haven't we been told many times that Kaspersky – a Russian software security firm – is close to the Kremlin. If so, then why 'uncover' this story that would be so apparently damaging to their own friends? Of course this is one step of logic that no self-respecting active or passive russophobic journalist, or simply one enjoying it, would deign to ask.

So you see, yet again and apart from Kaspersy in this case, no other named source is willing to come out and publicly name finger the Russians and of course the Kremlin by association. Yes kids, its is journalism at its finest!

marknesop , September 10, 2015 at 1:07 pm

Yes, the "western analysts" to whom they refer are probably FireEye, a California firm, who claimed that a super-capable virus program it discovered "was programmed on Russian-language machines and built during working hours in Moscow." We've already been over how idiotic that is.

Warren , September 9, 2015 at 4:18 pm

Syria crisis: Nato concerned by Russia 'military build-up'

The US and Nato have expressed concern over reports that Russia is increasing its military presence in Syria.

Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg said if confirmed, Russia's involvement would not help to solve the conflict.

Separately on Wednesday, US Secretary of State John Kerry "reiterated" his concerns to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov over the phone.

Russia, a key ally of Syria during its four-year civil war, says it has sent military experts but that is all.
Correspondents say that without Moscow's backing, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad may have fallen by now.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34205003

marknesop , September 9, 2015 at 5:04 pm

It is clear the USA does not want any help in Syria, unless it is from its trusted allies. I wonder why? Does Washington honestly think people are so dozy that they can't catch on? A couple of other things are clear, too; one, either the USA's intelligence is terrible or it did not even bother to check if the rumors are true, because the Kremlin has said it has no immediate plans to intervene in Syria. However, two, the USA obviously does not trust the answer, because it has already taken the step of asking European allies in the region to deny permission for overflight to Russia. It seems fairly obvious that the USA does not want Russia in Syria even though it is "losing" to ISIS.

I'm sure the Kremlin is well aware that the USA is covertly helping and encouraging ISIS, and hopes they will overrun Damascus. And Britain's snooty attitude about Assad possibly continuing in his position as leader suggests they expect the push that will overwhelm Assad to come soon. I can't believe Russia is just going to sit back and let it happen, knowing the main purpose is to enable a Qatari gas pipeline that will cut it out of the European gas market.

Patient Observer , September 9, 2015 at 5:56 pm

The pipeline is a big deal but they also want to remove (no, murder) any non-compliant national leader – need to keep up the image of invincibility. Notice how the leaders of Iraq, Serbia and Libya were all murdered directly or indirectly by Western hands.

Western propaganda simply provides cover for the vast majority of the US population who are fearful of recognizing the Empire's hideous face,

It has come up in this blog from time to time that most Americans are basically decent and simply lack access to truthful information. I tend to disagree. Anyone with decency and half a brain would not be deluded by the idiocy that passes for news. In short, the majority of Americans choose to be ignorant because they are cowards.

Fern , September 9, 2015 at 6:14 pm

You're quite right about the importance of the image of invincibility achieved by the literal or metaphorical grinding of all opposition into the dirt. In addition to the list you give, it seems that Yanukovich was also targeted for assassination, only narrowly escaping with his life and yet his 'crime' was the seemingly pretty minor one of deferring the EU Association Agreement. The same kind of conquering mentality was discernible in the Greek bailout negotiations when the Troika went all out to heap humiliation on Tspiras. A glimpse of the psychopaths behind the liberal, democratic masks.

james@wpc , September 9, 2015 at 6:00 pm

This is speculation but what makes sense to me is that there is a faction (at least) within the Russian govt that is pushing for upping the military support to Syria and this fabricated controversy is an attempt to head off that internally proposed Russian initiative.

All this, to me, points to the US getting desperate to overcome the SAA, and soon, otherwise 'all is lost'

Oddlots , September 9, 2015 at 5:54 pm

"…rely on feted "experts" who do not know if their ass is bored or punched…"

God you make me laugh.

Thanks for the intro to Rory Galagher. Completely new to me. Working through some you tube videos and it's far better for my blood-pressure than getting caught up on the day's "mendacity index."

Btw I came across this today:

marknesop , September 9, 2015 at 9:15 pm

Yes, the plan to tip over Syria does go back quite a bit, and the USA has always wanted to take him out because he is a Russian ally. His refusal of the Qatari pipeline deal put the writing on the wall for him.

Oddlots , September 9, 2015 at 10:10 pm

I remember some U.S. Economic wonk talking about the way Syria seemed to sit out the GFC of 2008 as if it was somehow sinister that the "cheap seats" would get a – cough – pass.

Wish I could remember who it was. Someone of Summers' stature but not him.

At the time it struck me as utterly perverse: Let me get this straight… You are belittling this country because its government – maybe by accident: who cares? – has insulated its citizens from the worst of our epochal melt down? You do realize, given the country's level of development, that you are talking about whether the population can, you know, eat?

Of course no-one called him on it.

Cortes , September 10, 2015 at 7:33 am

US "successes" analysed:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176042/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_nothing_succeeds_like_failure/

marknesop, September 10, 2015 at 1:00 pm

I smell the earthy and pastoral bouquet of bovine excrement. Both USA Today and Die Zeit are agreed that ISIS/ISIL numbers only about 20,000-30,000 members. Yet representatives of the "USA-led Coalition" claim to have killed more than 15,000 of them, in around 5,500 air strikes – an air strike for every 6 people in the organization.

Oh, sure, USA Today claims that recruiting has offset the losses, but seriously – a force of no more than 30,000 is prevailing against the Syrian Army and the USA-led Coalition, despite the fact that it has no air force of its own, and gaining like a brush fire? What kind of nancies is the USA-led coalition recruiting these days? Can you hear, ghost of Simon de Montfort, whose tiny force of French knights defeated a force more than 20 times their own number at Muret? It's no good – the professionalism of the Syrian army is well-established, and they were enjoying significant success against the rebels until the USA poked its warty nose in and said "I insist that I help you; no, no, you're not doing it right", and ISIS straight away began to gain ground. There is no reasonable explanation other than that Washington will countenance no other outcome than an ISIS victory, and is working energetically toward that goal.

Moscow Exile , September 9, 2015 at 8:58 pm

ООН: на Донбассе погибли почти 8 тыс. человек

UN: in the Donbass almost 8 thousand people have died
Almost 8 thousand people have lost their lives in Eastern Ukraine since mid-April 2014. This is stated in a report published by the UN Monitoring mission on human rights in the Ukraine, reports Ukraine National News.

In the report, which covers the period from 16 may to 15 August 2015, it is noted that the number of civilian casualties has increased by more than half compared with the previous three months: 105 people were killed and 308 injured compared to 60 killed and 102 wounded between February 16 and may 15.

So, since the conflict began in Eastern Ukraine in mid-April of 2014, at least 7,962 people, including members of the Ukrainian Armed forces, civilians and members of armed groups, have been killed and at least 17,811 wounded, the high Commissioner said, citing the latest available data.

And a deathly silence about this in the Western media.

Oddlots , September 9, 2015 at 10:13 pm

According to S.F. Cohen German intelligence puts the figure at 50 k and that seems reasonable to me. But out of date.

marknesop , September 9, 2015 at 10:32 pm

I'm with him. The casualties in Syria are hyped considerably higher than the real figure, because the activists want to provoke a NATO intervention and a high kill count argues for that, while the aim in Ukraine is the exact opposite.

et Al , September 10, 2015 at 4:21 am

That's the Bosnian Gambit. Not long after the civil war in Bosnia started, Cherif Bassiouni picked 200,000 dead Bosnian civilians out of his ass and the Pork Pie News Networks ran with it like an olympic gold marathon runner.

He of course hails from the De Paul university, one of the biggest sources serbophobic hate during the conflict. He's a Humanitarian War warrior of the first odor:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._Cherif_Bassiouni

Moscow Exile , September 10, 2015 at 12:16 am

Yes, Cohen and German intelligence say that the 8K figure only correlates to morgue body counts; the total figure is much higher.

Yukie news and Western Pork Pie News always implies these deaths are caused by the blood thirsty Evil One. Svidomite bloggers even post pictures of slaughtered by Yukie army artillery barrages Donbass civilians, stating that this is the work of Russia's bloody hands.

Included in those Svidomite propaganda blogs are horrific images of disembowelled, limbless Ukrainian Donbass citizens, including women and babies and small children. The Svidomites even show pictures of those civilians murdered by Yukie air force cluster bombs at Lugansk, including pictures of that woman in the red dress who had her legs partly blasted off and who was still conscious and speaking shortly before she died, claiming that their deaths were caused by Putin.

... ... ...

Польша: зудящее желание реституции
Poland: A nagging desire for restitution

Poland – the eternal enemy of the Ukraine. And it is unfortunate that the representatives of the Kiev regime are not capable of recognizing this fact that has been written and voiced by many historical and philosophical minds. So says the leader of the Ukraine Union of Left Forces,, Vasilii Volga, who is amused by the misunderstanding shown by high representatives of the Kiev regime as regards the real goals of the relationship between the Ukraine and the heirs of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Yeah, well … the perfidious Moskaly subhuman Orcs are the real enemy of the Ukraine, aren't they?

marknesop , September 10, 2015 at 9:34 am

I would be willing to bet that a map strikingly similar to the one pictured was swimming in and out of the consciousness of former NATO Secretary-General-in-waiting Radek Sikorsky when he blurted out that outrageous falsehood about hearing Putin propose the carving-up of Ukraine to Poland's leaders. He went for it because he knew English-speakers would immediately assume it was true, and did not count on Polish pushback from his rivals because, like most stuck-on-themselves diplomatic golden boys, it did not occur to him that he had any serious rivals among the dullards that make up his fellows in Poland's political milieu. I am more sure all the time that his bold declaration was a trial balloon to gauge Europe's reaction to Poland's repatriation of its former lands. He just decided to float it as a Russian plan in case Europe freaked out. He probably thought it was foolproof.

[Sep 02, 2015] Repugnance as a Constraint on Markets

libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org

Liberty Street

comments from Economist's View Links for 09-02-15

Second Best said...

'Repugnance laws go above and beyond existing laws to enforce the desire by members of society to prohibit certain types of behavior that otherwise would be legal. In short, such laws are justified on the grounds that allowing repugnant actions imposes a negative externality on everyone (not just the parties involved) and lowers the public good.'

---

In the U.S. voting as a negative externality is repugnant to a democracy and has been replaced by money as more effective speech.

Due to the rational ignorance effect, many voters don't vote because one more vote doesn't matter. This is repugnant to the rest, who replace the void of people votes with money votes.

The result is suppression of repugnant votes that generate negative externalities, replaced with virtuous votes that generate positive externalities both, to those who buy votes and those who sell them.

The narrow cream of single issue virtuous votes rises to the top to decide which virtuous leaders will continue to suppress the repugnance of voting for democracy in the U.S.

[Aug 13, 2015] Government terror Torture - Bush & Obama still on the hook

Government terror Torture - Bush & Obama still on the hook | Global politics | Scoop.it

From www.brasschecktv.com - Today, 7:53 PM

TV about what's REALLY going on.

Enrique Ferro's insight:

This a 2013 story and now ignored, but
it's still alive and well behind the scenes.

Human rights attorneys around
the world are positioning to
charge and arrest Bush and Obama
and their sleazy subordinates for
their torture campaigns.

Video: (12:21)

Guiding Obama into Global Make-Believe

Common Dreams

The Orwellian concept of 'information warfare' holds that propaganda can break down enemies and decide geopolitical outcomes, a strategy that has taken hold of the U.S. government's approach to international crises, especially the Ukraine showdown

by

Ray McGovern

47 Comments

(Photo: Ash Carter/flickr/cc)

CIA Director John Brennan told TV host Charlie Rose on Friday that, on assuming office, President Barack Obama "did not have a good deal of experience" in intelligence-related matters, adding – with remarkable condescension – that now "he has gone to school and understands the complexities."

If that's the case, I would strongly suggest that Obama switch schools. Judging from his foreign policy team's inept and increasingly dangerous actions regarding Ukraine and the endless stream of dubious State Department and senior military cry-wolf accusations of a Russian "invasion," Obama might be forgiven for being confused by the "complexities."

He should not be forgiven, though, if he remains too timid to bench his current foreign policy team and find more substantively qualified, trustworthy advisers without axes to grind. He is, after all, President. Has he no managerial skill … no guts?

This U.S. pattern of exaggeration – making scary claims about Ukraine without releasing supporting evidence – has even begun to erode the unity of the NATO alliance where Germany, in particular, is openly criticizing the Obama administration's heavy-handed use of propaganda in its "information warfare" against Russia.

The German magazine Der Spiegel has just published a highly unusual article critical of the NATO military commander, Air Force General Philip Breedlove, entitled "Breedlove's Bellicosity: Berlin Alarmed by Aggressive NATO Stance on Ukraine."

It is becoming clearer day by day that the Germans are losing patience with unsupported and alarmist U.S. statements on Ukraine, particularly in the current delicate period when a fledgling ceasefire in eastern Ukraine seems to be holding tenuously.

The Spiegel story was sourced to German officials who say Breedlove and his breed are making stuff up, adding that the BND (the CIA equivalent in Germany) "did not share" Breedlove's extreme assessment of Russian actions. Spiegel continued:

"For months now, many in the Chancellery simply shake their heads each time NATO, under Breedlove's leadership, goes public with striking announcements about Russian troop or tank movements. … False claims and exaggerated accounts, warned a top German official during a recent meeting on Ukraine, have put NATO - and by extension, the entire West - in danger of losing its credibility."

Scaring the Europeans

The Obama administration's erratic and bellicose approach to Ukraine caused German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande to take matters into their own hands in February to press for a ceasefire and an agreement on how to resolve the crisis politically, rather than following the U.S. strategy of having the regime in Kiev escalate its "anti-terrorist operation" against ethnic Russian rebels in the east who are supported by Moscow.

Fearing the conflict was spinning out of control – with the prospects of a showdown between nuclear-armed Russia and the United States on Russia's border – Merkel traveled to the White House on Feb. 9 seeking assurances from President Obama that he would not fall in line behind his tough-talking aides and members of Congress who want advanced weaponry for Ukraine.

