There were no prosecution in three years since publication of this article
Notable quotes:
"... New York Police Department detectives and prosecutors working an alleged underage sexting case against former Congressman Anthony
Weiner have turned over a newly-found laptop he shared with wife Huma Abedin to the FBI with enough evidence "to put Hillary (Clinton)
and her crew away for life," NYPD sources told True Pundit. ..."
"... NYPD detectives and a NYPD Chief, the department's highest rank under Commissioner, said openly that if the FBI and Justice
Department fail to garner timely indictments against Clinton and co- conspirators, NYPD will go public with the damaging emails now
in the hands of FBI Director James Comey and many FBI field offices. ..."
"... Meanwhile, FBI sources said Abedin and Weiner were cooperating with federal agents, who have taken over the non-sexting portions
the case from NYPD. The husband-and-wife Clinton insiders are both shopping for separate immunity deals, sources said. ..."
"... Prosecutors in the office of US Attorney Preet Bharara have issued a subpoena for Weiner's cell phones and travel records,
law enforcement sources confirmed. NYPD said it planned to order the same phone and travel records on Clinton and Abedin, however, the
FBI said it was in the process of requesting the identical records. Law enforcement sources are particularly interested in cell phone
activity and travel to the Bahamas, U.S. Virgin Islands and other locations that sources would not divulge. ..."
"... Both NYPD and FBI sources confirm based on the new emails they now believe Hillary Clinton traveled as Epstein's guest on at
least six occasions, probably more when all the evidence is combed, sources said. Bill Clinton, it has been confirmed in media reports
spanning recent years, that he too traveled with Epstein over 20 times to the island. ..."
"... Because Weiner's campaign website is managed by the third-party consultant and political email guru, FBI agents are burdened
with the task of trying to decipher just how many people had access to Weiner's server and emails and who were these people. Or if the
server was ever compromised by hackers, or other actors. ..."
"... Abedin told FBI agents in an April interview that she didn't know how to consistently print documents or emails from her secure
Dept. of State system. Instead, she would forward the sensitive emails to her yahoo, Clintonemail.com and her email linked to Weiner.
..."
"... Abedin said, according to FBI documents, she would then access those email accounts via webmail from an unclassified computer
system at the State Dept. and print the documents, many of which were classified and top secret, from the largely unprotected webmail
portals. ..."
New York Police Department detectives and prosecutors working an alleged underage sexting case against former Congressman
Anthony Weiner have turned over a newly-found laptop he shared with wife Huma Abedin to the FBI with enough evidence "to put Hillary
(Clinton) and her crew away for life," NYPD sources told True Pundit.
NYPD sources said Clinton's "crew" also included several unnamed yet implicated members of Congress in addition to her aides and
insiders.
The NYPD seized the computer from Weiner during a search warrant and detectives discovered a trove of over 500,000 emails to and
from Hillary Clinton, Abedin and other insiders during her tenure as secretary of state. The content of those emails sparked the
FBI to reopen its defunct email investigation into Clinton on Friday.
But new revelations on the contents of that laptop, according to law enforcement sources, implicate the Democratic presidential
candidate, her subordinates, and even select elected officials in far more alleged serious crimes than mishandling classified and
top secret emails, sources said. NYPD sources said these new emails include evidence linking Clinton herself and associates to:
Money laundering
Child exploitation
Sex crimes with minors (children)
Perjury
Pay to play through Clinton Foundation
Obstruction of justice
Other felony crimes
NYPD detectives and a NYPD Chief, the department's highest rank under Commissioner, said openly that if the FBI and Justice
Department fail to garner timely indictments against Clinton and co- conspirators, NYPD will go public with the damaging emails now
in the hands of FBI Director James Comey and many FBI field offices.
"What's in the emails is staggering and as a father, it turned my stomach," the NYPD Chief said. "There is not going to be
any Houdini-like escape from what we found. We have copies of everything. We will ship them to Wikileaks or I will personally hold
my own press conference if it comes to that."
The NYPD Chief said once Comey saw the alarming contents of the emails he was forced to reopen a criminal probe against Clinton.
"People are going to prison," he said.
Meanwhile, FBI sources said Abedin and Weiner were cooperating with federal agents, who have taken over the non-sexting portions
the case from NYPD. The husband-and-wife Clinton insiders are both shopping for separate immunity deals, sources said.
"If they don't cooperate they are going to see long sentences," a federal law enforcement source said.
NYPD sources said Weiner or Abedin stored all the emails in a massive Microsoft Outlook program on the laptop. The emails
implicate other current and former members of Congress and one high-ranking Democratic Senator as having possibly engaged in criminal
activity too, sources said.
Prosecutors in the office of US Attorney Preet Bharara have issued a subpoena for Weiner's cell phones and travel records,
law enforcement sources confirmed. NYPD said it planned to order the same phone and travel records on Clinton and Abedin, however,
the FBI said it was in the process of requesting the identical records. Law enforcement sources are particularly interested in cell
phone activity and travel to the Bahamas, U.S. Virgin Islands and other locations that sources would not divulge.
The new emails contain travel documents and itineraries indicating Hillary Clinton, President Bill Clinton, Weiner and multiple
members of Congress and other government officials accompanied convicted pedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein on his Boeing 727
on multiple occasions to his private island in the US Virgin Islands, sources said. Epstein's island has also been dubbed
Orgy Island or
Sex Slave Island where Epstein allegedly pimps out underage girls and boys to international dignitaries.
Both NYPD and FBI sources confirm based on the new emails they now believe Hillary Clinton traveled as Epstein's guest on
at least six occasions, probably more when all the evidence is combed, sources said. Bill Clinton, it has been confirmed in media
reports spanning recent years, that he too traveled with Epstein over 20 times to the island.
Laptop Also Unveiled More Classified, Top Secret Breaches
According to other uncovered emails, Abedin and Clinton both sent and received thousands of classified and top secret documents
to personal email accounts including Weiner's unsecured campaign web site which is managed by Democratic political consultants in
Washington D.C.
Weiner maintained little known email accounts that the couple shared on the website anthonyweiner.com. Weiner, a former seven-term
Democratic Congressman from New York, primarily used that domain to campaign for Congress and for his failed mayoral bid of New York
City.
At one point, FBI sources said, Abedin and Clinton's classified and top secret State Department documents and emails were stored
in Weiner's email on a server shared with a dog grooming service and a western Canadian bicycle shop.
However, Weiner and Abedin, who is Hillary Clinton's closest personal aide, weren't the only people with access to the Weiner's
email account. Potentially dozens of unknown individuals had access to Abedin's sensitive State Department emails that were stored
in Weiner's email account, FBI sources confirmed.
FEC records show Weiner paid more than $92,000 of congressional campaign funds to Anne Lewis Strategies LLC to manage his email
and web site. According to FBI sources, the D.C.-based political consulting firm has served as the official administrator of the
anthonyweiner.com domain since 2010, the same time Abedin was working at the State Department. This means technically Weiner and
Abedin's emails, including top secret State Department emails, could have been accessed, printed, discussed, leaked, or distributed
by untold numbers of personnel at the Anne Lewis consulting firm because they can control where the website and it emails are pointed,
FBI sources said.
According to FBI sources, the bureau's newly-minted probe into Clinton's use and handling of emails while she served as secretary
of state, has also been broadened to include investigating new email-related revelations, including:
Abedin forwarded classified and top secret State Department emails to Weiner's email
Abedin stored emails, containing government secrets, in a special folder shared with Weiner warehousing over 500,000 archived
State Department emails.
Weiner had access to these classified and top secret documents without proper security clearance to view the records
Abedin also used a personal yahoo address and her Clintonemail.com address to send/receive/store classified and top secret
documents
A private consultant managed Weiner's site for the last six years, including three years when Clinton was secretary of state,
and therefore, had full access to all emails as the domain's listed registrant and administrator via Whois email contacts.
Because Weiner's campaign website is managed by the third-party consultant and political email guru, FBI agents are burdened
with the task of trying to decipher just how many people had access to Weiner's server and emails and who were these people. Or if
the server was ever compromised by hackers, or other actors.
Abedin told FBI agents in an April interview that she didn't know how to consistently print documents or emails from her secure
Dept. of State system. Instead, she would forward the sensitive emails to her yahoo, Clintonemail.com and her email linked to Weiner.
Abedin said, according to FBI documents, she would then access those email accounts via webmail from an unclassified computer
system at the State Dept. and print the documents, many of which were classified and top secret, from the largely unprotected webmail
portals.
Clinton did not have a computer in her office on Mahogany Row at the State Dept. so she was not able to read timely intelligence
unless it was printed out for her, Abedin said. Abedin also said Clinton could not operate the secure State Dept. fax machine installed
in her Chappaqua, NY home without assistance.
Perhaps more alarming, according to the FBI's 302 Report detailing its interview with Abedin, none of the multiple FBI agents
and Justice Department officials who conducted the interview pressed Abedin to further detail the email address linked to Weiner.
There was never a follow up, according to the 302 report.
But now, all that has changed, with the FBI's decision to reopen the Clinton email investigation and the husband and wife seeking
immunity deals to testify against Clinton and other associates about the contents of the laptop's emails.
This was written in 2011 but it summarizes Obama presidency pretty nicely, even today. Betrayer
in chief, the master of bait and switch. That is the essence of Obama legacy. On "Great Democratic betrayal"...
Obama always was a closet neoliberal and neocon. A stooge of neoliberal financial oligarchy, a puppet,
if you want politically incorrect term. He just masked it well during hist first election campaigning
as a progressive democrat... And he faced Romney in his second campaign, who was even worse, so after
betraying American people once, he was reelected and did it twice. Much like Bush II. He like
another former cocaine addict -- George W Bush has never any intention of helping American people, only
oligarchy.
Notable quotes:
"... IN contrast, when faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. ..."
"... We (yes, we) recognise that capitalism is the most efficient way to maximise overall prosperity and quality of life. But we also recognise that unfettered, it will ravage the environment, abuse labor, and expand income disparity until violence or tragedy (or both) ensues. ..."
"... These are the lessons we've learned since the industrial revolution, and they're the ones that we should be drawing from the past decade. We recognise that we need a strong federal government to check these tendencies, and to strike a stable, sustainable balance between prosperity, community, opportunity, wealth, justice, freedom. We need a voice to fill the moral vacuum that has allowed the Koch/Tea/Fox Party to emerge and grab power. ..."
"... Americans know this---including, of course, President Obama (see his April 13 speech at GW University). But as this article by Dr. Westen so effectively shows, Obama is incompetent to lead us back ..."
"... he is not competent to lead us back to a state of American morality, where government is the protector of those who work hard, and the provider of opportunity to all Americans. ..."
"... I've heard him called a mediator, a conciliator, a compromiser, etc. Those terms indicate someone who is bringing divergent views together and moving us along. That's part of what a leader does, though not all. Yet I don't think he's even lived up to his reputation as a mediator. ..."
"... Almost three years after I voted for Obama, I still don't know what he's doing other than trying to help the financial industry: the wealthy who benefit most from it and the technocrats who run it for them. But average working people, people like myself and my daughter and my grandson, have not been helped. We are worse off than before. And millions of unemployed and underemployed are even worse off than my family is. ..."
"... So whatever else he is (and that still remains a mystery to me), President Obama is not the leader I thought I was voting for. ..."
"... I knew that Obama was a charade early on when giving a speech about the banking failures to the nation, instead of giving the narrative Mr. Westen accurately recommended on the origins of the orgy of greed that just crippled our economy and caused suffering for millions of Americans ..."
"... He should have been condemning the craven, wanton, greed of nihilistic financial gangsters who hijacked our economy. Instead he seemed to be calling for all Americans not to hate rich people. That was not the point. Americans don't hate rich people, but they should hate rich people who acquire their wealth at the expense of the well being of an entire nation through irresponsible, avaricious, and in some instances illegal practices, and legally bribe politicians to enact laws which allow them to run amok over our economy without supervision or regulation. ..."
"... I knew then that Obama was either a political lemon, in over his head, an extremely conflict averse neurotic individual with a compulsive need for some delusional ideal of neutrality in political and social relations, or a political phony beholden to the same forces that almost destroyed the country as Republicans are. ..."
When Barack Obama rose to the lectern on Inauguration Day, the nation was in tatters. Americans
were scared and angry. The economy was spinning in reverse. Three-quarters of a million people lost
their jobs that month. Many had lost their homes, and with them the only nest eggs they had. Even
the usually impervious upper middle class had seen a decade of stagnant or declining investment,
with the stock market dropping in value with no end in sight. Hope was as scarce as credit.
In that context, Americans needed their president to tell them a story that made sense of what
they had just been through, what caused it, and how it was going to end. They needed to hear that
he understood what they were feeling, that he would track down those responsible for their pain and
suffering, and that he would restore order and safety. What they were waiting for, in broad strokes,
was a story something like this:
"I know you're scared and angry. Many of you have lost your jobs, your homes, your hope. This
was a disaster, but it was not a natural disaster. It was made by Wall Street gamblers who speculated
with your lives and futures. It was made by conservative extremists who told us that if we just eliminated
regulations and rewarded greed and recklessness, it would all work out. But it didn't work out. And
it didn't work out 80 years ago, when the same people sold our grandparents the same bill of goods,
with the same results. But we learned something from our grandparents about how to fix it, and we
will draw on their wisdom. We will restore business confidence the old-fashioned way: by putting
money back in the pockets of working Americans by putting them back to work, and by restoring integrity
to our financial markets and demanding it of those who want to run them. I can't promise that we
won't make mistakes along the way. But I can promise you that they will be honest mistakes, and that
your government has your back again." A story isn't a policy. But that simple narrative - and the
policies that would naturally have flowed from it - would have inoculated against much of what was
to come in the intervening two and a half years of failed government, idled factories and idled hands.
That story would have made clear that the president understood that the American people had given
Democrats the presidency and majorities in both houses of Congress to fix the mess the Republicans
and Wall Street had made of the country, and that this would not be a power-sharing arrangement.
It would have made clear that the problem wasn't tax-and-spend liberalism or the deficit - a deficit
that didn't exist until George W. Bush gave nearly $2 trillion in tax breaks largely to the wealthiest
Americans and squandered $1 trillion in two wars.
And perhaps most important, it would have offered a clear, compelling alternative to the dominant
narrative of the right, that our problem is not due to spending on things like the pensions of firefighters,
but to the fact that those who can afford to buy influence are rewriting the rules so they can cut
themselves progressively larger slices of the American pie while paying less of their fair share
for it.
But there was no story - and there has been none since.
In similar circumstances, Franklin D. Roosevelt offered Americans a promise to use the power of
his office to make their lives better and to keep trying until he got it right. Beginning in his
first inaugural address, and in the fireside chats that followed, he explained how the crash had
happened, and he minced no words about those who had caused it. He promised to do something no president
had done before: to use the resources of the United States to put Americans directly to work, building
the infrastructure we still rely on today. He swore to keep the people who had caused the crisis
out of the halls of power, and he made good on that promise. In a 1936 speech at Madison Square Garden,
he thundered, "Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate
as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me - and I welcome their hatred."
When Barack Obama stepped into the Oval Office, he stepped into a cycle of American history, best
exemplified by F.D.R. and his distant cousin, Teddy. After a great technological revolution or a
major economic transition, as when America changed from a nation of farmers to an urban industrial
one, there is often a period of great concentration of wealth, and with it, a concentration of power
in the wealthy. That's what we saw in 1928, and that's what we see today. At some point that power
is exercised so injudiciously, and the lives of so many become so unbearable, that a period of reform
ensues - and a charismatic reformer emerges to lead that renewal. In that sense, Teddy Roosevelt
started the cycle of reform his cousin picked up 30 years later, as he began efforts to bust the
trusts and regulate the railroads, exercise federal power over the banks and the nation's food supply,
and protect America's land and wildlife, creating the modern environmental movement.
Those were the shoes - that was the historic role - that Americans elected Barack Obama to fill.
The president is fond of referring to "the arc of history," paraphrasing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr.'s famous statement that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
But with his deep-seated aversion to conflict and his profound failure to understand bully dynamics
- in which conciliation is always the wrong course of action, because bullies perceive it as weakness
and just punch harder the next time - he has broken that arc and has likely bent it backward for
at least a generation.
When Dr. King spoke of the great arc bending toward justice, he did not mean that we should wait
for it to bend. He exhorted others to put their full weight behind it, and he gave his life speaking
with a voice that cut through the blistering force of water cannons and the gnashing teeth of police
dogs. He preached the gospel of nonviolence, but he knew that whether a bully hid behind a club or
a poll tax, the only effective response was to face the bully down, and to make the bully show his
true and repugnant face in public.
IN contrast, when faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic
inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack
Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. Instead of indicting the
people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it. He never explained that
decision to the public - a failure in storytelling as extraordinary as the failure in judgment behind
it. Had the president chosen to bend the arc of history, he would have told the public the story
of the destruction wrought by the dismantling of the New Deal regulations that had protected them
for more than half a century. He would have offered them a counternarrative of how to fix the problem
other than the politics of appeasement, one that emphasized creating economic demand and consumer
confidence by putting consumers back to work. He would have had to stare down those who had wrecked
the economy, and he would have had to tolerate their hatred if not welcome it. But the arc of his
temperament just didn't bend that far.
Michael August 7, 2011
Eloquently expressed and horrifically accurate, this excellent analysis articulates the frustration
that so many of us have felt watching Mr...
Bill Levine August 7, 2011
Very well put. I know that I have been going through Kübler-Ross's stages of grief ever since
the foxes (a.k.a. Geithner and Summers) were...
AnAverageAmerican August 7, 2011
"In that context, Americans needed their president to tell them a story that made sense of
what they had just been through, what caused it,...
Unfortunately, the Democratic Congress of 2008-2010, did not have the will to make the economic
and social program decisions that would have improved the economic situation for the middle-class;
and it is becoming more obvious that President Obama does not have the temperament to publicly
push for programs and policies that he wants the congress to enact.
The American people have a problem: we reelect Obama and hope for the best; or we elect a Republican
and expect the worst. There is no question that the Health Care law that was just passed would
be reversed; Medicare and Medicare would be gutted; and who knows what would happen to Social
Security. You can be sure, though, that business taxes and regulation reforms would not be in
the cards and those regulations that have been enacted would be reversed. We have traveled this
road before and we should be wise enough not to travel it again!
Brilliant analysis - and I suspect that a very large number of those who voted for President
Obama will recognize in this the thoughts that they have been trying to ignore, or have been trying
not to say out loud. Later historians can complete this analysis and attempt to explain exactly
why Mr. Obama has turned out the way he has - but right now, it may be time to ask a more relevant
and urgent question.
If it is not too late, will a challenger emerge in time before the 2012 elections, or will
we be doomed to hold our noses and endure another four years of this?
Very eloquent and exactly to the point. Like many others, I was enthralled by the rhetoric
of his story, making the leap of faith (or hope) that because he could tell his story so well,
he could tell, as you put it, "the story the American people were waiting to hear."
Disappointment has darkened into disillusion, disillusion into a species of despair. Will I
vote for Barack Obama again? What are the options?
This is the most brilliant and tragic story I have read in a long time---in fact, precisely
since I read when Ill Fares the Land by Tony Judt. When will a leader emerge with a true moral
vision for the federal government and for our country? Someone who sees government as a balance
to capitalism, and a means to achieve the social and economic justice that we (yes, we) believe
in? Will that leadership arrive before parts of America come to look like the dystopia of Johannesburg?
We (yes, we) recognise that capitalism is the most efficient way to maximise overall prosperity
and quality of life. But we also recognise that unfettered, it will ravage the environment, abuse
labor, and expand income disparity until violence or tragedy (or both) ensues.
These are the lessons we've learned since the industrial revolution, and they're the ones
that we should be drawing from the past decade. We recognise that we need a strong federal government
to check these tendencies, and to strike a stable, sustainable balance between prosperity, community,
opportunity, wealth, justice, freedom. We need a voice to fill the moral vacuum that has allowed
the Koch/Tea/Fox Party to emerge and grab power.
Americans know this---including, of course, President Obama (see his April 13 speech at
GW University). But as this article by Dr. Westen so effectively shows, Obama is incompetent to
lead us back to America's traditional position on the global economic/political spectrum.
He's brilliant and eloquent. He's achieved personal success that is inspirational. He's done some
good things as president. But he is not competent to lead us back to a state of American morality,
where government is the protector of those who work hard, and the provider of opportunity to all
Americans.
Taxes, subsidies, entitlements, laws... these are the tools we have available to achieve our
national moral vision. But the vision has been muddled (hijacked?) and that is our biggest problem.
-->
I voted for Obama. I thought then, and still think, he's a decent person, a smart person, a
person who wants to do the best he can for others. When I voted for him, I was thinking he's a
centrist who will find a way to unite our increasingly polarized and ugly politics in the USA.
Or if not unite us, at least forge a way to get some important things done despite the ugly polarization.
And I must confess, I have been disappointed. Deeply so. He has not united us. He has not forged
a way to accomplish what needs to be done. He has not been a leader.
I've heard him called a mediator, a conciliator, a compromiser, etc. Those terms indicate
someone who is bringing divergent views together and moving us along. That's part of what a leader
does, though not all. Yet I don't think he's even lived up to his reputation as a mediator.
Almost three years after I voted for Obama, I still don't know what he's doing other than
trying to help the financial industry: the wealthy who benefit most from it and the technocrats
who run it for them. But average working people, people like myself and my daughter and my grandson,
have not been helped. We are worse off than before. And millions of unemployed and underemployed
are even worse off than my family is.
So whatever else he is (and that still remains a mystery to me), President Obama is not
the leader I thought I was voting for. Which leaves me feeling confused and close to apathetic
about what to do as a voter in 2012. More of the same isn't worth voting for. Yet I don't see
anyone out there who offers the possibility of doing better.
This was an extraordinarily well written, eloquent and comprehensive indictment of the failure
of the Obama presidency.
If a credible primary challenger to Obama ever could arise, the positions and analysis in this
column would be all he or she would need to justify the Democratic party's need to seek new leadership.
I knew that Obama was a charade early on when giving a speech about the banking failures
to the nation, instead of giving the narrative Mr. Westen accurately recommended on the origins
of the orgy of greed that just crippled our economy and caused suffering for millions of Americans,
he said "we don't disparage wealth in America." I was dumbfounded.
He should have been condemning the craven, wanton, greed of nihilistic financial gangsters
who hijacked our economy. Instead he seemed to be calling for all Americans not to hate rich people.
That was not the point. Americans don't hate rich people, but they should hate rich people who
acquire their wealth at the expense of the well being of an entire nation through irresponsible,
avaricious, and in some instances illegal practices, and legally bribe politicians to enact laws
which allow them to run amok over our economy without supervision or regulation.
I knew then that Obama was either a political lemon, in over his head, an extremely conflict
averse neurotic individual with a compulsive need for some delusional ideal of neutrality in political
and social relations, or a political phony beholden to the same forces that almost destroyed the
country as Republicans are.
If such attempts were really registered, the question is were those attempts to hack US sites from
Russian IP space a false flag operation, probably with participation of Ukrainian secret services?
'
As one commenter noted: "The Ukrainian government have been trying to drive a wedge between the West
and Russia for years for their own political advantage."
If so what is the agenda outside obvious attempt to poison Us-Russian relations just before
Trump assumes presidency. Neocon in Washington are really afraid losing this plush positions.
And there is the whole colony of such "national security professionals" in Washington DC. For
example Robert Kagan can't do anything useful outside his favorite Russophobic agenda and would be an
unemployed along with his wife, who brought us Ukrainian disaster.
Notable quotes:
"... President Obama issued a terse statement seeming to blame Russia for the hack of the Democratic National Committee emails. "These data theft and disclosure activities could only have been directed by the highest levels of the Russian government," he wrote. ..."
"... The problem with this story is that, like the Iraq-WMD mess, it takes place in the middle of a highly politicized environment during which the motives of all the relevant actors are suspect. Nothing quite adds up. ..."
"... Now we have this sanctions story, which presents a new conundrum. It appears that a large segment of the press is biting hard on the core allegations of electoral interference emanating from the Obama administration. ..."
"... Did the Russians do it? Very possibly, in which case it should be reported to the max. But the press right now is flying blind. ..."
"... Maybe the Russians did hack the DNC, but the WikiLeaks material actually came from someone else? There is even a published report to that effect, with a former British ambassador as a source, not that it's any more believable than anything else here. ..."
"... We ought to have learned from the Judith Miller episode. Not only do governments lie, they won't hesitate to burn news agencies. In a desperate moment, they'll use any sucker they can find to get a point across. ..."
"... The Joint Analysis Report from the FBI contains an appendix that lists hundreds of IP addresses that were supposedly "used by Russian civilian and military intelligence services." While some of those IP addresses are from Russia, the majority are from all over the world, which means that the hackers constantly faked their location. ..."
"... "If I was the Chinese and I wanted to make it look like the Russians did it, I would use Russian language within the code, I would use Russian techniques of breaking into the organization," McAfee said, adding that, in the end, "there simply is no way to assign a source for any attack." ..."
"... I have a problem understanding why the powers that be can't understand the widening gap between their on podium statements and the average persons view. Are they hoping to brainwash, or really believe it, or just leaving a video record for posterity that might sway historical interpretation of the current time? ..."
"... A little OT, but how many people realize that Israel (less than half the population of the former Palestine) has taken complete control of ALL water and has decreed that 3% of that water may be directed to the Palestinians! ..."
"... It's been said that on average Americans are like mushrooms – "Keep 'em in the dark and feed 'em shit!" ..."
"... And THAT, from what I've read in OPEN literature (obviously) about what is known by our cyber threat intel community, read on tech sites, and seen on the outstanding documentary program CyberWar about the Eastern European hacking community, is a OUTRIGHT BLATANT LIE. ..."
"... NOTE that he may actually believe that because that is what he may have been TOLD, just as Bush was told there were WMDs in Iraq, but as I've pointed out, the clumsy errors allowing the malware to be so very EASILY traced back to "supposedly" Russia are beyond belief for any state-sponsored outfit, especially a Russian effort. ..."
"... Note that the user info for TWO BILLION Yahoo email accounts was stolen and they left no traces which then led the FBI to conclude that it must have been "state sponsored." ..."
"... We are left with two basic options. Either they are simply stupid or their is a larger agenda at hand. I don't believe they are stupid. They have been setting fires all around this election for months, none of them effective by themselves, but ALL reinforcing the general notion that Trump is unfit and illegitimate. ..."
"... I do not believe this is just random panic and hyperbole. They are "building" something. ..."
"... This is what is must have been like being a Soviet Citizen in 1989 or so. The official media was openly laughed at because its lies were so preposterous. ..."
"... Sadly, the JAR, as the Joint Analysis Report is called, does little to end the debate. Instead of providing smoking guns that the Russian government was behind specific hacks, it largely restates previous private-sector claims without providing any support for their validity. Even worse, it provides an effective bait and switch by promising newly declassified intelligence into Russian hackers' "tradecraft and techniques" and instead delivering generic methods carried out by just about all state-sponsored hacking groups." ..."
"... WORSE than "delivering generic methods carried out by just about all state-sponsored hacking groups." It should have said "by just about anyone using 'in the wild' malware tools." ..."
"... The Russians probably have a lot of information about USG employees, contractors, etc, via hacking, recording, etc than Wikileaks. But, as a general rule, intelligence agencies do not dump it into the public domain because you don't want a potential adversary know what you know about him lest he investigate and close off the means of obtaining that information. The leaks came from elsewhere. ..."
"... Smells like a "false flag" operation, like the USA/NATO Operation Gladio in Europe. ..."
"... McCain and the War Hawks have had it out for Russia for a long time, and the Neo-cons have been closing in on the borders of Russia for some time. What will be interesting is when Trump meets with the CIA/NSA et al. for intel briefings on the alleged hacking. Hopefully, Trump will bring along VP Pence, Mad Dog and the other Marine generals (appointees) for advice. I suspect that the "false flag" nature of the hacking excuse will be evident and revealed as the pretext for the Neo-con anti-Russia agenda moving forward. ..."
"... McCain is the real thug, and an interferer in foreign elections (Kiev) and seems to have no real scruples. ..."
"... After Victoria Nuland brags about the USA spending $5 billion to overthrow the elected Ukraine government, how these Russia-phobes have any credibility is beyond me. Just shows that the consolidation of the media into a few main propaganda outlets under Bill Clinton (who also brought the Neo-cons into foreign policy dominance) has reached its logical apex. The Swamp is indeed a stinking, Corrupt miasma. ..."
"... Russia a country of 170 million surrounded by NATO military bases and 800 million people in the EU and USA is the threat? The US alone spends 12 times as much on its military annually than Russia. It's not Russia invading and overthrowing secular governments in the Muslim world. ..."
"... If I remember correctly the CIA claimed their intelligence sources came from unspecified 'allies'. It seems rather crucial to establish who these allies actually are. If it were Germany that would be one thing, however it is more than likely to be the Ukraine. ..."
"... So if Obama had actually produced evidence that the Russians had hacked Hilary's illegal, unprotected email setup in her Chapaqua basement/closet how would that change the ***content*** of the emails? It wouldn't. ..."
"... Obama is failing to convince the world that Russia is a bunch of whistle blowers on his corrupt regime. All of the emails detailing corruption and fraud are true (unchallenged), however Obama wants to suggest they were obtained illegally from an illegal email server? That is Obama's bullshit defense for the corrupt behavior? ..."
Is there any evidence those expelled are "intelligence operatives"? Any hard evidence Russia was
behind the Hillary hacks? Any credible evidence that Putin himself is to blame?
The answers are No, No, and No. Yet, once again the American press is again asked to co-sign a
dubious intelligence assessment.
In an extraordinary development Thursday, the Obama administration announced a series of sanctions
against Russia. Thirty-five Russian nationals will be expelled from the country. President
Obama issued a terse statement seeming to blame Russia for the hack of the Democratic National
Committee emails. "These data theft and disclosure activities could only have been directed by
the highest levels of the Russian government," he wrote.
The problem with this story is that, like the Iraq-WMD mess, it takes place in the middle
of a highly politicized environment during which the motives of all the relevant actors are suspect.
Nothing quite adds up.
If the American security agencies had smoking-gun evidence that the Russians had an organized
campaign to derail the U.S. presidential election and deliver the White House to Trump, then expelling
a few dozen diplomats after the election seems like an oddly weak and ill-timed response. Voices
in both parties are saying this now.
Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham
noted the "small price" Russia paid for its "brazen attack." The Democratic National Committee,
meanwhile, said Thursday that taken alone, the Obama response is "
insufficient " as a response to "attacks on the United States by a foreign power."
The "small price" is an eyebrow-raiser.
Adding to the problem is that in the last months of the campaign, and also in the time since
the election, we've seen an epidemic of factually loose, clearly politically motivated reporting
about Russia. Democrat-leaning pundits have been unnervingly quick to use phrases like "Russia
hacked the election."
This has led to widespread confusion among news audiences over whether the Russians hacked
the DNC emails (a story that has at least been backed by some evidence, even if it
hasn't always been great evidence ), or whether Russians hacked vote tallies in critical states
(a far more outlandish tale backed by
no credible evidence ).
As noted in The Intercept and other outlets, an Economist/YouGov poll conducted this month
shows that 50 percent of all Clinton voters believe the Russians hacked vote tallies.
And reports by some Democrat-friendly reporters – like Kurt Eichenwald, who has birthed some
real head-scratchers this year, including what he admitted was a
baseless claim that Trump spent time in an institution in 1990 – have attempted to argue that
Trump surrogates may have been liaising with the Russians because they either visited Russia
or appeared on the RT network. Similar reporting about Russian scheming has been based entirely
on unnamed security sources.
Now we have this sanctions story, which presents a new conundrum. It appears that a large
segment of the press is biting hard on the core allegations of electoral interference emanating
from the Obama administration.
Did the Russians do it? Very possibly, in which case it should be reported to the max.
But the press right now is flying blind.
Maybe the Russians did hack the DNC, but the WikiLeaks material actually came from someone
else? There is even a
published report to that effect, with a former British ambassador as a source, not that it's
any more believable than anything else here.
We just don't know, which is the problem.
We ought to have learned from the Judith Miller episode. Not only do governments lie, they
won't hesitate to burn news agencies. In a desperate moment, they'll use any sucker they can find
to get a point across.
The Joint Analysis Report from the FBI contains an appendix that lists hundreds of IP addresses
that were supposedly "used by Russian civilian and military intelligence services." While some
of those IP addresses are from Russia, the majority are from all over the world, which means that
the hackers constantly faked their location.
McAfee argues that the report is a "fallacy," explaining that hackers can fake their location,
their language, and any markers that could lead back to them. Any hacker who had the skills to
hack into the DNC would also be able to hide their tracks, he said
"If I was the Chinese and I wanted to make it look like the Russians did it, I would use
Russian language within the code, I would use Russian techniques of breaking into the organization,"
McAfee said, adding that, in the end, "there simply is no way to assign a source for any attack."
Question of Patriotism
It's not patriotic to accept accusations as facts, given US history of lies, deceit, meddling,
and wars.
The gullibility and ignorance of the typical media lapdog is appalling, and whores like McCain
and Graham will use them shamelessly to promote their twisted, warmongering agenda. The same old
story, over and over again.
I have a problem understanding why the powers that be can't understand the widening gap between
their on podium statements and the average persons view. Are they hoping to brainwash, or really
believe it, or just leaving a video record for posterity that might sway historical interpretation
of the current time?
Net control very likely in Europe soon with public administration of the web/content. Might at
least help reduce the unemployment rate. Looked over the 2016 Bilderberg attendees too. MSM attendees
interesting vs political bias they exhibit.
Whoever thinks there aren't people behind the scenes with a plan is naive and woe betide anyone
upsetting that plan.
Unemployment rate read last refuge from the official economy. Not the alt. web that takes away
motivation, it is a pressure valve for people who find the official direction nothing short of
insulting. The majority of social media users won't be distracted.
Noticed zh on Italy for you if you had not picked it up
A little OT, but how many people realize that Israel (less than half the population of the
former Palestine) has taken complete control of ALL water and has decreed that 3% of that water
may be directed to the Palestinians!
Over ten million get running water for 12 hrs a week, while in Israel (borders move
every day as the world says nothing) there are no water restrictions zero!
So, while Palestinians
struggle to live in hot barren desert conditions (food and medicine is also denied children die
of treatable cancer often as medication is blocked), a 5 min drive away millions of gallons are
used to create a green, lush paradise for the Jewish Masters!
Did you know US laws were changed in 1968 to allow "Dual Citizens" to be elected and appointed
to government positions and today many of the top posts are citizens of Israel and America WTF?
Trump needs to make a daily dose of Red Pills the law
Oops the 10M fig is a bit high but it's at least double the Jewish population, yet they get 97%
this is slow moving genocide yet it's never even acknowledged
Syria is about gas pipelines. Corporations want to profit from the gas pipeline through the region
and wr the people are supposed to send our children to war over it and pay taxes tpbsupport the
effort. Rissia wants pipelines from their country under the Black sea and Irans pipelines to the
north. The US is supporting Qatar pipeline and LNG from our own shores to the EU.
"These data theft and disclosure activities could only have been directed by the highest levels
of the Russian government," (Obama) wrote.
And THAT, from what I've read in OPEN literature (obviously) about what is known by our
cyber threat intel community, read on tech sites, and seen on the outstanding documentary program
CyberWar about the Eastern European hacking community, is a OUTRIGHT BLATANT LIE.
NOTE that he may actually believe that because that is what he may have been TOLD, just as
Bush was told there were WMDs in Iraq, but as I've pointed out, the clumsy errors allowing the
malware to be so very EASILY traced back to "supposedly" Russia are beyond belief for any state-sponsored
outfit, especially a Russian effort.
Note that the user info for TWO BILLION Yahoo email accounts was stolen and they left no
traces which then led the FBI to conclude that it must have been "state sponsored."
We are left with two basic options. Either they are simply stupid or their is a larger agenda
at hand. I don't believe they are stupid. They have been setting fires all around this election
for months, none of them effective by themselves, but ALL reinforcing the general notion that
Trump is unfit and illegitimate.
I do not believe this is just random panic and hyperbole. They are "building" something.
Well, it is an established and accepted fact that Richard Nixon was a very intelligent guy. None
of Nixon's detractors ever claimed he was stupid, and Nixon won reelection easily.
Tricky Dick was just a tad "honesty challenged", and so is Obama. They were/are both neo-keynesians,
both took their sweet time ending stupid wars started by their predecessors even after it was
clear the wars were pointless.
Then again, I doubt Obozo is as smart as Nixon. Soros is clearly the puppeteer controlling
what Obama does. Soros is now freaking out that his fascist agenda has been exposed.
This is what is must have been like being a Soviet Citizen in 1989 or so. The official media
was openly laughed at because its lies were so preposterous.
"While security companies in the private sector have said for months the hacking campaign was
the work of people working for the Russian government, anonymous people tied to the leaks have
claimed they are lone wolves. Many independent security experts said there was little way to know
the true origins of the attacks.
Sadly, the JAR, as the Joint Analysis Report is called, does little to end the debate.
Instead of providing smoking guns that the Russian government was behind specific hacks, it largely
restates previous private-sector claims without providing any support for their validity. Even
worse, it provides an effective bait and switch by promising newly declassified intelligence into
Russian hackers' "tradecraft and techniques" and instead delivering generic methods carried out
by just about all state-sponsored hacking groups."
WORSE than "delivering generic methods carried out by just about all state-sponsored hacking
groups." It should have said "by just about anyone using 'in the wild' malware tools."
2015 Bilderberg. Looking down the attendees and subjects covered. Interesting some of the main
anti-Brexit groups had representatives there, suggests HC picked for 2016 US election, Cyber-security
and etc. Look at the key topics. How they all helped define 2016. So many current intertwined
themes.
The Russians probably have a lot of information about USG employees, contractors, etc,
via hacking, recording, etc than Wikileaks. But, as a general rule, intelligence agencies do not
dump it into the public domain because you don't want a potential adversary know what you know
about him lest he investigate and close off the means of obtaining that information. The leaks
came from elsewhere.
Smells like a "false flag" operation, like the USA/NATO Operation Gladio in Europe.
McCain and the War Hawks have had it out for Russia for a long time, and the Neo-cons have
been closing in on the borders of Russia for some time. What will be interesting is when Trump
meets with the CIA/NSA et al. for intel briefings on the alleged hacking. Hopefully, Trump will
bring along VP Pence, Mad Dog and the other Marine generals (appointees) for advice. I suspect
that the "false flag" nature of the hacking excuse will be evident and revealed as the pretext
for the Neo-con anti-Russia agenda moving forward.
The CIA it is now widely believed was part of the Deep State behind the JFK assassination when
JFK took an independent view, so Trump will need the USA Marines on his side. McCain is the
real thug, and an interferer in foreign elections (Kiev) and seems to have no real scruples.
After Victoria Nuland brags about the USA spending $5 billion to overthrow the elected
Ukraine government, how these Russia-phobes have any credibility is beyond me. Just shows that
the consolidation of the media into a few main propaganda outlets under Bill Clinton (who also
brought the Neo-cons into foreign policy dominance) has reached its logical apex. The Swamp is
indeed a stinking, Corrupt miasma.
Perhaps the Clinton Foundation and nascent Obama foundation feel it in their financial
interests to nurture the misma.
Cha-ching, cha-ching. Money to be made in demonizing Russia.
"The CIA it is now widely believed was part of the Deep State behind the JFK assassination when
JFK took an independent view "
All the circumstantial evidence pointed to Oswald. No one has ever proven otherwise, in over
50 years.
After 50 years of being propagandized by conspiracy book writers, it isn't surprising that
anything is widely believed at this point. The former curator of the 6th Floor Museum, Gary Mack,
believed there was a conspiracy, but over time came to realize that it was Oswald, alone.
When liberal Rolling Stone questions the Obama/DNC propaganda, you know for certain that they
have lost even their base supporters (the ones that can still think). The BS has just gotten too
stupid.
Why is the WSJ strongly supporting Obama here but also saying he waited way to long to make this
move? I don't always agree with them nor do I with you.
