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Skepticism and Pseudoscience > Who Rules America > Neoliberal Brainwashing
Even though I agreed with him, I warned that whenever someone tried to raise the issue, he or she was accused of fomenting class warfare. “There’s class warfare, all right, "Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning." Make no mistake, the neo-Liberal fuckers are just as bad as the Stalinists May '68 and its Afterlives [Review] Neoliberal ideology acted as a smokescreen that enabled the financially powerful to rewrite the rules and place themselves beyond the law. |
Due to the size the introduction was moved to a separate page: Neoliberalism: a primer
NOTE: Best articles on neoliberalism can be found at Neoliberalism 101: 12 best articles on neoliberalism
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May 24, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
karlof1 , May 24 2020 20:52 utc | 29
...China's Foreign Minister Yang Yi held a lengthy presser providing detailed answers to many differing questions. The topic of "Wolf Diplomacy" is in the news today and was asked about by CNN:" Cable News Network : We've seen an increasingly heated 'war of words' between China and the US. Is 'wolf warrior' diplomacy the new norm of China's diplomacy?
Wang Yi : I respect your right to ask the question, but I'm afraid you're not framing the question in the right way. One has to have a sense of right and wrong. Without it, a person cannot be trusted, and a country cannot hold its own in the family of nations .
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"The world is undergoing changes of a kind unseen in a century and full of instability and turbulence. Confronted by a growing set of global challenges, we hope all countries will realize that humanity is a community with a shared future. We must render each other more support and cooperation, and there should be less finger-pointing and confrontation. We call on all nations to come together and build a better world for all." [My Emphasis]
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Apr 29, 2020 | fpif.org
How will the coronavirus transform the relationship between state and market? A look at oil, food, and finance.
You pay little attention to the systems of your body -- circulatory, digestive, pulmonary -- unless something goes wrong.These automatic systems ordinarily go about their business, like unseen clockwork, while you think about a vexing problem at work, drink your morning cup of coffee, walk up and down stairs, and head out to your car to begin your morning commute. If you had to focus your attention on breathing, pushing blood through your veins, and metabolizing food, you'd have no time or energy to do anything else. The body abhors the micromanaging of the mind.
The same applies to the world's markets. They whir away in the background of your life, providing loans to your business, coffee beans to your nearby supermarket, labor to build your house, gas to fill your car. You take all of these markets for granted. All you have to concern yourself with is earning enough money to gain access to these goods and services. That's what it means to live in a modern economy. The days of hunting and gathering, of complete self-sufficiency, are long past.
And then, in a series of sickening shifts, the markets go haywire. As with a heart attack, you no longer can take the optimal performance of these systems for granted.
The coronavirus crisis has thrown the global economy into cardiac arrest, and now you are acutely aware of the very markets that you had previously just assumed would function as normal. The first indication was the precipitous drop in the stock market that took place in late February. Then, as the United States began to enter quarantine, the labor market collapsed and hundreds of millions of people were suddenly out of work. Shortages in a few key commodities -- masks, ventilators, toilet paper -- began to appear.
It is one of the central tenets of laissez-faire capitalism that markets behave like automatic systems, that an "invisible hand" regulates supply and demand. Market fundamentalists believe that the less the government interferes with these automatic systems, the better. They argue, to the contrary, that markets should increasingly take over government functions: a privatized post office, for instance, or Social Security accounts subjected to the stock market.
Market fundamentalists are like Christian Scientists. They refuse government intervention just as the faithful reject medical intervention. Much like God's grace, the invisible hand operates independent of human plan.
Then something happens, like a pandemic, which tests this faith. States around the world are now spending trillions of dollars to intervene in the economy: to bail out banks, save businesses, help out the unemployed. Countries are imposing export controls on key commodities. As in wartime, governments are directing manufacturers to produce critical goods to fill an unexpected demand for greater supply.
These are emergency interventions. The market fundamentalist looks forward to the day when stay-at-home restrictions are lifted, people go back to work, the stock market barrels back into bull mode, and the invisible hand, with perhaps a few Band-aids across the knuckles, returns to its job.
But some pandemics fundamentally alter the economy. In such emergencies, people realize that an economy is constructed and thus can be reconstructed. Are we now at just such a moment in world history? Will the coronavirus permanently transform the relationship between the state and the market?
Let's take a look at three key markets -- oil, food, and finance -- to measure the impact of the pandemic and the prospects for transformation.
Oil
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In 2007, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa offered to forgo digging for oil beneath the Yasuni national park in exchange for $3.6 billion from the international community. No one took him up on the offer.
When the U.S. price of oil went below zero last week, I immediately thought of Correa's offer. The mainstream scoffed at the Ecuadorian leader back in 2007. How on earth could you possibly propose to keep oil under the earth? The world economy runs on fossil fuels. You might as well ask your kid to keep her Halloween candy uneaten in the back of the cupboard.
Today, however, the world is glutted with oil. The global recession has radically reduced the need for oil and gas.
In the United States, transportation absorbs nearly 70 percent of oil consumption. With airplanes grounded, fewer trains and busses in operation, and highways uncongested, the demand for oil has dropped precipitously. Businesses, too, are using less energy. It's not just oil. Companies devoted to pumping natural gas out of shale deposits are filing for bankruptcy as their market value drops precipitously: the price of a share of fracking giant Whiting Petroleum fell from $150 a couple years ago to 67 cents on March 31.
It's gotten to the point that you almost can't give away the stuff.
After all, if you somehow found yourself with a bunch of barrels of oil, where would you store it? Oil-storage tanks in the United State are near capacity. "Oil supertankers are looking like petroleum paparazzi, crowding the Los Angeles shoreline, either as floating storage or waiting on some kind of turn in sentiment," Brian Sullivan writes at CNBC . "With prices higher in coming months, for now it pays to sit on oil and hope to sell it for more money down the pipeline."
Oil-producing nations, after years of boosting their supplies, finally agreed in mid-April to cut production by 10 percent -- about 10 million gallons a day. In other words, they are deciding to leave oil in the ground. Now, however, it doesn't even qualify as a half-measure, since demand has dropped by 35 percent. The oil producers are awaiting the end of recession, when the quarantined go back to work, and everyone jumps on their transport of choice to make up for lost travel. They are awaiting a return to normal.
But the market for fossil fuels is not normal. The notion that the invisible hand will steer economies in a sustainable direction is hogwash. We are long past the moment when we should have paid Correa and everyone else to leave the oil and gas in the ground and move toward a world powered entirely by clean energy. The market treats the environment either as a commodity like any other or as an "externality" that doesn't factor into the final price of goods and services. That is so nineteenth century.
Climate change demands an intervention into the energy markets with restrictions on production, subsidies for clean energies like solar, and government purchases of electric cars. Returning to "normal" after the pandemic is not a viable option.
Food
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Like the oil exporters, food producers in the United States are restricting production as well.
In Delaware and Maryland, chicken producers are euthanizing two million chickens because the processing plants don't have enough workers. Sickness and death in these facilities, which has caused closures that are disrupting the supply chain, has prompted Trump to classify such plants as "critical infrastructure" that needs to remain open. Meanwhile, thousands of acres of fruits and vegetables are rotting in the fields in Florida because of the suspension of bulk food sales to schools, theme parks, and restaurants. The shortage of pickers -- often migrant laborers whose mobility has been restricted -- is complicating harvests.
Unlike oil, however, the overall demand for food remains high. The grocery business is booming . Food banks are overwhelmed by a surge unlike any in recent decades. The U.S. Department of Agriculture ordinarily could swoop in and buy up surplus production -- as it did for soybean growers during the trade war with China -- for use in food banks and other distribution programs. But as with so many other government agencies in the Trump era, the USDA has been slow to act , despite repeated pleas from growers and governors.
The pandemic is highlighting all the problems that have long plagued the food supply. First, there is the mismatch between supply and demand. Around 820 million people globally didn't have enough to eat in 2018, a figure that had been rising for three years in a row, and contrasts with another rising number: the 672 million obese people in the world. In the United States, fully 40 percent of food goes to waste every year. So, obviously the invisible hand does a pretty poor job of achieving market equilibrium.
Second, despite a growing movement to eat locally and seasonally, the food system still eats up a huge amount of energy. The problem lies not so much with bananas arriving by cargo ship, which is relatively efficient, but with perishable items delivered by plane . And it's what we eat, rather than where the products come from, that matters most. "Regardless of whether you compare the footprint of foods in terms of their weight (e.g. one kilogram of cheese versus one kilogram of peas); protein content; or calories, the overall conclusion is the same," writes Hannah Ritchie. "Plant-based foods tend to have a lower carbon footprint than meat and dairy. In many cases a much smaller footprint."
Third, because of economies of scale and abysmal labor practices, food in the industrialized world is too often grown by agribusiness, processed by transnational corporations, and picked or handled by workers who don't even make close to a living wage.
Returning to this kind of food system after the pandemic fades would be truly unappetizing. The livable wage campaign must spread to the countryside, meat substitutes must get an additional lift through government and institutional purchases, and innovative programs like the Too Good to Go app in Europe -- which sells extra restaurant and supermarket food at a discount -- must be brought to the United States to cut down on food waste and get meals to those in need.
Finance
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The financial crisis of 2008-2009 exposed the fragility and fundamental inequality of the global financial system. But all along the invisible hand has been pickpocketing poor Peter to pay prosperous Paul. Bankers, stockbrokers, and financial gurus have constructed a casino-like system that occasionally doles out a few pennies to the people playing the slots even as it enriches the house -- the top 1-2 percent -- at every turn.
The most outrageous part of this scheme is that the financial crisis demonstrated just how bad the financiers were at their own game. Not only did they not go to prison for illegal activities, they were with a few exceptions not even punished economically for their market failures. They were either too big, too rich, or too powerful for the government to allow them to fail.
In The New Yorker , Nick Paumgarten quotes a prominent investment banker at a bond fund:
"In the financial crisis, we won the war but lost the peace." Instead of investing in infrastructure, education, and job retraining, we emphasized, via a central-bank policy of quantitative easing (what some people call printing money), the value of risk assets, like stocks. "We collectively fell in love with finance," he said.
After the last financial crisis, the wealthy, who are heavily invested in the stock market, did quite well, while everyone else took a hit. Explains Colin Schultz in Smithsonian magazine: "While families hovering around the average net worth lost 36 percent over the past decade -- dropping from $87,992 in 2003 to $56,335 in 2013 -- people in the top 95th percentile actually gained 14 percent in the same tumultuous period -- going from $740,700 in 2003 to $834,100 in 2013."
The Trump administration is clearly in love with finance. Even before the pandemic hit, Trump's tax reform provided the top six U.S. banks with $32 billion in savings . That's more than what the 2008 bank bailout provided (and remember, banks mostly paid back those earlier loans). The stock market also benefited from an unprecedented upswing in stock buybacks -- $2 trillion combined in 2018 and 2019 -- that enriched shareholders at the expense of workers.
The $2 trillion in initial stimulus funds that the U.S. government is providing this time around has gone to individuals (those Trump-signed checks in the mail), small businesses (except when it went to big businesses), hospitals, and unemployed workers. There's also money for farmers, schools, food stamps, and (alas) the Pentagon. Future rounds of stimulus spending might include infrastructure, more aid to states and localities, and funds for smaller banks.
There's not much enthusiasm, at least publicly, to bail out Wall Street. Stock buybacks were explicitly excluded from the stimulus package. Meanwhile, the stock market has begun to climb out of the basement in the last couple weeks, largely on the strength of the news of all this new money being pumped into the economy.
But just as the tax bill was a covert giveaway to financial institutions, so have been several of the administration's pandemic responses. Quantitative easing, by which the Federal Reserve buys bonds and mortgage-backed securities, has increased the amount of liquidity available to financial institutions.
In the latest effort, the Fed announced that it will buy $500 billion in corporate bonds, but without any of the strings attached to other assistance such as limits on stock buybacks or executive compensation. The banks are even nickel and diming people by seizing stimulus check deposits to cover overdrawn accounts.
Out of a total pie of around $6 trillion in potential stimulus spending, banks and major corporations are well-placed to grab the lion's share. Writes Nomi Prins at TomDispatch:
In the end, according to the president, that could mean $4.5 trillion in support for big banks and corporate entities versus something like $1.4 trillion for regular Americans, small businesses, hospitals, and local and state governments. That 3.5 to 1 ratio signals that, as in 2008, the Treasury and the Fed are focused on big banks and large corporations, not everyday Americans.
Invisible hand? Hardly. That's the very visible hand of government tilting the financial markets even more in favor of the rich. As for the invisible enrichment that goes on beneath the surface, otherwise known as corruption, the Trump administration has gutted the oversight mechanisms that could bring those abuses to light.
It's time to end America's love affair with finance. That means, in the short term, higher taxes on the very rich, limitations on CEO pay built into all bailouts, and reviving all the reasonable proposals for reforming the financial sector that were either left out of or didn't get full implemented in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act passed in the wake of the last financial crisis.
Post-Pandemic Economics
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The Black Death depopulated Europe, killing as much as 60 percent of the population in the middle of the fourteenth century. Feudalism depended on lots of peasants working the land to support the one percent of that era. By carrying off so many of these workers, the Black Death made a major contribution to eroding the foundations of the dominant economic system of the time.
The coronavirus will not kill anywhere near as many people as the Black Death did. But it may well contribute to exposing the failures of "free markets" and the scandal of governments intervening in the economy on behalf of this era's one percent. The pandemic is already, thanks to huge stimulus packages, undermining the "small government" canard. A state apparatus deliberately hobbled by the Trump administration -- after earlier "reforms" by both parties -- did a piss-poor job of dealing with this crisis. That doesn't bode well for dealing with the even larger challenge of climate change.
The short-term fixes described above in the oil, food, and finance sectors are necessary but insufficient. They shift the balance more toward the government and away from the "free" market. They're not unlike the New Deal: reforming capitalism to save capitalism. But this pandemic is pointing to an even more fundamental transformation, to a new definition of economics.
The tweaking of markets to achieve optimal performance is much like the rejiggering of earth-centric models of the universe that took place in the Middle Ages. These models became more and more complex to account for new astronomical discoveries. Then along came Copernicus with a heliocentric model that accounted for all the new data. It took some time, however, for the old model to lose favor, despite its obvious failures.
The global economy remains market-centered, even though the evidence has been mounting that these markets are failing us and the planet. Tweaking this model isn't good enough. We need a new Copernicus who will provide a new theory that fits our unfolding reality, a new environment-centered economics that can maximize not profit but the well-being of living things. John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus.
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May 20, 2020 | www.bloomberg.com
Not long after Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, ordered the state's 40 million residents to stay home to stop the spread of the new coronavirus, Dr. Greg Morganroth called his team of doctors and said their dermatology group was staying open.
Morganroth is chief executive officer of the California Skin Institute , which he founded in 2007 as a single office in Mountain View. He's since expanded to more than 40 locations using a financing strategy that's become exceedingly common in American health care: private equity. In this case, he took out a loan from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. that could eventually convert to an equity stake. CSI is now the largest dermatology chain in California.
But the Covid-19 pandemic put Morganroth in a precarious position. Most medical procedures were characterized as nonessential by government officials and practitioners. Doctors were closing offices, and patients were staying away to limit their potential exposure to the virus.
CSI took a different approach. Morganroth explained his thinking on April 2 in a Zoom call with more than 170 dermatologists from around the country organized by the Cosmetic Surgery Forum, an industry conference. Contrary to what they might have heard, Morganroth told them, they should consider staying open during the pandemic. "Many of us are over-interpreting guidelines," he said.
For a moment there was an awkward silence. Doctors had thought they were signing up for advice on how to apply for government money that would help them meet payroll while they were shut down; they hadn't expected to be told not to shut down at all. Morganroth continued: "We are going to be in a two-year war, and we need to make strategic plans for our businesses that enable us to survive and to rebound."
Back at CSI, the company's front-office staff was working the phones, calling patients in some of the worst-hit areas and reminding them to show up for their appointments, even for cosmetic procedures such as Botox injections to treat wrinkles. During the videoconference, Morganroth argued that offering Botox in a pandemic wasn't so different from a grocery store allowing customers to buy candy alongside staples.
"If I had a food supply company and had to stay open, and I had meat, bread, and milk, would I stop making lime and strawberry licorice?" Morganroth asked. "I would make everything and go forward."
From a public-health point of view, some of the doctors believed, this was questionable. Common reasons for visiting a dermatologist's office -- skin screenings, mole removals, acne consultations -- aren't particularly time sensitive. Serious matters, such as suspected cancers and dangerous rashes, can be handled, at least initially, with telemedicine consultations . Then doctors can weigh the risks for their patients and determine who needs to come in. In a statement, CSI says that it followed local and state laws for staying open, while providing "necessary care" for patients, and that it had not required doctors to come to work.
"You can't serve two masters. You can't serve patients and investors"
Morganroth's defense of pandemic Botox might seem odd, but it made perfect sense within the logic of the U.S. health-care system, which has seen Wall Street investors invade its every corner, engineering medical practices and hospitals to maximize profits as if they were little different from grocery stores. At the center of this story are private equity firms, which saw the explosive growth of health-care spending and have been buying up physician staffing companies, surgery centers, and everything else in sight.
Over the past five years, the firms have invested more than $10 billion in medical practices, with a special focus on dermatology, which is seen as a hot industry because of the aging population. Baby boomers suffer from high rates of two potentially lucrative conditions: skin cancer and vanity. Some estimates suggest that private equity already owns more than 10% of the U.S dermatology market. And firms have started to expand into other specialties, including women's health, urology, and gastroenterology.
There's nothing inherently wrong with any of this. But some doctors say that the private equity playbook, which involves buying companies, drastically cutting costs, and then selling for a profit -- the goal is generally to make an annualized return of 20% to 30% within three to five years -- creates problems that are unique to health care. "I know private equity does this in other industries, but in medicine you're dealing with people's health and their lives," says Michael Rains, a doctor who worked at U.S. Dermatology Partners , a big private equity-backed chain. "You can't serve two masters. You can't serve patients and investors."
Investment firms, and the practices they fund, say these concerns are overblown. They point out that they're giving doctors a financial shelter from the rapidly changing medical environment, a particularly attractive prospect now, and that money from private equity firms has expanded care to more patients. But they've also made it next to impossible to track the industry's impact or reach. Firms rarely announce their investments and routinely subject doctors to nondisclosure agreements that make it difficult for them to speak publicly. Bloomberg Businessweek spoke to dozens of doctors at 10 large private equity-backed dermatology groups. Those interviews, along with information obtained from other employees, investors, lawyers, court filings, and company records, reveal how the firms operate, and why they sometimes fail patients.
The process is never exactly the same, but there are familiar patterns, which tend to play out in five steps.
Step 1: MarriageThe strange thing about private equity money in medicine is that for-profit investors have long been prevented from buying doctor's offices. Corporate ownership goes against a doctrine set by the American Medical Association , the main trade group for doctors in the U.S., and is prohibited by law in many states, including Texas and New Jersey. For most of the past 100 years, if you wanted to make money on a medical practice, you needed to have a medical license.
Yet over the past decade, lawyers devised a structure that allows investors to buy a medical practice without technically owning it: the MSO, or management service organization. Today, when an investment firm buys a doctor's office, what it's actually buying are the office's "nonclinical" assets. In theory, physicians control all medical decisions and agree to pay a management fee to a newly created company, which handles administrative tasks such as billing and marketing.
In practice, though, investors expect some influence over medical decision-making, which, after all, is connected to profits. "When we partner with you, it's a marriage," said Matt Jameson, a managing director at BlueMountain Capital, a $17 billion firm that recently invested in a women's health company, while speaking at a conference in New York in September. "We have to believe it. You have to believe it. It's not going to be something where clinical is completely not touched." (When contacted by Businessweek , Jameson asked to clarify his comments. "Doctors and other qualified healthcare professionals at the providers we've invested in make medical decisions," he said in a statement.)
The typical buyout starts with the acquisition of a big, popular practice, often with multiple doctors and several locations, for as much as $100 million. (Investors typically pay between 9 and 12 times annual profit.) This practice functions as an anchor, like a name-brand department store at a shopping mall, attracting patients and doctors to the new group as it expands. Then comes the roll-up: The private equity firm purchases smaller offices and solo practices, giving the group a regional presence.
As part of the new structure, investors deal with paperwork and save money by buying medical supplies in bulk. Crucially they also negotiate higher insurance reimbursement rates. One dermatologist who sold her practice to the California Skin Institute says she was surprised to find out the bigger group's payouts from insurers were $25 to $125 more per visit.
When individual doctors sell, they generally receive $2 million to $7 million each, with 30% to 40% of that paid in equity in the group. After the acquisition, doctors get a lower salary and are asked to help recruit other doctors to sell their practices or to join as employees.
At first, doctors are generally thrilled by all of this. They have financial security and can focus on treating patients without the stress of running a business. Patients, for the most part, are in the dark. Unlike when your mortgage changes hands, you usually aren't notified when a big investment firm buys your doctor. Sometimes the sign on the door bearing the physician's name stays put, and subtle changes in operations or unfamiliar fees may be the only clues that anything has happened.
Step 2: Growth
The promise of more patients is a big draw for doctors. By sharing marketing costs and adding locations, the new companies can advertise more and attract customers. Private equity-owned practices have been diligent users of social media, announcing newly added doctors and posting coupons on Twitter and Instagram. But these practices can be aggressive in ways that make some doctors uncomfortable.
At Advanced Dermatology & Cosmetic Surgery , the largest private equity-backed group in the field, with more than 150 locations across the U.S., that sense of discomfort came shortly after Audax Group bought a controlling stake in what was then a much smaller chain in 2011. The new management team introduced a scorecard that rewarded offices with cash if they met daily and monthly financial goals, according to a lawsuit filed in 2013 against the company by one of its dermatologists. The doctor alleged that the bonus program encouraged staff to do as many procedures as possible, rather than strictly addressing patients' medical needs.
In some of the company's Florida offices, the doctor alleged, medical assistants responded to the bonus structure by ticking extra boxes on exam reports, stating that doctors checked many more areas of the body than they actually had. That led to higher patient bills, defrauding the government under its Medicare program, according to the lawsuit. The federal government declined to join the case, and it was dismissed about a year after it was filed. Advanced and Audax declined to comment.
One-Stop Skin Care
By buying up labs and adding specialists, private equity-owned dermatology groups get paid at every step of a patient's treatment.
Data: Estimated Medicare reimbursement rates for the Miami area, Sensus Healthcare sales presentation
Private equity-backed practices also try to increase revenue by adding more-lucrative procedures, according to doctors interviewed by Businessweek . In dermatology, this means more cosmetics, laser treatments, radiation, and especially Mohs surgeries -- a specialized skin cancer procedure that removes growths from delicate areas like the face and neck one layer at a time, to limit scarring. The surgery involves expensive equipment and specialized doctors, so some large medical groups keep costs down by assembling traveling Mohs teams, who fly in from other states. Others create mobile labs in vans that set up in clinics' parking lots.
Most dermatologists use outside labs and pathologists, but private equity-owned groups buy up existing labs and hire their own pathologists. Then doctors are encouraged to refer patients within the group and send biopsy slides to the company-owned labs, keeping the entire chain of revenue in-house. This takes advantage of a regulatory quirk that has made dermatology, and a handful of other specialties, attractive to private equity. Under the 1989 Stark Law, doctors aren't allowed to make patient referrals for their own financial gain. An exception was made for some fields because it's more convenient for patients, explains Dr. Sailesh Konda, a Mohs surgeon and professor at the University of Florida. "But that can be abused."
Step 3: SynergyNow comes the cost-cutting. This is supposed to be the hallmark of private equity, and, done right, it can work to the benefit of doctors and patients. But there are pitfalls unique to medicine, where aggressive cuts can lead to problems, some of them merely inconvenient and some potentially dangerous.
A doctor at Advanced Dermatology says that waiting for corporate approvals means his office is routinely left without enough gauze, antiseptic solution, and toilet paper. Even before the great toilet paper shortage of 2020, he would travel with a few rolls in the trunk of his car, to spare patients when an office inevitably ran out. The company declined to comment.
At the country's second-biggest skin-care group, U.S. Dermatology Partners , a former doctor says a regional manager switched to a cheaper brand of needles and sutures without consulting the medical staff. The quality was so poor, she says, they would often break off in her patients' bodies. Mortified, she'd have to dig them out and start over. She complained to managers but couldn't get better supplies, she says. Paul Singh, U.S. Dermatology's CEO, says the company uses a "reputable, global vendor for medical supplies." "While our group may have standardized purchasing processes, individual providers have the autonomy to procure specific supplies that they need for a particular patient situation or patient population," he says in a statement.
Doctors who join a private equity-backed group generally sign contracts that state they'll never have to compromise their medical judgment, but some say that management began to intervene there, too. Dermatologists at most of the companies say they were pushed to see as many as twice the number of patients a day, which made them feel rushed and unable to provide the same quality of care. Others were forced to discuss their cases with managers or medical directors, who asked the doctors to explain why they weren't sending more patients for surgery. Multiple practices also encouraged doctors to send home Mohs surgery patients with open wounds and have them come back the next day for stitches -- or to have a different doctor do the closure the same day -- because that would allow the practice to collect more from insurers.
That's if doctors are performing the procedures at all. At Advanced Dermatology, several doctors say they were asked to claim that physician assistants, or PAs, were under their supervision when they weren't seeing patients in the same building, or even the same town. Because PAs are paid less than dermatologists, this allowed the company to keep costs low while growing the business. In a statement, Eric Hunt, Advanced's general counsel and chief compliance officer says that having PAs on staff enables the company to "provide access to quality dermatological care to more patients."
Step 4. Rolling Up the Roll-UpAdvanced Dermatology was sold in 2016 by Audax to Harvest Partners LP , following a pattern that's typical in the industry. At some point, after costs have been cut and profits maximized, most private equity-owned medical groups will be sold, often to another private equity firm, which will then try to somehow make the company even more profitable.
Having reduced most of the obvious costs, Advanced Dermatology began skimping on more important supplies, including Hylenex, according to doctors and other employees. The drug is an expensive reversal agent used when cosmetic fillers, which are supposed to make skin look plumper, go wrong. Not having enough is dangerous: Patients who get an injection that inadvertently blocks a blood vessel can be left with dead sections of skin or even go blind if they don't get enough Hylenex in a matter of hours. The company says that it stocks Hylenex in every office that performs cosmetic procedures, and that it "has no records of any provider being denied an order for this medication."
Advanced Dermatology also started giving even more authority to PAs, according to doctors and staff. Without enough oversight some were missing deadly skin cancers, they say. Others were doing too many biopsies and cutting out much larger areas of skin than necessary, leaving patients with big scars. Doctors who complained about the bad behavior say they saw PAs moved to other locations rather than fired or given more supervision. Hunt, the company's lawyer, says that all PAs get six months of training and are supervised by experienced doctors.
The staff coined a new medical diagnosis, "pre- pre- pre-cancer"
Advanced Dermatology also put more pressure on doctors to send biopsies to in-house labs. The move made sense financially, but some of the doctors didn't trust the lab. One of its two pathologists in Delray Beach, Fla., Steven Glanz, had a history of misdiagnosing benign tumors, which led patients to undergo surgeries that were later found to be unnecessary, according to doctors who worked with him. Dermatologists who warned that Glanz was a danger to patients say that their complaints to Dr. Matt Leavitt, the group's founder and CEO, were ignored. More procedures, doctors knew, brought in more money.
Glanz, who had been with the practice since its early days, was known to read slides under a microscope with a pistol on his desk. After he was arrested with a handgun, a folding knife, and a vial of methamphetamine crystals, he was fired and Florida's state medical board fined him $10,000, requiring him to complete a five-hour course on ethics before he could resume practicing. But his former colleagues were unsettled; they knew Glanz's signature was on years of reports that determined treatment for patients. Some slides were reevaluated, and pathologists noticed mistakes. Managers told some doctors and their staff that patients, even those who'd been misdiagnosed and had unnecessary procedures, were not to be told. Glanz pleaded guilty to stalking and a firearms violation and was sentenced to probation. When a reporter called his office and identified herself, the receptionist hung up. Further attempts to reach Glanz were unsuccessful. Advanced's Hunt says that he was "formally released from employment three years ago," but did not comment further.
Of course, some doctors pushed ethical boundaries long before private equity came into the picture. But critics of the industry, including doctors and investors, say management teams put in place by private equity firms tend to look the other way as long as a medical practice is profitable. Of the dermatologists with the highest biopsy rates in the country (between 4 and 11 per patient, per year), almost 25% were affiliated with private equity-backed groups, according to Dr. Joseph Francis, a Mohs surgeon and data researcher at the University of Florida.
Medical providers may have also been blurring ethical lines at U.S. Dermatology Partners, which was until recently on its second private equity owner, Abry Partners LLC . At four of the company's offices in Texas, a doctor and his PAs were doing more biopsies than necessary, according to employees. These employees say the staff routinely called patients with benign lichenoid keratosis, small brownish blotches that usually go away on their own, and told them the growths should be removed. Under instruction from the doctor, the staff coined a new medical diagnosis, "pre- pre- pre-cancer," and then talked patients into coming in for removal, employees say. Singh, the U.S. Dermatology CEO, says that the company trusts doctors to make the right decisions and that it monitors them through routine audits.
Step 5: Sell-OffIn some cases the cost-cutting either becomes impossible or leads to compromises in care too obvious to ignore. In 2016 a DermOne LLC office in Irving, Texas, had been using a faulty autoclave machine to sterilize surgical equipment -- the state and county health departments identified 137 patients that needed to get tested for blood-borne diseases such as HIV and hepatitis. By 2018, DermOne's backer, Westwind Investors, wanted out.
Westwind had been one of the earliest firms to build a big dermatology business -- with practices in five states -- but others had grown larger. After the debacle in Irving, the Nevada-based firm sold DermOne's medical records and patient lists, as well as some of its offices, to other groups. It dissolved the remaining offices, leaving some patients abruptly without care. Westwind did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Two other private equity-backed groups, TruDerm and Select Dermatology LLC, have also gone out of business in the past two years.
The surviving chains have been saddled with large piles of debt they're now struggling to repay. In January, U.S. Dermatology Partners defaulted on a $377 million loan, meaning the private equity backer, Abry Partners, had to hand over the keys to its lenders, Golub Capital , Carlyle Group , and Ares Management , which will now oversee a chain with almost 100 locations, receiving 1 million visits from patients a year. Abry did not respond to requests for comment .
For the medical groups that make it, the game plan is to eventually sell to the largest players, such as KKR , Blackstone Group , and Apollo Global Management . Pioneering investors, including Audax, are now buying practices in other fields -- a concerning development to critics who note that the areas that are currently attracting investment, such as urology, generally involve more invasive procedures. Should doctors performing vasectomies be thinking about the dollar-rate returns for KKR -- or any private investor?
"It's ultimately going to backfire," says Dr. Jane Grant-Kels, a veteran dermatologist and professor at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. "There's a limit to how much money you can make when you're sticking knives into human skin for profit."
One paradox of the Covid-19 pandemic has been that even as the virus has focused the entire country on health care, it's been a financial disaster for the industry. And so, while emergency room doctors and nurses care for the sick -- comforting those who would otherwise die alone, and in some cases dying themselves -- private equity-backed staffing companies and hospitals have been cutting pay for ER doctors. These hospitals, like the big medical practices, make a large portion of their money from elective procedures and have been forced into wrenching compromises.
For investors with capital, on the other hand, the economic fallout from the virus is a huge opportunity. Stay-at-home orders have left small practices more financially strained than they've ever been. That will likely accelerate sales to private equity firms, according to Marc Cabrera, an investment banker focused on health-care deals at Oppenheimer & Co. Independent doctors or groups that previously rebuffed offers from deep-pocketed backers "will reconsider their options," he says.
Many doctors may ultimately come to regret cashing out, but it's hard to get out once you're in. As part of an acquisition, the private equity groups typically require doctors to sign yearslong contracts, with noncompete clauses that prevent them from working in the surrounding area.
As governors throughout the nation ease restrictions on businesses, Advanced Dermatology is opening its most profitable offices first. The company received an undisclosed sum under the Cares Act, as part of the government relief package intended for health-care workers. Hunt, Advanced's chief compliance officer, told employees in an email earlier this month that the money would be used for protective gear, such as masks, and to replace "millions of dollars" in lost revenue.
The group had closed most of its offices since the stay-at-home orders were issued in March, cutting pay for doctors and furloughing staff. With cities and states beginning to consider reopening, doctors and PAs say they've been told they should be prepared for a full schedule. Hunt says the company is following the appropriate safety measures, but employees fear it will be nearly impossible to keep patients apart in waiting rooms. Opening in a reduced capacity, they understand, is not an option.
Read more: Private Equity Ate Finance, and Now It's Taking Over the World
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May 24, 2020 | www.unz.com
128 , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 12:53 pm GMT
A lockdown in a lot of places seems to be justified on the basis of the fact that even if you are middle aged, the chances of hospitalization are still around 5 percent, and in the US going to the hospital for a week or weeks can leave you bankrupt.A123 , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 1:36 pm GMT@AP The interesting & important thing to note is that fatalities are heavily tied to the related factors of pre-existing conditions and advanced age. For example:Bert , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 5:34 pm GMThttps://www.statista.com/statistics/1107913/number-of-coronavirus-deaths-in-sweden-by-age-groups/
With CQ/AZ/ZN available everywhere, the bulk of the economy could reopen immediately with or without masks. Given that psychology is important, odds are mask wearing will make the restart more effective. However, masks provide partial protection at most.
PEACE
@utu Epidemiology uses R0 for an initial reproductive rate when a pathogen first invades a naive host population. Re is the designation for later when immunity begins to exist and, for human beings in the current pandemic, host behavior changes.
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May 24, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com
After the Soviet collapse thirty years ago, that order expanded its jurisdiction. Proponents sought to subsume the old Eastern Bloc, including perhaps Russia itself, into the American sphere. And they wanted to do so firmly on Washington's terms. Even as the country began to deindustrialize and growth slowed, American leadership developed a taste for fresh crusades in the Middle East; exotic savagery, went the subtext, had to be brought finally to heel. China was a rising force, but its regime would inevitably crater or democratize. Besides, Beijing was a peaceful trading partner of the United States.
2008, 2016 and 2020 -- the financial crisis, Trump's election and now the Coronavirus and its reaction -- have been successive gut punches to this project, a hat trick which may seal its demise. Ask anyone attempting to board an international flight, or open a new factory in China, or get anything done at the United Nations: the world is de-globalizing at a speed almost as astonishing as it integrated. Post-Covid, U.S.-China confrontation is not a choice. It's a reality. The liberal international order is not lamentable. It's already dead.
This was the argument made by Bannon. It had other backers, of course, within both the academy and an emerging foreign policy counter-establishment loathe to repeat the mistakes of the past thirty years. But coming from the former top political advisor to the sitting president of the United States, it was provocative stuff. Bannon articulated a perspective which seemed to be on the tip of the foreign policy world's tongue. And it riled people up. The most fulsome rebuttal to the zeitgeist was perhaps The Jungle Grows Back , tellingly written by Robert Kagan, an Iraq War architect. The peripheral world was dangerous brush; the United States was the machete.
Trumpian nationalism has chugged along for nearly three years since -- stripped, some might say, of its Bannonite flair and intelligence. The most hysterical prophecies of what the president might do -- that he might withdraw from the geriatric North Atlantic Treaty Organization, for instance -- have not come to pass. Trump has howled and roared, true: but so far, his most disruptive foreign policy maneuver has been escalation against Iran.
It's very good to hear the right getting a little humility in them now and talking less empire, more multilateralism. Trump has been way too concerned with his MAGA personality cult to understand the value of humility.kouroi MPC • 3 days agoThe world's a big place. The reality is, America first will more and more mean working together with other nations for mutual benefit, and often their gain will indirectly be to our own also.
Working more and more, yes. This is why US is undercutting Germany's competitiveness, by blocking a cheap source of energy via NS2...MPC kouroi • 3 days agoAs Bush said, you are either with us or against us. Nothing has changed and nothing will change, but it will become uglier. If it were to desire multi-polarity, the US would tolerate not only states, like KSA, where the Royals own everything, but also states, like Iran, or Cuba, where the people (through the government/state) owns assets (land and productive facilities). But the US does not tolerate such type of multi-polarity, not open to US "investment" and ownership (bought with fiat money).
Cold War II started in 2007, with Putin. Popcorn & beer lads!
It does seem like there's a creeping idea, not just on dissident internet sites now like before, that the Russian rivalry is a luxury of the past. Even the liberals are going to have to reconcile with liberal hegemony not being workable and settle for something less. Owing to distance and mutual interest (common rivals Britain and Germany) Russia and America had a long history of friendship before the Cold war.DUNK Buhari2 • 2 days agoI sadly agree about the predatory nature of much of America does. I think it really is a reflection of partially, imperial arrogance, but even moreso a matter of who runs the country. Oligarchy is poorly checked in modern America. Maybe we can hope for a humbled oligarchy, at least.