Though Obama reportedly assured Merkel that he would resist the pressure, he continues to keep slip-sliding into line behind the war hawks and letting his subordinates feed the propaganda fires that could lead to a more dangerous war, especially Gen. Breedlove and Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, a former adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.

In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 4, 2015, Nuland presented her usual black-and-white depiction of the Ukrainian civil war, claiming Russia had "manufactured a conflict controlled by the Kremlin, fueled by Russian tanks and heavy equipment." She added that Crimea and eastern Ukraine live under a "Reign of Terror."

Of course, the core problem with how Nuland and pretty much the entire U.S. establishment present the Ukraine crisis is that they ignore how it got started. Nuland, Sen. John McCain and other U.S. officials egged on western Ukrainians to destabilize and overthrow the elected President Viktor Yanukovych, whose political base was in the south and east, including Crimea.

The coup opened historic fissures in this deeply divided country where hatreds between the more European-oriented west and the ethnic Russian east go back many generations, including the unspeakable slaughter during World War II when some western Ukrainians joined with the Nazis to fight the Red Army and exterminate Jews and other minorities.

Despite the U.S. claims over the past year about unprovoked "Russian aggression," Russian President Vladimir Putin was not the instigator of the conflict, but rather he was reacting to a violent "regime change" on his border and to Russian fears that NATO would seize the historic Russian naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea.

But Nuland and other neocon hardliners have never been interested in a nuanced presentation of reality. Instead, they have treated Ukraine as if it were a testing ground for the latest techniques in psychological or information warfare, although the propaganda is mostly aimed at the U.S. and European publics, getting them ready for more war.

Mocking Merkel

As for Merkel and her peace efforts, Nuland was overheard during a behind-closed-doors meeting of U.S. officials at a security conference in Munich last month disparaging the German chancellor's initiative, calling it "Merkel's Moscow thing," according to Bild, a German newspaper, citing unnamed sources.

Another U.S. official went even further, the report said, calling it the Europeans' "Moscow bullshit."

The tough talk behind the soundproof doors at a conference room in the luxurious Bayerischer Hof hotel seemed to get the American officials, both diplomats and members of Congress, worked into a lather, according to the Bild account.

Nuland suggested that Merkel and Hollande cared only about the practical impact of the Ukrainian war on bread-and-butter issues of Europe: "They're afraid of damage to their economy, counter-sanctions from Russia."

Another U.S. politician was heard adding: "It's painful to see that our NATO partners are getting cold feet" – with particular vitriol directed toward German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen as "defeatist" because she supposedly no longer believed in a Kiev victory.

Sen. McCain talked himself into a rage, declaring "History shows us that dictators always take more, whenever you let them. They can't be brought back from their brutal behavior when you fly to Moscow to them, just like someone once flew to this city," Munich, a reference to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's "appeasement" of Adolf Hitler.

According to the Bild story, Nuland laid out a strategy of countering Merkel's diplomacy by using strident language to frame the Ukraine crisis in a way that stops the Europeans from backing down. "We can fight against the Europeans, we can fight with rhetoric against them," Nuland reportedly said.

NATO Commander Breedlove was quoted as saying the idea of funneling more weapons to the Kiev government was "to raise the battlefield cost for Putin, to slow down the whole problem, so sanctions and other measures can take hold."

Nuland interjected to the U.S. politicians present that "I'd strongly urge you to use the phrase 'defensive systems' that we would deliver to oppose Putin's 'offensive systems.'" But Breedlove left little doubt that these "defensive" weapons would help the Ukrainian government pursue its military objectives by enabling more effective concentration of fire.

"Russian artillery is by far what kills most Ukrainian soldiers, so a system is needed that can localize the source of fire and repress it," Breedlove reportedly said. "I won't talk about any anti-tank rockets, but we are seeing massive supply convoys from Russia into Ukraine. The Ukrainians need the capability to shut off this transport. And then I would add some small tactical drones."

Nuland's Rhetoric

Before the Ukraine coup in February 2014, Nuland was overheard in a phone conversation with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt discussing who should become the country's new leaders – "Yats is the guy," she said about Arseniy Yatsenyuk who became the post-coup prime minister – while also criticizing the less aggressive European approach with the pithy phrase, "Fuck the EU."

Nuland's tough-gal rhetoric continues, including her bellicose testimony before Congress this month, along with the alarmist (and unproven) reports from Gen. Breedlove, who claimed that "well over a thousand combat vehicles, Russian combat forces, some of their most sophisticated air defense, battalions of artillery' having been sent to the Donbass" in eastern Ukraine.

The Nuland-Breedlove allies in Kiev are doing their part, too. Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko recently claimed that around 50 tanks, 40 missile systems and 40 armored vehicles entered east Ukraine's breakaway Luhansk region from Russia via the Izvaryne border crossing.

This "rhetoric" strategy follows the tried-and-true intelligence gambit known as the Mighty Wurlitzer, in which false and misleading information is blasted out by so many different sources – like the pipes of an organ – that the lies become believable just because of their repetition.

The Ukraine story has followed this pattern with dubious claims being made and repeated by U.S. and Ukrainian officials and then amplified by a credulous Western news media, persuading people who otherwise might know better - even when supporting evidence is lacking.

Similarly, Official Washington's chorus of loud demands for ignoring Merkel and sending sophisticated weapons to Ukraine continues to build with the latest member of the choir, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

On March 4, Clapper broke the important ethos of professional intelligence officers scrupulously avoiding policy advocacy when he told an audience in New York that the U.S. should arm the Ukrainians "to bolster their resolve and bolster their morale that, you know, we are with them."

Clapper offered this endorsement as his "personal opinion," but who cares about James Clapper's personal opinion? He is Director of National Intelligence, for God's sake, and his advocacy immediately raises questions about whether Clapper's "personal opinion" will put pressure on his subordinates to shape intelligence analysis to please the boss.

We saw a possible effect of this recently when journalist Robert Parry contacted the DNI's office to get an updated briefing on what U.S. intelligence has concluded about who was at fault for shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014.

Blaming the Russians

In prepared testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Assistant Secretary Nuland had insinuated that the Russians and the ethnic Russian rebels were to blame. She said, "In eastern Ukraine, Russia and its separatist puppets unleashed unspeakable violence and pillage; MH-17 was shot down."

This may have been another example of Nuland using "rhetoric" to shape the debate, but it prompted Parry to ask the DNI's office about what evidence there was to support Nuland's finger-pointing in this tragic incident that killed 298 people.

Kathleen Butler, a DNI spokesperson, insisted that the U.S. intelligence assessment on MH-17 had not changed since July 22, 2014, five days after the shoot-down when the DNI's office distributed a sketchy report suggesting Russian complicity based largely on what was available on social media.

Parry then sent a follow-up e-mail saying: "are you telling me that U.S. intelligence has not refined its assessment of what happened to MH-17 since July 22, 2014?" Butler responded: "Yes. The assessment is the same." To which, Parry replied: "That's just not credible." [See Consortiumnews.com's "US Intel Stands Pat on MH-17 Shoot-down."]

But the DNI's response does make sense if later U.S. intelligence analysis contradicted the initial rush to judgment by Secretary of State John Kerry and other senior officials blaming Russia and the rebels. The Obama administration might not want to surrender a useful propaganda club to bash Moscow, or as Nuland might say, an important piece of anti-Russian "rhetoric."

As for Brennan and his appearance before the stuffy Council on Foreign Relations fielding questions posed by Charlie Rose as the "presider," the CIA director seemed more concerned about the flak his agency has been getting for having a cloudy crystal ball and not anticipating how the Ukraine crisis would unfold, saying:

"Now I know that many would like the CIA to predict the future - answering questions such as 'will Crimea secede and be annexed by Russia' and 'will Russian forces move into Eastern Ukraine.' But the plain and simple truth is that … virtually all events around the globe, future events - including in Ukraine - are shaped by numerous variables and yet-to-happen developments as well as leadership considerations and decisions."

But the prospect of CIA analysts seeing events clearly – both understanding what may have caused an event in the past and perceiving the complex forces that may shape the future – are diminished when the U.S. intelligence community becomes politicized and exploited for propaganda purposes, when it gets enlisted into "information warfare."

Obama could surely use some experienced, mature help in putting an end to this potpourri of you-pick-your-favorite-statement about "Russian aggression." The disarray and deceit on such an important issue does nothing to bolster confidence that he has been tutored well, that he understands the value of sober intelligence work, or that he is in control of U.S. foreign policy.

© 2015 Consortium News
Ray McGovern

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. During his career as a CIA analyst, he prepared and briefed the President's Daily Brief and chaired National Intelligence Estimates. He is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

Obama the NeoCon by Tim Ross

June 13, 2011 | A Hollywood Republican | 9 Comments

Between 2002 and 2008, the Left in America maintained a consistent assault against President George W. Bush which included a number of pejoratives, most notably calling him a "NeoCon." Even my Democrat friends would look me straight in the eye and say, "Bush… that, that NeoCon!" And I would reply, "Wait! What exactly is a NeoCon?" And they didn't know. All they knew was that it wasn't good. But where are all those Democrats now that Barack Obama is in office? Because Obama is the greatest NeoCon of all.

So, what is a NeoCon anyway? It's a term we've all heard from time to time, but what does it mean? And why did it become so prevalent during the Bush years? Is it really a word designed to demonize or does it have a valid and constructive meaning? And if Bush was such a terrible NeoCon, then why isn't Obama receiving the same treatment?

The term, NeoCon saw tremendous growth in the American lexicon during the Bush years. Google showed an increase from 26,300 search results for the term in 2002 to 1,610,000 by 2008.

UrbanDictionary.com, a Web-based dictionary containing of over 10.5 million user-created definitions of slang words and phrases which are regulated by volunteer editors and rated by site visitors, has seven definitions of "NeoCon" created between 2004 through 2006:

2004 – Morally idealistic conservatatives. neocon is short for neo-conservative. Neocons separate themselves from Republicans that are traditionally fiscal conservative.
Slang – Crusading republican.
Slang – Neocons exist separated into two very distinct groups. The largest, group one, are the people below the 99th income percentile. They are religious and/or war-mongering blowhard lemmings who follow the second group; The second group is made up of the top one percent. They cut taxes for themselves, borrow trillions (second term pending), and their behavior is largely the subject of this blog. Of necessity, they pay Rove to pipe tabloid for the Rats. Lemmings rather. Whichever, they both work.
Vlugar – White bible thumping trash.
The draft-dodging neocons running the white house are threatening our future as a great nation.

2004 – Neoconservative. Originally used to describe left-wingers who crossed the floor, neocons are on the authoritarian right, rather than the traditionally conservative libertarian right. They tend to be very pro-war and adopt the mentality of "We're better than you and we know it."
Some more vulgar people call them Neoc*nts.
"I don't really like Kerry, but I'd rather see him in power than those horrendous neocons who currently run things!"

2005 – Quite possibly one of the lowest forms of life around. A collection of no good, low life, lying, rotten, four flushing, inbred sacks of wind and horsesh*t.
The current administration is full of these people.

2006 – Someone whose political views represent the worst of both worlds: fiscally liberal, socially conservative.
Bush is a neocon because he supports racking up a huge deficit while dictating people's personal lives.

2006 – Neoconservative. Criminally insane spenders that believe in killing brown people for the new world order. Huge Orwellian government, unfathomable amounts of spending, bomb tens of thousands of people to death to rearrange the globe. Take the worst aspects of the liberal and conservative positions and combine them into one and you would have a NeoCon.
Neocons are the greatest threat to life, liberty and property this country has ever known.

2006 – 1. Small group of politicians coming from as early as the Ford administration up to the Bush II administration.
2. Have a fake pretense about believing in smaller government. In reality believe in big spending and tax cuts for their wealthy political and business friends, hence deficit spending.
3. They fake being social conservatives, although true social conservatives believe they really care about social issues. Neocons distract the public by acting like they really care about social issues like gay marriage, abortion, and flag burning. Meanwhile they are busy conducting wars and stifling your freedom.
4. Believe in costly wars and creating boogeymen to try and make you think only they can keep you safe while they restrict your freedoms to "protect you". This is their signature issue, to help keep them in power.
5. Actually despise any types of small government advocates, Barry Goldwater, traditional live and let live conservative, and libertarians.
George Bush I and II, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, are all a bunch of neocons.

2006 – Another word for neo-Nazi.
Neocons are neo-Nazis in pinstripe suits.

In short, the term NeoCon became a derogatory term that described Bush, Conservatives, Right Wingers and Republicans as no good low life lying rotten inbred war-mongering blowhard lemmings who are criminally insane spenders and the lowest forms of life around… and, oh yes, Nazis in pinstripe suits.


By 2008, the Left had successfully demonized Bush as a war mongering nation building "NeoCon." Whichever Republican won the nomination would simply need to be tied to Bush and victory would come easy for whoever the Democrat nominee was… even if it was a former community organizer with no executive experience whatsoever. And that is exactly what happened.

Since, Obama took office in 2009, the "NeoCon" chatter began to get quiet. After all, the Democrats had a Supermajority in Congress and a Democrat President… there was no Republicans to call a NeoCon anymore. Google search results for "NeoCon" dropped by 130,000 hits… almost ten percent (10%).

So, what is a NeoCon?

The term was created and used by the Left as a tool to verbally assault those moving from the Left to the Right. Its roots go as far back as 1883 when a periodical called Today, featured an excerpt of Karl Marx's book Captial, that discussed "the principles of neo-Conservatism as expounded by the late Lord Beaconsfield…" Lord Beaconsfield was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1874 to 1880 and it was said that he started his career somewhat on the Left and ended it as a staunch Conservative.

The term remained somewhat dormant for the next century until socialist Michael Harrington wrote an article for Dissent Magazine in 1973 titled, "The Welfare State and Its Neoconservative Critics." The term, neoconservative, maintained the same meaning during this time as a former Leftist who had moved Right; however, it was now being related to those Democrats who supported a "socially progressive" domestic policy (support for a welfare state and a mixed economy) as well as strong foreign policy that supported the Vietnam War in spite of the Democrat party's growing opposition.