Ok I haven't read the comments but would only say that when Vladimir Putin the once leader
of the KGB becomes a preacher and starts criticizing the West for abandoning its Christian roots,
it's moral dignity, that for me doesn't just stink, it raises red flags all over the place. I
think Trump and some of the rest of u r being set up here-like lambs to the slaughter. Mish your
naïveté here surprises me!
Russia a country of 170 million surrounded by NATO military bases and 800 million people
in the EU and USA is the threat? The US alone spends 12 times as much on its military annually
than Russia. It's not Russia invading and overthrowing secular governments in the Muslim world.
If I remember correctly the CIA claimed their intelligence sources came from unspecified 'allies'.
It seems rather crucial to establish who these allies actually are. If it were Germany that would
be one thing, however it is more than likely to be the Ukraine.
The Ukranian government have been trying to drive a wedge between the West and Russia for years
for their own political advantage. If I was Trump then when I took office I would want an extremely
thorough investigation into the activities of the CIA by a third reliable party.
Excerpt: But was it really Russian meddling? After all, how does one prove not only intent
but source in a world of cyberespionage, where planting false flag clues and other Indicators
of Compromise (IOCs) meant to frame a specific entity, is as important as the actual hack.
Robert M. Lee, CEO and founder of cybersecurity company Dragos, which specializes in threats
facing critical infrastructure, also noted that the IOCs included "commodity malware," or hacking
tools that are widely available for purchase.
He said:
1. No they did not penetrate the grid.
2. The IOCs contained *commodity malware* – can't attribute based off that alone.
So if Obama had actually produced evidence that the Russians had hacked Hilary's illegal,
unprotected email setup in her Chapaqua basement/closet how would that change the ***content***
of the emails? It wouldn't.
Obama is failing to convince the world that Russia is a bunch of whistle blowers on his
corrupt regime. All of the emails detailing corruption and fraud are true (unchallenged), however
Obama wants to suggest they were obtained illegally from an illegal email server? That is Obama's
bullshit defense for the corrupt behavior?
And as "proportional retaliation" for this Russian whistle blowing, Obozo is evicting 35 entertainment
staff from the Russian embassy summer camp?
I doubt Hollywood or San Francisco has the integrity to admit they backed the wrong loser when
they supported Obozo but they should think about their own credibility after January 20th. Anyone
who is still backing Obozo is just too stupid to tie their own shoes much less vote
"... White House/StateDep press release on sanctions is ORWELLIAN: corruption within the DNC/Clinton's
manager Podesta undermines the democracy, not its exposure as claimed (let alone the fact that there
is still no evidence that the Russian government has anything to do with the hacks). ..."
"... The press release also talks about how the security of the USA and its interests were compromised,
so Obama in effects says that national security interest of the country is to have corrupt political
system, which is insane. ..."
"... You may be sure that the Americans will commit all the stupidities they can think of, plus
some that are beyond imagination." ~Charles de Gaulle. ..."
"... United States are not united I guess. Guess, that Merkel is the next on the list... ..."
"... Obama will be making to many paid speeches to be doing anything of the sort. And frankly I
suspect he be silent, because Trump is soon going to know where all the bodies were buried under Obama,
just like Obama knows where all the bodies are buried from the Bush area. ..."
On Friday, the Kremlin responded to the moves, including the expulsion of 35 suspected intelligence
operatives and the closing of two Russian facilities in the US, with a shrug. Putin, it seems,
is willing simply to wait until Trump moves into the Oval Office. Trump's tweet suggested he is
too.
But such provocative words could not distract the media and public from another domestic concern
for Trump – the growing perception that his predecessor has acted to
his disadvantage .
"The sanctions were clearly an attempt by the Obama administration to throw a wrench into –
or [to] box in – the next administration's relationship with Russia," said Boris Zilberman, a
Russia expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
"Putin, in part, saw through that and sidestepped it by playing good cop to [Russian foreign
minister Sergey] Lavrov and the [state] Duma, who were calling for a reciprocal response."
vgnych 8h ago
All Obama does with his clumsy movements is just attempting to blame Russians for Democrat's
loss of elections. Also he is obscuring peaceful power transition while at it.
All what Trump needs to do is to just call the looser a loser a move on.
White House/StateDep press release on sanctions is ORWELLIAN: corruption within the DNC/Clinton's
manager Podesta undermines the democracy, not its exposure as claimed (let alone the fact that
there is still no evidence that the Russian government has anything to do with the hacks).
The press release also talks about how the security of the USA and its interests were
compromised, so Obama in effects says that national security interest of the country is to
have corrupt political system, which is insane.
This argumentation means that even if Russian government has done the hacking, it was a
good deed, there is nothing to sanction Russia for even in such case.
'Fraid both Putin and Trump are a lot smarter than Barry. Putin's move in not retaliating and
inviting US kids to the Kremlin New Year party was an astute judo throw. And Barry is sitting
on his backside wondering how it happened.
Reply
.. Probably Obama's "exceptionalism" made him so clumsy on international affairs stage..
.. just recently.. snubbed by Fidel.. he refused to meet him..
.. humiliated by Raul Castro, he declined to hug president of USA..
.. Duterte described.. hmm.. his provenance..
.. Bibi told him off in most vulgar way.. several times..
.. and now this..
..pathetic..
P.S. You may be sure that the Americans will commit all the stupidities they can think of, plus
some that are beyond imagination." ~Charles de Gaulle.
Obama knew about Russian involvement in July. Look it up. He ignored it because it was seen
as having no effect, and they didn't want the appearance of the government favoring Hillary,
because they thought she was in line for a landslide victory.
After the election, "RUSSIA" has become a fund raising buzz word for Democrats.
The election should have taught our "betters" that people do think for themselves, albeit occasionally.
I've been frustrated enough with Obama since he pardoned Bush and Cheney... now he wants
to sacrifice whatever shreds of reputation the Democratic party has... to be a white knight
for miserable candidate, warmonger, and incompetent Hillary Clinton.
He figured the republicans would love him when he took Bush et al. off the hook and (clumsily)
implemented Romney's health plan. They didn't.
Now he thinks leftists will love him because he's going "all in" on Hillary didn't lose
this all on her own. They won't.
The guy doesn't have a fraction of the insight he credits himself with.
Simple solution, publish the commenter geolocation and ban proxy, clean the comment section
from putinbots. Putin like ASBO's must stop to do more harm against democracy.
Reply Share
Yes, the so-called liberals are losing all over. They blame everyone but themselves. The problem
is that they have been found out. They were not real liberals at all. They had little bits
of liberal policies like "Gay rights" and "bathrooms for Transgenders" and, of course, "Anti-Anti-Semitism
Laws" and a few other bits and pieces with which they constructed a sort of camoflage coat,
but the core of their policies was Corpratism. Prize exhibits: Tony Blair and Barak Obama.
The extreme Left and extreme Right ("Populists") are benefiting by being able to say what
they mean, loud and apparently clear. People are not, on the whole, politically sophisticated
but they do realise that they have been lied to for a very long time and they are fed up. That
is why "Populists are making such a showing in the polls. People don't believe in the centre's
"Liberalism" any more.
You just know these people, like Johnny boy, who are pointing fingers at Russia are doing so
based upon long laid plans to bind up Trump from building a healthy relationship with Russia
which would put an end to terrorism and likely all of these petty little wars that are tearing
the world to pieces. These people want war because division keeps them in power and war makes
them lots of money. I hope that Trump and Putin can work together and build a trust and foundation
as allies in that together we can stamp out terrorism and stabilize the worlds conflicts. Everything
these people do in the next 20 days has a single agenda and that is to cause instability and
roadblocks for Trump and his team. Hope is just around the corner people so let's help usher
it in.
First... let's see some actual evidence/proof. Oh, that's right, none has been offered up.
Second... everyone is upset that the DNC turd was exposed, but no one upset about the existence
of the turd. ?
Obama acting like a petulant child that has to leave the game and go home now, so he's kicking
the game board and forcing everyone else to clean up his mess. Irresponsible.
Hundred times repeated lie will become the truth... that's the US officials policy for decades
now. In 8 years, they did nothing, so they are trying to do "something" in the last minute.
For someone, who's using his own brain is all of this just laughable.
United States are not united I guess. Guess, that Merkel is the next on the list...
Hopefully now this will enable senate and congress republicans to prevent these crazy ideas
of russian appeasement take hold and prusue a hardline against Russia, Hamas, Iran and Cuba.
They'll probably do that. Business as usual. To pursue a hard line against Isis enablers like
Saudi and Qatar, now that would be a surprise.
Reply Share
Obama will be making to many paid speeches to be doing anything of the sort. And frankly
I suspect he be silent, because Trump is soon going to know where all the bodies were buried
under Obama, just like Obama knows where all the bodies are buried from the Bush area.
You are a wishful thinker, if you think Obama is going anything after he leaves office.
The foreign power did the American people a favor when it exposed the corruption within the
Democratic Party; something the establishment media was apparently unable or unwilling to do.
Rather than sanctioning Putin, Americans should be thanking him!
Seems a no brainer, reverse Obama's ridiculous posturing gesture. As if the US doesn't have
a long track record of interfering in the affairs of other countries.
Personally I think the US should do as it wishes but it's extremely hypocritical to act shocked
when the same meddling is returned by others. Obama is acting foolishly as if the final weeks
of his presidency have any genuine traction on future events.
Firstly, this coup is not against a standing President, but targets an elected president set to
take office on January 20, 2017. Secondly, the attempted coup has polarized leading sectors of the
political and economic elite. It even exposes a seamy rivalry within the intelligence-security apparatus,
with the political appointees heading the CIA involved in the coup and the FBI supporting the incoming
President Trump and the constitutional process. Thirdly, the evolving coup is a sequential process,
which will build momentum and then escalate very rapidly.
Notable quotes:
"... In the past few years Latin America has experienced several examples of the seizure of Presidential power by unconstitutional means, which may help illustrate some of the current moves underway in Washington. These are especially interesting since the Obama Administration served as the 'midwife' for these 'regime changes'. ..."
"... Firstly, this coup is not against a standing President, but targets an elected president set to take office on January 20, 2017. Secondly, the attempted coup has polarized leading sectors of the political and economic elite. It even exposes a seamy rivalry within the intelligence-security apparatus, with the political appointees heading the CIA involved in the coup and the FBI supporting the incoming President Trump and the constitutional process. Thirdly, the evolving coup is a sequential process, which will build momentum and then escalate very rapidly. ..."
"... In the wake of her resounding defeat, Candidate Stein usurped authority from the national Green Party and rapidly raked in $8 million dollars in donations from Democratic Party operatives and George Soros-linked NGO's (many times the amount raised during her Presidential campaign). This dodgy money financed her demand for ballot recounts in selective states in order to challenge Trump's victory. The recounts failed to change the outcome, but it was a 'first shot across the bow', to stop Trump. It became a propaganda focus for the neo-conservative mass media to mobilize several thousand Clintonite and liberal activists. ..."
"... The 'Big Lie' was repeated and embellished at every opportunity by the print and broadcast media. The 'experts' were trotted out voicing vitriolic accusations, but they never presented any facts and documentation of a 'rigged election'. Everyday, every hour, the 'Russian Plot' was breathlessly described in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Financial Times, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, BBC, NPR and their overseas followers in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Oceana and Africa. The great American Empire looked increasingly like a 'banana republic'. ..."
"... The coup intensified as Trump-Putin became synonymous for "betrayal" and "election fraud". As this approached a crescendo of media hysteria, President Barack Obama stepped in and called on the CIA to seize domestic control of the investigation of Russian manipulation of the US election – essentially accusing President-Elect Trump of conspiring with the Russian government. Obama refused to reveal any proof of such a broad plot, citing 'national security'. ..."
"... Obama's last-ditch effort will not change the outcome of the election. Clearly this is designed to poison the diplomatic well and present Trump's incoming administration as dangerous. Trump's promise to improve relations with Russia will face enormous resistance in this frothy, breathless hysteria of Russophobia. ..."
"... Ultimately, President Obama is desperate to secure his legacy, which has consisted of disastrous and criminal imperial wars and military confrontations. He wants to force a continuation of his grotesque policies onto the incoming Trump Administration. ..."
"... Trump's success at thwarting the current 'Russian ploy' requires his forming counter alliances with Washington plutocrats, many of whom will oppose any diplomatic agreement with Putin. Trump's appointment of hardline economic plutocrats who are deeply committed to shredding social programs (public education, Medicare, Social Security) could ignite the anger of his mass supporters by savaging their jobs, health care, pensions and their children's future. ..."
"... If Trump defeats the avalanching media, CIA and elite-instigated coup (which interestingly lack support from the military and judiciary), he will have to thank, not only his generals and billionaire-buddies, but also his downwardly mobile mass supporters (Hillary Clinton's detested 'basket of deplorables'). ..."
"... He embarked on a major series of 'victory tours' around the country to thank his supporters among the military, workers, women and small business people and call on them to defend his election to the presidency. He will have to fulfill some of his promises to the masses or face 'the real fire', not from Clintonite shills and war-mongers, but from the very people who voted for him. ..."
"... It is true there is breaking news today but you certainly won't hear it from the mainstream media. While everyone was enjoying the holidays president Obama signed the NDAA for fiscal year 2017 into law which includes the "Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act" and in this video Dan Dicks of Press For Truth shows how this new law is tantamount to "The Records Department of the Ministry of Truth" in George Orwell's book 1984. ..."
"... What we have to do is prove that there is an organization that includes George Soros, but is not limited to him personally–you know, a kosher nostra! ..."
"... I would dearly like to know what Moscow and Tel Aviv know about 9-11. I suspect they both know more than almost anyone else. ..."
"... Those dastardly Russkies have informed and enlightened the American public for long enough! This shall not stand! ..."
"... What I have against Obama is his regime-change war in Syria, his State Department enabled coup in Ukraine, his support of Saudi war/genocide against Yemen, his destruction of Libya, his demonization of Putin, and his bringing us to a status near war in our relations with Russia. ..."
"... Obama has been providing weapons, training, air support and propaganda for Terrorists via their affiliates in Syria, and now directly. This is a felony, if not treason. ..."
A coup has been underway to prevent President-Elect Donald Trump from
taking office and fulfilling his campaign promise to improve US-Russia relations. This 'palace coup'
is not a secret conspiracy, but an open, loud attack on the election.
The coup involves important US elites, who openly intervene on many levels from the street to
the current President, from sectors of the intelligence community, billionaire financiers out to
the more marginal 'leftist' shills of the Democratic Party.
The build-up for the coup is gaining momentum, threatening to eliminate normal constitutional
and democratic constraints. This essay describes the brazen, overt coup and the public operatives,
mostly members of the outgoing Obama regime.
The second section describes the Trump's cabinet appointments and the political measures that
the President-Elect has adopted to counter the coup. We conclude with an evaluation of the potential
political consequences of the attempted coup and Trump's moves to defend his electoral victory and
legitimacy.
The Coup as 'Process'
In the past few years Latin America has experienced several examples of the seizure of Presidential
power by unconstitutional means, which may help illustrate some of the current moves underway in
Washington. These are especially interesting since the Obama Administration served as the 'midwife'
for these 'regime changes'.
Brazil, Paraguay, Honduras and Haiti experienced coups, in which the elected Presidents were ousted
through a series of political interventions orchestrated by economic elites and their political allies
in Congress and the Judiciary.
President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton were deeply involved in these operations as part
of their established foreign policy of 'regime change'. Indeed, the 'success' of the Latin American
coups has encouraged sectors of the US elite to attempt to prevent President-elect Trump from taking
office in January.
While similarities abound, the on-going coup against Trump in the United States occurs within
a very different power configuration of proponents and antagonists.
Firstly, this coup is not against a standing President, but targets an elected president set to
take office on January 20, 2017. Secondly, the attempted coup has polarized leading sectors of the
political and economic elite. It even exposes a seamy rivalry within the intelligence-security apparatus,
with the political appointees heading the CIA involved in the coup and the FBI supporting the incoming
President Trump and the constitutional process. Thirdly, the evolving coup is a sequential process,
which will build momentum and then escalate very rapidly.
Coup-makers depend on the 'Big Lie' as their point of departure – accusing President-Elect Trump
of
being a Kremlin stooge, attributing his electoral victory to Russian intervention against his
Democratic Party opponent, Hillary Clinton and
blatant voter fraud in which the Republican Party
prevented minority voters from casting their ballot for Secretary Clinton.
The first operatives to emerge in the early stages of the coup included the marginal-left Green
Party Presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein, who won less than 1% of the vote, as well as the mass
media.
In the wake of her resounding defeat, Candidate Stein usurped authority from the national Green
Party and rapidly raked in $8 million dollars in donations from Democratic Party operatives and George
Soros-linked NGO's (many times the amount raised during her Presidential campaign). This dodgy money
financed her demand for ballot recounts in selective states in order to challenge Trump's victory.
The recounts failed to change the outcome, but it was a 'first shot across the bow', to stop Trump.
It became a propaganda focus for the neo-conservative mass media to mobilize several thousand Clintonite
and liberal activists.
The purpose was to undermine the legitimacy of Trump's electoral victory. However, Jill Stein's
$8 million dollar shilling for Secretary Clinton paled before the oncoming avalanche of mass media
and NGO propaganda against Trump. Their main claim was that anonymous 'Russian hackers' and not the
American voters had decided the US Presidential election of November 2016!
The 'Big Lie' was repeated and embellished at every opportunity by the print and broadcast media.
The 'experts' were trotted out voicing vitriolic accusations, but they never presented any facts
and documentation of a 'rigged election'. Everyday, every hour, the 'Russian Plot' was breathlessly
described in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Financial Times, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, BBC,
NPR and their overseas followers in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Oceana and Africa. The great American
Empire looked increasingly like a 'banana republic'.
Like the Billionaire Soros-funded 'Color Revolutions', from Ukraine, to Georgia and Yugoslavia,
the 'Rainbow Revolt' against Trump, featured grass-roots NGO activists and 'serious leftists', like
Jill Stein.
The more polished political operatives from the upscale media used their editorial pages to question
Trump's illegitimacy. This established the ground work for even higher level political intervention:
The current US Administration, including President Obama, members of the US Congress from both parties,
and current and former heads of the CIA jumped into the fray. As the vote recount ploy flopped, they
all decided that 'Vladimir Putin swung the US election!' It wasn't just lunatic neo-conservative
warmongers who sought to oust Trump and impose Hillary Clinton on the American people, liberals and
social democrats were screaming 'Russian Plot!' They demanded a formal Congressional investigation
of the 'Russian cyber hacking' of Hillary's personal e-mails (where she plotted to cheat her rival
'Bernie Sanders' in the primaries). They demanded even tighter economic sanctions against Russia
and increased military provocations. The outgoing Democratic Senator and Minority Leader 'Harry'
Reid wildly accused the FBI of acting as 'Russian agents' and hinted at a purge.
ORDER IT NOW
The coup intensified as Trump-Putin became synonymous for "betrayal" and "election fraud". As this approached a crescendo of media hysteria, President Barack Obama stepped in and called
on the CIA to seize domestic control of the investigation of Russian manipulation of the US election
– essentially accusing President-Elect Trump of conspiring with the Russian government. Obama refused
to reveal any proof of such a broad plot, citing 'national security'.
President Obama solemnly declared the Trump-Putin conspiracy was a grave threat to American democracy
and Western security and freedom. He darkly promised to retaliate against Russia, " at a time and
place of our choosing".
Obama also pledged to send more US troops to the Middle East and increase arms shipments to the
jihadi terrorists in Syria, as well as the Gulf State and Saudi 'allies'. Coincidentally, the Syrian
Government and their Russian allies were poised to drive the US-backed terrorists out of Aleppo –
and defeat Obama's campaign of 'regime change' in Syria.
Trump Strikes Back: The Wall Street-Military Alliance
Meanwhile, President-Elect Donald Trump did not crumple under the Clintonite-coup in progress.
He prepared a diverse counter-attack to defend his election, relying on elite allies and mass supporters.
Trump denounced the political elements in the CIA, pointing out their previous role in manufacturing
the justifications (he used the term 'lies') for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He appointed three
retired generals to key Defense and Security positions – indicating a power struggle between the
highly politicized CIA and the military. Active and retired members of the US Armed Forces have been
key Trump supporters. He announced that he would bring his own security teams and integrate them
with the Presidential Secret Service during his administration.
Although Clinton-Obama had the major mass media and a sector of the financial elite who supported
the coup, Trump countered by appointing several key Wall Street and corporate billionaires into his
cabinet who had their own allied business associations.
One propaganda line for the coup, which relied on certain Zionist organizations and leaders (ADL,
George Soros et al), was the bizarre claim that Trump and his supporters were 'anti-Semites'. This
was were countered by Trump's appointment of powerful Wall Street Zionists like Steven Mnuchin as
Treasury Secretary and Gary Cohn (both of Goldman Sachs) to head the National Economic Council. Faced
with the Obama-CIA plot to paint Trump as a Russian agent for Vladimir Putin, the President-Elect
named security hardliners including past and present military leaders and FBI officials, to key security
and intelligence positions.
The Coup: Can it succeed?
In early December, President Obama issued an order for the CIA to 'complete its investigation'
on the Russian plot and manipulation of the US Presidential election in six weeks – right up to the
very day of Trump's inauguration on January 20, 2017! A concoction of pre-cooked 'findings' is already
oozing out of secret clandestine CIA archives with the President's approval. Obama's last-ditch effort
will not change the outcome of the election. Clearly this is designed to poison the diplomatic well
and present Trump's incoming administration as dangerous. Trump's promise to improve relations with
Russia will face enormous resistance in this frothy, breathless hysteria of Russophobia.
Ultimately, President Obama is desperate to secure his legacy, which has consisted of disastrous
and criminal imperial wars and military confrontations. He wants to force a continuation of his grotesque
policies onto the incoming Trump Administration. Will Trump succumb? The legitimacy of his election
and his freedom to make policy will depend on overcoming the Clinton-Obama-neo-con-leftist coup with
his own bloc of US military and the powerful Wall Street allies, as well as his mass support among
the 'angry' American electorate. Trump's success at thwarting the current 'Russian ploy' requires
his forming counter alliances with Washington plutocrats, many of whom will oppose any diplomatic
agreement with Putin. Trump's appointment of hardline economic plutocrats who are deeply committed
to shredding social programs (public education, Medicare, Social Security) could ignite the anger
of his mass supporters by savaging their jobs, health care, pensions and their children's future.
If Trump defeats the avalanching media, CIA and elite-instigated coup (which interestingly lack
support from the military and judiciary), he will have to thank, not only his generals and billionaire-buddies,
but also his downwardly mobile mass supporters (Hillary Clinton's detested 'basket of deplorables').
He embarked on a major series of 'victory tours' around the country to thank his supporters among
the military, workers, women and small business people and call on them to defend his election to
the presidency. He will have to fulfill some of his promises to the masses or face 'the real fire',
not from Clintonite shills and war-mongers, but from the very people who voted for him.
A very insightful analysis. The golpistas will not be able to prevent Trump from taking power.
But will they make the country ungovernable to the extent of bringing down not just Trump but the
whole system?
If the coup forces President Trump to abandon his America First campaign promises by appointing globalists
eager to invade-the-world/invite-the-world, then the coup is a success and the Trump campaign was a
failure.
Ultimately, President Obama is desperate to secure his legacy, which has consisted of disastrous
and criminal imperial wars and military confrontations
The current wave of icon polishing we constantly are being asked to indulge seems a bit over the
top. Why is our president more devoted to legacy than Jackie Kennedy was to the care and maintenance
of the Camelot image?
Have we ever seen as fine a behind-the-curtain, Wizard of Oz act, as performed by Barrack Obama for
the past eight years? Do we know anything at all about this man aside from the fact that he loves his
wife and kids?
Replies:
@Skeptikal I expect Obama loves his kids.
Great analysis from Petras.
So many people have reacted with "first=level" thinking only as Trump's appointments have been announced:
"This guy is terrible!" Yes, but . . . look at the appointment in the "swamp" context, in the "veiled
threat" context. Harpers mag actually put a picture on its cover of Trump behind bars. That is one of
those veiled invitations like Henry II's "Will no one rid me of this man?"
I think Trump understands quite well what he is up against.
I agree completely with Petras that the compromises he must make to take office on Jan. 20 may in the
end compromise his agenda (whatever it actually is). I would expect Trump to play things by ear and
tack as necessary, as he senses changes in the wind. According to the precepts of triage, his no. 1
challenge/task now is to be sworn in on Jan. 20. All else is secondary.
Once he is in the White House he will have incomparably greater powers to flush out those who are trying
to sideline his presidency now. The latter must know this. He will be in charge of the whole Executive
Branch bureaucracy (which includes the Justice Department). ,
@animalogic Oh, yes, Robert -- To read the words "Obama" & "legacy" in the same sentence is to LOL.
What a god-awful president.
An 8 year adventure in failure, stupidity & ruthlessness.
The Trump-coup business: what a (near treasonous) disgrace. The "Russians done it" meme: "let's show
the world just how stupid, embarrassing & plain MEAN we can be". A trillion words -- & not one shred
of supporting evidence.... ?! And I thought that the old "Obama was not born in the US" trope was shameless
stupidity --
If there is any bright side here, I hope it has convinced EVERY American conservative that the neo-con's
& their identical economic twin the neoliberals are treasonous dreck who would flush the US down the
drain if they thought it to their political advantage.
Excellent analysis! Mr. Petras, you delved right into the crux of the matter of the balance of forces
in the U.S.A. at this very unusual political moment. I have only a very minor correction to make, and
it is only a language-related one: you don't really want to say that Trump's "illegitimacy" is being
questioned, but rather his legitimacy, right?
Another thing, but this time of a perhaps idiosyncratic nature: I am a teeny-weeny bit more optimistic
than you about the events to come in your country. (Too bad I cannot say this about my own poor country
Brazil, which is going faster and faster down the drain.)
@John Gruskos If the coup forces President Trump to abandon his America First campaign promises
by appointing globalists eager to invade-the-world/invite-the-world, then the coup is a success and
the Trump campaign was a failure.
The recounts failed to change the outcome, but it was a 'first shot across the bow', to stop Trump.
It became a propaganda focus for the neo-conservative mass media to mobilize several thousand Clintonite
and liberal activists.
On the contrary, this first salvo from the anti-American forces resulted in more friendly fire hits
on the attackers than it did on its intended targets. Result: a strengthening of Trump's position. It
also serve to sap morale and energy from the anti-American forces, helping dissipate their momentum.
The purpose was to undermine the legitimacy of Trump's electoral victory.
And it backfired, literally strengthening it (Trump gained votes), while undermining the anti-American
forces' legitimacy.
The purpose was to undermine the legitimacy of Trump's electoral victory. However, Jill Stein's
$8 million dollar shilling for Secretary Clinton paled before the oncoming avalanche of mass media
and NGO propaganda against Trump. Their main claim was that anonymous 'Russian hackers' and not the
American voters had decided the US Presidential election of November 2016!
This was simply a continuation of Big Media's Full Capacity Hate Machine (thanks to Whis for the
term; this is the only time I will acknowledge the debt) from the campaign. It has been running since
before Trump clinched the nomination. It will be no more effective now, than it was then. Americans
are fed up with Big Media propaganda in sufficient numbers to openly thwart its authors' will.
The big lie, as you refer to it, hasn't even produced the alleged "report" in question. The CIA supposedly
in lockstep against Trump (I don't buy that), and they can't find one hack willing to leak this "devastating"
"report"? It must suck. Probably a nothing burger.
This is all much ado about nothing. Big Media HATES Trump. They want to make sure Trump and the American
people don't forget that they HATE Trump. It's a broken strategy, doomed to failure (it will only cause
Trump to dig in and go about his agenda without their help; it certainly will not break him, or endear
him to their demands). Trump's voters all voted for him in spite of it, so it won't win them
over, either. Personally, I think Trump's low water mark of support is well behind him. Obviously subject
to future events.
Trump denounced the political elements in the CIA, pointing out their previous role in manufacturing
the justifications (he used the term 'lies') for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
CIA mouthpieces have been pointing and sputtering in response that it was not they who cooked the
books, but parallel neoconservative chickenhawk groups in the Bush administration. The trouble with
this is that the CIA did precious little to counter the chickenhawks' narrative, instead choosing to
assent by way of silence.
Personally, I sort of doubt this imagined comity between Hussein and the CIA Ever seen Zero Dark
Thirty ? How much harder did Hussein make the CIA's job? I doubt it was Kathryn Bigelow who chose
to go out of her way to make that movie hostile to Hussein; it's far more likely that this is simply
where the material led her. I similarly doubt that the intelligence community difficulties owed to Hussein
were in any way limited to the hunt for UBL.
The trouble with this is that the CIA did precious little to counter the chickenhawks' narrative,
instead choosing to assent by way of silence.
That's not entirely accurate. CIA people like Michael Scheuer and Valery Plame were trying to undermine
the neocon narrative about Iraq and WMD, not bolster it. At that time, the neocons controlled the ranking
civilian positions at the Pentagon, but did not yet fully control the CIA This changed after Bush's
re-election, when Porter Goss was made DCI to purge all the remaining 'realists' and 'arabists' from
the agency. Now the situation in the opposite: the CIA is totally neocon, while the Pentagon is a bit
less so.
So even if what Trump is saying is technically inaccurate, it's still true at a deeper level: it was
the neocons who lied to us about WMD, just as it is now the neocons who are lying to us about
Russia.
I think Obama's right-in-the-open [a week or so ago] authorization for the sale and shipping [?]
of "man pads" to various Syrian rebel and terrorist forces is insane, and may be contrary to law.
Yes, I have no trouble calling it TREASON. It is certainly felony support for terrorists.
Man pads are shoulder held missile launchers that can destroy high and fast aircraft .such as commercial
passenger airlines [to be blamed on Russia?] and also any nations' fighter/bombers .such as Russia's
Air Force planes operating in Syria still–that were invited to do so by the elected government of Syria
which is still under attack by US proxy [terrorist] forces. Syria is a member in good standing of the
UN.
Given this I think we are all in very great danger today–now– AND I think we have to press hard
to reverse the insane Obama move vis a vis these man pads.
This truly is an emergency.
TULSI GABBARD'S BILL MAY BE TOO LITTLE TOO LATE. It may even be just window dressing or PR. [That
could be the reason Peter Welch has agreed to co-sponsor it.... The man never does anything that is
real and substantive and decent or courageous.]
IN ANY EVENT both Gabbard and Welch via this bill have now acknowledged
that Obama and the US are supporting terrorists in Syria [and elsewhere]–a felony under existing laws.
–Quite possibly an impeachable offense.
"Misprision" of treason or misprision of a felony IS ITSELF A FELONY.
If Gabbard and Welch KNOW that the man-pad authorization and other US support
for terrorists in Syria and elsewhere is presently occurring, I THINK THEY NEED TO FORCE PROSECUTION
UNDER EXISTING LAWS NOW, rather than just sponsoring a sure-to-fail NEW LAW that will prevent such things
in the far fuzzy future–or NOT.
Respectfully,
Dennis Morrisseau
US Army Officer [Vietnam era] ANTI-WAR
–FOR TRUMP–
Lieutenant Morrisseau's Rebellion
FIRECONGRESS.org
Second Vermont Republic
POB 177, W. Pawlet, VT USA 05775 [email protected]
802 645 9727
Yes finally someone has the guts to say it: Obama is a traitor and terrorist.
Said by a true antiwar hero, Lt. Morrisseau who said no to Vietnam, while in uniform, as an officer
in the U.S. Army. The New York Times and CBS Evening News picked it up back in the day. It was big,
and this is bigger, same war though, just a different name: Its called World War III, smouldering as
we speak.
Again I do urge Unz to contact Denny and get this letter up as a feature. Note that it has been sent
to Rep. Gabbard and Rep. Welch. so it is a vital, historic action, may it be recognized.
BTW Rep. Tulsi Gabbards Bill is the Stop Arming Terrorist Act.
I think Obama's right-in-the-open [a week or so ago] authorization for the sale and shipping [?] of
"man pads" to various Syrian rebel and terrorist forces is insane, and may be contrary to law.
Yes, I have no trouble calling it TREASON. It is certainly felony support for terrorists.
Man pads are shoulder held missile launchers that can destroy high and fast aircraft ....such as commercial
passenger airlines [to be blamed on Russia?] and also any nations' fighter/bombers....such as Russia's
Air Force planes operating in Syria still--that were invited to do so by the elected government of Syria
which is still under attack by US proxy [terrorist] forces. Syria is a member in good standing of the
UN.
Given this......I think we are all in very great danger today--now-- AND I think we have to press hard
to reverse the insane Obama move vis a vis these man pads.
This truly is an emergency.
TULSI GABBARD'S BILL MAY BE TOO LITTLE TOO LATE. It may even be just window dressing or PR. [That could
be the reason Peter Welch has agreed to co-sponsor it.... The man never does anything that is real and
substantive and decent or courageous.]
IN ANY EVENT both Gabbard and Welch via this bill have now acknowledged
that Obama and the US are supporting terrorists in Syria [and elsewhere]--a felony under existing laws.
--Quite possibly an impeachable offense.
"Misprision" of treason or misprision of a felony IS ITSELF A FELONY.
If Gabbard and Welch KNOW that the man-pad authorization and other US support
for terrorists in Syria and elsewhere is presently occurring, I THINK THEY NEED TO FORCE PROSECUTION
UNDER EXISTING LAWS NOW, rather than just sponsoring a sure-to-fail NEW LAW that will prevent such things
in the far fuzzy future--or NOT.
Respectfully,
Dennis Morrisseau
US Army Officer [Vietnam era] ANTI-WAR
--FOR TRUMP--
Lieutenant Morrisseau's Rebellion
FIRECONGRESS.org
Second Vermont Republic
POB 177, W. Pawlet, VT USA 05775 [email protected]
802 645 9727
The Man Pad Letter is brilliant!
It needs to be published as a feature story.
Yes finally someone has the guts to say it: Obama is a traitor and terrorist.
Said by a true antiwar hero, Lt. Morrisseau who said no to Vietnam, while in uniform, as an officer
in the U.S. Army. The New York Times and CBS Evening News picked it up back in the day. It was big,
and this is bigger, same war though, just a different name: Its called World War III, smouldering as
we speak.
Again I do urge Unz to contact Denny and get this letter up as a feature. Note that it has been sent
to Rep. Gabbard and Rep. Welch. so it is a vital, historic action, may it be recognized.
BTW Rep. Tulsi Gabbards Bill is the Stop Arming Terrorist Act.
• Replies:
@El Dato Hmmm.... If I were GRU I would offer Uber services to the recipients of the manpads all
the way up to West European airports (not that this is needed, just take a truck, any truck).
What will the EU say if smouldering wreckage happens?
Especially as Obama won't be there to set the overall tone.
This is a good article but there's been a sudden shift. Incredibly, Obama has finally gotten some
balls in his dealings with Israel. And Trump is starting to sound like a neocon!
Maybe Trump is worried enough about a potential coup to dump his 'America First' platform (at least
for now) to shore up vital Jewish support for his teetering inauguration. This ploy will require a lot
of pro-Zionist noise and gesturing. Consequently, Trump is starting to play a familiar political role.
And the Zio-friendly media is holding his feet to the fire.
Has the smell of fear pushed Trump over the edge and into the lap of the Zionist establishment? It's
beginning to look that way.
Or is Trump just being a fox?
Let's face it: nobody can pull out all the stops better than Israel's Fifth Column. They've got the
money, the organization skills, the media leverage, and the raw intellectual moxie to make political
miracles/disasters happen. Trump wants them on his side. So he's is tacitly cutting a last-minute deal
with the Israelis. Trump's Zionized rhetoric (and political appointments) prove it.
This explains the apparent reversal that's now underway. Obama's pushing back while Trump is accommodating.
And, as usual, the Zions are dictating the Narrative.
As Israel Shamir reminds us: there's nothing as liberating to a politician as leaving office. Therefore,
Obama is finally free to do what's right. Trump however is facing no such luxury. And Bibi is more defiant
than ever. This is high drama. And Trump is feeling the heat.
Indeed, outgoing Sec. John Kerry just delivered a major speech where he reiterated strongly US support
for a real 'Two State' solution in Israel/Palestine.
And I thought the Two State Solution was dead.
Didn't you?
Kerry also criticized Israel's ongoing confiscation of the Occupied Territories. It was a brilliant
analysis that Kerry gave without the aid of a teleprompter. Hugely impressive. Even so, Kerry did not
throw Israel under the bus, as claimed. His speech was extremely fair.
This renewed, steadfast American position, coupled with the UNSC's unanimous vote against Israel
(which Obama permitted by not casting the usual US veto) has set the stage for a monumental showdown.
Israel has never been more isolated. But it's Trump–not Obama–that's looking weak in the face of Israeli
pressure.
Indeed, the international Jewish establishment remains uniquely powerful. They may be hated (and
appropriately so) but they get things accomplished in the political arena. Trump understands this all-too-well.
Will Trump–out of fear and necessity–run with the mega-powerful Jews who tried to sabotage his campaign?–Or
will he stay strong with America First and avoid "any more disasterous wars". It's impossible to say.
Trump is speaking out of both sides of his mouth.
I get the feeling that even Trump is unsure of where all this is going. But the situation is fast
approaching critical mass. Something's gotta give. The entire world is fed up with Israel.
Will Trump blink and take the easy road with the Zions?–Or will he summon Putin's independent, nationalistic
spirit and stay the course of 'America First'?
Unfortunately, having scrutinized the Zions in action for decades, I'm fearful that Trump will go
Pure Washington and run with the Israeli-Firsters. This will fortify his shaky political foundation.
I hope that I'm wrong about this but the Zions are brilliantly equipped to play both sides of America's
political divide. No politician is immune to their machinations.
In general, I agree with a good portion of your analysis. A few minor quibbles and
qualifications, though:
Incredibly, Obama has finally gotten some balls in his dealings with Israel.
Not really. Since he's a lame-duck president and the election is over, he's not really risking anything
here. After all, opposition to settlements in the occupied territories has been official US policy for
nearly 50 years, and when has that ever stopped Israel from founding/expanding them? No, this is just
more empty symbolism.
And I thought the Two State Solution was dead.
It's been dead foreever. The One State solution will replace it, and that will really freak out all
the Zios.
They may be hated (and appropriately so) but they get things accomplished in the political arena.
Trump understands this all-too-well.
Oderint dum metuant ("Let them hate, so long as they fear.") - Caligula ,
Trump will go Pure Washington and run with the Israeli-Firsters. This will fortify his shaky political
foundation. I hope that I'm wrong about this but the Zions are brilliantly equipped to play both
sides of America's political divide. No politician is immune to their machinations.
I'm hoping that Trump is running with the neocons just as far as is necessary to pressure congress to
confirm his cabinet appointments and make sure he isn't JFK'd before he gets into office and can set
about putting security in place to protect his own and his family's lives.
For John McBloodstain to vote for a SoS that will make nice with his nemesis; Putin, will require massive
amounts of Zio-pressure. The only way that pressure will come is if the Zio-cons are convinced that
Trump is their man.
Once his cabinet appointments are secured, then perhaps we might see some independence of action. Not
until. At least that is my hope, however naïve.
It isn't just the Zio-cons that want to poke the Russian bear, it's also the MIC. Trump has to navigate
a very dangerous mine field if he's going to end the Endless Wars and return sanity and peace to the
world. He's going to have to wrangle with the devil himself (the Fiend), and outplay him at his own
game. , @map
I wish people would stop making a big deal out of John Kerry's and Barack Obama's recent stance
on Israel. Neither of them are concerned about whatever injustice happened to the Palestinians.
What they are concerned with is Israeli actions discrediting the anti-white, anti-national globalism
program before it has successfully destroyed all of the white nations. That is the real reason why they
want a two-state solution or a right of return. If nationalists can look at the Israeli example as a
model for how to proceed then that will cause a civil war among leftists and discredit the entire left-wing
project.
Trump, therefore, pushing support for Israel's national concerns is not him bending to AIPAC. It is
a shrewd move that forces an internecine conflict between left-wing diaspora Jews and Israeli Jews.
It is a conflict Bibi is willing to have because the pet project of leftism would necessarily result
in Israel either being unlivable or largely extinct for its Jewish population. This NWO being pushed
by the diaspora is not something that will be enjoyed by Israeli Jews.