Trump is indeed an empty suit and a demagogue, but he ran on a decent nationalist platform (probably thanks to Bannon, who is almost certainly a closeted gay. No joke... a deep-in-the-closet, self-hating gay. The navy can change a man, and he's a fraud in other ways: see Eric Striker's article "International Finance's Anti-China Crusade"). Trump does have an absurd ego, and he probably figured becoming president would impress Ivanka too.kirthigdon • 3 days agoAlso, the Uyghurs are not totally innocent victims... Some of them are US-financed revolutionaries and some of them have committed terrorism: see Godfree Roberts at Unz Review: "China and the Uyghurs" (January 10, 2019) and Ajit Singh at The Grayzone: "Inside the World Uyghur Congress: The US-backed right-wing regime change network seeking the 'fall of China'" (March 5, 2020). Some of our pathetic propagandists make it seem like they're in concentration camps, but there is objective reporting that suggests it's more like job training programs and anti-jihad classes. Absurd lies have certainly been told about North Korea and many other countries, so be skeptical.
Yeah, let's get that hate on for China - why they're as bad as Russia, Iran and Venezuela put together and there are so many more of them. Especially a lot are available right here in the US and have lots of restaurants that can be boycotted. Not that many Venezuelan restaurants around. Seriously, can Americans get over this childishness? When the US closes down its 800+ overseas bases and withdraws its fleet to its own shores instead of Iran's and China's, then maybe Americans will be entitled to complain about someone else's imperialism.Collin Reid • 3 days agoMost of anti-China stuff Hawley, much like Trump, claims always feels empty populism for WWC voters.Feral Finster Collin Reid • 3 days ago1) It is reasonable to be against our Middle East endeavors and not be so anti-China.
2) I still don't understand how it is China fault for stealing manufacturing jobs when it is the US private sector that does it. (And Vietnam exist, etc.) So without Charles Koch and Tim Cook behind this trade stuff, it feels like empty populism.
3) The most obvious point on China to me is how little they do use military measures for their 'imperialism.'One problem with all this populism emptiness, is there is a lot issues with China to work on:
1) This virus could have impact economies in Africa and South America a lot where the nations have to renegotiate their loans to China. I have no idea how this goes but there will be tensions here. Imperialism is tough in the long run.
2) There are nations banding together on China's reaction to the virus and it seems reasonable that US joining them would be more effective than Trump's taunting.
3) To prove Trump administration incompetence, I have no idea how he is not turning this crisis into more medical equipment and drugs manufacturing. (My guess is this both takes a lot of work and frankly a lot of manufacturing plants have risks of spreads so noone wants to invest.)Apparently it is now a form of aggression, imperialism, even, to work for lower wages than a comparable American worker.DUNK Collin Reid • 2 days agoI can understand some protectionist measures. But acting as if these measures were a response to an unprovoked attack is hyperventilating.
Hawley is a "fake populist" according to Eric Striker's article "International Finance's Anti-China Crusade" and I just saw fake-patriot airhead Pete Hegseth claim China wants to destroy our civilization, on fake populist Tucker Carlson's show. It's well-established that Fox News and the GOP are still neocons and fake patriots... after all, the Trump administration is run by Jared Kushner, a protégé of Rupert Murdoch and Bibi Netanyahu.dbjm • 3 days agoHawley's speech on the Senate floor yesterday deserves much more criticism than it gets here. This article from Reason does a good job breaking down the speech and pointing out what's right AND wrong about it:Collin Reid Kessler • 2 days agoWhat if there is reduced wars and civil wars n the world today than ever. (So say anytime before 1991?) I get all the Middle East & African Wars but look at the rest of the world. When in history have the major West Europe powers not had a major war in 75 years. After issues of post Cold War East Europe is probably more peaceful than ever. Look at South America. In the 1970s the Civil Wars raged in all those nations. Or the Pacific Rim? Japan, China, and other nations are fighting with Military right now.kouroi Collin Reid • 2 days agoThis is certainly less than perfect but the number of people (per million) dieing in wars and civil wars are at historic lows.
The fall of Soviet Union and weakening of Russia allowed US and Western Europe to attack Serbia in 1990s. A stronger Russia wouldn't have allowed that to happen (who's trying to get Crimea from Russia's control now?). But with US aggressiveness and bellicosity (including nuclear posture) at Russia's borders do not bode well.chris chuba • 3 days agoBut it is true, less important people are dying now...
Chinese imperialism? Uh ... other than shaking trees and drumming up fear can I get like one example of that.DUNK chris chuba • 2 days agoTaiwan, part of China since the 1500's and they are have not issued any new threats since 1949.
Hong Kong - stolen from China and now reluctantly given back with lots of conditions. If they deserve the right of independence through referendum I'm all for it as long as we apply this standard uniformly including parts of Texas, San Diego, New Mexico, Arizona, any place that has a large foreign population will do.
Yeah, "Chinese imperialism" is complete nonsense, just like the claim that they definitely originated the coronavirus, caused Americans to be under house arrest, and caused a depression. In fact, the origin of the virus is far from clear, and it wasn't China who hyped up and exaggerated the danger and wrecked the economy. It was our superficial corporate media and government that did that (perhaps deliberately)... the same people who are desperately trying to deflect blame onto the CCP. The same people who have been mismanaging and ruining America for decades in order to enrich themselves.Gregtown • 3 days agoShould we all start reading Chomsky books again?Sidney Caesar Gregtown • 3 days ago • edited"Neoliberal democracy. Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless."
Most people would be well served to read Chomsky a first time.Gregtown Sidney Caesar • 3 days ago
However, it should be noted, Chomsky's critiques of neoliberalism aren't grounded in nationalism, xenophobia, and racism. So a lot of TAC readers (and especially writers) may be disappointed.Ha...sadly true.Tradcon • 3 days agoI just pulled On Anarchism off my bookshelf. Time to revisit my early 20's.
Hawley seems like the natural choice for the potential future of the GOP, that is a post-fusionist or post-liberal GOP. However the one thing that worries me is his foreign policy. He talks the talk, but I'm having trouble to see if he walks the walk. As Mills noted he didn't vote to end support for the genocidal war in Yemen, a war that serves purely the interests of Saudi Arabia and not our own. He has criticized David Petraeus before, but its important not to be fooled by just rhetoric. While accepting he'll be better than any Tom Cotton or (god forbid) Nikki Haley in 2024, his foreign policy needs to be examined more until then.stevek9 • 3 days agoOur response to the epidemic was 100% 'made in China'. The entire 'Western World' decided to copy Beijing. If that doesn't establish a new level of leadership for China, I don't know what would. I'm surprised this is not more widely recognized. You can run down the many parallels, including the pathetic photo-op attempt by the West to build those emergency hospitals (Nightingale in the UK, Javits Center, etc. all across the US), which were just to show 'hey we can build hospitals in a few weeks also' ... never mind they could never, and were never used for anything at all.Kiyoshi01 • 3 days agoAt this point, Hawley is all talk. Further, much of his talking amounts to little more than expressing resentment. I agree that the US needs to follow a more nationalist pathway, which involved making itself less dependent on its chief geopolitical rival. But accomplishing this is going to require more than bashing China and asserting that cosmopolitan Americans are traitors. At this point, Hawley has no positive program to offer. Giving paid speeches that vilify coastal elites and China is not a political plan.MPC Kiyoshi01 • 2 days agoFurther, I agree that we're probably moving away from the universalist order that's guided much of our thinking since the 1990s. But isolationism is not the answer. We need to begin building a multilateral order that takes full account of China's rise as a worthy rival. This means that we need to develop a series of smaller-scale agreements with strategic partners. The TPP is a good example of such an agreement. But where is the call to revive it?
Lastly, I find the article's reference to China's treatment of gays and lesbians to be curious. I'd first note that using the term "homosexual" in reference to people is generally viewed as an offensive slur. Further, China's treatment of gay people isn't so bad, and tends to be better than what Hawley's evangelical supporters would afford. Moreover, China is a multi-ethnic country. It's program in Xinjiang has more to do with maintaining political order than a desire to repress non-Han people.
The general chest puffing nature of the American right makes it hard for them to understand that America might need to work with other countries at a deep level, and not as vassals either.DUNK MPC • 2 days agoIt doesn't seem like they're able to understand anything, or learn anything.Barry_II Kiyoshi01 • 11 hours ago". We need to begin building a multilateral order that takes full accountKevinS • 3 days ago • edited
of China's rise as a worthy rival. This means that we need to develop a
series of smaller-scale agreements with strategic partners. The TPP is a
good example of such an agreement. But where is the call to revive it?"The thing is that the post-WWII liberal international order was good for things like that.
Trump and the GOP quite deliberately destroyed it. Before that, the US would have the trust of many other governments; now they don't trust the US - even if Biden is elected, the next Trump is on the way."We benefit if countries that share our opposition to Chinese imperialism -- countries like India and Japan, Vietnam, Australia and Taiwan -- are economically independent of China, and standing shoulder to shoulder with us,"Kiyoshi01 KevinS • 3 days agoOK....then can someone explain why Hawley opposed the TPP, which was designed to accomplish just this. The TPP was supposed to create trading relationships between these countries and the United States in the context of an agreement that excluded China. In this instance people like Hawley were advancing China's position and interests (I suspect simply because it was a treaty negotiated under Obama, which apparently was enough to make it bad).
Probably because Hawley seems more interested in demagoguery than accomplishing anything productive. Never mind that 95% of the people who voted for him probably couldn't find Japan or Vietnam on a map.kouroi KevinS • 2 days agoTPP was not geared against China as a blanket thing, as an entire exclusion of China. The perfidy of TPP was that it was against any economic interactions with State Owned Enterprises (didn't mention the origin, didn't have to). The ultimate goal wasn't to isolate China but to force privatization of said SOEs, preferably run from Wall Street.calidus • 3 days agoPrivate property good and = Democracy; State property bad = Authoritarianism, dictatorship, etc. It is a fallacy here somewhere, cannot really put my finger on it...
Except this is all lies. On each chance to actually do something Hawley has sided with international corporations, as a good conservative will always do. Fixing globalism will never come form the right, this is all smoke and mirrors for the religious right, aka the rubes. And they are perpetual suckers and will keep buying into this crap as our nation is hollowed out and raided by the rich. And that, is TRUE conservatism.TheSnark • 3 days ago"Now we must recognize that the economic system designed by Western policy makers at the end of the Cold War does not serve our purposes in this new era," proclaimed Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri. "And it does not meet our needs for this new day." He continued, perhaps too politely: "And we should admit that multiple of its founding premises were in error."Kiyoshi01 Amicus Brevis • 2 days agoThe "error" in the founding premises of the post-WWII economic system was that it assumed that the US would act in a responsible manner. Instead we have run huge budget deficits and borrowed the difference from foreigners, randomly invading other countries, undermined the institutions we set up, bullied smaller countries rather than working with them, and abused our control of the financial system.
No, that old economic system served our interests very well, as long as we respected the institutions we set up and kept our own house in order. We haven't been doing any of that for at least 20 years.
Let's bear in mind that the Republican leader of the Senate married into a wealthy Chinese family that makes its money from hauling Chinese exports to our shores and the shores of other developed nations.Amicus Brevis Kiyoshi01 • 2 days ago • editedThis is all just hollow bravado meant to appeal to the right's nativist base.
I am not into the thinking that everyone whose politics I don't support is acting in bad faith. We are talking about the actions of literally millions of people. Accusing this or that person of acting in bad faith because of personal interest is just dirty politics dressed up as perceptiveness. I am not accusing any specific person of acting in bad faith, although some of the people who pushed opening up to China because more business in China would create a class of people who would eventually push for Democracy there, were indeed acting in bad faith. They wanted access to cheap labor with no rights.phreethink • 2 days agoYet, no doubt many of them actually believed the propaganda, because it supposedly happened in South Korea, Taiwan and other places. And especially the ones who switched the line to "globalism" when it was clear that the supposed indigenous pressures for Democracy did not materialize also acted in bad faith. I only assume that some of were because once I understood the rationale of the CCCP it was clear to me that China was radically different, and there is no way that so many of those guys who are smarter and more knowledgeable about political systems than me, did not figure it out. But I am not going to behave as if it the Republicans alone who were pushing either of these two false messages.
Criticizing China for "imperialism" is the height of hypocrisy on multiple levels. First, the United States has engaged in economic imperialism, sometimes enforced with military intervention, for a hundred years. Read Smedley Butler's "War is a Racket" if you doubt that. Second, this is the same guy who voted against our proxy war in Yemen. Third, one could very reasonably argue that China is simply applying the lessons it learned at the hands of Western imperialists since 1800s..DUNK phreethink • 2 days agoIt's good that SOME Republicans are at least giving lip service to the idea of bringing back manufacturing in this country. But you have to thank Trump for that, not the GOP establishment. The offshoring of American manufacturing as part of "free trade" was strongly supported (if not led) by the GOP going back to the 1980s.
And check out John Perkins's books ("Confessions of an Economic Hit Man", etc.) for up-to-date information. It's obviously true that criticizing China for "imperialism" is ridiculously hypocritical but people like Senator Hawley know they can get away with it because they understand how propaganda works on the dumbed-down masses.They understand doublethink, repetition, appeal to patriotism, appeal to racism, appeal to fear, etc. People like Rupert Murdoch do this every day... poorly, but well enough to be effective on a lot of people.
Incidentally, the Republicans may talk about bringing manufacturing back to the US but they're actually planning on shifting it to India (see Eric Striker's article "International Finance's Anti-China Crusade").
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May 23, 2020 | discussion.theguardian.com
hartebeest , 10 Apr 2019 18:42
Back in the Thatcher/Reagan years there were at people around who genuinely believed in the superiority of the market, or at least, made the effort to set out an intellectual case for it.Apomorph -> GeorgeMonbiot , 10 Apr 2019 18:19Now we're in a different era. After 2008, hardly anyone really believes in neoliberal ideas anymore, not to the point that they'd openly make the case for them anyway. But while different visions have appeared to some extent on both left and right, most of those in positions of power and influence have so internalised Thatcher's 'there is no alternative' that it's beyond their political horizons to treat any alternatives which do emerge as serious propositions, let alone come up with their own.
So neoliberalism stumbles on almost as a reflex action. Ben Fine calls it a 'zombie' but I think the better analogy is cannibalism. Unlike the privatisations of the 80s and 90s there's barely any pretence these days that new sell-offs are anything more than simply part of a quest to find new avenues for profit-making in an economy with tons of liquid capital but not enough places to profitability put it. Because structurally speaking most of the economy is tapped out.
Privatising public services at this point is just a way to asset strip and/or funnel public revenue streams to a private sector which has been stuck in neoliberal short-term, low skill, low productivity, low wage, high debt mode for so long that it has lost the ability to grow. So now it is eating itself, or at least eating the structures which hold it up and allow it to survive.
Right-wing ideology is often presented as a natural state and not ideological at all. This denial is a central feature, acting as a way of abdicating responsibility for harmful and selfish actions and providing means of fostering intellectual suspicion to prevent challenges or structured and coherent critiques like your own. The right engenders coalitions of people disinterested in politics and distrustful of politicians with those who feel intellectually superior but see politics as an amoral game in the pursuit of "enlightened" self-interest.As a result, everything about it is disingenous. There is no alternative (that we want you to choose). It's not racist to (constantly, always negatively and to the expense of everything else) talk about immigration. Cutting taxes for the rich reduces inequality (because we change the criteria to exclude the richest from the calculations). This is also because there are dualities at play. Neoliberalism relies on immigration to increase worker competition and suppress wage demand but courts the xenophobic vote (which is why even with reduced EU migration Brexit has so far increased overall immigration and would continue to do so in the event of no deal or May's deal). Both Remainers and Leavers have accused the other of being a neoliberal project, and in certain aspects -because of these dualities - both sides are correct.
I also believe the disdain for "political correctness" is somewhat a result of neoliberalism, since marketisation is so fundamental to the project and the wedge of the market is advertising, the language of bullshit and manipulation. People railing against political correctness feel judged for their automatic thoughts that they identify as natural instead of culturally determined. Behavioural advertising encourages these thoughts and suppresses consideration. It is a recipe for resentment.
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May 23, 2020 | discussion.theguardian.com
TenTribesofTexas , 11 Apr 2019 01:15
2 simple points that epitomize neo liberalism.marshwren , 10 Apr 2019 22:291. Hayek's book 'The Road to Serfdom' uses an erroneous metaphor. He argues that if we allow gov regulation, services and spending to continue then we will end up serfs. However, serfs are basically the indentured or slave labourers of private citizens and landowners not of the state. Only in a system of private capital can there be serfs. Neo liberalism creates serfs not a public system.
2. According to Hayek all regulation on business should be eliminated and only labour should be regulated to make it cheap and contain it so that private investors can have their returns guaranteed. Hence the purpose of the state is to pass laws to suppress workers.
These two things illustrate neo-liberalism. Deception and repression of labour.
As a matter of semantics, neo-liberalism delivered on the promise of freedom...for capitalists to be free of ethical accountability, social responsibility, and government regulation and taxes. And people can't understand why i'm a socialist.
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Apr 10, 2019 | www.theguardian.com
Thousands of people march through London to protest against underfunding and privatisation of the NHS. Photograph: Wiktor Szymanowicz/Barcroft Images M y life was saved last year by the Churchill Hospital in Oxford, through a skilful procedure to remove a cancer from my body . Now I will need another operation, to remove my jaw from the floor. I've just learned what was happening at the hospital while I was being treated. On the surface, it ran smoothly. Underneath, unknown to me, was fury and tumult. Many of the staff had objected to a decision by the National Health Service to privatise the hospital's cancer scanning . They complained that the scanners the private company was offering were less sensitive than the hospital's own machines. Privatisation, they said, would put patients at risk. In response, as the Guardian revealed last week , NHS England threatened to sue the hospital for libel if its staff continued to criticise the decision.
The dominant system of political thought in this country, which produced both the creeping privatisation of public health services and this astonishing attempt to stifle free speech, promised to save us from dehumanising bureaucracy. By rolling back the state, neoliberalism was supposed to have allowed autonomy and creativity to flourish. Instead, it has delivered a semi-privatised authoritarianism more oppressive than the system it replaced.
Workers find themselves enmeshed in a Kafkaesque bureaucracy , centrally controlled and micromanaged. Organisations that depend on a cooperative ethic – such as schools and hospitals – are stripped down, hectored and forced to conform to suffocating diktats. The introduction of private capital into public services – that would herald a glorious new age of choice and openness – is brutally enforced. The doctrine promises diversity and freedom but demands conformity and silence.
Much of the theory behind these transformations arises from the work of Ludwig von Mises. In his book Bureaucracy , published in 1944, he argued that there could be no accommodation between capitalism and socialism. The creation of the National Health Service in the UK, the New Deal in the US and other experiments in social democracy would lead inexorably to the bureaucratic totalitarianism of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
He recognised that some state bureaucracy was inevitable; there were certain functions that could not be discharged without it. But unless the role of the state is minimised – confined to defence, security, taxation, customs and not much else – workers would be reduced to cogs "in a vast bureaucratic machine", deprived of initiative and free will.
By contrast, those who labour within an "unhampered capitalist system" are "free men", whose liberty is guaranteed by "an economic democracy in which every penny gives a right to vote". He forgot to add that some people, in his capitalist utopia, have more votes than others. And those votes become a source of power.
His ideas, alongside the writings of Friedrich Hayek , Milton Friedman and other neoliberal thinkers, have been applied in this country by Margaret Thatcher, David Cameron, Theresa May and, to an alarming extent, Tony Blair. All of those have attempted to privatise or marketise public services in the name of freedom and efficiency, but they keep hitting the same snag: democracy. People want essential services to remain public, and they are right to do so.
If you hand public services to private companies, either you create a private monopoly, which can use its dominance to extract wealth and shape the system to serve its own needs – or you introduce competition, creating an incoherent, fragmented service characterised by the institutional failure you can see every day on our railways. We're not idiots, even if we are treated as such. We know what the profit motive does to public services.
So successive governments decided that if they could not privatise our core services outright, they would subject them to "market discipline". Von Mises repeatedly warned against this approach. "No reform could transform a public office into a sort of private enterprise," he cautioned. The value of public administration "cannot be expressed in terms of money". "Government efficiency and industrial efficiency are entirely different things."
"Intellectual work cannot be measured and valued by mechanical devices." "You cannot 'measure' a doctor according to the time he employs in examining one case." They ignored his warnings.
Their problem is that neoliberal theology, as well as seeking to roll back the state, insists that collective bargaining and other forms of worker power be eliminated (in the name of freedom, of course). So the marketisation and semi-privatisation of public services became not so much a means of pursuing efficiency as an instrument of control.
Public-service workers are now subjected to a panoptical regime of monitoring and assessment, using the benchmarks von Mises rightly warned were inapplicable and absurd. The bureaucratic quantification of public administration goes far beyond an attempt at discerning efficacy. It has become an end in itself.
Its perversities afflict all public services. Schools teach to the test , depriving children of a rounded and useful education. Hospitals manipulate waiting times, shuffling patients from one list to another. Police forces ignore some crimes, reclassify others, and persuade suspects to admit to extra offences to improve their statistics . Universities urge their researchers to write quick and superficial papers , instead of deep monographs, to maximise their scores under the research excellence framework.
As a result, public services become highly inefficient for an obvious reason: the destruction of staff morale. Skilled people, including surgeons whose training costs hundreds of thousands of pounds, resign or retire early because of the stress and misery the system causes. The leakage of talent is a far greater waste than any inefficiencies this quantomania claims to address.
New extremes in the surveillance and control of workers are not, of course, confined to the public sector. Amazon has patented a wristband that can track workers' movements and detect the slightest deviation from protocol. Technologies are used to monitor peoples' keystrokes, language, moods and tone of voice. Some companies have begun to experiment with the micro-chipping of their staff . As the philosopher Byung-Chul Han points out , neoliberal work practices, epitomised by the gig economy, that reclassifies workers as independent contractors, internalise exploitation. "Everyone is a self-exploiting worker in their own enterprise."
The freedom we were promised turns out to be freedom for capital , gained at the expense of human liberty. The system neoliberalism has created is a bureaucracy that tends towards absolutism, produced in the public services by managers mimicking corporate executives, imposing inappropriate and self-defeating efficiency measures, and in the private sector by subjection to faceless technologies that can brook no argument or complaint.
Attempts to resist are met by ever more extreme methods, such as the threatened lawsuit at the Churchill Hospital. Such instruments of control crush autonomy and creativity. It is true that the Soviet bureaucracy von Mises rightly denounced reduced its workers to subjugated drones. But the system his disciples have created is heading the same way.
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
The other point to be made is that the return of fundamentalist nationalism is arguably a radicalized form of neoliberalism. If 'free markets' of enterprising individuals have been tested to destruction, then capitalism is unable to articulate an ideology with which to legitimise itself.glisson , 12 Apr 2019 00:10Therefore, neoliberal hegemony can only be perpetuated with authoritarian, nationalist ideologies and an order of market feudalism. In other words, neoliberalism's authoritarian orientations, previously effaced beneath discourses of egalitarian free-enterprise, become overt.
The market is no longer an enabler of private enterprise, but something more like a medieval religion, conferring ultimate authority on a demagogue. Individual entrepreneurs collectivise into a 'people' serving a market which has become synonymous with nationhood.
A corporate state emerges, free of the regulatory fetters of democracy. The final restriction on the market - democracy itself - is removed. There then is no separate market and state, just a totalitarian market state.
This is the best piece of writing on neoliberalism I have ever seen. Look, 'what is in general good and probably most importantly what is in the future good'. Why are we collectively not viewing everything that way? Surely those thoughts should drive us all?economicalternative -> Pinkie123 , 11 Apr 2019 21:33Pinkie123: So good to read your understandings of neoliberalism. The political project is the imposition of the all seeing all knowing 'market' on all aspects of human life. This version of the market is an 'information processor'. Speaking of the different idea of the laissez-faire version of market/non market areas and the function of the night watchman state are you aware there are different neoliberalisms? The EU for example runs on the version called 'ordoliberalism'. I understand that this still sees some areas of society as separate from 'the market'?economicalternative -> ADamnSmith2016 , 11 Apr 2019 21:01ADamnSmith: Philip Mirowski has discussed this 'under the radar' aspect of neoliberalism. How to impose 'the market' on human affairs - best not to be to explicit about what you are doing. Only recently has some knowledge about the actual neoliberal project been appearing. Most people think of neoliberalism as 'making the rich richer' - just a ramped up version of capitalism. That's how the left has thought of it and they have been ineffective in stopping its implementation.economicalternative , 11 Apr 2019 20:42Finally. A writer who can talk about neoliberalism as NOT being a retro version of classical laissez faire liberalism. It is about imposing "The Market" as the sole arbiter of Truth on us all.Pinkie123 , 11 Apr 2019 13:27
Only the 'Market' knows what is true in life - no need for 'democracy' or 'education'. Neoliberals believe - unlike classical liberals with their view of people as rational individuals acting in their own self-interest - people are inherently 'unreliable', stupid. Only entrepreneurs - those close to the market - can know 'the truth' about anything. To succeed we all need to take our cues in life from what the market tells us. Neoliberalism is not about a 'small state'. The state is repurposed to impose the 'all knowing' market on everyone and everything. That is neoliberalism's political project. It is ultimately not about 'economics'.The left have been entirely wrong to believe that neoliberalism is a mobilisation of anarchic, 'free' markets. It never was so. Only a few more acute thinkers on the left (Jacques Ranciere, Foucault, Deleuze and, more recently, Mark Fisher, Wendy Brown, Will Davies and David Graeber) have understood neoliberalism to be a techno-economic order of control, requiring a state apparatus to enforce wholly artificial directives. Also, the work of recent critics of data markets such as Shoshana Zuboff has shown capitalism to be evolving into a totalitarian system of control through cybernetic data aggregation.manolito22 -> MrJoe , 11 Apr 2019 08:14
Only in theory is neoliberalism a form of laissez-faire. Neoliberalism is not a case of the state saying, as it were: 'OK everyone, we'll impose some very broad legal parameters, so we'll make sure the police will turn up if someone breaks into your house; but otherwise we'll hang back and let you do what you want'. Hayek is perfectly clear that a strong state is required to force people to act according to market logic. If left to their own devices, they might collectivise, think up dangerous utopian ideologies, and the next thing you know there would be socialism. This the paradox of neoliberalism as an intellectual critique of government: a socialist state can only be prohibited with an equally strong state. That is, neoliberals are not opposed to a state as such, but to a specifically centrally-planned state based on principles of social justice - a state which, to Hayek's mind, could only end in t totalitarianism. Because concepts of social justice are expressed in language, neoliberals are suspicious of linguistic concepts, regarding them as politically dangerous. Their preference has always been for numbers. Hence, market bureaucracy aims for the quantification of all values - translating the entirety of social reality into metrics, data, objectively measurable price signals. Numbers are safe. The laws of numbers never change. Numbers do not lead to revolutions. Hence, all the audit, performance review and tick-boxing that has been enforced into public institutions serves to render them forever subservient to numerical (market) logic. However, because social institutions are not measurable, attempts to make them so become increasingly mystical and absurd. Administrators manage data that has no relation to reality. Quantitatively unmeasurable things - like happiness or success - are measured, with absurd results.It should be understood (and I speak above all as a critic of neoliberalism) that neoliberal ideology is not merely a system of class power, but an entire metaphysic, a way of understanding the world that has an emotional hold over people. For any ideology to universalize itself, it must be based on some very powerful ideas. Hayek and Von Mises were Jewish fugitives of Nazism, living through the worst horrors of twentieth-century totalitarianism. There are passages of Hayek's that describe a world operating according to the rules of a benign abstract system that make it sound rather lovely. To understand neoliberalism, we must see that it has an appeal.
However, there is no perfect order of price signals. People do not simply act according to economic self-interest. Therefore, neoliberalism is a utopian political project like any other, requiring the brute power of the state to enforce ideological tenets. With tragic irony, the neoliberal order eventually becomes not dissimilar to the totalitarian regimes that Hayek railed against.
Nationalised rail in the UK was under-funded and 'set up to fail' in its latter phase to make privatisation seem like an attractive prospect. I have travelled by train under both nationalisation and privatisation and the latter has been an unmitigated disaster in my experience. Under privatisation, public services are run for the benefit of shareholders and CEO's, rather than customers and citizens and under the opaque shroud of undemocratic 'commercial confidentiality'.Galluses , 11 Apr 2019 07:26What has been very noticeable about the development of bureaucracy in the public and private spheres over the last 40 years (since Thatcher govt of 79) has been the way systems are designed now to place responsibility and culpability on the workers delivering the services - Teachers, Nurses, social workers, etc. While those making the policies, passing the laws, overseeing the regulations- viz. the people 'at the top', now no longer take the rap when something goes wrong- they may be the Captain of their particular ship, but the responsibility now rests with the man sweeping the decks. Instead they are covered by tying up in knots those teachers etc. having to fill in endless check lists and reports, which have as much use as clicking 'yes' one has understood those long legal terms provided by software companies.... yet are legally binding. So how the hell do we get out of this mess? By us as individuals uniting through unions or whatever and saying NO. No to your dumb educational directives, No to your cruel welfare policies, No to your stupid NHS mismanagement.... there would be a lot of No's but eventually we could say collectively 'Yes I did the right thing'.fairshares -> rjb04tony , 11 Apr 2019 07:17'The left wing dialogue about neoliberalism used to be that it was the Wild West and that anything goes. Now apparently it's a machine of mass control.'It is the Wild West and anything goes for the corporate entities, and a machine of control of the masses. Hence the wish of neoliberals to remove legislation that protects workers and consumers.
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May 23, 2020 | discussion.theguardian.com
Comment edited for clarity
Bolsheviks put ideology above and before the people needs; Neoliberals put capital above people. Neoliberals are the next-worst thing after Boslheviks (although nobody can match Bolsheviks as for excesses including Stalin terror) . That's why bothe now in the USA and in the USSR before the dissolution we have a lot of "death of despare" That said, why would anybody trust neolibral pols ?
Coronavirus had shown Brezhnev socialism and the US neoliberalism were never as far apart as people imagined. Two sides of a coin. A theological dispute.
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May 23, 2020 | discussion.theguardian.com
It's the same in education. Academies are unaccountable bureaucracies with very expensive layers of management while teachers are being laid off in some of the most deprived areas of the country, exemplified by this story from SheffieldJohnS58 , 11 Apr 2019 06:15Only the greedy, selfish, well off, egotistical and share holders believe that Public Services should, could and would benefit from privatisation and deregulation.Olympia1881 -> Centrecourt , 11 Apr 2019 05:46Education and Health for example are (in theory) a universal right in the UK. As numbers in the population rise and demographics change so do costs ie delivery of the service becomes more expensive.As market force logic is introduced it also becomes less responsive - hence people not able to get the right drugs and treatment and challenging and challenged young people being denied an education that is vital for them in increasing numbers.
Meanwhile - as Public Services are devalued and denuded in this system the private sector becomes increasingly wealthy at the top while its workers become poorer and less powerful at the bottom.
With the introduction of Tory austerity which punishes the latter to the benefit of the former there is no surprise that this system does not work and has provided a platform for the unscrupulous greedy and corrupt to exploit Brexit and produce conditions which will take 'Neiliberalism' to where logic suggests it would always go - with the powerful rich protected minority exerting their power over an increasingly poor and powerless majority.
Education is a prime example of where neoliberalism has had a negative effect. It worked well when labour was pumping billions into it and they invested in early intervention schemes such as sure start and nursery expansion. Unfortunately under the tories we have had those progressive policies scaled right back. Children with SEND and/or in care are commodities bought and sold by local authorities. I've been working in a PRU which is a private company and it does good things, but I can't help but think if that was in the public sector that it would be in a purpose built building rather than some scruffy office with no playground. The facilities aren't what you would expect in this day in age. If we had a proper functioning government with a plan then what happens with vulnerable children would be properly organised rather than a reactive shit show.
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May 23, 2020 | www.commondreams.org
America's billionaires saw their combined net worth soar by $434 billion between March 18 and May 19 while the coronavirus pandemic killed tens of thousands of people and ravaged the U.S. economy, forcing more than 30 million out of work.
That's according to a new analysis released Thursday by Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) titled " Tale of Two Crises: Billionaires Gain as Workers Feel Pandemic Pain ."
The report shows that the five wealthiest billionaires in the U.S. -- Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Bill Gates of Microsoft, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway, and Larry Ellison of Oracle -- saw their collective wealth grow by a total of $75.5 billion between March 18 and May 19, a 19% jump.
Bezos -- the world's richest man -- saw his wealth jump by nearly $35 billion in the two-month period. Yet even as Bezos' fortune continues to grow, Amazon announced last week that it will not extend $2-an-hour hazard pay for warehouse workers beyond the end of May.
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May 23, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
vk , May 22 2020 21:02 utc | 28
China is still in great danger. Of the existing 30 or so high-tech productive chains, China only enjoys superiority at 2 or 3 (see 6:48).
It is still greatly dependent on the West to development and still is a developing country.
So, yes, the West still has a realistic chance of destroying China and inaugurating a new cycle of capitalist prosperity.
What happens with the "decoupling"/"Pivot to Asia" is that, in the West, there's a scatological theory [go to 10th paragraph] - of Keynesian origin - that socialism can only play "catch up" with capitalism, but never surpass it when a "toyotist phase" of technological innovation comes (this is obviously based on the USSR's case). This theory states that, if there's innovation in socialism, it is residual and by accident, and that only in capitalism is significant technological advancement possible. From this, they posit that, if China is blocked out of Western IP, it will soon "go back to its place" - which is probably to Brazil or India level.
If China will be able to get out of the "Toyotist Trap" that destroyed the USSR, only time will tell. Regardless, decoupling is clearly not working, and China is not showing any signs so far of slowing down. Hence Trump is now embracing a more direct approach.
As for the USA, I've put my big picture opinion about it some days ago, so I won't repeat myself. Here, it suffices to say that, yes, I believe the USA can continue to survive as an empire - even if, worst case scenario, in a "byzantine" form. To its favor, it has: 1) the third largest world population 2) huge territory, with excellent proportion of high-quality arable land (35%), that basically guarantees food security indefinitely (for comparison, the USSR only had 10% of arable land, and of worse quality) 3) two coasts, to the two main Oceans (Pacific and Atlantic), plus a direct exit to the Arctic (Alaska and, de facto, Greenland and Canada) 4) excellent, very defensive territory, protected by both oceans (sea-to-sea), bordered only by two very feeble neighbors (Mexico and Canada) that can be easily absorbed if the situation asks to 4) still the financial superpower 5) still a robust "real" economy - specially if compared to the micro-nations of Western Europe and East-Asia 6) a big fucking Navy, which gives it thalassocratic power.
I don't see the USA losing its territorial integrity anytime soon. There are separatist movements in places like Texas and, more recently, the Western Coast. Most of them exist only for fiscal reasons and are not taken seriously by anyone else. The Star-and-Stripes is still a very strong ideal to the average American, and nobody takes the idea of territory loss for real. If that happens, though, it would change my equation on the survival of the American Empire completely.
As for Hong Kong. I watched a video by the chief of the PLA last year (unfortunately, I watched it on Twitter and don't have the link with me anymore). He was very clear: Hong Kong does not present an existential threat to China. The greatest existential threat to China are, by far, Xinjiang and Tibet, followed by Taiwan and the South China Sea. Hong Kong is a distant fourth place.
Those liberal clowns were never close.
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May 22, 2020 | www.commondreams.org
A progressive organization of 23,000 physicians from across the U.S. demanded Thursday that the American Hospital Association (AHA) divest completely from a dark-money lobbying group that has spent millions combating Medicare for All and instead devote those financial resources to the fight against Covid-19 and to better support for patients and healthcare workers.
Dr. Adam Gaffney, president of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), said in a statement that "the Covid-19 pandemic has stretched hospitals' resources to the limit, and the AHA should not waste precious member hospitals' funds lobbying against universal health coverage" as a member of the Partnership for America's Health Care Future (PFAHCF).
Because Medicare for All would provide a lifeline to hospitals in underserved areas that have been hit hard by Covid-19, Gaffney argued, the AHA "cannot claim to represent hospitals while also opposing a single-payer system that would keep struggling hospitals open." The AHA represents around 5,000 hospitals and other healthcare providers in the U.S.
As Common Dreams reported earlier this month, public health officials are accusing the Trump administration of directing billions of dollars in Covid-19 hospital bailout funds to high-revenue providers while restricting money to hospitals that serve low-income areas.
Tenet Healthcare, an investor-owned hospital company that has donated hundreds of thousands to PFAHCF, has received $345 million in Covid-19 bailout funds, Axios reported last month.
"The AHA should immediately leave the PFAHCF," Gaffney said, "and redirect that money to supporting patients and frontline healthcare workers."
"As physicians, we can no longer tolerate a health system that puts profits ahead of patients and public health," Gaffney added. "It's time for health professionals to hold accountable the organizations that claim to represent us."
Formed in the summer of 2018 by an alliance of pharmaceutical, insurance, and hospital lobbyists with the goal of countering the push for universal healthcare, PFAHCF's anti-Medicare for All " army " has grown rapidly since its founding, with the AHA joining the fray in 2019.