In other words, it referred to those Democrats moving away from the political party with an agenda that saw a strong domestic policy that included a large federal government playing a central role in the American economy as well as having an aggressive foreign policy that resulted in the spread of democracy all across the globe.

In 2002, Bush gave a State of the Union address which was a response to the 9/11 attacks and outlined what would later be coined the Bush Doctrine, "I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons." Bush's aim was simply to protect America and promote democracy around the world. And the term NeoCon was given new life once again.

Bush, with the full consent of Congress, sent Troops into Afghanistan and Iraq. The reasons were not to spread democracy. The U.S. went into Afghanistan as a reaction to 9/11 and went into Iraq because of a looming threat of another such attack. The democratization of these states was not the primary goal, rather a by product of the primary goals.

On the domestic front, President Bush's policies grew the government and increased spending. From education to domestic security to space exploration to agricultural subsidies to Medicare, Bush expanded public spending by seventy percent (70%), more than double the increase under President Clinton; however, he opposed many a "socially progressive" ideas such as creating a welfare state or a mixed economy.

Bush's domestic agenda didn't matter. The Left in America focused on his foreign policy and suggested that Bush was not simply protecting America from those who have and would do us harm, but that he was nation building, using armed force in the aftermath of a conflict to underpin an enduring transition to democracy. This was enough to begin the propaganda that Bush was an imperial president… a NeoCon.

If Bush was such a terrible NeoCon, then why isn't Obama receiving the same treatment?

On the domestic front, the first twenty months of Obama's presidency saw him add as much debt as Bush created during his entire presidency… and his spending plan calls for the doubling of the national debt in five years and tripling it in ten years. This spending increase doesn't comes from defense spending, it comes from socially progressive plans that included a $787 billion stimulus, a $30 billion expansion of a child health-care program, and a $410 billion federal spending bill that increased nondefense discretionary spending ten percent (10%) for the last half of fiscal year 2009… not to mention increases of nondefense discretionary spending another twelve percent (12%) for fiscal year 2010. Add on Obamacare and the numbers are ridiculous.

And Obama's foreign policy? He failed to bring home the Troops in Iraq as promised, he increased the number of Troops in Afghanistan, he did not close Gitmo as promised, and he – without Congressional approval – attacked Libya. Why did he attack Libya? Was it in our national interest? No. Was the United States under imminent threat? No. Obama unconstitutionally attacked Libya because Qaddafi did not step down when Libyan protesters were calling for a regime change, but rather began a military campaign against those Libyan protesters.

This wasn't any different than any other countries holding major protests in the Middle East. At that time Algeria saw 8 deaths, Bahrain 22 deaths, Djibouti 2 deaths, Jordan 2 deaths, Oman 6 deaths, Syria 100 deaths (1,300 deaths and 10,000 arrests as of June 13, 2011) and Yemen 122 deaths, Iran 3 deaths (1,500 arrested), Morocco 6 deaths, Saudi Arabia 2 deaths (100 arrested), Sudan 1 death and Western Sahara 1 death.

Yet, Obama attacked and continues an assault on Libya. Why? According to his March 28, 2011 speech, he stated that "For generations, the United States of America has played a unique role as an anchor of global security and as an advocate for human freedom… Confronted by this brutal repression and a looming humanitarian crisis, I ordered warships into the Mediterranean…. America led an effort with our allies at the United Nations Security Council to pass a historic resolution that authorized a no-fly zone to stop the regime's attacks from the air, and further authorized all necessary measures to protect the Libyan people." So, it was clearly a humanitarian effort. But why Libya and not the other dozen Middle Eastern countries that were doing the same thing to its people?

Obama is clearly working with the protestors to bring democracy to Libya. He is nation building. Obama is acting as an imperial president.

But where is the Left protesting Obama? Where are the new UrbanDictionary definitions of NeoCon? Where is Cindy Sheehan camping out these days? Where is Code Pink? Where is MoveOn? Where is the Mainstream Media on this issue?

So, in the end, for all the heat Bush took for being a "NeoCon" between 2002 and 2008, Obama has actually lived up to the title. His domestic policy has stayed solidly Left wing with the greatest increases in socially progressive spending of any President ever and his foreign policy has moved more to the right and become increasingly hawkish. Attacking the Libyan government in an effort to help the protesters democratize the nation is the true essence of a NeoCon.

Quite objectively, Obama just might be the greatest NeoCon this country has ever seen.

Why President Obama is a Neocon By Ryan Faith

February 20, 2015 | VICE News
This week, the Obama administration's attention has been focused on the Summit on Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) - a swath of cops, foreign bigwigs, and imams convened in Washington to tell each other how very much they disapprove of decapitation, crucifixion, immolation, and whatnot.

And if there's one thing the summit has made clear, it's that President Barack Obama is a neocon.

In a Tuesday op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, the president wrote, "Efforts to counter violent extremism will only succeed if citizens can address legitimate grievances through the democratic process and express themselves through strong civil societies." At a speech at the summit on Wednesday, Obama said that "the essential ingredient to real and lasting stability and progress is not less democracy. It's more democracy. It's institutions that uphold the rule of law and apply justice equally." Finally, his Thursday speech at a Summit session hosted at the State Department reiterated the points made in his Wednesday speech, covering the importance of democratic institutions in CVE.

To be fair, the idea that the US should actively promote democracy and rule of law because it's in America's national interest is not unique to neoconservatism. It's also a core premise of the Wilsonian perspective on foreign policy (a.k.a. liberal internationalism or liberal interventionism). The difference is that neocons tend to have far less faith in the ability of squishy, fuzzy international drum circles like the United Nations - née League of Nations - to do anything useful on this front.

Regardless, Obama is keen on promoting the idea that democracy and the rule of law are key parts of CVE, which is the core tenet of the neocon foreign policy perspective. While he has been relatively restrained in his approval of intervention for the sake of democracy promotion, the general Responsibility to Protect (R2P) framework, promoted by people like US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, legitimizes a much more forward-leaning stance on intervention. R2P is based, more or less, on the idea that the concept of sovereignty doesn't mean the rest of the world has to sit around and watch while a sovereign nation gets excessively genocidal with its own people.

The US has been dedicated to promoting democracy around the world - often at the point of a gun - since the end of the Cold War.

In the years following the Arab Spring, Obama has toned down a lot of his talk about democracy promotion in the Middle East and North Africa. But in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks and a new focus on CVE throughout US government, democracy promotion has come back into vogue at the White House.

There will be plenty of folks - liberal, conservative, and otherwise - who launch clouds of spittle and venom at the suggestion that Obama and George W. Bush have anything in common with regard to foreign policy. That's partly because there's an immense amount of rumor, innuendo, and bullshit about what the term neocon does or does not embody - from pre-emptive invasions to social conservatism to Jewish agents infiltrating government - but at the end of the day, the first neocons were a bunch of liberal interventionists who left the Democratic party because they felt the left couldn't tell its ass from a hole in the ground on national security issues in general and the Soviet Union in particular.

Moving to the modern day, to be sure, there are significant differences between Obama and Bush policies: The fate of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, the role of nuclear weapons in national security, and the presence of US forces in Iraq are but a few examples of the many ways in which both men view the world differently. That said, there are a lot of areas in which they are in absolute lockstep agreement: the peril of terrorists with WMD, the value of drones in combating terrorist groups, and the geostrategic importance of engaging Africa.

This compare and contrast between the outlooks came to the fore again during this week's Summit on CVE. Both Bush and Obama have gone to great lengths to disavow the idea of a War Against Islam, and they have both promoted the idea that Islam is not an inherently violent religion while dedicating a fair amount of combat power to a region predominately populated by Muslims.

There are a few common features to pretty much any philosophical/theological/ideological worldview, whether it's Islam or liberal interventionism. Within any community of thought, there comes a time when people fall out of step intellectually and start fighting for the "heart and soul" of the movement. Often, one group will argue that everything has to be dialed up to 11, and doing anything less is the same as doing nothing at all. Other groups will push back about how the upstarts are rash or are betraying the true ideals of the cause.

Schisms and splinters ensue, harsh words are used, and a fight for legitimacy begins. Leadership of both the extremist and traditionalist sides claim that they are the true representatives of the entire body of adherents, and that their opponents are loons who aren't really part of the broader movement.

In logic, this is referred to as the No True Scotsman fallacy, which goes a little something like this:

Person A: "No Scotsman turns down a second helping of haggis."

Person B: "But Donald MacDougall, who is on a diet, turned down a second helping of haggis."

Person A: "Well, no true Scotsman turns down a second helping of haggis."

In the case of Obama and the neocons - or, really, the American political left and right - everyone will go to great lengths to find, manufacture, and advertise their differences on interventionism as part of their effort to establish their own particular brand identities. After all, political polarization is good campaign strategy.

But once you peel back that layer, it's pretty apparent that the US has been dedicated to promoting democracy around the world - often at the point of a gun - since the end of the Cold War. Sometimes it's been in the guise of humanitarian intervention, and other times it's been the result of a more clear-cut case of national interest.

To be sure, isolationist sentiments periodically get traction in America; Senator Rand Paul is an example. However, the sheer inertia of the foreign policy and defense establishments in the US and throughout the West - particularly in the years since 9/11 - suggest any institutional deviations from the interventionist approach will be short lived. Insofar as there's any traction for the Western anti-war or anti-interventionist movements, the dramatic death of the anti-war movement following the inauguration of Obama indicates this is a partisan contest for control of Western interventionism rather than real opposition to the interventionist model. The US is a nation that has a relatively weak ethnic identity; it's a cultural and ideological construct. And so without a common belief in Western, liberal, democratic institutions, there's not a lot a whole lot left to bind Americans together.

That's one reason the US is fairly evangelical about spreading its political mores and values around the world. And this is part of what's fueling the broader conflict between the US and groups like al Qaeda; Western democracies and violent Islamists are carrying out a blood-soaked negotiation about whether "True democracy" and "True Islam" can coexist. It's a debate that has been going on since before 9/11, and we can only hope that things like this week's CVE confab prove to be a more productive form of negotiation than the decapitation-and-airstrikes mode of debate.

Follow Ryan Faith on Twitter: @Operation_Ryan

[Aug 13, 2015] Its not migrants who are the marauders and plunderers

Notable quotes:
"... The sultan of Najd, Abdelaziz al-Saud bowed his head before the British High Commissioner in Percy Cox's Iraq. His voice quavered, and then he started begging with humiliation: "Your grace are my father and you are my mother. I can never forget the debt I owe you. You made me and you held my hand, you elevated me and lifted me. I am prepared, at your beckoning, to give up for you now half of my kingdom…no, by Allah, I will give up all of my kingdom, if your grace commands me! ..."
Aug 13, 2015 | The Guardian

Never let it be said that Britain's leaders miss an opportunity to inflame fear and loathing towards migrants and refugees. First David Cameron warned of the threat posed by "a swarm of people" who were "coming across the Mediterranean … wanting to come to Britain". Then his foreign secretary Philip Hammond upped the ante.

The chaos at the Channel tunnel in Calais, he declared, was caused by "marauding" migrants who posed an existential threat. Cheer-led by the conservative press, he warned that Europe would not be able to "protect itself and preserve its standard of living" if it had to "absorb millions of migrants from Africa".

With nightly television coverage of refugees from the world's worst conflicts risking their lives to break into lorries and trains heading for Britain, this was rhetoric designed to stoke visceral fears of the wretched of the Earth emerging from its depths.

Barely a hint of humanity towards those who have died in Calais this summer has escaped ministers' lips. But in reality the French port is a sideshow, home to a few thousand migrants unable to pay traffickers for more promising routes around Britain's border controls.

Europe's real refugee crisis is in the Mediterranean. More than 180,000 have reached Italy and Greece by sea alone this year, and more than 2,000 have died making the crossing, mostly from war-ravaged Libya. The impact on Greece, already wracked with crisis, is at tipping point.

On the Greek island of Kos, 2,000 mostly Syrian and Afghan refugees were rounded up on Tuesday and locked in a sports stadium after clashes with riot police, who used stun grenades to maintain order. Numbers reaching the Greek islands have quadrupled since last year.

But nothing in Europe matches the millions who have been driven to seek refuge in Turkey, Lebanon, Pakistan or Jordan. Set against such a global drama, Calais is little more than deathly theatre. Britain is not one of the main destinations for either refugees or illegal migrants – the vast majority of whom overstay their visas, rather than stow away in the Channel tunnel.

Last year 25,870 sought asylum in the UK and only 10,050 were accepted. By contrast, Sweden accepted three times as many and Germany had more than 200,000 asylum and new asylum applicants. Nor is Britain's asylum seeker's benefit rate, at £36.95 a week, remotely the magnet it is portrayed. France pays £41.42; in Norway it's £88.65.

What does suck overwhelmingly legal migrant workers into Britain is a highly deregulated labour market, where workplace protection is often not enforced and which both gangmasters and large private companies are able ruthlessly to exploit.

The case, reported in the Guardian, of the entirely legal Lithuanian farm workers – who are suing a Kent-based gangmaster supplying high street supermarkets over inhuman working conditions, debt bondage and violent intimidation – is only the extreme end of a growing underbelly of harsh and insecure employment.

If ministers were remotely concerned about "rogue employers driving down wages" by using illegal migrants, as they claim, they would be strengthening trade unions and rights at work. But they're doing the opposite. And they're using the language of dehumanisation to justify slashing support for asylum seekers' children, locking up refused applicants indefinitely and targeting illegal workers far more enthusiastically than the employers who exploit them.

But what risks dividing communities can also turn them against such anti-migrant crackdowns. In recent months, flash protests have erupted in London and other cities against UK Border Agency attempts to arrest failed asylum seekers or undocumented migrant workers. In areas such as Elephant and Castle, riot police have been called in after UKBA vans were surrounded and pelted with eggs by angry locals and activists trying to prevent the detention of people seen as part of the community.

The chaos at Calais and the far larger-scale upheaval and suffering across Europe could be brought under control by the kind of managed processing that northern European governments, such as Britain's, are so keen to avoid.

'If the current US and British-backed Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen continues, expect Yemeni refugees to join the region's exodus in the months to come.'