Consider the problem. The problem is that Palestinians have revanchist claims against Israel. Those
revanchist claims do not go away just because they get their own country or they get a right of return.
Either "solution" actually strengthens the Palestinian claim against Israel and results in a vastly
reduced security stance and quality of life for Israelis. The diaspora left is ok with that because
they want to continue importing revanchist groups into Europe and America to break down white countries.
So, Israel makes a small sacrifice for the greater good of anti-whitism, a deal that most Israelis do
not consider very good for themselves. Trump's support for Israeli nationalism short-circuits this project.
Of course, one could ask: why don't the Israeli Jews just move to America? What's the big deal if Israel
remains in the middle east? The big deal is the kind of jobs and activities available for Israelis to
do. A real nation requires a lot of scut work. Someone has to do the plumbing, unplug the sewers, drive
the nails, throw out the trash. Everyone can't be a doctor, a lawyer or a banker. Tradesmen, technicians,
workers are all required to get a project like Israel off the ground and maintained.
How many of these
Israelis doing scut work in Israel for a greater good want to do the same scut work in America just
to get by? The problem operates in reverse for American Jews. A Jew with an American law degree is of
no use to Israelis outside of the money he brings and whether he can throw out the trash. Diaspora Jews,
therefore, have no reason to try and live and work in Israel.
So, again, we see that Trump's move is a masterstroke. Even his appointment to counter the coup with
Zionists is brilliant, since these Zionists are rich enough to both live anywhere and indulge their
pride in nationalist endeavors. ,
As Israel Shamir reminds us: there's nothing as liberating to a politician as leaving office.
Therefore, Obama is finally free to do what's right . "
THEN WHY DOESN'T HE DO WHAT'S RIGHT? As Seamus Padraig pointed out, the UN abstention is "just more
empty symbolism." Meanwhile... The Christmas Eve attack on the First Amendment The approval of arming terrorists in Syria
The fake news about Russian hacking throwing Killary's election
Aid to terrorists is a felony. Obama should be indicted.
Most of the Western world is much sicker of the head-choppers in charge of our 'human rights'
at the UN (thanks to Obama and the UK) than it is of Israel. It is they, not we, who have funded ISIS
directly.
The real issue at stake is that Presidential control of the system is non existent, and although
Trump understands this and has intimated he is going to deal with it, it is clear his hands will now
be tied by all the traitors that run the US.
You need a Nuremburg type show trial to deal with all the (((usual suspects))) that have usurped
the constitution. (((They))) arrived with the Pilgrim Fathers and established the slave trade buying
slaves from their age old Muslim accomplices, and selling them by auction to the goyim.
(((They))) established absolute influence by having the Fed issue your currency in 1913 and forcing
the US in to three wars: WWI, WWII and Vietnam from which (((they))) made enormous profits.
You have to decide whether you want these (((professional parasitical traitors))) in your country
or not. It is probably too late to just ask them to leave, thus you are faced with the ultimate reality:
are you willing to fight a civil war to free your nation from (((their))) oppression of you?
This is the elephant in the room that none of you will address. All the rest of this subject matter
is just window dressing. Do you wish to remain economic slaves to (((these people))) or do you want
to be free [like the Syrians] and live without (((these traitor's))) usurious, inflationary and dishonest
policies based upon hate of Christ and Christianity?
My guess: the outgoing Obama administration is in a last ditch killing frenzy, to revenge Aleppo
loss!
The Berlin bus blowup, The Russian ambassador in Turkey killed and the Red army's most eminent Alexandrov's
choir send to the bottom of the black sea.
Typical CIA ops to threaten world leaders to comply with the incumbent US elite.
Watch Mike Morell (CIA) threaten world leaders:
• Replies:
@annamaria The prominence of the "perfumed prince" Morell is the most telling indictment of the
so-called "elites" in the US. The arrogant, irresponsible (and untouchable) imbeciles among the real
"deciders" in the US have brought the country down to a sub-civilization status when the US does not
do diplomacy, does not follow international law, and does not keep with even marginal aspects of democracy
home and abroad. The proliferation of the incompetent and opportunists in the highest echelons of the
US government is the consequence of the lack of responsibility on the top. Morell - who has never been
in combat and never demonstrated any intellectual vigor - is a prime example of a sycophantic and poorly
educated opportunist that is endangering the US big time.
Correct me if I am wrong . plain ole citizens can start RICO suits against the likes of Soros.
It seems you may be on to something:
RICO also permits a private individual "damaged in his business or property" by a "racketeer" to
file a civil suit. The plaintiff must prove the existence of an "enterprise". The defendant(s) are
not the enterprise; in other words, the defendant(s) and the enterprise are not one and the same.[3]
There must be one of four specified relationships between the defendant(s) and the enterprise: either
the defendant(s) invested the proceeds of the pattern of racketeering activity into the enterprise
(18 U.S.C. § 1962(a)); or the defendant(s) acquired or maintained an interest in, or control of,
the enterprise through the pattern of racketeering activity (subsection (b)); or the defendant(s)
conducted or participated in the affairs of the enterprise "through" the pattern of racketeering
activity (subsection (c)); or the defendant(s) conspired to do one of the above (subsection (d)).[4]
In essence, the enterprise is either the 'prize,' 'instrument,' 'victim,' or 'perpetrator' of the
racketeers.[5] A civil RICO action can be filed in state or federal court.[6]
In the past few years Latin America has experienced several examples of the seizure of Presidential
power by unconstitutional means Brazil, Paraguay, Honduras and Haiti experienced coups
The US is not at the stage of these countries yet. To compare them to us, politically, is moronic.
In another several generations it likely will be different. But by then there won't be any "need" for
a coup.
If things keep up, the US "electorate" will be majority Third World. Then, these people will
just vote as a bloc for whomever promises them the most gibs me dat. That candidate will of course be
from the oligarchical elite. Trump is likely the last white man (or white man with even marginally white
interests at heart) to be President. Unless things drastically change, demographically.
Yes finally someone has the guts to say it: Obama is a traitor and terrorist.
Said by a true antiwar hero, Lt. Morrisseau who said no to Vietnam, while in uniform, as an officer
in the U.S. Army. The New York Times and CBS Evening News picked it up back in the day. It was big,
and this is bigger, same war though, just a different name: Its called World War III, smouldering as
we speak.
Again I do urge Unz to contact Denny and get this letter up as a feature. Note that it has been sent
to Rep. Gabbard and Rep. Welch. so it is a vital, historic action, may it be recognized.
BTW Rep. Tulsi Gabbards Bill is the Stop Arming Terrorist Act.
Hmmm . If I were GRU I would offer Uber services to the recipients of the manpads all the way up
to West European airports (not that this is needed, just take a truck, any truck).
What will the EU say if smouldering wreckage happens?
Especially as Obama won't be there to set the overall tone.
@Mark Green This is a good article but there's been a sudden shift. Incredibly, Obama has finally
gotten some balls in his dealings with Israel. And Trump is starting to sound like a neocon!
Maybe Trump is worried enough about a potential coup to dump his 'America First' platform (at least
for now) to shore up vital Jewish support for his teetering inauguration. This ploy will require a lot
of pro-Zionist noise and gesturing. Consequently, Trump is starting to play a familiar political role.
And the Zio-friendly media is holding his feet to the fire.
Has the smell of fear pushed Trump over the edge and into the lap of the Zionist establishment? It's
beginning to look that way.
Or is Trump just being a fox?
Let's face it: nobody can pull out all the stops better than Israel's Fifth Column. They've got the
money, the organization skills, the media leverage, and the raw intellectual moxie to make political
miracles/disasters happen. Trump wants them on his side. So he's is tacitly cutting a last-minute deal
with the Israelis. Trump's Zionized rhetoric (and political appointments) prove it.
This explains the apparent reversal that's now underway. Obama's pushing back while Trump is accommodating.
And, as usual, the Zions are dictating the Narrative.
As Israel Shamir reminds us: there's nothing as liberating to a politician as leaving office. Therefore,
Obama is finally free to do what's right. Trump however is facing no such luxury. And Bibi is more defiant
than ever. This is high drama. And Trump is feeling the heat.
Indeed, outgoing Sec. John Kerry just delivered a major speech where he reiterated strongly US support
for a real 'Two State' solution in Israel/Palestine.
And I thought the Two State Solution was dead.
Didn't you?
Kerry also criticized Israel's ongoing confiscation of the Occupied Territories. It was a brilliant
analysis that Kerry gave without the aid of a teleprompter. Hugely impressive. Even so, Kerry did not
throw Israel under the bus, as claimed. His speech was extremely fair.
This renewed, steadfast American position, coupled with the UNSC's unanimous vote against Israel
(which Obama permitted by not casting the usual US veto) has set the stage for a monumental showdown.
Israel has never been more isolated. But it's Trump--not Obama--that's looking weak in the face of Israeli
pressure.
Indeed, the international Jewish establishment remains uniquely powerful. They may be hated (and
appropriately so) but they get things accomplished in the political arena. Trump understands this all-too-well.
Will Trump--out of fear and necessity--run with the mega-powerful Jews who tried to sabotage his
campaign?--Or will he stay strong with America First and avoid "any more disasterous wars". It's impossible
to say. Trump is speaking out of both sides of his mouth.
I get the feeling that even Trump is unsure of where all this is going. But the situation is fast
approaching critical mass. Something's gotta give. The entire world is fed up with Israel.
Will Trump blink and take the easy road with the Zions?--Or will he summon Putin's independent, nationalistic
spirit and stay the course of 'America First'?
Unfortunately, having scrutinized the Zions in action for decades, I'm fearful that Trump will go
Pure Washington and run with the Israeli-Firsters. This will fortify his shaky political foundation.
I hope that I'm wrong about this but the Zions are brilliantly equipped to play both sides of America's
political divide. No politician is immune to their machinations.
Okay so you voted twice for BO, and now for HC, so what else is new.
Authenticjazzman, "Mensa" society member of forty-plus years and pro jazz artist.
D.C. has passed their propaganda bill so I am not shocked.
Dec 27, 2016 "Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act" Signed Into Law! (NDAA 2017)
It is true there is breaking news today but you certainly won't hear it from the mainstream media.
While everyone was enjoying the holidays president Obama signed the NDAA for fiscal year 2017 into law
which includes the "Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act" and in this video Dan Dicks of Press
For Truth shows how this new law is tantamount to "The Records Department of the Ministry of Truth"
in George Orwell's book 1984.
Ultimately, President Obama is desperate to secure his legacy, which has consisted of disastrous
and criminal imperial wars and military confrontations
The current wave of icon polishing we constantly are being asked to indulge seems a bit over the top.
Why is our president more devoted to legacy than Jackie Kennedy was to the care and maintenance of the
Camelot image?
Have we ever seen as fine a behind-the-curtain, Wizard of Oz act, as performed by Barrack Obama for
the past eight years? Do we know anything at all about this man aside from the fact that he loves his
wife and kids? https://robertmagill.wordpress.com/2016/12/09/barry-we-hardly-knew-ye/
I expect Obama loves his kids.
Great analysis from Petras.
So many people have reacted with "first level" thinking only as Trump's appointments have been announced:
"This guy is terrible!" Yes, but . . . look at the appointment in the "swamp" context, in the "veiled
threat" context. Harpers mag actually put a picture on its cover of Trump behind bars. That is one of
those veiled invitations like Henry II's "Will no one rid me of this man?"
I think Trump understands quite well what he is up against.
I agree completely with Petras that the compromises he must make to take office on Jan. 20 may in the
end compromise his agenda (whatever it actually is). I would expect Trump to play things by ear and
tack as necessary, as he senses changes in the wind. According to the precepts of triage, his no. 1
challenge/task now is to be sworn in on Jan. 20. All else is secondary.
Once he is in the White House he will have incomparably greater powers to flush out those who are trying
to sideline his presidency now. The latter must know this. He will be in charge of the whole Executive
Branch bureaucracy (which includes the Justice Department).
Ultimately, President Obama is desperate to secure his legacy, which has consisted of disastrous
and criminal imperial wars and military confrontations
The current wave of icon polishing we constantly are being asked to indulge seems a bit over the top.
Why is our president more devoted to legacy than Jackie Kennedy was to the care and maintenance of the
Camelot image?
Have we ever seen as fine a behind-the-curtain, Wizard of Oz act, as performed by Barrack Obama for
the past eight years? Do we know anything at all about this man aside from the fact that he loves his
wife and kids? https://robertmagill.wordpress.com/2016/12/09/barry-we-hardly-knew-ye/
Oh, yes, Robert -- To read the words "Obama" & "legacy" in the same sentence is to LOL.
What a god-awful president. An 8 year adventure in failure, stupidity & ruthlessness.
The Trump-coup business: what a (near treasonous) disgrace. The "Russians done it" meme: "let's show
the world just how stupid, embarrassing & plain MEAN we can be". A trillion words - & not one shred
of supporting evidence . ?! And I thought that the old "Obama was not born in the US" trope was shameless
stupidity -- If there is any bright side here, I hope it has convinced EVERY American conservative that the neo-con's
& their identical economic twin the neoliberals are treasonous dreck who would flush the US down the
drain if they thought it to their political advantage.
The recounts failed to change the outcome, but it was a 'first shot across the bow', to stop Trump.
It became a propaganda focus for the neo-conservative mass media to mobilize several thousand Clintonite
and liberal activists.
On the contrary, this first salvo from the anti-American forces resulted in more friendly fire hits
on the attackers than it did on its intended targets. Result: a strengthening of Trump's position. It
also serve to sap morale and energy from the anti-American forces, helping dissipate their momentum.
The purpose was to undermine the legitimacy of Trump's electoral victory.
And it backfired, literally strengthening it (Trump gained votes), while undermining the anti-American
forces' legitimacy.
The purpose was to undermine the legitimacy of Trump's electoral victory. However, Jill Stein's $8
million dollar shilling for Secretary Clinton paled before the oncoming avalanche of mass media and
NGO propaganda against Trump. Their main claim was that anonymous 'Russian hackers' and not the American
voters had decided the US Presidential election of November 2016!
This was simply a continuation of Big Media's Full Capacity Hate Machine (thanks to Whis for the term;
this is the only time I will acknowledge the debt) from the campaign. It has been running since before
Trump clinched the nomination. It will be no more effective now, than it was then. Americans are fed
up with Big Media propaganda in sufficient numbers to openly thwart its authors' will.
The big lie, as you refer to it, hasn't even produced the alleged "report" in question. The CIA supposedly
in lockstep against Trump (I don't buy that), and they can't find one hack willing to leak this "devastating"
"report"? It must suck. Probably a nothing burger.
This is all much ado about nothing. Big Media HATES Trump. They want to make sure Trump and the American
people don't forget that they HATE Trump. It's a broken strategy, doomed to failure (it will only cause
Trump to dig in and go about his agenda without their help; it certainly will not break him, or endear
him to their demands). Trump's voters all voted for him in spite of it, so it won't win them
over, either. Personally, I think Trump's low water mark of support is well behind him. Obviously subject
to future events.
Trump denounced the political elements in the CIA, pointing out their previous role in manufacturing
the justifications (he used the term 'lies') for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
CIA mouthpieces have been pointing and sputtering in response that it was not they who cooked the books,
but parallel neoconservative chickenhawk groups in the Bush administration. The trouble with this is
that the CIA did precious little to counter the chickenhawks' narrative, instead choosing to assent
by way of silence.
Personally, I sort of doubt this imagined comity between Hussein and the CIA Ever seen Zero Dark
Thirty ? How much harder did Hussein make the CIA's job? I doubt it was Kathryn Bigelow who chose
to go out of her way to make that movie hostile to Hussein; it's far more likely that this is simply
where the material led her. I similarly doubt that the intelligence community difficulties owed to Hussein
were in any way limited to the hunt for UBL.
The trouble with this is that the CIA did precious little to counter the chickenhawks' narrative,
instead choosing to assent by way of silence.
That's not entirely accurate. CIA people like Michael Scheuer and Valery Plame were trying to undermine
the neocon narrative about Iraq and WMD, not bolster it. At that time, the neocons controlled the ranking
civilian positions at the Pentagon, but did not yet fully control the CIA This changed after Bush's
re-election, when Porter Goss was made DCI to purge all the remaining 'realists' and 'arabists' from
the agency. Now the situation in the opposite: the CIA is totally neocon, while the Pentagon is a bit
less so.
So even if what Trump is saying is technically inaccurate, it's still true at a deeper level: it
was the neocons who lied to us about WMD, just as it is now the neocons who are lying to us about
Russia.
@Mark Green
This is a good article but there's been a sudden shift. Incredibly, Obama has finally
gotten some balls in his dealings with Israel. And Trump is starting to sound like a neocon!
Maybe Trump is worried enough about a potential coup to dump his 'America First' platform (at least
for now) to shore up vital Jewish support for his teetering inauguration. This ploy will require a lot
of pro-Zionist noise and gesturing. Consequently, Trump is starting to play a familiar political role.
And the Zio-friendly media is holding his feet to the fire.
Has the smell of fear pushed Trump over the edge and into the lap of the Zionist establishment? It's
beginning to look that way.
Or is Trump just being a fox?
Let's face it: nobody can pull out all the stops better than Israel's Fifth Column. They've got the
money, the organization skills, the media leverage, and the raw intellectual moxie to make political
miracles/disasters happen. Trump wants them on his side. So he's is tacitly cutting a last-minute deal
with the Israelis. Trump's Zionized rhetoric (and political appointments) prove it.
This explains the apparent reversal that's now underway. Obama's pushing back while Trump is accommodating.
And, as usual, the Zions are dictating the Narrative.
As Israel Shamir reminds us: there's nothing as liberating to a politician as leaving office. Therefore,
Obama is finally free to do what's right. Trump however is facing no such luxury. And Bibi is more defiant
than ever. This is high drama. And Trump is feeling the heat.
Indeed, outgoing Sec. John Kerry just delivered a major speech where he reiterated strongly US support
for a real 'Two State' solution in Israel/Palestine.
And I thought the Two State Solution was dead.
Didn't you?
Kerry also criticized Israel's ongoing confiscation of the Occupied Territories. It was a brilliant
analysis that Kerry gave without the aid of a teleprompter. Hugely impressive. Even so, Kerry did not
throw Israel under the bus, as claimed. His speech was extremely fair.
This renewed, steadfast American position, coupled with the UNSC's unanimous vote against Israel
(which Obama permitted by not casting the usual US veto) has set the stage for a monumental showdown.
Israel has never been more isolated. But it's Trump--not Obama--that's looking weak in the face of Israeli
pressure.
Indeed, the international Jewish establishment remains uniquely powerful. They may be hated (and
appropriately so) but they get things accomplished in the political arena. Trump understands this all-too-well.
Will Trump--out of fear and necessity--run with the mega-powerful Jews who tried to sabotage his
campaign?--Or will he stay strong with America First and avoid "any more disasterous wars". It's impossible
to say. Trump is speaking out of both sides of his mouth.
I get the feeling that even Trump is unsure of where all this is going. But the situation is fast
approaching critical mass. Something's gotta give. The entire world is fed up with Israel.
Will Trump blink and take the easy road with the Zions?--Or will he summon Putin's independent, nationalistic
spirit and stay the course of 'America First'?
Unfortunately, having scrutinized the Zions in action for decades, I'm fearful that Trump will go
Pure Washington and run with the Israeli-Firsters. This will fortify his shaky political foundation.
I hope that I'm wrong about this but the Zions are brilliantly equipped to play both sides of America's
political divide. No politician is immune to their machinations.
In general, I agree with a good portion of your analysis. A few minor quibbles and qualifications,
though:
Incredibly, Obama has finally gotten some balls in his dealings with Israel.
Not really. Since he's a lame-duck president and the election is over, he's not really risking anything
here. After all, opposition to settlements in the occupied territories has been official US policy for
nearly 50 years, and when has that ever stopped Israel from founding/expanding them? No, this is just
more empty symbolism.
And I thought the Two State Solution was dead.
It's been dead for ever. The One State solution will replace it, and that will really freak out all
the Zios.
They may be hated (and appropriately so) but they get things accomplished in the political arena.
Trump understands this all-too-well.
Oderint dum metuant ("Let them hate, so long as they fear.") – Caligula
@Karl
the "shot across the bow" was the "Not My President!" demonstrations, which were long before
Dr Stein's recount circuses.
They spent a lot of money on buses and box lunches - it wouldn't fly.
Nothing else they try will fly.
Correct me if I am wrong.... plain ole citizens can start RICO suits against the likes of Soros.
Correct me if I am wrong . plain ole citizens can start RICO suits against the likes of Soros.
It seems you may be on to something:
RICO also permits a private individual "damaged in his business or property" by a "racketeer"
to file a civil suit. The plaintiff must prove the existence of an "enterprise". The defendant(s)
are not the enterprise; in other words, the defendant(s) and the enterprise are not one and the same.[3]
There must be one of four specified relationships between the defendant(s) and the enterprise: either
the defendant(s) invested the proceeds of the pattern of racketeering activity into the enterprise
(18 U.S.C. § 1962(a)); or the defendant(s) acquired or maintained an interest in, or control of,
the enterprise through the pattern of racketeering activity (subsection (b)); or the defendant(s)
conducted or participated in the affairs of the enterprise "through" the pattern of racketeering
activity (subsection (c)); or the defendant(s) conspired to do one of the above (subsection (d)).[4]
In essence, the enterprise is either the 'prize,' 'instrument,' 'victim,' or 'perpetrator' of the
racketeers.[5] A civil RICO action can be filed in state or federal court.[6]
@Max Havelaar
My guess: the outgoing Obama administration is in a last ditch killing frenzy, to
revenge Aleppo loss!
The Berlin bus blowup, The Russian ambassador in Turkey killed and the Red army's most eminent Alexandrov's
choir send to the bottom of the black sea.
Typical CIA ops to threaten world leaders to comply with the incumbent US elite.
Watch Mike Morell (CIA) threaten world leaders:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZK2FZGKAd0
The prominence of the "perfumed prince" Morell is the most telling indictment of the so-called "elites"
in the US. The arrogant, irresponsible (and untouchable) imbeciles among the real "deciders" in the
US have brought the country down to a sub-civilization status when the US does not do diplomacy, does
not follow international law, and does not keep with even marginal aspects of democracy home and abroad.
The proliferation of the incompetent and opportunists in the highest echelons of the US government is
the consequence of the lack of responsibility on the top. Morell – who has never been in combat and
never demonstrated any intellectual vigor – is a prime example of a sycophantic and poorly educated
opportunist that is endangering the US big time.
The arrogant, irresponsible (and untouchable) imbeciles among the real "deciders" in the US have
brought the country down to a sub-civilization status when the US does not do diplomacy, does not
follow international law, and does not keep with even marginal aspects of democracy home and abroad.
It is corrupt, annamaria, corrupt to the very core, corrupt throughout. Any talk of elections, honest
candidates, devoted elected representatives, etc., is sappy naivete. They're crooks; the sprinkling
of decent reps is minuscule and ineffective.
So, what to do? ,
@Max Havelaar
A serial killer, paid by US taxpayers. By universal human rights laws he would hang.
I agree with some, mostly the pro-Constitutionalist and moral spirit of the essay, but differ as
to when the Coup D'etat is going to – or has already taken place .
The coup D'etat that destroyed our American Republic, and its last Constitutional President, John
F. Kennedy, took place 53 years ago on November 22, 1963. The coup was consolidated at the cost of 2
million Vietnamese and 1 million Indonesians (1965). The assassinations of JF Kennedy's brother, Robert
Kennedy, R. Kennedy's ally, Martin L. King, Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, John Lennon, and many others, followed.
Mr. Petras, the Coup D'etat has already happened.
Our mission must be the Restore our American Republic! This is The Only Road for us. There
are no shortcuts. The choice we were given (for Hollywood President), in 2016, between a psychotic Mass
Murderer, and a mid level Mafioso Casino Owner displayed the lack of respect the Oligarchs have for
the American Sheeple. Until we rise, we will never regain our self-respect, our Honor.
I enclose a copy of our Flier, our Declaration, For The Restoration of the Republic below,
for your perusal. We (of the Anarchist Collective), have distributed it as best we can.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal governments are instituted
among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government
becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and to institute
new government, laying its foundation on such principles "
The above is a portion of the Declaration of Independence , written by Thomas Jefferson.
We submit the following facts to the citizens of the United States.
The government of the United States has been a Totalitarian Oligarchy since the military financial aristocracy
destroyed the Democratic Republic on November 22, 1963, when they assassinated the last democratically
elected president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy , and overthrew his government. All following governments
have been unconstitutional frauds. Attempts by Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King to restore the
Republic were interrupted by their murder.
A subsequent 12 year colonial war against Vietnam , conducted by the murderers of Kennedy,
left 2 million dead in a wake of napalm and burning villages.
In 1965 , the U.S. government orchestrated the slaughter of 1 million unarmed Indonesian civilians.
In the decade that followed the CIA murdered 100,000 Native Americans in Guatemala.
In the 1970s , the Oligarchy began the destruction and looting of America's middle class,
by encouraging the export of industry and jobs to parts of the world where workers were paid bare subsistence
wages. The 2008, Bailout of the Nation's Oligarchs cost American taxpayers $13trillion. The long
decline of the local economy has led to the political decline of our hard working citizens, as well
as the decay of cities, towns, and infrastructure, such as education.
The impoverishment of America's middle class has undermined the nation's financial stability. Without
a productive foundation, the government has accumulated a huge debt in excess of $19trillion . This debt will have to be paid, or suffered by future generations. Concurrently, the top 1% of the
nation's population has benefited enormously from the discomfiture of the rest. The interest rate has
been reduced to 0, thereby slowly robbing millions of depositors of their savings, as their savings
cannot stay even with the inflation rate.
The government spends the declining national wealth on bloody and never ending military adventures,
and is or has recently conducted unconstitutional wars against 9 nations. The Oligarchs maintain 700
military bases in 131 countries; they spend as much on military weapons of terror as the rest of the
nations of the world combined. Tellingly, more than half the government budget is spent on the military
and 16 associated secret agencies.
The nightmare of a powerful centralized government crushing the rights of the people, so feared by the
Founders of the United States, has become a reality. The government of Obama/Biden, as with previous
administrations such as Bush/Cheney, and whoever is chosen in November 2016, operates a Gulag of dozens
of concentration camps, where prisoners are denied trials, and routinely tortured. The Patriot Act
and The National Defense Authorizations Act , enacted by both Democratic and Republican factions
of the oligarchy, serve to establish a legal cover for their terror.
The nation's media is controlled , and, with the school systems, serve to brainwash the population;
the people are intimidated and treated with contempt.
The United States is No longer Sovereign
The United States is no longer a sovereign nation. Its government, The Executive, and Congress, is
bought, utterly owned and controlled by foreign and domestic wealthy Oligarchs, such as the Rothschilds,
Rockefellers, and Duponts , to name only a few of the best known.
The 2016 Electoral Circus will anoint new actors to occupy the same Unconstitutional Government,
with its controlling International Oligarchs. Clinton, Trump, whomever, are willing accomplices for
imperialist international murder, and destruction of nations, including ours.
For Love of Country
The Restoration of the Republic will be a Revolutionary Act, that will cancel all previous debts
owed to that unconstitutional regime and its business supporters. All debts, including Student Debts,
will be canceled. Our citizens will begin, anew, with a clean slate.
As American Founder, Thomas Jefferson wrote, in a letter to James Madison:
"I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self evident, 'that the earth belongs in usufruct
to the living':"
"Then I say the earth belongs to each of these generations, during it's course, fully, and in their
own right. The 2d. Generation receives it clear of the debts and incumberances of the 1st. The 3d of
the 2d. and so on. For if the 1st. Could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead
and not the living generation."
Our Citizens must restore the centrality of the constitution, establishing a less powerful government
which will ensure President Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms , freedom of speech and expression,
freedom to worship God in ones own way, freedom from want "which means economic understandings which
will secure to every nation a healthy peace time life for its inhabitants " and freedom from fear "which means
a world-wide reduction of armaments "
Once restored: The Constitution will become, once again, the law of the land and of a free people.
We will establish a government, hold elections, begin to direct traffic, arrest criminal politicians
of the tyrannical oligarchy, and, in short, repair the damage of the previous totalitarian governments.
For the Democratic Republic! Sons and Daughters of Liberty [email protected]
@annamaria
The prominence of the "perfumed prince" Morell is the most telling indictment of the
so-called "elites" in the US. The arrogant, irresponsible (and untouchable) imbeciles among the real
"deciders" in the US have brought the country down to a sub-civilization status when the US does not
do diplomacy, does not follow international law, and does not keep with even marginal aspects of democracy
home and abroad. The proliferation of the incompetent and opportunists in the highest echelons of the
US government is the consequence of the lack of responsibility on the top. Morell - who has never been
in combat and never demonstrated any intellectual vigor - is a prime example of a sycophantic and poorly
educated opportunist that is endangering the US big time.
The arrogant, irresponsible (and untouchable) imbeciles among the real "deciders" in the US have
brought the country down to a sub-civilization status when the US does not do diplomacy, does not
follow international law, and does not keep with even marginal aspects of democracy home and abroad.
It is corrupt, annamaria, corrupt to the very core, corrupt throughout. Any talk of elections, honest
candidates, devoted elected representatives, etc., is sappy naivete. They're crooks; the sprinkling
of decent reps is minuscule and ineffective.
So, what to do?
• Replies:
@Bill Jones
The corruption is endemic from top to bottom.
My previous residence was in Hamilton Township in Monroe County, PA . Population about 8,000.
The 3 Township Supervisors appointed themselves to township jobs- Road master, Zoning officer etc and
pay themselves twice the going rate with the occupant of the job under review abstaining while his two
palls vote him the money. Anybody challenging this is met with a shit-storm of propaganda and a mysterious
explosion in voter turn-out: guess who runs the local polls?
The chief of the local volunteer fire company has to sign off on the sprinkler systems before any occupation
certificate can be issued for a commercial building. Conveniently he runs a plumbing business. Guess
who gets the lion's share of plumbing jobs for new commercial buildings?
As they climb the greasy pole, it only gets worse.
Meanwhile the routine business of looting continues:
My local rag (an organ of the Murdoch crime family) had a little piece last year about the new 3 year
contract for the local county prison guards. I went back to the two previous two contracts and discovered
that by 2018 they will have had 33% increases over nine years. Between 2008 and 2013 (the latest years
I could find data for) median household income in the county decreased by 13%.
At some point some rogue politician will start fighting this battle.
If the US is split between Trump and Clinton supporters, then the staffs of the CIA and FBI are probably
split the same way.
The CIA and FBI leadership may take one position or another, but many CIA and FBI employees joined
these agencies in the first place to serve their country – not to assist Neo-con MENA Imperial projects,
and they know a lot more than the general public about what is really going on.
Employees can really mess things up if they have a different political orientation to their employers.
@Mark Green
This is a good article but there's been a sudden shift. Incredibly, Obama has finally
gotten some balls in his dealings with Israel. And Trump is starting to sound like a neocon!
Maybe Trump is worried enough about a potential coup to dump his 'America First' platform (at least
for now) to shore up vital Jewish support for his teetering inauguration. This ploy will require a lot
of pro-Zionist noise and gesturing. Consequently, Trump is starting to play a familiar political role.
And the Zio-friendly media is holding his feet to the fire.
Has the smell of fear pushed Trump over the edge and into the lap of the Zionist establishment? It's
beginning to look that way.
Or is Trump just being a fox?
Let's face it: nobody can pull out all the stops better than Israel's Fifth Column. They've got the
money, the organization skills, the media leverage, and the raw intellectual moxie to make political
miracles/disasters happen. Trump wants them on his side. So he's is tacitly cutting a last-minute deal
with the Israelis. Trump's Zionized rhetoric (and political appointments) prove it.
This explains the apparent reversal that's now underway. Obama's pushing back while Trump is accommodating.
And, as usual, the Zions are dictating the Narrative.
As Israel Shamir reminds us: there's nothing as liberating to a politician as leaving office. Therefore,
Obama is finally free to do what's right. Trump however is facing no such luxury. And Bibi is more defiant
than ever. This is high drama. And Trump is feeling the heat.
Indeed, outgoing Sec. John Kerry just delivered a major speech where he reiterated strongly US support
for a real 'Two State' solution in Israel/Palestine.
And I thought the Two State Solution was dead.
Didn't you?
Kerry also criticized Israel's ongoing confiscation of the Occupied Territories. It was a brilliant
analysis that Kerry gave without the aid of a teleprompter. Hugely impressive. Even so, Kerry did not
throw Israel under the bus, as claimed. His speech was extremely fair.
This renewed, steadfast American position, coupled with the UNSC's unanimous vote against Israel
(which Obama permitted by not casting the usual US veto) has set the stage for a monumental showdown.
Israel has never been more isolated. But it's Trump--not Obama--that's looking weak in the face of Israeli
pressure.
Indeed, the international Jewish establishment remains uniquely powerful. They may be hated (and
appropriately so) but they get things accomplished in the political arena. Trump understands this all-too-well.
Will Trump--out of fear and necessity--run with the mega-powerful Jews who tried to sabotage his
campaign?--Or will he stay strong with America First and avoid "any more disasterous wars". It's impossible
to say. Trump is speaking out of both sides of his mouth.
I get the feeling that even Trump is unsure of where all this is going. But the situation is fast
approaching critical mass. Something's gotta give. The entire world is fed up with Israel.
Will Trump blink and take the easy road with the Zions?--Or will he summon Putin's independent, nationalistic
spirit and stay the course of 'America First'?
Unfortunately, having scrutinized the Zions in action for decades, I'm fearful that Trump will go
Pure Washington and run with the Israeli-Firsters. This will fortify his shaky political foundation.
I hope that I'm wrong about this but the Zions are brilliantly equipped to play both sides of America's
political divide. No politician is immune to their machinations.
Trump will go Pure Washington and run with the Israeli-Firsters. This will fortify his shaky political
foundation. I hope that I'm wrong about this but the Zions are brilliantly equipped to play both
sides of America's political divide. No politician is immune to their machinations.
I'm hoping that Trump is running with the neocons just as far as is necessary to pressure congress
to confirm his cabinet appointments and make sure he isn't JFK'd before he gets into office and can
set about putting security in place to protect his own and his family's lives.
For John McBloodstain to vote for a SoS that will make nice with his nemesis; Putin, will require
massive amounts of Zio-pressure. The only way that pressure will come is if the Zio-cons are convinced
that Trump is their man.
Once his cabinet appointments are secured, then perhaps we might see some independence of action.
Not until. At least that is my hope, however naïve.
It isn't just the Zio-cons that want to poke the Russian bear, it's also the MIC. Trump has to navigate
a very dangerous mine field if he's going to end the Endless Wars and return sanity and peace to the
world. He's going to have to wrangle with the devil himself (the Fiend), and outplay him at his own
game.
I do not like saying it, but the appointment of the Palestinian hating Jew as ambassador to Israel
has disarmed the Jew community – they can no longer call Trump an anti-Semite – the most power two words
in America. The result is that the domestic side of the coup is over.
The Russian thing has to play out. The Jew forces will try and make bad blood between America and
Russia – hopefully Trump and Putin will let it play out, but really ignore it.
If we get past the inauguration, the CIA is going to be toast. GOOD!
Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats today (effective Friday) - doing his best to screw things up before
Trump takes office. Will he start WWIII, then say Trump can't transition during war?
Obama has authorized transfer of weapons, including MANPADS, to terrorist affiliates. If we are at war
with terrorists, isn't this Treason? It is most certainly a felony under the Patriot Act - providing
aid, directly or indirectly, to terrorists.
A Bill of Impeachment against Obama might stave off WWIII.
Francis Boyle writes:
"... I am willing to serve as Counsel to any Member of the US House of Representatives willing to put
in a Bill of Impeachment against Obama as soon as Congress reconvenes-just as I did to the late, great
Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez on his Bill to Impeach Bush Sr. on the eve of Gulf War I. RIP.
Just have
the MOC get in touch with me as indicated below.
Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA
217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax)
That's not entirely accurate. CIA people like Michael Scheuer and Valery Plame were trying to
undermine the neocon narrative about Iraq and WMD, not bolster it.
It seems that our POTUS has just chosen to eject 35 Russian diplomats from our country, on grounds
of hacking the election against Hillary.
Is this some weird, preliminary "shot across the bow" in preparation for the coming "coup attempt"
you seem to believe is in the offing ?
It seem the powers-that-be are pulling out all the stops to prevent an authentic rapprochement with
Moscow.
What for ?
It makes you wonder if there is more to this than meets the eye, something beyond the sanguine disgruntlement
of the party bosses and a desire for payback against Hillary's big loss ?
Does anyone know if Russia is more aware than most Americans of certain classified details pertaining
to stuff ..like 9-11 ?
Why is cooperation between the new administration and Moscow so scary to these people that they would
initiate a preemptive diplomatic shut down ?
They seem to be dead set on welding shut every single diplomatic door to the Kremlin there is , before
Trumps inauguration.
Perhaps something "else "is being planned ..Does anyone have any ideas whats going on ?
@Tomster
What does Russian intelligence know? Err ... perhaps something like that the US/UK have
sold nukes to the head-choppers of the riyadh caliphate, say (knowing how completely mad their incestuous
brains are?). Who knows? - but such a fact could explain many inexplicable things.
@Art
I do not like saying it, but the appointment of the Palestinian hating Jew as ambassador to
Israel has disarmed the Jew community – they can no longer call Trump an anti-Semite – the most power
two words in America. The result is that the domestic side of the coup is over.
The Russian thing has to play out. The Jew forces will try and make bad blood between America and Russia
– hopefully Trump and Putin will let it play out, but really ignore it.
If we get past the inauguration, the CIA is going to be toast. GOOD!
Peace --- Art
"If we get past the inauguration ."
Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats today (effective Friday) – doing his best to screw things up
before Trump takes office. Will he start WWIII, then say Trump can't transition during war?
Obama has authorized transfer of weapons, including MANPADS, to terrorist affiliates. If we are at
war with terrorists, isn't this Treason? It is most certainly a felony under the Patriot Act – providing
aid, directly or indirectly, to terrorists.
A Bill of Impeachment against Obama might stave off WWIII. Francis Boyle writes:
" I am willing to serve as Counsel to any Member of the US House of Representatives willing to put
in a Bill of Impeachment against Obama as soon as Congress reconvenes-just as I did to the late, great
Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez on his Bill to Impeach Bush Sr. on the eve of Gulf War I. RIP. Just have
the MOC get in touch with me as indicated below.
Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA
217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax)
This is much ado about nothing - in a NYT's article today - they said that the DNC was told about
being hacked in the fall or winter of 2015 - they all knew the Russian were hacking all along!
The RNC got smart - not the DNC - it is 100% their fault. Right now they look real stupid.
Really - how pissed off can they be?
Peace --- Art
p.s. I do not blame Obama – he had to do something – looks like he did the minimum.
@Mark Green
This is a good article but there's been a sudden shift. Incredibly, Obama has finally
gotten some balls in his dealings with Israel. And Trump is starting to sound like a neocon!
Maybe Trump is worried enough about a potential coup to dump his 'America First' platform (at least
for now) to shore up vital Jewish support for his teetering inauguration. This ploy will require a lot
of pro-Zionist noise and gesturing. Consequently, Trump is starting to play a familiar political role.
And the Zio-friendly media is holding his feet to the fire.
Has the smell of fear pushed Trump over the edge and into the lap of the Zionist establishment? It's
beginning to look that way.
Or is Trump just being a fox?
Let's face it: nobody can pull out all the stops better than Israel's Fifth Column. They've got the
money, the organization skills, the media leverage, and the raw intellectual moxie to make political
miracles/disasters happen. Trump wants them on his side. So he's is tacitly cutting a last-minute deal
with the Israelis. Trump's Zionized rhetoric (and political appointments) prove it.
This explains the apparent reversal that's now underway. Obama's pushing back while Trump is accommodating.
And, as usual, the Zions are dictating the Narrative.
As Israel Shamir reminds us: there's nothing as liberating to a politician as leaving office. Therefore,
Obama is finally free to do what's right. Trump however is facing no such luxury. And Bibi is more defiant
than ever. This is high drama. And Trump is feeling the heat.
Indeed, outgoing Sec. John Kerry just delivered a major speech where he reiterated strongly US support
for a real 'Two State' solution in Israel/Palestine.