As The Intercept reported last October, the for-profit hospital industry has played an "integral role" in the corporate fight against single-payer.
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May 22, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
milomilo , May 23 2020 0:24 utc | 44
@vk , hilarious post trying to potray modern day USN as fhe same one who fought japanese.. after WW2 all USN did was doing tag with soviets and today even their skill lost in the current situation.. The good ole US navy is gone, all that left is aging airframes and ships and confused doctrine that focused on clearing endless brush fires from restless natives..USN are not able to fight peer enemy naval force, its man power are not sustainable in such fight , thus they will resort to military draft system again and pray tell how many foolish ignorant gung ho flag waving american would enlist ? it is easy for chickenhawks to scream war war war but when their lives or their kid's lives on the line of fire most will ran away to canada or mexico
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May 22, 2020 | consortiumnews.com
Herman , May 17, 2020 at 09:00
Interesting comparison between the aspirations of De Gaulle and Putin.
"Having a sense of history, de Gaulle saw that colonialism had been a moment in history that was past. His policy was to foster friendly relations on equal terms with all parts of the world, regardless of ideological differences. I think that Putin's concept of a multipolar world is similar. It is clearly a concept that horrifies the exceptionalists."
Agree with Johnstone.
OlyaPola , May 19, 2020 at 11:55
"Having a sense of history, de Gaulle saw that colonialism had been a moment in history that was past. "
Mr. de Gaulle like other "leaders" of colonial powers did understand that the moment of overt coercive relations of colonialism had passed and that colonialism to remain qualitatively the same, required covert coercive relations facilitated by the complicity of local "elites" on the basis of perceived self-interest.
The exceptions to such strategies lay within constructs of settler colonialism which were addressed primarily through warfare – "The United States of America", Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia, Indonesia, Algeria, Kenya, Rhodesia, Mozambique, Angola refer – to facilitate such future strategies.
"I think that Putin's concept of a multipolar world is similar."
As outlined elsewhere the concept of a multi-polar world is not synonymous with the concept of colonialism except for the colonialists who consistently seek to encourage such conflation through myths of we-are-all-in-this-togetherness.
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May 22, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
Dear Corporate America: maybe you remember the old Johnny Paycheck tune? Let me refresh your memory: take this job and shove it.
Put yourself in the shoes of a single parent waiting tables in a working-class cafe with lousy tips, a worker stuck with high rent and a soul-deadening commute --one of the tens of millions of America's working poor who have seen their wages stagnate and their income becoming increasingly precarious / uncertain while the cost of living has soared.
Unemployment and the federal stimulus bonus of $600 a week are far more than your regular wages, including tips. Exactly why do you want to go back to your miserable job and low pay? Why wouldn't you take time off and enjoy life a little, which is what you've been wanting to do for years?
Indeed--why not? The pandemic is giving many permission to get what they always wanted. Consider these examples:
1. The Federal Reserve has always pined for the power to bail out the top .01% / the New Nobility the way they deserve, with unlimited money-printing and the Fed being able to buy every rigged, fraudulent asset spewed by the New Nobility's financial and corporate predators and parasites.
Yee-haw, the pandemic genie granted your wish: there's no limits on how many trillions you can shove into the greedy maw of the top .01%, and bail out every single one of their predatory, exploitive, legalized looting bets that went south.
2. Local officials always wanted to commandeer some motels and shove the homeless into them, to clear the sidewalks and parks and then claim "homeless problem solved." Presto, your wish has been granted.
3. Central government authorities have always resented all those pesky civil liberties restraints on their unquenchable desires to control every tiny aspect of life, public and private, and now--voila, the doors to Petty Authoritarian Heaven have opened. Question our authority? A tenner in the gulag for you, Doubter of All That Is Great and Good.
4. Restaurant owners who on camera always have to say how much they love their customers and business, never mind the money, who secretly have come to loathe their over-entitled, self-absorbed, dilettante customers and are sick and tired of the soaring rent, business licenses, insurance, payroll taxes and costs of ingredients.
You know what, pal? Here's the keys, you can re-open whatever the heck you want, I'm outta here. I've been secretly wishing I could get out from underneath this crushing burden and get my life back. Yes, it was exciting way back when, but now it's nothing but an endless grind that wasn't making money even before the pandemic.
5. Since the financiers, Big Tech mini-gods and stock buyback crowd have looted and pillaged their way to immense fortunes by lying, cheating, conniving and gaming, why not follow the money just like the predators and parasites at the top of the heap?
Indeed, why not fudge the application for a federal small business loan and use the "free money" to lease that shiny new Rolls Royce you always desired? Well, haven't the authorities been begging us to borrow and spend like there's no tomorrow?
6. Dear Corporate America: maybe you remember the old Johnny Paycheck tune? Let me refresh your memory: take this job and shove it, I ain't working here no more. If there's a will, there's a way, and I'm stepping off the rat race merry-go-round, thank you very much. You can find some other sucker to do your dirty work and BS work, all for the greater glory and wealth of your New Nobility shareholders. I'm outta here. So I won't get rich, that dream died a long time ago. What I'm interested in now is getting my life back.
The pandemic might not follow the Central Casting script of a V-shaped return to debt-serf, BS-work wonderfulness. Everyone who was sick and tired of their pre-pandemic life and the endless exploitation has had time to think things over, and some consequential percentage of them will welcome "good-bye to all that" and others will decide not to go back, even if that is still an option.
It's called opting out, and it has always characterized the end of imperial pretensions, pillaging, propaganda and predation. Financial parasites, beware the second-order effects of your overweening dominance and limitless greed.
My recent books:
Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World ($13)
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May 22, 2020 | www.commondreams.org
President Donald Trump told Republican senators during a private lunch Tuesday that he is willing to let expanded unemployment benefits expire at the end of July, a decision that would massively slash the incomes of tens of millions of people who have lost their jobs due to the Covid-19 crisis.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the president "privately expressed opposition to extending a weekly $600 boost in unemployment insurance for laid-off workers affected by the coronavirus pandemic, according to three officials familiar with his remarks."
House Democrats passed legislation last week that would extend the beefed-up unemployment benefits through January of 2021 as experts and government officials -- including Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell -- warn the U.S. unemployment rate could soon reach 25%. The unemployment insurance boost under the CARES Act is set to expire on July 31, even as many people have yet to receive their first check.
"With nearly 1 in 5 Americans out of work, Donald Trump's plan is to cut off the boost to unemployment benefits and shower his wealthy buddies with more tax cuts," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), one of the architects of the unemployment insurance expansion, told HuffPost . "This is the worst economic crisis in 100 years and Donald Trump is doubling down on Herbert Hoover's economic playbook and pushing workers to risk their health for his political benefit."
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) -- who declared earlier this month that Congress will only extend the boosted unemployment insurance "over our dead bodies" -- said after the private lunch that Trump believes the benefits are "hurting the economic recovery." Graham was one of several Republican senators who opposed the initial expansion of unemployment benefits as too generous.
An analysis released last week by the Hamilton Project, an initiative of the Brookings Institution, found that expanded unemployment benefits offset "roughly half of lost wages and salaries in April." Unemployment insurance has "been essential to families, and is vital for keeping the economy from cratering further," the authors of the analysis noted.
Ernie Tedeschi, a former Treasury Department economist, estimated that "come July 31, if the emergency UI top-up isn't extended, unemployed workers will effectively get a pay cut of 50-75% overnight."
"It's increasingly looking like there won't be enough labor demand to hire them all back at that point," Tedeschi tweeted.
The latest Labor Department statistics showed that more than 36 million people in the U.S. have filed jobless claims since mid-March as mass layoffs continue in the absence of government action to keep workers on company payrolls. Despite the grim numbers, the Post 's Jeff Stein reported Tuesday that the White House is " predicting a swift economic recovery " as it resists additional efforts to provide relief to frontline workers and the unemployed.
On top of rejecting an extension of enhanced unemployment insurance, Trump last month publicly voiced opposition to another round of direct stimulus payments, instead advocating a cut to the tax that funds Social Security and Medicare.
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May 22, 2020 | www.commondreams.org
Demanding McDonald's prioritize public health and worker safety over profits, hundreds of employees at the fast food chain went on strike Wednesday, a day before the company was set to hold its annual shareholders' meeting.
Instead of distributing dividends to its shareholders, the striking employees are calling for the company to use its massive profits to pay for safety and financial protections for workers, scores of whom have contracted Covid-19 in at least 16 states so far.
Employees and strike organizers at the fair wage advocacy group Fight for $15 are demanding hazard pay during the pandemic of "$15X2," paid sick leave, sufficient protective gear for workers, and company-wide policy of closing a restaurant for two weeks when an employee becomes infected, with workers being fully paid.
The strike is taking place at stores in at least 20 cities. Fight for $15 and the SEIU, which is also supporting the action, say it's the first nationwide coordinated effort targeting the company since the coronavirus pandemic began in March.
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May 21, 2020 | consortiumnews.com
In France, confinement has been generally well accepted as necessary, but that does not mean people are content with the government -- on the contrary. Every evening at eight, people go to their windows to cheer for health workers and others doing essential tasks, but the applause is not for President Macron.
Macron and his government are criticized for hesitating too long to confine the population, for vacillating about the need for masks and tests, or about when or how much to end the confinement. Their confusion and indecision at least defend them from the wild accusation of having staged the whole thing in order to lock up the population.
What we have witnessed is the failure of what used to be one of the very best public health services in the world. It has been degraded by years of cost-cutting. In recent years, the number of hospital beds per capita has declined steadily. Many hospitals have been shut down and those that remain are drastically understaffed. Public hospital facilities have been reduced to a state of perpetual saturation, so that when a new epidemic comes along, on top of all the other usual illnesses, there is simply not the capacity to deal with it all at once.
The neoliberal globalization myth fostered the delusion that advanced Western societies could prosper from their superior brains, thanks to ideas and computer startups, while the dirty work of actually making things is left to low-wage countries. One result: a drastic shortage of face masks. The government let a factory that produced masks and other surgical equipment be sold off and shut down. Having outsourced its textile industry, France had no immediate way to produce the masks it needed.
Meanwhile, in early April, Vietnam donated hundreds of thousands of antimicrobial face masks to European countries and is producing them by the million. Employing tests and selective isolation, Vietnam has fought off the epidemic with only a few hundred cases and no deaths.
You must have thoughts as to the question of Western unity in response to Covid–19.
In late March, French media reported that a large stock of masks ordered and paid for by the southeastern region of France was virtually hijacked on the tarmac of a Chinese airport by Americans, who tripled the price and had the cargo flown to the United States. There are also reports of Polish and Czech airport authorities intercepting Chinese or Russian shipments of masks intended for hard-hit Italy and keeping them for their own use.
The absence of European solidarity has been shockingly clear. Better-equipped Germany banned exports of masks to Italy. In the depth of its crisis, Italy found that the German and Dutch governments were mainly concerned with making sure Italy pays its debts. Meanwhile, a team of Chinese experts arrived in Rome to help Italy with its Covid–19 crisis, displaying a banner reading "We are waves of the same sea, leaves of the same tree, flowers of the same garden." The European institutions lack such humanistic poetry. Their founding value is not solidarity but the neoliberal principle of "free unimpeded competition."
How do you think this reflects on the European Union?
The Covid–19 crisis makes it just that much clearer that the European Union is no more than a complex economic arrangement, with neither the sentiment nor the popular leaders that hold together a nation. For a generation, schools, media, politicians have instilled the belief that the "nation" is an obsolete entity. But in a crisis, people find that they are in France, or Germany, or Italy, or Belgium -- but not in "Europe." The European Union is structured to care about trade, investment, competition, debt, economic growth. Public health is merely an economic indicator. For decades, the European Commission has put irresistible pressure on nations to reduce the costs of their public health facilities in order to open competition for contracts to the private sector -- which is international by nature.
Globalization has hastened the spread of the pandemic, but it has not strengthened internationalist solidarity. Initial gratitude for Chinese aid is being brutally opposed by European Atlanticists. In early May, Mathias Döpfner, CEO of the Springer publishing giant, bluntly called on Germany to ally with the U.S. -- against China. Scapegoating China may seem the way to try to hold the declining Western world together, even as Europeans' long-standing admiration for America turns to dismay.
Meanwhile, relations between EU member states have never been worse. In Italy and to a greater extent in France, the coronavirus crisis has enforced growing disillusion with the European Union and an ill-defined desire to restore national sovereignty.
Corollary question: What are the prospects that Europe will produce leaders capable of seizing that right moment, that assertion of independence? What do you reckon such leaders would be like?
The EU is likely to be a central issue in the near future, but this issue can be exploited in very different ways, depending on which leaders get hold of it. The coronavirus crisis has intensified the centrifugal forces already undermining the European Union. The countries that have suffered most from the epidemic are among the most indebted of the EU member states, starting with Italy. The economic damage from the lockdown obliges them to borrow further. As their debt increases, so do interest rates charged by commercial banks. They turned to the EU for help, for instance by issuing eurobonds that would share the debt at lower interest rates. This has increased tension between debtor countries in the south and creditor countries in the north, which said nein . Countries in the eurozone cannot borrow from the European Central Bank as the U.S. Treasury borrows from the Fed. And their own national central banks take orders from the ECB, which controls the euro.
What does the crisis mean for the euro? I confess I've lost faith in this project, given how disadvantaged it leaves the nations on the Continent's southern rim.
The great irony is that "a common currency" was conceived by its sponsors as the key to European unity. On the contrary, the euro has a polarizing effect -- with Greece at the bottom and Germany at the top. And Italy sinking. But Italy is much bigger than Greece and won't go quietly.
The German constitutional court in Karlsruhe recently issued a long judgment making it clear who is boss. It recalled and insisted that Germany agreed to the euro only on the grounds that the main mission of the European Central Bank was to fight inflation, and that it could not directly finance member states. If these rules were not followed, the Bundesbank, the German central bank, would be obliged to pull out of the ECB. And since the Bundesbank is the ECB's main creditor, that is that. There can be no generous financial help to troubled governments within the eurozone. Period.
Is there a possibility of disintegration here?
The idea of leaving the EU is most developed in France. The Union Populaire Républicaine, founded in 2007 by former senior functionary François Asselineau, calls for France to leave the euro, the European Union, and NATO.
The party has been a didactic success, spreading its ideas and attracting around 20,000 active militants without scoring any electoral success. A main argument for leaving the EU is to escape from the constraints of EU competition rules in order to protect its vital industry, agriculture, and above all its public services.
A major paradox is that the left and the Yellow Vests call for economic and social policies that are impossible under EU rules, and yet many on the left shy away from even thinking of leaving the EU. For over a generation, the French left has made an imaginary "social Europe" the center of its utopian ambitions.
" Europe" as an idea or an ideal, you mean.
Decades of indoctrination in the ideology of "Europe" has instilled the belief that the nation-state is a bad thing of the past. The result is that people raised in the European Union faith tend to regard any suggestion of return to national sovereignty as a fatal step toward fascism. This fear of contagion from "the right" is an obstacle to clear analysis which weakens the left and favors the right, which dares be patriotic.
Two and a half months of coronavirus crisis have brought to light a factor that makes any predictions about future leaders even more problematic. That factor is a widespread distrust and rejection of all established authority. This makes rational political programs extremely difficult, because rejection of one authority implies acceptance of another. For instance, the way to liberate public services and pharmaceuticals from the distortions of the profit motive is nationalization. If you distrust the power of one as much as the other, there is nowhere to go.
Such radical distrust can be explained by two main factors -- the inevitable feeling of helplessness in our technologically advanced world, combined with the deliberate and even transparent lies on the part of mainstream politicians and media. But it sets the stage for the emergence of manipulated saviors or opportunistic charlatans every bit as deceptive as the leaders we already have, or even more so. I hope these irrational tendencies are less pronounced in France than in some other countries.
I'm eager to talk about Russia. There are signs that relations with Russia are another source of European dissatisfaction as "junior partners" within the U.S.–led Atlantic alliance. Macron is outspoken on this point, "junior partners" being his phrase. The Germans -- business people, some senior officials in government -- are quite plainly restive.
Russia is a living part of European history and culture. Its exclusion is totally unnatural and artificial. Brzezinski [the late Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Carter administration's national security adviser] spelled it out in The Great Chessboard : The U.S. maintains world hegemony by keeping the Eurasian landmass divided.
But this policy can be seen to be inherited from the British. It was Churchill who proclaimed -- in fact welcomed -- the Iron Curtain that kept continental Europe divided. In retrospect, the Cold War was basically part of the divide-and-rule strategy, since it persists with greater intensity than ever after its ostensible cause -- the Communist threat -- is long gone.
I hadn't put our current circumstance in this context. US-backed, violent coup in Ukraine, 2014.
The whole Ukrainian operation of 2014 [the U.S.–cultivated coup in Kyiv, February 2014] was lavishly financed and stimulated by the United States in order to create a new conflict with Russia. Joe Biden has been the Deep State's main front man in turning Ukraine into an American satellite, used as a battering ram to weaken Russia and destroy its natural trade and cultural relations with Western Europe.
U.S. sanctions are particularly contrary to German business interests, and NATO's aggressive gestures put Germany on the front lines of an eventual war.
But Germany has been an occupied country -- militarily and politically -- for 75 years, and I suspect that many German political leaders (usually vetted by Washington) have learned to fit their projects into U.S. policies. I think that under the cover of Atlantic loyalty, there are some frustrated imperialists lurking in the German establishment, who think they can use Washington's Russophobia as an instrument to make a comeback as a world military power.
But I also think that the political debate in Germany is overwhelmingly hypocritical, with concrete aims veiled by fake issues such as human rights and, of course, devotion to Israel.
We should remember that the U.S. does not merely use its allies -- its allies, or rather their leaders, figure they are using the U.S. for some purposes of their own.
What about what the French have been saying since the G–7 session in Biarritz two years ago, that Europe should forge its own relations with Russia according to Europe's interests, not America's?
At G7 Summit in Biarritz, France, Aug. 26, 2019. (White House)
I think France is likelier than Germany to break with the U.S.–imposed Russophobia simply because, thanks to de Gaulle, France is not quite as thoroughly under U.S. occupation. Moreover, friendship with Russia is a traditional French balance against German domination -- which is currently being felt and resented.
Stepping back for a broader look, do you think Europe's position on the western flank of the Eurasian landmass will inevitably shape its position with regard not only to Russia but also China? To put this another way, is Europe destined to become an independent pole of power in the course of this century, standing between West and East?
At present, what we have standing between West and East is not Europe but Russia, and what matters is which way Russia leans. Including Russia, Europe might become an independent pole of power. The U.S. is currently doing everything to prevent this. But there is a school of strategic thought in Washington which considers this a mistake, because it pushes Russia into the arms of China. This school is in the ascendant with the campaign to denounce China as responsible for the pandemic. As mentioned, the Atlanticists in Europe are leaping into the anti–China propaganda battle. But they are not displaying any particular affection for Russia, which shows no sign of sacrificing its partnership with China for the unreliable Europeans.
If Russia were allowed to become a friendly bridge between China and Europe, the U.S. would be obliged to abandon its pretensions of world hegemony. But we are far from that peaceful prospect.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune , is a columnist, essayist, author and lecturer. His most recent book is "Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century" (Yale). Follow him on Twitter @thefloutist . His web site is Patrick Lawrence . Support his work via his Patreon site .
Josep , May 19, 2020 at 02:04
It recalled and insisted that Germany agreed to the euro only on the grounds that the main mission of the European Central Bank was to fight inflation, and that it could not directly finance member states.
I once read a comment elsewhere saying that, back in 1989, both Britain (under Margaret Thatcher) and the US objected to German reunification. Since they could not stop the reunification, they insisted that Germany accept the incoming euro. A heap of German university professors jumped up and protested, knowing fully well what the game was: namely the creation of a banker's empire in Europe controlled by private bankers.
Thorben Sunkimat , May 20, 2020 at 13:45
France and Britain rejected the german reunification. The americans were supportive, even though they had their demands. Mainly privatisation of german public utilities. After agreeing to those demands the americans persuaded the british and pressured the french who agreed to german reunification after germany agreed to the euro.
So why did france want the euro?
The German central bank crashed the European economy after reunification with high interest rates. This was because of above average growth rates mainly in Eastern Germany. Main function of the Bundesbank is to keep inflation low, which is more important to them than anything else. Since Germany's D Mark was the leading currency in Europe the rest of Europe had to heighten their interest rates too, witch lead to great economic problems within Europe. Including France.
OlyaPola , May 21, 2020 at 05:30
"namely the creation of a banker's empire in Europe controlled by private bankers."
Resort to binaries (controlled/not controlled) is a practice of self-imposed blindness. In any interactive system no absolutes exist only analogues of varying assays since "control" is limited and variable. In respect of what became the German Empire this relationship predated and facilitated the German Empire through financing the war with Denmark in 1864 courtesy of the arrangements between Mr. von Bismark and Mr. Bleichroder. The assay of "control of bankers" has varied/increased subsequently but never attained the absolute.
It is true that finance capital perceived and continues to perceive the European Union as an opportunity to increase their assay of "control" – the Austrian banks in conjunction with German bank assigning a level of priority to resurrecting spheres of influence existing prior to 1918 and until 1945.
One of the joint projects at a level of planning in the early 1990's was development of the Danube and its hinterland from Regensburg to Cerna Voda/Constanta in Romania but this was delayed in the hope of curtailment by some when NATO bombed Serbia in 1999 (Serbia not being the only target – so much for honesty-amongst-theives.)
This project was resurrected in a limited form primarily downstream from Vidin/Calafat from 2015 onwards given that some states of the former Yugoslavia were not members of the European Union and some were within spheres of influence of "The United States of America".
As to France, "Vichy" and Europa also facilitated the resurrection of finance capital and increase in its assay of control after the 1930's, some of the practices of the 1940's still being subject to dispute in France.
mkb29 , May 18, 2020 at 16:33
I've always admired Diana Johnstone's clear headed analyses of world/European/U.S./ China/Israel-Palestine/Russia/ interactions and the motivation of its "players". She has given some credence to what as been known as French rationalism and enlightenment. (Albeit as an American expat) Think Descartes, Diderot, Sartre , and She loves France in her own rationalist-humanist way.
Linda J , May 18, 2020 at 13:21
I have admired Ms. Johnstone's work for quite awhile. This enlightening interview spurs me to get a copy of the book and to contribute to Consortium News.
Others may be interested in the two-part video discovered yesterday featuring Douglas Valentine's analysis of the CIA's corporate backers and their global choke-hold on governments and their influencers in every region of the world.
Part 1
see:youtu(dot)be/cP15Ehx1yvIPart 2
see:youtu(dot)be/IYvvEn_N1sEworldblee , May 18, 2020 at 12:26
Not many have the long distance perspective on the world, let alone Europe, that Diana Johnstone has. Great interview!
Drew Hunkins , May 18, 2020 at 11:03
"Decades of indoctrination in the ideology of "Europe" has instilled the belief that the nation-state is a bad thing of the past. The result is that people raised in the European Union faith tend to regard any suggestion of return to national sovereignty as a fatal step toward fascism. This fear of contagion from "the right" is an obstacle to clear analysis which weakens the left and favors the right, which dares be patriotic."
Bingo! A marvelous point indeed! Quick little example -- Bernard Sanders should have worn an American flag pin on his suit during the 2020 Dem primary campaign.
chris , May 18, 2020 at 04:46
A very good analysis. As an American who has relocated to Spain several years ago, I am always disappointed that discussions of European politics always assume that Europe ends at the Pyrenees. Admittedly, Spanish politics is very complicated and confusing. Forty years of an unreconstructed dictatorship have left their mark, but the country´s socialist, communist and anarchic currents never went away. I like to say that the country is very conservative, but at least the population is aware of what is going on.
Perhaps what Ms. Johnston says about the French being just worn out, with no stomach for more violent conflict also applies to the Spanish since their great ideological struggle is more recent. The American influence during the Transition (which changed little – as the expression goes: The same dog but with a different collar) was very strong, and remains so. Even so, there is popular support for foreign and domestic policies independent of American and neoliberal control, but by and large the political and economic powers are not on board. I do not think Spain is willing to make a break alone, but would align itself with an European shift away from American control.
As Ms. Johnston says, Europe currently lacks leaders willing to take the plunge, but we will see what the coming year brings.
Sam F , May 17, 2020 at 17:45
Thank you Diana, these are valuable insights. Since WWII the US has itself been occupied by tyrants, using Russophobia to demand power as fake defenders.
1. Waving the flag and praising the lord on mass media, claiming concern with human rights and "Israel"; while
2. Subverting the Constitution with large scale bribery, surveillance, and genocides, all business as usual nowadays.
In the US, the form of government has become bribery and marketing lies; it truly knows no other way.It may be better that Russia and China keep their distance from the US and maybe even the EU:
1. The US and EU would have to produce what they consume, eventually empowering workers;
2. Neither the US nor EU are a political or economic model for anyone, and should be ignored;
3. Neither the US nor EU produces much that Russia and China cannot, by investing more in cars and soybeans.It will be best for the EU if it also rejects the US and its "neolib" economic and political tyranny mechanisms:
1. Alliance with Russia and China will cause substantial gains in stability and economic strength;
2. Forcing the US to abandon its "pretensions of world hegemony" will soon yield more peaceful prospects; and
3. Isolating the US will force it to improve its utterly corrupt government and society, maybe 40 to 60 years hence.Drew Hunkins , May 17, 2020 at 15:40
" French philosophy .By constantly attacking, deconstructing, and denouncing every remnant of human "power" they could spot, the intellectual rebels left the power of "the markets" unimpeded, and did nothing to stand in the way of the expansion of U.S. military power all around the world "
Brilliant. Exactly right. This was the progenitor to our contemporary I.D. politics which seems to be solely obsessed with vocabulary, semantics and non-economic cultural issues while rarely having a critique of corporate capitalism, militarism, massive inequality and Zionism. And it almost never advocates for robust economic populist proposals like Med4All, U.B.I., debt jubilee, and the fight for $15.
Drew Hunkins , May 17, 2020 at 15:10
The book is phenomenal. I posted a customer review over on Amazon for this stupendous work. Below is a copy of my review:
(5 stars) One of the most important intellects pens her magisterial lasting legacy
Reviewed in the United States on March 31, 2020Johnstone's been an idol of mine ever since I started reading her in the 1990s. She's clearly proved her worthiness over the decades by bucking the mainstream trend of apologetics for corporate capitalism, neoliberalism, globalism and imperialistic militarism her entire career and this astonishing memoir details it all in what will likely be the finest book of 2020 and perhaps the entire decade.
Her writing style is beyond superb, her grasp of the overarching politico-socio-economic issues that have rocked the world over the past 60 years is as astute and spot-on as you will find from any global thinker. She's right up there with Michael Parenti, James Petras, John Pilger and Noam Chomsky as seminal figures who have documented and brought light to tens of thousands (millions?) of people across the globe via their writings, interviews and speaking engagements.
Johnstone has never been one to shy away from controversial topics and issues. Why? Simple, she has the facts and truth on her side, she always has. Circle in the Darkness proves all this and more, she marshals the documentation and lays it out as an exquisite gift for struggling working people around the world.
From her groundbreaking work on the NATO empire's sickening war on sovereign Serbia, the dead end of identity politics and trans bathroom debates, to her critique of unfettered immigration and open borders, and her dismissal of the absurd Russsiagate baloney, better than anyone else, Johnstone has kept her intellect carefully honed to the real genuine kitchen table bread and butter issues that truly matter. She recognized before most of the world's scholars the perils of rampant inequality and saw the writing on the wall as to where this grotesque economic system is taking us all: down a dystopian slope into penury and police-state heavy-handedness, with millions unable to come up with $500 for an emergency car repair or dental bill.
Whenever she comes out with a new article or essay I immediately drop everything and devour it, often reading it twice to let her wisdom really soak in. So too Circle of Darkness is an extremely well written beautiful work that will scream out to be re-read every few years by those with a hunger to know exactly what was going on since the Korean War era through today regarding liberal thought, neocon and neoliberal dominance with its capitalist global hegemony and the take over of Western governments by the parasitic financial elite.
There will never be another Diana Johnstone. Circle in the Darkness will stand as her lasting legacy to all of us.
Bob Van Noy , May 17, 2020 at 14:43
"As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it" ~Albert Einstein
Many Thanks CN, Patrick Lawrence, and Joe Lauria. Once again I must commend CN for picking just the appropriate response to our contemporary dilemma.
The quote above leads Diana Johnstone's new book and succinctly describes both the universe and our contemporary experience with our digital age. President Kennedy and Charles de Gaulle of France would agree that colonialism was past and that a new world (geopolitical) approach would become necessary, but that philosophy would put them against some great local and world powers. Each of them necessarily had different approaches as to how this might be accomplished. They were never allowed to present their specific proposals on a world stage. Let's hope a wiser population will once again "see" this possibility and find a way to resolve it
Aaron , May 17, 2020 at 14:18
Well over the span of all of those decades, the consistent, inexorable theme seems to be a trend of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, a small number of individuals, not really states, gaining wealth and power, so everybody else fights over the crumbs, blaming this or that party, alliance, event or whatever, but behind it all there are two flower gardens, indeed the rich are all flowers of their golden garden, and the poor are all flowers of their garden.
It's like the Europeans and the 99 percent in America have all fallen for the myth of the American dream, that if we are just allowed more free, unfettered economic opportunity, it's just up to us to pick ourselves up by the bootstraps and become a billionaire.
The mask competition and fiasco shows the importance of a country simply making things in their own country, not on the other side of the world, it's not nationalism it's just a better way to logistically deliver reliable products to the citizens.
AnneR , May 17, 2020 at 13:42
Regarding French colonialism – as I recall the French were especially brutal in their forced withdrawal from Algeria, both toward Algerians in their homeland and to Algerians within France itself.
And the French were hardly willing, non-violent colonialists when being fought by the Vietnamese who wanted to be free of them (quite rightly so).
As for the French in Sub-Saharan Africa – they have yet to truly give up on their presumed right to have troops within these countries. They did not depart any of their colonies happily, willingly – like every other colonial power, including the UK.
And, as for WWII – she seems, in her reminiscences, to have mislaid Vichy France, the Velodrome roundups of French Jews, and so on ..
Ms Johnstone clearly has been looking backwards with rose-tinted specs on when it comes to France.
Randal Marlin , May 18, 2020 at 13:00
There may be some truth to AnneR's claim that Ms Johnstone has been looking with rose-tinted specs when it comes to France, but it is highly misleading for her to talk about "the French" regarding Algeria. I spent 1963-64 in Aix-en-Provence teaching at the Institute for American Universities and talked with some of the "pieds-noirs," (French born in Algeria).
After French President Charles de Gaulle decided to relinquish French control over Algeria, having previously reassured the colonial population that "Je vous ai compris" ("I have understood you"), there followed death threats to many French colonizers who had to flee Algeria immediately within 24 hours or get their throats slit – "La valise ou le cercueil" (the suitcase or the coffin).
In the fall of 1961, I saw Parisian police stations with machine-gun armed men behind concrete barriers, as an invasion by the colonial French paratroopers against mainland France was expected. The "Organisation Armée Secrète," OAS, (Secret Armed Organization) of the colonial powers, threatened at the time to invade Paris.
As an aside, giving a sense of the anger and passion involved, when the death of John F.Kennedy in November 1963 was announced in the historic, right-wing café in Aix, Les Deux Garçons, a huge cheer went up when the media announcer proclaimed "Le Président est assassinée. Only, that was because they thought de Gaulle was the president in question. A huge disappointment when they heard it was President Kennedy. To get a sense of the whole situation regarding France and Algeria I recommend Alistair Horne's "A Savage War of Peace."
OlyaPola , May 19, 2020 at 11:23
"They did not depart any of their colonies happily"
Some hold that they never departed, but mutated tools including CFA zones and "intelligence" relations in furtherance of "changing" to remain qualitatively the same. Just as "The United States of America" is a system of coercive relations not synonymous with the political geographical area designated "The United States of America", the colonialism of former and present "colonial powers" continues to exist, since the "independence" of the colonised was always, and continues to be, framed within linear systems of coercive relations, facilitated by the complicity of "local elites" on the basis of perceived self-interest, and the acquiescence of "local others" for myriad reasons.
Despite the "best" efforts of the opponents and partly in consequence of the opponents' complicity, the PRC and the Russian Federation like "The United States of America" are not synonymous with the political geographical areas designated as "The People's Republic of China and The Russian Federation", are in lateral process of transcending linear systems of coercive relations and hence pose existential threats to "The United States of America".
The opponents are not complete fools but the drowning tend to act precipitously including flailing out whilst drowning; encouraging some to dispense with rose- tinted glasses, despite such accessories being quite fashionable and fetching.
OlyaPola , May 20, 2020 at 04:32
" .. their colonies "
Perception of and practice of social relations are not wholly synonymous. A construct whose founding myths included liberty, egality and fraternity – property being discarded at the last moment since it was judged too provocative – experienced/experiences ideological/perceptual oxymorons in regard to its colonial relations, which were addressed in part by rendering their "colonies" department of France thereby facilitating increased perceptual dissonance.
Like many, Randal Marlin draws attention below to the perceptions and practices of the pied-noir, but omits to address the perceptions and practices of the harkis whom were also immersed in the proselytised notion of departmental France, and to some degree continue to be.
This understanding continues to inform the practices and problems of the French state.
Lolita , May 17, 2020 at 12:05
The analysis is very much inspired from "Comprendre l'Empire" by Alain Soral.
Dave , May 17, 2020 at 11:27
Do not fail to read this interview in its entirety. Ms Johnstone analyzes and describes many issues of national and global importance from the perspective of an USA expat who has spent most of her career in the pursuit of what may be termed disinterested journalism. Whether one agrees or disagrees in whole or in part the perspectives she presents, particularly those which pertain to the demise (hopefully) of the American Empire are worthy of perusal.
Remember that this is not a polemic; it's a memoir of a lifetime devoted to reporting and analyzing and discussion of most of the significant issues confronting global and national politics and their social ramifications. And a big thanks to Patrick Lawrence and Consortium News for posting the interview.
PEG , May 17, 2020 at 09:11
Diana Johnstone is one of the most intelligent, clear-minded and honest observers of international politics today, and her book "Circle in the Darkness" – which expands on the topics and insights touched on in this interview – is certainly among the best and most compelling books I have ever read, putting the events of the last 75 years into objective context and focus (normally something which only historians can do, if at all, generations after the fact).
After reading Circle in the Darkness, I have ordered and am now reading her books on Hillary Clinton (Queen of Chaos) and the Yugoslav wars (Fool's Crusade), which are very worthwhile and important. I would recommend that her many articles over the years, appearing in such publications such as In These Times, Counterpunch and Consortium News, be reprinted and published together as an anthology. Through Circle in the Darkness, we have Diana Johnstone's "Life", but it would be good also to have her "Letters".
Herman , May 17, 2020 at 09:00
Interesting comparison between the aspirations of De Gaulle and Putin.
"Having a sense of history, de Gaulle saw that colonialism had been a moment in history that was past. His policy was to foster friendly relations on equal terms with all parts of the world, regardless of ideological differences. I think that Putin's concept of a multipolar world is similar. It is clearly a concept that horrifies the exceptionalists."
Agree with Johnstone.
OlyaPola , May 19, 2020 at 11:55
"Having a sense of history, de Gaulle saw that colonialism had been a moment in history that was past. "
Mr. de Gaulle like other "leaders" of colonial powers did understand that the moment of overt coercive relations of colonialism had passed and that colonialism to remain qualitatively the same, required covert coercive relations facilitated by the complicity of local "elites" on the basis of perceived self-interest.
The exceptions to such strategies lay within constructs of settler colonialism which were addressed primarily through warfare – "The United States of America", Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia, Indonesia, Algeria, Kenya, Rhodesia, Mozambique, Angola refer – to facilitate such future strategies.
"I think that Putin's concept of a multipolar world is similar."
As outlined elsewhere the concept of a multi-polar world is not synonymous with the concept of colonialism except for the colonialists who consistently seek to encourage such conflation through myths of we-are-all-in-this-togetherness.
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May 20, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
By Jomo Kwame Sundaram, a former economics professor, who was Assistant Director-General for Economic and Social Development, Food and Agriculture Organization, and who received the Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought in 2007. Originally published by Inter Press Service
Economic growth is supposed to be the tide that lifts all boats. According to the conventional wisdom until recently, growth in China, India and East Asian countries took off thanks to opening up to international trade and investment.
Such growth is said to have greatly reduced poverty despite growing inequality in both sub-continental economies and many other countries. Other developing countries have been urged to do the same, i.e., liberalize trade and attract foreign investments.
Doha Round 'Dead in Water'
However, multilateral trade negotiations under World Trade Organization (WTO) auspices have gone nowhere since the late 1990s, even with the so-called Doha Development Round begun in 2001 as developing countries rallied to support the US after 9/11.
After the North continued to push their interests despite their ostensible commitment to a developmental outcome, the Obama administration was never interested in completing the Round, and undermined the WTO's functioning, e.g., its dispute settlement arrangements, even before Trump was elected.