'If the current US and British-backed Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen continues, expect Yemeni refugees to join the region's exodus in the months to come.' Photograph: Yahya Arhab/EPA

But that would only be a temporary fix for a refugee crisis driven by war and state disintegration – and Britain, France and their allies have played a central role in most of the wars that are fuelling it. The refugees arriving in Europe come from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Sudan, Pakistan, Somalia and Eritrea.

With the recent exception of the dictatorial Eritrean regime, those are a roll-call of more than a decade of disastrous western-led wars and interventions. In the case of Libya, the British and French-led bombing campaign in 2011 led directly to the civil war and social breakdown that has made the country the main conduit for refugee trafficking from Africa. And in Syria, the western funding, arming and training of opposition groups – while fuelling the rise of Isis – has played a crucial role in the country's destruction.

If the current American and British-backed Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen continues, expect Yemeni refugees to join the region's exodus in the months to come. So the first longer term contribution Britain and its allies could make to staunching the flow of refugees would be to stop waging open and covert wars in the Middle East and north Africa. That is actual marauding.

The second would be a major shift in policy towards African development. Africa may not be leading the current refugee crisis, and African migrants certainly don't threaten European living standards. But as a group of global poverty NGOs argued this week, Africa is being drained of resources through western corporate profit extraction, extortionate debt repayments and one-sided trade "partnership" deals. If that plunder continues and absolute numbers in poverty go on rising as climate change bites deeper, migration pressures to the wealthy north can only grow.

There is a genuine migration crisis driven by war and neoliberal globalisation. Despite the scaremongering, it hasn't yet reached Britain. But it's a fantasy to imagine that fences, deportations and better security can protect fortress Europe. An end to the real plunder and marauding would be more effective.


ID0049691 nadel 13 Aug 2015 10:55

Why don't you start with yourself? How many of your ancestors like millions of other Europeans, went to Africa, the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere to "settle" there over the past centuries? Now that the tide is turning you and your likes do nothing but whine and accuse others of being "left wingers". The left wingers seem to be the only people left with human feelings.

Beastcheeks 13 Aug 2015 10:55

Thank you Seamus - a beacon of light amongst the marauding dirge of mass media ignorance and hatred that characterises the current mainstream British position. When I read many of responses to your reasoned arguments - I hang my head in shame. Mass delusion and hatred not dissimilar to Nazi Germany I'm afraid. The very fact you have to spell out the obvious truth - that you can't bomb the hell out of people and then cry foul when they come to us for safe refuge - beggars belief. I am well and truly disgusted and am in the process of relinquishing my British nationality. No longer am I willing to tolerate such ignorant intolerance in my name.


rentierDEATHcult 13 Aug 2015 10:51

Shias are not joining ISIS ... but the vast majority of Sunnis are not joining it, either !?

Kurds are Sunnis - they're fighting ISIS.

Sunni tribes in Iraq are collaborating with Shia (often Iranian) militias to fight ISIS.

Even fellow Sunni Jihadists in the al-Nusra Front (& affiliated brigades) regard ISIS as ignorant nihilists and want to have nothing to do with them.

Your thesis about a Shia + Sunni conflict driving the wave of migration into Europe is, simply, flawed.

Its utter nonsence, in fact.

Moreover, Shia and Sunni have lived amongst each other, largely, in peace during that 1400 years. Prior to the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, most suburbs of Baghdad were mixed and a significant proportion of families shared a dual Shia + Sunni tradition.


Rj H 13 Aug 2015 10:42

There are some good and bad points to all this as demonstrated on this comments thread. There seems to be no real consensus and blame is shifted from one side to the other (whether political, social, class or economic). The only thing we (indigenous population) might all agree upon is; upon stepping back and looking at the current state of the UK (formally Great Britain) most of us will come to the conclusion that something has gone wrong and the country and the UK is not enjoying good health. That fact alone should demonstrate that those in charge are not doing their jobs properly. Poor leadership across 40 years has damaged this country. A country that once governed FOR its people now governs contrary to the majority of its people's wishes. Those at the top are not capable (or indeed willing) to look out for those at the bottom. We as a population are being hit and abused by a government that cares only for the wealth and power of a select few. Never have so many been owed so much by so few. The government has reduced the people's voice to a hoarse whisper. We need to regain our voice and SHOUT back that we won't stand for this situation any longer.


blueanchor rentierDEATHcult 13 Aug 2015 10:36

"How is Islam responsible ...?".

Aren't the battlelines across swathes of Islam's heartland in the Middle-East drawn up broadly on Sunni v Shia lines? For instance I don't think you'll find any Shia joining Isis. What you have now is an eruption of the Islamic sectarian dispute which has been running on and off for 1,400 years, and people are fleeing to escape it.


musolen David Hicks 13 Aug 2015 10:35

No, you're right, of course we don't, that's the point.

One sided trade deals are negotiated with massive distortion favouring the big multinational corporations but listen to the IMF and all you hear is we have to 'open up our markets to enable free trade'.

The US has more trade embargoes in place than any other nation and EU is close behind and the irony doesn't even register on the faces at IMF and World Bank trampling the world spreading their Neo-Liberal rubbish.

My point was that to have capitalism, if you are an advocate of capitalism you have to accept those free movements of goods, money and people.

Paul Torgerson Rob99 13 Aug 2015 10:35

Well at least there is one person on here who has not swallowed the right wing xenophobic crap. But the right wing press is doing a great job of brain washing the populace. Examining the facts indicates a humanitarian problem that will not in any way disadvantage Europe even if they allow ALL these people to settle in Europe


wasson Bicbiro 13 Aug 2015 10:34

So you think if the UK minimum wage was lower than Poland they'd still come? I'm afraid I'm going to have to to disagree with you there bic. They come because they can earn in a week what they earn in 3 months in Poland. Simple as.


rentierDEATHcult sludge 13 Aug 2015 10:32

If you know anything about Lawrence of Arabia (since you brought him up), you would know that the British were collaborating against the Ottomans by inciting Arab tribes to revolt against them.

The Ottoman state was seen as an Islamist bulwark against European colonialism, especially, British imperialism.

So i'm not sure why you think the British would have undermined the Saudis and handed territories they had seized back to the Ottoman Turks - against whom the British were collaborating - (using the Saudis) !?

You need to understand and embrace this part of recent British history. Because anyone that doesn't understand (or acknowledge) their history is not to be trusted with the present.


bugiolacchi dragonpiwo 13 Aug 2015 10:28

UK is not part of Shengen. Non-EU migrants who work, live, travel freely, and prosper in the rest of Europe need a visa to cross the few miles of water between us and the continent.

As per the ID cards, every time they interview an 'illegal' immigrant, one of the reasons given for coming here is that it is the only country (in the world?) where one does no need to identify themselves when asked (a 'utility bill' my socks...) and can drive without a driving licence or car documentations with them, but to 'present' them later. A Christmas invitation if one wants to 'blend' in the background'. Again, a 'utility bill' as an idea.. hilarious!


rentierDEATHcult sludge 13 Aug 2015 10:19

The 'Gazzeteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman & Central Arabia' authored by John Gordon Lorimer has now been declassified by the British government and provides significant insight into the relationship between Abdulaziz al Saud and the British colonial authorities.

The memoirs of HRP Dickson in his 1951 book "Kuwait and Her Neighbours" provides further details on how Britain supported the rise of the Saudi monarchy as de facto colonial agents of Pax Britannica.

Dickson was British envoy to the Gulf emirates and an aide to British High Commissioner for Iraq - Sir Percy Cox

Dickson recounts this exchange between Sir Percy and Abdelaziz al Saud during the conference in al-Aqeer in November 1922:

The sultan of Najd, Abdelaziz al-Saud bowed his head before the British High Commissioner in Percy Cox's Iraq. His voice quavered, and then he started begging with humiliation: "Your grace are my father and you are my mother. I can never forget the debt I owe you. You made me and you held my hand, you elevated me and lifted me. I am prepared, at your beckoning, to give up for you now half of my kingdom…no, by Allah, I will give up all of my kingdom, if your grace commands me!"

[Aug 1, 2015] USA in the World

journal-neo.org

Analyzing President Obama's foreign policy, or rather, analyzing the intellectual and positional evolution of his global positions is no easy task. It would not be hyperbole to say Obama came into office with the hopes and dreams of millions of Democrats and perhaps even the muted optimism of many moderate Republicans. In other words, hitting everything right on the mark was likely impossible. This only makes the present analysis more interesting, for the presidency of Obama has been marked by vicious attacks from the right, deep disappointment from the left and relative indifference from the international community. This negativity is more understandable when the main argument here is entertained: expectations have not been met in terms of foreign policy because Obama's positions have more closely aligned with what some might call 'true' conservatism, something no side foresaw in 2008.

This apparent foreign policy surprise is partially the result of an interconnected process of push-and-pull: conservatives look to regain a dominant position for the future and democrats look to truly feel as if the President is one of them. This study is not so much how successfully he achieves peace between these two divergent camps, but rather how frustrating he seems to be to both for his failure to meet the stereotypical expectations of either side. One thing seems to be certain when looking at Obama foreign policy: external criticism of his positions seems to lead to a pragmatic overreaction that is more aligned with a moderate conservatism and makes him notoriously difficult to label with a broad left-leaning or right-leaning brush.

The event to highlight in an ever growing list of foreign policy positions that testify to an Obama true conservatism is perhaps the loudest achievement of all: the operation that successfully killed Osama bin Laden. The elimination of OBL has long been arguably the one foreign policy objective both Democrats and Republicans could agree upon. In the end, Obama accomplished the feat utilizing a Navy Seal team that violated the territorial sovereignty of Pakistan, performing an operation that purposefully left a supposed War on Terror ally completely in the dark. Every detail of this operation was in line with conservative foreign policy thinking. For those on the left who felt OBL was a 'unique' target that demanded 'unique' means this is simply not true: Obama has repeatedly said in the face of some international criticism about the manner in which OBL was eliminated that he would not hesitate to employ the same means for another high-value target. In other words, the sanctity of terms like multi-national cooperation and territorial sovereignty are relative. Ronald Reagan could not be prouder.

The issue has never been with whether Obama knows how to talk the Democratic talk. But does he actually walk the talk when the chips are truly on the global table? That is in serious question. Some have noticed the gap between his inspirational speeches and the actual policies he supports. Some have lamented what they see as bold promise in the potential to enact change only to ultimately be disappointed in specifics that are not nearly as transformational. Yet still others have talked of a shift not in substance but in tone, of foreign policy changes that are more cosmetic than real. These observations represent a small but important perception that questions how much of a departure there has been in foreign policy from the Bush-era. What many hoped would be a radical divergence something like foreign policy continuity has emerged instead.

Pragmatism is rarely a source for policy innovation. In crisis the instinctive reaction is to fall back to what is already learned. The safe method is the fallback. In foreign policy, whether Republican or Democrat, the fallback position for at least the last forty years has been realism, status quo, and national self-interest. Obama's lofty rhetoric and grand speeches hide what is ultimately an inner realist masquerading as a pragmatist. It is not a failure to imagine or an unwillingness to accept bold challenges in the 21st century global arena. If Obama's foreign policy positions to date have been uninspiring, it is because that is exactly who he is as an international statesman.

Why would one of the best political talkers in a generation be so bland when it comes to real decision-making on the global stage? Some of this is undoubtedly tied in with what President Obama is most personally comfortable with. Another explanatory variable has affected not just Obama the politician but Democrats as an entire party – defending against the accusation of being foreign policy weaklings. This was arguably the biggest lesson learned from the Democratic failure of 2004, when Vietnam war veteran, Purple Heart winner, and long-time Foreign Affairs Senate stalwart John Kerry lost to Bush. A Democrat could always criticize a Republican for being too quick and eager to go right to the stick before considering the carrot. What needed to be ensured was that Americans could see Democrats as being not too reliant on the carrots and, quite frankly, looking too goofy when trying to handle the stick (undoubtedly a legacy that was made eternal when Massachusetts Governor Dukakis stuck his head out of the tank in 1988). It seems clear that Democrats are always quick to overreact to such accusations and criticisms. They are even quicker to line up to show the chevrons symbolically tattooed on their arms, signifying their willingness and capability of defending America as stalwart and aggressively as any Republican. So there is a dual-track – one personal, one political – that basically guaranteed from the beginning a let-down for all those who wanted to see the lofty Obama rhetoric truly transform into real-time foreign policy change. To ask President Obama to go against his natural personal inclination is possible. To ask him to go against it while also having him fight off the structural constraints hindering his party in terms of foreign policy is unrealistic. The Obama record seems to indicate this.

Obama clearly values calculation. He is cautious and not overly prone to missteps and gaffes. More importantly, given the criticism and nature of the attacks he endures from opponents, that strategic calculus only becomes more careful. He also suffers from frustration, caused by his own party and those on the far left, which felt they were voting for some sort of presidential messiah. Most efforts to please this extreme part of his constituency is likely considered by the pragmatist Obama as offering little reward in terms of future elections. He is no doubt a bit disappointed by his own failure to make a transformative mark on the global stage and enact change through the sheer force of his will. The international community still likes President Obama. But no states, in terms of their substantive foreign policy/national security interests, have radically altered their positions just because Obama said so. How does this impact the foreign policy of Barack Obama? It has a centering effect that might even go beyond center and lean to the right. It is easy to forget that the George W. Bush era was not a tribute to classical conservative thought. On the contrary, the neoconservative ideology that underpinned many of his positions was decidedly aggressive in a wonderfully quixotic and somewhat liberal way. It was like taking Rousseau's 'forcing you to be free' and applying it to the might and capabilities of the United States military. Obama is not a global messiah. In terms of foreign policy he is not even a great liberal. He is also not the object of a super-secret conspiracy brought to power by invisible America-haters bent on destroying the United States from within. Sometimes it seems Obama is more often criticized from both sides for not being the caricature partisans would most like him to be. But that ability to not cater to caricature is what will continue to make the distinction between policy rhetoric and policy reality a fascinating subject for Obama analysis.