And I thought the Two State Solution was dead.
Didn't you?
Kerry also criticized Israel's ongoing confiscation of the Occupied Territories. It was a brilliant
analysis that Kerry gave without the aid of a teleprompter. Hugely impressive. Even so, Kerry did not
throw Israel under the bus, as claimed. His speech was extremely fair.
This renewed, steadfast American position, coupled with the UNSC's unanimous vote against Israel
(which Obama permitted by not casting the usual US veto) has set the stage for a monumental showdown.
Israel has never been more isolated. But it's Trump--not Obama--that's looking weak in the face of Israeli
pressure.
Indeed, the international Jewish establishment remains uniquely powerful. They may be hated (and
appropriately so) but they get things accomplished in the political arena. Trump understands this all-too-well.
Will Trump--out of fear and necessity--run with the mega-powerful Jews who tried to sabotage his
campaign?--Or will he stay strong with America First and avoid "any more disasterous wars". It's impossible
to say. Trump is speaking out of both sides of his mouth.
I get the feeling that even Trump is unsure of where all this is going. But the situation is fast
approaching critical mass. Something's gotta give. The entire world is fed up with Israel.
Will Trump blink and take the easy road with the Zions?--Or will he summon Putin's independent, nationalistic
spirit and stay the course of 'America First'?
Unfortunately, having scrutinized the Zions in action for decades, I'm fearful that Trump will go
Pure Washington and run with the Israeli-Firsters. This will fortify his shaky political foundation.
I hope that I'm wrong about this but the Zions are brilliantly equipped to play both sides of America's
political divide. No politician is immune to their machinations.
I wish people would stop making a big deal out of John Kerry's and Barack Obama's recent stance on
Israel. Neither of them are concerned about whatever injustice happened to the Palestinians.
What they are concerned with is Israeli actions discrediting the anti-white, anti-national globalism
program before it has successfully destroyed all of the white nations. That is the real reason why they
want a two-state solution or a right of return. If nationalists can look at the Israeli example as a
model for how to proceed then that will cause a civil war among leftists and discredit the entire left-wing
project.
Trump, therefore, pushing support for Israel's national concerns is not him bending to AIPAC. It
is a shrewd move that forces an internecine conflict between left-wing diaspora Jews and Israeli Jews.
It is a conflict Bibi is willing to have because the pet project of leftism would necessarily result
in Israel either being unlivable or largely extinct for its Jewish population. This NWO being pushed
by the diaspora is not something that will be enjoyed by Israeli Jews.
Consider the problem. The problem is that Palestinians have revanchist claims against Israel. Those
revanchist claims do not go away just because they get their own country or they get a right of return.
Either "solution" actually strengthens the Palestinian claim against Israel and results in a vastly
reduced security stance and quality of life for Israelis. The diaspora left is ok with that because
they want to continue importing revanchist groups into Europe and America to break down white countries.
So, Israel makes a small sacrifice for the greater good of anti-whitism, a deal that most Israelis do
not consider very good for themselves. Trump's support for Israeli nationalism short-circuits this project.
Of course, one could ask: why don't the Israeli Jews just move to America? What's the big deal if
Israel remains in the middle east? The big deal is the kind of jobs and activities available for Israelis
to do. A real nation requires a lot of scut work. Someone has to do the plumbing, unplug the sewers,
drive the nails, throw out the trash. Everyone can't be a doctor, a lawyer or a banker. Tradesmen, technicians,
workers are all required to get a project like Israel off the ground and maintained. How many of these
Israelis doing scut work in Israel for a greater good want to do the same scut work in America just
to get by? The problem operates in reverse for American Jews. A Jew with an American law degree is of
no use to Israelis outside of the money he brings and whether he can throw out the trash. Diaspora Jews,
therefore, have no reason to try and live and work in Israel.
So, again, we see that Trump's move is a masterstroke. Even his appointment to counter the coup with
Zionists is brilliant, since these Zionists are rich enough to both live anywhere and indulge their
pride in nationalist endeavors.
• Replies:
@joe webb
masterful interpretation here. But I doubt it , in spades. Trump cooled out the soccer
moms on the Negroes by yakking about Uplift. And he reduced the black vote a tad. That was very clever,
but probably did not come from Trump.
As for "The problem is that Palestinians have revanchist claims against Israel. Those revanchist
claims do not go away just because they get their own country or they get a right of return. Either
"solution" actually strengthens the Palestinian claim against Israel and results in a vastly reduced
security stance and quality of life for Israelis."
That is a huge claim which is not substantiated with argument. If the Palestinians sign a peace treaty
with Israel, and then continue to press their claims...Israel would have the moral high ground to beat
hell out of them. Clearly, the jews got the guns, and the Palestinians got nothing but world public
opinion.
Please present an argument on just how Palestinians and other Arabs could continue to logically and
morally challenge Israel. Right now, the only thing preventing Israel from cleansing Israel of Arabs
is world public opinion. That public opinion is real and a huge factor.
I have been arguing that T. may be outfoxing the jews, but I doubt it now. Don't forget the Christian evangelical vote and Christians generally who have a soft spot in their brains
for the jews.
Also, T's claim that he will end the ME wars is a big problem if he is going to go after Isis, big
time, in Syria or anywhere else. He has put himself in the rock/hard place position. I don't think he
is that smart. I voted for him of course and sent money, but...
Joe Webb ,
@RobinG
"A real nation requires a lot of scut work. Someone has to do the plumbing, unplug the sewers,
drive the nails, throw out the trash."
"The 'experts' were trotted out voicing vitriolic accusations, but they never presented any facts
and documentation of a 'rigged election'. Everyday, every hour, the 'Russian Plot' was breathlessly
described in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Financial Times, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, BBC,
NPR and their overseas followers in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Oceana and Africa."
You left out Fox, most of their news anchors and pundits are rabidly pro Israel and anti Russia.
There is a pretty good chance, since all else has failed so far, Obama will declare 'a special situation
martial law'. And you can be sure many on both sides of Congress will comply. This will once again demonstrate
who is on the power elite payroll. If this happens hopefully the military will be on Trumps side and
round up those responsible and proper justice meted out.
@map
I wish people would stop making a big deal out of John Kerry's and Barack Obama's recent stance
on Israel. Neither of them are concerned about whatever injustice happened to the Palestinians.
What they are concerned with is Israeli actions discrediting the anti-white, anti-national globalism
program before it has successfully destroyed all of the white nations. That is the real reason why they
want a two-state solution or a right of return. If nationalists can look at the Israeli example as a
model for how to proceed then that will cause a civil war among leftists and discredit the entire left-wing
project.
Trump, therefore, pushing support for Israel's national concerns is not him bending to AIPAC. It is
a shrewd move that forces an internecine conflict between left-wing diaspora Jews and Israeli Jews.
It is a conflict Bibi is willing to have because the pet project of leftism would necessarily result
in Israel either being unlivable or largely extinct for its Jewish population. This NWO being pushed
by the diaspora is not something that will be enjoyed by Israeli Jews.
Consider the problem. The problem is that Palestinians have revanchist claims against Israel. Those
revanchist claims do not go away just because they get their own country or they get a right of return.
Either "solution" actually strengthens the Palestinian claim against Israel and results in a vastly
reduced security stance and quality of life for Israelis. The diaspora left is ok with that because
they want to continue importing revanchist groups into Europe and America to break down white countries.
So, Israel makes a small sacrifice for the greater good of anti-whitism, a deal that most Israelis do
not consider very good for themselves. Trump's support for Israeli nationalism short-circuits this project.
Of course, one could ask: why don't the Israeli Jews just move to America? What's the big deal if Israel
remains in the middle east? The big deal is the kind of jobs and activities available for Israelis to
do. A real nation requires a lot of scut work. Someone has to do the plumbing, unplug the sewers, drive
the nails, throw out the trash. Everyone can't be a doctor, a lawyer or a banker. Tradesmen, technicians,
workers are all required to get a project like Israel off the ground and maintained. How many of these
Israelis doing scut work in Israel for a greater good want to do the same scut work in America just
to get by? The problem operates in reverse for American Jews. A Jew with an American law degree is of
no use to Israelis outside of the money he brings and whether he can throw out the trash. Diaspora Jews,
therefore, have no reason to try and live and work in Israel.
So, again, we see that Trump's move is a masterstroke. Even his appointment to counter the coup with
Zionists is brilliant, since these Zionists are rich enough to both live anywhere and indulge their
pride in nationalist endeavors.
masterful interpretation here. But I doubt it , in spades. Trump cooled out the soccer moms on the
Negroes by yakking about Uplift. And he reduced the black vote a tad. That was very clever, but probably
did not come from Trump.
As for "The problem is that Palestinians have revanchist claims against Israel. Those revanchist
claims do not go away just because they get their own country or they get a right of return. Either
"solution" actually strengthens the Palestinian claim against Israel and results in a vastly reduced
security stance and quality of life for Israelis."
That is a huge claim which is not substantiated with argument. If the Palestinians sign a peace treaty
with Israel, and then continue to press their claims Israel would have the moral high ground to beat
hell out of them. Clearly, the jews got the guns, and the Palestinians got nothing but world public
opinion.
Please present an argument on just how Palestinians and other Arabs could continue to logically and
morally challenge Israel. Right now, the only thing preventing Israel from cleansing Israel of Arabs
is world public opinion. That public opinion is real and a huge factor.
I have been arguing that T. may be outfoxing the jews, but I doubt it now. Don't forget the Christian evangelical vote and Christians generally who have a soft spot in their brains
for the jews.
Also, T's claim that he will end the ME wars is a big problem if he is going to go after Isis, big
time, in Syria or anywhere else. He has put himself in the rock/hard place position. I don't think he
is that smart. I voted for him of course and sent money, but
Joe Webb
• Replies:
@map
The revanchist claim that I refer to is psychological, not moral or legal. Palestinians think
their land was stolen in the same way Mexicans think Texas and California were stolen. That feeling
will not change just because they get a two-state solution or a right of return. What it will result
in is a comfortable base from which to continue to operate against Israel, one that Israel can't afford.
It is Nationalism 101 not to allow revanchist groups in your country.
The leftists are being consistent in their ideology by opposing Israel, because they are fully on board
going after what looks like a white country attacking brown people and demanding not to be dismantled
by anti-nationalist policies. Trump suggesting the capital go to Jerusalem and supporting Bibi is just
triangulation against the left.
I feel sorry for the Palestinians and I think they have been treated very shabbily. They did lose a
lot as any refugee population would and they should be comfortably repatriated around the Muslim Middle
East. I don't know who is using them or for what purpose.
@Realist
"The 'experts' were trotted out voicing vitriolic accusations, but they never presented
any facts and documentation of a 'rigged election'. Everyday, every hour, the 'Russian Plot' was breathlessly
described in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Financial Times, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, BBC,
NPR and their overseas followers in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Oceana and Africa."
You left out Fox, most of their news anchors and pundits are rabidly pro Israel and anti Russia.
There is a pretty good chance, since all else has failed so far, Obama will declare 'a special situation
martial law'. And you can be sure many on both sides of Congress will comply. This will once again demonstrate
who is on the power elite payroll. If this happens hopefully the military will be on Trumps side and
round up those responsible and proper justice meted out.
The obscenity of the US behavior abroad leads directly to an alliance of ziocons and war profiteers.
Here is a highly educational paper on the exceptional amorality of the US administration:
http://www.voltairenet.org/article194709.html
"The existence of a NATO bunker in East Aleppo confirms what we have been saying about the role of NATO
LandCom in the coordination of the jihadists The liberation of Syria should continue at Idleb the
zone is de facto governed by NATO via a string of pseudo-NGO's. At least, this is what was noted last
month by a US think-tank. To beat the jihadists there, it will be necessary first of all to cut their
supply lines, in other words, close the Turtkish frontier. This is what Russian diplomacy is currently
working on." Well. After wasting the uncounted trillions of US dollars on the war on terror and after filling the
VA hospitals with the ruined young men and women and after bringing death a destruction on apocalyptic
scale to the Middle East in the name of 9/11, the US has found new bosom buddies – the hordes of fanatical
jihadis.
Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats today (effective Friday) - doing his best to screw things up before
Trump takes office. Will he start WWIII, then say Trump can't transition during war?
Obama has authorized transfer of weapons, including MANPADS, to terrorist affiliates. If we are at war
with terrorists, isn't this Treason? It is most certainly a felony under the Patriot Act - providing
aid, directly or indirectly, to terrorists.
A Bill of Impeachment against Obama might stave off WWIII. Francis Boyle writes: "... I am willing to serve as Counsel to any Member of the US House of Representatives willing to put
in a Bill of Impeachment against Obama as soon as Congress reconvenes-just as I did to the late, great
Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez on his Bill to Impeach Bush Sr. on the eve of Gulf War I. RIP. Just have
the MOC get in touch with me as indicated below.
Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone)
217-244-1478 (fax)
Hi RobinG,
This is much ado about nothing – in a NYT's article today – they said that the DNC was told about
being hacked in the fall or winter of 2015 – they all knew the Russian were hacking all along!
The RNC got smart – not the DNC – it is 100% their fault. Right now they look real stupid.
Really – how pissed off can they be?
Peace - Art
p.s. I do not blame Obama – he had to do something – looks like he did the minimum.
I try to write clearly, but if this is your response I've failed miserably. My interest in the hacking
is nil.
What I have against Obama is his regime-change war in Syria, his State Department enabled coup in Ukraine,
his support of Saudi war/genocide against Yemen, his destruction of Libya, his demonization of Putin,
and his bringing us to a status near war in our relations with Russia.
Obama has been providing weapons, training, air support and propaganda for Terrorists via their affiliates
in Syria, and now directly. This is a felony, if not treason.
The feds have now released their reports, detailing how the dastardly Russians darkly influenced
the 2016 presidential election by releasing Democrats' emails, and giving the American public a peek
inside the Democrat machine.
Those dastardly Russkies have informed and enlightened the American public for long enough! This
shall not stand!
This is much ado about nothing - in a NYT's article today - they said that the DNC was told about
being hacked in the fall or winter of 2015 - they all knew the Russian were hacking all along!
The RNC got smart - not the DNC - it is 100% their fault. Right now they look real stupid.
Really - how pissed off can they be?
Peace --- Art
p.s. I do not blame Obama – he had to do something – looks like he did the minimum.
Hi Art,
I try to write clearly, but if this is your response I've failed miserably. My interest in the hacking
is nil.
What I have against Obama is his regime-change war in Syria, his State Department enabled coup in
Ukraine, his support of Saudi war/genocide against Yemen, his destruction of Libya, his demonization
of Putin, and his bringing us to a status near war in our relations with Russia.
Obama has been providing weapons, training, air support and propaganda for Terrorists via their affiliates
in Syria, and now directly. This is a felony, if not treason.
What I have against Obama is his regime-change war in Syria, his State Department enabled coup in
Ukraine, his support of Saudi war/genocide against Yemen, his destruction of Libya, his demonization
of Putin, and his bringing us to a status near war in our relations with Russia.
RobinG --- Agree 100% - some times I get things crossed up --- Peace Art
I assume that everyone agrees that the final outcome of the security breach was that 'Wikileaks'
leaked internal emails of Clinton Campaign Manager Pedesta and DNC emails regarding embarrassing behavior.
No one is suggesting that the leaked information is 'fake news'.
An alternative hypothesis is that the Wikileaks material was, in fact, leaked by members of the Democratic
campaign itself.
Given that Podesta's password was 'P@ssw0rd' - does it take Russian deep state security to hack?
Though CAP is still having issues with my email and computer, yours is good to go. jpodesta p@ssw0rd
The report is 13 pages of mostly nothing.
Note the Disclaimer:
DISCLAIMER: This report is provided "as is" for informational purposes only. The Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) does not provide any warranties of any kind regarding any information contained within.
DHS does not endorse any commercial product or service referenced in this advisory or otherwise. This
document is distributed as TLP:WHITE: Subject to standard copyright rules, TLP:WHITE information may
be distributed without restriction. For more information on the Traffic Light Protocol, see
https://www.us-cert.gov/tlp .
@annamaria
The obscenity of the US behavior abroad leads directly to an alliance of ziocons and
war profiteers. Here is a highly educational paper on the exceptional amorality of the US administration:
http://www.voltairenet.org/article194709.html
"The existence of a NATO bunker in East Aleppo confirms what we have been saying about the role of NATO
LandCom in the coordination of the jihadists... The liberation of Syria should continue at Idleb ...
the zone is de facto governed by NATO via a string of pseudo-NGO's. At least, this is what was noted
last month by a US think-tank. To beat the jihadists there, it will be necessary first of all to cut
their supply lines, in other words, close the Turtkish frontier. This is what Russian diplomacy is currently
working on."
Well. After wasting the uncounted trillions of US dollars on the war on terror and after filling the
VA hospitals with the ruined young men and women and after bringing death a destruction on apocalyptic
scale to the Middle East in the name of 9/11, the US has found new bosom buddies - the hordes of fanatical
jihadis.
@joe webb
masterful interpretation here. But I doubt it , in spades. Trump cooled out the soccer
moms on the Negroes by yakking about Uplift. And he reduced the black vote a tad. That was very clever,
but probably did not come from Trump.
As for "The problem is that Palestinians have revanchist claims against Israel. Those revanchist
claims do not go away just because they get their own country or they get a right of return. Either
"solution" actually strengthens the Palestinian claim against Israel and results in a vastly reduced
security stance and quality of life for Israelis."
That is a huge claim which is not substantiated with argument. If the Palestinians sign a peace treaty
with Israel, and then continue to press their claims...Israel would have the moral high ground to beat
hell out of them. Clearly, the jews got the guns, and the Palestinians got nothing but world public
opinion.
Please present an argument on just how Palestinians and other Arabs could continue to logically and
morally challenge Israel. Right now, the only thing preventing Israel from cleansing Israel of Arabs
is world public opinion. That public opinion is real and a huge factor.
I have been arguing that T. may be outfoxing the jews, but I doubt it now. Don't forget the Christian evangelical vote and Christians generally who have a soft spot in their brains
for the jews.
Also, T's claim that he will end the ME wars is a big problem if he is going to go after Isis, big
time, in Syria or anywhere else. He has put himself in the rock/hard place position. I don't think he
is that smart. I voted for him of course and sent money, but...
Joe Webb
The revanchist claim that I refer to is psychological, not moral or legal. Palestinians think their
land was stolen in the same way Mexicans think Texas and California were stolen. That feeling will not
change just because they get a two-state solution or a right of return. What it will result in is a
comfortable base from which to continue to operate against Israel, one that Israel can't afford.
It is Nationalism 101 not to allow revanchist groups in your country.
The leftists are being consistent in their ideology by opposing Israel, because they are fully on
board going after what looks like a white country attacking brown people and demanding not to be dismantled
by anti-nationalist policies. Trump suggesting the capital go to Jerusalem and supporting Bibi is just
triangulation against the left.
I feel sorry for the Palestinians and I think they have been treated very shabbily. They did lose
a lot as any refugee population would and they should be comfortably repatriated around the Muslim Middle
East. I don't know who is using them or for what purpose.
• Replies:
@Tomster
"treated very shabbily" indeed, by other Arabs - who have done virtually nothing for them.
,
@joe webb
good points. Yet, Palestinians ..."They should be comfortably repatriated around the Muslim
Middle East." sounds pretty much like an Israel talking point. How about Israel should be dissolved and the Jews repatriated around Europe and the US?
Not being an Idea world, but a Biological World, revanchism is true enough up to a point. Of course
The Revanchists of All Time are the jews, or the zionists, to speak liberalize.
As for feelings that don't change, there is a tendency for feelings to change over time, especially
when a "legal" document is signed by the participating parties. I have long advocated that the Jews
pay for the land they stole, and that that payment be made to a new Palestinian state. A Palestinian
with a home, a job, a family, and a nice car makes a lot of difference, just like anywhere else.
(We paid the Mexicans in a treaty that presumably ended the Mexican war. This is a normal state of affairs.
Mexico only "owned" California, etc, for about 25 years, and I do not think paid the injuns anything
for their land at the time. Also, if memory serves, I think Pat Buchanan claimed somewhere that there
were only about 10,000 Mexicans in California at the time, or maybe in the whole area under discussion..)
How Palestine stolen property, should be evaluated I leave to the experts. Jews would appear to have
ample resources and could pony up the dough.
The biggest problem is the US evangelicals and equally important, the nice Episcopalians and so on,
even the Catholic Church which used to Exclude Jews now luving them. This is part of our National Religion.
The Jews are god's favorites, and nobody seems to mind. Kill an Arab for Christ is the national gut
feeling, except when it gets too expensive or kills too many Americans.
As I have said, Trump is in between the rock and the hard place. If he wants to end the Jewish Wars
in the ME, he cannot luv the jews, and especially he cannot start lobbing bombs around too much...even
over Isis and the dozens of jihadist groups, especially now in Syria.
Sorry but your "comfortably repatriated" is a real howler. There is no comfort to be had by anybody
in the ME. And, like Jews with regard to your points about revanchism in general, Palestinians have
not blended into the general Arab populations of other countries, like Lebanon, etc.. Using your own
logic, the Palestinians will continue to nurse their grievances no matter where they are, just like
the Jews.
The neocon goals of failed states in the Arab World has been largely accomplished and the only way humpty-dumpty
will be put back together again is for tough Arab Strong Men to reestablish order. Like Assad, like
Hussein, etc. Arab IQ is about 85 in general. There is not going to be democracy/elections/civics lessons per the White countries's genetic predisposition.\
For that matter, Jews are not democrats. Left alone Israel, wherever it is, reverts to Rabbinic Control
and Jehovah, the Warrior God, reigns. Fact is , that is where Israel is heading anyway. Jews never invented free speech and rule of law, nor did Arabs, or any other race on the planet.
The Jews With Nukes is of World Historical Importance. And Whites have given them the Bomb, just as
Whites have given Third World inferior races, access to the Northern Cornucopia of wealth, both spiritual
and material. They will , like the jews, exploit free speech and game the economic system.
All Semites Out! Ditto just about everybody else, starting with the Chinese.
finally, if the jews had any real brains, they would get out of a neighborhood that hates them for their
jewishness, their Thefts, and their Wars. Otoh, Jews seem to thrive on being hated more than any other
race or ethnic group. Chosen to Always Complain.
I assume that everyone agrees that the final outcome of the security breach was that 'Wikileaks'
leaked internal emails of Clinton Campaign Manager Pedesta and DNC emails regarding embarrassing behavior.
No one is suggesting that the leaked information is 'fake news'.
An alternative hypothesis is that the Wikileaks material was, in fact, leaked by members of the Democratic
campaign itself.
Given that Podesta's password was 'P@ssw0rd' -- does it take Russian deep state security to hack?
Though CAP is still having issues with my email and computer, yours is good to go. jpodesta p@ssw0rd
The report is 13 pages of mostly nothing.
Note the Disclaimer:
DISCLAIMER: This report is provided "as is" for informational purposes only. The Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) does not provide any warranties of any kind regarding any information contained within.
DHS does not endorse any commercial product or service referenced in this advisory or otherwise. This
document is distributed as TLP:WHITE: Subject to standard copyright rules, TLP:WHITE information may
be distributed without restriction. For more information on the Traffic Light Protocol, see https://www.us-cert.gov/tlp.
An alternative hypothesis is that the Wikileaks material was, in fact, leaked by members of the
Democratic campaign itself.
His name was Seth Rich, and he did software for the DNC.
His name was Seth Rich, and he did software for the DNC.
"Was" is the operative word:
Julian Assange Suggests That DNC's Seth Rich Was Murdered For Being a Wikileaker
https://heatst.com/tech/wikileaks-offers-20000-for-information-about-seth-richs-killer/ ,
@alexander
Given all the hoaky, "evidence free" punitive assaults being launched against Moscow
today ....combined with the profusion of utterly fraudulent narratives foisted down the throats of the
American people over the last sixteen years...
Its NOT outside of reason to take a good hard look at the "Seth Rich incident" and reconstruct an
outline of events(probably) much closer to the truth than the big media would ever be willing to discuss
or admit.
Namely, that Seth Rich, a young decent kid (27) who was working as the data director for the campaign,
came across evidence of "dirty pool" within the voting systems during the DNC nomination ,which were
fraudulently (and maybe even blatantly) tilting the results towards Hillary.
He probably did the "right thing" by notifying one of the DNC bosses of the fraud ..who informed
him he would look into it and that he should keep it quite for the moment...
.I wouldn't be surprised if Seth reached out to a reporter , too, probably at the at the NY Times,
who informed his editor...who, in turn, had such deep connections to the Hillary corruption machine...that
he placed a call to a DNC backroom boss ... who , at some point, made the decision to take steps to
shut Seth's mouth, permanently...."just make it look like a robbery (or something)"
Seth, not being stupid, and knowing he had the dirt on Hillary that could crush her (as well as the
reputation of the entire democratic party)......probably reached out to Julian Assange, too, to hedge
his bets.
In the interview Julian gave shortly after Seth's death, he intimated that Seth was the leak, although
he did not state it outright.
Something like this sequence of events (with perhaps a few alterations ) is probably quite close
to what actually happened.
So here we have a scenario, where the D.N.C. Oligarchs , so corrupt, so evil, so disdainful of the
electorate, and the democratic process , rig the nomination results (on multiple levels) for Hillary..and
when the evidence of this is found, by a decent young kid with his whole life ahead of him, they had
him shot in the back.....four times...
And then "Big Media for Hillary", rather than investigate this horrific tragedy and expose the dirty
malevolence at play within the DNC , quashes the entire narrative and grafts in its place the"substitute"
Putin hacks..... demanding faux accountability... culminating with sanctions and ejections of the entire
Russian diplomatic corp.......all on the grounds of attempting to "sully American Democracy"
.
But hey, that's life in the USA....Right, Seamus ?
"what looks like a white country attacking brown people and demanding not to be dismantled by anti-nationalist
policies. "
The longer Israel persists in its "facts-on-the-ground" thievery, the less moral standing it has
for its white country. And it is a racist state also within its own "borders."
A pathetic excuse for a country. Without the USA it wouldn't exist.
A black mark on both countries' report cards.
@map
I wish people would stop making a big deal out of John Kerry's and Barack Obama's recent stance
on Israel. Neither of them are concerned about whatever injustice happened to the Palestinians.
What they are concerned with is Israeli actions discrediting the anti-white, anti-national globalism
program before it has successfully destroyed all of the white nations. That is the real reason why they
want a two-state solution or a right of return. If nationalists can look at the Israeli example as a
model for how to proceed then that will cause a civil war among leftists and discredit the entire left-wing
project.
Trump, therefore, pushing support for Israel's national concerns is not him bending to AIPAC. It is
a shrewd move that forces an internecine conflict between left-wing diaspora Jews and Israeli Jews.
It is a conflict Bibi is willing to have because the pet project of leftism would necessarily result
in Israel either being unlivable or largely extinct for its Jewish population. This NWO being pushed
by the diaspora is not something that will be enjoyed by Israeli Jews.
Consider the problem. The problem is that Palestinians have revanchist claims against Israel. Those
revanchist claims do not go away just because they get their own country or they get a right of return.
Either "solution" actually strengthens the Palestinian claim against Israel and results in a vastly
reduced security stance and quality of life for Israelis. The diaspora left is ok with that because
they want to continue importing revanchist groups into Europe and America to break down white countries.
So, Israel makes a small sacrifice for the greater good of anti-whitism, a deal that most Israelis do
not consider very good for themselves. Trump's support for Israeli nationalism short-circuits this project.
Of course, one could ask: why don't the Israeli Jews just move to America? What's the big deal if Israel
remains in the middle east? The big deal is the kind of jobs and activities available for Israelis to
do. A real nation requires a lot of scut work. Someone has to do the plumbing, unplug the sewers, drive
the nails, throw out the trash. Everyone can't be a doctor, a lawyer or a banker. Tradesmen, technicians,
workers are all required to get a project like Israel off the ground and maintained. How many of these
Israelis doing scut work in Israel for a greater good want to do the same scut work in America just
to get by?
The problem operates in reverse for American Jews. A Jew with an American law degree is of
no use to Israelis outside of the money he brings and whether he can throw out the trash. Diaspora Jews,
therefore, have no reason to try and live and work in Israel.
So, again, we see that Trump's move is a masterstroke. Even his appointment to counter the coup with
Zionists is brilliant, since these Zionists are rich enough to both live anywhere and indulge their
pride in nationalist endeavors.
"A real nation requires a lot of scut work. Someone has to do the plumbing, unplug the sewers, drive
the nails, throw out the trash."
Perhaps you'd like to discuss why so much of this and other "scut work" is done by Palestinians,
while an increasing number of Israeli Jews are on the dole.
@Mark Green
This is a good article but there's been a sudden shift. Incredibly, Obama has finally
gotten some balls in his dealings with Israel. And Trump is starting to sound like a neocon!
Maybe Trump is worried enough about a potential coup to dump his 'America First' platform (at least
for now) to shore up vital Jewish support for his teetering inauguration. This ploy will require a lot
of pro-Zionist noise and gesturing. Consequently, Trump is starting to play a familiar political role.
And the Zio-friendly media is holding his feet to the fire.
Has the smell of fear pushed Trump over the edge and into the lap of the Zionist establishment? It's
beginning to look that way.
Or is Trump just being a fox?
Let's face it: nobody can pull out all the stops better than Israel's Fifth Column. They've got the
money, the organization skills, the media leverage, and the raw intellectual moxie to make political
miracles/disasters happen. Trump wants them on his side. So he's is tacitly cutting a last-minute deal
with the Israelis. Trump's Zionized rhetoric (and political appointments) prove it.
This explains the apparent reversal that's now underway. Obama's pushing back while Trump is accommodating.
And, as usual, the Zions are dictating the Narrative.
As Israel Shamir reminds us: there's nothing as liberating to a politician as leaving office. Therefore,
Obama is finally free to do what's right. Trump however is facing no such luxury. And Bibi is more defiant
than ever. This is high drama. And Trump is feeling the heat.
Indeed, outgoing Sec. John Kerry just delivered a major speech where he reiterated strongly US support
for a real 'Two State' solution in Israel/Palestine.
And I thought the Two State Solution was dead.
Didn't you?
Kerry also criticized Israel's ongoing confiscation of the Occupied Territories. It was a brilliant
analysis that Kerry gave without the aid of a teleprompter. Hugely impressive. Even so, Kerry did not
throw Israel under the bus, as claimed. His speech was extremely fair.
This renewed, steadfast American position, coupled with the UNSC's unanimous vote against Israel
(which Obama permitted by not casting the usual US veto) has set the stage for a monumental showdown.
Israel has never been more isolated. But it's Trump--not Obama--that's looking weak in the face of Israeli
pressure.
Indeed, the international Jewish establishment remains uniquely powerful. They may be hated (and
appropriately so) but they get things accomplished in the political arena. Trump understands this all-too-well.
Will Trump--out of fear and necessity--run with the mega-powerful Jews who tried to sabotage his
campaign?--Or will he stay strong with America First and avoid "any more disasterous wars". It's impossible
to say. Trump is speaking out of both sides of his mouth.
I get the feeling that even Trump is unsure of where all this is going. But the situation is fast
approaching critical mass. Something's gotta give. The entire world is fed up with Israel.
Will Trump blink and take the easy road with the Zions?--Or will he summon Putin's independent, nationalistic
spirit and stay the course of 'America First'?
Unfortunately, having scrutinized the Zions in action for decades, I'm fearful that Trump will go
Pure Washington and run with the Israeli-Firsters. This will fortify his shaky political foundation.
I hope that I'm wrong about this but the Zions are brilliantly equipped to play both sides of America's
political divide. No politician is immune to their machinations.
"As Israel Shamir reminds us: there's nothing as liberating to a politician as leaving office. Therefore,
Obama is finally free to do what's right . "
THEN WHY DOESN'T HE DO WHAT'S RIGHT? As Seamus Padraig pointed out, the UN abstention is "just more
empty symbolism." Meanwhile The Christmas Eve attack on the First Amendment The approval of arming terrorists in Syria
The fake news about Russian hacking throwing Killary's election
Aid to terrorists is a felony. Obama should be indicted.
I try to write clearly, but if this is your response I've failed miserably. My interest in the hacking
is nil.
What I have against Obama is his regime-change war in Syria, his State Department enabled coup in Ukraine,
his support of Saudi war/genocide against Yemen, his destruction of Libya, his demonization of Putin,
and his bringing us to a status near war in our relations with Russia.
Obama has been providing weapons, training, air support and propaganda for Terrorists via their affiliates
in Syria, and now directly. This is a felony, if not treason.
What I have against Obama is his regime-change war in Syria, his State Department enabled coup
in Ukraine, his support of Saudi war/genocide against Yemen, his destruction of Libya, his demonization
of Putin, and his bringing us to a status near war in our relations with Russia.
RobinG - Agree 100% – some times I get things crossed up - Peace Art
@Mark Green
This is a good article but there's been a sudden shift. Incredibly, Obama has finally
gotten some balls in his dealings with Israel. And Trump is starting to sound like a neocon!
Maybe Trump is worried enough about a potential coup to dump his 'America First' platform (at least
for now) to shore up vital Jewish support for his teetering inauguration. This ploy will require a lot
of pro-Zionist noise and gesturing. Consequently, Trump is starting to play a familiar political role.
And the Zio-friendly media is holding his feet to the fire.
Has the smell of fear pushed Trump over the edge and into the lap of the Zionist establishment? It's
beginning to look that way.
Or is Trump just being a fox?
Let's face it: nobody can pull out all the stops better than Israel's Fifth Column. They've got the
money, the organization skills, the media leverage, and the raw intellectual moxie to make political
miracles/disasters happen. Trump wants them on his side. So he's is tacitly cutting a last-minute deal
with the Israelis. Trump's Zionized rhetoric (and political appointments) prove it.
This explains the apparent reversal that's now underway. Obama's pushing back while Trump is accommodating.
And, as usual, the Zions are dictating the Narrative.
As Israel Shamir reminds us: there's nothing as liberating to a politician as leaving office. Therefore,
Obama is finally free to do what's right. Trump however is facing no such luxury. And Bibi is more defiant
than ever. This is high drama. And Trump is feeling the heat.
Indeed, outgoing Sec. John Kerry just delivered a major speech where he reiterated strongly US support
for a real 'Two State' solution in Israel/Palestine.
And I thought the Two State Solution was dead.
Didn't you?
Kerry also criticized Israel's ongoing confiscation of the Occupied Territories. It was a brilliant
analysis that Kerry gave without the aid of a teleprompter. Hugely impressive. Even so, Kerry did not
throw Israel under the bus, as claimed. His speech was extremely fair.
This renewed, steadfast American position, coupled with the UNSC's unanimous vote against Israel
(which Obama permitted by not casting the usual US veto) has set the stage for a monumental showdown.
Israel has never been more isolated. But it's Trump--not Obama--that's looking weak in the face of Israeli
pressure.
Indeed, the international Jewish establishment remains uniquely powerful. They may be hated (and
appropriately so) but they get things accomplished in the political arena. Trump understands this all-too-well.
Will Trump--out of fear and necessity--run with the mega-powerful Jews who tried to sabotage his
campaign?--Or will he stay strong with America First and avoid "any more disasterous wars". It's impossible
to say. Trump is speaking out of both sides of his mouth.
I get the feeling that even Trump is unsure of where all this is going. But the situation is fast
approaching critical mass. Something's gotta give. The entire world is fed up with Israel.
Will Trump blink and take the easy road with the Zions?--Or will he summon Putin's independent, nationalistic
spirit and stay the course of 'America First'?
Unfortunately, having scrutinized the Zions in action for decades, I'm fearful that Trump will go
Pure Washington and run with the Israeli-Firsters. This will fortify his shaky political foundation.
I hope that I'm wrong about this but the Zions are brilliantly equipped to play both sides of America's
political divide. No politician is immune to their machinations.
Most of the Western world is much sicker of the head-choppers in charge of our 'human rights' at
the UN (thanks to Obama and the UK) than it is of Israel. It is they, not we, who have funded ISIS directly.
It seems that our POTUS has just chosen to eject 35 Russian diplomats from our country, on grounds of
hacking the election against Hillary.
Is this some weird, preliminary "shot across the bow" in preparation for the coming "coup attempt" you
seem to believe is in the offing ?
It seem the powers-that-be are pulling out all the stops to prevent an authentic rapprochement with
Moscow.
What for ?
It makes you wonder if there is more to this than meets the eye, something beyond the sanguine disgruntlement
of the party bosses and a desire for payback against Hillary's big loss ?
Does anyone know if Russia is more aware than most Americans of certain classified details pertaining
to stuff.....like 9-11 ?
Why is cooperation between the new administration and Moscow so scary to these people that they would
initiate a preemptive diplomatic shut down ?
They seem to be dead set on welding shut every single diplomatic door to the Kremlin there is , before
Trumps inauguration.
Perhaps something "else "is being planned........Does anyone have any ideas whats going on ?
What does Russian intelligence know? Err perhaps something like that the US/UK have sold nukes
to the head-choppers of the riyadh caliphate, say (knowing how completely mad their incestuous brains
are?). Who knows? – but such a fact could explain many inexplicable things.
@map
The revanchist claim that I refer to is psychological, not moral or legal. Palestinians think
their land was stolen in the same way Mexicans think Texas and California were stolen. That feeling
will not change just because they get a two-state solution or a right of return. What it will result
in is a comfortable base from which to continue to operate against Israel, one that Israel can't afford.
It is Nationalism 101 not to allow revanchist groups in your country.
The leftists are being consistent in their ideology by opposing Israel, because they are fully on board
going after what looks like a white country attacking brown people and demanding not to be dismantled
by anti-nationalist policies. Trump suggesting the capital go to Jerusalem and supporting Bibi is just
triangulation against the left.
I feel sorry for the Palestinians and I think they have been treated very shabbily. They did lose a
lot as any refugee population would and they should be comfortably repatriated around the Muslim Middle
East. I don't know who is using them or for what purpose.
"treated very shabbily" indeed, by other Arabs – who have done virtually nothing for them.
An alternative hypothesis is that the Wikileaks material was, in fact, leaked by members of the Democratic
campaign itself.
His name was Seth Rich, and he did software for the DNC.
Given all the hoaky, "evidence free" punitive assaults being launched against Moscow today .combined
with the profusion of utterly fraudulent narratives foisted down the throats of the American people
over the last sixteen years
Its NOT outside of reason to take a good hard look at the "Seth Rich incident" and reconstruct an
outline of events(probably) much closer to the truth than the big media would ever be willing to discuss
or admit.
Namely, that Seth Rich, a young decent kid (27) who was working as the data director for the campaign,
came across evidence of "dirty pool" within the voting systems during the DNC nomination ,which were
fraudulently (and maybe even blatantly) tilting the results towards Hillary.
He probably did the "right thing" by notifying one of the DNC bosses of the fraud ..who informed
him he would look into it and that he should keep it quite for the moment
.I wouldn't be surprised if Seth reached out to a reporter , too, probably at the at the NY Times,
who informed his editor who, in turn, had such deep connections to the Hillary corruption machine that
he placed a call to a DNC backroom boss who , at some point, made the decision to take steps to shut
Seth's mouth, permanently ."just make it look like a robbery (or something)"
Seth, not being stupid, and knowing he had the dirt on Hillary that could crush her (as well as the
reputation of the entire democratic party) probably reached out to Julian Assange, too, to hedge his
bets.
In the interview Julian gave shortly after Seth's death, he intimated that Seth was the leak, although
he did not state it outright.
Something like this sequence of events (with perhaps a few alterations ) is probably quite close
to what actually happened.
So here we have a scenario, where the D.N.C. Oligarchs , so corrupt, so evil, so disdainful of the
electorate, and the democratic process , rig the nomination results (on multiple levels) for Hillary..and
when the evidence of this is found, by a decent young kid with his whole life ahead of him, they had
him shot in the back ..four times
And then "Big Media for Hillary", rather than investigate this horrific tragedy and expose the dirty
malevolence at play within the DNC , quashes the entire narrative and grafts in its place the"substitute"
Putin hacks .. demanding faux accountability culminating with sanctions and ejections of the entire
Russian diplomatic corp .all on the grounds of attempting to "sully American Democracy"
.