To be sure, the Doha Round proposals were hardly 'developmental' by any standards, with most developing countries barely benefitting, if not actually worse off following the measures envisaged, even according to World Bank and other studies.
GVC miracle?
According to the World Bank's annual flagship World Development Report (WDR) 2020 on Trading for Development in the Age of Global Value Chains , GVCs have been mainly responsible for the growth of international trade for two decades from the 1990s.
GVCs now account for almost half of all cross-border commerce due to 'multiple counting', as products cross more borders than ever. Firms' creative book-keeping may also overstate actual value added in some tax jurisdictions to minimize overall tax liability.
WDR 2020 claims that GVCs have thus accelerated economic development and even convergence between North and South as fast-growing poor countries have grown more rapidly, closing the economic gap with rich countries.
Automation, innovative management, e.g., 'just-in-time' (JIT), outsourcing, offshoring and logistics have dramatically transformed production . Labour processes are subject to greater surveillance, while piecework at home means self-policing and use of unpaid household labour.
WDR 2020 Out of Touch
WDR 2020 presumes trends that no longer exist. Trade expansion has been sluggish for more than a decade, at least since the 2008 global financial crisis when the G20 of the world's largest economies and others adopted protective measures in response.
GVC growth has slowed since, as economies of the North insisted on trade liberalization for the South, while abandoning their own earlier commitments as the varied consequences of economic globalization fostered reactionary jingoist populist backlashes.
Meanwhile, new technologies involving mechanization, automation and other digital applications have further reduced overall demand for labour even as jobs were 'off-shored'. Trump-initiated trade policies and conflicts have pressured US and other transnational corporations to 'on-shore' jobs after decades of 'off-shoring' .
Nonetheless, WDR 2020 urges developing countries to bank on GVCs for growth and better jobs. Success of this strategy depends crucially on developed countries encouraging 'offshoring', a policy hardly evident for well over a decade!
As the last World Bank chief economist , albeit for barely 15 months, Yale Professor Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg recently agreed , "the world is retreating from globalization". "Protectionism is on the rise -- industrialized countries are less open to imports from developing countries. In addition, there is by now a lot of competition".
The Covid-19 crisis has further encouraged 'on-shoring' and 'chain shortening', especially for food, medical products and energy. Although the Japanese and other governments have announced such policies, ostensibly for 'national security' and other such reasons, Goldberg has nonetheless reiterated the case for GVCs in Covid-19's wake .
Trade Does Not Lift All Boats
After claiming that "economists have argued for centuries that trade is good for the economy as a whole", Goldberg has also noted that "trade generates winners and losers", with many losing out, and urges acknowledging "the evidence rather than trying to discredit it, as some do." Following Samuelson and others, she recommends compensating those negatively effected by trade liberalization, claiming "sufficient gains generated by open trade that the winners can compensate the losers and still be better off" without indicating how this is to be done fairly.
Compensation and redistribution require transfers which are typically difficult to negotiate and deliver at low cost. Tellingly, like others, she makes no mention of international transfers, especially for fairly redistributing the unequal gains from trade among trading partners.
Interestingly, she also observes, "There are plenty of examples, especially in African countries, where wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few even when the tide rises, only very few boats rise. Growth doesn't trickle down and doesn't improve the lot of the poor."
Unlikely Pan-Africanist
After decades of World Bank promotion of the 'East Asian miracle' for emulation by other developing countries, especially in Africa, Greek-born American Goldberg insists that what worked for growth and poverty reduction in China will not work in Africa today.
Echoing long time Bank critics, she argues, "If trade with rich countries is no longer the engine of growth, it will be more important than ever to rely on domestic resources to generate growth that does trickle down and translates to poverty reduction."
Instead, as if supporting some contemporary pan-Africanists, she argues, "Africa needs to rely on itself more than ever. The idea that export-led industrialization as it happened in China or East Asia is going to lead growth in Africa becomes less and less plausible".
She argues that "the African market is a very large market with incredible potential. It has not been developed yet. So, regional integration might be one path forward. Rather than opting for global integration, which may be very hard to achieve these days when countries are retreating from multilateralism, it might be more feasible to push for regional trade agreements and create bigger regional markets for countries' goods and services".
Acknowledging "We are still a very long way from there because most countries are averse to this idea -- they see their neighbors as competitors rather than countries they can cooperate with", not seeming to recognize the historical role of the Bank and mainstream trade economists in promoting the 'free trade illusion' and discrediting pan-Africanism.
chuck roast , May 20, 2020 at 9:01 am
hear him, and hear him
Econospeak at its best. Filled with cliches and "on the one hand(s)." This articles perfectly describes why social distancing can ultimately be a boon to mankind. This fellow Sundaram can self isolate at home and still get a paycheck. He can begin puttering about in his garden and start growing his own food. Eventually, he will find this activity to be far more rewarding than cogitating on the various cost and benefits of the international value chains, and will be spending more and more time in his garden. UBI will kick in. He will decide to disengage from "globalization" and being a public nuisance and adopt this new, socially beneficial lifestyle permanently. By doing "piecework at home" he will add to real gross domestic product, and he, the economy and the rest of the planet will be immeasurably improved.The Historian , May 20, 2020 at 10:49 am
Good analysis. But part of my confusion with this article started with the headline: "Covid-19 Straw Breaks Free Trade Camel's Back"
What free trade? Nothing in the article discusses free trade and I doubt that there has ever been free trade for a very long time. Is this more Econospeak?
I do agree with the author that the way trading is done now, however he defines it, has not risen all boats.
Amfortas the hippie , May 20, 2020 at 1:33 pm
Regarding the existence of "Free Trade"
I watched this in real time when Nafta passed(i was agin it, and voted for Perot accordingly, both times)
I knew a middle class mexican american guy father of a friend of mine. His business, pre-Nafta, was going to his extended familia's ranch/farm(100 acres) in Tamaulipas, and returning with fruits and veggies and vanilla and a whole bunch of "junk" like that metal yard art and terra cotta birdbaths and such.
had a dually pickup and a 20 foot trailer.
Post Nafta, this was suddenly illegal he wasn't part of the Club, and went to work as a cook along side me and his son.
since that time, I've heard essentially the same story from numerous mexican american folks who used to do similar stuff.
nafta killed that small time cross border trade and the only "Freedom" involved was for the Maquiladora-owners, US Welfare Corn Corporations and the Cartels.
anecdata, of course, but still
if "they" were really for "free trade", they'd allow me to legally sell a frelling egg or tomato or grow some weed, for that matter(high demand, low quality unstable supply).Susan the other , May 20, 2020 at 2:24 pm
I voted for ross perot too. I even went across the street and talked to my neighbors – the last time I did that – as they always say, it's like staring into the eyes of a chicken – oh so "liberal" at the time – To them Ross Perot was just an insufferable hick. But I loved the guy. And he was right. I think he lived in the same neighborhood as little George in Dallas – but Ross didn't want us to spread our resources too thin whereas little George saw MidEast oil as our best security. So now that that has blown up, it's regionalism v. globalism. It's a brake on turbo trade. It's not a fix. We don't want to be lulled into thinking we've achieved something like a trade balance and an environmental balance – that will take a century – and only if we stop fibbing to ourselves.
Bsoder , May 20, 2020 at 3:28 pm
I worked for Ross, for a while post GM (1987). I liked him very much, although we fought quite a bit. Mostly, I agreed with his public policy outlook, when I didn't and it came up I told him. He didn't surround himself with the wights that the Orange Menace does. Striking -he was very loyal to people in his orbit. NAFTA had protections for labor, unions, & the environment they just never were enforced. There must be some 'law' that says anything neoliberal turns into a racket over time, so it was with NAFTA.
Left in Wisconsin , May 20, 2020 at 4:53 pm
The NAFTA protections for workers were just hand waves. Lance Compa, who is at Cornell, ran the US office trying to get the labor provisions (weak as they were) enforced. As I recall, they were never able to bring even a single case forward.
Adam Eran , May 20, 2020 at 2:32 pm
"Free" trade means removing regulations and tariffs. As Michael Hudson reminds us, in Classical economics, it used to mean free of the unproductive burdens of the rentiers.
As for NAFTA, one might figure shipping a bunch of subsidized Iowa corn down to Mexico would impair the income of Mexican farmers.. The NAFTA treaty compensates the big ones.
Corn is only arguably the most important food crop in the world. The little (uncompensated by NAFTA) Mexican farmers were only keeping the disease resistance and diversity of the corn genome alive with the varieties they grew .But they weren't making any money for Monsanto So they were hung out to dry and migration to "Gringolandia" increased dramatically not all of it "legal."
In the wake of NAFTA, not only did Mexico experience capital flight (remember the Clinton administration's $20 billion bank bailout?), Mexico's real median income declined 34%. (Source: Ravi Batra's Greenspan's Fraud ).
One has to go back to the Great Depression to find that kind of decline in the U.S. Of course that provoked no great migration Oh wait! The Okies!
Imagine the Okies exiting the dust bowl to go to California where they would be caged, separated from their families, and ultimately shipped back to Oklahoma, where they would either be very miserable or even starve. That's what we've been doing to the Mexican refugees U.S. actions created never mind the fact that U.S. military and political attacks on its southern neighbors have been going on for literally centuries. (Between 1798 and 1994, the U.S. is responsible for 41 changes of government south of its borders).
Incidentally, the Harvard-educated neoliberal, Carlos Salinas Gotari, the Mexican president who signed NAFTA, was so despised he had to spend at least the initial years of his retirement in Ireland.
It's not for nothing that the guys who stand up to the Yanquis (Castro!) are heroes in the South.
taunger , May 20, 2020 at 6:47 am
It's amazing how economists can focus solely on economic activity, and the thought that something like climate change or politics might make their pronouncements useless isn't even rebutted.
John Wright , May 20, 2020 at 11:54 am
This reference: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-co2-isnt-falling-more-during-a-global-lockdown/
Has that one of the Covid-19 lockdown effects has been a fall in expected incremental CO2 added to the atmosphere in 2020 relative to 2019:
"Forecasters expect emissions to fall more than 5% in 2020, the greatest annual reduction on record. But it's still short of the 7.6% decline that scientists say is needed every year over the next decade to stop global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.*.
Yes, the earth's climate is one of the uncompensated losers of the world's current system of economic growth.
Economists seem to be forever optimizing for the GDP measure, while giving lip service to "uncompensated losers" such as workers and the earth's climate.
TomDority , May 20, 2020 at 8:16 am
Me, being a cynic and all – I thought the way trade worked in the real world (not the one described by well paid economists) was a multi step process
1) target developing country by undermining their core farming, self sustaining activity and export industries through cheap importation of grains and crops and other goods – thus making it impossible for locals to survive through their own industry
2) simultaneous loans (investment) to the country (economic aid) and corruption of political leaders designed to enable step three
3) Whence said country is indebted – force country to export whatever (mineral) wealth onto a glutted market to pay back its debts – this is easily done as the labor component is ripe for the picking/ fleecing
4) crush the country into economic austerity for as long as it takes to enslave its citizens and grab everything of value from the country
5) pretend that the IMF etc did such a great job – but the countries people (victims) or government did not do enough and must take care of themselves better
The Rev Kev , May 20, 2020 at 9:58 am
I think that you covered the Standard Operation Procedure here in better detail than I could. I would only add to point 2) that the bankers will go to these local leaders and show them how to hide their money and help them set up accounts in a place like the Caymans as part of the service.
And if that economist wants to find where all of Africa's wealth is going, he might want to start in the City of London and New York first.
David , May 20, 2020 at 8:43 am
I share the general sense of confusion. I'm not quite sure what the point of this essay is. It's full of wild generalisations like:
"According to the conventional wisdom until recently, growth in China, India and East Asian countries took off thanks to opening up to international trade and investment."
I don't think that's ever been conventional wisdom for Japan, Korea and China, for example, whose economies were (and in part still are) highly protected. Industrialisation in those countries was not "export-led".
It also confuses "trade" in the old sense, of countries importing things they couldn't produce and exporting what they could, with "trade" in the new sense of moving stuff around the world largely for financial reasons. Trade in the classic sense may have benefited the country as a whole (though this is debatable) but trade in the current sense was never intended to. Likewise I hadn't heard that globalisation had fostered a "jingoist backlash" – jingoism after all means aggressive calls for war. But then the whole article is clumsily written and badly constructed.
And the idea that Africa should rely on itself is fair enough, but runs counter to every piece of advice given to Africa since independence: remember, the World Bank master plan was for African countries to grow cash-crops for export to generate cash for industrial development? We know how that worked out. And yes the African market has enormous potential but it's desperately lacking in infrastructure, which makes trade between eve adjacent nations desperately difficult. You need to fix that first.Thuto , May 20, 2020 at 4:37 pm
There's a growing realisation on our continent that outsiders aren't going to lead us to the promised land. The obstacles to effective intra-african trade that you identify will have to be cleared before Africa's potential can be realised, and as an African I have to believe they will be, challenging as that will be.
The overthrow of Omar Al Bashir in Sudan has shown that people in Africa are agitating for real, lasting changing, liberation from the rule of corrupt leaders and true, not pseudo independence from the West and increasingly China as well.
Other leaders have taken notice of this, as have ordinary citizens across the continent. It will take time, ther'll probably be a few false starts, we'll wobble a bit but in the end I believe we'll get there.
a different chris , May 20, 2020 at 9:24 am
"trade generates winners and losers", with many losing out, and urges acknowledging "the evidence rather than trying to discredit it, as some do."
I don't known who "discredits" it.
What I see is that everybody important acknowledges it, but does squat about it. This redistribution never happens, the rich get richer in a role reversal of "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today". Any attempt to have the rich share the hamburger is greeted with a "not now!" and a assurance that if the rich stop continuously getting richer at this particular point in time then everything will collapse.
The poor, of course, ain't got until this mythical "Tuesday".
HotFlash , May 20, 2020 at 11:23 am
"the African market has enormous potential"
Indeed! Very few Africans have IoT sous-vide sticks yet, or Smart doorbells. I'll bet they are way behind on fast fashion, too. Vast market to sell them things no-one needs and that wreck the earth on credit . Just gotta get those roads built so Jeff can deliver stuff to them in 2 days.
Bsoder , May 20, 2020 at 3:39 pm
The best understanding of what is going on in Africa I got from Jared Diamond – book, "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed". And for background – "Guns, Germs, and Steel". Global climate heating is going to destroy Africa, already is. The usual story, no water, no forests, too much heat and humidity. It's a terrible reckoning. And largely not of their making.
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May 21, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
TomDority , , May 20, 2020 at 8:16 am
Me, being a cynic and all – I thought the way trade worked in the real world (not the one described by well paid economists) was a multi step process
1) target developing country by undermining their core farming, self sustaining activity and export industries through cheap importation of grains and crops and other goods – thus making it impossible for locals to survive through their own industry
2) simultaneous loans (investment) to the country (economic aid) and corruption of political leaders designed to enable step three
3) Whence said country is indebted – force country to export whatever (mineral) wealth onto a glutted market to pay back its debts – this is easily done as the labor component is ripe for the picking/ fleecing
4) crush the country into economic austerity for as long as it takes to enslave its citizens and grab everything of value from the country
5) pretend that the IMF etc did such a great job – but the countries people (victims) or government did not do enough and must take care of themselves better
The Rev Kev , , May 20, 2020 at 9:58 am
I think that you covered the Standard Operation Procedure here in better detail than I could. I would only add to point 2) that the bankers will go to these local leaders and show them how to hide their money and help them set up accounts in a place like the Caymans as part of the service.
And if that economist wants to find where all of Africa's wealth is going, he might want to start in the City of London and New York first.
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May 19, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog, It's Time To Step Into The ArenaThere's a passage in Teddy Roosevelt's famous 1910 "Citizenship in a Republic" speech I want to share with you today:
If a man's efficiency is not guided and regulated by a moral sense, then the more efficient he is the worse he is, the more dangerous to the body politic. Courage, intellect, all the masterful qualities, serve but to make a man more evil if they are merely used for that man's own advancement, with brutal indifference to the rights of others. It speaks ill for the community if the community worships those qualities and treats their possessors as heroes regardless of whether the qualities are used rightly or wrongly. It makes no difference as to the precise way in which this sinister efficiency is shown. It makes no difference whether such a man's force and ability betray themselves in a career of money-maker or politician, soldier or orator, journalist or popular leader. If the man works for evil, then the more successful he is the more he should be despised and condemned by all upright and far-seeing men. To judge a man merely by success is an abhorrent wrong; and if the people at large habitually so judge men, if they grow to condone wickedness because the wicked man triumphs, they show their inability to understand that in the last analysis free institutions rest upon the character of citizenship, and that by such admiration of evil they prove themselves unfit for liberty.
The above words strike me as a perfect description of the deep hole we find ourselves in presently throughout these United States of America. It takes a whole nation to screw things up as badly as we have, and boy have we ever.
Yes it took parasites, sociopathic oligarchs and a power drunk national security state to bring us to our current state of affairs, but it also took the rest of us. For far too long we as a people have been apathetic, hoodwinked spectators to the life unfolding around us. Voting for "the lesser of two evils" for decade upon decade thinking it might be different this time. Putting up with the economic game that's been put in front of us, despite the fact that it demonstrably and systematically rewards and incentivizes predatory and destructive behavior. As a people, we have been superficial, indifferent and gleefully ignorant of reality. It's time to change all that.
You can consider today's post a rallying cry to step into the arena. Stepping into the arena is often portrayed as becoming involved in national politics or some other large platform action, but I see it differently. If you think the only way to have a real impact is by voting or running for Congress, you're likely to give up and remain passive. The truth is your entire life can be repurposed to be an expression of increased kindness, wisdom and strength. It's the most impactful long-term action most of us can have on this earth, and anyone can do it.
Change yourself before trying to change the world. If enough people did this the world would change without you even trying.
-- Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) May 15, 2020I think what keeps a lot of people on the sidelines of a conscious life is an inability to intimately process the above. Many people discount the little things, the countless actions of daily existence that impact those around you and cumulatively make you who you are.
I think one reason mass media puts so much emphasis on voting at the national level is the owners of these propaganda channels know voting will change absolutely nothing. The oligarchy and national security state are fully in charge, and they're not going to allow the pesky rabble to get in the way of such a lucrative racket by voting. Getting those who are politically inclined to spend all their time and energy on a rigged and completely corrupt phantom democracy in D.C. is a great way to keep them busy with nonsense. It's also a perfect way to demoralize that portion of the population which understands it's just theater. If you can be convinced that voting at the national level is the only way to change things, you're much more likely to recede into apathy and become intentionally disengaged. This happens to a lot of people, but it's a big mistake.
When I look back at my life thus far, it was during my decade on Wall Street when I was the most ignorant and superficial . So focused on stroking my ego, making a bunch of money and career advancement, I lost a lot of who I am at my core during that time. I often wonder if that's the case for a lot of people who achieve conventional success within the current paradigm. It's fortunate I removed myself from that situation and began thinking more deeply about who I am and what really matters.
Stepping up and getting into the arena will mean something different for each of us, but the one word that keeps popping into my head is resilience. There are several clear ways to become more resilient. There's mental and emotional resiliency, there's financial resiliency and there's physical resiliency (where and how you live). I see all three as fundamentally important and functioning best when working together. Resiliency starts at the most basic level because if you and your family aren't resilient, then you won't be much use to anyone else. If the people of a community or nation lack resiliency it provides the perfect space for authoritarianism and evil to manifest and flourish.
Case in point, see the following comments by Alan Dershowitz during a recent interview.
"You have no right not to be vaccinated, you have no right not to wear a mask... If you refuse to be vaccinated the state has the right to take you to a dr's office & plunge a needle in your arm." @AlanDersh take on vaccines & masks is vile & un-American. pic.twitter.com/j2C1Rk3d7h
-- Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) May 18, 2020This is despotism plain and simple, and it's being expressed by a guy who still has considerable influence despite his many Jeffrey Epstein related controversies. It's going to take a resilient, courageous and ethical public to stand up to scoundrels like this and just say NO. No, you will not grab me, drag me off somewhere and inject something into my body without my consent. We've been passive spectators in the destruction of our society for far too long. It's time to both say no and to create something better.
When I walked away from New York City and Wall Street ten years ago it was clear what sort of trajectory the country was on, and it's only gotten worse since. We're now in the crucial period spanning 2020-2025 that will decide what the next several decades look like. The big battle for the future is here. Right now. If there's ever been a time in your life to step up, this is it.
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Liberty Blitzkrieg is an ad-free website. If you enjoyed this post and my work in general, visit the Support Page where you can donate and contribute to my efforts.
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May 20, 2020 | www.unz.com
Godfree Roberts , says: Show Comment May 8, 2020 at 12:43 am GMT
@Harold Smith There is an innocuous military term, incapable of maneuver , to describe an army which is nothing more than a group of people in uniforms. They look like an army but, when things go bad, they prove incapable of responding in a disciplined, purposive manner. Arab armies come to mind.Our government and much of our industry, especially defense and fintec, appear to be incapable of maneuver. They're justself-seeking individuals with no loyalty to each other, their clients, citizenry, or their country.
If we don't want to suffer an interim dystopia, we need to start work on a new constitution because the old one is worn out and we're going over a cliff.
I keep harping on China because they read our Constitution and foundation documents and, in 1950, drafted a 20th century constitution which is well worth reading. They've convened every 10 years since then and amended it to keep it current. For them, the constitution is a living document, not a totem, and they take it very seriously.
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May 19, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Last night, as dozens of biotech companies rushed to issue stock following the massive spike in Moderna shares on some extremely preliminary trial results inspired the biggest short-squeeze in US equities since the beginning of May, we warned that Moderna shareholders might be in for a bruising "bait-and-switch" as reports about insider share sales emerged, and Moderna, along with dozens of other biotech companies the company, seized on the demand to issue more shares.
But it's not only Moderna's billionaire founder/CEO Stephane Bancel - once compared to a post-scandal Elizabeth Holmes - who stands to profit from the action: the White House's new vaccine czar also holds - or rather, held - more than 150,000 options contracts on Moderna shares worht more than $12 million, and had resisted pressure to divest them despite the blatant conflict of interest. We were joking yesterday when we speculated that he would probably be glad to exercise these options at current prices. But just as every joke contains a nugget of truth, that one turned out to be prophetic, too.
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May 19, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
If it were true why would they need to repeat it again and again?
- Forbes - May 15 2012 - Meghan Casserly The American Dream Is Alive And Well... In New Jersey
- The Telegraph - August 4 2014 - Jeremy Warner The American Dream is alive and well, if you are trained for the jobs of the future
- Forbes - September 30 2015 - John Tamny - FreedomWorks Ignore The Left And Right, The American Dream Is Alive And Well
- FOX Business - August 22 2016 - Steve Tobak The American Dream Is Alive and Well
- Forbes India - November 1 2016 - Monte Burke The American dream is alive and well...
- Washington Times - June 19 2017 - Ed Feulner - Heritage Foundation The American Dream, alive and well
- KEDM - July 4 2018 - Byron Moore, Argent Advisors, Inc. The American Dream is Alive and Well
- New York Times - February 2 2019 - Samuel J. Abrams - American Enterprise Institute The American Dream Is Alive and Well
- Daily Caller - February 6 2019 - Steve Sanetti - NSSF Firearm Industry Trade Association The American Dream Is Alive And Well
- FOX Business - September 30 2019 - Julia Limitone Eric Trump: The American Dream is alive and well
- Mail Online - October 2019 - Lauren Fruen The American Dream is still alive! Children of poor immigrants still beat US-born kids up the ladder - just as they did 100 years ago - but now Chinese and Indian migrants have replaced Italian and Irish as the most successful
- CNBC - November 14 2019 Billionaire Bob Parsons: The American Dream is alive and well
- FOX News - November 26 2019 - Carol Ross Carol Roth: The American Dream is alive and well -- Let's be thankful for it
- Clarion Ledger - December 10 2019 - Lynn Evans The American Dream is alive and well, but redefined
- Wall Street Journal - January 31, 2020 - Michael R. Strain, American Enterprise Institute The American Dream Is Alive and Well
- Newsweek - February 27 2020 - Lee Habeeb The American Dream Is Alive and Well. Just Ask District Taco's Osiris Hoil
- The Independent Voice - May 7 2020 - Barbara Ball The American Dream is alive and well
- New York Times - May 18 2020 - Michael R. Strain - American Enterprise Institute The American Dream Is Alive and Well
vk , May 19 2020 13:22 utc | 21
If it were true why would they need to repeat it again and again? The American Dream died in 1969 - the last year of the post-war miracle in the USA. For the following five years, the country continued to flourish, but at a clear slower pace. With the oil crisis of 1974-5, the American Dream definitely died, albeit some indicators (e.g. real wages) still showed some improvements.
1978 was the last year real wages showed significant growth in real terms in the USA. After that, came the great stagnation of the neoliberal era (1978-2008), 30 consecutive years of frozen earns for the American working classes. This era is not marked by a slow down in consumption, though. On the contrary: consumption continued to rise, but, this time, it was mainly debt-fueled. Americans wages stagnated, but they didn't want to give up their hyperconsumption privileges, so they contracted debt after debt.
As the timeline shows, it is a myth neoliberalism begun in the USA only with Reagan's election in 1980. Most neoliberal reforms begun during Jimmy Carter's second half of his lonely term (1978-1980). It was Jimmy Carter, for example, who hired (nominated) Paul Volcker to the Fed. Other essential Acts that paved the way to neoliberalism were also passed during Jimmy Carter's later part of the reign.
Jen , May 19 2020 10:58 utc | 6
Not only does the headline "The American Dream is Alive and Well" need to be repeated ad nauseam but also the narrative it promotes, of the immigrant family that succeeds through sheer hard work and dedication and nothing else - no help from government subsidies or relatives already in the country, no dependence on bank loans that help start a business or put teenagers through college, no discrimination whatsoever - has to be hammered constantly over and over, even when everyone can see that the story template no longer has any legs if it ever had any.William Gruff , May 19 2020 12:58 utc | 18For all the sophisticated techniques and tools of propaganda that the likes of Edward Bernays and his followers in the PR industry bequeathed to the US, the elites and their mass media lackeys can't even get the repetition to look and sound more than banal and one-dimensional.
Jen @6: "For all the sophisticated techniques and tools of propaganda that the likes of Edward Bernays and his followers in the PR industry bequeathed to the US, the elites and their mass media lackeys can't even get the repetition to look and sound more than banal and one-dimensional."lizard , May 19 2020 12:56 utc | 17Nice observation that incompetence is pervasive even among the empire's most important servants. It must be asked, though, if better talent is really necessary? The propaganda and brainwashing may be ham fisted and blunt as a hammer, but it does seem to work nonetheless.
Anyway, the more sophisticated brainwashing is not in the infotainment field but rather in the supposedly pure entertainment domain. Redneck dynasties built upon the monster retail bonanza from selling duck lures, for example. Those implant "The American Dream" directly into the subconscious without the need for awkward capitalist ideological exposition, bypassing any potential bullshit filters that the typical media consumers might possess.
I wonder what America would have become if sociopaths like Allen Dulles hadn't relocated to Nazi braintrust after WWII. maybe it was inevitable that we would become the 4th reich.William Gruff , May 19 2020 12:58 utc | 18David Talbot's book The Devil's Chessboard should be required reading for all Americans.
Jen @6: "For all the sophisticated techniques and tools of propaganda that the likes of Edward Bernays and his followers in the PR industry bequeathed to the US, the elites and their mass media lackeys can't even get the repetition to look and sound more than banal and one-dimensional."Linda Amick , May 19 2020 12:59 utc | 19Nice observation that incompetence is pervasive even among the empire's most important servants. It must be asked, though, if better talent is really necessary? The propaganda and brainwashing may be ham fisted and blunt as a hammer, but it does seem to work nonetheless.
Anyway, the more sophisticated brainwashing is not in the infotainment field but rather in the supposedly pure entertainment domain. Redneck dynasties built upon the monster retail bonanza from selling duck lures, for example. Those implant "The American Dream" directly into the subconscious without the need for awkward capitalist ideological exposition, bypassing any potential bullshit filters that the typical media consumers might possess.
We all know these main stream media outlets do little more than pump out propaganda to the ignorant masses who need someone to tell them what they want to hear.Christian J Chuba , May 19 2020 13:01 utc | 20May 2020, seriously???Richard Steven Hack , May 19 2020 12:02 utc | 15Wow, those guys were phoning it in. 1. Their dreamland pieces were identical to the ones in 2015, 2. the bottom 20% who they claim either don't have it so bad or can easily improve their lot, have been gutted like a fish and left out to dry. Did people write these opinion pieces or robots, robots could easily replace their jobs, pity their jobs won't be automated but I really don't see why they couldn't be. Actually Neocons could be replaced by automatons.
Recent contributions, burger flippers => code slingers
I heard some politician suggest that while many of the jobs will never come back that people can learn to code. We need drug testing for our politicians. I 'code' and I'm wetting my pants. It's not because I think that it's so easy I an be easily replaced but but we still need demand. If everyone is losing their jobs ... terrifies me.
As an aside that is nonetheless relevant, dealing as it does with issues of the responsibility that banks have for the mess in this world, I recommend watching the TV series, "Devils", described here on Wikipedia:Devils (TV series)
https://tinyurl.com/yb8cbwsq
PlotLondon, 2011. The Italian Massimo Ruggero is the head of trading at the banking giant American New York - London Bank (NYL). While the financial crisis is raging across Europe, Massimo is making hundreds of millions thanks to speculation. His mentor is Dominic Morgan, the American CEO of NYL and the closest thing to a father Massimo has ever had. He fully supports it, the talented trader seems to be the first choice in the run for vice-CEO. But when Massimo is unwillingly involved in a scandal that sees his ex-wife implicated as an escort, Dominic denies him the promotion, instead choosing the old school banker Edward Stuart.
Massimo is amazed: his father turns his back on him. Convinced that he has been set up, Massimo is determined to bring out the truth, but when Edward suddenly dies, Massimo realizes that something bigger is at stake. With the help of his team and a group of hackers, Massimo will discover the plot hidden behind apparently unrelated events such as the Strauss-Kahn scandal, the war in Libya and the PIIGS crisis. Finding himself in front of the Devils who pull the ropes of the world, Massimo will have to choose whether to fight them or join them.
The series is well-written and well-acted. If you have access to it (I get it off the Internet, but it does not appear to be available in the US market yet), it's well worth watching. It is in some ways better than "Deep State", the spy series that was on a season or two ago. It has already been renewed for a second season.
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May 19, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
karlof1 , May 18 2020 17:14 utc | 36
Alastair Crooke's in fine form today bringing Jung, Euripides, the Outlaw US Empire's Culture Wars, and Zionist Imperialism together to illustrate "Our Civilisational Quagmire" and the imperative of "Looking Truth in the Eye." But all that's initially hidden as he begins by intoning:"First, the bottom line: If you don't solve the biology, the economy won't recover."
A Truth far too many mostly in the West don't seem capable of grasping:
"But the biology is not solved, and the tension of trying to point in opposite directions simultaneously is igniting a separate, raging political brushfire....
"The pretence that the U.S. and the global economy is about to snap back, as soon as virus mitigation is lifted; the pretence that Covid-19 is either a fake (just another 'flu); or, is 'over'; the pretence that U.S. and Europe have competent and resilient political and economic structures – and the pretence that once Covid is over, we will all return to a world, just as it was?"
I wrote awhile ago that the pandemic provided an opportunity to use an analytical tool known as the Franklin Reality Model to see the values and beliefs held by differing nations and their cultures and ideologies as it exposes them so graphically they cannot be hidden by any amount of spin or propaganda. The revelations provided my empirical basis for judging Trump's response specifically and the West's generally to be one of complete Moral Failure. And not just Trump, but Pelosi, Biden and the vast majority of Democrats, too--their shared Neoliberal ideology's Immoral basis and Parasitic nature being one of the main roots of the problem.
karlof1 , May 18 2020 17:29 utc | 39
Thomas Briggs @35--Nancy E. Sutton , May 18 2020 17:42 utc | 40I suggest you read this Atlantic article , "We Are Living in a Failed State: The coronavirus didn't break America. It revealed what was already broken." And either before or during, take a gander at this Real GDP graph that still understates the genuine amount of GDP shrinkage since parasitic financial "gains" are added to GDP instead of subtracted as a cost to the real economy. Essentially since GHW Bush's recession, the real economy of the Outlaw US Empire's shrunk about 1.5% annually or @45% overall with the vast majority of economic gains accruing to the top 10%. That grim reality is the #1 reason why Trump won in 2016, and why he stands a very good chance of losing in 2020--"It's the economy, stupid."
Re: Karl, did the 'West' (Anglo-Zionist world) buy (or actually promote) the 80's 'Greed is Good' line, and ignore what Greenspan supposedly learned..."I have found a flaw...I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organisations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms."Even the average American might be able to see that 'socialism' (i.e., Social Security, et al) is better than 'trickle down'... to put it in simple terms. Neo-liberalism appears to be killing many of us right now. The problem, seems to me, is how to turn the light bulb on for Amerian non-voters... obviously Bernie would have 'had a heart attack' if he'd gotten the nomination.
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May 19, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Nancy E. Sutton , May 18 2020 17:42 utc | 40
Re: Karl, did the 'West' (Anglo-Zionist world) buy (or actually promote) the 80's 'Greed is Good' line, and ignore what Greenspan supposedly learned..."I have found a flaw...I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organisations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms."Even the average American might be able to see that 'socialism' (i.e., Social Security, et al) is better than 'trickle down'... to put it in simple terms. Neo-liberalism appears to be killing many of us right now. The problem, seems to me, is how to turn the light bulb on for Amerian non-voters... obviously Bernie would have 'had a heart attack' if he'd gotten the nomination.
karlof1 , May 18 2020 18:38 utc | 54
Nancy E. Sutton @40--Greenspan issued his belated and stupendously weak mea culpa long after the horse left the corral and had galloped several time around the planet. One vital component was already deeply emplaced prior to his tenure that allowed those entities to "protect" themselves--Regulatory Capture. Recall "Banking Crises" began to become regular occurrences during Reagan/Bush. One of Hudson's great contributions is looking into how political-economic theory was captured and transformed into just economic theory, which he castigates as "Junk Economics" in his book of that title. At his website, there're numerous essays that deal with that topic; out of the several dozen I might link to is this one from 2011 . Discovering how we were manipulated into the Neoliberal religion must be understood if we are to get out from under its boot, which is a tall task since millions must become informed, and the Neoliberals control the media. You asked How. My answer is for us to become informed such that we can inform others, which is why Hudson's written an excellent series of books that make it all easy to comprehend and transmit--I taught introductory college economics and know Hudson's works are vastly superior to the texts we used. The two pertinent books for debunking Neoliberalism are Killing the Host and J is for Junk Economics . For the overall historical perspective, his trilogy that begins with and forgive them their debts will be a must, the second book he says will be ready for publication by New Years.
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May 18, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Atlantic Council senior fellow, Congressional candidate, and Russia conspiracy theorist Evelyn Farkas is desperately trying to salvage her reputation after recently released transcripts from her closed-door 2017 testimony to the House Intelligence Committee revealed she totally lied on national TV .
In March of 2017, Farkas confidently told MSNBC 's Mika Brzezinski: " The Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about the Trump staff dealing with Russians , that they would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would not longer have access to that intelligence ."
https://www.youtube.com/embed/dCMF94FX530?start=25
Except, during testimony to the House, Farkas admitted she lied . When pressed by former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) on why she said 'we' - referring to the US government, Farkas said she "didn't know anything."
In short, she was either illegally discussing US intelligence matters with her "former colleagues," or she made the whole thing up.
Now, Farkas is in damage control mode - writing in the Washington Post that her testimony demonstrated "that I had not leaked intelligence and that my early intuition about Trump-Kremlin cooperation was valid.' She also claims that her comments to MSNBC were based on "media reports and statements by Obama administration officials and the intelligence community," which had "began unearthing connections between Trump's campaign and Russia."
Farkas is now blaming a 'disconcerting nexus between Russia and the reactionary right,' for making her look bad (apparently Trey Gowdy is part of the "reactionary right" for asking her who she meant by "we").
Attacks against me came first on Twitter and other social media platforms, from far-right sources. Forensics data I was shown suggested at least one entity had Russian ties . The attacks increased in quantity and ferocity until Fox News and Trump-allied Republicans -- higher-profile, and more mainstream, sources -- also criticized me .
...
Trump surrogates, including former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski , Donald Trump Jr. and Fox News hosts such as Tucker Carlson have essentially accused me of treason for being one of the "fraudulent originators" of the "Russia hoax." -Evelyn Farkas
She then parrots the Democratic talking point that the attacks she's received are part of Trump's larger "Obamagate" allegations - " a narrative that distracts attention from his administration's disastrous pandemic response and attempts to defect blame for Russian interference onto the Obama administration" (Obama told Putin to ' cut it out ' after all).
Meanwhile, Poor Evelyn's campaign staff has become " emotionally exhausted " after her Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts have been "overwhelmed with a stream of vile, vulgar and sometimes violent messages" in response to the plethora of conservative outlets which have called her out for Russia malarkey.