Dr. Matthew Crosston is Professor of Political Science and Director of the International Security and Intelligence Studies program at Bellevue University, exclusively for the online magazine "New Eastern Outlook"

[Jan 05, 2015] US and Russia in danger of returning to era of nuclear rivalry by Julian Borger

Sign of emergence of this anti-Russian witch hunt from 2015...
Notable quotes:
"... This is just US propaganda to get the increased military spending through congress. ..."
Jan 01, 2015 | The Guardian
A widening rift between Moscow and Washington over cruise missiles and increasingly daring patrols by nuclear-capable Russian submarines threatens to end an era of arms control and bring back a dangerous rivalry between the world's two dominant nuclear arsenals.

Tensions have been taken to a new level by US threats of retaliatory action for Russian development of a new cruise missile. Washington alleges it violates one of the key arms control treaties of the cold war, and has raised the prospect of redeploying its own cruise missiles in Europe after a 23-year absence.

On Boxing Day, in one of the more visible signs of the unease, the US military launched the first of two experimental "blimps" over Washington. The system, known as JLENS, is designed to detect incoming cruise missiles. The North American Aerospace Command (Norad) did not specify the nature of the threat, but the deployment comes nine months after the Norad commander, General Charles Jacoby, admitted the Pentagon faced "some significant challenges" in countering cruise missiles, referring in particular to the threat of Russian attack submarines.

Those submarines, which have been making forays across the Atlantic, routinely carry nuclear-capable cruise missiles. In the light of aggressive rhetoric from Moscow and the expiry of treaty-based restrictions, there is uncertainty over whether those missiles are now carrying nuclear warheads.

The rise in tension comes at a time when the arms control efforts of the post-cold-war era are losing momentum. The number of strategic nuclear warheads deployed by the US and Russia actually increased last year, and both countries are spending many billions of dollars a year modernising their arsenals. Against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine and a failing economy, Vladimir Putin is putting increasing emphasis on nuclear weapons as guarantors and symbols of Russian influence. In a speech primarily about the Ukrainian conflict last summer, Putin pointedly referred to his country's nuclear arsenal and declared other countries "should understand it's best not to mess with us".

The Russian press has taken up the gung-ho tone. Pravda, the former mouthpiece of the Soviet regime, published an article in November titled "Russian prepares a nuclear surprise for Nato", which boasted of Russian superiority over the west, particularly in tactical nuclear weapons.

"The Americans are well aware of this," the commentary said. "They were convinced before that Russia would never rise again. Now it's too late."

Some of the heightened rhetoric appears to be bluster. The new version of the Russian military doctrine, published on 25 December, left its policy on nuclear weapons unchanged from four years earlier. They are to be used only in the event of an attack using weapons of mass destruction or a conventional weapon onslaught which "would put in danger the very existence of the state". It did not envisage a pre-emptive strike, as some in the military had proposed.

However, the new aggressive tone coincides with an extensive upgrading of Russia's nuclear weapons, reflecting Moscow's renewed determination to keep pace with the US arsenal. It will involve a substantial increase in the number of warheads loaded on submarines, as a result of the development of the multi-warhead Bulava sea-launched ballistic missile.

The modernisation also involves new or revived delivery systems. Last month Russia announced it would re-introduce nuclear missile trains, allowing intercontinental ballistic missiles to be moved about the country by rail so they would be harder to target.

There is also mounting western anxiety over Russian marketing abroad of a cruise missile called the Club-K, which can be concealed, complete with launcher, inside an innocuous-looking shipping container until the moment it is fired.

However, the development that has most alarmed Washington is Russian testing of a medium-range cruise missile which the Obama administration claims is a clear violation of the 1987 intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) treaty, the agreement that brought to an end the dangerous standoff between US and Russian cruise missiles in Europe. By hugging the contours of the Earth, cruise missiles can evade radar defences and hit strategic targets with little or no notice, raising fears on both sides of surprise pre-emptive attacks.

At a contentious congressional hearing on 10 December, Republicans criticised two of the administration's leading arms control negotiators, Rose Gottemoeller of the State Department and Brian McKeon of the Pentagon, for not responding earlier to the alleged Russian violation and for continuing to observe the INF treaty.

Gottemoeller said she had raised US concerns over the new missile "about a dozen times" with her counterparts in Moscow and Obama had written to Putin on the matter. She said the new Russian cruise missile – which she did not identify but is reported to be the Iskander-K with a reach in the banned 500-5,500km range – appeared to be ready for deployment.

The Russians have denied the existence of the missile and have responded with counter-allegations about American infringements of the INF treaty that Washington rejects.

McKeon said the Pentagon was looking at a variety of military responses to the Russian missile, including the deployment of an American equivalent weapon.

"We have a broad range of options, some of which would be compliant with the INF treaty, some of which would not be, that we would be able to recommend to our leadership if it decided to go down that path," McKeon said. He later added: "We don't have ground-launched cruise missiles in Europe now, obviously, because they are prohibited by the treaty but that would obviously be one option to explore."

Reintroducing cruise missiles into Europe would be politically fraught and divisive, but the Republican majority in Congress is pushing for a much more robust American response to the Russian missile.

The US military has also been rattled by the resurgence of the Russian submarine fleet. Moscow is building new generations of giant ballistic missile submarines, known as "boomers", and attack submarines that are equal or superior to their US counterparts in performance and stealth. From a low point in 2002, when the Russian navy managed to send out no underwater patrols at all, it is steadily rebounding and reasserting its global reach.

There have been sporadic reports in the US press about Russian submarines reaching the American east coast, which have been denied by the US military. But last year Jacoby, the head of Norad and the US northern command at the time, admitted concerns about being able to counter new Russian investment in cruise missile technology and advanced submarines.

"They have just begun production of a new class of quiet nuclear submarines specifically designed to deliver cruise missiles," Jacoby told Congress.

Peter Roberts, who retired from the Royal Navy a year ago after serving as a commanding officer and senior UK liaison officer with the US navy and intelligence services, said the transatlantic forays by Akula-class Russian attack submarines had become a routine event, at least once or twice a year.

"The Russians usually put out a sortie with an Akula or an Akula II around Christmas It normally stops off Scotland, and then through the Bay of Biscay and out over the Atlantic. It will have nuclear-capable missiles on it," he said.

Roberts, who is now senior research fellow for sea power and maritime studies at the Royal United Services Institute, said the appearance of a periscope off the western coast of Scotland, which triggered a Nato submarine hunt last month, was a sign of the latest such Russian foray.

He said the Russian attack submarine was most likely heading for the US coast. "They go across to eastern seaboard, usually to watch the carrier battle groups work up [go on exercises].

"It's something the Americans have been trying to brush off but there is increasing concern about the American ability to track these subs. Their own anti-sub skills have declined, while we have all been focused on landlocked operations, in Afghanistan and so on."

The Akula is being superseded by an even stealthier submarine, the Yasen. Both are multipurpose: hunter-killers designed to track and destroy enemy submarine and carrier battle groups. Both are also armed with land-attack cruise missiles, currently the Granat, capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

On any given sortie, Roberts said, "it is completely unknown whether they are nuclear-tipped".

A Russian media report described the Akula as carrying Granat missiles with 200-kilotonne warheads, but the reliability of the report is hard to gauge.

The US and Russia removed cruise missiles from their submarines after the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction treaty (Start), but that expired at the end of 2009. Its successor, New Start, signed by Obama and the then Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, in 2010 does not include any such limitation, nor does it even allow for continued exchange of information about cruise missile numbers.

Pavel Podvig, a senior research fellow at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research and the leading independent analyst of Russian nuclear forces, said: "The bottom line is that we don't know, but it's safe to say that it's quite possible that Russian subs carry nuclear SLCMs [submarine-launched cruise missiles].

Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert at the Monterey Institute of International Studies and founding publisher of ArmsControlWonk.com, believes the JLENS blimps are primarily a response to a Russian move to start rearming attack submarines with nuclear weapons.

"For a long time, the Russians have been saying they would do this and now it looks like they have," Lewis said. He added that the fact that data exchange on cruise missiles was allowed to expire under the New Start treaty is a major failing that has increased uncertainty.

The Russian emphasis on cruise missiles is in line with Putin's strategy of "de-escalation", which involves countering Nato's overwhelming conventional superiority with the threat of a limited nuclear strike that would inflict "tailored damage" on an adversary.

Lewis argues that Putin's accentuation of Russia's nuclear capabilities is aimed at giving him room for manoeuvre in Ukraine and possibly other neighbouring states.

"The real reason he talks about how great they are is he saying: 'I'm going to go ahead and invade Ukraine and you're going to look the other way. As long as I don't call it an invasion, you're going to look at my nuclear weapons and say I don't want to push this,'" he said.

With both the US and Russia modernising their arsenals and Russia investing increasing importance its nuclear deterrent, Hans Kristensen, the director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, said we are facing a period of "deepening military competition".

He added: "It will bring very little added security, but a lot more nervous people on both sides."

InvisibleOISA -> Ethelunready 4 Jan 2015 23:53

Just how many warheads have the Iranians lofted towards Europe in the past quarter century? Anyhow, the Yanqui ABM system is a pathetic blunderbuss. But extremely profitable for Boeing.

For instance:

US ABM test failure mars $1bn N. Korea defense plan
06.07.2013 10:03

A $214-million test launch of the only US defense against long-range ballistic missile attacks failed to hit its target over the Pacific Ocean, according to the Missile Defense Agency. There have been no successful interceptor tests since 2008.

InvisibleOISA 4 Jan 2015 23:41

Hey Julian. What a wussy propaganda piece. How about a few facts to put things in perspective.

"All told, over the next decade, according to the U.S. Congressional Budget Office, the United States plans to spend $355 billion on the maintenance and modernization of its nuclear enterprise,[3] an increase of $142 billion from the $213 billion the Obama administration projected in 2011.[4] According to available information, it appears that the nuclear enterprise will cost at least $1 trillion over the next 30 years.[5]

Beyond these upgrades of existing weapons, work is under way to design new weapons to replace the current ones. The Navy is designing a new class of 12 SSBNs, the Air Force is examining whether to build a mobile ICBM or extend the service life of the existing Minuteman III, and the Air Force has begun development of a new, stealthy long-range bomber and a new nuclear-capable tactical fighter-bomber. Production of a new guided "standoff" nuclear bomb, which would be able to glide toward a target over a distance, is under way, and the Air Force is developing a new long-range nuclear cruise missile to replace the current one."

And what about NATO, the u$a poodle.

NATO

"The new B61-12 is scheduled for deployment in Europe around 2020. At first, the guided bomb, which has a modest standoff capability, will be backfitted onto existing F-15E, F-16, and Tornado NATO aircraft. From around 2024, nuclear-capable F-35A stealthy fighter-bombers are to be deployed in Europe and gradually take over the nuclear strike role from the F-16 and Tornado aircraft."

Source: Arms Control Association

VikingHiking -> Rudeboy1 4 Jan 2015 23:25

To sum up the results of the lend-lease program as a whole, the Soviet Union received, over the war years, 21,795 planes, 12,056 tanks, 4,158 armored personnel carriers, 7,570 tractor trucks, 8,000 antiaircraft and 5,000 antitank guns, 132,000 machine-guns, 472 million artillery shells, 9,351 transceivers customized to Soviet-made fighter planes, 2.8 million tons of petroleum products, 102 ocean-going dry cargo vessels, 29 tankers, 23 sea tugboats and icebreakers, 433 combat ships and gunboats, as well as mobile bridges, railroad equipment, aircraft radar equipment, and many other items."

"Imperialist Powers paid for the blood of Soviet soldiers with limited supplies of obsolete weapons, canned food and other war materiel which amounted to about 4% of total Soviet production during WarII".

During Cold War all traces of Lend Lease and after UNRRA help were meticulously sanitized and removed; photos of soviet soldiers riding Shermans, Universal Carriers or manning AAA guns were excluded from books and never appeared in magazines.

Five eights of the total German War effort was expended on the Russian front.

So it was a combination of allied arms and resources which kaputed the Nazi's, namely
1) The Russian Army
2) THE American Air Force
3) The British Navy and Merchant Marine
4) Hitler's Stupidity

Beckow -> StrategicVoice213 4 Jan 2015 23:03

Are you done with your boasting? By the way, you forgot Hollywood and GMO foods.

Leaving aside the one-side nature of your list (internet or web were also invented in CERN by a European team), technology or business are not the same as intelligence.

Most Americans simply don't understand the world, its history, other cultures, don't see others as having independent existence with other choices. They don't get it because they are isolated and frankly quite lazy intellectually. Thus the infamous "we won WW2 in Normandy" boast and similar bizarre claims.

Are other often similar? Yes, absolutely. But most of the others have no ability to provoke a nuclear Armageddon, so their ignorance is annoying, but not fatal. The article was about the worsening US-Russia confrontation and how it may end (or end everything). The fact that US has actively started and provoked this confrontation in the last few years, mostly out of blissful ignorance and endless selfishness. Thus we get "defensive missiles against Iran on Russia's border", coups in Ukraine, endless demonizations...well, I think you get the picture. If you don't, see the original post

irgun777 4 Jan 2015 22:59

" increasingly daring patrols by nuclear-capable Russian submarines "

What motivates the Cry Wolf tune of this article ?
Don't we also conduct nuclear and nuclear capable submarine patrols ? Even our allies
and friends operate routinely " nuclear capable submarines "

Our military budget alone is 10 times the Russian , we have over 600 military bases around
the world , some around Russia. We still continue to use heavy , nuclear capable bombers
for patrol , something Russia stopped doing after the Cold War. Russia did not
support and financed a coup in our neighbors . Something Ron Paul and Kissinger warned us
not to do.


Georgeaussie 4 Jan 2015 22:55

This is just US propaganda to get the increased military spending through congress. I think its interesting that Americans believe their military personal are defending there country when the United States is usually the aggressor. And that is my view,. And as for people saying Russian bots and Korean bots(which i don't know if they exist) you are sounding just as bad as them, every country has propaganda and everyone has a right to believe what they want, wether its western media or eastern media. People on here don't need people like you with you extreme biases, yes have an opinion, but don't put other peoples opinion down because you think your right, collectively there is no right or wrong, do you know whats going on around closed doors in your govt? Well sorry you probably know less then you think, i like to read different media reports and its interesting, do you "obama bots" know that Russia is helping look for the black box of the air asia flight? I just thought it was interesting not reading that in my "western media" reports over the weeks. So comment and tell me if you honestly think "western bot" are correct and "eastern bots" aren't b/c i would like too know how there i a right and and wrong. In my OPINION there isn't if anything you are both wrong.