@map
The revanchist claim that I refer to is psychological, not moral or legal. Palestinians think
their land was stolen in the same way Mexicans think Texas and California were stolen. That feeling
will not change just because they get a two-state solution or a right of return. What it will result
in is a comfortable base from which to continue to operate against Israel, one that Israel can't afford.
It is Nationalism 101 not to allow revanchist groups in your country.
The leftists are being consistent in their ideology by opposing Israel, because they are fully on board
going after what looks like a white country attacking brown people and demanding not to be dismantled
by anti-nationalist policies. Trump suggesting the capital go to Jerusalem and supporting Bibi is just
triangulation against the left.
I feel sorry for the Palestinians and I think they have been treated very shabbily. They did lose a
lot as any refugee population would and they should be comfortably repatriated around the Muslim Middle
East. I don't know who is using them or for what purpose.
good points. Yet, Palestinians "They should be comfortably repatriated around the Muslim Middle
East." sounds pretty much like an Israel talking point. How about Israel should be dissolved and the Jews repatriated around Europe and the US?
Not being an Idea world, but a Biological World, revanchism is true enough up to a point. Of course
The Revanchists of All Time are the jews, or the zionists, to speak liberalize.
As for feelings that don't change, there is a tendency for feelings to change over time, especially
when a "legal" document is signed by the participating parties. I have long advocated that the Jews
pay for the land they stole, and that that payment be made to a new Palestinian state. A Palestinian
with a home, a job, a family, and a nice car makes a lot of difference, just like anywhere else.
(We paid the Mexicans in a treaty that presumably ended the Mexican war. This is a normal state of
affairs. Mexico only "owned" California, etc, for about 25 years, and I do not think paid the injuns
anything for their land at the time. Also, if memory serves, I think Pat Buchanan claimed somewhere
that there were only about 10,000 Mexicans in California at the time, or maybe in the whole area under
discussion..)
How Palestine stolen property, should be evaluated I leave to the experts. Jews would appear to have
ample resources and could pony up the dough.
The biggest problem is the US evangelicals and equally important, the nice Episcopalians and so on,
even the Catholic Church which used to Exclude Jews now luving them. This is part of our National Religion.
The Jews are god's favorites, and nobody seems to mind. Kill an Arab for Christ is the national gut
feeling, except when it gets too expensive or kills too many Americans.
As I have said, Trump is in between the rock and the hard place. If he wants to end the Jewish Wars
in the ME, he cannot luv the jews, and especially he cannot start lobbing bombs around too much even
over Isis and the dozens of jihadist groups, especially now in Syria.
Sorry but your "comfortably repatriated" is a real howler. There is no comfort to be had by anybody
in the ME. And, like Jews with regard to your points about revanchism in general, Palestinians have
not blended into the general Arab populations of other countries, like Lebanon, etc.. Using your own
logic, the Palestinians will continue to nurse their grievances no matter where they are, just like
the Jews.
The neocon goals of failed states in the Arab World has been largely accomplished and the only way
humpty-dumpty will be put back together again is for tough Arab Strong Men to reestablish order. Like
Assad, like Hussein, etc. Arab IQ is about 85 in general. There is not going to be democracy/elections/civics lessons per the White countries's genetic predisposition.\
For that matter, Jews are not democrats. Left alone Israel, wherever it is, reverts to Rabbinic Control
and Jehovah, the Warrior God, reigns. Fact is , that is where Israel is heading anyway.
Jews never invented free speech and rule of law, nor did Arabs, or any other race on the planet.
The Jews With Nukes is of World Historical Importance. And Whites have given them the Bomb, just
as Whites have given Third World inferior races, access to the Northern Cornucopia of wealth, both spiritual
and material. They will , like the jews, exploit free speech and game the economic system.
All Semites Out! Ditto just about everybody else, starting with the Chinese.
finally, if the jews had any real brains, they would get out of a neighborhood that hates them for
their jewishness, their Thefts, and their Wars. Otoh, Jews seem to thrive on being hated more than any
other race or ethnic group. Chosen to Always Complain. Joe Webb
Trump has absolutely no support in the media. With the Fox News and Fox Business, first string, talking
heads on vacation (minimal support) the second and third string are insanely trying to push the Russian
hacking bullshit. Trump better realize that the only support he has are the people that voted for him.
January 2017 will be a bad month for this country and the rest of 2017 much worse.
Sorry Joe, the "whites" did not give the Jews the atomic bomb. In truth, the Jews were critically
important in developing the scientific ideas and technology critical to making the first atomic bomb.
I can recognize Jewish malfeasance where it exists, but to ignore their intellectual contributions
to Western Civilization is sheer blindness.
One thing lost in all the hullabaloo about Russian hacks is that the Obama
administration's record on cyber security has been terrible. Off the top of my
head I can think of several compromising cases:
* Anything having to do with HRC's bathroom server, of course
* The Sony hack that Obama said was North Korea, but other experts say was
probably just Trump's 400 lb fat guy on a bed.
* The alleged Chinese hacking of OPM
* And undoubtedly the "CYBER 911!!" of the alleged Russian interference in the
election.
I don't see anyone talking about the fact that cyber infrastructure looks
like it's been hit by birdshot. All the while, Obama's intelligence teams are
mining information on Americans as extralegally as possible.
"Russia tampered with vote tallies to help Donald Trump"
Yeah, that seems like a clear statement, but when you consider that the vast majority of people
do not habitually read closely and interpret things literally, I can see how this would easily
be misinterpreted.
Russia tampered with the election to help Donald Trump. That's a fairly well established fact.
It's not the same as "tampered with vote tallies" but an inattentive poll respondent might assume
the question was about the former. And most people are inattentive.
"Russia tampered with the election to help Donald Trump. That's a fairly well established fact."
You are funny. Especially with your "well established fact" nonsense.
In such cases the only source of well established facts is a court of law or International
observers of the elections. All other agencies have their own interest in distorting the truth.
For example, to get additional funding.
And that list includes President Obama himself, as a player, because he clearly was a Hillary
supporter and as such can not be considered an impartial player and can politically benefit from
shifting the blame for fiasco to Russia.
Also historically, he never was very truthful with American people, was he? As in case of his
"Change we can believe in!" bait and switch trick.
There were several other important foreign players in the US elections: for example KAS and
Israel. Were their actions investigated? Especially in the area of financial support of candidates.
And then FYI there is a documented history of US tampering in Russian Presidential election
of 2011-2012 such as meetings of the US ambassador with the opposition leaders, financing of opposition
via NGO, putting pressure by publishing election pools produced by US financed non-profits, and
so on and so forth. All in the name of democracy, of course. Which cost Ambassador McFaul his
position; NED was kicked out of the country.
As far as I remember nobody went to jail in the USA for those activities. There was no investigation.
So it looks like the USA authorities considered this to be a pretty legal activity. Then why they
complain now?
And then there is the whole rich history of CIA subverting elections in Latin America.
So is not this a case of "the pot calling the kettle black"?
I don't know. But I would avoid your simplistic position. The case is too complex for this.
At least more complex that the narrative the neoliberal MSMs try to present us with. It might
be Russian influence was a factor, but it might be that it was negligible and other factors were
in play. There is also a pre-history and there are other suspects.
You probably need to see a wider context of the event.
Some perspective: For most of human history, power was rooted in
possession
of land. After the
Industrial Revolution , power lay in controlling in the means of production. But today, the main
source of power is control of information.
Having the power to control information (what Steve Sailer calls
The Megaphone ) gives you the ability to determine what issues will be discussed, what
viewpoints are considered legitimate, and who is allowed to participate in polite society. It
ultimately allows you to push an entire code of morality on others. And morality is, ultimately,
a weapon more terrible than can be found in any arsenal [
Weaponized Morality , by Gregory Hood, Radix, October 12, 2016].
The 2016 election was ultimately a battle between the
commanding heights of media (newspapers, networks, and web portals) and what we could call the
guerillas of media (/pol, forums, hackers,
right wing trolls , and independent media outlets like us). The latter lacked power on their
own, but they united behind Donald Trump, a man whose brand was so well-established that the Establishment
couldn't ignore him. It was
Fourth Generation Warfare –this time over information.
And just as guerillas have been frustrating established armies all around the world on real-world
battlefields, so did the online commandos frustrate and eventually overcome the seemingly invincible
Fourth Estate.
But this victory wasn't inevitable. From day one,
the MSM tried to destroy Donald Trump , including his business empire, because of his stated
views on immigration.
Since that failed, they have started turning on his supporters with three tactics.
First , a blatant attempt to pathologize dissent–especially the Alt Right.
Soon after the election, the Leftist Think Progress blog announced that the Alt Right should
only be called "white nationalist" or "white supremacist". [
Think Progress will no longer describe racists as "alt-right" , November 22, 2016]
The AP dutifully echoed this pronouncement days later, warning journalists not to use the term and
instead to stick to pejoratives. [
AP issues guidelines for using the term 'alt-right,' by Brent Griffiths, Politico,
November 28, 2016]
This is a literally
Orwellian attempt to eliminate Crimethink through
linguistic control
. Of course, no such guidelines will apply to non-white Identitarian groups such as the National
Council of La Raza, which will continue to be called an "advocacy" or "progressive grass-roots immigration-reform
organization" [
NCLR head: Obama 'deporter-in-chief, ' by Reid Epstein, Politico, March 4,
2016].
Secondly , a meme has been invented about so-called
"Fake News," which will be used to shut down
dissident media outlets.
Needless to say, most the rationale for this is not just fake, but comically, obviously, wrong.
Thus the Washington Post
reported that VDARE.com (and many other sites) was a "Russian propaganda effort" based on no
evidence at all. We ask: where is our vodka?
Rolling Stone, which
pushed one of the most disgusting hoaxes in
modern journalism at the University
of Virginia, is having
meetings with President
Obama to discuss "fake news." The Guardian
fell for what appears to be a hoax decrying "online hate" precisely because it is impossible
to tell the difference today between the latest virtue signaling craze and satire.
Actual attacks on Trump supporters are not covered, while unsourced, unverified claims of a wave
of "hate crimes," which mostly consists of handwritten notes most likely written by the supposed
"victims" or
incidents so trivial normal people wouldn't even notice , dominate the headlines.
This is a far more insidious form of "fake news" than anything "the Russians" are promoting. And
what about the lie of "
hands up, don't shoot ?"
Another example: supposedly mainstream outlets are comfortable leveling wild charges Steve Bannon
is somehow a "white nationalist." Bannon on the evidence is actually a
civic nationalist who has specifically denounced racism and, if anything, is showing troubling
signs of moving towards the
"DemsRRealRacist"- style talking points which led Conservatism Inc. to disaster. There are absolutely
no statements by Bannon actually calling for, say, a white ethnostate.
Thirdly , the Trump victory is clearly leading to increased attempts at outright
repression.
Or, as VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow
told the NPI conference: "What we are going to see in the next few years is an intensified Reign
Of Terror."
For example, Buzzfeed's latest masterpiece of journalism: the shocking revelation that
reality stars Chip and Joanna Gaines attend a church that disagrees with homosexual marriage [
Chip and Joanna Gaines' Church Is Firmly Against Same-Sex Marriage , by Kate Aurthur,
Buzzfeed, November 29, 2016]. You know–like every Christian church for about 2000 years. The
obvious agenda: to get the show canceled or the Gaines to disavow their own pastor.
This is the goal of most "journalism" today–to get someone fired or to get someone to disavow
someone. The
Southern Poverty Law Center (
$PLC to VDARE.com) makes a
lucrative income from
policing speech . ( Right, a graph of their endowment fund.)And journalists today are no different
than the $PLC. They do not report, they do not provide information, and rather than ensuring freedom
they are the willing tools of repression.
And this repression only goes one way.
If you wouldn't invite
some communist demonstrator into your meeting, why would you invite an MSM journalist? They have
the same beliefs, the same motivations, and increasingly, they rely on the same tactics. Aside from
the occasional throwing of feces (as Richard Spencer learned at NPI), the preferred tactic of "Antifa"
consists of pearl-clutching blog posts.
Since the election, journalists have been paying tribute to their own courage, promising to hold
Trump accountable. But there is no greater enemy to free speech than reporters. Shutting down the
networks and shuttering the newspapers would be a boon to independence of thought, not an obstacle.
For his own sake, to defend his own Administration, Trump has to delegitimize the MSM, just as
he did during the campaign. He should continue to use his Twitter account and speak straight to the
people. He should not
hold press conferences with national MSM and speak only to local reporters before holding rallies.
If Twitter bans him, as Leftists are urging, he should nationalize it as a utility and make it a
free speech zone.[
Twitter has become a utility , by Alan Kohler, The Australian, October 17,
2016]
And Trump's supporters need to act the same way. Stop giving reporters access. Stop pretending
you can play the MSM for your own benefit. Stop acting like these people are anything other than
hostile political activists whose only interest in life is to make yours worse.
Stop giving them what they want.
Your career, family, and entire life may depend on it. And so does the life of the nation.
James Kirkpatrick [
Email him]
is a Beltway veteran and a refugee from Conservatism Inc.
"... "The lockstep zombies for the sleaze and global mayhem of the Clinton Machine and Dem Party gangsters are on the march. These liberals for US Empire are showing their reverence and fanboy love for the CIA and FBI and McCarthyism. ..."
"... They either cheered or shrugged when the Clinton thugs stole the primary from Bernie (with his obsequious assent) or snored when Obama/Clinton staged coups and installed fascists in Honduras and Ukraine but oh how they bellow and shake their fists at the *alleged* hacking by Russia that amounts to providing info on just how sleazy the Democratic Party is. ..."
"... THAT form of fake news is not only acceptable it is to be embraced and taught to our fucking children. If the NYT or WaPo tells us all bad things come from Putin these shock troops for the Democratic Party click their heels and salute. ..."
"... The risk of WWIII is not enough to deter these fucking maniacs from doing all they can to keep their team in power. Meanwhile their leaders want to "work with" Trump and "give him a chance." Who are the fascists in this shit show?? Such a clusterfuck of incoherence. ..."
"... If it's true the "Russians" (who be that by the way?) did what the professional liars in the intelligence agencies say they did it doesn't even amount to a parking violation compared to the billions and billions of dollars spent by the US over the last 70 years rigging and crushing democracy (literally with murder) across the globe. ..."
This post by Leftie on facebook offers glimpse into chasm on the other side.
It's Progs vs Globs. ProGlob is coming apart.
"The lockstep zombies for the sleaze and global mayhem of the Clinton Machine and Dem Party gangsters
are on the march. These liberals for US Empire are showing their reverence and fanboy love for the CIA
and FBI and McCarthyism.
They either cheered or shrugged when the Clinton thugs stole the primary from Bernie (with his obsequious
assent) or snored when Obama/Clinton staged coups and installed fascists in Honduras and Ukraine but
oh how they bellow and shake their fists at the
*alleged*
hacking by Russia that amounts
to providing info on just how sleazy the Democratic Party is.
The "fake news" (it's called free speech you fucking assholes) that the Rooskies pumped into our
helpless and confused brains is a threat to the Republic but "capitalism means freedom and democracy",
WMD's, yellow cake, mobile weapons labs, babies torn from incubators, the international monolithic communist
conspiracy, Gaddafi supplying viagra to his troops, the headchoppers Obama gives arms and sends into
Syria to destroy yet another nation are "moderates", KONY 2012, the filthy Hun is coming to kill us
all in 1917, "Duck and cover!!" Gulf of Tonkin, Ho Chi Min's soldiers are going to spring from their
canoes on the beaches of Malibu to rape your wife and make you wear pajamas, "superpredators" and on
and on etc etc etc
THAT form of fake news is not only acceptable it is to be embraced and taught to our fucking children.
If the NYT or WaPo tells us all bad things come from Putin these shock troops for the Democratic Party
click their heels and salute.
The risk of WWIII is not enough to deter these fucking maniacs from doing all they can to keep their
team in power. Meanwhile their leaders want to "work with" Trump and "give him a chance." Who are the
fascists in this shit show?? Such a clusterfuck of incoherence.
If it's true the "Russians" (who be
that by the way?) did what the professional liars in the intelligence agencies say they did it doesn't
even amount to a parking violation compared to the billions and billions of dollars spent by the US
over the last 70 years rigging and crushing democracy (literally with murder) across the globe.
And
the whole obscene carnival engulfing the nation is of course to be blamed on the racist knuckle-dragging
"basket of deplorables.""
A Wikileaks envoy today claims he personally received Clinton campaign emails in Washington
D.C. after they were leaked by 'disgusted' whisteblowers - and not hacked by Russia.
Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and a close associate of Wikileaks founder
Julian Assange, told Dailymail.com that he flew to Washington, D.C. for a clandestine hand-off
with one of the email sources in September.
'Neither of [the leaks] came from the Russians,' said Murray in an interview with Dailymail.com
on Tuesday. ' The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks,
not hacks.'
His account contradicts directly the version of how thousands of Democratic emails were published
before the election being advanced by U.S. intelligence.
Americans steeped in a culture of 'politics' are again being fooled, this election wasn't about
party or state lines, "Republicans" didn't win over "Democrats" - this election was about a wild
card, a non-politician, non-Establishment candidate winning by a landslide if going by the polls
(Trump was given 5% chance of winning up until the night of election).
When Peña Nieto won, Sepúlveda began destroying evidence. He drilled holes in flash drives,
hard drives, and cell phones, fried their circuits in a microwave, then broke them to shards with
a hammer. He shredded documents and flushed them down the toilet and erased servers in Russia
and Ukraine rented anonymously with Bitcoins. He was dismantling what he says was a secret history
of one of the dirtiest Latin American campaigns in recent memory.
For eight years, Sepúlveda, now 31, says he traveled the continent rigging major political
campaigns. With a budget of $600,000, the Peña Nieto job was by far his most complex. He led a
team of hackers that stole campaign strategies, manipulated social media to create false waves
of enthusiasm and derision, and installed spyware in opposition offices, all to help Peña Nieto,
a right-of-center candidate, eke out a victory. On that July night, he cracked bottle after bottle
of Colón Negra beer in celebration. As usual on election night, he was alone.
Sepúlveda's career began in 2005, and his first jobs were small-mostly defacing campaign websites
and breaking into opponents' donor databases. Within a few years he was assembling teams that
spied, stole, and smeared on behalf of presidential campaigns across Latin America. He wasn't
cheap, but his services were extensive. For $12,000 a month, a customer hired a crew that could
hack smartphones, spoof and clone Web pages, and send mass e-mails and texts. The premium package,
at $20,000 a month, also included a full range of digital interception, attack, decryption, and
defense. The jobs were carefully laundered through layers of middlemen and consultants. Sepúlveda
says many of the candidates he helped might not even have known about his role; he says he met
only a few.
His teams worked on presidential elections in Nicaragua, Panama, Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia,
Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Venezuela. Campaigns mentioned in this story were contacted
through former and current spokespeople; none but Mexico's PRI and the campaign of Guatemala's
National Advancement Party would comment.
The point here, well there are several points. One, Sepulveda is not the only guy in the world
doing this. The CIA even has a team of social media trolls and the NSA has a department that only
develops robots to do the same thing Sepulveda was doing and better. The age of 'spies' has transformed
into an electronic, digital, online version - much like the internet has transformed life and business
it has also changed the way the intelligence establishment deals with controlling the population.
Oh how the FBI has evolved since the days of Hoffman and Cointelpro!
Many of Sepúlveda's efforts were unsuccessful, but he has enough wins that he might be able
to claim as much influence over the political direction of modern Latin America as anyone in the
21st century. "My job was to do actions of dirty war and psychological operations, black propaganda,
rumors-the whole dark side of politics that nobody knows exists but everyone can see," he says
in Spanish, while sitting at a small plastic table in an outdoor courtyard deep within the heavily
fortified offices of Colombia's attorney general's office. He's serving 10 years in prison for
charges including use of malicious software, conspiracy to commit crime, violation of personal
data, and espionage, related to hacking during Colombia's 2014 presidential election. He has agreed
to tell his full story for the first time, hoping to convince the public that he's rehabilitated-and
gather support for a reduced sentence.
Usually, he says, he was on the payroll of Juan José Rendón, a Miami-based political consultant
who's been called the Karl Rove of Latin America. Rendón denies using Sepúlveda for anything illegal,
and categorically disputes the account Sepúlveda gave Bloomberg Businessweek of their relationship,
but admits knowing him and using him to do website design. "If I talked to him maybe once or twice,
it was in a group session about that, about the Web," he says. "I don't do illegal stuff at all.
There is negative campaigning. They don't like it-OK. But if it's legal, I'm gonna do it. I'm
not a saint, but I'm not a criminal." While Sepúlveda's policy was to destroy all data at the
completion of a job, he left some documents with members of his hacking teams and other trusted
third parties as a secret "insurance policy."
We don't need a degree in cybersecurity to see how this was going on against Trump all throughout
the campaign. Not only did they hire thugs to start riots at Trump rallies and protest, a massive
online campaign was staged against Trump.
Rendón, says Sepúlveda, saw that hackers could be completely integrated into a modern political
operation, running attack ads, researching the opposition, and finding ways to suppress a foe's
turnout. As for Sepúlveda, his insight was to understand that voters trusted what they thought
were spontaneous expressions of real people on social media more than they did experts on television
and in newspapers. He knew that accounts could be faked and social media trends fabricated, all
relatively cheaply. He wrote a software program, now called Social Media Predator, to manage and
direct a virtual army of fake Twitter accounts. The software let him quickly change names, profile
pictures, and biographies to fit any need. Eventually, he discovered, he could manipulate the
public debate as easily as moving pieces on a chessboard-or, as he puts it, "When I realized that
people believe what the Internet says more than reality, I discovered that I had the power to
make people believe almost anything."
Sepúlveda managed thousands of such fake profiles and used the accounts to shape discussion
around topics such as Peña Nieto's plan to end drug violence, priming the social media pump with
views that real users would mimic. For less nuanced work, he had a larger army of 30,000 Twitter
bots, automatic posters that could create trends. One conversation he started stoked fear that
the more López Obrador rose in the polls, the lower the peso would sink. Sepúlveda knew the currency
issue was a major vulnerability; he'd read it in the candidate's own internal staff memos.
While there's no evidence that Rendon or Sepulveda were involved in the 2016 election, there is
also no evidence that Russian hackers were involved in the 2016 election. There's not even false
evidence. There isn't a hint of it. There isn't a witness, there isn't a document, there's nothing
- it's a conspiracy theory! And a very poor one.
Russian hackers would have had the same or better (probably much better) tools, strategies, and
resources than Sepulveda. But none of this shows up anywhere. If anything, this is an example of
how NOT to hack an election.
Thanks. Right. Hillary's official electronic communications is more correct than Hillary's emails.
(And the "wipe them, you mean like with a rag?" from Hillary, after having been in government
all her adult life and after having presented herself as a modern Secretary of State who knew
all about how government and modern technology worked would have been a funny joke if it hadn't
obviously been intended to cover up enormous crimes.)
Whoever is running the world with all of this fake stuff and all of the monitoring of people and
petty false propganda, they pretty much suck at it. it is as if they are claiming to be running
the world using "training wheels". As a substitute for God they stink! Grade D-!
The tale doesn't have to be a good one for the TV addicted masses to believe it, it only has to
be presented by the only sources these imbeciles are willing to use: their fucking TV sets. Most
people are so deluded by their main source of entertainment and information that they wouldn't
give a shit if incontrovertible evidence that their TV information source was lying was presented
to them.
Most people I know don't want to know anything that can't be spoonfed to them on a TV screen.
"The tale doesn't have to be a good one for the TV addicted masses to believe it..."
Like the tale that the only steel highrise buildings to ever collapse due to fires (turning
into dust at near freefall speed) ocurred on a single day 15 years ago, orchestrated, along with
everything else on that fateful day, by a man in a cave half a world away.
and that after every airport was closed and every single commercial plane was grounded, that man's
entire extended family resident in the u.s., some two dozen individuals, was given fbi protection,
rented cars and chartered planes, and flown out of the country without ever being interviewed,
at all, by any law enforcement branch of the government of the united states which, needless to
say, had absolutely no involvement with the deadliest foreign attack on u.s. soil since the war
of 1812, killing nearly 600 more than died at pearl harbor.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bin-laden-family-evacuated/
this was known at the time it happened. what took longer to discover was that the source of
the foreign attack was not a cave in afghanistan or even saudi arabia or the muslim world generally.
all along it was our trusted ally, brave little israel.
Anti-semitism enables one to ignore the elephant in the room, namely the Saudis who have been
spending billions promoting Wahhabism and terrorism, to blame a tiny little country for everything,
without ever having to bother about evidence. Seek help.
I wonder what facts you have to label Trump's team "globalist shills".
Robert W. Merry in his National Interest article disagrees with you
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/trump-vs-hillary-nationalism-vs-globalism-2016-16041
=== start of the quote ===
Globalists captured much of American society long ago by capturing the bulk of the nation's elite
institutions -- the media, academia, big corporations, big finance, Hollywood, think tanks, NGOs,
charitable foundations. So powerful are these institutions -- in themselves and, even more so,
collectively -- that the elites running them thought that their political victories were complete
and final. That's why we have witnessed in recent years a quantum expansion of social and political
arrogance on the part of these high-flyers.
Then along comes Donald Trump and upends the whole thing. Just about every major issue that this
super-rich political neophyte has thrown at the elites turns out to be anti-globalist and pro-nationalist.
And that is the single most significant factor in his unprecedented and totally unanticipated
rise. Consider some examples:
Immigration: Nationalists believe that any true nation must have clearly delineated and protected
borders, otherwise it isn't really a nation. They also believe that their nation's cultural heritage
is sacred and needs to be protected, whereas mass immigration from far-flung lands could undermine
the national commitment to that heritage.
Globalists don't care about borders. They believe the nation-state is obsolete, a relic of
the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which codified the recognition of co-existing nation states.
Globalists reject Westphalia in favor of an integrated world with information, money, goods
and people traversing the globe at accelerating speeds without much regard to traditional concepts
of nationhood or borders.
=== end of the quote ===
I wonder how "globalist shills" mantra correlates with the following Trump's statements:
=== start of quote ===
"Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very, very wealthy ... but
it has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache," Trump told supporters
during a prepared speech targeting free trade in a nearly-shuttered former steel town in Pennsylvania.
In a speech devoted to what he called "How To Make America Wealthy Again," Trump offered a
series of familiar plans designed to deal with what he called [Obama] "failed trade policies"
- including rejection of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with Pacific Rim nations
and re-negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico,
withdrawing from it if necessary.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee also said he would pursue bilateral trade agreements
rather than multi-national deals like TPP and NAFTA.
In addition to appointing better trade negotiators and stepping up punishment of countries
that violate trade rules, Trump's plans would also target one specific economic competitor: China.
He vowed to label China a currency manipulator, bring it before the World Trade Organization and
consider slapping tariffs on Chinese imports coming into the U.S.
"... We have a dollar democracy that protects the economic interest of the elite class while more than willing to let working class families lose their homes and jobs on the back end of wide scale mortgage fraud. Then the fraud was perpetuated in the mortgage default process just to add insult to injury. ..."
"... One thing that Trump certainly got wrong that no one ever points out is that there is a lot more murder than rape crossing the Mexican-American border in the drug cartel operations ..."
"... The technocrats lied about how globalization would be great for everyone. People's actual experience in their lives has been different. ..."
"... Centrist Democrat partisans with their increasinly ineffectual defenses of the establishment say it's only about racism and xenophobia, but it's more than that. ..."
Assaults on democracy are working because our current political elites have no idea how to
defend it.
[There are certainly good points to this article, but the basic assumption that our electorally
representative form of republican government is the ideal incarnation of the democratic value
set is obviously incorrect. We have a dollar democracy that protects the economic interest of
the elite class while more than willing to let working class families lose their homes and jobs
on the back end of wide scale mortgage fraud. Then the fraud was perpetuated in the mortgage default
process just to add insult to injury.
One thing that Trump certainly got wrong that no one ever points out is that there is a lot
more murder than rape crossing the Mexican-American border in the drug cartel operations:<) ]
The author fails to mention the Sanders campaign. An elderly socialist Jew from Brooklyn was able
to win 23 primaries and caucuses and approximately 43% of pledged delegates to Clinton's 55%.
This despite a nasty, hostile campaign against him and his supporters by the Clinton campaign
and corporate media.
There's also Jeremy Corbyn in the UK. Podemos, Syriza, etc.
Italy's 5 Star movement demonstrates a hostility to technocrats as well.
The author doesn't really focus on how the technocrats have failed.
The technocrats lied about how globalization would be great for everyone. People's actual experience
in their lives has been different.
Trump scapegoated immigrants and trade, as did Brexit, but what he really did was channel hostility
and hatred at the elites and technocrats running the country.
Centrist Democrat partisans with their increasinly ineffectual defenses of the establishment
say it's only about racism and xenophobia, but it's more than that.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to Peter K.... , -1
"Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very, very wealthy ... but
it has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache," Trump told supporters
during a prepared speech targeting free trade in a nearly-shuttered former steel town in Pennsylvania.
In a speech devoted to what he called "How To Make America Wealthy Again," Trump offered a series
of familiar plans designed to deal with what he called "failed trade policies" - including rejection
of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with Pacific Rim nations and re-negotiation of the
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico, withdrawing from it if necessary.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee also said he would pursue bilateral trade agreements
rather than multi-national deals like TPP and NAFTA.
In addition to appointing better trade negotiators and stepping up punishment of countries that violate
trade rules, Trump's plans would also target one specific economic competitor: China. He vowed to
label China a currency manipulator, bring it before the World Trade Organization and consider slapping
tariffs on Chinese imports coming into the U.S.
This Russian hacking thing is being discussed entirely out of realistic context.
Cyber security
is a serious risk management operation that firms and governments spend outrageous sums of money
on because hacking attempts, especially from sources in China and Russia, occur in vast numbers
against every remotely desirable target corporate or government each and every day. At my former
employer, the State of Virginia, the data center repelled over two million hacking attempts from
sources in China each day. Northrop Grumman, the infrastructure management outsourcer for the
State of Virginia's IT infrastructure, has had no known intrusions into any Commonwealth of Virginia
servers that had been migrated to their standard security infrastructure thus far since the inception
of their contract in July 2006. That is almost the one good thing that I have to say about NG.
Some state servers, notably the Virginia Department of Health Professions, not under protection
of the NG standard network security were hacked and had private information such as client SSNs
stolen. Retail store servers are hacked almost routinely, but large banks and similarly well protected
corporations are not. Security costs and it costs a lot.
Even working in a data center with an excellent intrusion protection program as part of that
program I had to take an annual "securing the human" computer based training class. Despite all
of the technical precautions we were retrained each year to among other things NEVER put anything
in an E-Mail that we did not want to be available for everyone to read; i.e., to never assume
privacy is protected in an E-Mail. Embarrassing E-Mails need a source. We should assume that there
will always be a hacker to take advantage of our mistakes.
The reality is that all the major world powers (and some minor ones), including us, do this routinely
and always have. While it is entirely appropriate to be outraged that it may have materially determined
the election (which I think is impossible to know, though it did have some impact), we should
not be shocked or surprised by this.
"...I would suggest attacks on Putin's personal business holdings all over the world..."
[My guess is that has been being done a long time ago considering the direction of US/Russian
foreign relations over NATO expansion, the Ukraine, and Syria.
Long before TCP/IP the best way to prevent dirty secrets from getting out was not to have dirty
secrets. It still works.
The jabbering heads will not have much effect on the political opinions of ordinary citizens
because 40 million or more US adults had their credit information compromised by the Target hackers
three years ago. Target had been saving credit card numbers instead of deleting them as soon as
they obtained authorizations for transfers, so that the 40 million were certainly exposed while
more than twice that were probably exposed. Establishment politicians having their embarrassing
E-mails hacked is more like good fun family entertainment than something to get all riled up about.]
Voting machines are public and for Federal elections then tampering with them is elevated to a
Federal crime. Political parties are private. The Federal government did not protect Target or
Northrop Grumman's managed infrastructure for the Commonwealth of Virginia although either one
can take forensic information to the FBI that will obtain warrants for prosecution. Foreign criminal
operations go beyond the immediate domestic reach of the FBI. Not even Interpol interdicts foreign
leaders unless they are guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes.
The Federal government can do what it will as there are not hard guidelines for such clandestine
operations and responses. Moreover, there are none to realistically enforce against them, which
inevitably leads to war given sufficient cycles of escalation. Certainly our own government has
done worse (political assassinations and supporting coups with money and guns) with impunity merely
because of its size, reach, and power.
BTW, "the burglar that just ransacked your house" can be arrested and prosecuted by a established
regulated legal system with absolutely zero concerns of escalating into a nuclear war, trade war,
or any other global hostility. So, not the same thing at all. Odds are good though that the burglar
will get away without any of that because when he does finally get caught it will be an accident
and probably only after dozen if not hundreds of B&E's.
There is a line. The US has crossed that line, but always in less developed countries that
had no recourse against us. Putin knows where the line is with the US. He will dance around it
and lean over it, but not cross it. We have him outgunned and he knows it. Putin did not tamper
with an election, a government function. Putin tampered with private data exposing incriminating
information against a political party, which is a private entity rather than government entity.
Whatever we do should probably stay within the rule of law as it gets messy fast once outside
those boundaries.
As far as burglars go I live in a particular working class zip code that has very few burglaries.
It is a bad risk/reward deal unless you are just out to steal guns and then you better make sure
that no one is home. Most people with children still living at home also have a gun safe. Most
people have dogs.
There are plenty burglaries in a lower income zip code nearby and lots more in higher income
zip codes further away, the former being targets of opportunity with less security and possible
drug stashes, which has a faster turnover than fencing big screen TV's. High income neighborhoods
are natural targets with jewelry, cash, credit cards, and high end electronics, but far better
security systems. I don't know much about their actual crime stats because they are on the opposite
side of the City of Richmond VA from me, but I used to know a couple of burglars when I lived
in the inner city. They liked the upscale homes near the University of Richmond on River Road.
"They kept telling us the e-mail didn't reveal anything and now they say the e-mail determined
the election"
And those two statement are not in conflict unless you are a brain dead Fox bot. Big nothing-burgers
like Bhengazi or trivial emails can easily be blown up and affect a few hundred thousand voters.
When the heck are you going to grow up and get past your 5 stages of Sanders grief?
I know - and there used to be some signs of a functional brain. Now it is all "they are all the
same" ism and Hillary derangement syndrome on steroids. Someone who cares need to do an intervention
before it becomes he get gobbled up by "ilsm" ism.
ABC video interview by Martha Raddatz of Donna Brazile 2:43
Adding the following FACTS, not opinion, to the Russian Hacking debate at the DNC
Russian hacks of the DNC began at least as early as April, the FBI informed the DNC in May
of the hacks, NO ONE in the FedGovt offered to HELP the DNC at anytime (allowed it to continue),
and Russia's Putin DID NOT stop after President Obama told Putin in September to "Cut it Out",
despite Obama's belief otherwise
"DNC Chair Says Russian Hackers Attacked The Committee Through Election Day"
'That goes against Obama's statement that the attacks ended after he spoke to Putin in September'
by Dave Jamieson Labor Reporter...The Huffington Post...12/18/2016...10:59 am ET
"The chair of the Democratic National Committee said Sunday that the DNC was under constant
cyber attack by Russian hackers right through the election in November. Her claim contradicts
President Barack Obama's statement Friday that the attacks ended in September after he issued
a personal warning to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"No, they did not stop," Donna Brazile told Martha Raddatz on ABC's "This Week." "They came
after us absolutely every day until the end of the election. They tried to hack into our system
repeatedly. We put up the very best cyber security but they constantly [attacked]."
Brazile said the DNC was outgunned in its efforts to fend off the hacks, and suggested the
committee received insufficient protection from U.S. intelligence agencies. The CIA and FBI have
reportedly concluded that Russians carried out the attacks in an effort to help Donald Trump defeat
Hillary Clinton.
"I think the Obama administration ― the FBI, the various other federal agencies ― they informed
us, they told us what was happening. We knew as of May," Brazile said. "But in terms of helping
us to fight, we were fighting a foreign adversary in the cyberspace. The Democratic National Committee,
we were not a match. And yet we fought constantly."
In a surprising analogy, Brazile compared the FBI's help to the DNC to that of the Geek Squad,
the tech service provided at retailer Best Buy ― which is to say well-meaning, but limited.
"They reached out ― it's like going to Best Buy," Brazile said. "You get the Geek Squad, and
they're great people, by the way. They reached out to our IT vendors. But they reached us, meaning
senior Democratic officials, by then it was, you know, the Russians had been involved for a long
time."..."
This new perspective and set of facts is more than distressing it details a clear pattern of Executive
Branch incompetence, malfeasance, and ineptitude (perhaps worse if you are conspiratorially inclined)
im1dc -> im1dc... , -1
The information above puts in bold relief President Obama's denial of an Electoral College briefing
on the Russian Hacks
There is now no reason not to brief the Electors to the extent and degree of Putin's help for
demagogue Donald
Fred C. Dobbs -> Peter K....
December 26, 2016 at 07:15 AM neopopulism: A cultural and political movement, mainly in Latin
American countries, distinct from twentieth-century populism in radically combining classically opposed
left-wing and right-wing attitudes and using electronic media as a means of dissemination. (Wiktionary)
(facebook.com)
286
Posted by msmash
on Thursday November 24, 2016 @01:01PM
from the
stranger-things
dept.
On Wednesday, J. Alex Halderman, the director of the University of Michigan's
Center for Computer Security & Society and a respected voice in computer
science and information society, said that the Clinton Campaign
should ask for a recount of the vote for the U.S. Presidential election
.
Later he wrote, "Were this year's deviations from pre-election polls the
results of a cyberattack? Probably not. I believe the most likely explanation
is that the polls were systematically wrong, rather than that the election was
hacked. But I don't believe that either one of these seemingly unlikely
explanations is overwhelmingly more likely than the other." The Outline, a new
publication by a dozen of respected journalists, has published a post (on
Facebook for now, since their website is still in the works), in which former
Motherboard's reporter Adrianne Jeffries makes it clear that we
still don't have concrete evidence that the vote was tampered with, but why
still the case for paper ballots is strong
. From the article:
Halderman
also repeats the erroneous claim that federal agencies have publicly said that
senior officials in Russia commissioned attacks on voter registration databases
in Arizona and Illinois. In October, federal agencies attributed the Democratic
National Committee email hack to Russia, but specifically said they could not
attribute the state hacks. Claims to the contrary seem to have spread due to
anonymous sourcing and the conflation of Russian hackers with Russian
state-sponsored hackers. Unfortunately, the Russia-hacked-us meme is spreading
fast on social media and among disaffected Clinton voters. "It's just
ignorance," said the cybersecurity consultant Jeffrey Carr, who published his
own response to Halderman on Medium. "It's fear and ignorance that's fueling
that." The urgency comes from deadlines for recount petitions, which start
kicking in on Friday in Wisconsin, Monday in Pennsylvania, and the following
Wednesday in Michigan. There is disagreement about how likely it is that the
Russian government interfered with election results. There is little
disagreement, however, that our voting system could be more robust -- namely,
by requiring paper ballot backups for electronic voting and mandating that all
results be audited, as they already are in some states including California.
Despite the 150,000 signatures collected on a Change.org petition, what happens
next really comes down to the Clinton team's decision.
(wired.co.uk)
270 Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday November 27, 2016 @03:34AM from the help-me-hive-mind
dept. Upworthy co-founder Eli Pariser is leading a group of online volunteers hunting for ways to
respond to the spread of fake news. An anonymous reader quotes Wired UK: Inside a Google Doc,
volunteers
are gathering ideas and approaches to get a grip on the untruthful news stories. It is part analysis,
part brainstorming, with those involved being encouraged to read widely around the topic before contributing.
"This is a massive endeavour but well worth it," they say...
At present, the group is coming up with
a list of potential solutions and approaches . Possible methods the group is looking at include:
more human editors, fingerprinting viral stories then training algorithms on confirmed fakes, domain
checking, the blockchain, a reliability algorithm, sentiment analysis, a Wikipedia for news sources,
and more.
The article also suggests this effort may one day spawn fake news-fighting tech startups.
"... The Democratic Party as a Party (Sanders was an outlier) has nothing to do with "fair and equal
play for all". This is a party of soft neoliberals and it adheres to Washington consensus no less then
Republicans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Consensus ..."