There is evidence that Russian actors are contributing to these attacks. The same day that right-wing pundits began pumping accusations, newly created Russian Twitter accounts picked them up. Within a day, Russian " disinformation clearinghouses " posted versions of the story . Many of the Twitter accounts boosting attacks have posted in unison, a sign of inauthentic social media behavior.
We assume Zero Hedge is included in said ' disinformation clearinghouses ' Farkas fails to expound on.
She closes by defiantly claiming "I wasn't silenced in 2017, and I won't be silenced now."
No Evelyn, nobody is silencing you. You're being called out for your role in the perhaps the largest, most divisive hoax in US history - which was based on faulty intelligence that includes crowdstrike admitting they had no proof of that Russia exfiltrated DNC emails, and Christopher Steele's absurd dossier based on his 'Russian sources.'
MrBoompi, 18 minutes ago
chubbar, 23 minutes agoLying is a common occurrence on MSNBC. Farkas was just showing her party she is qualified for a more senior position.
LetThemEatRand, 59 minutes agoMy opinion, based on zero facts, is that the lie she told was to Gowdy. She had to say she lied about having intelligence data or she'd be looking at a felony along with whomever she was talking to in the US gov't. You just know these cocksuckers in the resistance don't give a **** about laws or fairness, it's all about getting Trump. So they set up an informal network to get classified intelligence from the Obama holdovers out into the wild where these assholes could use it against Trump and the gov't operations. Treason. She needs to be executed for her efforts!
mtumba, 50 minutes agoThis whole thing reminds me of a fan watching their team play a championship game. If the ref makes a bad call and their team wins, they don't care. And if the ref makes a good call and their team loses, they blame the ref. No one cares about the truth or the facts. That in a nutshell is politics in the US. If you believe that anyone will "switch sides" or admit the ref made a bad call or a good call, you're smoking the funny stuff.
It's a natural response to a corrupt system.
When the system is wholly corrupt so that truth doesn't matter, what else is there to care about other than your side winning?
It's a travesty.
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May 17, 2020 | www.youtube.com
44, the biggest fraudulent, groomed 'president' in USA history. Imagine if legal citizens knew the TRUTH about corruption within the political arena? Thank you, @TuckerCarlson
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May 17, 2020 | nationalinterest.org
... ... ...
Coronavirus has already begun to undermine the legitimacy of the European project in a greater manner that nationalist movements had hoped to achieve. European finance ministers have clashed over all EU nations sharing "corona bonds" debt, while France and Germany responded to Italy's request for ventilators with a refusal accompanied by closing their borders with Italy. At around the same time, the United States imposed a unilateral ban on commercial flights with the EU.
China's economic growth strategy and foreign policy aspirations are being frustrated in the wake of Coronavirus, as developing countries are likely to scrutinize China's Belt Road Initiative. Among Western policymakers anti-China sentiment is increasing. In the UK, there is mounting opposition to Huawei building its fifth-generation mobile networks. In late March, the United States abandoned its long-standing policy of maintaining a status quo vis a vis Taiwan. President Donald Trump signed into law The Taiwan Allies International Protection and Enhancement Initiative (TAIPEI) Act, which increases U.S. support for Taiwan and "alters" engagement with nations that undermine Taiwan's security or prosperity. Beijing responded that it would respond forcefully if the law was implemented, all the while China increases its military drills around Taiwan. This is increasingly likely to occur while the United States increasingly supports Hong Kong's independence movement and demonstrates willingness to confront China in the South China Seas. Similarly, Washington is likely to be drawn into a confrontation with North Korea as the collapse of North Korea's health system may threaten Kim Jong-un's regime leading him to militarily lash out.
The latest phase of globalization spearheaded by the West entailed that service economies were not responsible for the manufacture of the products they consumed. Instead, they depended upon outsourcing production of cheap goods in distant shores creating unprecedented levels of economic prosperity, which at its root was artificial. Liberal democracies did not reach "the end of history," where conflict was to be consigned to the dustbin of history, but could easily be unraveled by a virus emanating from a society it was reliant upon that did not share its norms. In a similar vein, the Roman Empire's apex contained the seeds of its decay as it had become overstretched and difficult to manage. The historian Edward Gibbon, in his 1776 book The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , notes that Romans had become weak and responded to the challenges of hyperinflation, civil wars and revolts by outsourcing their duties to defend their empire in far flung regions to "barbarian" mercenaries such as the Visigoths. Blowback occurred as these barbarians' increased economic production and their ability to conduct warfare, which led them, ultimately, to turn against their benefactors and sack the Roman Empire. Similarly, the West increased the prosperity of faraway nations and ironically, as a result their military assertiveness by being beholden to extended global supply chains. This along with the risk of globalization unravelling increases the prospects of inter-state and great power conflict. All it took was a virus to detonate the fuse that was shorter than anyone expected.
Barak Seener is the CEO of Strategic Intelligentia and a former Middle East Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). He is on Twitter at @BarakSeener .
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May 16, 2020 | original.antiwar.com
In the very near future, countries are going to have to choose whether they make guns or vaccines
"There have been as many plagues as wars in history, yet plagues and wars take people equally by surprise."
~ Albert Camus, "The Plague"Camus' novel of a lethal contagion in the North African city of Oran is filled with characters all too recognizable today: indifferent or incompetent officials, short sighted and selfish citizens, and lots of great courage. What not even Camus could imagine, however, is a society in the midst of a deadly epidemic pouring vast amounts of wealth into instruments of death.
Welcome to the world of the hypersonic weapons, devices that are not only superfluous, but which will almost certainly not work. They will, however, cost enormous amounts of money. At a time when countries across the globe are facing economic chaos, financial deficits, and unemployment at Great Depression levels, arms manufacturers are set to cash in big.
A Hypersonic Arms Race
Hypersonic weapons are missiles that go five times faster than sound – 3,800 mph – although some reportedly can reach speeds of Mach 20, 15,000 mph. They come in two basic varieties. One is powered by a high-speed scramjet. The other, launched from a plane or missile, glides to its target. The idea behind the weapons is that their speed and maneuverability will make them virtually invulnerable to anti-missile systems.
Currently there is a hypersonic arms race going on among China, Russia, and the U.S., and, according to the Pentagon, the Americans are desperately trying to catch up with its two adversaries.
Truth is the first casualty in an arms race.
In the 1950s, it was the "bomber gap" between the Americans and the Soviets. In the 1960s, it was the "missile gap" between the two powers. Neither gap existed, but vast amounts of national treasure were nonetheless poured into long-range aircraft and thousands of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The enormous expenditures on those weapons, in turn, heightened tensions between the major powers and on at least three occasions came very close to touching off a nuclear war.
In the current hypersonic arms race, "hype" is the operational word. "The development of hypersonic weapons in the United States," says physicist James Acton of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "has been largely motivated by technology, not by strategy. In other words, technologists have decided to try and develop hypersonic weapons because it seems like they should be useful for something, not because there is a clearly defined mission need for them to fulfill."
They have certainly been "useful" to Lockheed Martin , the largest arms manufacturer in the world. The company has already received $3.5 billion to develop the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon (Arrow) glide missile, and the scramjet-driven Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle (Hacksaw) missile.
The Russians also have several hypersonic missiles, including the Avangard glide vehicle, a missile said to be capable of Mach 20. China is developing several hypersonic missiles, including the DF-ZF, supposedly capable of taking out aircraft carriers.
"No Advantage Whatsoever"
In theory hypersonic missiles are unstoppable. In real life, not so much.
The first problem is basic physics: speed in the atmosphere produces heat. High speed generates lots of it. ICBMs avoid this problem with a blunt nose cone that deflects the enormous heat of re-entering the atmosphere as the missile approaches its target. But it only has to endure heat for a short time because much of its flight is in frictionless low earth orbit.
Hypersonic missiles, however, stay in the atmosphere their entire flight. That is the whole idea. An ICBM follows a predictable ballistic curve, much like an inverted U and, in theory, can be intercepted. A missile traveling as fast as an ICBM but at low altitude, however, is much more difficult to spot or engage.
But that's when physics shows up and does a Las Vegas: what happens on the drawing board stays on the drawing board.
Without a heat deflecting nose cone, high-speed missiles are built like big needles, since they need to decrease the area exposed to the atmosphere. Even so, they are going to run very hot. And if they try to maneuver, that heat will increase. Since they can't carry a large payload, they will have to be very accurate – but as a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists points out, that is "problematic."
According to the Union, an object traveling Mach 5 for a period of time "slowly tears itself apart during the flight." The heat is so great it creates a "plasma" around the craft that makes it difficult "to reference GPS or receive outside course correction commands."
If the target is moving, as with an aircraft carrier or a mobile missile, it will be almost impossible to alter the weapon's flight path to intercept it. And any external radar array would never survive the heat or else be so small that it would have very limited range. In short, you can't get from here to there.
Lockheed Martin says the tests are going just fine, but then Lockheed Martin is the company that builds the F-35, a fifth generation stealth fighter that simply doesn't work. It does, however, cost $1.5 trillion, the most expensive weapons system in US history. The company has apparently dropped the scramjet engine because it tears itself apart, hardly a surprise.
The Russians and Chinese claim success with their hypersonic weapons and have even begun deploying them. But Pierre Sprey, a Pentagon designer associated with the two very successful aircraft – the F-16 and the A-10 – told defense analyst Andrew Cockburn that he is suspicious of the tests.
"I very much doubt those test birds would have reached the advertised range had they maneuvered unpredictably," he told Cockburn. "More likely they were forced to fly a straight, predictable path. In which case hypersonics offer no advantage whatsoever over traditional ballistic missiles."
Guns or Vaccines
While Russia, China, and the US lead the field in the development of hypersonics, Britain, France, India, and Japan have joined the race too.
Why is everyone building them?
At least the Russians and the Chinese have a rationale. The Russians fear the US antimissile system might cancel out their ICBMs, so they want a missile that can maneuver. The Chinese would like to keep US aircraft carriers away from their shores.
But antimissile systems can be easily fooled by the use of cheap decoys, and the carriers are vulnerable to much more cost effective conventional weapons. In any case hypersonic missiles can't do what they are advertised to do.
For the Americans, hypersonics are little more than a very expensive subsidy for the arms corporations. Making and deploying weapons that don't work is nothing new. The F-35 is a case in point, but nevertheless, there have been many systems produced over the years that were deeply flawed.
The US has spent over $200 billion on antimissile systems, and once they come off the drawing boards, none of them work very well, if at all.
Probably the one that takes the prize is the Mark-28 tactical nuke, nicknamed the "Davy Crockett," and its M-388 warhead. Because the M-388 was too delicate to be used in conventional artillery, it was fired from a recoil-less rife with a range of 2.5 miles. Problem: if the wind was blowing in the wrong direction, the Crockett cooked its three-man crew. It was only tested once and found to be "totally inaccurate."
So, end of story? Not exactly. A total of 2,100 were produced and deployed, mostly in Europe.
While the official military budget is $738 billion, if one pulls all US defense related spending together, the actual cost for taxpayers is $1.25 trillion a year, according to William Hartung of the Center for International Policy. Half that amount would go a long way toward providing not only adequate medical support during the Covid-19 crisis – it would also pay jobless Americans a salary.
Given that there are more than 31 million Americans now unemployed and the possibility that numerous small businesses – restaurants in particular – will never reopen, building and deploying a new generation of weapons is a luxury the US and other countries cannot afford.
In the very near future, countries are going to have to choose whether they make guns or vaccines.
Foreign Policy In Focus columnist Conn Hallinan can be read at www.dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com and www.middleempireseries.wordpress.com .
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May 16, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
karlof1 , May 15 2020 19:04 utc | 9
And just in time, we have this essay, "How Biosecurity Is Enabling Digital Neo-Feudalism" by Pepe Escobar. Seven years ago, this prediction was made:"In the worst-case scenario projected for a pandemic, Zylberman predicted that 'sanitary terror' would be used as an instrument of governance....
"Agamben did square the circle: it's not that citizens across the West have the right to health safety; now they are juridically forced (italics [Pepe's]) to be healthy. That, in a nutshell, is what biosecurity is all about.
"So no wonder biosecurity is an ultra-efficient governance paradigm. Citizens had it administered down their throats with no political debate whatsoever. And the enforcement, writes Agamben, kills 'any political activity and any social relation as the maximum example of civic participation.'"
Escobar's topic's been the subject of heated discussion here. How much of "reopening" in meant to combat the implied totalitarian potential? Perhaps an entire thread ought to be devoted? That such was a planned additional benefit of the COVID-19 attack seems very reasonable. Since it was thought of, discussed and had books published about it seems to indicate it ought to become a central topic at MoA.
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May 16, 2020 | off-guardian.org
On the one side, figures allied to American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's vision for an anti-Imperial world order lined up behind FDR's champion Harry Dexter White while those powerful forces committed to maintaining the structures of a bankers' dictatorship (Britain was always primarily a banker's empire) lined up behind the figure of John Maynard Keynes[ 1 ].
John Maynard Keynes was a leading Fabian Society controller and treasurer of the British Eugenics Association (which served as a model for Hitler's Eugenics protocols before and during the war). During the Bretton Woods Conference, Keynes pushed hard for the new system to be premised upon a one world currency controlled entirely by the Bank of England known as the Bancor. He proposed a global bank called the Clearing Union to be controlled by the Bank of England which would use the Bancor (exchangeable with national currencies) and serve as unit of account to measure trade surpluses or deficits under the mathematical mandate of maintaining "equilibrium" of the system.
Harry Dexter White, on the other hand, fought relentlessly to keep the City of London out of the drivers' seat of global finance and instead defended the institution of national sovereignty and sovereign currencies based on long term scientific and technological growth.
Although White and FDR demanded that US dollars become the reserve currency in the new world system of fixed exchange rates, it was not done to create a "new American Empire" as most modern analysts have assumed, but rather was designed to use America's status as the strongest productive global power to ensure an anti-speculative stability among international currencies which entirely lacked stability in the wake of WWII.
Their fight for fixed exchange rates and principles of "parity pricing" were designed by FDR and White strictly around the need to abolish the forms of chaotic flux of the un-regulated markets which made speculation rampant under British Free Trade and destroyed the capacity to think and plan for the sort of long term development needed to modernize nation states. Theirs was not a drive for "mathematical equilibrium" but rather a drive to "end poverty" through REAL physical economic growth of colonies who would thereby win real economic independence.
As figures like Henry Wallace (FDR's loyal Vice President and 1948 3rd party candidate), Representative Wendell Wilkie (FDR's republican lieutenant and New Dealer), and Dexter White all advocated repeatedly, the mechanisms of the World Bank, IMF, and United Nations were meant to become drivers of an internationalization of the New Deal which transformed America from a backwater cesspool in 1932 to becoming a modern advanced manufacturing powerhouse 12 years later. All of these Interntional New Dealers were loud advocates of US-Russia –China leadership in the post war world which is a forgotten fact of paramount importance.
In his 1944 book Our Job in the Pacific , Wallace said:
It is vital to the United States, it is vital to China and it is vital to Russia that there be peaceful and friendly relations between China and Russia, China and America and Russia and America. China and Russia Complement and supplement each other on the continent of Asia and the two together complement and supplement America's position in the Pacific.Contradicting the mythos that FDR was a Keynesian, FDR's assistant Francis Perkins recorded the 1934 interaction between the two men when Roosevelt told her:
"I saw your friend Keynes. He left a whole rigmarole of figures. He must be a mathematician rather than a political economist."
In response Keynes, who was then trying to coopt the intellectual narrative of the New Deal stated he had "supposed the President was more literate, economically speaking."
In his 1936 German edition of his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money , Keynes wrote:
For I confess that much of the following book is illustrated and expounded mainly with reference to the conditions existing in the Anglo Saxon countries. Nevertheless, the theory of output as a whole, which is what the following book purports to provide, is much more easily adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state.While Keynes represented the "soft imperialism" for the "left" of Britain's intelligentsia, Churchill represented the hard unapologetic imperialism of the Old, less sophisticated empire that preferred the heavy fisted use of brute force to subdue the savages. Both however were unapologetic racists and fascists (Churchill even wrote admiringly of Mussolini's black shirts) and both represented the most vile practices of British Imperialism.
FDR's Forgotten Anti-Colonial Vision RevitedFDR's battle with Churchill on the matter of empire is better known than his differences with Keynes whom he only met on a few occasions. This well documented clash was best illustrated in his son/assistant Elliot Roosevelt's book As He Saw It (1946) who quoted his father:
I've tried to make it clear that while we're [Britain's] allies and in it to victory by their side, they must never get the idea that we're in it just to help them hang on to their archaic, medieval empire ideas I hope they realize they're not senior partner; that we are not going to sit by and watch their system stultify the growth of every country in Asia and half the countries in Europe to boot.[ ]
The colonial system means war. Exploit the resources of an India, a Burma, a Java; take all the wealth out of these countries, but never put anything back into them, things like education, decent standards of living, minimum health requirements – all you're doing is storing up the kind of trouble that leads to war. All you're doing is negating the value of any kind of organizational structure for peace before it begins.
Writing from Washington in a hysteria to Churchill, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden said that Roosevelt "contemplates the dismantling of the British and Dutch empires."
Unfortunately for the world, FDR died on April 12, 1945. A coup within the Democratic establishment, then replete with Fabians and Rhodes Scholars, had already ensured that Henry Wallace would lose the 1944 Vice Presidency in favor of Anglophile Wall Street Stooge Harry Truman.
Truman was quick to reverse all of FDR's intentions, cleansing American intelligence of all remaining patriots with the shutdown of the OSS and creation of the CIA, the launching of un-necessary nuclear bombs on Japan and establishment of the Anglo-American special relationship.
Truman's embrace of Churchill's New World Order destroyed the positive relationship with Russia and China which FDR, White and Wallace sought and soon America had become Britain's dumb giant.
The Post 1945 Takeover of the Modern Deep StateFDR warned his son before his death of his understanding of the British takeover of American foreign policy, but still could not reverse this agenda. His son recounted his father's ominous insight:
You know, any number of times the men in the State Department have tried to conceal messages to me, delay them, hold them up somehow, just because some of those career diplomats over there aren't in accord with what they know I think. They should be working for Winston.As a matter of fact, a lot of the time, they are [working for Churchill]. Stop to think of 'em: any number of 'em are convinced that the way for America to conduct its foreign policy is to find out what the British are doing and then copy that!" I was told six years ago, to clean out that State Department. It's like the British Foreign Office
Before being fired from Truman's cabinet for his advocacy of US-Russia friendship during the Cold War, Wallace stated:
American fascism" which has come to be known in recent years as the Deep State [ ] Fascism in the postwar inevitably will push steadily for Anglo-Saxon imperialism and eventually for war with Russia. Already American fascists are talking and writing about this conflict and using it as an excuse for their internal hatreds and intolerances toward certain races, creeds and classes.In his 1946 Soviet Asia Mission, Wallace said:
Before the blood of our boys is scarcely dry on the field of battle, these enemies of peace try to lay the foundation for World War III. These people must not succeed in their foul enterprise. We must offset their poison by following the policies of Roosevelt in cultivating the friendship of Russia in peace as well as in war.Indeed this is exactly what occurred. Dexter White's three year run as head of the International Monetary Fund was clouded by his constant attacks as being a Soviet stooge which haunted him until the day he died in 1948 after a grueling inquisition session at the House of Un-American Activities.
White had previously been supporting the election of his friend Wallace for the presidency alongside fellow patriots Paul Robeson and Albert Einstein.
Today the world has captured a second chance to revive the FDR's dream of an anti-colonial world . In the 21st century, this great dream has taken the form of the New Silk Road, led by Russia and China (and joined by a growing chorus of nations yearning to exit the invisible cage of colonialism).
If western nations wish to survive the oncoming collapse, then they would do well to heed Putin's call for a New International system, join the BRI, and reject the Keynesian technocrats advocating a false "New Bretton Woods" and "Green New Deal" .
Originally published on The Saker[1] You may be thinking "wait! Wasn't FDR and his New Deal premised on Keynes' theories??" How could Keynes have represented an opposing force to FDR's system if this is the case? This paradox only exists in the minds of many people today due to the success of the Fabian Society's and Round Table Movement's armada of revisionist historians who have consistently created a lying narrative of history to make it appear to future generations trying to learn from past mistakes that those figures like FDR who opposed empire were themselves following imperial principles.
Another example of this sleight of hand can be seen by the sheer number of people who sincerely think themselves informed and yet believe that America's 1776 revolution was driven by British Imperial philosophical thought stemming from Adam Smith, Bentham and John Locke.
Matthew Ehret is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review , a BRI Expert on Tactical talk , regular author with Strategic Culture, the Duran and Fort Russ and has authored 3 volumes of 'Untold History of Canada' book series. In 2019 he co-founded the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation and can be reached at matt.ehret@tutamail.com
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May 16, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Since the days of Adam Smith, free market capitalists have held that human beings are rational actors who pursue economic gain for self-interested motives. But here is Patrick, a free marketer if there ever was one, talking about a gift-sacrifice economy model in which people – some people, at least – lay down their lives to keep the economic engines revved.
Patrick's words reveal an unspoken truth about capitalism. For the system to work smoothly, there have always been requirements of human sacrifice -- a certain portion of the population was expected to act not as self-serving homo economicus, but self-sacrificing homo communis , focused upon what benefits the collective at their own expense. If these people can't social distance at the workplace, they are expected to show up anyway. If there isn't enough safety equipment, they are declared essential workers who must put their lives and that of their families at risk for the greater good.
But for whom and for what is this sacrifice intended? How much dying will be figured into state budgets and gross domestic product (GDP)? When ranked by GDP, the U.S. is the wealthiest economy in the world, but is a country's wealth something totally separate from, or even contrary to, the health and life the majority of its citizens?
Wealth v. "illth"
To help us navigate these questions, it is useful turn to someone who offered potent challenges to the economic calculus of his day: John Ruskin , the 19 th -century art critic-turned-political economist. He was one of the most outspoken critics of capitalism and prevailing economic ideas of the Victorian era , and his work presciently points to shortcomings that have followed us into the present day.
Ruskin questions the premises on which free market capitalism is based, returning to first principles: what is wealth? What do we value? How should we understand the relationship between people, the economy, and the state?
In his view, economies are, above all, social systems whose true end is to benefit the people, and not, as the Texan politician would have it, the other way around. Anticipating the behavioral economics of our own day, Ruskin rejected the idea advocated by such economists as John Stuart Mill that there could be a deductive science of economics based on the assumption that the human being is "a covetous machine" that when applied to actual situations could take "the social affections," the non-rational aspects of human behavior, into account. Ruskin recognized that such a system implicitly removed the marketplace from the constraints of religion and morality that are supposed to apply to all human behavior. He compared it to an assumption that humans are essentially a skeleton with flesh, blood and consciousness as add-ons founding "an ossifiant theory of progress on this negation of a soul."
Ruskin defined wealth quite differently from many of his contemporaries, and ours. For him, wealth is anything that supports life and health, from the supplies in your storeroom to the song in your heart: "There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others." ( Unto this Last ).
By that definition, America is looking increasingly impoverished. And it is not a virus which is stealing our wealth away.
Playing on the root of the word "wealth" from the Old English word "weal," signifying health, Ruskin proposed that while wealth was anything life-supporting that could be used and enjoyed, it had a dark counterpart that he called "illth" from the Old Norse word for bad – the things that make people ill, their lives stunted and despairing, their environment polluted. Wealth cannot be produced without illth, but great fortunes have been made by extracting the means of wealth without paying the cost of illth. To take a Ruskinian example, a factory that pollutes the water it uses, fouls the air and pays its workers below what a healthy life requires will be more profitable than a business that cleans up after itself and pays a living wage, but its illth becomes a form of national debt expressed in damage to the health of others and the environment. Think of something like a toxic Superfund site.
Economists have a term for Ruskin's concept of illth, referring to it as "negative externalities," even though they are not external to the capitalist economic system, but intrinsic to it. The most daunting problems of the current age, environmental disaster and inequality, are fueled by illth.
The Covid-19 crisis has merely amplified trends of rising illth, of despair, sickness, and alienation, which have been on the rise for decades as globalization, money-driven politics, decimated workers' rights, and privatization have tipped the economic balance far in favor of the very few. If we are to judge a country's health not by GDP, which rises in the face of a massive oil spill , but according to the criteria of the World Happiness Report (WHR), which measures things like social trust and faith in institutions, America is in bad shape when it comes to the ratio of wealth to illth. Scandinavian countries top the WHR, while the U.S. ranks a dismal 19 th .
According to the Columbia University study of the 2020 WHR report , the key factors that account for the relative happiness of Scandinavian countries -- what makes them wealthy in Ruskin's terms -- are precisely those that have been under pressure or cut back in the U.S. since the rise of neoliberalism: "emancipation from market dependency in terms of pensions, income maintenance for the ill or disabled, and unemployment benefits" together with labor market regulation such as a high minimum wage. Of course, no one likes to pay taxes, but Scandinavian "citizens' satisfaction with public and common goods such as health care, education, and public transportation that progressive taxation helps to fund," meets with approval at all income levels.
Pandemics are exacerbated by illth. We can see it in communities of color where the coronavirus strikes down those whose resources and access to health care have been limited by discriminatory policies and high contact employment. We can see it in factory farms where broken supply chains have caused farmers to euthanize livestock and plow under crops while people across the country go hungry. Airlines got immediate stimulus aid in the U.S., but there has been no subsidy for the restaurant supply chain that could be diverted for distribution by food banks and favorably located restaurants thus sustaining at least some of our much-vaunted small businesses. No one has to fly, but everyone must eat.
We sense illth accumulating in the comments of Las Vegas mayor Carolyn Goodman, who, in her eagerness to get the casinos back in business, told an astonished Anderson Cooper on CNN that she would offer up the city's workers as a " control group " in a reopening experiment. If they weren't able to social distance, Goodman was unconcerned: "In my opinion, you have to go ahead," she said . "Every day you get up, it's a gamble."
Ruskin saw the capitalists of his day as gamblers heedless of the costs they foisted onto ordinary people: "But they neither know who keeps the bank of the gambling-house, nor what other games may be played with the same cards, nor what other losses and gains, far away among the dark streets, are essentially, though invisibly, dependent upon theirs in lighted rooms." ( Unto This Last ).
In other words, not only do capitalists gamble with other peoples' lives; they are oblivious to the fact that there are other ways to arrange society, to deal the cards differently, more fairly.
Witness the post-Covid reality imagined by Governor Cuomo. Instead of focusing on what changes could better support the health and lives of ordinary people, he has called in Google CEO Eric Schmidt to head a commission to reimagine New York state with more technology permanently inserted into every dimension of civic life. A better deal for Silicon Valley, to be sure. But what is in the cards for everyone else? When educational platforms and health protocols are mapped by gigantic and unaccountable corporations, who gets lost? Surely the answer is those who can least afford it.
President Trump says that it is time to move on from the coronavirus and get on with economy. Ruskin would have recognized the deity worshipped by country's leader, which he called the "Goddess of getting on." Only Ruskin recognized that she tended to favor "not of everybody's getting on – but only of somebody's getting on," -- what he called a "vital, or rather deathful, distinction." For capitalists, getting on post-Covid means executives working remotely while the rank and file return to the factory floor without adequate face masks, and large corporations, not public input, determines the blueprints for our lives.
The issue of worker safety does matter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, but not because he fears that some will get sick or die, but for a potential " epidemic of litigation ." In the next pandemic relief legislation, McConnell is looking to solve the problem of worker safety by shielding corporations from lawsuits rather than supporting Centers for Disease Control (CDC) mandated regulations that would both promote safety and sort out what is and is not actionable.
The Visible Hand
Instead of Adam Smith's Invisible Hand, Ruskin advocated a Visible Hand of reasoned management, a government which could allocate resources effectively and create stores of what citizens most needed in a crisis. In our day this need not be a literal storehouse but surge capacity. The Obama administration, for example, contracted with Halyard Health to design a machine that could turn out 1.5 million N95 masks per day. They were ready to build the machine in 2018 when the Trump administration cancelled the program .
In Ruskin's view, the Visible Hand was the guardian of the lives of the citizens, especially the poor, whose health and lives were their essential property. Ruskin actually defined an economy as the wise management of labor, applying labor, carefully preserving what it produces, and wisely distributing those products. A country's wealth is in the people's strength and health, not their illness and death.
Ruskin's concepts of wealth and illth help us understand the centrality of ethics and responsibility to economic activity, and how economies are not an assemblage of atomistic human units but whole systems of people interacting, where the activities of some impact the lives of all. His work indicates the need for a whole systems approach to a crisis in which what happens on the beaches of Georgia impacts a nursing home in North Carolina, and visitors to New York City or New Orleans can carry the infection home. The decisions of one business in a complex international supply chain can impact the fate of millions.
In unregulated capitalism, Ruskin sussed out what Sigmund Freud might have recognized as the death drive. Decisions about the economy, he held, must be informed by the essential biologic basis of life itself: "The real science of political economy, which has yet to be distinguished from the bastard science, as medicine from witchcraft, and astronomy from astrology, is that which teaches nations to desire and labour for the things that lead to life; and which teaches them to scorn and destroy the things that lead to destruction" ( Unto This Last ).
The Covid crisis has exposed contradictions in market and America First ideology. Without federal aid to state and local governments, essential personnel are being laid off even as we declare them heroes. Employer based insurance is failing, but few American politicians are willing to fully embrace single payer insurance. Meat plant workers are declared essential, but still subject to deportation, as if famed Revolutionary patriot Nathan Hale had said, "I only regret that you have but one life to give for my country."
Ultimately, the most dangerous pestilence that threatens the country is not a packet of RNA called Covid-19 but an economic and political system that does not value true wealth, and promotes the life of the few while condemning the many to literal sickness unto death.
Henry Moon Pie , May 15, 2020 at 5:38 am
Excellent piece by Parramore. Ruskin is an interesting thinker whose ideas have direct application to our situation. This was central:
President Trump says that it is time to move on from the coronavirus and get on with economy. Ruskin would have recognized the deity worshipped by country's leader, which he called the "Goddess of getting on." Only Ruskin recognized that she tended to favor "not of everybody's getting on – but only of somebody's getting on," -- what he called a "vital, or rather deathful, distinction." For capitalists, getting on post-Covid means executives working remotely while the rank and file return to the factory floor without adequate face masks, and large corporations, not public input, determines the blueprints for our lives.
There's one thing I hope the Left learns before too long. Human beings have a religious impulse. It's not as powerful or as central to our existence as the sexual impulse, but it's there in all of us, even Richard Dawkins. Like the sexual impulse, the real question is where will this religious impulse lead us. For the Right, their twisted unChristian conception of Christianity is a powerful force within their political movement. In fact, it might be said to be what holds it together and provides the energy for their unfortunate efforts.
Meanwhile, the Left, considering itself too firmly ensconced in modernity to recognize the reality of the religious impulse despite modern science's identification of it, denies the existence of this basic and potentially powerful human trait. We saw some of the activists and organizers in Bernie's campaign employ deep organizing techniques which are basically spiritual exercises. We know Thomas Berry's calls for a new religion focused on humanity's relationship to the Earth and its creatures. The Left needs to acknowledge our spiritual aspects and work to turn our religious impulse away from patriarchalism, misogyny and homophobia of the Right and toward love for the Earth, our fellow humans and our fellow creatures. That's where reside the power and persistence necessary to overcome our religiously misinspired opponents.
Bsoder , May 15, 2020 at 9:34 am
There is a gene that creates within the brain a structure that either perceives 'god' (my view), or generates a sense of spirituality in [sic] reality. The university of Waterloo has been doing studies on this for at least thirty years. Anything we have evolved has a calorie cost to maintain, so it must serve purpose in furthering life. There have been many debates about this gene but no one can argue it's not about spirituality, and/or god, and/or what the Druids what call magic. To me there's always been, that question, we can go back and have data to 1/billion of 1/billion to 1/billion⁶⁶⁷(minus) of a second before the inflation singularity that created this universe. But then, why? As the said in the 'Little Prince', 'it's only with the heart one sees rightly'.
Susan the other , May 15, 2020 at 10:07 am
The little prince is right. What we call spirituality is intelligence above what is necessary our daily existence. Our "daily bread". Our sixth sense is probably more accurate and reliable than all our rationalizations combined. But it is a thing that can't be orchestrated by religion or politics. What happens between people in groups when fear is eliminated is a sudden change toward choices that are the most sensible. As long as the process isn't interfered with. That's the difficulty. It's like leaving nature alone long enough for it to recover from human devastation.
Clive , May 15, 2020 at 10:28 am
What we call spirituality is intelligence above what is necessary our daily existence.
(although if I was trying to do your comment complete justice, I would have to simply re-quote the whole thing, it was that good)
Sometimes Susan the other, you're so profound, it almost hurts!
Certainly for me, I've got very little, comparatively, in my life right. I've passed on opportunities which would made me rich beyond the dreams of avarice. And much else besides. Mostly because I've overanalysed and rationalised things away. What I've got right has been, conversely, down to following my intuition. If humanity could unlock that potential within us, just think what we could do.
Susan the other , May 15, 2020 at 1:21 pm
If I'm profound Clive it's because I look to you and a handful of other VSP for inspiration.
RBHoughton , May 15, 2020 at 8:48 pm
That's what makes NC unique – the sense of honor and respect amongst supporters.
SAKMAN , May 15, 2020 at 10:29 am
If we are talking about VMAT2 here, then its also been implicated in opiod dependence. . . just another example of god I guess? To some for sure.
Susan the other , May 15, 2020 at 9:58 am
Neo-transcendentalism please.
ChiGal in Carolina , May 15, 2020 at 10:41 am
The Sun
mary oliverHave you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderfulthan the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizonand into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone–
and how it slides againout of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flowerstreaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance–
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love–
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasurethat fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms youas you stand there,
empty-handed–
or have you too
turned from this world–or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?Henry Moon Pie , May 15, 2020 at 11:01 am
A response to Oliver's powerful poem from Thomas Berry:
The continuity between the human and the cosmic was experienced with special sensitivity in the Chinese world [A] sense of the sacred dimension of the Earth is involved, a type of awareness less available from our traditional Western religions. This lack of intimacy with the natural was further extended when Descartes proposed that the living world was best described as a mechanism, because there was no vital principle integrating, guiding, and sustaining the activities of what we generally refer to as the living world.
Yet, strangely enough, a new sense of the sacred dimension of the universe and the planet Earth is becoming available from our more recent scientific endeavors. The observational sciences, principally through the theories of relativity, quantum physics, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, the sense of a self-organizing universe, and the more recent chaos theories have taken us beyond a mechanistic understanding of an objective world. We know there is a subjectivity in all our knowledge and that we ourselves, precisely as intelligent beings, activate one of the deepest dimensions of the universe. Once again, we realize that knowledge is less a subject-object relationship than it is a communion of subjects, .
Thomas Berry, "The Gaia Hypothesis: Its Religious Implications" in The Sacred Universe
Susan the other , May 15, 2020 at 1:26 pm
I'm reading Rovelli's The Order of Time right now and every few pages I just stop, my jaw drops and I get lost in the realization.
Rod , May 15, 2020 at 9:59 am
I'm glad you are making this point to acknowledge:
Human beings have a religious impulse.From my direct experience, Native Americans seem to center their activism in a Spiritual Context. Prayer for Guidance–for courage–for wisdom–for compassion–before starting up on anything. imo, it keeps the priorities in focus.
Petter , May 15, 2020 at 3:12 pm
I'm posting in this thread even though I'm not sure it fits. The religious or spiritual impulse appears to be universal, there doesn't seem any doubt about that. Here's an interesting article on Big Gods, or moralizing Gods.
Big data analyses suggest that moralizing gods are rather the product than the drivers of social complexity:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190320141116.htm
-- -- -- -- --
One prominent theory, the big or moralizing gods hypothesis, assumes that religious beliefs were key. According to this theory people are more likely to cooperate fairly if they believe in gods who will punish them if they don't. "To our surprise, our data strongly contradict this hypothesis," says lead author Harvey Whitehouse. "In almost every world region for which we have data, moralizing gods tended to follow, not precede, increases in social complexity." Even more so, standardized rituals tended on average to appear hundreds of years before gods who cared about human morality.Such rituals create a collective identity and feelings of belonging that act as social glue, making people to behave more cooperatively. "Our results suggest that collective identities are more important to facilitate cooperation in societies than religious beliefs," says Harvey Whitehouse.
-- -- -- -Amfortas the hippie , May 15, 2020 at 6:14 am
I can definitely recommend Ruskin's "Unto This Last". I obtained it(among several others that had been on my list(from NC) for a while) just before Covid.
short book wonderfully written.
and kicks you in the gut like some new revelation.
turns out that divorcing "Economics" from "Political Economy" was a mistake.
treating the former as if it were a natural science, like Physics or Chemistry let alone Pure Mathematics is deleterious.