Veritas Vicnit 5 Jan 2015 00:05

p1. 'Russian General: We Are At War'

"Gen. Leonid Ivashov... issued a sharp warning about the nature of the strategic crisis unfolding in Ukraine: "Apparently they [US and EU officials] have dedicated themselves, and continue to do so, to deeply and thoroughly studying the doctrine of Dr. Goebbels. . . They present everything backwards from reality. It is one of the formulas which Nazi propaganda employed most successfully: . . . They accuse the party that is defending itself, of aggression. What is happening in Ukraine and Syria is a project of the West, a new type of war: ... wars today begin with psychological and information warfare operations. . . under the cover of information commotion, U.S. ships are entering the Black Sea, that is, near Ukraine. They are sending marines, and they have also begun to deploy more tanks in Europe. . . We see that on the heels of the disinformation operation a land-sea, and possibly air operation is being prepared." (Russian General: 'We Are At War', February 22, 2014)

"what David Petraeus has done for counter-insurgency warfare, Stuart Levey [later David Cohen] has done for economic warfare" [Sen. Joe Lieberman]

Russian military sources have disclosed their recognition that offensive operations (economic warfare, proxy warfare, regime change operations, etc.) are active as is the mobilisation of military architecture.

MattTruth 5 Jan 2015 00:05

Russia is not a threat to USA. The elite of USA just need a war and need it soon.

afewpiecesofsilver -> Continent 5 Jan 2015 00:00

That's exactly why the US/NATO is trying to 'wedge' Ukraine into their EU. Then they can develop military bases in traditionally, socially, culturally, verbally Russian Ukraine, right on Russia's border....After the well known, publicized and continuous international bullying and abuse of Russia and Putin over the last couple of years, and now the recent undermining of it's oil economy by US and NATO, anyone who is condemning Putin and Russia obviously can't read.

moosejaw12999 5 Jan 2015 00:00

Might give a few minute warning on cruise missiles but will do nothing against drones will it Barry ? When you start a game , you should think for a minute where it might end . Americas worst enemy is always her own disgruntled people . Drones will be the new weapon of choice in Americas upcoming civil war .

Ross Kramer 4 Jan 2015 23:58

"Russia is a regional power" - Obama said last year. Yeah, sure. Just by looking at the map I can see it is twice bigger than the US in territory. Its tails touches Alaska and its head lays on the border with Germany. How on Earth the biggest country in the world with the nuclear arsenal equal to that of the US can be "just a regional power"?

[Nov 18, 2014] Hillary the Warmonger by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

November 18, 2014 | CounterPunch

Glenn Greenwald has revealed that Hillary Clinton is the presidential candidate of the banksters and warmongers. Pam and Russ Martens note that Elizabeth Warren is the populist alternative. I doubt that a politician who represents the people can acquire the campaign funds needed to run a campaign. If Warren becomes a threat, the Establishment will frame her with bogus charges and move her aside.

Hillary as president would mean war with Russia. With neocon nazis such as Robert Kagan and Max Boot running her war policy and with Hillary's comparison of Russia's president Putin to Adolf Hitler, war would be a certainty. As Michel Chossudovsky and Noam Chomsky have written, the war would be nuclear.

If Hillary is elected president, the financial gangsters and profiteering war criminals would complete their takeover of the country. It would be forever or until armageddon.

To understand what we would be getting with Hillary, recall the Clinton presidency. The Clinton presidency was transformative in ways not generally recognized. Clinton destroyed the Democratic Party with "free trade" agreements, deregulated the financial system, launched Washington's ongoing policy of "regime change" with illegal military attacks on Yugoslavia and Iraq, and his regime used deadly force without cause against American civilians and covered up the murders with fake investigations. These were four big changes that set the country on its downward spiral into a militarized police state with massive income and wealth inequality.

One can understand why Republicans wanted the North American Free Trade Agreement, but it was Bill Clinton who signed it into law. "Free trade" agreements are devices used by US corporations to offshore their production of goods and services sold in American markets. By moving production abroad, labor cost savings increase corporate profits and share prices, bringing capital gains to shareholders and multi-million dollar performance bonuses to executives. The rewards to capital are large, but the rewards come at the expense of US manufacturing workers and the tax base of cities and states.

When plants are closed and the work shipped overseas, middle class jobs disappear. Industrial and manufacturing unions are eviscerated, destroying the labor unions that financed the Democrats' election campaigns. The countervailing power of labor against capital was lost, and Democrats had to turn to the same sources of funding as Republicans. The result is a one party state.

The weakened tax base of cities and states has made it possible for Republicans to attack the public sector unions. Today the Democratic Party no longer exists as a political party financed by the union dues of ordinary people. Today both political parties represent the interests of the same powerful interest groups: the financial sector, the military/security complex, the Israel Lobby, the extractive industries, and agribusiness.

Neither party represents voters. Thus, the people are loaded up with the costs of financial bailouts and wars, while the extractive industries and Monsanto destroy the environment and degrade the food supply. Elections no longer deal with real issues such as the loss of constitutional protections and a government accountable to law. Instead the parties compete on issues such as homosexual marriage and federal funding of abortion.

Clinton's repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act was the initiating move followed by the removal of more constraints that allowed the financial system to transform itself into a gambling casino where bets are covered by the public and the Federal Reserve. The full consequences of this remain to be seen.

The Clinton regime's attack on the Serbs was a war crime under international law, but it was the Yugoslavian president who tried to defend his country who was put on trial as a war criminal. When the Clinton regime murdered Randy Weaver's family at Ruby Ridge and 76 people at Waco, subjecting the few survivors to a show trial, the regime's crimes against humanity went unpunished. Thus did Clinton set the precedents for 14 years of Bush/Obama crimes against humanity in seven countries. Millions of people have been killed, maimed, and displaced, and it is all acceptable.

It is easy enough for a government to stir up its population against foreigners as the successes of Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama demonstrate. But the Clinton regime managed to stir up Americans against their fellows as well. When the FBI gratuitously murdered Randy Weaver's wife and young son, propagandistic denunciations of Randy Weaver took the place of accountability. When the FBI attacked the Branch Davidians, a religious movement that split from the Seventh-day Adventist Church, with tanks and poison gas, causing a fire that burned 76 people, mainly women and children, to death, the mass murder was justified by the Clinton regime with wild and unsubstantiated charges against the government's murdered victims.

All efforts to bring accountability to the crimes were blocked. These were the precedents for the executive branch's successful drive to secure immunity from law. This immunity has now spread to local police who routinely abuse and murder US citizens on their streets and in their homes.

Washington's international lawlessness about which the Russian and Chinese governments increasingly complain originated with the Clinton regime. Washington's lies about Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction" originated in the Clinton regime, as did the goal of "regime change" in Iraq and Washington's illegal bombings and embargoes that costs the lives of 500,000 Iraqi children, lost lives that Clinton's Secretary of State said were justified.

The US government had done wicked things in the past. For example, the Spanish-American war was a grab for empire, and Washington has always protected the interests of US corporations from Latin American reformers, but the Clinton regime globalized the criminality. Regime change has become reckless bringing with it danger of nuclear war. It is no longer Grenada and Honduras whose governments are overthrown. Today it is Russia and China that are targeted. Former parts of Russia herself–Georgia and Ukraine–have been turned into Washington's vassal states. Washington-financed NGOs organize "student protests" in Hong Kong, hoping that the protests will spread into China and destabilize the government. The recklessness of these interventions in the internal affairs of nuclear powers is unprecedented.

Hillary Clinton is a warmonger, and so will be the Republican candidate. The hardening anti-Russian rhetoric issuing from Washington and its punk EU puppet states places the world on the road to extinction. The arrogant neoconservatives, with their hubristic belief that the US is the "exceptional and indispensable" country, would regard a deescalation of rhetoric and sanctions as backing down. The more the neocons and politicians such as John McCain and Lindsey Graham escalate the rhetoric, the closer we come to war.

As the US government now embraces pre-emptive arrest and detention of those who might someday commit a crime, the entire cadre of neocon warmongers should be arrested and indefinitely detained before they destroy humanity.

The Clinton years produced a spate of books documenting the numerous crimes and coverups–the Oklahoma City bombing, Ruby Ridge, Waco, the FBI crime lab scandal, Vincent Foster's death, CIA involvement in drug running, the militarization of law enforcement, Kosovo, you name it. Most of these books are written from a libertarian or conservative viewpoint as no one realized while it was happening the nature of the transformation of American governance. Those who have forgotten and those too young ever to have known owe it to themselves to acquaint or re-acquaint themselves with the Clinton years. Recently I wrote about Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's book, The Secret Life of Bill Clinton. Another book with substantial documentation is James Bovard's Feeling Your Pain. Congress and the media aided and abetted the extensive coverups, focusing instead on the relatively unimportant Whitewater real estate deals and Clinton's sexual affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Clinton and his corrupt regime lied about many important things, but only his lie about his affair with Monica Lewinsky caused the House of Representatives to impeach him. By ignoring numerous substantial grounds for impeachment and selecting instead an insubstantial reason, Congress and the media were complicit in the rise of an unaccountable executive branch. This lack of accountability has brought us tyranny at home and war abroad, and these two evils are enveloping us all.

Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. Roberts' How the Economy Was Lost is now available from CounterPunch in electronic format. His latest book is How America Was Lost.

[Apr 18, 2014] Ukraine: Is Obama Channeling Cheney by Yves Smith

April 18, 2014 | naked capitalism

In this Real News Network report, Michael Hudson discusses the news blackout in the US as far as critical developments in the Ukraine are concerned, and how the distortions and gaps in reporting exceed those in the runup to the Iraq War. From the top of the interview:

Late last week, the German television program ARD Monitor, which is sort of their version of 60 Minutes here, had an investigative report of the shootings in Maidan, and what they found out is that contrary to what President Obama is saying, contrary to what the U.S. authorities are saying, that the shooting was done by the U.S.-backed Svoboda Party and the protesters themselves, the snipers and the bullets all came from the Hotel Ukrayina, which was the center of where the protests were going, and the snipers on the hotel were shooting not only at the demonstrators, but also were shooting at their own–at the police and the demonstrators to try to create chaos. They've spoken to the doctors, who said that all of the bullets and all of the wounded people came from the same set of guns. They've talked to reporters who were embedded with the demonstrators, the anti-Russian forces, and they all say yes. All the witnesses are in agreement: the shots came from the Hotel Ukrayina. The hotel was completely under the control of the protesters, and it was the government that did it.

So what happened was that after the coup d'état, what they call the new provisional government put a member of the Svoboda Party, the right-wing terrorist party, in charge of the investigation. And the relatives of the victims who were shot are saying that the government is refusing to show them the autopsies, they're refusing to share the information with their doctors, they're cold-shouldering them, and that what is happening is a coverup. It's very much like the film Z about the Greek colonels trying to blame the murder of the leader on the protesters, rather than on themselves.

Now, the real question that the German data has is: why, if all of this is front-page news in Germany, front-page news in Russia–the Russian TV have been showing their footage, showing the sniping–why would President Obama directly lie to the American people? This is the equivalent of Bush's weapons of mass destruction. Why would Obama say the Russians are doing the shooting in the Ukraine that's justified all of this anti-Russian furor? And why wouldn't he say the people that we have been backing with $5 billion for the last five or ten years, our own people, are doing the shooting, we are telling them to doing the shooting, we are behind them, and we're the ones who are the separatists?

I strongly suggest you watch the interview in full, or read the transcript here.

readerOfTeaLeaves, April 18, 2014 at 1:42 am

If Hudson is even 1/4th accurate, this is an unmitigated disaster.

I anticipate the BRICs going off the dollar as a reserve currency any day now; we are making ourselves pariahs.

If it is true that Victoria Nuland of the US Dept of State - recorded helping to set up the current puppet President in Ukraine - previously worked for Dick Cheney, we are screwed. How on earth Obama is letting the neocon (and oil company) holdovers run the show is both baffling and terrifying.

Here's hoping the US military has more sense than the politicians.

I don't know what to believe, but the level of confrontation Hudson describes is insane. The economic consequences seem pallid compared with the risks he implies.

Sic Semper Tyrannis has become essential reading these past weeks. http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/

Brindle, April 18, 2014 at 7:42 am

"How on earth Obama is letting the neocon (and oil company) holdovers run the show is both baffling and terrifying. "

Obama is a neocon. His whole political career has been based on duping liberals to make them feel he is one of them. Obama left so many Bush/Cheney holdovers in office because he basically agrees with them.

RUKidding, April 18, 2014 at 10:48 am

Yes. Obama is both a NeoLiberal & a NeoCon. I've come to see that those are not mutually exclusive. Obama left a huge number of BushCo appointees littered throughout the Fed Agencies, and actually Obama fired Carol Lam, the US Attorney in San Diego, who managed to put the crooked Republican Representative, Randy "Duke" Cunningham, in jail. Lam was working on other corruption cases, and Obama pulled the plug on her quick-smart, and those corruption cases went down the plug hole.

Obama has been mentored by Dick Cheney, although I believe at one time that Obama denied that. Why a putative "liberal" Democrat would have to deny being mentored by such a scourge as Cheney is one for the books.

NotTimothyGeithner

Joe Lieberman was Obama's Senate mentor.

Cynthia

Obama has been described as "neocon light" and I think that this is correct. The older group of neocons like Cheney and Rumsfeld are indeed trying to do him in, but both groups believe in American imperialistic domination of the entire planet.

I also believe that, aside from traditional neocon considerations, Obama is indeed out for personal revenge for the humiliation that he suffered at Putin's hands, first in Georgia and then in Syria. I think that this little worm is about to suffer his third humiliation in the Ukraine and that is really something to worry about. Losing face can cause power driven fools like Obama to engage in increasingly risky behavior.

Banger

So far most senior officers are skeptical of civilians that use war to distract the people from their troubles. Many have been instrumental in nixing plans to invade Iran (twice) when civilian leadership (both Bush and Obama) wanted to create an "incident" they nixed it. Similarly, the Syria plan of carpet bombing Syria was nixed as this extremely silly adventure will be nixed, God willing.