"... If you read the key postulates it is clear that that they essentially behaved like an occupier
in this country. In this sense "Occupy Wall street" movement should actually be called "Liberation from
Wall Street occupation" movement. ..."
"... Bill Clinton realized that he can betray working class with impunity as "they have nowhere
to go" and will vote for Democrat anyway. In this sense Bill Clinton is a godfather of the right wing
nationalism in the USA. He sowed the "Teeth's of Dragon" and now we have, what we have. ..."
You guys should wake up and smell what country you live in. Here is a good place to start.
"Campaigning for president in 1980, Ronald Reagan told stories of Cadillac-driving "welfare
queens" and "strapping young bucks" buying T-bone steaks with food stamps. In trumpeting these
tales of welfare run amok, Reagan never needed to mention race, because he was blowing a dog
whistle: sending a message about racial minorities inaudible on one level, but clearly heard
on another. In doing so, he tapped into a long political tradition that started with George
Wallace and Richard Nixon, and is more relevant than ever in the age of the Tea Party and the
first black president.
In Dog Whistle Politics, Ian Haney L?pez offers a sweeping account of how politicians and
plutocrats deploy veiled racial appeals to persuade white voters to support policies that favor
the extremely rich yet threaten their own interests. Dog whistle appeals generate middle-class
enthusiasm for political candidates who promise to crack down on crime, curb undocumented immigration,
and protect the heartland against Islamic infiltration, but ultimately vote to slash taxes
for the rich, give corporations regulatory control over industry and financial markets, and
aggressively curtail social services. White voters, convinced by powerful interests that minorities
are their true enemies, fail to see the connection between the political agendas they support
and the surging wealth inequality that takes an increasing toll on their lives. The tactic
continues at full force, with the Republican Party using racial provocations to drum up enthusiasm
for weakening unions and public pensions, defunding public schools, and opposing health care
reform.
Rejecting any simple story of malevolent and obvious racism, Haney L?pez links as never
before the two central themes that dominate American politics today: the decline of the middle
class and the Republican Party's increasing reliance on white voters. Dog Whistle Politics
will generate a lively and much-needed debate about how racial politics has destabilized the
American middle class -- white and nonwhite members alike."
Reading the above posts I am reminded that in November there was ONE Election with TWO Results:
Electoral Vote for Donald Trump by the margin of 3 formerly Democratic Voting states Michigan,
Ohio, and Pennsylvania
Popular Vote for Hillary Clinton by over 2.8 Million
The Democratic Party and its Candidates OBVIOUSLY need to get more votes in the Electoral States
that they lost in 2016, not change what they stand for, the principles of fair and equal play
for all.
And, in the 3 States that turned the Electoral Vote in Trump's favor and against Hillary, all
that is needed are 125,000 or more votes, probably fewer, and the DEMS win the Electoral vote
big too.
It is not any more complex than that.
So how does the Democratic Party get more votes in those States?
PANDER to their voters by delivering on KISS, not talking about it.
That is create living wage jobs and not taking them away as the Republican Party of 'Free Trade'
and the Clinton Democratic Party 'Free Trade' Elites did.
Understand this: It is not the responsibility of the USA, or in its best interests, to create
jobs in other nations (Mexico, Japan, China, Canada, Israel, etc.) that do not create jobs in
the USA equivalently, especially if the gain is offset by costly overseas confrontations and involvements
that would not otherwise exist.
"The Democratic Party and its Candidates OBVIOUSLY need to get more votes in the Electoral
States that they lost in 2016, not change what they stand for, the principles of fair and equal
play for all. "
The Democratic Party as a Party (Sanders was an outlier) has nothing to do with "fair and
equal play for all". This is a party of soft neoliberals and it adheres to Washington consensus
no less then Republicans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Consensus
If you read the key postulates it is clear that that they essentially behaved like an occupier
in this country. In this sense "Occupy Wall street" movement should actually be called "Liberation
from Wall Street occupation" movement.
Bill Clinton realized that he can betray working class with impunity as "they have nowhere
to go" and will vote for Democrat anyway. In this sense Bill Clinton is a godfather of the right
wing nationalism in the USA. He sowed the "Teeth's of Dragon" and now we have, what we have.
"... "Donald Trump tapped into the anger of a declining middle class that is sick and tired of establishment economics, establishment politics and the establishment media. People are tired of working longer hours for lower wages, of seeing decent paying jobs go to China and other low-wage countries, of billionaires not paying any federal income taxes and of not being able to afford a college education for their kids – all while the very rich become much richer. ..."
"... "To the degree that Mr. Trump is serious about pursuing policies that improve the lives of working families in this country, I and other progressives are prepared to work with him. To the degree that he pursues racist, sexist, xenophobic and anti-environment policies, we will vigorously oppose him." ..."
This is inspiring, but I hope they realise that opposing Trump is just
one side of a two-front battle. Trump needs to be opposed when (as seems
very likely) he will start to drive a very right wing pro-billionaire set of
policies. But its increasingly obvious that there is an equally difficult
battle to be fought against the 'centrists' in the Dems and elsewhere. If
all the focus is on Trump, then there is the danger they just become the
useful idiots of the Dem mainstream.
I would go so far to say that their greatest opponent and biggest
danger is not Trump and the Republicans at all. It is the Democratic
Party and pretty much every significant office holding Democrat and their
staffs.
Revolution starts at home. Fighting with Republicans will not
accomplish much when the fifth columnists from the Democratic Party are
going to sabotage every effort they make which shows promise of having an
effect. They need to show their power by hamstringing targeted Democrats
and thus herding the rest into line through fear. You do what we say and
how we say it or we replace you. They have to own the left. No more
liberal's in name only. You are against us or you are with us.
I agree - they must be opposed in the primaries. That's tough to
do, and will take real dedication and money. The deplorable Debbie
Wasserman Schultz won against Tim Canova in the 2016 primary, and the
equally deplorable Chuck Schumer won reelection in 2016, so he won't
be facing a primary opponent until the 2022 election season. Pelosi,
of course is vulnerable every two years.
Please need to be willing to do more than just post comments on
blogs. And lets not have any more of those comments bewailing the
impossibility of overthrowing the status quo - it's difficult, but
it's not impossible. (This paragraph isn't directed specifically to
you, JohnnyGL or PlutoniumKun. I'm just concerned that some other
commenters seem to try to prevent people from taking an active role in
politics, and that is just plain wrong.)
uh why fight against a party with NO federal power? (state power in a
few states so maybe relevant there)
Even if you get unanimous Dem opposition how much does it matter? Ok
the Rs don't quite have a super-majority yet I guess but it is Rs who
will be passing legislation. Fighting Dems is about like fighting WWII
after it's all over. They have mouthpieces and foundations it is true,
but no power.
Better message is to be pro a set of policies:
1. Medicare for all
2. SS are a real retirement system
3. Job Guarantee
4. College for all – student debt
5. Taxes as social and business policy
6. No permanent standing military
Irritated by the identity politics of the main article. That and
would they have opened an office if Hillary had won? If not, I fear
they don't understand and are doomed to repeat the same mistakes of
their elders.
Sanders is always on point moving toward the goal with minimal time
spent talking about moving away from what Is opposed. Here's a sometime
humorous case in point–
A candid conversation: Bernie Sanders and Sara Silverman
Waaaaay too many bullet points already, and I see that others are
adding more. Not that I'm saying any of those are unimportant, but when
you have a dozen goals you actually have none at all. My ideal
progressive movement would hammer relentlessly on 3 major initiatives:
– Medicare for all
– $15 minimum wage
– Post office banking
All 3 provide tangible benefits to the majority of Americans, with the
added bonus of poking a sharp stick in the eye of the oligarchs.
I definitely agree about keeping the list of priorities short, but
I feel that these two areas are foundational and systemically
corrupting, and little else is likely to be accomplished without major
reforms of both
– MIC/"Defense" spending (mostly spent on offense, not defending
the borders of the USA from invasion)
– Campaign Finance – big money in politics
9. Lifelong job education and skills-building for all unemployed and
under-employed, paid for directly from corporate taxes.
10. Universal two-year commitment to the military or a full-time volunteer
public service program.
11. Rewilding and reforesting polluted and abandoned land.
12. Anti-trust! More trust-busting needed!
13. Agricultural reform to ban feedlots, fertilizers and pesticides and
reorganize farms to restore and rebuild soil. And yes, this will create
jobs.
"9. Lifelong job education and skills-building for all unemployed and
under-employed, paid for directly from corporate taxes."
people don't know what a nightmare such scenarios are, ok it sucks if
you are underemployed and have no way to retrain because finances, but it
also sucks big league if you have to spend your entire life working full
time AND pursuing more and more formal education, forever until you die.
Is any of our utopias going to care about human beings being able to BE
human beings? We are so so much more than just useful labor machines
forever aquiring labor market useful skills.
Ok course a basic income guarantee or a labor market tilted for labor
not capital (including government job creation sure – and sure there's
other things that can tilt it for labor – lower Social Security age,
unionization etc.) would nullify this objection as the competition for
jobs would lessen enough perhaps.
"10. Universal two-year commitment to the military or a full-time
volunteer public service program."
well this is even more self-evidently nightmarish but it hardly needs
unpacking. 2 years of becoming hired killers for the imperialist murder
machine. Yea I know you didn't specify military as mandatory, I'm just
saying what is being encouraged.
jrs: Agreed. Points 9 and 10 are non-starters. They will not lessen
class warfare. Only a jobs policy and a commitment to full employment
will. And this idea that U.S. citizens have to be drafted into some
regimented public-service program isn't helpful.
But let's talk about reopening the Civilian Conservation Corps, as
in point 11. Now that is a genuinely good idea. And people would
gladly join–without feeling regimented.
There was an interesting debate around the water cooler links on
Festivus. I would like to recap and extend it here because I want to know
more. First about how you, Lambert, see the take over of a single state
Democratic party office breaking open a path to reform the party from
within. I would like to hear what scenarios you feel are possible.
Walden pond wrote
"The elite control the D party (which is nothing but a criminal organization
at this point). They will allow outsiders to have dog-catcher, but get
uppity and run for a state position and that person will be out in an
instant. The Ds are factually/legally a private club and they can select
their membership and candidates in any way they choose or get a court to
back them on every petty legal change they make to block outsiders. They
change rules (legal contract) retroactively, they violate their own rules
repeatedly and someone thinks they are going to get any farther than a few
school board positions or city council is going to fail.
Taking over the D party is similar to proposing infiltrating gangs (fully
backed by the legal system) with 13 year olds to 'save the neighborhood'."
I whole heartedly agree. I think it's important that people understand
that the party is not just a "machine" waiting for someone new to guide it.
It is not a set of empty offices and poster printing machines with helpful
local people waiting for guidance. At the top, it is much more like an
exclusive country club whose membership passes down through wealthy families
who think they know what's best for the nation.
Anyhow, if you have a strategy on how to break it, I would like to
support that discussion. I would like to hear more.
I'm glad you carried this discussion over to today. People hear have
heard my sad tales of woe when I decided in 2004 to stop being
inattentive and to actually try "to change the party from within" that
talk show hosts like Thom Hartmann and "The Nation" gang call for every 4
years. Yes, I discovered what Walden Pond wrote; that there is an "elite"
control of the state parties. They are almost hereditary positions. Yes,
they will get excited by a newbie like me who was articulate, worked in
Hollywood, married to a rancher for conservative creeds. But then I
started to challenge their positions by advocating for single payer;
stronger labor stances that they all paId lip service to but didn't
really seem to care about. So no longer was I allowed to talk to the
press at the DNC Convention. As I recall in 2006 or 2007 they changed a
rule to make it harder to challenge Jon Tester in a primary.
Affairs like "Campaign for America's Future" conventions were always in
D.C. And during the 2nd one I went to, I confirmed by observations that
they were just big job fairs for people wanting jobs in the next
administration or becoming lobbyists. That was actually what the
convention in 2004 was too that I attended as a delegate. "Agriculture
Salutes Tom Harking"; brought to you not by The Grange but by Monsanto
and Carroll. Lavish party with handsome young men shucking tons of
oysters. Ick.
I went in naive as I suspect many well meaning millennials will do now to
this "house". But boy did I start to wake up and finally by 2009 after
the failed single payer health care movement, I quit this dead donkey.
There's a lot of contentious debate on whether to fight in the
Democrat Party or build a 3rd one. The answer is both, always and
constantly.
1) Start the fight within the Party, as seen in MI. What happened
there is important to expose and embarrass the local party officials. I
consider the incident an encouraging sign and hope there are more like it
around the country (not happy with the guy getting assaulted, of course,
but if it shows 'they are who we thought they were', then that's progress
of a sort).
2) If you can fight within the party and the party leadership at the
state level understands the need to change and gets on board (getting on
board as defined by fighting for specific policies, organizing and party
building, and going against the wishes of big donors), then work with
them.
3) if the big donors and dinosaur party leaders don't get on board,
then then need to be A) removed, if possible. Or, if not possible, B)
they should be isolated. If Schumer and Pelosi can't be primary-ed out of
existence (a-la Eric Cantor) then they should be stripped of leadership
positions and isolated. Primary all of their allies in congress. Pelosi
still got around 2/3 of the vote. Let's get it below 1/2. We're not
starting from scratch, there's a base of opposition to work with.
4) Part of the contention between points 2) and 3) is protests like
those seen recently protesting at Schumer's office by BLM and Occupy
folks. Again, make them come to us on policy. Life should get
increasingly uncomfortable for Party leaders and members that don't play
ball. It should be clear that their current attitudes and policies are
untenable and they need to get with the new program. Hassle them in their
offices, at their public events. Anti-fracking protestors who harassed
Cuomo over several years showed what to do. I think one of his kids joked
that when they got lost on the way to an event, they could always find
where they were going because the anti-fracking protestors were there
waiting for them.
People like Pelosi and Schumer will cave to public pressure, they've
done it in the past. Pelosi said no to medicare changes when Obama wanted
to put entitlement reform on the table. These people are different than
ideologues who will push their agenda regardless of public opinion.
They're snakes, but they'll play ball under pressure.
5) Now in the case where we can't with the fight within the party, go
outside. Socialist Alternative, Working Families and other 3rd parties
that are built up at the local level can threaten and do real damage.
Does anyone think Seattle gets a $15/hr min. wage without Sawant and
Socialist Alternative? Working Families Party demonstrated exactly what
NOT to do during NY Governor election. If Cuomo won't come to us and meet
our demands, bring him down. Suck it up, deal with a Republican for a few
years, if necessary. While the Republican is in charge, pressure them,
too. Don't think about the election right now .that's short termism.
Let's think 2, 3, 4 elections out. If you're not winning now, clear out
the deadwood to win later.
6) Now, to face up to the 'lesser evil' arguments regarding 5). It's
over, there's no more 'lesser evilism'. It's dead. Hillary Clinton and
the elite Dems killed it. They put it all on display for all to see. They
were willing to crush the left (again), squash voting rights through a
variety of means, and risk Trump or another whacky 'Pied Piper' candidate
in order to get their anointed candidate put in charge. THAT should tell
you EXACTLY who we're dealing with here. They were perfectly willing to
risk Trump to win, so that means if a 3rd party can get 3%-5% in a close
election and play a spoiler role, then that 3rd party should DO it. Every
time. Again, keep doing it until the Democrats adopt the platform of a
3rd party (which, presumably includes fight for $15, medicare for all, no
wars, etc). Again, until the Dems come to us on policy, they will be
opposed.
But, but Nader brought us Bush who brought us Iraq War! You cannot
take risks like that! Must vote lesser evil!!! Oh really? Dems voted for
Patriot Act, Dems voted for AUMF over and over again. Dems voted to keep
funding the war, too. When Dems don't win the Presidency they want to sit
back and wait for Repubs to do awful stuff so that Dems will be back in
charge as seen in 2006-8. Pelosi and Reid did NOTHING to deserve a win,
they just waited it out until people voted for change again. They want to
do this again. We can't let them. Make them do their job. Make them act
in opposition. Make them earn their next win, otherwise we'll get the
same group and the same policies that have just been discredited.
7) From the article, I like Ahmed's strategy/tactics, but the concept
of attacking Trump the person, seems flawed. Remember, policy is what
matters!
Nixon passed an amendment that created the EPA. That doesn't happen if
you oppose Nixon for who he is. Also, wikipedia reveals that the Clean
Water Act got passed in spite of Nixon's veto! If Trump wants to move in
the right direction, he should be praised for doing so. If he doesn't, go
around him!
Trump is a guy that just slapped the Repub establishment silly and
clearly is running at least partially out of vanity more than he wants to
collect fat checks when he leaves office (like the Clintons, and probably
Obama soon enough). There's value in this, by itself, and there's value
on policy grounds, too.
Okay, I'm done. I hope anyone who bothers to read found this
enjoyable. Happy for comments. Also, to be clear, I've got no experience
in organizing or any kind of playbook to carry this plan out. :) So, feel
free to mock my credentials, because they don't exist!
Sigh. We millennials might be smart about policy and pragmatic, but if
this is our moonshot, we don't know jack about how to organize a successful
social movement. Protesting "Trump" is stupid. Trump is not a policy. He is
a person. Is our goal to make him feel bad about himself? And he did win the
election. So his administration is, in fact, "legitimate" in any meaningful
sense of the word.
I'd have slightly different lists, but I entirely agree that a pro-policy
platform is an essential starting point. That said, protests basically
always fail, and more often then not IMO, strengthen the opposition. When
they succeed, or even make headway like NODAPL, they always share a common
set of features.
1) One very specific policy. Today, if I were in charge, I'd choose
Federally funded Medicare for all. Never mind details for protesting
purposes.
2) A simple, clear message that appeals to values that most people in a
body politic can agree on "Health Care is a Civil Right!"
3) A symbol that presents a clear, binary, moral choice. Sorry people, it
makes me feel icky too, but this is where we go hunting for a dying grandma
or kid with cancer who can't get medical care and make him/her our mascot
(ideally, in a purely strategic realm, such person would refuse any care
until it was guaranteed to all, then die at a decisive moment, thus becoming
a martyr).
4) The ability to bring different folks together to agree on ONE thing.
Organized bitch sessions about Obamacare in Trump country might work here,
but we'd have to throw shit at the wall and see what stuck. I know for a
fact that most Trump supporters, if pressed, will say that a family should
not have to choose between impoverishment and treating mom's cancer. But
protesting "Trump" is protesting them too, with the main goal of feeling
like you are a better person because you know that gender is socially
constructed or whatever (as if there is something magical in who you are
that is the reason you got to go to a private liberal arts college, and you
totally never would have been racist no matter what life circumstances you
were born into).
It's not that I'm a single issue person, it's just protesting lots of
things at once just makes a lot of noise, and a bunch of people trying to
work together with competing agendas (lack of shared vision, in corporate
speak), makes all human organizations dysfunctional. Basically, I support
many issues, but think mixing them all together is not a good recipe for
success.
Didn't read the article. Seems like a misdirected effort to me. You don't
win voters by being against something. You win them by being for something.
I am getting tired of the "Ain't It Awful" game. Give me a vision to be for.
There is something called target fixation. When you concentrate on what
you want to avoid, you end up going right toward it. Concentrate on where
you want to go rather than spend all your time thinking about where you
don't want to go.
This can be demonstrated by asking someone to follow your instructions
and then issuing a number of imperative sentences:
Don't think of blue
Don't think about your left earlobe
Don't think about what Crazyman will do with this
Don't think of Trump
Etc
One has to think of those things in order to make sense of the words.
Moving away from can be a powerful motivator but only toward will get you
there. Sorry, clarifying the obvious again.
This effort is not about winning voters but about blocking really bad
policy changes that will hurt millions of people. Organizing for an
election campaign and organizing for issue-based activism are not the
same. If Barb Mikulski forty-odd years ago had just gone around the city
talking about her vision of good communities and good transportation
policy, a lot of Baltimore neighborhoods would have been wiped out as the
city was cut apart by an ill-placed interstate. She stopped it by
organizing a fight against it. More recently, Destiny Watford, still in
high school at the time, was the prime mover in the successful fight
against an incinerator in her Curtis Bay neighborhood in south Baltimore.
There is a time and a place for everything. There are at least two
other organizations focusing on electoral politics. This one has a
different purpose.
Yes to be opposed to Trump is because they think a bunch of bad
policies will come from his administration and they are likely not
wrong. It doesn't need to be about Trump the person at all, though for
some deluded people it may be. Now they could broaden it to opposing
Paul Ryans congress etc. since they are hardly better but if any
legistlaton is actually going to be passed a Republican congress and
Trump will be working together.
A single issue focus, say it was Medicare for all, even if it was
sucessful, would have let all the other issues a Trump administration
will represent slide. Ok so if Trump passes tax cuts say that further
enrich the plutocrats, an ever more unequal society might even destroy
Medicare for all (the rich will just buy their way out). If Trump
passes even more obviously anti-environmental legistlation, the fact
Medicare for all was achieved would be a goal of it's own but would
not change this. Maybe there are people enough for all movements, I
don't know.
It'll never work & for good reason. It's a form of ideation contrary to
gnostic principles and therefore to the highest spiritual values on this
plane of existence.
Sad to see hopeful inspired people get lost in that maze of misery. Trust
your perceptions in the silence of your mind without looking to anybody else
for affirmation. People are people. That's what everybody who can figure
things out figures out when they grow up.
Grow up & Merry Christmas. LOL
I'm wishing Trump well & am somewhat hopeful that - through the odd
feedback loops in complex systems - the provocations of his originality will
shape things in a direction even progressives will find appealing. Maybe
I'll be wrong, I admit. But I'm usually not wrong. LOL. (Although I am
sometimes, no lie.)
Firecracker puppies professional trainer who isists she knows about how
people of color feel..hmmm a bunch of photos of ms nadine and her fellow
associates something about dc that tells me the demographics are not the
same as iowa does not look as she thinks there are any people of color who
can train on what "she" calls "non violence" and her "famous" black female
puppet to represent and protest against the military because the military is
so black and female seems a bit tone deaf
Same old same old chameleons bending to the new hot button funding to
keep the lights on
"As the international director of the committee to make noise and get
nothing done, we strive to "
And ms bangladeshi her nov 27 tweet that anyone right of the democrats is
a fascist does this child have an idea what that word means, or is it
something she picked up at one of the "people" conventions she attended or
spoke at
Not looking to be hyper cynical on this of all days but seems moumita has
spent her entire adult life posing with her megaphone and for someone who is
so "out there" mekantz find much about her except her self proclaimed
relevance and for a person who claims this large network somewhat smallish
set of followers on her chyrping account
The Washington police will now have to use a search warrant or a
battering ram unlike Zuccotti park where night sticks and pepper spray were
used. I don't see a problem getting those. Especially after agents have
infiltrated. Well at least it is a start which I hope snowballs!
enter the sans coullottes! I am thrilled and will try to get in contact
with them. depend upon it, the American people will turn to those who
demonstrate the best ability to push back against Trump. Which is why Bernie
has been doing that since the election.
No, I disagree. Bernie does not push back against Trump. No identity
politics, no focus on personalities. Bernie pushes back against
wrong-headed policies. Bernie wants policies that benefit the majority.
Let's pray our new president does some good that most of us do not
expect. I hope he is more unpredictable than that. I may be wrong but I
can hope.
Sounds like the Alternet crowd is up to its sheepdogging tactics again.
Let's corral young energy and co-opt it for the Democrats. Co-opting is what
I call "Skunking" because it sure stinks up the joint.
I'm with the majority here in finding this sad that these "organizers"
have decided to go all negative. They are "going to hold him [Trump]
accountable and delegitimize literally everything he is doing and not let
him succeed." Well, how has that worked out so far.
New thinking and new solutions ae called for, not the same old feel good
"protests" and voter drives that professional organizers love to do. If they
had done any real introspection they would have come up with ways of forming
new coalitions; and also realize the need to keep Schumer and Pelosi as
accountable as Trump. But these are still party operatives in younger
sheep's clothing. Many are poli sci majors who want to be in politics in
Washington as a vocation. See, they are the wise "behind the scenes" people
that will guide the "activists" . Ugh. Same old; Same old story.
And this smells of the same DLC Clinton gang since they are calling Trump's
victory and presidency illegitimate. Again, they don't want to delve into
why she lost. They wants jobs in D.C. And spend their energy "resisting"
rather than coming up with anything remotely interesting. This is not
Occupy. And I doubt they will embrace young Anarchists.
Wonderful shakeout by Cohn: Trump won by
trading places with
Obama
. O appealed to less educated whites as their protector
against the Wall Street candidate (47% time) Romney. (Crackpot) Trump
appealed to them with same promise versus Wall Street candidate (true
enough) Hill.
Upshot: Dems only have to get busy rebuilding labor union density at the
state by progressive state level (or not so progressive; but be seen trying
hard). Repubs will have no where to hide: once and for all political
checkmate.
We are only asking state legislatures to make possible joining a union if
you want to - without running an impassable gauntlet - no complicated policy
issues at all.
Totally unpromising that they start with the calamitous premise of the
whole Sanders campaign: "a campaign where Bernie specifically said, 'Do not
attack the other person." Sanders knew he could run a campaign that would
destroy the Clinton, a proven loser on the merits, and thereby make it
possible to defeat any of the GOP's dumpster of deplorables, especially the
Trumpe-l'oeil. But that would involve a political break with the whole
record of the Obama administration in both domestic and foreign policy. So
instead Sanders wound up saying the falsest single thing anyone said in the
whole campaign–"nobody cares about those damn e-mails."
Youth may wish to have their bragging rights for their old age, but Trump
has proven that power lies with the voters, who will be driven away to the
likes of Reagan by this posturing.
Ahmed has not learned all the lessons of the 1960s.
We-The-Ppl rejected Gold Sacks's "shitty deal" Hillary, foisted on us by
the Dems whose elites "assassinated" the best candidate since JFK; Repubs
rejected "fool me again" Jeb in the Primary. Nasty Trump was put there to
shoo-in Hill, but it backfired. Democracy? all gone. The Wild West is back.
We need both "away from" and "toward" bullet points. The "away
from" will naturally target Trump's onerous policies and will generate
lots of energy. The "toward" bullet points will also "target" the
"fake news" neoliberals because their support will prove to be tepid
faint praise and lots of how it can't be done. Energy wise it will be
more of a slog. They will also covertly seek to undermine progressive
change. They will be called out on their crap.
Why didn't they set up this "permanent base" when Sanders voted for the
700 billion dollar F35 or when Obama claimed the legal right to indefinitely
detain or kill anyone without judicial oversight?
"You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image,
when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."
I assume all of those who have so arrogantly dismissed the efforts of
these young people are all, therefore, engaged in alternative activities
that support their respective opinions of how to effect the change that is
our only salvation from neo-feudalism. Otherwise, I say put up or shut up.
Because I'm getting really sick of all the armchair quarterbacking, which
to me is no different from the way the DNC elites treat anyone who isn't a
member of their club. If people who object to the goals and/or methods of
the District 13 House group have useful suggestions to make, why haven't
they engaged in working to bring those suggestions to fruition. It's also
precisely the kind of ivory-tower critique that has brought us to this pass,
so do keep in mind that when pointing out the sins of others, one has three
other fingers pointing in the opposite direction.
Natural skeptic/cynic at this point I go back to to Bernie's first
statement after the election:
"Donald Trump tapped into the anger of a declining middle class that
is sick and tired of establishment economics, establishment politics and the
establishment media. People are tired of working longer hours for lower
wages, of seeing decent paying jobs go to China and other low-wage
countries, of billionaires not paying any federal income taxes and of not
being able to afford a college education for their kids – all while the very
rich become much richer.
"To the degree that Mr. Trump is serious about pursuing policies that
improve the lives of working families in this country, I and other
progressives are prepared to work with him. To the degree that he pursues
racist, sexist, xenophobic and anti-environment policies, we will vigorously
oppose him."
Now taken in that light, do we need a generic "anti-Trump" resistance
house to "stick out like a sore thumb"?
Or do we need something that speaks to the deeper issues around which
non-squillionaire people can unite?
I concur with those who posted above on sticking to the issues. If you
stick to the issues, the face of the opposition (from within and without)
doesn't matter. It's about getting people to realize that agents of the
establishment on BOTH sides (Dem & Repub) of all various
identarian
flavors have betrayed us all.
Now granted, there's plenty of swamp left undrained to warrant being all
up the new administration's grill like freckles. But please, let's get the
focus where it should be – on what's being done and undone. Focusing on
"Trump" is a non-starter.
Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah and FestivusForTheRestOfUs to everyone!
(rollingstone.com)
335
Posted by EditorDavid
on Sunday December 04, 2016 @12:39PM
from the
ghosts-of-Joseph-McCarthy
dept.
MyFirstNameIsPaul
was one
of several readers who spotted this disturbing instance of fake news about fake
news. An anonymous reader writes:
Last week the Washington Post described
"independent researchers" who'd identified "more than 200 websites as
routine peddlers of Russian propaganda
" that they estimated were viewed
more than 200 million times on Facebook. But the researchers insisted on
remaining anonymous "to avoid being targeted by Russia's legions of skilled
hackers," and when criticized on Twitter,
responded
"Awww, wook at all the angwy Putinists, trying to change the
subject -- they're so vewwy angwy!!"
The group "seems to have been in existence for just a few months,"
writes Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi
, calling the Post's article an
"astonishingly lazy report". (Chris Hedges, who once worked on a Pulitzer
Prize-winning team at the New York Times, even found his site
Truthdig
on the group's dubious list of over 200 "
sites
that reliably echo Russian propaganda
," along with other long-standing
sites like
Zero
Hedge
,
Naked
Capitalism
, and the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.) "By
overplaying the influence of Russia's disinformation campaign, the report also
plays directly into the hands of the Russian propagandists
that it hopes to
combat," complains Adrian Chen, who in 2015 documented real Russian propaganda
efforts which he traced to "a building in St. Petersburg where
hundreds
of young Russians worked to churn out propaganda
."
The Post's article was picked up by other major news outlets (
including
USA Today
), and included an ominous warning that "The
sophistication of the Russian tactics may complicate efforts by Facebook and
Google to crack down on 'fake news'."
(cnbc.com)
416
Posted by msmash
on Tuesday December 06, 2016 @10:20AM
from the
aftermath
dept.
China is trying to capitalize on President-elect Donald Trump's hardline
immigration stance and vow to clamp down on a foreign worker visa program that
has been used to recruit thousands from overseas to Silicon Valley. From a
report on CNBC:
Leading tech entrepreneurs, including Robin Li, the
billionaire CEO of Baidu, China's largest search engine, see Trump's plans as
a huge potential opportunity to lure tech talent away from the United States
.
The country already offers incentives of up to $1 million as signing bonuses
for those deemed "outstanding" and generous subsidies for start-ups. Meanwhile,
the Washington Post last month reported on comments made by Steve Bannon, who
is now the president-elect's chief strategist, during a radio conversation with
Trump in Nov. 2015. Bannon, the former Breitbart.com publisher, indicated that
he didn't necessarily agree with the idea that foreign talent that goes to
school in America should stay in America. "When two-thirds or three-quarters of
the CEOs in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia, I think ...,"
Bannon said, trailing off. "A country is more than an economy. We're a civic
society."
(moneycontrol.com)
184 Posted by msmash on Monday November 28, 2016 @02:20PM from the meanwhile-in-India dept.
From a report on Reuters: Anticipating a more protectionist US technology visa programme under
a Donald Trump administration, India's $150 billion IT services sector will
speed up acquisitions in the United States and recruit more heavily from college campuses there
. Indian companies including Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, and Wipro have long used H1-B
skilled worker visas to fly computer engineers to the US, their largest overseas market, temporarily
to service clients. Staff from those three companies accounted for around 86,000 new H1-B workers
in 2005-14. The US currently issues close to that number of H1-B visas each year. President-elect
Trump's campaign rhetoric, and his pick for Attorney General of Senator Jeff Sessions, a long-time
critic of the visa programme, have many expecting a tighter regime.
Posted by EditorDavid
on Sunday November 27, 2016 @11:34AM
from the
making-campaign-promises-great-again
dept.
Monday president-elect Donald Trump sent "the strongest signal yet that the
H-1B visa program is going get real scrutiny once he takes office," according
to CIO.
During his presidential campaign, Trump was critical of the H-1B visa program
that has been widely criticized for displacing U.S. high-technology workers.
"Companies are importing low-wage workers on H-1B visas to take jobs from young
college-trained Americans," said Trump at an Ohio rally.
"... Another thing: it will be clear how serious they take the allegations of Russian hacking, by how they address the problem of auditing electronic voting machines. ..."
"... If the 2018 elections aren't all with voter verified paper ballots, accompanied by random auditing and auditing all close elections, we know the accusations of Russian hacking were blatant lies. ..."
Another thing: it will be clear how serious they take the allegations of Russian hacking,
by how they address the problem of auditing electronic voting machines.
If the 2018 elections aren't all with voter verified paper ballots, accompanied by random auditing
and auditing all close elections, we know the accusations of Russian hacking were blatant lies.
"... The use of the term, however, rather naïvely implies that it is possible for a government agency to not be politicized. A non -political government agency, it is assumed, acts without regard to how its actions and claims affect its political standing among powerful interests in Washington. Such an agency has never existed. ..."
"... Indeed, when a government agency relies on taxpayer funding, Congressional lawmaking, and White House politics to sustain itself, it is absurd to expect that agency to somehow remain not "politicized." That is, it's a logical impossibility to think it possible to set up a government agency that relies on government policymakers to sustain it, and then think the agency in question will not attempt to influence or curry favor with those policymakers. ..."
"... Does the organization depend on taxpayer funding for a substantial amount of its budget? ..."
"... Does the organization engage in what would be illegal activities were it not for protective government legislation? ..."
Anonymous leakers at the CIA continue to make claims about Russia and the 2016 election. In response to demands to provide evidence,
the CIA has declined to offer any, refusing to meet with Congressional intelligence committees, and refusing to issue any documents
offering evidence. Instead, the CIA, communicating via leaks, simply says the equivalent of "trust us."
Not troubled by the lack of evidence, many in the media and in the Democratic party have been repeating unsubstantiated CIA claims
as fact.
Of course, as
I've noted before , the history of CIA intelligence is largely a history of missing the forest for the trees. Sometimes, the
failures have been spectacular.
One of the questions that immediately arises in the media in situations like these, however, is "
has the CIA been politicized ?"
When used in this way, the term "politicized" means that the CIA is involved in helping or hurting specific political factions
(e,g., specific ideological groups, pressure groups, or presidential administrations) in order to strengthen the CIA's financial
or political standing.
All Government Agencies Are Politicized
The use of the term, however, rather
naïvely implies that it is possible for a government agency to not be politicized. A non -political government agency, it is
assumed, acts without regard to how its actions and claims affect its political standing among powerful interests in Washington.
Such an agency has never existed.
Indeed, when a government agency relies on taxpayer funding, Congressional lawmaking, and White House politics to sustain
itself, it is absurd to expect that agency to somehow remain not "politicized." That is, it's a logical impossibility to think it
possible to set up a government agency that relies on government policymakers to sustain it, and then think the agency in question
will not attempt to influence or curry favor with those policymakers.
This idea might seem plausible to school children in junior-high-school civics classes, but not to anyone who lives in the real
world.
In fact, if we wish to ascertain whether or not an institution or organization is "politicized" we can simply ask ourselves a
few questions:
Does the organization depend on a legal monopoly to accomplish its mission? That is, does the organization benefit from a
government prohibition on other organizations - especially private-sector ones - doing the same thing?
Does the organization depend on taxpayer funding for a substantial amount of its budget?
Was the organization created by government legislation?
Are senior officials appointed by government policymakers (i.e., the President)?
Does the organization engage in what would be illegal activities were it not for protective government legislation?
If the answer to any of these questions is "yes" then you are probably dealing with a politicized organization. If the answer
to all of these questions is "yes" - as is the case with the CIA - then you're definitely dealing with a very politicized organization.
(Other "non-political" organizations that fall well within this criteria as well include so-called "private" organizations such as
the Federal Reserve System and Fannie Mae.)
So, it has always been foolish to ask ourselves if the CIA is "politicized" since the answer is obviously "yes" for anyone who
is paying attention.
Nevertheless, the myth that the CIA and agencies like it can be non-political continues to endure, although in many cases, the
charge has produced numerous helpful historical analysis of just how politicized the CIA has been in practice.
Recent Narratives on CIA Politicization
Stories of CIA politicization take at least two forms: One type consists of anti-CIA writers attempting to illustrate how the
CIA acts to manipulate political actors to achieve its own political ends. The other type consists of pro-CIA writers attempting
to cast the CIA as an innocent victim of manipulation by senior Washington officials.
Of course, it doesn't matter whether the provenance of CIA politicking comes from within the agency or outside it. In both cases,
the fact remains that the Agency is a tool for political actors to deceive, manipulate, and attack political enemies.
With CIA leaks apparently attempting to call the integrity of the 2016 election into question, the CIA is once again being accused
of politicization. Consequently, articles in the
Washington
Times , the
Daily Caller , and
The Intercept all question the CIA's motivation and present numerous examples of the Agency's history of deception.
The current controversy is hardly the first time the Agency has been accused of being political, and during the build up to the
Iraq invasion in 2003, for example, the CIA worked with the Bush Administration to essentially manufacture "intelligence."
In his book Failure of Intelligence , Melvin Allan Goodman writes:
Three years after the invasion of Iraq, a senior CIA analyst, Paul Pillar, documented the efforts of the Bush administration
to politicize the intelligence of the CIA on Iraqi WMD and so-called links between Iraq and al Qaeda. Pillar accused the Bush
administration of using policy to drive intelligence production, which was the same argument offered by the chief of British intelligence
in the Downing Street memorandum prior to the war, and aggressively using intelligence to win public support for the decision
to go to war....Pillar does not explain why no senior CIA official protested, let alone resigned in the wake of the president's
misuse of intelligence on Iraq's so-called efforts to obtain uranium ore in Africa. Pillar falsely claimed "for the most part,
the intelligence community's own substantive judgments do not appear to have been compromised," when it was clear that the CIA
wa wrong on every conclusion and had to politicize the intelligence to be so egregiously wrong."
Since then, CIA officials have attempted to rehabilitate the agency by claiming the agency was the hapless victim of the Administration.
But, as Goodman notes, we heard no protests from the Agency when such protests would have actually mattered, and the fact is the
Agency was easily used for political ends. Whether or not some agents wanted to participate in assisting the Bush administration
with trumping up evidence against Iraq remains irrelevant. The fact remains the CIA did it.
Moreover, according to documents compiled by John Prados
at the George Washington University , "The U.S. intelligence community buckled sooner in 2002 than previously reported" and that
"Under the circumstances, it is difficult to avoid the impression that the CIA and other intelligence agencies defended themselves
against the dangers of attack from the Bush administration through a process of self-censorship. That is the very essence of politicization
in intelligence."
In other words, to protect its own budgets and privileges, the CIA reacted quickly to shape its intelligence to meet the political
goals of others.
Journalist Robert Parry has also
attempted to go the CIA-as-victim
route in his own writings. In an article written before the Iraq War debacle, Parry looks at how the Agency was used by both
Reagan and Clinton, and claims that what is arguably of the CIA's biggest analytical errors - repeatedly overstating the economic
strength of the Soviet Union - was the result of pressure applied to the Agency by the Reagan administration. (Parry may be mistaken
here, as the CIA
was
wrong about the Soviet economy long before the Reagan Administration .)
While attempting to defend the CIA, however, Parry is merely providing a list of the many ways in which the CIA serves to manufacture
false information that are useful for political officials.
In this essay for the Center for
International Policy, Goodman further lists many examples of politicization and concludes "Throughout the CIA's 60-year history,
there have been many efforts to slant analytical conclusions, skew estimates, and repress evidence that challenged a particular policy
or point of view. As a result, the agency must recognize the impact of politicization and introduce barriers to protect analysts
from political pressures. Unfortunately, the CIA has largely ignored the problem."