It ignores and neglects all the amorphous and ephemeral things that make this Life worth living .how can you quantify a sunset or a moonrise or the smell of your newborn's hair or a first kiss?
the Economists have taken reductive essentialism to absurd extremes .and somehow convinced a great many of us to go along to our ultimate destruction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHOhD0RT9NUMarx called this sort of thing Reification .giving something a Quality it doesn't truly possess. Money as the Holy Cracker in the Temple of Moloch.
or, the morality of a Serpent: I shall Devour.(see: Joseph Campbell:"a serpent is a "motile alimentary canal")
we're expected to feed ourselves and our children into the flaming bronze maw of their idol( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moloch )
as if "The Economy" is some thunderstorm or Holy Mountain, instead of a Human Creation.
"There is no such thing as Society" .and "TINA" .and these moronic "protesters" holding signs that say "Arbiet macht frie" apparently unaware of the provenance of that phrase .after all , we stopped really teaching the Humanities like History quite a while ago.
we forget that "They" require our assent and consent to this "sacrifice"(L:"to make holy") that without that consent, they have nothing not even their precious wealth(which is what, these days? electrons moving in a database, somewhere?).now, "They" have as much as admitted that things like the Stock Market are disconnected from Reality that the Casino doesn't need Main Street and Human Beings to function.
This, after decades of training us to believe just the opposite. Why else put a stock market ticker at the bottom of every cable news channel as if all that mattered to us'n's?
One of my favorite words is Eudaimonia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudaimonia ) but you only learn about that from the Humanities.
another of my favorite words is Thaumazein "Wonder", or "Awe" also from ancient Greek Philosophy
we've allowed the most withered souls to define the Good for us
Now, when all their works lie in ruins around us .and their narrow and anti-humanist, mechanistic absurdity and cruelty are on full display has there ever been a better time to turn away? To sit and think about what matters?
Withdraw your Consent." O happiness! O happiness! Wilt thou perhaps sing, O my soul? Thou liest in the grass. But this is the secret, solemn hour, when no shepherd playeth his pipe.
Take care! Hot noontide sleepeth on the fields. Do not sing! Hush! The world is perfect.
Do not sing, thou prairie-bird, my soul! Do not even whisper! Lo- hush! The old noontide sleepeth, it moveth its mouth: doth it not just now drink a drop of happiness --
-- An old brown drop of golden happiness, golden wine? Something whisketh over it, its happiness laugheth. Thus -- laugheth a God. Hush! --
-- 'For happiness, how little sufficeth for happiness!' Thus spake I once and thought myself wise. But it was a blasphemy: that have I now learned. Wise fools speak better.
The least thing precisely, the gentlest thing, the lightest thing, a lizard's rustling, a breath, a whisk, an eye-glance -- little maketh up the best happiness. Hush!
-- What hath befallen me: Hark! Hath time flown away? Do I not fall? Have I not fallen -- hark! into the well of eternity?
-- What happeneth to me? Hush! It stingeth me -- alas -- to the heart? To the heart! Oh, break up, break up, my heart, after such happiness, after such a sting!
-- What? Hath not the world just now become perfect? Round and ripe? Oh, for the golden round ring -- whither doth it fly? Let me run after it! Quick!"
( http://4umi.com/nietzsche/zarathustra/70 )Bsoder , May 15, 2020 at 9:43 am
Good day it you sir, you are in rare and most excellent form, Amfortas. Amen.
McKillop , May 15, 2020 at 3:00 pm
Hey Amphortas the Hippie!
I enjoy reading your comments and the slices of your life served up to us – you are an interesting guy and a good antidote to me whenever I am disheartened by the stuff I am bombarded with by the exceptional Americans foisted upon the world as typical.
Who would believe that I read Thus spake Zarathustra 'cause of your comments? I sent the link on to my son who is 16 and has been physically separated from us for months caught in this vortex. We'll see how it is taken compared to Mnm.
ThanksAmfortas the hippie , May 15, 2020 at 3:21 pm
Aww. Thanks, dude/dudette.
zarathustra is very accessible.
i've noticed that lots of people(like my wife) have been taught somehow that they can't read stuff like that, so don't even try.
just another crime against us all.
aristotle can be pretty dense as can a lot of the more familiar philosophers(hegel=ugh–) but Nietszche is pretty easy to get into, due to his style .although some translations are better than others(I like the translation linked above for Zarathustra the KJV Tone works for me.)
One shouldn't be intimidated by Marcus Aurelius, Herodotus or Boethius, either.rob , May 15, 2020 at 7:42 am
Isn't it ironic, that ruskin was able to see our issues and spoke to people with such force as to effect our lives and in a sense is partly responsible for the world we have today.
When he spoke at oxford in 1870 cecil rhodes was so impressed he supposedly carried a copy of it with him in the future.
The ideas expressed by ruskin convinced rhodes that he needed to save "good english society" from "the masses"(the poor english and all the rest of the savages who wouldn't understand how to be proper."
Rhodes and his cohorts,in the british upper crust and media establishment created "the british rountable" in 1891. These roundtablers did lots of things..Both through official channels and by ways of running the largest newspapers who really perfected propaganda, decades before goebbels. Eventually they formed in 1919, "the royal institute of international relations" in britian. and "the council on foreign relations" in new york"
Generations of these members have really "made" the world that exists today. Which is why the "conspiracy theories" exist . when people look at the lists of who
Personally, I think there ought to be study in the relationships these people had with each other and with history. As with any family, they may be related, but not always on the same page but still have the power of the family name and the prestige.
The council on foreign relations is the wellspring of "neoliberalism" neo consevatism too , for that matter. Their place in history is central. This is the axis of the "anglo-american establishment"rob , May 15, 2020 at 9:02 am
oops, that is "royal institute of international affairs" or as people refer to it "chatham house"
Off The Street , May 15, 2020 at 9:21 am
Upon first reading the headline about America's Chilling Experiment in Human Sacrifice , I wondered: Which one?
Now back to Ruskin.
shinola , May 15, 2020 at 10:02 am
Dan Patrick's attitude is a prime example of a principle that regular NC readers may have seen a time or two:
Because Markets / Go Die
anon2 , May 15, 2020 at 11:26 am
Hence the folly of an economy based on debt rather than equity: it must continue to run or risk cascading defaults.
Then why do we have government privileges for private debt creation in the first place? Because subtle theft is easier and more "efficient" than honest sharing?
Alex Cox , May 15, 2020 at 12:15 pm
Perhaps science is the religion of the PMC. An unquestioning belief in anything scientists/big pharma/tech wizzards throw on the table, whether it's GMOs, vaccines containing mercury, thalidomide, social media, driverless cars or trips to Mars.
JBird4049 , May 15, 2020 at 2:14 pm
I use to go to Nevada regularly and mostly via the Donner Pass. Just a roundabout way of suggesting that some might consider the Donner Party as the right way to have a society. They almost made it over the pass, missing it by a couple of days, despite taking a shortcut that was actually a longcut using bad information from a book, IIRC. They were told repeatedly by those who had gone West before not to do so, but
They remind me of today's times.
Dwight , May 15, 2020 at 2:32 pm
In Nashville, TN last month, a masked protester at the state capitol carried a sign "Sacrifice the Weak." I was shocked when a local news show reported on protesters and filmed this sign along with other signs and protesters, and the reporter did not comment on this horrible, Nazi-like statement.
p fitzsimon , May 15, 2020 at 4:32 pm
Have there been any prominent religious leaders who have given counsel on the sacrificial nature of a return to work to save the economy. At what point is the risk to human life and health compensated by an economic return?
Hepativore , May 15, 2020 at 11:00 pm
Come to think of it, does it not seem odd that with many prominent religious figures, none of them seem to be willing to speak up on how greed is destroying the world and all of the wealthy owners of capital that are its promoters? Greed is a major sin in almost every religion, yet you hardly ever see any religious clergy give sermons on how widespread and dangerous greed is or publicly admonish Wall Street if they hold themselves up to be the moral leaders of society.
Henry Moon Pie , May 15, 2020 at 7:20 pm
The great way is low and plain,
but people like shortcuts over the mountains.From Ursula K. Le Guin's translation of the Tao te Ching #53
It's an old problem.
Chris , May 15, 2020 at 10:01 pm
The fundamental problem we have with all the "very smart people" who think economics is a science is that I can't write an equation that will convince these masters of the universe that they shouldn't be @$$holes.
I can't tell anyone that even if it doesn't profit you there's a reason to choose to help your fellow humans.
I also can't define a relationship that explains why even if you can figure out how to stay within the letter of the law and exploit a loop hole to make more money but only in way that hurts other people, you shouldn't do it. Or why you shouldn't write a law or lobby for a law that exists only so it can be abused.
These guys will never accept the concept of illth because it challenges their concept of wealth. And so it goes
One of the best educated persons I know shared this with me: the most valuable thing is a hierarchy of values.
rob , May 16, 2020 at 8:15 am
I thought it was a trust fund in a tax haven.
Silly me.DHG , May 16, 2020 at 4:25 pm
I dont gamble with my life. The shrewd will take the necessary precautions and keep themselves concealed as much as possible. The stupid will not take these precautions, likely get sick and some will perish .
Karen , May 16, 2020 at 5:46 pm
It amazes me that protesters and policymakers are still treating this as an impossible tradeoff -- a false dichotomy -- between life and money, when it's clear that success lies with practical solutions, of which there are many, to achieve both. Starting with masks!
I love the idea of billionaires leading the way, demonstrating the efficacy of their reopening plans through personal example.
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May 16, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
bevin , May 16 2020 15:31 utc | 104
An excellent article on the WSWS:
"...In the "brutal economics" of capitalism, the lives lost to the COVID-19 pandemic are simply the cost of doing business. While trillions of dollars have been spent propping up financial markets, no serious efforts have been made to contain the pandemic, and whatever mitigation measures have been put in place, including the closure of businesses, are being rapidly abandoned."The efforts by the ruling class to counterpose workers' lives to livelihoods is an entirely false choice. Both can be defended with the necessary allocation of social resources to stop and eradicate COVID-19 and all other communicable diseases. Non-essential workplaces must remain closed for as long as it takes for these measures to be put in place.
"But containing the pandemic requires an investment in social infrastructure that the capitalist class is not willing to make. The COVID-19 pandemic has made clear the utter incompatibility of the capitalist system with the preservation of the most basic social right: the right to life."
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/16/pers-m16.html
"I also don't know why you would quote a Wapo article, uncritically, in response to fairleft. Why would I care what they say about anything? They represent power. I consider them no more reliable on pharma imperialism as they are on military imperialism."
oglalla@102
You answer the question yourself. Nobody is suggesting that anyone read the Washington Post uncritically. I am surprised that you should accuse b of having done so. The evidence is that he has read the Post critically-as we all have to do in a culture in which the major source of news, for everyone, is a media compromised enormously by its allegiances, particularly its allegiance to capitalism.
Read the Wapo critically and you will be left with a residue of information which can be cross checked by various means, once you have done that you can evaluate the importance of its conclusions. It is what we all have to do.
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May 16, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
bevin , May 16 2020 13:39 utc | 87
Maybe this story from the Toronto Star will help explain why so many people are dying:"Three of the largest for-profit nursing home operators in Ontario, which have had disproportionately high numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths, have together paid out more than $1.5 billion in dividends to shareholders over the last decade, the Star has found.
"This massive sum does not include $138 million paid in executive compensation and $20 million in stock buybacks (a technique that can boost share prices), according to the financial reports of the province's three biggest publicly traded long-term-care home companies, Extendicare, Sienna Senior Living and Chartwell Retirement Residences.
"That's a total of more than $1.7 billion taken out of their businesses."
Beneath all the uninformed, pretentious anecdote swapping about stats and panaceas, the drivelling over whether or not there is a pandemic or whether Bill Gates, Soros or the KKK planned and executed it on behalf of haute finance, something very simple is taking place.
Capitalism, which devours people and turns lives into capital, having made a pandemic disease of the sort now surrounding us inevitable, is protecting itself. Its major fear is that if there are too many victims-cf The Black Death- the price of labour may rise to the extent that it impinges on the rate of profit. It dare not consider the possibility that the working class will organise itself to put an end to the system, as an alternative to doing what men have done throughout the history of epidemics- blaming everything on an angry deity or an elite such as the Illuminati, the Council for Foreign Affairs or bloggers corrupted by money.
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May 16, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
vk , May 16 2020 18:05 utc | 129
@ Posted by: hopehely | May 16 2020 17:27 utc | 126Not the proletariat, but the Brazilian elite is entirely bilingual nowadays (Portuguese and English). Contrary to the myth, there are more English speakers in Brazil than Spanish speakers, that is, English is Brazil's de fact second language, not Spanish (as you would expect for a country circles by Spanish speakers).
In place of Spanish, Brazilians speak the so-called "Portunhol", which is essentially Portuguese with Spanish lexicon. The Brazilian elite - unless he/she "works" for something specifically Spanish (i.e. Santander Bank, or a Latin American subsidiary of an American giant HQd in Brazil) - is not educated in Spanish. Many of them are educated with English as their first language, Portuguese being the second, in specially prepared Anglophone schools which are only available to these same elite members. Those schools adopt the American national curriculum system, so when they graduate from high school, they can go directly to an American college without those genius-hunter mega-tests organized annually by the likes of the MIT: they enroll as normal, typical American citizens. Almost all of them have second homes in Miami or in some other city in Florida (e.g. Sarasota), where they usually (but not only) spend the Brazilian winter (June-August).
Most of the Brazilian elite share the same disgust the American elite has for the "Hispanics", and they abhor being confused with one by their American counterparts, so they avoid any connection with Spanish they can - including giving their children English or Anglicized names (e.g. Anthony instead of Antonio; Henry instead of Henrique; Mary instead of Maria - all of which are exactly the same in Spanish and Portuguese).
And those are just the "rich". The real Brazilian elite (the "billionaires") do not even live in Brazilian territory, and educate their children directly in the USA educational system. A concrete example of this is Eduardo Saverin, one of the founders of Facebook. He was spent the first years of his life in Rio de Janeiro to a billionaire Brazilian family, but quickly moved to the USA when he was just a kid because the Brazilian Intelligence (Abin) warned his parents he was on the list of the most likely to be kidnapped in Brazil. He was then raised as an American, and went to Harvard as a normal American (billionaire) citizen.
More extravagant examples exist, though. Lily Safra, widow of the banker who founded Safra Bank, chose to have her main home in London, as it probably fits her lifestyle better (she has a more "sophisticated" taste, preferring the likes of jewel collections and European architecture). Others (generally the ones who still have a strong cultural connection with their European ancestors) do the same, sending their children to be educated in Switzerland instead of the USA. But those are the exception that proves the rule, not the rule itself.
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May 16, 2020 | www.youtube.com
Farkas; "I'll come on the show any time and explain what you're missing."
Tucker: "You're invited on tonight."
Farkas: "Tonight? Oh, I can't make it tonight. Got a million other things to do. I'd come on any other time... But tonight?"
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May 16, 2020 | www.youtube.com
Shannon Moore , 2 days agoHe should do more than resign. He should be prosecuted for his role in an attempted coup. Schiff for prisoner 2020.
D LE , 3 days agoSchiff probably practice his lies in his mirror every morning so he can convince himself of Russian interference. Biggest liar in America Adam Schifty schiff. Needs to be arrested immediately for treason and lying under oath. But as usual nothing will happen. These people are above the law. And are untouchable. Its enough to frustrate the hell out of normal sain Americans. 4 more years of Donald Trump
TheFoolinthe rainn , 3 days agoEvery person that went on television and knowingly lied should be tried for treason , sedition and attempted over throw of Trumps presidency.
Norita Sanders , 5 days agoFolks need to take a much closer look at your own state legislature, district attorney, prosecutors, public defenders, social workers... especially your own town councils and school boards. They're stealing your lives and children at the Grassroots local level.
CAPT. RICK ALLEN , 2 days agoBill and Hillary Clinton sold the U.S. out years ago with the North American free trade agreement. And obama finished us off during g his last term.
Joe Merkel , 1 day agoThey should throw Schiff in jail and then give everything he owns to his victims who lost everything.
Tim Coleman , 3 days agoSchiff absolutely SHOULD resign but he won't. Not only will he not but he'll cheat and win re-election along with his mom, Nancy Pelosi.
Adam Schiff is not resigning. He's doubling down yet again! If you "want" him to resign, you need to understand he's staying in office until voted out. There's no willpower in the house to take action against him.
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May 15, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com
Our elites have been responding to incentives which are beneficial to their institutions, and China, but detrimental to America.
A shell of a piano in the lobby of the Lee Plaza Hotel. The decades-long decline of the U.S. automobile industry is acutely reflected in the urban decay of Detroit, the city lovingly referred to as Motor City. (Photo by Timothy Fadek/Corbis via Getty Images) George D. O'Neill Jr. We have come to a point in our nation's public discourse where there is a widespread realization that many of the economic policies pursued and promoted by our political, business and media elites have failed us in multiple ways. We have heard our trade policies called "Free Trade" and "Free Market", but those statements were often dishonest.
When crafting these agreements, our elites have been responding to incentives which are beneficial to their institutions but detrimental to the well-being of American citizens.
... ... ...
The same is true for manufacturing businesses. The closing of a factory has huge costs for a neighborhood: unemployed people. Not just those from the factory, but the people who work at companies which supply goods and services to that factory. The consequences of a factory closing cascades through the economy. The tax base for that neighborhood is also eroded, which reduces the community's ability to maintain and deliver essential services and support civic institutions.
We cannot just turn off a factory like a light switch and turn it back on at will when the Chinese decide to raise their prices at a later date.
None of this takes into account the quality of the goods that we receive. We have just become aware that more than 90% of our pharmaceutical antibiotics are manufactured in China. When you hear of the big drug recalls, keep in mind many of them are from China, which is famous for ubiquitous and flagrant corruption as well as a disregard for quality control. Do we really know if our antibiotics are safe?
Now, back to our leadership, which we have relied on to guide our nation. Their incentives often lead them to make choices which do not benefit the American people. The Chinese have famously made generous deals with a sitting vice-president's son and a Secretary of State's stepson that likely insured high level government silence about their predatory practices. The Chinese have purchased important media assets, such as the largest film distribution company in America and inked lucrative media deals with huge media companies to purchase silence about their predatory behavior. The same is true with many other industries.
... ... ...
The Price Mechanism Theory only works well when there is honest and accurate information to understand the true costs, but our leadership is corrupt and has not been honest with us. In order to protect both American interests and American citizens, it is important to develop mechanisms to fully understand the consequences of many of our policies and who is making them. Who is making the decisions is often just as important as what is being decided.
George D. O'Neill, Jr., an artist, is the founder of The Committee for Responsible Foreign Policy and a board member of The American Ideas Institute, the parent of The American Conservative. Mr. O'Neill has been in the mining industry for more than four decades. He and his wife reside in Florida.
Correct. The so called "free markets & trade" worked in conditions after WWII, when US goverment used it's military and political influence to set up favorable economic & trade conditions for US. It's an utopian vision, that has nothing to do with real world.MPC • 19 hours ago • editedIt's important to recognize that it's not realistic to do all manufacturing in America, at least in the short term. We consume too much. Before the virus, we were already running on all cylinders as employment was concerned and have been for a few years.The Coolie MPC • 10 hours ago • editedThere is a significant difference however in our trade dependencies being on China, versus Japan, Mexico, Vietnam, or India. The former is a geopolitical rival, the latter are not. In fact, laying groundwork to move more of our trade to the latter builds up China's regional rivals at the expense of China, and at comparatively less expense to us.
It's not healthy for a future multipolar world for such a capable power projector as China to be so disproportionately profiting from declining hegemon America.
If you think the hallowing of the US economy with it increasing wage inequalities, outsized wealth allocation to financial sectors, increasingly political divisions, etc. is because CHINA BAD, then you are no different than the other corporate profiteers who dug us in this hole in the first place. This is how the corporatists are trying to avoid blame for their fundamentalist policies over the past four decades. They lash out, "It's only the BAD Chinese, everything will be better if we just move it to Vietnam/Bangladesh/Ethiopia."MPC The Coolie • 10 hours ago • editedYou ascribe things to me that have nothing to do with what I said. The Chinese are not bad, just a competitor, and China is not responsible for America's own choices.The Coolie MPC • 8 hours agoYou're just replacing one utopian thinking about free trade, with another about economic protectionism. The world doesn't fit neatly around ideological dogma.
Until you square America's overconsumption you have to tolerate trade deficits. You can make strategic choices about where they come from at least. Free traders were not honest about impacts on domestic industry. Domestic protectionism is not being honest about the fact that for it to succeed, consumption of imported goods, and some domestic, to free up capacity to import substitute, has to tank, without the prospect of enough domestic production happening to replace them, and certainly not at anything like the price levels that exist currently.
In the long run overconsumption should be attacked. Strategic, mutually beneficial trade relationships will still exist. In the short run we should be more careful about the source of trade deficits. Overconsumption will not be solved overnight. But that's not a neat campaign slogan.
I don't disagree with the problems of an over-consumption reliant economy, which prefers we purchase new TVs every 3 years, smartphones every 2 years, and 3 new winter coats every season. But it's a huge fallacy to imagine that reallocating production to Vietnam or Bangladesh will reduce China's power. Who will be creating those factories? Sorry, Chinese investment. Where will the logistics chain need to connect? Sorry, all roads will lead to China - both for its 1.4 billion consumer and their ability to control the higher end of the manufacturing. When will they demand China's inclusion in a grouping like TPP? Sorry, within 1-2 years of signing that supposed "Keep China Out" agreement. Guess whose economies will be even more reliant on China? You guessed it, all those supposed U.S. allies who want no part in global decoupling.Wally • 17 hours ago • editedIt was ok to let low margin manufacturing move offshore because Americans were going to move up the value chain. These other countries, like China, would develop their economy, lift a few billion people out of poverty, and transform themselves into beacons of freedom and democracy across the developing world. The globalists told us this over and over again. China (and India) would make our plastic junk and we would sell them financial products and services like credit default swaps and make a killing!MPC Wally • 11 hours agoAnd that's how it worked out. The bankers made out. No one cared about the displaced factory workers because it was their own fault they weren't smart enough to become Wall Street masters of the universe. Buying American, we were told way back in the 80s by Saint Ronald Reagan was a scam to support corrupt unions and lazy management. How dare they demand, for example, that Japanese car makers locate here in the US. We should just let them import what they want and let Ford go bankrupt. Union busting was more important than anything else.
What you want with trade is to keep it somewhat balanced, and watch employment. To continue the example Japan exports roughly twice to us what we export to them. Ideally that'd be more even, but who is going to make more products to export to Japan, or produce Japanese products here? You'll have to fight for workers already being employed elsewhere. And many on the right probably would not like the idea of more immigrants to help staff production, or to free up Americans to staff it.kouroi MPC • 10 hours agoAmerica does suck up too many talented people into well paid jobs that do little to advance us, but certainly not enough to correct the trade imbalances of every country we trade with. Probably not even Japan whose imbalance is a tiny fraction of China's.
America's trade imbalances are a collaboration between foreign producers seeing opportunities, domestic elites seeing major profit, but most importantly Americans themselves whose consumption impulses are so, so lucrative. Americans cannot make all the stuff that Americans want right now. Enter immigrants. Enter outsourcing. Enter major trade deficits. People profit on the exchange, but this is a setup that America collectively has voted for with its wallet, over and over again.
Also America makes/made products that other people don't want. From 2 by 4 lumber in inches and feet, when the rest of the world is in metric system, to oversize fridges and pick-up trucks that do not fit in the European or Japanese size houses and roads.Kent • 16 hours ago"Deliver a good product at a price and quality acceptable to the customer."FND Kent • 15 hours agoLOL. Obviously a failed businessman. The purpose is to put your customer's money in your pocket. If your customer is making a profit off of your product, raise the price. If the customer balks and buys from a different vendor, buy all the vendors. Create a monopoly. Once you have a monopoly, stop paying whiney American workers who expect decent pay and respect, and have Chinese slaves make your product. The purpose of the "Free Market" is not about price. It's about maximizing shareholder value. It's not about creating good jobs, America or any of that other nostalgia from the pre-Free Market days.
It's about liberty. The liberty of the property and capital owning class to keep their wealth (their wealth is the same thing as your labor), in their hands and away from you and your stupid government's grubby, unwashed hands.
The ideal market conditions result in happy customers and profitable businesses. Its true that ideal market conditions often don't prevail when a monopoly is created. But what makes it even worse is when government enables those conglomerates to become even larger by making it impossible for small businesses to compete due to onerous regulations and gobbletygook tax loopholes gained by conglomerate lobbyists.joeo • 14 hours agoI believe the economic policies based on the dominant economic theory in Germany is the best approach for a solid, competitive economy. That theory is Ordo-liberalism, which allows government to make sure a proper legal environment for the economy exists to maintain a healthy level of competition through measures that adhere to market principles.
The Ordo-liberalists believe if the state does not take active measures to foster competition, firms with monopoly power will emerge, which will not only subvert the advantages offered by the market economy, but also possibly undermine good government, since strong economic power can be transformed into political power. We have seen this happen in the US and it is BIPARTISAN. In fact some of the worst examples of unholy alliances between corporations and government come from the Dem side of the aisle.
The open markets, open borders policy has been good for the elite but detrimental for the US. Millions of immigrants were let in as the jobs they could perform were outsourced to China and Asia in general. Consumer electronics,textiles,steel, appliances, automotive and manufacturing of all sorts were allowed to leave. Not everyone can be a coder, work on Wall Street, for the Government or Academia. This same elite is aghast at the rise of Trump, what else could anyone have reasonably expected?Harry Huntington • 14 hours agoThe problem is Milton Friedman was wrong about central planning. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was written when communication systems were poor, so localized information was better. With modern data collection, "big data" analysis, AI and other such tools central planning exists and works. We call the winners in that planning world companies like Walmart and Amazon. We also know that central planning in the US worked with less than perfect data. The War Production Board in the US in WWII did allocate production of all those things necessary to manufacture Milton Friedman's needle (or more likely a cotter pin). There were imperfections but we let those run over into the consumer segment of goods. Flash forward to today, the "free market" is the myth used to convince average American to allow hedge funds, private equity, and companies like Bain Captial ship their jobs overseas. Especially as we move to robots, there is no reason to import any manufactured goods. Likewise, those pesky environmental rules we have? There is no reason we don't apply those rules to things people seek to sell in the US market--meaning we could make an importer prove goods were manufactured according to US standards. Health and safety standards are not sources of "comparative advantage" in free market theories.kouroi Harry Huntington • 10 hours agoAnd this is why the Chinese, Russians, Indians, Iranians, Japanese, Europeans, Koreans, don't want their economies run from Wall Street and carefully control the shares owned by outsiders.Tradcon • 13 hours ago • editedI think on the topic of "planning" its important to clarify. Some call any government intervention an example of "central planning" while others apply that term only to Soviet-style Gosplan. Either way the "Knowledge Problem", while true to an extent, is incomplete. The fact of the matter is we don't need to know everything about the market to make correct decisions regarding what economic goals we want to set, and there is a scale, a difference, between something like the American System and Gosplan. Julius Krein's article in the American Compass was excellent, I'll link it below. One need only look to the success of the East Asian Tigers or to the US from 1791-1965 (dates vary) to see the success of a healthy sort of developmentalist "planning". Not all planning has to be adverse to private business, the most successful types are done in conjunction with it. There will be imperfections whether the government is involved or not, the fact that imperfections will exist or that mistakes might be made is no excuse for inaction, especially when that inaction leads to the situation we're currently in regarding pharmaceuticals.kouroi Tradcon • 10 hours agoHow about all the externalities that an unregulated free-market tends to forget?Tradcon kouroi • 5 hours agoYes Krein goes into that. A market does not take into account national security.kouroi Tradcon • 2 hours agoYes, interesting article. I liked how quickly in the article it started talking about risk and the important role government has in mitigating that risk.HistoryProf • 12 hours agoWhat is also missing from this entire discussion about free markets, which is essential and it is eschewed or pooh-pooed or entirely not acknowledged by libertarians and conservatives alike (not that progressive / liberals talk about it), is what is the role of representative democracy in steering how economy (which is a means to an end, not an end to itself) should work, what is the role of government, and who's really the sovereign (We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.....).
Is the government by the people and for the people or it isn't? Are there proper mechanisms in place to oversee how well operations are conducted by government, according to approved budgets? Is government supposed to do forecasting and crystal balling solely by using think tank reports or should have internal professional and knowledgeable analysts doing this work (I swear on the constitution of the US to serve, etc., etc, etc.).
All this rabbit hole over which libertarians and conservatives starting with Reagan have been pooping on. Nixon nowadays, or Eisenhower wouldn't be accepted by Republicans, nor FDR by Democrats... And talking about free markets and democracy, it is puzzling to have just a duopoly entrenched in the marketplace of political ideas in the US. Everything else is literally killed.
It's too easy to just blame corrupt elites and therefore let the system itself completely off the hook. Any system that allows for a small number of private entities to twist everything to their personal advantage is a system with major structural flaws. The essential core of the problem is that any system pursued too rigidly and ideologically will lead to short-sighted decisions that ultimately lead to perverse and absurd outcomes.Offshoring most of our manufacturing wasn't a corrupt decision made by a small cabal of villains. It was a logical, yet ultimately destructive, result of blind and unthinking pursuit of pure "free trade."kouroi HistoryProf • 10 hours agoImagine a society (like the U.S.) to be like an organism with a heart, lungs, brain, limbs, etc. Now imagine that each part of the body is told to maximize its own benefit without any concern for the organism as a whole.
Those in charge of the brain say "We function better with more blood flow, so let's block off blood flow to the arms and legs so that we get more. Great idea!" Now the organism's brain is doing great, but its arms and legs wither and die.
"We are benefiting from the increased blood flow too," says the lungs, "but the heart just isn't producing enough for us to really flourish." What if we outsource blood pumping to an external entity that promises us more volume? So now the heart dies and what is left of the organism is now hooked to an external machine to keep it alive.
"Why do we have to rely on an inefficient mouth and teeth to give us our source material?" chimes the stomach. "How about a feeding tube to give us cheaper and faster raw materials?" Etc etc etc.
On and on it goes with some parts doing great from their perspective, but with the overall organism being hollowed out and weakened.
The best type of economic system in a country is a mixed one that blends together capitalism with some degree of central thinking and planning (egads, heresy!) about how decisions could adversely affect the long term health of the country as a whole.
Nice comparison. Are you letting us think and believe that one part of the body ends up thinking that is in fact totally independent and can leave all the rest wither and die? With deep psychopathic tendencies, that filters all the stimuli and the information received from the body, except its own?Inn caritas • 12 hours agoNo wonder revolutions happen...
"Libertarianism" was never about liberty: it's just swapping the dictatorship of the state for the dictatorship of the market.Egyptsteve Inn caritas • 9 hours agoLibertarianism: Let me smoke my weed, have my gay sex, and don't make me pay any taxes.L RNY • 11 hours agoThe communists had said that capitalism would sell the seeds of its own destruction. Our elites came up with free trade but chose to ignore that free trade was merely a facade to export jobs and import goods with them skimming the profit. They chose to ignore all the financial (and political) machinations like currency rigging, state subsidies, forced state sharing or ownership of technology when off shored to China, they choise to ignore prison labor and others. This isnt about free trade or free markets because there is no such thing. Every nation has a different social welfare system, medical system, tax system, copyright and patent system, system of legal bribery and payoff, etc and each is meant to tip the scales of free markets and free trade to their advantage (and in the case of China a technological and monopolistic and militaristic advantage). We are now at a point where the game and the cards have been revealed though the Democrats have been profiting for so long that they want to keep the game going with the Chinese and other foreign nations (its easy money to line their pockets and their campaign funds since they dont have to listen to their constituents diverse views...they just need to manage them and listen to Chinese demands). Id say the american citizenry is boiling mad and arent far away from boiling over but we shall see where it goes or if it goes anywhere. To date Trumps restrictions on immigration and his trade deals are better than the nonexistent policies of the democrats but they are will woefully catering to the elites and lacking in spine and substance to do as Trump promised.kouroi L RNY • 10 hours agoI think prison labour is more relevant and widespread in the US rather than China. China has all the political interest to provide work for all the free multitudes teaming in their cities and countryside, why to give that to prisoners?Mario Diana • 8 hours ago • editedSame as the story with the Uighur camps. Just seen recently a Reuters article on the Russian vessel arriving in Germany to finish laying down the NS2 pipeline, with satellite pictures, etc. Just a ship. However, there was no picture provided to the world to show the massive developments required to house 1 million people, not one, and I looked.
Sorry, just a pet peeve of mine to see statements that don't stand close scrutiny.
Amicus Brevis Mario Diana • 2 hours ago • editedThe Price Mechanism Theory only works well when there is honest and accurate information to understand the true costs [ ]You're conflating the economic with the political. There is nothing wrong with Mises' work on prices and how they coordinate an advanced, widely distributed, division-of-labor economy. It works in the "macro" as well as the "micro" -- because that is an artificial distinction (something Mises could tell you about, too).
The fallacy is imagining that economic theory is the be-all-end-all. When people think that, they ignore political considerations and consequences, to the detriment of society at large. The bottom line is there is nothing wrong with free trade among free countries in a peaceful world. The political situation of the present world, however, demands a somewhat more modified approach. If these are the "true costs" you're talking about, fine. But you've expressed it in such a way as to muddy the waters of what is an honest and accurate economic theory.
That is because he doesn't understand what really happened in China. If you read this thread you also see many theories. They are all based on preconceptions and not actually reading about what happened China after the gang of four were ousted. They understand the consequences and they theorize about the cause. But they don't have to theorize. There is an actual history.Steveb • 7 hours agoChina was not selling cheap products to the United States until about three decades after the job transfers started and it was almost already done by then. The truth is, China had nothing to export but its labor. It did that by letting American and other companies set up in China for exploitative wages and protected them by denying its people any rights. They then built products under American management and training. The products were then shipped back to the US as "Chinese" products. But they really were American products made in China. The companies here were not protecting China. They were protecting themselves directly. The jobs transfer was not an unfortunate side effect. It was the whole point. China had nothing to trade. Mao had destroyed the economy.
I recall a long time ago when there was a documentary on this topic and one of the workers from a electric appliance manufacturing facility was interviewed. They were complaining about the Chinese manufactures taking over their product line with cheaper products and causing layoffs at the plant. The moderator asked them where they shopped, they replied "Walmart". When the moderator pointed out that Walmart was the leader in offshoring to get cheaper products, like the appliances they made, they just stared.− +You are going to somehow have to make Americans pay more for the same thing they can get cheaper from China. Who is going to do that? Not going to be those workers you are trying to protect, they don't have the money to do that. Price is king to them, it is only those snobby liberal types that can afford to do that.
Lets say you manage to get our factory worker to buy 1 expensive American shirt instead of 3 cheap Chinese shirts for the same price. They are not going to get 3 times the life out of that shirt so they are in the hole for that purchase.
Lets say you are really persuasive and the workers really do change, what about all the rest of the people that were employed in the retail and supply chain? What are they going to do? You just put them out of business. You are just deciding to move around who is unemployed.
What about the exporters? Do you really think that China is going to buy American products if you don't buy theirs? How did Trumps trade war work out? Have we won yet? As I recall it cost the average consumer between 500 and 1000 dollars by the time all the tariffs were applied and the farmers and ranchers in the Midwest that exported there are now on government welfare because they could not sell their products. His new "deal" was panned by economists as being nothing more than a minor cosmetic change, the same as the updated NAFTA deal that really changed little.
It is fun to blame the elites but it is a bit simplistic as the american workers have not had a problem sacrificing a few other workers to save some of their own money. If you want to change that you are going to have to start at the bottom and work up.
Gregtown Tradcon • 5 hours ago
It should be mentioned that the cheap clothing we buy is rarely made in China. China has leveled up and no longer makes the general crap people buy. The shirt cheap t-shirt I'm wearing was made in Vietnam.aha! • 4 hours agoA free market with foreign governments is an impossibility. We would have to know every single that is happening within their government and that will never happen. Indeed our internal free market is fading away due to cronyism and secrecy within our own governments. Tax breaks to lure businesses to your state are anti-free market (not to mention the taxes still have to be paid, by the people who are already there). Tax breaks and subsidies to companies already in your state (like windmills and solar panels) are anti-free market. So the conclusion that I draw is the Democrat and Republican parties are imbeciles and crooks and both parties must be destroyed.Amicus Brevis • 3 hours ago • editedIf you believe economic efficiency is the primary value, you would say, "if the Chinese are stupid enough to sell us products below their costs, we should be happy to take advantage of their stupidity." True enough .Fletcher • an hour agoBut it is not true that is what is happening. It never happened. Chinese invited American companies to manufacture in China. China was selling labor. Not products. It had no products to sell. But when the American companies in China use Chinese labor to manufacture American products the products come to America marked "made in China". But all that the Chinese really sold was cheap labor without rights .
The second thing to know is that the Chinese forbid American companies to use their own brand names in China. They had to create Chinese companies that are 51% Chinese owned but wholly American managed with Chinese management in training. The Americans operated as if they were at home. The only difference is that they had Chinese under studies and the line workers were Chinese. The American companies didn't care because they were making money hand over foot. So when they spoke of "free trade" we were selling out America workers and bringing home cheap goods that our public loved. This was called globalism. That was phase one.