The problem at this time is that the war-coalition has fully infiltrated the media how strong that coalition remains no one can tell.

NotTimothyGeithner

According to Seymore Hersch, the Joint Chiefs as a group through Dempsey told the President they were opposed to a strike on Syria.

OIFVet, April 18, 2014 at 2:02 am

Obama and the neocons are hellbent on starting a World War 3. They seem to think that a nuclear war can be won due to the ballistic missile shield which is now close to being operational (see Paul Craig Roberts in Counterpunch, http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/17/rivatization-is-a-ramp-for-corruption-and-insouciance-is-a-ramp-for-war/), with radar in Turkey, missile sites in Romania and Poland, and command center in Germany. In fact, the incident with the Russian fighter harassing the USS Donald Cook in the Black Sea the other day is not an ordinary saber rattling by the Russians at all.

The Donald Cook is the first of four missile destroyers to be modernized with the latest iteration of the Aegis radar system and SM-3 missiles capable of shooting down ballistic missiles which are to be based in Rota, Spain. As such her presence in the Black Sea is not a coincidence and represents a direct threat to Russia. The Russians were obviously on an ELINT gathering mission, trying to provoke the Cook into revealing as much about the new Aegis iteration as possible so that they can try to figure out exploitable weaknesses.

So the Russians are taking this quite seriously and I would wager that they have good enough intelligence to warrant a serious concern. I am truly afraid that surrealpolitik is in fact too mild of a description of the US actions, insanepolitik might be a more accurate moniker.

susan the other

Insanepolitik is right. The truth must be protected with a "bodyguard of lies." Thanks Winston for that coffin nail. If you look at the map, it really looks like the entire spat is about Caspian oil. Why else would the Black Sea be important enough to deploy 5 destroyers, or whatever they are called.

mf, April 18, 2014 at 10:01 am

correction: Hudson did not mess up. He is showing his true colors.

There is much that is wrong with the US, US democracy, and the world economy. A good portion of what is wrong has to do with exploding population worldwide. The oil based economic globalization might have worked in the world I was born into, it no longer works in the world I will die in. It is a social and technological conundrum that future generations will have to cope with.

However, favoring an obvious outbreak of aggressive fascism over US democracy, such as this democracy is today, is either taking leave from reality, or showing your true colors. Make a pick for Mr Hudson.

OIFVet

" obvious outbreak of aggressive fascism over US democracy, such as this democracy is today"

Leave it to poles to crap themselves every time the bear yawns and run right into the arms of an even more efficiently ruthless master.

steviefinn

It's a re-run of ' The Noble Lie '. "

The Office of Special Plans of 2002-3 was headed by Donald Feith, a Wolfowitz appointee whom Gen. Tommy Franks once famously called "the dumbest fucking guy on the planet." It included Abram Shulsky, Wolfowitz's college roommate at the University of Chicago and fellow student of the philosopher Leo Strauss, and implemented Strauss's principle that since the masses are intrinsically foolish and will not always approve heroic action when necessary, the "Wise" must employ "noble lies" to convince them. These are to be presented through "gentlemen" who are not too bright but malleable and enjoy credibility. Political science professor Shadia Drury, in her Leo Strauss and the American Right (1999), contends that Strauss believed that "perpetual deception of the citizens by those in power is critical because they need to be led, and they need strong rulers to tell them what's good for them."

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/29/the-neocons-won/

Brindle April 18, 2014 at 9:44 am

--Strauss believed that "perpetual deception of the citizens by those in power is critical because they need to be led, and they need strong rulers to tell them what's good for them."-

Sounds like something Cass Sunstein would say, although he would use updated language for our time. He's another University of Chicago guy, IIRC.

Banger April 18, 2014 at 9:57 am

These ideas go back a long way–in the U.S., we can trace it to the Creel Committee and its chief ideologue Walter Lippmann. Lippmann was liberal who believe, however, that the contemporary world was too complex for the normal citizen to grasp and therefore journos should not focus on the truth–but on digesting events for the public. Both Lippmann and Strauss feared the public and democracy as an idea. Those of us who were students in the 1960s knew this and we rebelled against this cynical POV–we were more optimistic–we actually believed in democracy unlike the "liberals" who led the country into perpetual war.

readerOfTeaLeaves April 18, 2014 at 10:40 am

Lippman believed that because the modern world (circa early 1900s) was becoming so complex, it was necessary to educate and have 'experts' in government. He was extremely interested in Public Opinion, but he also had a high regard for expertise.

Strauss believed in obsessive textual analysis of a single document – say, the Niger forgeries – at the expense of collecting information from a variety of sources. Interesting background on how the Straussians went wrong: http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2005/11/habakkuk_onleo_.html

Andrea April 18, 2014 at 9:02 am

Hudson is right to denounce the US media silence about what happened in Maidan. German TV even had a 'humor' show where the snipers in Maidan (as being from the protestors, puchists, separatists, Svoboda, Pravy Sektor etc. in cahoots with their backers, i.e. the US plus EU) were just taken as a 'fact.' – Very Gruesome but the obedient audience laughed.

Mind you a similar MSM cover-up is taking place in France, even worse imho than in the US, as the country is smaller, the media outlets less varied and more controlled.

History Hudson didn't mention.

Delegations from the EU, the US, Russia, Yanukovitch (then president) and some opposition leaders signed an agreement on Friday Feb 21 in Kiev – announced by Yanukovitch in the early afternoon (from press etc.), after lengthy negotiations.

It was piloted by Germany, F. W. Steinmeier (Foreign Min). Stipulated early elections, a return to the 2004 constitution, plus other such as freeing Timoshenko, amnesties, etc.

for ex Guardian

http://goo.gl/P5bFRg

for ex RT video

http://on.rt.com/l6q3bh

The sniping began the day before, on Thursday, while the negotiations were ongoing. The actors behind the scenes were determined no compromise be effected, no deal be agreed. And so it was. Yanukovitch fled on Saturday, the morning after the deal was signed. The deal died before it was signed…

Steinmeier says he doesn't regret it – "you have to try."

Cynthia April 18, 2014 at 2:24 pm

The US MSM has been duplicitous for so long now that only blinkered fools would look to it for factual information. I ceased reading or watching the MSM a good ten years ago. The thing that set me off was the lack of coverage of the Downing Street Memos. Every other media in the World had coverage except the US. That was too much for me, I cut the MSM out of my life.

NotTimothyGeithner April 18, 2014 at 9:17 am

I'm not sure I would pick Cheney. Obama's narcissism is driving our actions or at least reactions to the neoconservative backed coup. Putin one upped him, and I doubt Obama can handle being publicly embarrassed. For Obama, this is revenge. I'm sure he has a justification like any Obot, Obama is not merely limited to being the object of Obot programming but is one himself.

Kerry adds to the foul mood, but I think Kerry is legacy shopping and needs activities to justify his Iraq War support and complaints about conduct of the war instead of recognizing war plans go to he'll before the war starts. Kerry needs a success story of the war he envisioned.

Powers is a run of the mill lunatic obsessed with imperial power, and I suspect Rice just props up Obama's ego.

Banger April 18, 2014 at 9:37 am

I don't quite agree –- I'm sure vanity is involved, but my observation of this President indicates that he is merely reacting to the internal power struggles within his administration that are, in turn, influenced by deep political divisions within the Washington community of lobbyists, contractors, politicians, and the full panoply of what I will call "hustlers" that surround DC. The conflict is between the neoneocons (now made up of liberal but fanatical "humanitarian interventionists" like Samantha Power and her circle) and realists and the neoneocons are winning the internal struggle–why? Because of the state of the mainstream media which backs the new neocon agenda of world domination for a variety of reasons.

Obama is a "weak" President because he has never had a real power-base in Washington. He was always dependent on his handlers and their connections. He knows very well what happened to Jimmy Carter who was thoroughly f–ked by the Washington power-elite every which way. His Presidency was sabotaged systematically by every operative and mandarin in Washington. I'm not sure Carter, to this day, fully understands what they did to him. Obama was well aware of who is in power and who put him in power–no matter what he personally believes, he has to go along with the consensus that is presented to him.

I think what people on the left often miss is how serious these power-games are and the nature of the forces at work here both in terms of foreign and domestic politics. These guys don't mess about to get what they want–they don't play fair–those that play fair have been weeded out long ago only adept Machiavellians survive for long in Washington–even someone like Liz Warren has to use those skills or have someone close to her who does.

Jackrabbit April 18, 2014 at 2:50 pm

Not sure that a comparison to Jimmy Carter is valid. Obama is now well into his second term. I don't think this "weak" President is too concerned about being "sabotaged". He was meant to be weak, he was kept weak, and he accepts being weak.

I'm sorry, but once again I have to say that I see no "conflict" among neocons and realists. At the top, neocons and neolibs are united. A similar faulty analysis would say that there is a "conflict" between executives and reformers on Wall Street. No. There is pleading and cajoling, and moralizing about outrageous behavior by some lower ranks and outsiders but the executives and their lobbyists are fully in control. The only way anything will really change is if the public gets angry enough for mass demonstrations and resistance until there is fundamental reform.

Banger April 18, 2014 at 9:23 am

As I've said many times there is a more or less open conspiracy in Washington to create a "strategy of tension" throughout the world in order to impose authoritarian political order on the entire world–or to put it crudely, this group of people intend to dominate the world through one kind of force or another to create a New Rome. I broadly call these people neocons but this is a new neoconservative movement or neoneocons I gues that involves people like Samantha Power who believe in "humanitarian intervention" but are, in fact, just plain ole American Exceptionalist imperialists which is not too far from Paul Wolfowitz or Dick Cheney just with different makeup.

The neoneocons believe that the world will do better with a solid order than without it and European elites seem to agree to this agenda. They fear a world dominated by China/East Asia and Russia is the link between US/EU and Asia. Putin, unlike Yeltsin will not play ball with this agenda–he has his own vision of what society should be, as he's declared many times, and it is not on the Western model. He believes, and he's taking an enormous risk, that he can be successful in brokering power between East and West and insure a "place in the Sun" for Russia long-term–or something to that effect.

For me, the chief problem is not Ukraine or the illegal US/EU engineered coup (very similar to other coups carried out by the CIA throughout the world over many decades) but the state of the mainstream media. This drift towards war can only exist because the mainstream media as a whole is one big USG Propaganda Ministry–as with Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam and smaller wars the mainstream media is one big PR firm for War. The press has even been able to silence people like Sy Hersh who is one of the few reporters that senior dissident military and itel people trust to tell their side of the story. He now cannot publish their concerns in the U.S. media.

Some years ago the CIA had Operation Mockingbird, CIA director George Bush I announced that the operation (after its exposure by the Church Committee) would no longer pay journalists to disseminate U.S. propaganda. The CIA probably did stop this but, as everyone in Washington knows, the CIA shifted its operations to other organizations often private led by "former" CIA agents and others public like the National Endowment for Democracy. I believe that forces in Washington both bribe and coerce editors (editors always determine content) to stick to the Washington Consensus on what is and is not real–at this point they don't have to push very hard since the press corps is completely manned and womanned by "presstitutes" interested primarily by having a "seat at the table" and a career–they know if they stray from the Party line they will be driving a cab somewhere. Some, like Chris Hedges or Russ Baker, can create alternative careers but it aint easy even for them.

The enemy, we like to think, are the corporations, the banksters, the authoritarians in government, the NSA and so on. I submit that the enemy is the mainstream media and they must be always attacked and undermined–they lie systematically about everything including history. All members of the mainstream media whether on TV, radio, newsprint, glossy magazines are government bureaucrats or courtiers (Washington press corps). They should be exposed at all costs. Operation Mockingbird bloomed more after Bush stated that it would stop than before -- we remained in Vietnam, btw, for longer than necessary because of Mockingbird because the truth was known from 1963 onward by everyone in government and that I can guarantee you, not just from the Pentagon Papers but through oral accounts of the people at the center of those decisions. Some in government had their careers ruined by opposing that war and those that favored it -- one hopes that those in government who are dissenters can survive but they must have access to somebody in the press.

Ulysses April 18, 2014 at 10:24 am

Fantastic comment! The rare moments when truth breaks out in the MSM are always followed by well-funded, slick attempts to muddy the waters and damage the credibility of the truth-tellers.

Cynthia April 18, 2014 at 2:20 pm

Let's state right out front what this really is all about. This all comes down to the latest chapter in the IMF's economic destabilization of Ukraine, in order to allow the western banks to plunder Ukraine, just like it has every country that ever was unlucky enough to have any dealings with the IMF and World Bank. One merely has to go to Counterpunch or GlobalResearch to find articles on how this is done in country after country, and the damage the IMF has already caused there. What is happening is a crime against the Ukrainian people. They have already bankrupted Ukrainian agriculture, and they are going to destabilize the currency by forcing them to float it so it can be shortsold, and the vultures can descend and take everything of value there.

susan the other April 18, 2014 at 2:21 pm

I think the enemy is capitalism. It runs rampant against any force that opposes it and does so without nuance, without even trying to be subtle. I honestly believe that capitalism, or financialism as it is practiced today, is the most destructive force on the planet because in a world of diminishing resources and diminishing returns, capitalism does not even seek to understand equitable distribution of wealth but instead goes to war, even nuclear war, to preserve the extreme wealth controlled by those obviously uninspired oligarchs at the top. And for what?

jo6pac April 18, 2014 at 9:31 am

http://www.globalresearch.ca/unknown-snipers-and-western-backed-regime-change/27904

ltr April 18, 2014 at 9:46 am

Stephen Cohen adds to the sense of this report:

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/4/17/we_are_not_beginning_a_new

April 17, 2014

"We Are Not Beginning a New Cold War, We Are Well Into It": Stephen Cohen on Russia-Ukraine Crisis

curlydan April 18, 2014 at 2:08 pm

Very good DemocracyNow! segment. I liked these quotes from Cohen: "Putin didn't want-and this is reality, this is not pro-Putin or pro-Washington, this is just a fact-Putin did not want this crisis. He didn't initiate it. But with Putin, once you get something like that, you get Mr. Pushback. And that's what you're now seeing. And the reality is, as even the Americans admit, he holds all the good options. We have none. That's not good policymaking, is it?"