It is difficult to ascertain whether past intelligence failures were due to pressure form the administration or whether they originated
from within the Agency itself. Nevertheless, the intelligence failures are numerous, including:
The CIA was wrong about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
The fact that politicization occurs might help explain some of these failures, but simply claiming "politicization" doesn't erase
the legacy of failure, and it hardly serves as an argument in favor of allowing the CIA to continue to
command huge budgets and essentially
function unsupervised. Regardless of fanciful claims of non-political professionalism, it is undeniable that, as an agency of the
US government, the CIA is a political institution.
The only type of organization that is not politicized is a private-sector organization under a relatively laissez-faire regime.
Heavily regulated private industries and all government agencies are politicized by nature because they depend heavily on active
assistance from political actors to sustain themselves.
It should be assumed that politicized organizations seek to influence policymakers, and thus all the actions and claims of these
organization should be treated with skepticism and a recognition that these organizations benefit from further taxation and expanded
government powers inflicted on ordinary taxpayers and other productive members of society outside the privileged circles of Washington,
DC.
Perimetr -> Chupacabra-322 •Dec 23, 2016 11:34 AM
Is the CIA politicized?
...Is the pope catholic?
How many more presidents does the CIA have to kill to answer your question?
Oldwood -> DownWithYogaPants •Dec 23, 2016 11:26 AM
How could the CIA NOT be politicized? They collect "intelligence" and use it to influence policy makers without ANY accountability
and no real proof. The CIA operates on CONJECTURE that is completely subjective to bias and agenda. Is that ANYTHING BUT political?
TeaClipper's picture -> TeaClipper •Dec 23, 2016 11:24 AM
The CIA was not wrong about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, it lied about them. That is a very big distinction.
Old Poor Richard •Dec 23, 2016 12:13 PM
The question is whether the CIA is puppeteer and not the puppet.
The Snowden report, jam packed with provably false scurrilous accusations, demonstrates that not only is the US intelligence
community entirely lacking in credibility, but that they believe themselves so powerful that they can indefinitely get away with
baldfaced lies.
The thing is, the deep state can only keep up the charade when they completely control the narrative, the way China does. Hence
the attacks on the first amendment that are accelerating as fast as the attacks on the second amendment. Majority of Americans
don't believe the Russian hacking hoax and it make the CIA increasingly hysterical.
DarthVaderMentor •Dec 23, 2016 12:33 PM
The CIA has been politicized. In fact, all the way down to the COS level, and in concert with the State Department. Brennan and
Moran are nothing but Clinton surrogates.
In one embassy in a country where IEDs keep blowing up, there were millions of taxpayer dollars spent and continue to be spent
in "safe spaces" and "comfort food and liquor" inside an embassy (taking away space from the US Marine Giuards for it) to let
"Democrat snowflakes" in senior embassy and CIA positions recover from the Trump elections.
The real reaon for the loss of the Phillipines as an ally may eventually come out that a gay senior embassy official made a
pass at the President of the country. Just like it happened with the gay ambassador in the Dominican Republic.
That Libral You Hate •Dec 23, 2016 12:41 PM
I would say the simple answer to the question asked in the headline of this article is "yes" but it is important to actually understand
the nuance of the langer answer.
The critical nuance is that: politics didn't conquor the CIA, but rather the CIA injected itself into politics. I.e. the CIA
aren't political stooges, but act political because they have injected political stooges into politics and they have to act political
to protect them to protect their interests. Thus while the answer is "yes" the question is phrased wrong as: "Has the CIA Been
Politicized," the appropriate question is "Has politics been co-opted by the CIA"
insanelysane •Dec 23, 2016 12:50 PM
The first post is spot on except the CIA was in Southeast Asia stirring stuff up to get us into a war. War is big business.
The entire reason for Vietnam was "If Vietnam falls the commies will be marching down Main Street USA afterwards."
Well we fucking lost Vietnam and the commies still aren't marching down Main Street and yet the assessment is still being peddled
by the Corporation.
Kennedy was killed because, even though he was fucking totally drugged up, he still saw Vietnam for what it was.
The Corporation gave Johnson and offer he couldn't refuse, take the keys to the kingdom, just keep "fighting" in Vietnam. I
say fighting because we were just fucking around there. No one in charge wanted to risk winning the war.
And here we are today, 23rd, December, 2016, "fighting" in the Middle East and the Corporation not willing to risk winning
the war. Just need to keep it hot enough for the weapons and ammunition to be used in a nice steady pace to keep business going.
Fox Business News discusses a potential investigation involving CIA Director John Brennan over whether
he leaked information about the Russian hacking investigation to the media
John Brennan takes his cues directly from Barack Obama, which means the entire CIA, Russian hack
investigation, was initiated and conducted under Obama's direct order.
The Russian hack, media spin, has been and remains a political play. National security has very
little to do with it.
"... I think if you want to improve the economic inequality between countries, there are better ways than open borders. If the aim is to decrease economic inequality, you could make policies to reach this outcome that are more targeted than open borders, for example you could implement financial transfers between countries, or you could implement international minimum wages that could be phased in over 10-20-30 years, etc. ..."
"... If the other problem you want to address is mobility for people who want to immigrate for personal reasons, you can just improve the access to immigration within the normal migration system, and increase migration quotas in line with some sort of expectation of what a optimum maximum population would be within a set period. ..."
"... Another thing is infrastructure, it would be difficult to forecast infrastructure needs if migration is unregulated. It would take several decades to settle into a sort of equilibrium and until then you couldn't do very good projections of future infrastructure needs. In Victoria we already have had population growth that has outpaced infrastructure, and there are big problems particularly with transport but also with other infrastructure needs. ..."
"... The surcharge is supposed to be a payment towards the existing infrastructure, from which the new entrants benefit. But native-born citizens, who benefit from the infrastructure built up by previous generations get the same benefit as a free gift! That already presupposes some quite strong claims about who is entitled to what, and who is entitled to exclude whom from access. ..."
"... In a world with a rapidly increasing population and a resource base coming under increasing stress it acting merely to spread misery faster and to stop experiments in sustainability. ..."
"... It undermining social and democratic structures. ..."
"... Another issue with the tax is that it would make migration more difficult for lower income people who could't afford the tax. Countries like the UK are already targeting their migration intake to higher income earners where possible, and a tax would encourage that policy. ..."
"... What if there were a minimum tax per immigrant per year, equal to the average taxes paid by citizens? ..."
"... It is worth considering the world's economy as an engineering system that responds to forces placed upon it. One of the features of making migration difficult, through either bureaucratic or financial resistance, is that it dampens the response of the system to external forces. Open borders removes that damping and allows much faster response. Like most things in life, that has both good and bad consequences, but one of the consequences is the system becomes less stable. ..."
"... As for the productivity argument – as usual, political theorists underestimate the value of extended family and long term inter-family arrangements in creating 'social capital' for productivity and stability. ..."
"... Mobility has its place, and in a time when most Americans never went more than 25 miles from their birthplace during their entire lives an increase in mobility increased overall productivity. However, there are many reasons to believe that individual mobility is costing communities dearly in these present times; and that bad government and market oriented policies which are exacerbating the problem. ..."
"... So in addition to the problems of infrastructure and gentrification on the recieving end of these net flows, we have issues in the regions that are being left-behind. Our current reactionary politics seems to be one of the consequences of this difficult issue. ..."
"... I worry that "free movement of people" tends to have massive social costs that get swept under the rug when the issues are discussed in a purely economic framework. ..."
"... For most of human history, the vast majority of people lived in extended family groups in villages, towns, or temporary encampments where they knew their neighbors, had relatively small social worlds, and didn't travel more than a few days from home. Cities, as we know them, (and their accompanying social maladies) are really only two or three centuries old and post-industrial cities are an even newer phenomenon. ..."
"... What's worse, the rootless urban professionals have money, which means they can buy or rent homes anywhere, displacing the old residents. This has a double whammy effect, not only do the neighborhoods get new people who don't quite fit in, but the old "villagers" get forced out (and in many cases become rootless transplants in some other town), so communities enter a state of perpetual social flux where there aren't enough old timers left to assimilate the new arrivals and the social fabric disintegrates as natural communities are replaced by a massive web of voluntary ones that often don't (especially if there's a class or language barrier) and leave some people with no community at all. ..."
"... Think of the million Poles in the UK, for example, they will predictably have "close relationships" with people in Poland, and will British retirees in Spain with people in the UK, and Irish people in the UK with people living in Ireland . ..."
"... At this point I really, really have to emphasize the plug for John Smith's Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century because he addresses this kind of neoclassical boosterism more or less directly, from a leftist point of view. ..."
"... In Smith's telling the suppression of international labor mobility is actually central to explaining not just global wage differentials perceived to result from differences in productivity, but also the data by which labor productivity between countries is measured in the first place. The neoclassicals' trick here is to take the international division of labor that emerges from what Smith calls "global labor arbitrage" (e.g. outsourcing) and remove it from their conceptual category of production altogether, instead regarding it through the lens of international trade as if workers on a factory floor were constantly "trading" their partially-assembled products to others further down the assembly line. ..."
"... It's not exactly freedom of movement I'm arguing against so much as the notion that population centers have an essentially unlimited ability to absorb newcomers. From 18th Century Manchester to the American West to exploding Chinese industrial cities today, boom towns are notorious for their environmental devastation and social dysfunction. ..."
"... Many municipalities already do this through the use of building permits, but their efforts are compromised by an imperative to expand their tax base and competition between municipalities that gravely limits their effective bargaining power. In a free trade, open borders world, I can see the same thing happening at the national scale, forcing whole countries to compete with one another for jobs and labor and hastening the rate of neo-colonial resource plundering. ..."
"... Factor endowments equals they have poor people for cheap labor and we have rich people who create, consume and finance and the origins of the difference is like shrouded in mystery? ..."
"... John Smith of WLGR is Marxian. Apples profits are generated by the workers at Foxconn in China, not the designers in San Jose. The surplus accruing to intellectual property is mostly a product of past and present Imperialism. ..."
"... By the way, at least according to Wikipedia, there are 830,000 Poles in the UK_ so well south of a million still. It's a lot, but, lots less than, say, the 2.9 million Russian-born people in the US, a population I'm very familiar with, so I don't really need the lecture here. ..."
"... I'm not arguing against change, but rather change that comes so quickly it creates a schism between the past and the present. The Gold Rush changed California from predominantly Spanish-speaking to majority Anglo in just a few years (and also killed tens of thousands of Indians in the process), so even if a place still has the same name following migration, it might not be pronounced the same way. ..."
This is definitely approaching it from the right angle–large immigration flows act like globalization.
They improve overall average GDP but definitely hurt certain sectors of workers in ways that thus
far in the experiment suggests that they never recover.
I wonder about the effect of big city housing costs. They act as a barrier to moving to a better
job. Is this something that we should be worried about as part of the immigration issue?
ZM 12.21.16 at 6:15 am
I think if you want to improve the economic inequality between countries, there are better ways
than open borders. If the aim is to decrease economic inequality, you could make policies to reach
this outcome that are more targeted than open borders, for example you could implement financial
transfers between countries, or you could implement international minimum wages that could be
phased in over 10-20-30 years, etc.
If the other problem you want to address is mobility for people who want to immigrate for personal
reasons, you can just improve the access to immigration within the normal migration system, and
increase migration quotas in line with some sort of expectation of what a optimum maximum population
would be within a set period.
Also there is already a problem with gentrification in many cities, and associated issues of
people having to move further away from family and friends, and not enough affordable housing,
and homelessness - open borders would increase all these problems I would think as it would take
out all the regulations. And we already have problems with people from poor countries or poor
areas being under pressure to migrate for work and financial reasons, and open borders would exacerbate
that problem as well.
I think refugees need to be able to migrate the most urgently, but it would still be better
for them that there were specific policies for refugee migration that would allow the high numbers
of refugees to migrate to safety either temporarily or permanently, rather than open borders.
Most of the bloggers here are not in favour of laissez faire free trade, so I don't see why
open borders are favoured when "open trade" isn't?
Another thing is infrastructure, it would be difficult to forecast infrastructure needs if migration
is unregulated. It would take several decades to settle into a sort of equilibrium and until then
you couldn't do very good projections of future infrastructure needs. In Victoria we already have
had population growth that has outpaced infrastructure, and there are big problems particularly
with transport but also with other infrastructure needs.
I'm a bit suspicious that this sort of analysis suffers from large measurement biases.
As an environmentalist,
I'm concerned that we may be increasing a statistic (GDP) that is just a measure of an extent
of how much higher a proportion of consumer is now being captured in the market, and not a measure
of actual welfare. I remember very well as young economist wondering when I heard a more senior
economists complaining that Australians didn't want to work but just wanted to lie about on the
beach. And then I thought about how northern Europeans pay large amounts of money in order to
be able to lie about on the beach.
Maybe the beach occupying Australians were being rational and
the economist was not being rational. Having more crowded beaches does not show as a minus on
GDP as far as I know.
reason 12.21.16 at 9:20 am P.S.
GDP may also measure how rapidly our natural capital is being converted to perishable goods, but
not measure how rapidly it is being eroded.
On the immigration surcharge thing, I can see its attractions as a policy, but let me just comment
on it from the point of view of principle, not to advocate any particular solution but to notice
some things:
The surcharge is supposed to be a payment towards the existing infrastructure, from which the
new entrants benefit. But native-born citizens, who benefit from the infrastructure built up by
previous generations get the same benefit as a free gift! That already presupposes some quite
strong claims about who is entitled to what, and who is entitled to exclude whom from access.
(Adding in some plausible history, we might further note that the existing domestic infrastructure
hasn't, in many cases, been built up simply from the unaided efforts of the ancestors of the natives
but often reflects the efforts of the colonised or dominated ancestors of the would-be immigrants.)
Then notice also another asymmetry, that the proposal is to charge the incomers for the benefits
they derive from the infrastructure, whilst allowing the natives to benefit for free from human
capital that has been created elsewhere through educational and training programmes. That issue,
the so-called brain drain problem (I'm not a fan of the term or many of the associated claims
btw) forms the basis for a quite different set of proposals for taxing immigrants, the so-called
Bhagwati tax. So the poor migrants get hit by taxation proposals from both sides, as it were!
reason 12.21.16 at 9:35 am
P.P.S. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not totally against open borders in all circumstances (in
fact in a fairly equal world with a stable population I would be all for it), but I see a distinct
danger of very rapid immigration:
In a world with a rapidly increasing population and a resource base coming under increasing
stress it acting merely to spread misery faster and to stop experiments in sustainability.
"Chang, who opposes open borders" "Currently a reader in the Political Economy of Development
at the University of Cambridge"
Open borders for me but not for thee?
ZM 12.21.16 at 9:45 am Chris Bertram,
"So the poor migrants get hit by taxation proposals from both sides, as it were!"
Another issue with the tax is that it would make migration more difficult for lower income
people who could't afford the tax. Countries like the UK are already targeting their migration
intake to higher income earners where possible, and a tax would encourage that policy.
I would rather make improve inequality between countries, and then experiment with freer migration
after that. Since I think there would be less incentive to migrate if countries were more equal,
and then freer migration would be more likely to run smoother.
And (didn't see comment 7) - while yes, a surcharge isn't strictly fair, it is a far lesser evil
than not letting immigrants in at all.
I think it's plausible that remittances would more than make up for the investments home countries
had made in 'their' immigrants.
SamChevre 12.21.16 at 11:14 am
On a surcharge–I proposed one years ago in the context of the proposed "amnesty," that I think
avoids some of the problems Chris Bertram notes above.
What if there were a minimum tax per immigrant per year, equal to the average taxes paid by
citizens? This would be a "pay your share of current costs" tax, not an additional tax.
For the
US, it would be roughly $10,000 a year for the federal government (20% of per capita GDP)–and
any taxes paid to the federal government (FICA and income tax) would be credits against it.
It is worth considering the world's economy as an engineering system that responds to forces placed
upon it. One of the features of making migration difficult, through either bureaucratic or financial
resistance, is that it dampens the response of the system to external forces. Open borders removes
that damping and allows much faster response. Like most things in life, that has both good and
bad consequences, but one of the consequences is the system becomes less stable.
As an example, it is possible to get as many workers as you want into the UK within a few days.
If you have a warehouse that needs staff they can be here from anywhere in the EU, all well educated,
speaking English, with accommodation and ready to work. I'm not saying its a good or a bad thing.
But its a thing that has consequences.
One organisation that has resisted Open Borders is the Corbyn clique in the Labour Party. Entry
into the employment opportunities within that sector of the economy appears to be only open to
relatives, children of political allies, school mates and children of celebrity chums.
BenK 12.21.16 at 1:50 pm '
Not allowed to vote' is political smokescreen. If those people have for some reason not established
voting in the country they currently live in, then yes, they haven't paid the price for liberty
there. If they can, then they are voting – just not where they would apparently prefer to be voting.
As for the productivity argument – as usual, political theorists underestimate the value of
extended family and long term inter-family arrangements in creating 'social capital' for productivity
and stability.
Mobility has its place, and in a time when most Americans never went more than
25 miles from their birthplace during their entire lives an increase in mobility increased
overall productivity. However, there are many reasons to believe that individual mobility is costing
communities dearly in these present times; and that bad government and market oriented policies
which are exacerbating the problem.
A surcharge might be a useful approach. I will say, echoing Reason, that massive waves of immigration
into a region change a lot of things, and not necessarily in ways that the natives would view
as positive.
I've lived in L.A. for the past 35 years, and during that time millions of immigrants
have come into this metropolitan area. Traffic problems, noticeable in L.A. when I arrived in
1981 but something that could be reasonably dealt with, got much, worse.
The public school system
went from fair to actively problematic. In both cases, the problem was made much worse by lagging
public investment, particularly in transportation systems.
Maybe L.A. was uniquely dysfuntional
politically, but I would suspect that most regions would see degradations in public goods in times
of massive in-migration. The significant investment required for massive population growth will,
in all likelihood, not be made, especially in a timely way, and the sort of planning that would
actually be necessary for a pleasant transition to a more populous future seems likely to be beyond
the capabilities of most cities, at least the ones I've lived in.
The inevitable resulting problems
will not endear the newcomers to the natives, even if those problems are solely the fault of the
immigrants.
William Meyer 12.21.16 at 2:48 pm
Sorry, my mistake, the last sentence should read "even if those problems are NOT solely the fault
of the immigrants.
#7
Reminds one of the old story of the Capitalist who berates the local for quitting fishing after
catching enough for today's dinner so he can lay about playing guitar and drinking beer on the
beach.
"You should fish from dawn to dusk 7 days a week. Sell your surplus. Buy another fishing boat. Do
this for 30 years."
"What for?",asks the local.
"So you can retire and lay about, play guitar and drink beer on the beach!"
Omega Centauri 12.21.16 at 5:10 pm
I think its a very difficult sale politically. But, you already know that.
There also is the issue of potentially large scale population flows from less "productive"
areas to
more "productive" areas.
We have this same issue within countries, such as rust belt to coastal
cities in the US, and we've seen political consequences -Trump_vs_deep_state become ascendant.
So in addition
to the problems of infrastructure and gentrification on the recieving end of these net flows,
we have issues in the regions that are being left-behind. Our current reactionary politics seems
to be one of the consequences of this difficult issue.
@divelly it is from Adam Smith, Theory of the Moral Sentiments, part 3, ch. 3 :
"What the favourite of the king of Epirus said to his master, may be applied to men in all
the ordinary situations of human life. When the King had recounted to him, in their proper order,
all the conquests which he proposed to make, and had come to the last of them; And what does your
Majesty propose to do then? said the Favourite.-I propose then, said the King, to enjoy myself
with my friends, and endeavour to be good company over a bottle.-And what hinders your Majesty
from doing so now? replied the Favourite."
Stephen 12.21.16 at 8:10 pm
Moral sentiments of less desirable people: I propose to enjoy myself by being revenged on and
utterly destroying my enemies, and to be good company over the finest available bottle with those
who dare not contradict me.
I think we should be extra skeptical of any paper that claims that the "economics of open borders"
hasn't received "much" attention. Maybe not as much as many other things, and there may be some
hedging about what, exactly, fits, but the economics of migration has received _lots_ of attention.
In The US, the National Academy of Science did a huge study on it in the mid 80's, and updated
it again just recently.
Jagdish Bhagwati has written quite a bit on it, both popular and formal.
George Borjas has written a lot on it (most of it not good, in my opinion, but a lot on it.) Lots
and lots of people, including some very famous economist, have responded to Borjas. Paul Krugman
has written on it. One of my mentors, Howard Chang, a lawyer-economist at Penn Law, has written
a lot on it. Etc. So, already we know that there is something a bit fishy here.
Next, this sort of thing typically assumes, for its strong conclusions, that everyone will
move to where he or she will get the "highest" return for his or her skills. We know this is false,
because it doesn't even happen within any particular country, where there are no restrictions,
no "surcharge" to pay, and fewer cultural barriers. So, the gain will certainly be much smaller
than is projected.
I'd also suggest that this bit from John, Moreover, in a world where more than a billion
people travel internationally each year, it's inevitable that vast numbers of people are going
to have close relationships of all kinds with citizens of other countries. Restrictions on movements
across borders impose costs on all those people ranging from minor to calamitous.
Would need to be _much_ more rigorous to do any work. I travel quite a bit, yet unless "close
relationships" means "people I know somewhat", this isn't true for me. Is it true for "vast" numbers
of people? I'm not sure. It's too flabby to do work now. And, do we have in mind visits, temporary
residence, permanent residence (with or without access to full membership?) Etc. There are really
a huge number of details here, and the absolutely must be worked through, carefully, before you
can say anything useful. I'm in favor of reducing most barriers to movement. But, the arguments,
if they are to be any good, really do need some care.
I'm puzzled by your last paragraph Matt, given what I know about your work. I don't know how large
a number has to be to be "vast", but the spouses separated from one another and the children separated
from one parent by the UK's spousal visa income requirements already number in the 10s of 1000s.
Add to that elderly dependent relatives who are separated from children, lone refugee children
separated from family members in other countries. And then multiply all this separation by the
number of countries that make things difficult for people. I think that probably adds up to a
vast number of people in close relationships with others who are separated by border regimes and
who are currently incurring costs that are often calamitous. Don't you?
Hi Chris – yes, the cases you mention are interesting and important ones. It goes a little way
towards making John's too flabby to work statement a bit better. But even in these cases, it's
important to work through what's wrong with the different examples. (This is what I try to do
in my work, and it's why I'm annoyed by what seems to me to be handwaving that blurs and distorts
more than it helps.) I would insist that "making this difficult" for people, or causing them to
"incur costs" isn't a good way to think about these issues at all. (I will go see my parents for
the first time in over a year next week. It will be difficult and I will incur may costs to do
so. Nothing interesting follows from that at all, I think.) And, John's categories include may
more than those you mention. What follows for them? Why are borders, and not other types of boundaries
relevant here? (Suppose my best friend is admitted to Harvard and I am not. But I'd like to study
with him! Is it unfair that I'm not allowed to? Why not?) There are answers here, but we'll not
get at them from the approach in the post, I think, and especially not if we follow the approach
in this paragraph. The issues need to be dug in to, even though that take time.
(I might note that I've just finished a semi-popular short piece on thinking about immigration
post-Trump and post-Brexit. I started it by thinking about some of your discussion of Joe Carens'
book from a few years ago, and tried to think about reasonable strategies for working towards
fairer immigration policies in our dark times. One thing I suggested was fighting against needlessly
mean (in both senses of the word) restrictions like the too-high social support requirements for
family members in the UK. So, I see that as a real problem. But, I don't think that helps rehabilitate
the claims made, or suggested, in this paragraph. If and when the piece comes out, I'll send it
to you.)
John Quiggin 12.22.16 at 3:22 am
Matt @24 It was an aside of course, but one that I didn't think needed a detailed exposition.
The calamitous cases Chris mentions are well known, as is the fact that lots of people suffer
no, or only trivial, problems of this kind. Rather than multipy such trivial examples as you do
in @26, why not explain why you think the calamitous cases are rare, or need to be explained in
detail?
Matts response is to glib. My own family was driven into poverty by separation in the 1980s and
the long term pressures on all of us of that experience were huge. Yes nothing follows from that
if you're a wealthy academic, but quite a lot follows from it if you're not.
Dave 12.22.16 at 10:05 am
I worry that "free movement of people" tends to have massive social costs that get swept under
the rug when the issues are discussed in a purely economic framework.
For most of human history,
the vast majority of people lived in extended family groups in villages, towns, or temporary encampments
where they knew their neighbors, had relatively small social worlds, and didn't travel more than
a few days from home. Cities, as we know them, (and their accompanying social maladies) are really
only two or three centuries old and post-industrial cities are an even newer phenomenon.
What people in the urban professional class tend to forget, however, is that the old model
of village life never went away . In truly rural or otherwise undeveloped areas, it's mostly
stayed the same, and other cases it was remapped onto urban neighborhoods or desperately clung
to in "small towns" that are, in fact, larger than most Medieval cities.
Now, these people have a problem, which is that they'd very much like to maintain a traditional
village lifestyle (well, some of them just want to escape or move to the city and get rich, but
I'll get to that), but neither industrial nor post-industrial capitalism has had any patience
for people who want to stay put. Industries and opportunities have concentrated in large urban
agglomerations, but exactly which industries and which cities shifts every generation or two.
Plants close down or move to other countries, higher education pulls millions of people far from
home, entire fields of employment vanish or emerge from whole cloth and it's impossible to keep
up. So, we as individuals can, at any time, be forced into a terrible dilemma. Either move away
from the life you know and the people who keep you happy, healthy, safe, and sane, or forfeit
your "optimal" career and some share of prosperity and human capital.
Depending on what class you are, the values you hold, and what the costs and benefits of moving
away really are, there may be no choice at all. Really, there are two kinds of migrants. There
are the desperate, who migrate for negative reasons, and the ambitious, who do it for positive
ones (with plenty of overlap) and only the latter is really making a choice as such. The outcomes
are different too. Refugees and economic migrants occasionally become rich and successful, but
usually they're just looking for security. Whereas people who move around a lot to get the best
education and the best jobs, are often massively rewarded, but too many such people creates a
culture of anomy and alienation where no one knows their neighbors and everyone seems to be from
somewhere else.
What's worse, the rootless urban professionals have money, which means they can buy or rent
homes anywhere, displacing the old residents. This has a double whammy effect, not only do the
neighborhoods get new people who don't quite fit in, but the old "villagers" get forced out (and
in many cases become rootless transplants in some other town), so communities enter a state of
perpetual social flux where there aren't enough old timers left to assimilate the new arrivals
and the social fabric disintegrates as natural communities are replaced by a massive web of voluntary
ones that often don't (especially if there's a class or language barrier) and leave some people
with no community at all.
I grew up in the Southern California suburbs in wake of the Sunbelt migrations and massive
immigration from Latin America and had the utterly peculiar experience of being one of only a
tiny fraction of the population whose grandparents (well, two of them) also grew up there. Growing
up, it seemed like most of my teachers (and really a huge chunk of the professional class in general)
were from either the East Coast or the Midwest and many of them had strange notions about what
it meant to be Californian, having moved here for the sunshine or the surfing or the jobs or the
"vibe" and more able to see the place as an ideal than a reality.
People don't realize the extent to which generations of migration can isolate people from the
land, but I saw it. People that luxuriantly watered their lawns despite the climate and planted
gardens full of plants from all over the world while treating the native plants like weeds. The
tragedy of people in brushfire country not even realizing that having wooden shingles is a bad
idea. People mocking the native California accents, affecting them badly to fit in, or refusing
to acknowledge that we had one at all (we have several). Or, take the baffling experience millions
of California kids get this time of year where adults around them act like our Christmas is somehow
"wrong" because there's no snow and we don't have a "real" winter.
There was and is wanton disregard for tradition or the environment. The old growth oaks that
once covered much of SoCal were cut down for wood and cattle land and now most people have no
idea they were ever there, huge tracts of "empty" desert were flooded with saltwater when the
Salton Sea was created, the LA river was turned into a storm drain, massive population increases
and utterly unrestricted suburban sprawl has destroyed most of our wetlands and turned the Coastal
Sage Scrub into one of the most threatened ecosystems on Earth. All that and CalTrans still plants
invasive, flammable Eucalyptus by every freeway. These were largely the work of generations of
short sighted, greedy migrants who didn't understand or value the land, but will be borne by generations
to come. Our land is being paved, poisoned, and pumped dry and most people don't even see it because
there aren't enough people around who still remember when it was any different.
If open borders means that places all over the world start getting flooded with migrants and
disrespected and debased the way Southern California has been, then I have no choice but to oppose
it.
A small point: – instead of adding additional taxes, one way to get the same net effect is to
have a basic income with a long residency requirement for non-citizens.
John – there is a lot of space between "not rare" and "vast", isn't there? That space needs to
be looked at carefully, and not used as a hand-wave. That's my point.
Faustunotes – I'm sorry to hear that. In published work, I've argued for strong rights for
family migration schemes. Without knowing more about your situation (not that I'm asking for details
now) I can't say more about, but, for example, the sorts of public support systems I've argued
for (and that exist in many countries) can be easily met by lots of people – the US requires 125%
of the poverty level for a family of the appropriate size, for example. That is arguably a top
acceptable level.
That meant that I was able to sponsor my wife when I was a grad student making
$15,000 a year (in 2003), not at all a "wealthy academic". So, again, it's important to get the
details right, to criticize particular cases, and not draw strong conclusions from hand-waving
generalizations. Failing to do this won't lead to any good work.
Matt, I think your quibbling with John on "vast numbers" is pretty silly here. You are an American,
and the US is a continental power with a large population. Perhaps it is rare for Americans to
have close relationships (let's set the bar at good friendships) with people outside the borders
of their country. But many of us live in smaller countries and on continents with lots of borders.
I think you'll find that when you tot up all the Europeans and Latin Americans with cross border
relationships (to name but two continents) and add in all the people who belong to ethnicities
that stretch across many borders, you'll get to a pretty high number.
Think of the million Poles
in the UK, for example, they will predictably have "close relationships" with people in Poland,
and will British retirees in Spain with people in the UK, and Irish people in the UK with people
living in Ireland .
Alesis 12.22.16 at 8:55 pm
The ever present struggle with taking the empirical body of knowledge on gains from migration
and making it into policy is that the only salient objections to migration are decidedly non economic.
Sure they pretend at an economic basis with admirable dedication to the act but the bottom line
is even if you prove that net wages for every single individual would go up from migration it
would till have exactly the same opponents you started with.
At this point I really, really have to emphasize the plug for John Smith's Imperialism
in the Twenty-First Century because he addresses this kind of neoclassical boosterism more
or less directly, from a leftist point of view.
If he was reacting to this post Smith would zero
in on the key premise underlying Kennan's model: the idea that global wage differentials inherently
reflect global differences in the productivity of labor between nation-states, known as the Balassa-Samuelson
hypothesis. Kennan seems to handwave away the idea of actually defending it by deferring to "large
bodies of evidence", evidence whose interpretation within a more-or-less standard neoclassical
framework he takes as a given - although notice how he hedges his initial claims more carefully
("cross-country differences in income levels are associated with differences in productivity",
and "large differences [in productivity] remain after adjusting for differences in physical
and human capital endowments ", emphasis mine) before moving on to construct a model where
"relative wages are used below to measure cross-country differences in labor efficiency", plain
and simple. Nice trick!
In any case, here's Smith:
The North-South purchasing power anomaly is sometimes called the Penn effect, after the
Penn World Table, which has gathered comparative price data from most countries in the world
since 1950. This effect is inversely correlated with per-capita GDP; as Figure 5.2 (page 143)
clearly shows, the poorer the nation, the bigger the gap. Mainstream neoclassical economics
advances two chief explanations for this anomaly, the Balassa-Samuelson hypothesis, which hinges
on differences in labor productivity between rich and poor countries; and an alternative model,
proposed by Jagdish Bhagwati, Irving Kravis, Richard Lipsey, and others, which claims to circumvent
differences in labor productivity and accounts for the anomaly as the consequence of differences
in "factor endowments," that is, the relative abundance of capital and labor in the two countries.
Since their arguments are tautological, they arrive at the same conclusion. In the former approach,
the relative productivity of labor and capital determines the demand for these two factors
and, in conjunction with their supply, determines their equilibrium (market-clearing) prices.
In the second approach, different factor endowments affect the supply and demand in markets
for labor and capital, determining marginal productivities, so arriving at the other's starting
point.
According to both approaches, the purchasing power anomaly arises because of the low wages
of workers providing services (for example, a bus journey or a haircut), resulting in the prices
of these services being typically much lower in, say, Bangladesh than in Belgium. But equilibrium
exchange rates do equalize the prices of internationally tradable goods-in other words, they
assume that strong PPP holds in the tradable goods sector. Service sector wages are low in
Bangladesh because wage levels in the service sector are determined by wage levels in the tradable
goods sector. This occurs because labor is intersectorally mobile but not internationally mobile;
in other words, workers can freely move between the tradable and non-tradable sectors within
nations, equalizing wages between them, but cannot freely move across the borders between nations,
especially those between hard-currency and soft-currency nations. it therefore turns out that
the suppression of the free international movement of labor, the great exception to the principle
of globalization and whose cardinal importance is stressed in this book, is also at the heart
of the purchasing power anomaly.
In sum, the Balassa-Samuelson hypothesis says that the purchasing power anomaly results
from the lack of correspondence between the similar levels of productivity of service workers
in Belgium and Bangladesh and the vast differences in their wages. The contrary argument advanced
here is that it is the oversupply of labor, not its productivity, that is the prime determinant
of Southern wage levels. wages of service providers and incomes of petty entrepreneurs are
kept low not by the paltry productivity of workers in the tradable goods sector, as mainstream
theory has it, but by the destitution of a large part of the working population. This is why
a haircut or a bus journey in Dhaka is so much cheaper than in Amsterdam, even though a pair
of scissors or a bus may cost the same in both countries, and may even have come off the same
production line. Furthermore, local capitalists are not the prime beneficiaries of the super-profits
generated by this expanded employment of low-wage labor. Instead, intense competition among
Southern exporters leaves them with only a minor share of the proceeds, the rest passed on
to their Northern customers through ever-lower export prices. The purchasing power anomaly
results not only or mainly from conditions in goods and Forex markets but is fundamentally
the product of conditions in labor markets and in the sphere of production where this labor
is put to work. The enormous growth in the relative surplus population combines with suppression
of international labor mobility to exert a tremendous downward pressure on all wages and on
the incomes of small producers, maintaining or widening still further the distance between
real wages in the imperialist nations and in the Global South.
In Smith's telling the suppression of international labor mobility is actually central
to explaining not just global wage differentials perceived to result from differences in productivity,
but also the data by which labor productivity between countries is measured in the first place.
The neoclassicals' trick here is to take the international division of labor that emerges from
what Smith calls "global labor arbitrage" (e.g. outsourcing) and remove it from their conceptual
category of production altogether, instead regarding it through the lens of international
trade as if workers on a factory floor were constantly "trading" their partially-assembled
products to others further down the assembly line. Here's Smith again:
Statistics on labor productivity, obtained by dividing the value added of a firm, industrial
sector, or nation by its total workforce, are highly deceptive. Much of the alleged increase
in labor productivity in the imperialist nations is an artifact resulting from the outsourcing
of low value-added, labor-intensive production processes to low-wage countries. As Susan Houseman
has argued, "when manufacturers outsource or offshore work, labor productivity increases directly
because the outsourced or offshored labor used to produce the product is no longer employed
in the manufacturing sector and hence is not counted in the denominator of the labor productivity
equation." This is extremely important, because "the rate of productivity growth in U.S. manufacturing
increased in the mid-1990s, greatly outpacing that in the services sector and accounting for
most of the overall productivity growth in the U.S. economy." Thus she argues, "To the extent
that offshoring is an important source of measured productivity growth in the economy, productivity
statistics will, in part, be capturing cost savings or gains to trade but not improvements
in the output of American labor." Houseman believes this solves "one of the great puzzles of
the American economy in recent years the fact that large productivity gains have not broadly
benefited workers in the form of higher wages. Productivity improvements that result from
offshoring may largely measure cost savings, not improvements to output per hour worked by
American labor."
Thus, when a firm outsources labor-intensive production processes, the productivity of the
workers who remain in its employment rises, even though nothing about their specific labor
has changed. Outsourcing therefore has what might be called a "ventriloquist effect" on measures
of productivity. But this only scratches the surface of the productivity paradox. Labor-intensive
production processes are practically synonymous with low value-added production processes,
yet the more labor-intensive it is, that is, the larger living labor is relative to dead labor,
the greater is its contribution to value and surplus value-but much of this is captured by
capital-intensive capitals, showing up as a much higher value added per worker.
John Quiggin 12.22.16 at 11:17 pm
@Dave You are arguing against internal freedom of movement. Do you support systems of internal
passports, as in the Soviet Union or the hukou system in China?
John Quiggin 12.23.16 at 3:14 am
WLGR: I'll look for this book. But on an initial reading of your first quotation, it seems to
me that Smith is just restating the factor endowment model. What does "surplus labor" mean, if
not a high ratio of labor to capital? Does he spell out the distinction somewhere else?
ZM 12.23.16 at 3:26 am
John Quiggin,
China has a very large population, hukou is problematic and has some undesirable impacts, but
China needs to get all the provinces and cities more equal before they can change the hukou system.
At the moment the inequality between provinces and cities in China is very very great compared
to inequality between States and cities in Australia.
Although inequality has decreased as more people have been lifted out of poverty in the last 10-20
years.
Dave 12.23.16 at 6:06 am
@ John Quiggin 34
That's a very good question and it does show why one should always consider the full ramifications
of ones' arguments. I would say that policies against internal migration are not limited to Communist
dictatorships - that's what serfdom was, after all. I'm enough of a liberal to find that sort
of thing oppressive, but I do think it had a certain social utility (of course, letting people
move and travel has advantages too).
It's not exactly freedom of movement I'm arguing against so much as the notion that population
centers have an essentially unlimited ability to absorb newcomers. From 18th Century Manchester
to the American West to exploding Chinese industrial cities today, boom towns are notorious for
their environmental devastation and social dysfunction.
Even in a modern era where resource extraction and heavy industry are less dominant economic
drivers than they once were, the combination of free movement of capital and free movement of
labor is a consistent recipe for explosive, unplanned, and unsustainable growth in whatever areas
are deemed economically valuable. The boom bust cycle of capitalism maps onto the landscape itself
and the effects for both the natives and the newcomers can be devastating.
What I would argue though is that free movement of people is a problem only insofar as there
is free movement of capital. You won't have millions of people flood a region if that region hasn't
already been flooded with millions of jobs. This would require a new international regulatory
framework to put the brakes on massive industrial and commercial development and a rejection of
the current extreme growth bias in economic thought. In effect, I think that it should be businesses
that have to apply for those permits or internal passports, rather than individuals.
Many municipalities already do this through the use of building permits, but their efforts
are compromised by an imperative to expand their tax base and competition between municipalities
that gravely limits their effective bargaining power. In a free trade, open borders world, I can
see the same thing happening at the national scale, forcing whole countries to compete with one
another for jobs and labor and hastening the rate of neo-colonial resource plundering.
My worst case scenario is something like this. Lets say a fairly small - but not necessarily
tiny - country like Uruguay adopts global open borders. A little while later, they make the shocking
discovery that they're sitting on some of the largest reserves of, oh let's say, rare earth metals
in the world.
Now, these metals are incredibly valuable so getting the capital to open mines and ore processing
centers isn't a problem, the bigger issue is that Uruguay only has 3.4 million people, most of
whom already have jobs, so the tens of thousands of employees needed to build the new mining industry
will mostly be coming from elsewhere (or the mining companies will start by hiring Uruguayanos,
but then they'll need migrants to fill the jobs the natives vacated). It doesn't stop there though,
because the great new mining industry will produce secondary industries such as cell phone manufacturing,
service jobs for the growing population, construction jobs to expand the national infrastructure,
and on and on and on. These jobs bring in new migrants, who help grow the economy, and attract
new migrants in a feedback loop that only ends when the bubble bursts or wages collapse.
How big
does Uruguay get before the boom goes bust? Does it double in size? Triple? Does Montevideo become
one of the biggest cities in South America, with sprawling, polluted, slums to match? What happens
to the reasonably stable, reasonably prosperous, reasonably progressive little country that was
there before? Would Uruguay still be Uruguay at that point?