In the second stage, the Chinese quietly reminded the Americans that these were Chinese companies and it was time to begin to promote their Chinese understudies. The Americans didn't care because they still maintained control from America. And they could always find spots for the management back home. But from the Chinese point of view, they now had American technology in Chinese companies, run by Chinese. The technology was now theirs.
They felt free to grow their businesses with wholly owned and controlled subsidiaries since they now owned the technology. This was when the American companies began to scream about intellectual property. They cared because the interests of the rich were now being hurt. When they were stealing American jobs, that was Ok. Only then did our government see a problem. Shipping American jobs overseas is globalism, but shipping patents and copyrights is not. Globalism was always a con. It never existed. It was simply a smokescreen to exploit cheap, unprotected labor in the developing world. They knew from the start that it was not good for America. It was not a discovery. They didn't care because it made them rich.
Though I largely agree with the premise of this article the assumptions latent in mr. O'Neill's thinking specifically the US government has to do anything in reflection to the Chinese Communist politburo misses the point of freedom and property rights, in an economy free of the regulatory burden that the oligarchs in pose on the market through their governmental collusion not to mention the tax burden that helps to maintain the shipping lanes to China the American manufacturer will be fine. It should also be said for me environmental point of view free of state protection the perpetrators of mountaintop removal coal mining,glyphosate manufacture etc. Would find themselves much more vulnerable to civil lawsuit/tort law.
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May 15, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
"Lifting all boats" was always a lie. It was simply a way to sell trickle down by claiming that the objectively observable inequality it produced would somehow help everyone, eventually, sort of. There was not and has never been a plan by the Conservative Movement to lift all boats. Only a plan to feign interest in doing so.
Synoia , May 14, 2020 at 11:36 am
The rich were riding on the Boats being lifted by the workers.
orlbucfan , May 14, 2020 at 11:42 am
That pattern has appeared throughout recorded world history. How is it peacefully stopped?
Ed Miller , May 14, 2020 at 7:45 pm
I see the current situation more like the sinking of the Titanic (whether caused by the virus or shady financial dealing, it doesn't matter). The rich passengers get the lifeboats and the rest of the passengers get the ice water. A few survived in the water, so it's time to look to the future. Crony capitalism in a nutshell.
Bsoder , May 14, 2020 at 5:40 pm
Lifting all yachts.
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May 14, 2020 | www.unz.com
Anonymous [339] Disclaimer , says: Show Comment May 14, 2020 at 9:46 am GMT
@Rahan See:
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=z4FPcXTKh1wC&oi=fnd&pg=PA4&dq=%22van+creveld%22++1996+Paramaters+%22Fate+of+the+State%22&ots=4D9yFjPkyO&sig=z2Hz5-E0Nz9vjv1QEzNFWYrsZck#v=onepage&q=%22van%20creveld%22%20%201996%20Paramaters%20%22Fate%20of%20the%20State%22&f=falseor search Google Scholar for: "van Creveld" Parameters 1996 "Fate of the State"
Classic article, and first mention of the "hollowing out". Current crackdowns are by a government that has lost most real power (e.g. can't even suppress retail theft and has given up by making it legal), and is trying to get public submission again by over-enforcing quarantine / isolation rules. The facade of even this level of control is cracking. The problem is not an overly controlling government, it is of a government that lacks legitimacy even from its supporters (one doesn't hear POC or even the Jewish establishments praising the American form of government, even when they control it; none of them regard it as legitimate. That's what Postmodernism, for example, is about.
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May 14, 2020 | crookedtimber.org
"Libertarians who are extraordinarily sensitive to the least legal limitation on negative freedom are usually completely immune to the idea that structural features of capitalist society are coercive and freedom-limiting. "I think you will discover that those who coined the term libertarian (libertarie) which the propertarians knowning stole in the 1950s are well aware of those structural features -- as Proudhon argued, property is both theft and despotism.:
http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/160-years-libertarian
Please don't let these defenders of private tyranny continue their abuse of the good left-wing word libertarian.
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May 14, 2020 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com
Patient Observer May 11, 2020 at 8:50 am
Don't fuck with the Tuck:Mark Chapman May 11, 2020 at 9:54 amhttps://www.youtube.com/embed/fHh19Baj_pM?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent
The guy is on fire. Per Carlson, Obama orchestrated the Russian collusion propaganda. I suspect that the lovely Ms. Hilary was a conspirator as well.
Carlson has the number 1 television news show with 4.56 million viewers on average.
https://www.nytimes.com/svc/oembed/html/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2020%2F04%2F28%2Fbusiness%2Fmedia%2Fvirus-tucker-carlson-sean-hannity-fox-ratings.html
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Absolutely remarkable; in fact, 'stunning', as he uses it, is not too much of a stretch. The 'liberal elites' just go right on lying even though the sworn testimony of FBI interviewers is available for anyone to read, as well as the chilling manipulations of Strozk and Page, both of whom should be in prison and perhaps will be. And that fucker Schiff should swing. I can't believe the transformation of Carlson from Bush shill to the reincarnation of Edward R. Murrow. He makes this case so compellingly that nobody could watch that clip and not believe that Flynn was railroaded from the outset. And what were they allegedly going to jail Flynn's son for? Does anyone know? Were they just going to make something up? That is terrifying, and almost argues for the disbanding of the FBI, although it demonstrably still contains honest agents – as Carlson asks rhetorically, how many times have they done this already, and gotten away with it?Cortes May 11, 2020 at 10:10 amIt's hard to imagine anyone would vote Democrat now.
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The son was being lined up for prosecution for alleged FARA violations regarding work on Turkey, I think. The son was working with the General.Mark Chapman May 11, 2020 at 11:45 amLike Like
Couldn't have been too much of a crime, if they offered to let him go in exchange for Flynn pleading guilty to lying. Actually, you'd kind of think their business was prosecuting crimes whoever committed them, and that offering to excuse a crime in exchange for a guilty plea is .kind of a crime.uncle tungsten May 12, 2020 at 2:55 amMan, they have to clean house at the FBI. And there probably are several other organizations that need it, too. Not the political culling based on ideology that was a feature of the Bush White House, but the crowd that's in now just cannot be allowed to get off with nothing.
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Greetings Mark and all, I am a new arrival as Jen suggested the company is fine here for barflies to ponder the world. Can I surmise that if Flynn and son were the FBI targets for nefarious business dealings then surely Biden and son fall in to that same category. After all Biden and son filched millions after arranging a USA loan of $1Billion to Ukraine and then did it again after the IMF loaned a few million more. Carpetbagging and its modern day practice is a crime in the USA last I looked.Mark Chapman May 12, 2020 at 9:37 amIf that conspicuous bias isn't enough cause to dismember the FBI then consider the Uranium One deal that Hillary Clinton and family set up or perhaps the Debbie Wasserman Shultz fostering the Awan family spy and blackmail ring.
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Good day, Uncle, and welcome! For some reason I can't fathom, the Democrats seem to own or control all the 'respectable' media in the USA. FOX News is an exception, and has been a mouthpiece for the Republicans since its inception. But the Democrats control the New York Times and the Washington Post, which together represent the bulk of American public feeling to foreigners, and probably to the domestic audience as well. They are extremely active on conflicts between the two parties, ensuring the Democratic perspective gets put forward in calm, reasonable why-wouldn't-a-sensible-person-think-this-way manner. At the same time they cast horrific aspersions at the Republicans. Not that either are much good; but the news coverage is very one-sided – the position of the Democrats on the sexual-assault furor over the Kavanaugh appointment compared with their wait-and-see attitude to very similar accusations against Biden is a classic example.rkka May 13, 2020 at 9:33 amLike Like
Mark,Mark Chapman May 13, 2020 at 11:12 amI don't think its the Democrats that control the NYT &WP, so much as plutocrats. They're also the ones who fund both the Democrats & the Republicans. The only significant difference between the parties is largely in the arena of the social "culture war" issues. But on the issues plutocrats care about, like economic policy & foreign policy, the differences are shades of grey, rather than actual distinctions.
Just remember the coverage of both papers in the run up to George W Shrub's catastrophic Iraq war. They're stenographers, not journalists.
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That may well be true, but the NYT and WP historically champion the Democrats, endorse the Democratic candidate for president, and pander to Democratic issues and projects. The Wall Street Journal is the traditional Republican print outlet, and there might be others but I don't know them. CNN is overwhelmingly and weepily Democratic in its content – Wolf Blitzer's eyes nearly roll back in his head with ecstasy whenever he mentions Saint Hillary – while FOX News is Repubican to the bone and openly contemptuous of liberals. It could certainly be, on reflection probably is, that the same cabal of corporatists control them all, and a fine joke they must think it. And I certainly and emphatically agree there is almost no difference between the parties in execution of external policy.
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May 14, 2020 | www.unz.com
Pft , says: Show Comment May 14, 2020 at 6:41 am GMT
Sad but true. We are all given our illusions. In US its the illusion of democracy which is a fake democracy cloaking our totalitarian reality. In China they give the people the illusion of moving towards socialism, a fake socialism to be sure, never mind all the billionaire party members (and they don't have universal health care either, its insurance based) .The people have long accepted the reality of totalitarianism so they are one step ahead.Since China doesn't have another party to blame they must blame external enemies like the US and we happily play along with tarrifs paid for by us dumb sheep who cry out in satisfaction "take that". Lol
A fake Cold War works for us too. Trump says we are in a race for 5G and AI/Robotics with China. We must win or all is lost to China. Social credit scores, digital ID and digital currency along with Total Information Awareness and Full Spectrum Dominance over the herd.
Health effects of 5G will be blamed on CoVID. Fake Science is a great tool. Scientists never lie, they can be trusted, just like Priests . They are the Priests of the New Technocratic World Order. Global Warming and COVID- We must believe. They say Vaccines and 5G are good for you, just like DDT and Tobacco were said to be Good by Scientists of another time. We must believe. Have Faith and you will earn social credit bonus points.
Reality is Fake Wrestling. Kayfabe all the way baby. Who is the face and who is the heel? We are free to choose. So who says we don't have freedom?
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May 11, 2020 | ronpaulinstitute.org
The long-delayed release of testimony from the House Intelligence Committee has proved embarrassing for a variety of former Obama officials who have been extensively quoted on the allegedly strong evidence of collusion by the Trump campaign and the Russians. Figures like James Clapper, who is a CNN expert, long indicated hat the evidence from the Obama Administration was strong and alarming. However, in testimony, Clapper denied seeing any such evidence .
One of the most embarrassing is the testimony of Evelyn Farkas, a former Obama Administration official who was widely quoted in her plea to Congress to gather the evidence that she knew was found in by the Obama Administration. In her testimony under oath Farkas repeatedly stated that she knew of no such evidence of collusion.
Farkas, who served as the deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia, was widely quoted when she said on MSNBC in 2017 that she feared that evidence she knew about would be destroyed by the Trump Administration. She stated:
...was urging my former colleagues, and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill Get as much information as you can, get as much intelligence as you can, before President Obama leaves the administration, because I had a fear that somehow that information would disappear with the senior people that left. So it would be hidden away in the bureaucracy . . . the Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about their, the staff, the Trump staff's dealing with Russians, that they would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would no longer have access to that intelligence. So I became very worried, because not enough was coming out into the open, and I knew that there was more.MSNBC never seriously questioned the statements despite the fact that Farkas left the Obama Administration in 2015 before any such investigation could have occurred. As we have seen before, the factual and legal basis for such statements are largely immaterial in the age of echo journalism. The statement fit the narrative even if it lacked any plausible basis.Not surprisingly, the House Intelligence Committee was eager to have Farkas share all that she stated she "knew about ["the Trump folks"], their staff, the Trump's staff's dealing with Russian" and wanted to get "into the open." After all, she told MSNBC that "I knew that there was more."
She was finally put under oath in the closed classified sessions and there was nothing but classified crickets. Farkas was repeatedly asked to share that information that electrified the MSNBC hosts and audience. She repeatedly denied any such knowledge, telling then Rep. Trey Gowdy (R, S.C.), "I didn't know anything."
Gowdy noted that Farkas left the Obama administration in 2015 and asked "Then how did you know?" She repeated again "I didn't know anything."
Gowdy then asked "Well, then why would you say, we knew?"
He also asked:
'You also didn't know whether or not anybody in the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia, did you?' Gowdy later asked, getting to the point."I didn't," Farkas responded.MSNBC has said nothing about its prior headline story being untrue. Indeed, the media has barely acknowledged that the new documents reinforce that there was never any evidence of collusion and ultimately the allegations were rejected by the Special Counsel, Congress, and inspectors general.
For her part, Farkas has moved on. She is running for Congress . She is still citing her role in raising "the alarm" about Russian collusion:
'fter I left the Obama administration, I campaigned to help elect Secretary Clinton as our next President. When Russians interfered in that election, I was among the first to sound the alarm and urge Congress to take action. And I haven't let up since then.She was indeed one of the first but it proved to be a false alarm based on nonexistent knowledge. Does that matter anymore?Reprinted with permission from JonathanTurley.org .
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- New Putin-Erdogan Deal is Sugar-Coating the Turks' Surrender
6th March 2020
- The Salisbury Poisonings Two Years On: A Riddle, Wrapped in a Cover Up, Inside a Hoax
5th March 2020
- Quincy Conference: A 'Seat at the Table'...or a Kick in the Teeth?
5th March 2020
- Coronavirus vs. the Mass Surveillance State: Which Poses the Greater Threat?
4th March 2020
- The Myth of Moderate Nuclear War
3rd March 2020
- Some Thoughts on Idlib Dawn
3rd March 2020
- MIT Study Finds No Evidence of Fraud in Bolivian Election That Resulted in a Coup
2nd March 2020
- Can the Fed Save Us from Climate Change?
2nd March 2020
- February
- The threat of a nuclear war between the US and Russia is now at its greatest since 1983
29th February 2020
- Tulsi Gabbard: Presidential candidates must also condemn election interference by US intelligence agencies
28th February 2020
- The Threat of a Russia-Turkey-NATO Hot War Over Idlib is a Godsend for US Foreign Policy
28th February 2020
- Anonymous sources and the guys and gals who made the Iraq war a reality are now claiming that the Kremlin is at it again!
27th February 2020
- Debunking The Smear That Assange Recklessly Published Unredacted Documents
27th February 2020
- Credibility of European Court of Human Rights lies in ruins after judges' links to Soros revealed
26th February 2020
- US Foreign Policy Perpetual Perfidy
26th February 2020
- Cancel Culture: Its Causes and Its Consequences
25th February 2020
- Will Jacob Hornberger Sweep Upcoming Libertarian Presidential Primaries and Caucuses? If He Does, How Much Will It Matter?
25th February 2020
- How to Know If America Is Your Enemy
24th February 2020
- Intelligence Officials Sow Discord By Stoking Fear of Russian Election Meddling
24th February 2020
- Trump's Betrayal of Julian Assange
24th February 2020
- The Rise of Pete Buttigieg: The Man Who Isn't There
21st February 2020
- Show Trial Ends: Roger Stone Sentenced to 40 months in Prison, While Judge Rants About Trump
20th February 2020
- Drug War Obtuseness
20th February 2020
- Blago Is Free
20th February 2020
- Hillary's War: Nine Years Later Libya Still A Living Hell
19th February 2020
- Scandal-Ridden OPCW Now Using Twitter's 'Hide Replies' Function
19th February 2020
- Will Censorship Prevail over the First Amendment?
19th February 2020
- 18 Year Afghan War Coming To An End? Don't Hold Your Breath!
18th February 2020
- Explaining Syria
18th February 2020
- Trump Is Right: The US Does Indeed Need a Space Force
18th February 2020
- The Death Of Free Speech: Zuckerberg Asks Governments For Instructions On 'What Discourse Should Be Allowed'
18th February 2020
- The Koch-Soros Foreign Policy Project: 'Restraint' Or Deception?
17th February 2020
- Trump's Budget: More Warfare, Slightly Less Welfare
17th February 2020
- Trump Supporters Are George W Bush Supporters LARPing As Ron Paul Supporters
16th February 2020
- White House Justifies Killing Soleimani for Past Actions, not Imminent Threats
15th February 2020
- The Koch-Soros Quincy Project: A Train Wreck of Neocon and 'Humanitarian' Interventionists
15th February 2020
- Whistleblowers, Afghanistan & War Powers: A Conversation With Sen Rand Paul
13th February 2020
- New leaks shatter OPCW's attacks on Douma whistleblowers
13th February 2020
- More Lies on Iran: The White House Just Can't Help Itself as New Facts Emerge
13th February 2020
- No Quid Pro Quo? Trump Cancels Palestine Security Funding
12th February 2020
- Thousands Killed in 'Reconstruction' Mission Show it's High Time for US to Get Out of Afghanistan
12th February 2020
- 'Bring Our Troops Home' - With Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin
11th February 2020
- Hollywood Goes Full Blacklist and Fails to Grasp the Irony
11th February 2020
- US Lies and Deaths in Afghanistan
11th February 2020
- Trump's 2021 Budget: Big Gift For Military Spendthrifts
10th February 2020
- Democrats Ignore Trump's Real Violations
10th February 2020
- Step to Nuclear Doomsday: US Puts Low-Yield Nukes on Submarines in Response to Made-up Russian 'Escalate to Deescalate' Strategy
8th February 2020
- Did Washington Use a False Pretext for its Recent Escalation in Iraq?
8th February 2020
- The President Who Was Expelled from His Own Party
8th February 2020
- A Progressive Appeal To New Hampshire Libertarians, With Tulsi Gabbard
7th February 2020
- Trump's State Of The Union - 'America First' or Neocon Foreign Policy?
6th February 2020
- Why Both Republicans and Democrats Want Russia to Become the Enemy of Choice
6th February 2020
- Democrats Failed to Impeach Trump, But They Won't Give Up Trying – It's All They've Got
6th February 2020
- Acronym group that sabotaged Iowa caucus birthed by billionaire who funded Alabama disinformation campaign
6th February 2020
- Washington's Lonely Mr. No - With Rep Thomas Massie
5th February 2020
- Claims that John Bolton's book disclosures are 'top secret' ring hollow
5th February 2020
- US Uneasy as Iraq Gets New Prime Minister
5th February 2020
- Iowa Caucus Fiasco: Something New, Or Deja Vu?
4th February 2020
- Do We Need the First Amendment?
4th February 2020
- Coronavirus - Are The Chinese Telling The Truth?
3rd February 2020
- The Supers Are Back: DNC Members Planning Move To Block Sanders . . . Again
3rd February 2020
- Is the Draft Coming Back?
3rd February 2020
- Stumbling into Catastrophe
1st February 2020
- Grand Theft Property
1st February 2020
- January
- A New US Air Force Video Game Lets You Drone Bomb Iraqis and Afghans
31st January 2020
- Iraq to Neocons: Get the Hell Out of Our Country
31st January 2020
- 'If I Have To Fight For Recognition, I Will': Paul and Roberts On Collision Course Over Whistleblower Questions
30th January 2020
- House Vote Today: Can Congress Prevent War On Iran?
30th January 2020
- The Torturers and the 'Ticking Bomb': How Torture Became Routine in the Global War on Terror
30th January 2020
- 'Deal Of The Century' For Israel/Palestine...Or Dud Of The Century?
29th January 2020
- War! Glorious War!
29th January 2020
- Lev Parnas is Not the Impeachment Witness You are Looking For
29th January 2020
- Impeachment's Biggest Absurdity: Our Toxic Fixation On Useless And Corrupting Ukraine Aid
29th January 2020
- More Bombs Than Ever! Trump Escalates Obama's 'Good War' In Afghanistan.
28th January 2020
- Interventionism Makes Americans Less Safe
28th January 2020
- US Embassy Hit In Iraq - Does This Mean War?
27th January 2020
- Woke Wonk Elizabeth Warren's Foreign Policy Team is Stacked with Pro-War Swamp Creatures
27th January 2020
- A Million Iraqis Asked Us to Leave. We Should Listen.
27th January 2020
- The Unbearable Hypocrisy of US Sanctions on Iran
26th January 2020
- US to Grant $35 Million to Promote its Fake News Bubble in Syria & Control Local Media
25th January 2020
- 'No One Has Suggested My Son Did Anything Wrong': Joe Biden Doubles Down On Denial
25th January 2020
- Our American Ancestors Didn't Trust the Federal Government
24th January 2020
- US Torture Policy: Part Of 'American Exceptionalism'?
23rd January 2020
- Trade Sanctions Are Both Immoral and Ineffective
23rd January 2020
- How The Military-Industrial Complex Gets Away With Murder in Contract After Contract
23rd January 2020
- Truth Comes Out: New Evidence Syria Gas Attack Report Falsified
22nd January 2020
- The Many Matryoska Dolls to America's Way of Imagining Iran
22nd January 2020
- A New Definition of Warfare
22nd January 2020
- Iran Counters EU Threat Of Snapback Sanctions
21st January 2020
- Author of Leaked OPCW Engineering Report on Douma Speaks at UN Security Council
21st January 2020
- Rich Liberals Protected By Guns...Why Not The Rest Of Us?
21st January 2020
- The War In Trump's Ear
20th January 2020
- The Murder Of Qassem Soleimani Will Deter No One
20th January 2020
- Guaido's Last Ride
20th January 2020
- How Expansive is FBI Spying?
20th January 2020
- Keeping with its Crackdown on Alternative Voices, Google Deletes Press TV from YouTube
18th January 2020
- After US Killing of Iran's Soleimani, Narrative Control on Social Media is Getting Worse
18th January 2020
- Russia's Big Gamble in Libya
18th January 2020
- Trump Trial Begins - Guilty As Charged?
16th January 2020
- Who Targeted Ukraine Airlines Flight 752? Iran Shot It Down But There May Be More to the Story
16th January 2020
- Allies warn Trump that ISIS is on the rise again. But it's precisely because of America that Islamic State will never be defeated
16th January 2020
- Under US pressure, social media companies censor critical content and suspend Venezuelan, Iranian, and Syrian accounts
16th January 2020
- Lapdog Europeans Join Trump To Kill Iran Deal
15th January 2020
- 17 Years After 'Liberation,' Iraq Again Designated US 'Enemy'
14th January 2020
- The Pentagon's and CIA's Power to Assassinate Americans
14th January 2020
- Over 100 Years Ago the US Government lied us into World War I
14th January 2020
- "Iran Must Begin Acting Like A Normal Nation," Says Totally Normal Nation
13th January 2020
- Assassination-gate! Trump Officials Say No 'Imminent Threat.' With Phil Giraldi
13th January 2020
- US to Iraq: 'Vote All You Want, We're Not Leaving!'
13th January 2020
- How the US Runs Iraq
11th January 2020
- The Facts About Iran and Terrorism
10th January 2020
- US As The Globe's Judge, Jury & Executioner
10th January 2020
- Too Little Too Late? House Vote Today On Iran 'War Powers'
9th January 2020
- After 18 Years of US Occupation, Poll Finds Zero Percent of Afghans Thriving, 85 Percent 'Suffering'
9th January 2020
- Putin's Orthodox Christmas visit to Damascus plays up Assad's Syria as enclave of peace - while rest of Middle East burns
9th January 2020
- Iran didn't want to kill US troops with its strike, it wanted to make point to Trump about its missile tech & resolve. It did that.
8th January 2020
- Will This Billionaire-Funded Think Tank Get Its War With Iran?
8th January 2020
- Conservative Vets Group: 'Bring Our Troops Home!' With Dan McKnight
8th January 2020
- After Soleimani Killing Suddenly the US is Alone
8th January 2020
- Iran Strikes Back! RPI's Daniel McAdams on WWIII Threat.
7th January 2020
- Iraq 'Pull-Out' Letter: Mistake...Or More Deception?
7th January 2020
- Trump's Assassination Disaster
7th January 2020
- Why Was Soleimani Assassinated?
6th January 2020
- Does Trump Have An Ethnic Iranian Interrogation and Detention Program In The Works?
6th January 2020
- Iraqi PM reveals Soleimani was on peace mission when assassinated, exploding Trump's lie of 'imminent attacks'
6th January 2020
- Why I Don't Trust Trump on Iran
6th January 2020
- The US Government Lies Constantly, And The Burden Of Proof Is On The Accuser
5th January 2020
- Lies, the Bethlehem Doctrine, and the Illegal Murder of Soleimani
5th January 2020
- The Mafia Would Have Been Proud
4th January 2020
- Afghanistan Papers
4th January 2020
- How The Donald Assassinated 'America First'
4th January 2020
- After Trump's Attack, Iraq Finally United...Against Us!
3rd January 2020
- The Soleimani Assassination: The Long-Awaited Beginning of The End of America's Imperial Ambitions
3rd January 2020
- From War Drums to Hot War with Iran
3rd January 2020
- Trump Stumbling Into Neocon Trap In Iraq
2nd January 2020
- The Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act: Why Washington Is Both Corrupt and Ignorant
2nd January 2020
- Joe Biden's man shows the world why US policy towards Russia has completely failed
1st January 2020
- Shutter the US Embassy in Iraq
1st January 2020
- 2019
- December
- Ron, Daniel & Chris: Reflecting On The Past & Anticipating The Future
31st December 2019
- Libya's War Escalates as the Stakes Get Higher
31st December 2019
- Why I Don't Criticize Russia, China, Or Other Unabsorbed Governments
31st December 2019
- Did Pompeo Go Off Reservation in Iraq Attack?
31st December 2019
- Iraq War 3.0? New US Attack Infuriates Baghdad
30th December 2019
- Should Racists Get Health Care?
30th December 2019
- 'Opposing Interventionism In Nation X Means You Love Nation X's Government!'
28th December 2019
- US Plans to Conduct Cyberwar Against Russia in Retaliation for Unproven Election Meddling
28th December 2019
- Ron Paul's Liberty Year in Review
27th December 2019
- War and the Rogue Presidency, With Ivan Eland
27th December 2019
- Rachel Maddow Called Out By WaPo Columnist For Shamelessly Peddling Fake News
27th December 2019
- Impeachment Is a Distraction: Heavily Scripted Vote Demonstrates That Democracy Really Is Dead
27th December 2019
- Senior OPCW official ordered deletion of 'all traces' of dissenting report on 'Douma chemical attack' – WikiLeaks' new leak
27th December 2019
- 'New World Disorder' - Top Trends for 2020 With Gerald Celente
23rd December 2019
- Chemical Weapons Watchdog Is Just an American Lap Dog
23rd December 2019
- Donald Trump: Peace Candidate, Presidential Warmonger
23rd December 2019
- How Congress and the Federal Reserve Stole Christmas
23rd December 2019
- A Massive Scandal: How Assange, His Doctors, Lawyers and Visitors Were All Spied on for the US
20th December 2019
- The Insider: How National Security Mandarins Groomed Pete Buttigieg and Managed his Future
20th December 2019
- From Baghdad To Seoul, World Increasingly Sours On Hosting US Troops
19th December 2019
- By impeaching Trump, Democrats have made him more powerful than they could ever imagine
19th December 2019
- The Afghanistan Fiasco and the Decline and Fall of the American Military
19th December 2019
- Impeachment Vote Today: Constitutional Duty Or Political Farce?
18th December 2019
- Can Recep the Magnificent Sort Out Libya?
18th December 2019
- Saudi Attack At Pensacola: Why Did Pentagon Vetting Fail?
17th December 2019
- Endless Wars and Endless Lies
17th December 2019
- What Everyone is Missing About the Afghanistan Papers
17th December 2019
- Wikileaks Bombshell: UN Agency FAKED Douma 'Gas Attack' Report
16th December 2019
- Afghanistan War – The Crime of the Century
16th December 2019
- Inspector General report on FBI's FISA abuse tells us one thing: We need radical reform.
14th December 2019
- Afghanistan: Graveyard of Empires
14th December 2019
- Those Torture Drawings in the NYT
14th December 2019
- How Not To Be a CIA Propagandist
13th December 2019
- Schizophrenia! US Now Says Yemen NOT Iran Proxy War
12th December 2019
- Key Takeaway from Ukraine Peace Talks in Paris is that Zelensky's Best Friend is Putin
12th December 2019
- America's Unreliable Friends: Today's Allies Are Tomorrow's Enemies
12th December 2019
- Forget Impeachment! Washington Unites Behind Massive Military Bill!
11th December 2019
- The Fabricated 'Predicate' to Spy on the Trump Campaign
11th December 2019
- Democrats Drop Bribery and Other Crimes In Favor Of A Two-Article Impeachment
10th December 2019
- The Afghanistan War Revealed: An 18 Year, Trillion Dollar Lie!
10th December 2019
- Who Spied on Julian Assange?
10th December 2019
- 'Sexy Tricks': How Journalists Demonize Venezuela's Socialist Government, in Their Own Words
9th December 2019
- Congress is Trump's Co-Conspirator Against Liberty
9th December 2019
- Senile, Demented and Incontinent: NATO at 70
8th December 2019
- George Bush's Wars Set the Stage for 25 Years of Endless War
8th December 2019
- Target... Iran !
7th December 2019
- Jonathan Turley Versus the Impeachment Steamroller
5th December 2019
- Trump Sends 14,000 Troops For War on Iran. Will it be Enough?
5th December 2019
- Let's Invade Mexico!
5th December 2019
- Desperate For An Enemy, NATO Turns To China
4th December 2019
- The Pentagon's Destruction of the Bill of Rights
4th December 2019
- 'Brain Dead' NATO At 70 - Time To Pull The Plug?
3rd December 2019
- How I Survived for 3 Years as a Libertarian Cop
3rd December 2019
- Human Rights and Hypocrisy in the White House and Congress
3rd December 2019
- NATO at 70: Sclerotic & bureaucratic zombie should be pensioned off
3rd December 2019
- Military Pollution: The Hidden Costs Of War
2nd December 2019
- The New York Times' Long History of Endorsing US-Backed Coups
2nd December 2019
- Fight Another 'Terror War' Against Drug Cartels? There's a Better Way!
2nd December 2019
- November
- Will Deval Patrick be president? Not if his past scandals have anything to say about it.
30th November 2019
- Iran May Be the Only Winner in Iraq
30th November 2019
- The Secret War in Africa
29th November 2019
- New Study: 'Russian Trolls' Did Not 'Sow Discord' - They Influenced No One
29th November 2019
- Thanksgiving - Myth vs. Truth
28th November 2019
- Against The Left: With Lew Rockwell
27th November 2019
- Narrative Managers Faceplant In Hilarious OPCW Scandal Spin Job
27th November 2019
- Hunting for Hunter: Evidence Reveals Biden, Burisma Ukraine Bond Scandal, Tied to U.S. Firm
27th November 2019
- Should Navy Seal Gallagher Be Punished...Or Honored?
26th November 2019
- Iran Social Unrest: Protests and Carefully Planned Provocations
26th November 2019
- Scandal! UN Officials Faked Syria Gas 'Attack' Report!
25th November 2019
- State Department Shoots Itself in the Foot at Impeachment Hearings
25th November 2019
- Here is What the Horowitz Report Should Conclude
25th November 2019
- The Real Bombshell of the Impeachment Hearings
25th November 2019
- Explosive leaked email claims that UN watchdog's report into alleged poison gas attack by Assad was doctored - so was it to justify British and American missile strikes on Syria?
24th November 2019
- Bolivia's Coup Gov't Targets Alternative Media as Crackdown Turns Increasingly Violent
23rd November 2019
- The Pitfalls of a Pit Bull Russophobe
23rd November 2019
- Fueling Iran's Protests
23rd November 2019
- Did the United States Win the Cold War?
22nd November 2019
- Hong Kong's opposition unites with Washington hardliners to 'preserve the US's own political and economic interests'
22nd November 2019
- Impeachment #2 - A Bipartisan Distraction From The War On American Citizens
21st November 2019
- Congrats, Dems! You've Empowered A Pack Of Paranoid Neocon Morons
21st November 2019
- Rethinking National Security: CIA and FBI Are Corrupt, But What About Congress?
21st November 2019
- Impeachment Circus - A Distraction From Iran War Plans?
20th November 2019
- Is the Middle East Beginning a Self-Correction?
20th November 2019
- Impeach the Government: Rogue Agencies Have Been Abusing Their Powers for Decades
20th November 2019
- Taking Sides: Pompeo Declares Israeli Settlements Legal
19th November 2019
- The Hugely Important OPCW Scandal Keeps Unfolding. Here's Why No One's Talking About It.
19th November 2019
- Ron Paul, Hero
19th November 2019
- Catastrophe! $6.4 Trillion Wasted On 20 Years Of War!
18th November 2019
- Washington Threatens Egypt With Sanctions Over Russian Su-35 Fighter Jet Purchase
18th November 2019
- Federal Reserve: Enemy of Liberty and Prosperity
18th November 2019
- Plundering Iraq
17th November 2019
- Covert Operative In Ukraine Controversy Revealed To Be Associated Press
16th November 2019
- Bolivia's New Puppet Regime Wastes No Time Aligning With US Foreign Policy
16th November 2019
- The Brennan Dossier: All About a Prime Mover of Russiagate
16th November 2019
- As the deep state attacks Trump to rave media reviews, don't forget its dark side
15th November 2019
- Impeachment Witness Questions
15th November 2019
- Social Media Censorship Reaches New Heights as Twitter Permanently Bans Dissent
15th November 2019
- Trump To Steal Syria's Oil - Sowing The Seeds Of Blowback?
14th November 2019
- 'No No You Guys, THIS US-Backed Military Coup Is Perfectly Legitimate!'
14th November 2019
- The Latest False News on the Trump Impeachment
14th November 2019
- Top Bolivian coup plotters were School of the Americas grads, served as attachés in FBI police programs
14th November 2019
- Impeachment Hysteria! Washington Crippled, The World In Flames!
13th November 2019
- The Ukrainian Influence Peddling Rings – A Microcosm of How Imperial Washington Rolls
13th November 2019
- The Twilight of Liberty: the State Destroys Alternative Media
13th November 2019
- Bolivian Coup Comes Less Than a Week After Morales Stopped Multinational Firm's Lithium Deal
13th November 2019
- Bolivia Coup: Is Washington Pulling The Strings?
12th November 2019
- Cuba Was Never a Threat to 'National Security'
12th November 2019
- John Brennan's CIA Trump Task Force
12th November 2019
- Nikki Haley For VP? War Drums Banging On Armistice Day.
11th November 2019
- Macron's 'Brain-Dead' NATO?.. Thou Protest Too Much
11th November 2019
- Is The 'Mother of all Bubbles' About to Pop?
11th November 2019
- Whistleblower...Or Blowing Smoke? Should Trump's Accuser Appear?
7th November 2019
- US Congressional Panel Outlines Next Phase of Dirty War on Syria: Occupy Oil Fields and Block Reconstruction
7th November 2019
- Deep State on the National Security Council: Colonel Vindman Is an 'Expert' With an Agenda
7th November 2019
- Obamagate: How Much Did He Know About Brennan's CIA Task Force?
6th November 2019
- We Need a #MeToo Movement for Political Consent
6th November 2019
- Bush Goes To Rehab: The Role Of The 'Resistance' In Normalizing War Crimes
6th November 2019
- US Constructing Two New Bases In Syria's Oil-Rich Region: Report
6th November 2019
- Foreign Aid Makes Corrupt Countries More Corrupt
5th November 2019
- A New Kind of Tyranny: The Global State's War on Those Who Speak Truth to Power
5th November 2019
- Sentence First, Crime Later?
4th November 2019
- 'Thank God For The Deep State' - CIA Celebrates Coup Against Trump
4th November 2019
- Growing Indicators of Brennan's CIA Trump Task Force
3rd November 2019
- Mayor Pete's Millennial Slavery Program
3rd November 2019
- Ron Paul: 'Breaking Washington's Addiction to War'
3rd November 2019
- Police State Escalates War on Freedom of Speech
2nd November 2019
- The White House Plan to Strangle Iran
2nd November 2019
- Impeachment Theater
1st November 2019
- October
- Impeach Them All! F-35 Bipartisan Boondoggle Is The Real Crime!
31st October 2019
- The Failed FBI Plot to Paint Trump Doing Deals with Putin
31st October 2019
- Yes, Virginia, There Is A Deep State And It's Feeding The Anti-POTUS Mob
31st October 2019
- Killing Julian Assange: Justice Denied When Exposing Official Wrongdoing
31st October 2019
- Patriot Act On Steroids: Trump's Dangerous New 'Pre-Crime' Plan
30th October 2019
- The Never-Ending Wars on Terrorism and Drugs
30th October 2019
- Democrats Helped Cultivate the Barbarism of ISIS
30th October 2019
- The USA's History Of Controlling The OPCW To Promote Regime Change
30th October 2019
- Lebanon Color Revolt? Back To Syria... Impeachment Blues.
29th October 2019
- What About the Wagner Group? ...it's all about the OIL
29th October 2019
- Trump cancels the pullout from Syria then flip-flops, threatens war with Turkey and gives money to terrorists
29th October 2019
- Thanks to a Soviet Navy Captain -- We Survived 1962
29th October 2019
- 'Rothbard and War' - Lew Rockwell, Jr
28th October 2019
- Trump Flip-Flops on Syria Withdrawal. Again.