"If we move the forces, NATO forces, including American troops, to-toward Russia's borders, where will we be then? I mean, it's obviously going to militarize the situation, and therefore raise the danger of war. And I think it's important to emphasize, though I regret saying this, Russia will not back off. This is existential. Too much has happened."

"the result of this confrontation, East-West confrontation-and I can't emphasize how fundamental and important it is-is going to set back whatever prospects remained in Russia for further democratization or re-democratization, possibly a whole generation"

ltr April 18, 2014 at 9:49 am

As for the release of the phone call by Victoria Nuland, even the New York Times only spoke about the intercept of the call and the profane remark by Nuland but never about the conspiratorial content of the call and about the activities of Nuland and the Ambassador in Ukraine in encouraging and directing a coup against the government.

Banger April 18, 2014 at 9:59 am

Amazing wasn't it? It's almost as if those intercepted phone calls were airbrushed from history when they should be a central part of the debate. Any other person would have been forced to resign had they made a phone call going against official policy.

RUKidding April 18, 2014 at 10:58 am

Interesting, isn't it? US propaganda media only wanted to focus on Nuland's potty mouth and tsk tsk that Putin intercepted the call and "published" it. One had to go further afield than anything produced by MSM to get the whole story. And almost as soon as the potty mouth story was discussed by the Very Serious People, then it was dropped. And then we got the word incessantly to this day about Putin, who is very bad.

NYT is nothing more than propaganda from front to back page.

Cynthia April 18, 2014 at 2:36 pm

Yeah, they need a new, new bogeyman. Maybe they'll have a youtube video of a big burly guy with an AK-47 with Russia on his shirt chasing and catching a young girl with a kitten and then mowing her down while laughing and taking big swigs of vodka. CNN will pick it up and play it 40 times an hour to program the donkeys.

NotTimothyGeithner April 18, 2014 at 2:48 pm

I turned on CNN today to catch Don Lemon reporting on an avalanche in Nepal, and then he noted one place, Asia, has just experienced 3 disasters, the plane, the ferry and an avalanche. He is giving Wolf a run for his money.

Bawb le Revelateur April 18, 2014 at 10:15 am

This is what happens when the CIA is privatized and outsourced to agencies such as Booz-Allen – formerly Eric Snowden's employer: Accountability diminishes ever closer to zero.

Respectfully, an Obama-Channeling-Cheney header misleads by presuming Obama's and Chancellor Cheney's agenda to be identical. While outcomes may be, the premises are not necessarily so. Am I hair-splitting while a[nother] catastrophe proceeds? Quite likely. OTOH "blaming" Obama – whose 2009 naivete approached Bush43′s – is a bit too easy.

My point? We the people drank Ronald Reagan's kool-ade in 1980 and never have quit drinking it through today.

This nascent tragedy is the newest consequence of that over-indulgence. Unless [until?] the original premise is acknowledged and corrected you may as well attribute the consequence to the Administrations of your choosing and continue to "Blame It On The Bossa Nova"

TarheelDem April 18, 2014 at 10:28 am

Obama is channeling Victoria Nuland, her Kagan husband and in-laws, Ambassador Pyatt, and John Brennan. Guess why the Senate's Report on CIA Torture is so important in domestic politics relative to foreign policy? You have to go into the politics that allowed Victoria Nuland to become Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State to understand who exactly from the the Democratic Party side Obama is channeling.

Obama doesn't form his own foreign policy vision; it seems to be a consensus vision of people he thinks are experts and who have their own political power bases already in DC. Nothing shows more the community organizer side of him than the way he manages his community of foreign policy experts and world leaders with regard to identifying goals, strategies and supervising implementation. The impact of Obama is in the immediate reconciling of differences among those folks and pronouncing the President's decision of the moment. And the Churchillian determination not to preside over the decline of the American empire.

ambrit April 18, 2014 at 11:15 am

As for snipers firing into the crowd from adjoining buildings, well, that's SOP. The Mexican government did exactly that at Tlatelolco Square in 1968 in order to break the student movement prior to the '68 Olympics. The then MSM also did a disappearing job on the truth. The real events were uncovered only after forced release of documents from Mexican and U.S. sources over thirty plus years later. As in Ukraine, sanctioned violence was used to stifle democratic dissent and impose authoritarianism. In Mexico, it was determined that the 'snipers' were members of the elite Olympic Brigade, formed from elements of the Mexican police and Presidential Guard. Ukraine looks to be more of the same. I'm patiently waiting for it to happen here, for real. Police crackdowns on Occupy sites and ineffectual murder plots against internal dissidents as in Texas are the appetizers. When the main course comes on, I fear that some unit like the Tenth Mountain Division will be involved. Then the gloves will come off.

Michael Hudson April 18, 2014 at 11:15 am

The job of a Community Organizer is to make fortunes for real estate investors gentrifying. That is what Obama did in Chicago (See Yves' reprint of Bob Fitch's study some years ago), and that is just what he's doing in Ukraine. Cargill is angling for land rights, and other investors are anticipating a really, really cheap labor force as Ukraine's currency plummets. Obama is simply working with his backers, asking them what they want him to do. His job is to deliver his constituency.

Brindle April 18, 2014 at 11:33 am

I've come the conclusion that Obama hasn't had a single original thought in his head when it comes to ideas, policies etc. He isn't lacking in intelligence, he just is very content in being a follower, one who uses his savvy media skills to implement the designs of others,

jfleni April 18, 2014 at 11:32 am

While Neocons are not totally monolithic, there is an agenda: A posse of crypto-traitors, fully faithful to and even more extreme than BiBi-the-effing-mad and friends, including Sewer-mouth-Vicky, "Sammy" Power the red-headed nut, Rice, probably Hillary herself, and a multitude of shills, supporters and connected spouses, who are out of control and destructive to our real interests. Whether Congress and their natural enemies can halt this lunacy is unknown right now; it may take a severe and catastrophic military confrontation.

I remember when Ukraine and Russia were squabbling twenty years ago about who would get the Black Sea fleet, a bunch of broken down rusty tubs that nobody else would ever want. The bad feeling and enmity never went away, and didn't start just recently. What's new is the gusto of the NEOCONS to stir the pot. It is crazy and must be stopped, especially since solving our real problems play third fidddle to this neocon nonsense.

par4 April 18, 2014 at 11:38 am

Yves, ever think of starting another site called naked communism? I would hope people posting comments there would know that the U.S. has never been a "democracy" and that liberals aren't "of the left".

Jagger April 18, 2014 at 11:46 am

Maybe if we can get WW III going, we can solve a lot of pressing problems such as overpopulation, peak oil and climate change. Bearing in mind that WW II only took out 60 million, which is only a drop in the bucket with a current population of 7 billion, we would need to do better this time. If we can get the population down to 2-3 billion, we could strech out our remaining natural resources substantially. And of course, a nuclear winter should nicely counteract global warming. Got to look at the positives when you are Washington neocon operative selling a concept.

Of course if we all stopped having babies for a few decades, we could achieve exactly the same thing without all the mess.

Lord Koos April 18, 2014 at 1:40 pm

My father used to donate money to an organization dedicated to zero population growth (ZPG). The whole idea of limiting population growth on the planet was something that you heard about occasionally in the media at that time (the 1970s) and it was a subject of debate. These days the subject must be practically taboo for all the mention it gets and yet it's the most obvious thing in the world. Of course in my view, fossil fuel conservation as opposed to fracking is fairly obvious too, but then my ideas aren't so profitable.

jagger April 18, 2014 at 2:37 pm

I am not sure zero population growth would do the job today. I suspect we need a substantial reduction of total population. But that isn't going to happen at the scale needed voluntarily. And as you say, we hear absolutely nothing about the concept today.

Yes and I agree, fossil fuel conservation makes all the sense in the world as well. If we are marooned on a boat at sea, do we ration our limited water and hope for rescue or just drink it up as fast as we can because we have water at the moment? It is just insanity amonst our so called power elites. Unfortunately, everyone will pay the price.

NotTimothyGeithner April 18, 2014 at 1:14 pm

Um, you do realize there isn't an alternative to Russian gas. It's not a case of higher prices, and sanctions tend to strengthen the targeted regime. A popular Putin would beat the cap out of unpopular and coalition leaders after divisive elections in the West if a sanctions game starts.

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[Mar 27, 2018] Let's Investigate John Brennan, by Philip Giraldi

[Mar 22, 2018] I hope Brennan is running scared, along with Power. It's like the Irish Mafia.

[Mar 21, 2018] Former CIA Chief Brennan Running Scared by Ray McGovern

[Mar 21, 2018] Washington's Invasion of Iraq at Fifteen

[Mar 21, 2018] How They Sold the Iraq War by Jeffrey St. Clair

[Mar 16, 2018] Will the State Department Become a Subsidiary of the CIA

[Mar 13, 2018] The CIA takeover of the Democratic Party by Patrick Martin

[Mar 12, 2018] Obama's has continued his neoliberal ways after leaving office. Obama was NOT forced into neoliberal positions by terrible Repugs like his Obamabot apologists claimed repeatedly

[Mar 08, 2018] Mueller determines the US foreign policy toward Russia; The Intel Community Lies About Russian Meddling by Publius Tacitus

[Mar 08, 2018] Given the CrowdStrike itself is a massively compromised organization due to its founder and CEO, those "certified true images" are themselves tainted evidence

[Mar 08, 2018] A key piece of evidence pointing to 'Guccifer 2.0' being a fake personality created by the conspirators in their attempt to disguise the fact that the materials from the DNC published by 'WikiLeaks' were obtained by a leak rather than a hack had to do with the involvement of the former GCHQ person Matt Tait.

[Mar 02, 2018] Contradictions In Seth Rich Murder Continue To Challenge Hacking Narrative

[Feb 18, 2018] Had Hillary Won What Now by Andrew Levine

[Feb 15, 2018] Trump's War on the Deep State by Conrad Black

[Feb 14, 2018] The Anti-Trump Coup by Michael S. Rozeff

[Feb 14, 2018] The FBI and the President – Mutual Manipulation by James Petras

[Feb 12, 2018] I am wondering why it is that much of a stretch to believe that the CIA might have engineered the whole thing

[Jan 27, 2018] As of January 2018 Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey, is starting to look like something Trump should have done sooner.

[Jan 19, 2018] #ReleaseTheMemo Extensive FISA abuse memo could destroy the entire Mueller Russia investigation by Alex Christoforou

[Jan 12, 2018] The DOJ and FBI Worked With Fusion GPS on Operation Trump

[Dec 31, 2017] How America Spreads Global Chaos by Nicolas J.S. Davies

[Dec 31, 2017] Maybe Trump was the deep state candidate of choice? Maybe that s why they ran Clinton against him rather than the more electable Sanders? Maybe that s why Obama started ramping up tensions with Russia in the early fall of 2016 – to swing the election to Trump (by giving the disgruntled anti-war Sanders voters a false choice between Trump or war with Russia?

[Dec 31, 2017] How America Spreads Global Chaos by Nicolas J.S. Davies

[May 03, 2019] Former high-ranking FBI officials on Andrew McCabe's alarming admissions

[May 03, 2019] Andrew McCabe played the key role in the appointment of the special prosecutor

[Apr 29, 2019] The Mueller Report Indicts the Trump-Russia Conspiracy Theory by Aaron Maté

[Apr 28, 2019] The British Role in Russiagate Is About to Be Fully Exposed

[Apr 28, 2019] Tit For Tat: Why Did Mueller Let Trump Off the Hook by Mike Whitney

[Apr 22, 2019] FBI top brass have been colluding with top brass of CIA and MI6 to pursue ambitious anti-Russian agenda

[Apr 22, 2019] Current Neo-McCarthyism hysteria as a smoke screen of the UK and the USA intent to dominate European geopolitics and weaken Russia and Germany

[Apr 21, 2019] Makes me wonder if this started out as a standard operation by the FBI to gain leverage over a presidential contender

[Apr 21, 2019] Psywar: Propaganda during Iraq war and beyond

[Apr 21, 2019] Special Counsel Mueller -- Disingenuous and Dishonest by Larry C Johnson

[Apr 17, 2019] Six US Agencies Conspired ...

[Apr 16, 2019] CIA Director Used Fake Skripal Incident Photos To Manipulate Trump

[Apr 07, 2019] Nunes The Russian Collusion Hoax Meets An Unbelievbable End

[Apr 06, 2019] The Magnitsky Act-Behind the Scenes ASEEES

[Apr 04, 2019] Was John Brennan The Russia Lie Ringleader

[Apr 02, 2019] Requiem to Russiagate by CJ Hopkins

[Mar 25, 2019] Spygate The True Story of Collusion (plus Infographic) by Jeff Carlson

[Mar 25, 2019] Nuland role in Russiagate

[Mar 25, 2019] Another SIGINT compromise ...

[Mar 24, 2019] The accountability that must follow Mueller's report

[Mar 24, 2019] "Russia Gate" investigation was a color revolution agaist Trump. But a strnge side effect was that Clintons have managed to raise a vicious, loud mouthed thug to the status of some kind of martyr.

[Mar 24, 2019] With RussiaGate Over Where's Hillary

[Mar 23, 2019] Brennan pipe dream obliterated. The color revolution against Trump failed

[Mar 17, 2019] Mueller uses the same old false flag scams, just different packaging of his forensics-free findings

[Mar 17, 2019] VIPS- Mueller's Forensics-Free Findings

[Mar 11, 2019] Bruce Ohr, Liar or Moron by Larry C Johnson

[Mar 06, 2019] American Meddling in the Ukraine by Publius Tacitus

[Mar 05, 2019] The Shadow Governments Destruction Of Democracy

[Feb 16, 2019] Death Of Russiagate: Mueller Team Tied To Mifsud s Network

[Feb 08, 2019] To understand Steele and the five eyes involvement in the Russia hoax you need to go to the library

[Jan 13, 2019] As FBI Ramped Up Witch Hunt When Trump Fired Comey, Strzok Admitted Collusion Investigation A Joke

Sites



Etc

Society

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Quotes

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Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOSProgramming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC developmentScripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-MonthHow to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

Most popular humor pages:

Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor

The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D


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Last modified: March 12, 2020