28th October 2019
- 'Understanding the Intel and Law Enforcement Plot to Destroy the Trump Presidency'
26th October 2019
- Trump's Imaginary Withdrawal From Syria: A Look Behind the Wizard's Curtain
26th October 2019
- Barr Changes the Dynamic, The Threat of Obstruction of Justice
25th October 2019
- Trump and Erdogan Are Alike: Both Are 'Thin-Skinned' and Relied on 'Deplorables' to Win
25th October 2019
- 'We Want To Keep The Oil'
25th October 2019
- Is Trump Really Going To Take Syria's Oil?
24th October 2019
- Expert Panel Finds Gaping Plot Holes In OPCW Report On Alleged Syrian Chemical Attack
24th October 2019
- Assange in Court
24th October 2019
- USAID Funds Salaries of Venezuelan Opposition Politicians as It Doubles Down on the Coup
24th October 2019
- With US Withdrawal, Is Hillary's War On Syria Finally Over?
23rd October 2019
- Up In Smoke: The Neocon Assault On Syria Is Finally Over
23rd October 2019
- Trump's $4.5 Million Indulgence: Is White Helmets Blood Money the Price of US Leaving Syria?
23rd October 2019
- Can Trump Survive Ending Project Syria?
22nd October 2019
- 'Truth Is Treason' - The Torture Of Julian Assange
22nd October 2019
- A Call for a Coup Plus a Week Like No Other for Tulsi Gabbard
22nd October 2019
- FBI/DOJ Likely to Throw the CIA and Clapper Under the Bus
21st October 2019
- Homeschoolers are Educated, Not Indoctrinated
21st October 2019
- US Media in Crisis - Rick Sanchez at RPI's Washington Conference
20th October 2019
- The US has backed 21 of the 28 'crazy' militias leading Turkey's brutal invasion of northern Syria
19th October 2019
- Has US Foreign Policy Changed?
19th October 2019
- So, Admiral McRaven Just Called for a Military Coup, Kinda
18th October 2019
- Peace Expert George W Bush Says 'Isolationism' Is Dangerous To Peace
18th October 2019
- Does Socialism Lead To War? With Special Guest Sen. Rand Paul
17th October 2019
- To End the Wars, Attack the Right From the Right
17th October 2019
- Truth Is A Kremlin Talking Point
17th October 2019
- DC's Atlantic Council raked in funding from Hunter Biden's corruption-stained employer while courting his VP father
17th October 2019
- Bipartisan Support For Turkey Sanctions - A 'Victory' For Trump?
16th October 2019
- Politics Drops Its Pretenses
16th October 2019
- Terrorized, Traumatized and Killed: The Police State's Deadly Toll on America's Children
16th October 2019
- Pentagon Hands Manbij To The Russians (Can We Get Them To Take Afghanistan Too?)
15th October 2019
- Twitter Targets Hong Kong in US-backed Regime Change Operation
15th October 2019
- BREAKING: US Working With Russia to Handover Patrols Between Turkish and Syrian Armies in Manbij
15th October 2019
- Kurds Make Alliance With Assad - Victory For America (But Not For Neocons)
14th October 2019
- Washington is Wrong Once Again – Kurds Join Assad to Defend Syria
14th October 2019
- Washington's Sum of All Fears: Kurdish Militants Cut a Deal with Damascus
14th October 2019
- Finding a Vaccine for the Impeachment Derangement Virus
14th October 2019
- Turkey Beats the War Drums
12th October 2019
- The Plague of Western Adventurism in Syria
12th October 2019
- 'The Economic Costs of US Empire' - Nathan Goodman
12th October 2019
- Empty Desks at the NSC
11th October 2019
- Why Gilligan's Island May be the Answer to Police Brutality
11th October 2019
- Impeachment...Or Show Trial? Pelosi's Anonymous Accusers.
10th October 2019
- Sanctioning Away Free Speech: Americans Meet With Iranians at Their Peril
10th October 2019
- Investigation Of Biden-Enriching Burisma Opened Months Before Zelensky Even Elected: Report
10th October 2019
- Syria: Another Forever War Beckons
10th October 2019
- Iraq: Popular Revolt...Or Color Revolution?
9th October 2019
- After US Senator Asks Public to 'Imagine' CIA Interfering in Foreign Elections, Historians Are Like... Uhhh
9th October 2019
- Pinning an 'Antisemite' Label on President Trump
9th October 2019
- Who Are the Real Friends of the Troops?
8th October 2019
- President Trump - Don't Cave In To Warmongers On Syria Withdrawal!
8th October 2019
- Worried for Kurds in Syria, abandoned by US? Here's an obvious solution but it will make Washington hawks MAD
8th October 2019
- Trump: 'We're Leaving Syria.' Neocons Go Nuts!
7th October 2019
- The 'Whistleblower' Probably Isn't
7th October 2019
- Federal Reserve's Latest Bailouts More Proof Bad Times Ahead
7th October 2019
- When Ukraine's Prosecutor Came After His Son's Sponsor Joe Biden Sprang Into Action
4th October 2019
- Trump Administration Provides New Evidence for a Saudi Connection to 9/11
4th October 2019
- CrossTalk on Deep State: CIA COUP?
4th October 2019
- Ukraine Gains From Trump's Impeachment Inquiry
3rd October 2019
- The Impeachment Farce: Will The 'Smoking Gun' Backfire?
3rd October 2019
- What Will The US Do When Turkey Invades Syria?
2nd October 2019
- Why Even Liberals Should be 'Climate Change Skeptics'
2nd October 2019
- What Exactly Is Trump's Impeachable Offense?
2nd October 2019
- Iraq War 3.0? Israel Attacks...With US Backing!
1st October 2019
- Guns for Hire: No, the Government Shouldn't Be Using the Military to Police the Globe
1st October 2019
- What Was This CIA Officer Thinking?
1st October 2019
- September
- Foreign Aid for Dictators
30th September 2019
- Daniel McAdams: 'The US Has Ceased Being a Republic and Has Become a National Security State'
30th September 2019
- Houthis Rout Saudi Military - End Of The Road For MbS?
30th September 2019
- Impeachment or CIA Coup?
30th September 2019
- UK's Johnson Plays Court Jester for Trump to Wreck Iran Deal
28th September 2019
- Intel Community Quietly Scrapped Requirement For 'First-Hand Knowledge' Before CIA 'Rumorblower' Relied On Hearsay
28th September 2019
- Trump Triples Down on Venezuela Regime Change, Even as he Faces One Himself
28th September 2019
- 'NATO's Destructive Tentacles' - David Stockman
27th September 2019
- Rumorblower, Not Whistleblower
27th September 2019
- This is How the Elite Will Shut Down Your Free Speech
27th September 2019
- Trump Pushed Ukraine's President To Investigate Issues Of US Public Interest
27th September 2019
- From the Anti-Russia Brouhaha to the Ukraine Brouhaha
26th September 2019
- Forget The Impeachment Circus...Here's What Congress Should Really Investigate!
26th September 2019
- Trump Frees Himself From Bolton – but Robert O'Brien Will Be Just as Bad
26th September 2019
- Smoking Gun? Impeachment Blows Up In Democrat Faces...Again!
25th September 2019
- Welfare Checks Turn Deadly: You Might Want to Think Twice Before Calling the Cops
25th September 2019
- Another Day, Another Scandal. What the 'Trump-Ukraine Collusion' Is Really About
25th September 2019
- Impeachment Hysteria! But Who's Guilty, Trump Or Biden?
24th September 2019
- A Precision Strike on US Credibility – Shattering a US Paradigm
24th September 2019
- Reuters Seems Frustrated US Not Striking Iran for Aramco Attacks
24th September 2019
- Defending Saudi Arabia...Hardly Our Moral Responsibility!
23rd September 2019
- Kamala Harris and the Cult of the Presidency
23rd September 2019
- Democrats Panic Over Biden-Ukraine Scandal As MSM Hits Full Spin Cycle
23rd September 2019
- Will More US Troops in Saudi Arabia Make America Great?
23rd September 2019
- Aramco Attack a Defining Moment in US-Saudi Alliance
22nd September 2019
- 30+ Afghans Killed In Drone Strike While CIA Celebrates 18 Years Of War On Afghanistan
21st September 2019
- 'An Antiwar Conservative' - Rep. John Duncan, Jr.
21st September 2019
- Who Launched That Mystery Attack?
21st September 2019
- Constitution Day 2019: The Hidden Domestic Surveillance Crisis
20th September 2019
- Iran, We Got to Do Something?
20th September 2019
- A Non-Interventionism Foreign Policy Strategy Can Be a Bipartisan Affair
19th September 2019
- The Moral/Political Corrosion Of Negative Interest Rates, With Guest Jeff Deist
19th September 2019
- Spy vs Spy vs Spy: The Mysterious Mr. Smolenkov
19th September 2019
- Understanding Motivation in Criminal, Terror, and Military Attacks
19th September 2019
- Martial Law Masquerading as Law and Order: The Police State's Language of Force
18th September 2019
- Something Extraordinary in Sacramento
18th September 2019
- Trump Names New National Security Advisor - Bolton Without The Mustache?
18th September 2019
- Credibility Crisis: No One Believes Iran Attacked Saudi Arabia
17th September 2019
- Locked And Loaded In Behalf Of Empire First
17th September 2019
- Israel Spies and Spies and Spies
17th September 2019
- 'Locked And Loaded' - Will Trump Attack Iran?
16th September 2019
- Will Trump Take Neocon Bait and Attack Iran Over Saudi Strike?
16th September 2019
- Biden Takes Iraq Lies to the Max at Democratic Debate
15th September 2019
- Latest Russian Spy Story Looks Like Another Elaborate Media Deception
15th September 2019
- Sen. Graham Wants to Bomb Iran in Response to Houthi Attack on Saudi Oil
15th September 2019
- 'Real Anti-Interventionism'
14th September 2019
- The Cost of War!
13th September 2019
- Color Revolutionaries of the World, Unite! Hong Kong Protest Leader Pictured with White Helmets Boss
13th September 2019
- How To Defeat The Empire
12th September 2019
- With Bolton Out, Will Trump Open Door To Iran?
12th September 2019
- Trump the Russian Puppet. A Story That Just Will Not Die
12th September 2019
- Will Another John Bolton Replace John Bolton?
11th September 2019
- John Brennan's and Jim Clappers' Last Gasp?
11th September 2019
- Is America Doomed? Any Options Left?
10th September 2019
- The Pentagon's Upcoming Kangaroo Show Trial in Cuba
10th September 2019
- Trump Foreign Policy as Theater of the Absurd
10th September 2019
- Bolton And Pompeo Beat Down Trump's Afghan Peace Deal
9th September 2019
- Does Trump Believe What He Says About Syria?
9th September 2019
- 'Hands Off Hong Kong' - the Cry That Seldom Is Heard
9th September 2019
- Bill Dudley's Noble Lie
9th September 2019
- Establishment Right and Left Call for COINTELPRO 2.0
4th September 2019
- Meet the Militantly Pro-Israel Trump Official Directing the Economic War on Iran
4th September 2019
- USS Gerald Ford - A $13 Billion Boondoggle
4th September 2019
- Record High Military Suicides Continue - What's The Real Cause?
3rd September 2019
- Yes, Vaccine Safety IS Too Dangerous for Us to Discuss
3rd September 2019
- In Search of a Russiagate Scalp: The Entrapment of Maria Butina
2nd September 2019
- Beware (And Prepare): The American Empire Is Collapsing
2nd September 2019
- Bankrupt and Irrelevant: the Presidential Debates and Four Recent Studies on Pentagon Spending
2nd September 2019
- Forget the Russians: It's the Federal Reserve Seeking to Meddle in Our Elections
2nd September 2019
- August
- Do ratings trump accountability in journalism? Latest retracted MSNBC 'bombshell' suggests 'yes'
31st August 2019
- Saudi Arabia Acknowledges Defeat In Yemen - Starts To Sue For Peace
30th August 2019
- Julian Assange: Deprivation of Justice and Double Standards in Belmarsh Prison
30th August 2019
- Keep Your Powder Dry, Comey Is Not Out of the Woods
29th August 2019
- How To Make Sense Of Foreign Protests, Conflicts And Uprisings
28th August 2019
- New Jersey Event Canceled After Threats From Anti-Free Speech Groups
27th August 2019
- The FBI Tried and Failed to Entrap Donald Trump Using his Business Associate, Felix Sater
27th August 2019
- Rothbard and War
27th August 2019
- Who Are The Real Extremists?
26th August 2019
- Spending on Defense Is One Great Big Lie
23rd August 2019
- US Ambassador Grenell's Threat to Germany Has Backfired, Driving Germany Closer to Russia
22nd August 2019
- Trump Fine-Tunes Peace Deal With Taliban
22nd August 2019
- Lindsey Graham's Blank Check. Why a Defense Agreement With Israel Would Be a Disaster for Americans
22nd August 2019
- Joseph Mifsud, British Intel Asset, Not Russia's Boy
21st August 2019
- End Foreign Aid to Israel and Everyone Else
20th August 2019
- Trump Administration Wants Permanent Repeal of the 4th Amendment
19th August 2019
- The Saudis Learn the Term 'Asymmetric Response'
19th August 2019
- Behind a Made-for-TV Hong Kong Protest Narrative, Washington is Backing Nativism and Mob Violence
19th August 2019
- Are Recessions Inevitable?
19th August 2019
- Mass Media's Phony Freakout Over Bernie's WaPo Criticism Is Backfiring
17th August 2019
- The Hypocrisy of President Trump and His Administration
17th August 2019
- America's Benevolent Bombing of Serbia
17th August 2019
- US Sanctions Killing Innocent Iranians...Just 'Collateral Damage'?
15th August 2019
- Punishing the World With Sanctions
15th August 2019
- Violent Protests In Hong Kong Reach Their Last Stage
15th August 2019
- 'Humanitarianism'? Hillary's Libya Lies Still Creating Misery
14th August 2019
- Rich's Ghost Haunts the Courts
14th August 2019
- Can Trump Get Out Of Afghanistan?
13th August 2019
- Who Inflicts the Most Gun Violence in America? The U.S. Government and Its Police Forces
12th August 2019
- Grave Danger Of China Collapse - With Guest David Stockman
12th August 2019
- A Sino-Russian Firewall Against US Interference
12th August 2019
- Endgame for the Fed?
12th August 2019
- Eight Years Ago NATO Killed My Family in Their Sleep
10th August 2019
- China Accuses US Of 'Gangster Logic' For Defending Meetings With HK Independence Activists
9th August 2019
- The Persistent Myth That Trump Opposes War
9th August 2019
- Official Secrets: Priti Patel's Early War on Whistleblowers
9th August 2019
- Evidence Of CIA Meeting HK Protest Leaders? China Summons US Diplomats Over Viral Photo
8th August 2019
- Rothbard And War - With Guest Lew Rockwell
8th August 2019
- US Seizes Cargo Ship Trying to Deliver Food to Venezuela
8th August 2019
- Quincy Who? Another New Think Tank Tests the Waters
8th August 2019
- Turkey Threatens Syria Invasion - US Troops In Crossfire?
7th August 2019
- Wars and Domestic Massacres
7th August 2019
- Give Guantanamo Back to Cuba
7th August 2019
- 'Who Lost Turkey?'
6th August 2019
- For The Children? Trump's Venezuela Blockade Multiplies The Misery
6th August 2019
- Americans Should Be Very Skeptical Of Calls For New 'Terrorism' Laws
6th August 2019
- China Crisis: New US Missiles To Asia
5th August 2019
- Iran's Zarif drives Trump to insanity
5th August 2019
- Congress Spending Surge is National Suicide
5th August 2019
- Tulsi Gabbard's Military Nonsense
4th August 2019
- Trump Ponders Deadly Blockade of Venezuela
3rd August 2019
- The Empire Is Coming for Tulsi Gabbard
3rd August 2019
- UK 'Up To Its Neck' In RussiaGate Affair, Secret Texts Reveal British Role In Trump Coup Effort
2nd August 2019
- No, Tulsi Gabbard is NOT This Election's Ron Paul
2nd August 2019
- Rep. Omar and the Hypocrisy of Congress
1st August 2019
- Violent 'Color Revolution' In Hong Kong Fails Despite Strong NYT Support
1st August 2019
- The Spy Game: It Ain't What It Used to Be
1st August 2019
- July
- The Rise of the American Gestapo: Has It Already Happened Here?
31st July 2019
- Combatting Terrorism? US AFRICOM Is Making Terrorism WORSE!
30th July 2019
- As US Beefs Up Military Presence in the Gulf, Yemen's Houthis Turn to Russia for Support
30th July 2019
- Gun Violence in California
30th July 2019
- Is Biden Worse Than Pompeo On North Korea?
29th July 2019
- True Budget Hawks are Foreign Policy Doves
29th July 2019
- The Real Reason The Propagandists Have Been Promoting Russia Hysteria
28th July 2019
- The US Stunt In Hong Kong Will Make Other Issues More Difficult
27th July 2019
- Iranian Monarchists Praise the Shah's Brutal Rule on the Anniversary of his Death
27th July 2019
- Understanding the Roots of the Obama Coup Against Trump
27th July 2019
- US Sanctions Are Still Strangling Venezuela
26th July 2019
- Pentagon Wants 16-year Old Kids to Fight the Empire's Wars
25th July 2019
- 'Obliteration' - Trump Threatens Iran With Nuclear Strike
25th July 2019
- No Accountability in Washington. The CIA Wants to Hide All Its Employees
25th July 2019
- Not Mueller Time – At Last!
25th July 2019
- Monsters with Human Faces: The Tyranny of the Police State Disguised as Law-and-Order
24th July 2019
- Is Today's Mueller Testimony The End...Or The Beginning Of Impeachment?
24th July 2019
- Ruler of the World
24th July 2019
- Ukraine Election - Voters Defeat Second Color Revolution
23rd July 2019
- Did John Bolton Light the Fuse of the UK-Iranian Tanker Crisis?
23rd July 2019
- No More Wikileaks! Intelligence Authorization Bill Criminalizes Whistleblowers And Reporters
23rd July 2019
- US Pushing Allies To Send Warships Toward Iran
22nd July 2019
- The Strange Death of Conservatism
22nd July 2019
- Will Persian Gulf 'Tanker War' Become a Shooting War?
22nd July 2019
- Will Donald Trump Kill His Presidency Over Iran
21st July 2019
- How Trump's Arch-Hawk Lured Britain into a Dangerous Trap to Punish Iran
21st July 2019
- Who Was Epstein Working For?
20th July 2019
- New US Pentagon Chief – Vested Interest in War & Conflict
19th July 2019
- How Corporate Media Are Fueling a New Iran Nuclear Crisis
19th July 2019
- New CNN Assange Smear Piece Is Amazingly Dishonest, Even For CNN
18th July 2019
- Hating America After 9/11
18th July 2019
- Will 500 Troops To Saudi Arabia Really Make Us Safer?
18th July 2019
- Showdown! Trump Takes On Turkey Over Russian Missile Purchase
17th July 2019
- It's Un-American To Be Anti-Free Speech: Protect the Right to Criticize the Government
17th July 2019
- Pirate Nation: Why Britain Hijacked Iranian Ship on Behalf of Washington
16th July 2019
- Pompeo's Big Lie on Iran
16th July 2019
- Forever Wars! House Republicans Furious Over Iraq War Authorization Repeal
15th July 2019
- Ukraine Remains the Signpost of World Politics
15th July 2019
- Conservatives Against Liberty
15th July 2019
- Two-Faced Democrats Move to Prevent Trump's Iran War
14th July 2019
- Trump Consiglieres Giuliani and Bolton Paid Big Bucks by MEK Terrorist Group
13th July 2019
- Turkey Calls Trump's Bluff
13th July 2019
- Mueller Does Not Have Evidence That The IRA Was Part of Russian Government Meddling
12th July 2019
- Americans Should Adopt Unilateral Free Trade
12th July 2019
- Iran Keeps Calm While US And Britain Continue Their Provocations
11th July 2019
- Fake News? CNN Claims Iran Tried To Seize UK Tanker
11th July 2019
- The Death of Privacy: Government Fearmongers to Read Your Mail
11th July 2019
- Trump Threatens Military Bill Veto: Demands More Spending!
10th July 2019
- Breakthrough? Taliban Talks With Kabul Government Bear Fruit
9th July 2019
- DSA/Jacobin/Haymarket-Sponsored 'Socialism' Conference Features US Gov-Funded Regime-Change Activists
9th July 2019
- Bolton Losing Ground on Venezuela, Iran – But Far From Down and Out
9th July 2019
- Rattling Cages in the Propaganda War
9th July 2019
- Unintended Consequences: UK Tanker Fears Iran Retaliation In Gulf
8th July 2019
- Trump Reminds Us That America is a Military Nation
8th July 2019
- Frog-Marching Trump Toward War on Iran
8th July 2019
- CrowdStrikeOut: Mueller's Own Report Undercuts Its Core Russia-Meddling Claims
6th July 2019
- Obama: Front Man for Washington's Imperialism
6th July 2019
- Goodbye Dollar, It Was Nice Knowing You!
4th July 2019
- Fourth of July Should Celebrate Liberty, Not Politicians Like Trump
4th July 2019
- On Eve Of 4th Of July Parade US Attempts To Lure Iran Into Shooting Down Another US Plane
3rd July 2019
- Donald's Fourth: Sherman Tanks and Other Death Machines
3rd July 2019
- Trump In A Box: Iran Demands Right To Enrich 'To Any Level'
3rd July 2019
- Libya...War Crimes on Both Sides?
3rd July 2019
- Pompeo Claims Iran Broke Nuclear Deal - Is He Lying?
2nd July 2019
- Announcing the Ron Paul Scholars Seminar!
2nd July 2019
- SHOCKER: Charles Koch and George Soros to Team Up and Form Foreign Policy Institute
1st July 2019
- US Government Tops All for Creating Refugees
1st July 2019
- Trump Meets Kim In North Korea - Why Are The Democrats Hysterical?
1st July 2019
- Media and Politicians Ignore Oncoming Financial Crisis
1st July 2019
- June
- Washington's Infatuation with the MEK
30th June 2019
- Bullies Like Me
30th June 2019
- How Sen. Rick Scott Became Big Oil's Point Man on Venezuelan Regime Change
29th June 2019
- Marijuana Legalization: Where We've Been, Where We Are, And Where We Are Going
29th June 2019
- Trump To Unleash Hell On Europe: EU Announces Channel To Circumvent SWIFT And Iran Sanctions Is Now Operational
28th June 2019
- Problems Arise with Washington's Latest 'Color Revolution' in Hong Kong
28th June 2019
- Demasking the Torture of Julian Assange
28th June 2019
- Iran/US Escalation - Blame Pompeo And Bolton?
27th June 2019
- Have You Heard of the CIA's Iran Mission Center?
27th June 2019
- Why the State Department Let a Terrorist Cult Gather on its Doorstep
26th June 2019
- US Arms Dealers Getting Rich On Yemen's Misery
26th June 2019
- The Donald's Latest Iranian Caper – Sh*t-Faced Stupidity
26th June 2019
- NY Times Admits it Sends Stories to US Government for Approval Before Publication
26th June 2019
- Politics As Usual: Senate Refuses To Hold Iran War Debate
25th June 2019
- Trump Seeks 'Coalition Of The Willing' Against Iran
25th June 2019
- Is the Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program an Illusion?
24th June 2019
- New Sanctions To Hit Iranian Kids - Pompeo, Bolton Thrilled...
24th June 2019
- Boxed in by Neocons and the Media, Will Trump Launch Iran War?
24th June 2019
- VIPS Memo to the President: Is Pompeo's Agenda the Same As Yours?
22nd June 2019
- Did Venezuelan coup leaders pocket $70 million from Citgo's stolen US assets?
22nd June 2019
- A View From the Frontline of the Drug War
22nd June 2019
- Be Thankful for Trump's Iran Indecision For Now
22nd June 2019
- June Madness Strikes Washington. Iranians, Russians and Britons Beware!
21st June 2019
- US Credibility Dented in Iran Standoff
21st June 2019
- Iran Downs US Spy Drone: Who's The Aggressor?
20th June 2019
- Executive Over-Reach: Pompeo Dismisses Congress In Push for Iran War
19th June 2019
- From Coup Leaders to Con Artists: Juan Guaidó's Gang Exposed for Massive Humanitarian Aid Fraud
19th June 2019
- Cuba Is Feeling John Bolton's Wrath
19th June 2019
- America Last: The Real Meaning of the Donald's Deplorable Aggression Against Iran
19th June 2019
- Pompeo At CENTCOM: Pushing 'Tactical Assault' On Iran?
18th June 2019
- Massive Embezzlement Scandal Threatens Juan Guaido's Political Future
18th June 2019
- Credibility Crisis: No One Believes Pompeo On Iran Attack
17th June 2019
- False Identities Become the New Weapon: War with Iran Promoted by Fake Journalists
17th June 2019
- Medical IDs: Enemy of Privacy, Liberty, and Health
17th June 2019
- DOJ Bloodhounds on the Scent of John Brennan
15th June 2019
- Iran can be Trump's Nemesis
15th June 2019
- American Govt., NGOS Fuel and Fund Hong Kong Anti-Extradition Protests
14th June 2019
- Seven Reasons To Be Highly Skeptical Of The Gulf Of Oman Incident
14th June 2019
- Pence Goes to War: America Will Be Fighting Forever
13th June 2019
- GI Suicide: Maybe It's The Job?
13th June 2019
- State Department Emails Show Coordination Between Obama State Department and House Democrat Leader on Christopher Steele/Russia
12th June 2019
- More US Dictatorship Against Cuba
12th June 2019
- The State Department's War On Americans Against War On Iran
12th June 2019
- Right On Cue...The 'New ISIS Threat' In Afghanistan
11th June 2019
- Breaking Washington's Addiction to War
11th June 2019
- Snowden Bombshell Six Years On: Has Anything Changed?
10th June 2019
- Repeal the Espionage Act
10th June 2019
- The War Crimes That Don't Get Punished
10th June 2019
- The Drug War Fuels Neocon Foreign Policy
9th June 2019
- Sky News and the Western Press Have Once Again Failed Syria
9th June 2019
- Rep. Meadows: FBI Knew 'Within 60 Days' That Russia Probe 'Built On A Foundation Of Sand'
9th June 2019
- The Trust Project: Big Media and Silicon Valley's Weaponized Algorithms Silence Dissent
7th June 2019
- Mueller Caught In Another Deception; Key 'Russia Link' Exposed As Informant For US, Ukraine
7th June 2019
- Hate the State? You're a Nazi Bad Actor
6th June 2019
- Pompeo Accidentally Tells Truth About Failed Venezuela Coup
6th June 2019
- Tulsi Gabbard Pushes No War Agenda – and the Media Is Out to Kill Her Chances
6th June 2019
- Who's The Bigger War Criminal - Duncan Hunter...Or Those Who Sent Him To Iraq?
5th June 2019
- What Will the E-Verify Program Be Used to Surveil Next?
5th June 2019
- Top US Journalists Spread Fake News Claiming North Korean Official Was 'Purged' – Then He Shows Up on TV
5th June 2019
- The 'Good War'? US Bomb Kills Entire Afghan Family
4th June 2019
- Pentagon's Phony Iran 'Evidence': New Rationale for US Intervention?
4th June 2019
- Julian Assange: Prisoner of Conscience
4th June 2019
- By Backing Al-Qaeda, Trump Continues Obama's Horrible Syria Policy
3rd June 2019
- US-Iran: Inverted Reality, Real War
3rd June 2019
- More Evidence of the Russian Meddling Lie
3rd June 2019
- Hey Trump: Remember Wikileaks?
3rd June 2019
- How Did Russiagate Begin?
2nd June 2019
- Trump Will Be Impeached. The Stupid Party Says, 'Bring It On!'
1st June 2019
- May
- The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society
31st May 2019
- The Drug War Is Totally Idiotic
31st May 2019
- Pamela Anderson: Assange Is a Scapegoat, Not a Criminal
31st May 2019
- Are US/UK Trying To Kill Assange?
30th May 2019
- Washington's Mighty Warriors: Draft Dodgers and Scoundrels
30th May 2019
- Impeach John Bolton?
30th May 2019
- Technotyranny: The Iron-Fisted Authoritarianism of the Surveillance State
30th May 2019
- Mueller Blames Russia, Bolton Blames Iran. Should We Believe Them?
29th May 2019
- Pence Tells West Point Grads: 'War Is Coming!'
28th May 2019
- The Worst 2020 Election Interference Will Be Perfectly Legal
28th May 2019
- Amash is Wrong, Pelosi (So Far ) is Right on Articles of Impeachment
27th May 2019
- 'They Shall Not Grow Old' is a Superb Antiwar Film
27th May 2019
- Congress Fiddles While Trump Lurches Toward War on Iran
27th May 2019
- Bill Barr Is Wrong On Assange
26th May 2019
- Liberate Syria's Idlib, Precisely for the Civilians that America Fakes Concern Over
26th May 2019
- Why Do We Fight? How Do We Fight?
25th May 2019
- Microsoft's ElectionGuard a Trojan Horse for a Military-Industrial Takeover of US Elections
25th May 2019
- Assange Hit With Espionage Act Violations As DoJ Unveils 17 New Charges
23rd May 2019
- Trump Wants 10K More Troops In The Middle East. For What?
23rd May 2019
- Nope, Guccifer 2.0 Was Not a Russian Creation
23rd May 2019
- US and UK Policy Toward Libya Shifts to ISIS and the Brotherhood
23rd May 2019
- Delusional Pentagon: 'We Beat Iran Without Firing A Shot!'
22nd May 2019
- Revisiting Ron Paul's 1988 Case for Drug Legalization
22nd May 2019
- Poll: Almost Half Of College Students Do Not Believe First Amendment Protects Hate Speech
22nd May 2019
- US Accuses Syria Of More Chemical Attacks Just As Chemical Weapons Narrative Crumbles
22nd May 2019
- Fair Trial? US Steals Assange's Legal Papers
21st May 2019
- Impeach Trump But Only for the Right Reason
21st May 2019
- Do Iranian 'Threats' Signal Organized US-Israel Subterfuge?
21st May 2019
- Rockets In Baghdad's Green Zone - False Flag Or Iran Attack?
20th May 2019
- Violence Against Women Act Does Violence to the Constitution
20th May 2019
- CONFIRMED: Chemical Weapons Assessment Contradicting Official Syria Narrative Is Authentic
17th May 2019
- Trump Administration Withholds Information That Could Debunk Russian Interference Claims
17th May 2019
- Trump De-escalating? Satellite Intel Based On Tehran 'Misreading' US Intentions
17th May 2019
- Venezuela Peace Talks Open In Norway; US Neocons Raging Mad!
16th May 2019
- Iran Is Not a Major Sponsor of Terrorism, Not Even Close
16th May 2019
- US Abandons Iraq Embassy: Real Threats Or War Propaganda?
15th May 2019
- Top British Commander In Rare Public Dispute With US Over Iran Intelligence
15th May 2019
- Iraq Déjà Vu with Iran
15th May 2019
- Target Iran: Let The False Flags Fly? With Guest Phil Giraldi
14th May 2019
- Drivers Beware: The Deadly Perils of Traffic Stops in the American Police State
14th May 2019
- Pompeo Skips Moscow Trip To Pressure EU Officials In Brussels On Iran
13th May 2019
- From Drug Warrior To Drug War Warrior: Former Narcotics Officer Speaks Out
13th May 2019
- The World's Dictatress
13th May 2019
- Losing Income Tax Privacy Is a Real Danger
13th May 2019
- Iran and the Fairy Tale Atomic Bomb
12th May 2019
- Bomb Iran Half Way Back to the Stone Age
11th May 2019
- Who Knows What Evil Lurks In The Pentagon Budget? The Liberty Report Knows!
10th May 2019
- The War Tweets
10th May 2019
- Bolton Held "Extremely Rare" Iran Meeting At CIA Headquarters
10th May 2019
- Is Trump Watching The Liberty Report? President, Advisors At Loggerheads...
9th May 2019
- John Bolton is the Problem
9th May 2019
- Pandering to Israel Means War With Iran
9th May 2019
- Pretext For War- Pompeo Pushes Iran To Quit Nuclear Deal
8th May 2019
- Obama Spied on Other Republicans and Democrats As Well
8th May 2019
- Trump Threatens China Trade War...'Art Of The Deal'?
7th May 2019
- D Is for a Dictatorship Disguised as a Democracy
7th May 2019
- Iran to Even the Nuclear Score With US
7th May 2019
- John Bolton Can Almost Taste War With Iran
6th May 2019
- The Malevolent Farce that is Mueller and the Russia Hoax
6th May 2019
- NATO's Stoltenberg, Satan's 'Man of Straw'
6th May 2019
- A Nuclear War? Over Venezuela?
6th May 2019
- Another 'Jolly Little War'?
4th May 2019
- Democrats Don't Get It on the Drug War
4th May 2019
- McAdams: Venezuela's Guaido Worth More to Maduro Than to Opposition
3rd May 2019
- US Hypocrisy on Venezuela
3rd May 2019
- Biden's Ukrainian Corruption Scandal Casts Ominous Shadow Over 2020 Run
2nd May 2019
- Playing Chicken In The Straits Of Hormuz - Red Lines And War Talk
2nd May 2019
- Israeli Ambassador Calls For The Criminalization of Antisemitic Speech
2nd May 2019
- US Mainstream Media Worships Superficial 'Diversity,' but Diversity of Thought is Forbidden
2nd May 2019
- Venezuela - Guaidó Got Snookered
1st May 2019
- US Troops In Syria For 'Long Haul' Atop 'A Lot Of Oil Resources' - Pentagon Official
1st May 2019
- As Venezuela Coup Fizzles, Pompeo Threatens US Attack
1st May 2019
- April
- Venezuela Coup! Will Neocons (Finally) Get Their War?
30th April 2019
- Why Are Clapper and Brennan Not in Jail?
30th April 2019
- Tit for Tat? Why Did Mueller Let Trump Off the Hook?
29th April 2019
- After Mass Beheadings, Can Trump Still Claim 'Shared Values' With Saudis?
29th April 2019
- Why is Maria Butina in Prison?
29th April 2019
- With Assad Victorious, US Oil Sanctions Now Strangle Entire Syrian Population
28th April 2019
- Int'l Monitors: US Coalition Killed Over 1,600 Civilians During Bombing of Raqqa, Syria
27th April 2019
- Saudi Savagery: Kingdom Beheads 16-Year-Old For Sending Whatsapp Message
27th April 2019
- Trump's Crusaders March To War
27th April 2019
- 'Miscarriage of Justice' - RPI's Daniel McAdams on The Sentencing of Maria Butina
26th April 2019
- Trump Has Murdered Over 40,000 Venezuelans With Sanctions
26th April 2019
- Trump's Envoy to Ukraine is Paid by None Other Than Poroshenko Himself!
26th April 2019
- Trump Takes On Hillary's War...Battle For Libyan Oil!
25th April 2019
- Jared Kushner, Not Maria Butina, Is America's Real Foreign Agent
25th April 2019
- Kim/Putin Summit: Another Neocon Policy 'Success'
24th April 2019
- The Collapse of Deterrence with Iran
24th April 2019
- Pompeo Finally Tells The Truth: 'We Lie, We Cheat, We Steal'
23rd April 2019
- Governing Ukraine is No Laughing Matter
23rd April 2019
- The Three Purposes of Russiagate
23rd April 2019
- The Conspiracy Against Trump
23rd April 2019
- Pentagon's Endless War Brings Endless Pollution
22nd April 2019
- (Government) Spending is Theft
22nd April 2019
- The Prosecution Of Julian Assange Is Infinitely Bigger Than Assange
22nd April 2019
- Mueller Was Supposed to be the Democrats' Savior, But Now They're Out For Blood
19th April 2019
- Robert Mueller Did Not Merely Reject the Trump/Russia Conspiracy Theories. He Obliterated Them.
19th April 2019
- Mueller Exonerates Trump, But 'Russiagate' Will Not Die
18th April 2019
- The Triumph of Evil
18th April 2019
- Rumors of War: Washington Is Looking for a Fight
18th April 2019
- VIPS Fault Mueller Probe, Criticize Refusal To Interview Assange
17th April 2019
- Imperial Presidency Wins Again: Trump's Veto Continues Yemen War
17th April 2019
- From Jesus Christ to Julian Assange: When Dissidents Become Enemies of the State
17th April 2019
- Washington's Biggest Fairy Tale: 'Truth Will Out'
16th April 2019
- 'Pompeo Has Lost His Mind!' - China Fires Back On Venezuela
16th April 2019
- Why the Gulf States Are So Edgy
16th April 2019
- The Railroad That Awaits Julian Assange
15th April 2019
- Co-Conspirator: Ecuador Paid Off To Deliver Assange
15th April 2019
- Iraq Wrecked Me for Nothing
15th April 2019
- Julian Assange: Political Prisoner <