Poor former farmers that move to big cities typically wont drive cars, wont handle big industrial
manichery and will only heat /cool tiny living spaces. So they are probably not a significant
factor for the environmental issues in say big Chinese cities.
"Cities as we know them (and their accompanying social maladies) are really only two
or three centuries old".
No. Ancient Rome had a population of 750,000-1,000,000, based almost
entirely on migrants, and more than large enough to create any number of social maladies; at least
five other cities in Mediterranean with populations in the hundreds of thousands; series of cities
in China with populations similar to Rome.
Evidence suggests significant levels of mobility, not
just for elite. I don't think this necessarily has any bearing on the modern situation (capitalism,
technology, yadda yadda), but certainly the historical evidence doesn't support your implied "large-scale
migration is unnatural" thesis.
What a daft question. When did the 'model' Uruguay exist, the one that we are supposed to preserve
for all eternity? Now? Before the Uruguayan nation-state was formed? Before Columbus?
The irony is that the effort needed to prevent change would in all likelihood just lead to
other changes of a more dysfunctional nature.
engels 12.23.16 at 12:21 pm
OT and possibly an ignorant question but does anyone know of any meaningful national or cultural
difference between Uruguay and Argentina?
Factor endowments equals they have poor people for cheap labor and we have rich people who create,
consume and finance and the origins of the difference is like shrouded in mystery?
John Smith of WLGR is Marxian. Apples profits are generated by the workers at Foxconn in China,
not the designers in San Jose. The surplus accruing to intellectual property is mostly a product
of past and present Imperialism.
Chris – maybe it's silly, but, if my work on immigration has tried to show anything at all, it's
that to make a contribution on the subject, it's important to get the facts right, not make assumptions
about movement we know are not true (people will move to where they get the best return on their
skills, etc.), not assume away other difficulties, and not blur cases together through hand-waiving
("vast numbers", "relationships", etc.) All of that's done here, and even more so in the paper
under discussion. I find it really annoying. Maybe I shouldn't let it bother me, but it seems
to me to be typical "assume a can-opener" level of discussion, at the very best, and not helpful.
By the way, at least according to Wikipedia, there are 830,000 Poles in the UK_ so well south
of a million still. It's a lot, but, lots less than, say, the 2.9 million Russian-born people
in the US, a population I'm very familiar with, so I don't really need the lecture here.
You're right, of course. I recognize now that my argument was a bit fuzzy and verges into begging
the question ("Modern cities, as I've chosen to define them, only existed under capitalism,
therefore
urban dysfunction is all capitalism's fault, QED, etc."). "Bigger than Cleveland" is not a universal
definition of what a city is and I shouldn't have treated it as one.
I'm not trying to say massive migration was unnatural though. I'm of the opinion that anything
humans do is natural, if that helps. Nor do I think migration, even of the large-scale variety
is wrong , but rather that it can be immensely harmful if there are no systems in place
to mitigate its social and environmental effects. So discussing policy that would tear down all
political barriers to migration as if it were mainly an issue of wages and productivity struck
me as reductive. Even on purely economic terms, the way migration contributes to urban sprawl
outpacing infrastructure is a huge issue that I frequently see overlooked.
@Igor 41:
I'm not arguing against change, but rather change that comes so quickly it creates a schism between
the past and the present. The Gold Rush changed California from predominantly Spanish-speaking
to majority Anglo in just a few years (and also killed tens of thousands of Indians in the process),
so even if a place still has the same name following migration, it might not be pronounced the
same way.
engels 12.23.16 at 3:32 pm
Also would be interesting to see numbers on marriages to foreign nationals by country-a quick
google didn't turn it up.
@engels – pretty sure that this is because the stats don't exist for many countries. The British
government simply has no idea how many of its nationals are married to EU nationals (at least
for England and Wales, there may be some record-keeping in Scotland).
@47. The UK has no idea how many EU citizens are here full stop. Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia.
The 2001 UK Census recorded 36,555 Portuguese-born people resident in the UK. More recent
estimates by the Office for National Statistics put the figure at 107,000 in 2013. The 2011 Census
recorded 88,161 Portuguese-born residents in England and Wales. The censuses of Scotland and Northern
Ireland recorded 1,908 and 1,996 Portuguese-born residents respectively. Other sources estimate
the Portuguese community to be larger, with the editor of a Portuguese-language newspaper putting
the number of Portuguese passport holders in London alone at 350,000. According to academics José
Carlos Pina Almeida and David Corkill, writing in 2010, estimates of the Portuguese population
of the UK range from 80,000 to 700,000.
I mention it because informal information from someone at the embassy puts the number closer
to 1 million. Many of them well have been born here. But nevertheless the point is that the estimates
are all over the place.
Again, its not necessarily a good or a bad thing, but as a scientist with a bit of a measurement
fixation I find the fact that no-one has any idea to be quite disturbing.
engels 12.23.16 at 8:31 pm
E.g. on US vs Europe:
"4.6% of Americans were married to a foreigner in 2010, up from 2.4% in 1970"
"in France the proportion of international marriage rose from about 10% in 1996 to 16% in 2009.
In Germany, the rise is a little lower, from 11.3% in 1990 to 13.7% in 2010.
Some smaller countries
have much higher levels. Nearly half the marriages in Switzerland are international ones, up from
a third in 1990.
Around one in five marriages in Sweden, Belgium and Austria involves a foreign
partner"
"... Democratic party under Bill Clinton became yet another neoliberal party (soft neoliberals) and betrayed both organized labour and middle class in favour of financial oligarchy. ..."
"... The cynical calculation was that "they have nowhere to go" and will vote for Democrats anyway. And that was true up to and including election of "change we can believe in" guy. After this attempt of yet another Clinton-style "bait and switch" trick failed. ..."
"... Now it is clear that far right picked up large part of those votes. So in a way Bill Clinton is the godfather of the US far right renaissances. The same is true for Hillary: her "kick the can down the road" stance made victory of Trump possible (although it surprised me; I expected that neoliberals were still strong enough to push their candidate down the US people throat) ..."
"... Under "democrat" Obama the USA pursued imperial policy of creating global neoliberal empire. The foreign policy remained essentially unchanged. Neocons were partially replaced with "liberal interventionists" which is the same staff in a different bottle. This policy costs the US tremendous amount of money and it is probable that the US is going the way British empire went -- overextending itself. ..."
"... Regional currency blocks are now a reality and arrangements bypass the usage of US dollar if international trade are common. They are now in place between several large countries such as Russia and China and absolutely nothing can reverse this trend. So dollar became virtualized -- a kind of "conversion gauge" but without profits for real conversion national currency to dollars for major TBTF banks. ..."
This Washington Post article on Poland - where a right-wing, anti-intellectual, nativist party
now rules, and has garnered a lot of public support - is chilling for those of us who worry that
Trump_vs_deep_state may really be the end of the road for US democracy. The supporters of Law and Justice
clearly looked a lot like Trump's white working class enthusiasts; so are we headed down the same
path?
(In Poland, a window on what happens when
populists come to power http://wpo.st/aHJO2
Washington Post - Anthony Faiola - December 18)
Well, there's an important difference - a bit of American exceptionalism, if you like. Europe's
populist parties are actually populist; they pursue policies that really do help workers, as long
as those workers are the right color and ethnicity. As someone put it, they're selling a herrenvolk
welfare state. Law and Justice has raised minimum wages and reduced the retirement age; France's
National Front advocates the same things.
Trump, however, is different. He said lots of things on the campaign trail, but his personnel
choices indicate that in practice he's going to be a standard hard-line economic-right Republican.
His Congressional allies are revving up to dismantle Obamacare, privatize Medicare, and raise
the retirement age. His pick for Labor Secretary is a fast-food tycoon
who loathes minimum wage hikes. And his pick for top economic advisor is the king of trickle-down.
So in what sense is Trump a populist? Basically, he plays one on TV - he claims to stand for
the common man, disparages elites, trashes political correctness; but it's all for show. When
it comes to substance, he's pro-elite all the way.
It's infuriating and dismaying that he managed to get away with this in the election. But that
was all big talk. What happens when reality begins to hit? Repealing Obamacare will inflict huge
harm on precisely the people who were most enthusiastic Trump supporters - people who somehow
believed that their benefits would be left intact. What happens when they realize their mistake?
I wish I were confident in a coming moment of truth. I'm not. Given history, what we can count
on is a massive effort to spin the coming working-class devastation as somehow being the fault
of liberals, and for all I know it might work. (Think of how Britain's Tories managed to shift
blame for austerity onto Labour's mythical fiscal irresponsibility.) But there is certainly an
opportunity for Democrats coming.
And the indicated political strategy is clear: make Trump and company own all the hardship
they're about to inflict. No cooperation in devising an Obamacare replacement; no votes for Medicare
privatization and increasing the retirement age. No bipartisan cover for the end of the TV illusion
and the coming of plain old, ugly reality.
Democratic party under Bill Clinton became yet another neoliberal party (soft neoliberals)
and betrayed both organized labour and middle class in favour of financial oligarchy.
The cynical calculation was that "they have nowhere to go" and will vote for Democrats
anyway. And that was true up to and including election of "change we can believe in" guy. After
this attempt of yet another Clinton-style "bait and switch" trick failed.
Now it is clear that far right picked up large part of those votes. So in a way Bill Clinton
is the godfather of the US far right renaissances. The same is true for Hillary: her "kick the
can down the road" stance made victory of Trump possible (although it surprised me; I expected
that neoliberals were still strong enough to push their candidate down the US people throat)
Point 2:
Under "democrat" Obama the USA pursued imperial policy of creating global neoliberal empire.
The foreign policy remained essentially unchanged. Neocons were partially replaced with "liberal
interventionists" which is the same staff in a different bottle. This policy costs the US tremendous
amount of money and it is probable that the US is going the way British empire went -- overextending
itself.
Regional currency blocks are now a reality and arrangements bypass the usage of US dollar
if international trade are common. They are now in place between several large countries such
as Russia and China and absolutely nothing can reverse this trend. So dollar became virtualized
-- a kind of "conversion gauge" but without profits for real conversion national currency to dollars
for major TBTF banks.
So if we think about Iraq war as the way to prevent to use euro as alternative to dollar in
oil sales that goal was not achieved and all blood and treasure were wasted.
In this sense it would be difficult to Trump to continue with "bastard neoliberalism" both
in foreign policy and domestically and betray his election promises because they reflected real
problems facing the USA and are the cornerstone of his political support.
Also in this case neocons establishment will simply get rid of him one way or the other. I
hope that he understand this danger and will avoid trimming Social Security.
Returning to Democratic Party betrayal of interests of labour, Krugman hissy fit signifies
that he does not understand the current political situation. Neoliberal wing of Democratic Party
is now bankrupt both morally and politically. Trump election was the last nail into Bill Clinton
political legacy coffin.
Now we returned to essentially the same political process that took place after the Great Depression,
with much weaker political leaders, this time. So this is the time for stronger, more interventionist
in internal policy state and the suppression of financial oligarchy. If Trump does not understand
this he is probably doomed and will not last long.
That's why I think Trump inspired far right renaissance will continue and the political role
of military might dramatically increase. And politically Trump is the hostage of this renaissance.
Flint appointment in this sense is just the first swallow of increased role of military leaders
in government.
There certainly are experts in the field who should know
about the alleged hacking, but they are not allowed to disrupt mainstream media's Russophobe
frenzy. Bet you never saw William Binney on mainstream media. Who is Binney? He is the guy who
put together the NSA's elaborate worldwide surveillance system. He has publicly stated on
alternative news sites, that if something was "hacked", the NSA would instantly know who, when,
and whether the info was passed on to another party. He designed the system. He argues, there was
no hacking for that very reason. Binney insists the e-mails had to have been leaked by an
"insider" who had access to the data. Never heard him on mainstream media huh? Next comes Craig
Murray a former US Ambassador who claims he knows who leaked the e-mails, because he met with the
individual in Washington D.C. Never heard him on mainstream media either huh? Finally, Julian
Assange, the man who released the e-mails. He insisted all along he never got the e-mails from
Russia. Another no show on mainstream media. Whatever happened to the journalistic adage of going
to the source? Assange is the source, but no mainstream media journalist, and I use the term very
loosely, has ventured to speak with him. The accusation has been repeated countless times,
without any evidence, or consulting with any of the above three experts.
Because the big lie has been repeated so many times by
corporate media, about half of the US public, according to a recent poll, believes Russia
interfered, even though there is not a bit of evidence to support it. Once again they take the
bait; hook, line, and sinker.
For believers of Russian hacking, I offer the following analogy. It might, but I doubt it will
help, because you cannot undo the effect of propaganda. You are put on trial for murder that you
did not commit. The prosecutor and judge simply say they have reached a "consensus view", the
phrase offered by intelligence agencies, that you committed the murder and are guilty. You ask
for proof. They offer none. They just keep repeating that you did it. You challenge and ask how
do you know I did it? Answer: we have anonymous sources, but we cannot tell you who they are, nor
can we show you proof.
Just as in the fake run-up to the Iraq war, the expert voices of the opposition are not tolerated
on mainstream media. Do these folks really want a war with Russia? Are they so upset with Trump's
pronouncement that he wanted better relations with Russia? What sane person would not? Hmmm.
It appears there is a war already raging between the Russophobes, who do not want better
relations with Russia, and are doing their best to smear and demonize Putin, and those who do.
This is the same tactic used with Manuel Noriega of Panama, Muarmar Gaddafi, and Saddam Hussein,
before they made war on all three. Demonize, then make war.
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Shame on those who buy into propaganda
without any proof.
The oddity of the above author's first paragraph is that the
CIA was not lying in 2001-03. The CIA said Iraq/Saddam had no
wmds.
In fact, if you lived through it then perhaps you recall the
words cherry-picking and stove-piped intel. Now, I understand
he's CIA so there's no reason to believe them, but ask Larry
Johnson (I know, great name for CIA).
Actually he didn't mention the CIA in the first paragraph.
However in late 2002 CIA director George Tenet and United
States Secretary of State Colin Powell both cited attempts
by Hussein to obtain uranium from Niger in their September
testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
using intelligence Italy, Britain, and France.
Days before the Iraq invasion, the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) voiced serious doubt on the
authenticity of the documents to the UN Security Council,
judging them counterfeit but the CIA while having
suspicions, largely kept them to themselves.
The author of the above article, Joe Clifford is referring
to what CIA Chief George Tenet who represented US
intelligence, said: it was "Slam Dunk" Iraq had WMD. Tenet
was quoted over and over again by Bush-Dick regime to
justify US war against Iraq. After Tenet said those words,
CIA neither contradicted him nor corrected him which meant
that they went along with the "Slam Dunk" Iraq had WMD.
Tenet, representing US intelligence, even sat quietly
behind Powell at the UNSC when Powell was spewing his lies
about Iraq's nonexistent WMD.
Not only to officials repeat false assertions over and over,
but those who hear the falsities, themselves start repeating
them. The more outrageous, the more they are repeated.
You forgot former Yugoslavia.There they "sharpened "their
tools.They "demonized" that country,demonized their
President,trained and financed those local soldiers and then
destroyed that country while "peace making".Filthy
BASTARDS.And you people call USA a decent country?They lied
when they created that country and still their mouths and
deeds are full of lies,murder and plunder.And their Churches
are cheer leaders in that endeavour yet they will proclaim
even this Christmas "Peace to the world" while they will plot
more of the same.They preach one thing but their actions are
totally opposite.They leave wrecked countries behind them and
those people end up feeding from containers.I hope that they
choke on that stolen turkey.
The counter tactic for the "big lie" is the "big truth."
Ordinary people have access to e-mail, social media and
website comments. No secret organization is needed. Just make
counter-bullturdism part of your personal routine.
This takes time. Most people invest little thought into
the news they digest. Quite often, news (or "news") is not
even digested at all, just internalised. They know this.
The CIA, th eDNC, all of them. They rely on public apathy
to survive.
This the the lie the liberals love just like Iraq's wmd was
the lie so dear to the conservatives. It's sickening the way
these partisan idiots are so easily manipulated.
It doesn't matter who hacked the emails one bit! That right
there is the point the powers that be want us to argue about
endlessly, because it draws attention away from what actually
matters: What matters is that the emails revealed the truth
about the democratic party, and that they rigged their
primaries. What matters is that the press did not reveal this
and since the reveal, they have been trying to distract
people from the truth. It is the press and the Democratic
party that were influencing the 2016 election by lying and
cheating, not the Russians or whoever hacked the email.
The e-mails were not hacked: they were leaked. Every time
anyone refers to the "hacked" e-mails, it raises the
question "Who dunnit ?" This is a wild goose chase. The
e-mails were leaked by a disgusted insider.
The contents of the leaks/hacks were almost never claimed to
be false. Even the very faint cries of "the e-mails were
doctored" eventually died out. Nobody has stepped in to claim
that the information was false since. This means that all
Wikileaks revealed was true. Whoever was responsible for
providing this information has done a very valuable public
service. Yes, even if it (somehow) was the Russians. To deny
that the leak/hack was beneficial to the public is insane.
Not that we didn't know beforehand that the CIA are quite
crazy, but still. I would at least have expected them to
welcome this 4th detente. I mean, they have thus far shown
that their intelligence gathering efforts in Russia are
laughably bad. Do they not want some respite form the
humiliation? It would at least be good PR.
During the third and last presidential debate between Republican Donald Trump and
Democrat Hillary Clinton, debate moderator Chris Wallace
pulled a quote from a speech
Clinton had given to Brazilian bankers, noting the
information had been made available to the public via WikiLeaks.
Instead of
answering the question, Clinton blamed the Russian government for the leaks
,
alleging "
[t]he Russian government has engaged in espionage against Americans
,"
hacking "
American websites, American accounts of private people, of institutions
in an effort, as 17 of our intelligence agencies have confirmed, to influence our
election
."
Following the claim,
Clinton criticized Trump for
saying
"
[Clinton] has no idea whether it's Russia, China, or anybody else
,"
repeating her assertion that 17 U.S. intelligence agencies had determined the Russian
government had been behind the Democratic National Committee (DNC) hack.
Despite her claim, reality couldn't be more different.
Instead of 17 agencies, only the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI)
and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have
offered the public
any input on this matter, claiming the DNC attacks "
are
consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts
."
Without offering any evidence, these two - not 17 - agencies hinted that the
Kremlin
could
be behind the cyber attack.
But saying they
believe
the hacks come from the Russians is far short of saying they
know
the Russians
were behind them.
During an
interview on Aaron Klein's Sunday radio program
, former high-ranking NSA
intelligence official-turned-whistleblower,
William Binney
, discussed the alleged Russian involvement in our elections,
suggesting the cyber attack against the DNC may not have originated from the Russian
government. Instead, Binney says, a
"
disgruntled U.S. intelligence worker
"
is likely behind the breach.
According to Binney, what Mueller meant is that
the FBI has access to the NSA
database and that it's accessed without any oversight, meaning the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA), as well as the FBI, have open access to anything the NSA has access to. "
So
if the FBI really wanted [Clinton's and the DNC emails] they can go into that database
and get them right now
," Binney
told
Klein.
Asked
if he believed the NSA had copies of all Clinton's emails,
"
including
the deleted correspondence
,"
Binney said:
"
Yes. That would be my point. They have them all and the FBI can get
them right there
."
While Binney seems to be the only intelligence insider who has come forward with this
type of analysis, a young man from Russia whose servers were implicated in the recent
hacking of the DNC sites says he has information that will lead to the hacker - yet the
FBI won't knock on his door.
In a conversation with the
New York Times
, Vladimir M. Fomenko said his server rental company, King
Servers, is oftentimes used by hackers. Fomenko added that the hackers behind the attack
against computerized election systems in Arizona and Illinois - which, like the DNC
hack, were
also linked to the Russian government by the FBI
- had used his servers.
According to the 26-year-old entrepreneur,
"[w]e have the information.
If the F.B.I. asks, we are ready to supply the I.P. addresses, the logs, but nobody
contacted us."
"
It's like nobody wants to sort this out,
"
he
added
.
After learning that two renters using the nicknames Robin Good and Dick Robin had
used his servers to hack the Arizona and Illinois voting systems, Fomenko
released a statement
saying he learned about the problem through the news and shut
down the two users down shortly after.
While he
told the
New York Times
he doesn't know who the hackers are, he used his
statement to report that the hackers are not Russian security agents.
"
The analysis of the internal data allows King Servers to confidently
refute any conclusions about the involvement of the Russian special services in this
attack
,"
he
said
on September 15, the
New York Times
reported.
According to Fomenko, he found a trail left by the hackers through their contact with
King Servers' billing page, which leads to the next step in the chain
"
to
bring investigators in the United States closer to the hackers
."
The clients used about 60 I.P. addresses to contact Fomenko, including addresses
belonging to server companies in Finland, France, Italy, Norway, Britain, and Sweden.
With these addresses in hand, authorities could track the hackers down.
But while this information is somewhat recent, few news organizations found it
necessary to report on the King Servers link. In the past, however, at least one major
news network mentioned Binney.
In August 2016, Judge Andrew Napolitano
commented
on
the DNC hack.
On "Judge Napolitano Chambers," the Judge said that while the DNC, government
officials, and the Clinton campaign all accuse the Russians of hacking into the DNC
servers,
"
the Russians had nothing to do with it.
"
"A group of retired senior intelligence officials, including the NSA whistleblower
William Binney (former Technical Director, World Geopolitical & Military Analysis,
NSA), have posted an open letter on consortiumnews.com that destroys the Obama
administration's "Russian hacking" narrative.
Within the letter, Binney argues that, thanks to the NSA's "extensive domestic
data-collection network," any data removed remotely from Hillary Clinton or DNC
servers would have passed over fiber networks and therefore would have been captured
by the NSA who could have then analyzed packet data to determine the origination
point and destination address of those packets. As Binney further notes, the only way
the leaks could have avoided NSA detection is if they were never passed over fiber
networks but rather downloaded to a thumb drive by someone with internal access to
servers."
"... Only John F. Kennedy directly challenged it, firing CIA Director Allen Dulles after the Bay of Pigs disaster. He was assassinated, and whether or not CIA involvement is ever conclusively proven, the allegations have been useful to the agency, keeping politicians in line. The Deep State also co-opted the media, keeping it in line with a combination of fear and favor. ..."
"... Why has the US been involved in long, costly, bloody, and inconclusive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? ..."
"... Why should the US get involved in similar conflicts in Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Iran, and other Middle Eastern and Northern African hotspots? ..."
"... Isn't such involvement responsible for blowback terrorism and refugee flows in both Europe and the US? ..."
"... Have "free trade" agreements and porous borders been a net benefit or detriment to the US? Why is the banking industry set up for periodic crises that inevitably require government bail-outs? ..."
"... How has encouraging debt and speculation at the expense of savings and investment helped the US economy? ..."
"... The shenanigans in the US after Trump's election-violent protests, hysterical outbursts, the vote recount effort, the proof-free Russian hacking allegations, "fake news," and the attempt to sway electoral college electors-are the desperate screams of those trapped inside. ..."
"... Regrettably, the building analogy is imperfect, because it implies that those inside are helpless and that the collapse will only harm them. In its desperation, incompetence, and corrupt nihilism, the Deep State can wreak all sorts of havoc, up to and including the destruction of humanity. Trump represents an opportunity to strike a blow against the Deep State, but the chances it will be lethal are minimal and the dangers obvious. ..."
The pathetic attempts to undo Donald Trump's victory are signs of desperation, not strength, in
the Deep State.
The post World War II consensus held that the USSR's long-term goal was world domination. That
assessment solidified after the Soviets detonated an atomic bomb in 1949. A nuclear arms race, a
space race, maintenance of a globe-spanning military, political, and economic confederation, and
a huge expansion of the size and power of the military and intelligence complex were justified by
the Soviet, and later, the Red Chinese threats. Countering those threats led the US to use many of
the same amoral tactics that it deplored when used by its enemies: espionage, subversion, bribery,
repression, assassination, regime change, and direct and proxy warfare.
Scorning principles of limited government, non-intervention in other nations' affairs, and individual
rights, the Deep State embraced the anti-freedom mindset of its purported enemies, not just towards
those enemies, but toward allies and the American people. The Deep State gradually assumed control
of the government and elected officials were expected to adhere to its policies and promote its propaganda.
Only John F. Kennedy directly challenged it, firing CIA Director Allen Dulles after the Bay of
Pigs disaster. He was assassinated, and whether or not CIA involvement is ever conclusively proven,
the allegations have been useful to the agency, keeping politicians in line. The Deep State also
co-opted the media, keeping it in line with a combination of fear and favor.
Since its ascension in the 1950s, the biggest threat to the Deep State has not been its many and
manifest failures, but rather what the naive would regard as its biggest success: the fall of the
Soviet Union in 1991. Much of the military-industrial complex was suddenly deprived of its reason
for existence-the threat was gone. However, a more subtle point was lost.
The Soviet Union has been the largest of statism's many failures to date. Because of the Deep
State's philosophical blinders, that outcome was generally unforeseen. The command and control philosophy
at the heart of Soviet communism was merely a variant on the same philosophy espoused and practiced
by the Deep State. Like the commissars, its members believe that "ordinary" people are unable to
handle freedom, and that their generalized superiority entitles them to wield the coercive power
of government.
With "irresponsible" elements talking of peace dividends and scaling back the military and the
intelligence agencies, the complex was sorely in need of a new enemy . Islam suffers the same critical
flaw as communism-command and control-and has numerous other deficiencies, including intolerance,
repression, and the legal subjugation of half its adherents. The Deep State had to focus on the world
conquest ideology of some Muslims to even conjure Islam as a plausible foe. However, unlike the USSR,
they couldn't claim that sect and faction-ridden Islam posed a monolithic threat, that the Islamic
nations were an empire or a federation united towards a common goal, or that their armaments (there
are under thirty nuclear weapons in the one Islamic nation, Pakistan, that has them) could destroy
the US or the entire planet.
There was too much money and power at stake for the complex to shrink. While on paper Islam appeared
far weaker than communism, the complex had one factor in their favor: terrorism is terrifying. In
the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Americans surrendered liberties and gave the Deep State carte blanche
to fight a war on terrorism that would span the globe, target all those whom the government identified
as terrorists, and never be conclusively won or lost. Funding for the complex ballooned, the military
was deployed on multiple fronts, and the surveillance state blossomed. Most of those who might have
objected were bought off with expanded welfare state funding and programs (e.g. George W. Bush's
prescription drug benefit, Obamacare).
What would prove to be the biggest challenge to the centralization and the power of the Deep State
came, unheralded, with the invention of the microchip in the late 1950s. The Deep State could not
have exercised the power it has without a powerful grip on information flow and popular perception.
The microchip led to widespread distribution of cheap computing power and dissemination of information
over the decentralized Internet. This dynamic, organically adaptive decentralization has been the
antithesis of the command-and-control Deep State, which now realizes the gravity of the threat. Fortunately,
countering these technologies has been like trying to eradicate hordes of locusts.
The gravest threat, however, to the Deep State is self-imposed: it's own incompetence. Even the
technologically illiterate can ask questions for which it has no answers.
Why has the US been involved in long, costly, bloody, and inconclusive wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq?
Why should the US get involved in similar conflicts in Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Iran,
and other Middle Eastern and Northern African hotspots?
Isn't such involvement responsible for blowback terrorism and refugee flows in both
Europe and the US?
Have "free trade" agreements and porous borders been a net benefit or detriment to the
US? Why is the banking industry set up for periodic crises that inevitably require government
bail-outs? (SLL claims no special insight into the nexus between the banking-financial sector
and the Deep State, other than to note that there is one.) Why does every debt crisis result in
more debt?
How has encouraging debt and speculation at the expense of savings and investment helped
the US economy?
The Deep State can't answer or even acknowledge these questions because they all touch on its
failures.
Brexit, Donald Trump, other populist, nationalist movements catching fire, and the rise of the
alternative media are wrecking balls aimed at an already structurally unsound and teetering building
that would eventually collapse on its own. The shenanigans in the US after Trump's election-violent
protests, hysterical outbursts, the vote recount effort, the proof-free Russian hacking allegations,
"fake news," and the attempt to sway electoral college electors-are the desperate screams of those
trapped inside.
Regrettably, the building analogy is imperfect, because it implies that those inside are helpless
and that the collapse will only harm them. In its desperation, incompetence, and corrupt nihilism,
the Deep State can wreak all sorts of havoc, up to and including the destruction of humanity. Trump
represents an opportunity to strike a blow against the Deep State, but the chances it will be lethal
are minimal and the dangers obvious.
The euphoria over his victory cannot obscure a potential consequence: it may hasten and amplify
the destruction and resultant chaos when the Deep State finally topples . Anyone who thinks Trump's
victory sounds an all clear is allowing hope to triumph over experience and what should have been
hard-won wisdom.
"War on Terror" + "Refugee Humanitarian Crisis" =European Clusterfuck
Or
"War on Drugs" + "Afghan Opium/Nicaraguan Cocaine" =Police State America
Both hands (Left/Right) to crush Liberty
Mano-A-Mano -> Cheka_Mate •Dec 22, 2016 8:54 PM
The DEEP STATE pretends they hate Trump, gets him in office, hoodwinks the sheeple into
believing they voted for him, while they still retain control.
Voila!
TeamDepends -> unrulian •Dec 22, 2016 8:55 PM
Remember the Maine! Remember the Lusitania! Remember the USS Liberty! Remember the Gulf of
Tonkin! Never forget.
Withdrawn Sanction •Dec 22, 2016 8:52 PM
"In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Americans surrendered liberties and gave the Deep State
carte blanche..."
What a load of crap. The Deep State CAUSED 9/11 and then STOLE Americans' liberties.
StraightLineLogic: Linear thinker, indeed.
WTFUD •Dec 22, 2016 8:56 PM
Shakespeare would have had a field-day with this Material; Comic Tragedy!
BadDog •Dec 22, 2016 9:00 PM
Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.
red1chief •Dec 22, 2016 9:09 PM
Funny how a guy loading up his administration with Vampire Squids is thought to be disliked
by the Deep State. Deep State psy ops never ceases to amaze.
"... Democracy is inevitably going to clash with the demands of Globalization as they are opposite. Globalization requires entrepreneurs to search cheaper means of production worldwide. ..."
"... In practice, this means moving capital out of the USA. ..."
"... To put it in Marxist terms the interests of American society to survive and prosper came into contradiction with the interests of capitalism as a system of production and with the capitalists as a class who has no homeland, and for whom homeland is where it is easier to make money. ..."
"... American capitalism from its very beginning was based on the assumption that what was good for business was good for America. Until 1929 it more or less worked. The robber barons were robbing other entrepreneurs and workers but at least they reinvested their ill gained profits in America. The crash of 1929 showed that the interests of Big Banks clashed with the interest of American society with devastating results. ..."
"... The decades after WWII have seen a slow and steady erosion of American superiority in technology and productivity and slow and steady flight of capital from the USA. Globalization has been undermining America. From the point of view of Global prosperity if it is cheaper to produce in China, production should relocate to China. From the point of view of American worker, this is treason, a policy destroying the United States as an industrial power, as a nation, and as a community of citizens. Donald Trump is the first top ranking politician who has realized this simple fact. The vote for Donald Trump has been a protest against Globalization, immigration, open borders, capital flight, multiculturalism, liberalism and all the values American Liberal establishment has been preaching for 60 years that are killing the USA. ..."
"... Donald Trump wants to arrest the assault of Globalization on America. He promised to reduce taxes, and to attract business back to the USA. However, reduced taxes are only one ingredient in incentives. For businesses to stay or come back to the US, companies must have educated labor force, steady supply of talented, well-educated young people, excellent schools, and safe neighborhoods, among other things. As of now most of these preconditions are missing. ..."
"... Dr. Brovkin is a historian, formerly a Harvard Professor of History. He has published several books and numerous articles on Russian History and Politics. Currently, Dr. Brovkin works and lives in Marrakech, Morocco. ..."
"... This is an interesting question: is it possible to contain neoliberal globalization by building walls, rejecting 'trade' agreement, and so on. I get the feeling that a direct attack may not work. Water will find a way, as they say. With a direct attack against globalization, what you're likely to face is major capital flight. ..."
In his election campaign Donald Trump has identified several key themes that defined American malaise.
He pointed to capital flight, bad trade deals, illegal immigration, and corruption of the government
and of the press. What is missing in Trump's diagnosis though is an explanation of this crisis. What
are the causes of American decline or as Ross Pero used to say: Let's look under the hood.
Most of the challenges America faces today have to do with two processes we call Globalization
and Sovietization. By Globalization we mean a process of externalizing American business thanks to
the doctrine of Free trade which has been up to now the Gospel of the establishment. By Sovietization
we mean a process of slow expansion of the role of the government in economy, education, business,
military, press, virtually any and every aspect of politics and society.
Let us start with Globalization.
Dani Rodrick (
The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy) has argued that
it is impossible to have democracy and globalization at the same time. Democracy is inevitably
going to clash with the demands of Globalization as they are opposite. Globalization requires entrepreneurs
to search cheaper means of production worldwide.
In practice, this means moving capital out of the USA. For fifty years economists have
been preaching Free trade, meaning that free unimpeded, no tariffs trade is good for America. And
it was in the 1950s, 60s and 1970s that American products were cheaper or better than those overseas.
Beginning with the 1970s, the process reversed. Globalization enriched the capitalists and impoverished
the rest of Americans. To put it in Marxist terms the interests of American society to survive
and prosper came into contradiction with the interests of capitalism as a system of production and
with the capitalists as a class who has no homeland, and for whom homeland is where it is easier
to make money.
American capitalism from its very beginning was based on the assumption that what was good
for business was good for America. Until 1929 it more or less worked. The robber barons were robbing
other entrepreneurs and workers but at least they reinvested their ill gained profits in America.
The crash of 1929 showed that the interests of Big Banks clashed with the interest of American society
with devastating results.
The decades after WWII have seen a slow and steady erosion of American superiority in technology
and productivity and slow and steady flight of capital from the USA. Globalization has been undermining
America. From the point of view of Global prosperity if it is cheaper to produce in China, production
should relocate to China. From the point of view of American worker, this is treason, a policy destroying
the United States as an industrial power, as a nation, and as a community of citizens. Donald Trump
is the first top ranking politician who has realized this simple fact. The vote for Donald Trump
has been a protest against Globalization, immigration, open borders, capital flight, multiculturalism,
liberalism and all the values American Liberal establishment has been preaching for 60 years that
are killing the USA.
Donald Trump wants to arrest the assault of Globalization on America. He promised to reduce
taxes, and to attract business back to the USA. However, reduced taxes are only one ingredient in
incentives. For businesses to stay or come back to the US, companies must have educated labor force,
steady supply of talented, well-educated young people, excellent schools, and safe neighborhoods,
among other things. As of now most of these preconditions are missing.
To fight Globalization Donald Trump announced in his agenda to drop or renegotiate NAFTA and TPP.
That is a step in the right direction. However, this will not be easy. There are powerful vested
interests in making money overseas that will put up great resistance to America first policy. They
have powerful lobbies and votes in the Congress and it is by far not certain if Trump will succeed
in overcoming their opposition.
Another step along these lines of fighting Globalization is the proposed building of the Wall
on Mexican border. That too may or may not work. Powerful agricultural interests in California have
a vested interest in easy and cheap labor force made up of illegal migrants. If their supply is cut
off they are going to hike up the prices on agricultural goods that may lead to inflation or higher
consumer prices for the American workers.
... ... ...
The Military: Americans are told they have a best military in the world. In fact, it is not the
best but the most expensive one in the world. According to the National priorities Project, in fiscal
2015 the military spending amounted to 54% of the discretionary spending in the
amount of 598.5 billion dollars . Of those almost 200 billion dollars goes for operations and
maintenance, 135 billion for military personnel and 90 billion for procurement (see
Here is How the US Military Spends its Billions )
American military industrial complex spends more that the next seven runners up combined. It is
a Sovietized, bureaucratic structure that exists and thrives on internal deals behind closed doors,
procurement process closed to public scrutiny, wasted funds on consultants, kickbacks, and outrageous
prices for military hardware. Specific investigations of fraud do not surface too often. Yet for
example, DoD Inspector General reported:
Why is it that an F35 fighter jet should cost 135 million apiece and the Russian SU 35 that can
do similar things is sold for 35 million dollars and produced for 15 million? The answer is that
the Congress operates on a principle that any price the military asks is good enough. The entire
system of military procurement has to be scrapped. It is a source of billions of stolen and wasted
dollars. The Pentagon budget of half a trillion a year is a drain on the economy that is unsustainable,
and what you get is not worth the money. The military industrial complex in America does not deliver
the best equipment or security it is supposed to.(on this see:
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/cutting-waste-isnt-enough-curb-pentagon-spending-18640
)
Donald Trump was the first to his credit who raised the issue: Do we need all these bases overseas?
Do they really enhance American security? Or are they a waste of money for the benefit of other countries
who take America for a free ride. Why indeed should the US pay for the defense of Japan? Is Japan
a poor country that cannot afford to defend itself? Defense commitments like those expose America
to unnecessary confrontations and risk of war over issues that have nothing to do with America's
interests. Is it worth it to fight China over some uninhabitable islands that Japan claims? (See
discussion:
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/should-the-us-continue-guarantee-the-security-wealthy-states-17720
)
Similarly, Trump is the first one to raise the question: What is the purpose of NATO? ( see discussion
of NATO utility:
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/will-president-trump-renegotiate-the-nato-treaty-18647
) Yes the Liberal pro-Clinton media answer is: to defend Europe from Russian aggression. But
really what aggression? If the Russians wanted to they could have taken Kiev in a day two years ago.
Instead, they put up with the most virulently hostile regime in Kiev. Let us ask ourselves would
we have put up with a virulently anti-American regime in Mexico, a regime that would have announced
its intention to conclude a military alliance with China or Russia? Were we not ready to go to nuclear
war over Soviet missiles in Cuba? If we would not have accepted such a regime in Mexico, why do we
complain that the Russians took action against the new regime in Ukraine. Oh yes, they took Crimea.
But the population there is Russian, and until 1954 it was Russian territory and after Ukrainian
independence the Russians did not raise the issue of Crimea as Ukrainian territory and paid rent
for their naval base there The Russians took it over only when a hostile regime clamoring for NATO
membership settled in Kiev. Does that constitute Russian aggression or actually Russian limited response
to a hostile act? (see on this Steven Cohen:
http://eastwestaccord.com/podcast-stephen-f-cohen-talks-russia-israel-middle-east-diplomacy-steele-unger/
) As I have argued elsewhere Putin has been under tremendous pressure to act more decisively
against the neo-Nazis in Kiev. (see Vlad Brovkin: On Russian Assertiveness in Foreign Policy. (
http://eastwestaccord.com/?s=brovkin&submit=Search
)
With a little bit of patience and good will a compromise is possible on Ukraine through Minsk
accords. Moreover, Ukraine is not in NATO and as long as it is not admitted to NATO, a deal with
the Russians on Ukraine is feasible. Just like so many other pro-American governments, Ukraine wants
to milk Uncle Sam for what it is worth. They expect to be paid for being anti/Russian. (See discussion
on need of enemy:
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/does-america-need-enemy-18106
) Would it not be a better policy to let Ukraine know that they are on their own: no more subsidies,
no more payments? Mend your relations with Russia yourselves. Then peace would immediately prevail.
If we admit that there is no Russian aggression and that this myth was propagated by the Neo/Cons
with the specific purpose to return to the paradigm of the cold war, i.e. more money for the military
industrial complex, if we start thinking boldly as Trump has begun, we should say to the Europeans:
go ahead, build your own European army to allay your fears of the Russians. Europe is strong enough,
rich enough and united enough to take care of its defense without American assistance. (See discussion
of Trumps agenda:
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/course-correction-18062
)
So, if Trump restructures procurement mess, reduces the number of military bases overseas, and
invests in high tech research and development for the military on the basis of real competition,
hundreds of billions of dollars could be saved and the defense capability of the country would increase.
... ... ...
Dr. Brovkin is a historian, formerly a Harvard Professor of History. He has published several
books and numerous articles on Russian History and Politics. Currently, Dr. Brovkin works and lives
in Marrakech, Morocco.
This is a bit too much, Volodya. Maybe you should've taken one subject – globalization, for
example – and stop there.
This is an interesting question: is it possible to contain neoliberal globalization by
building walls, rejecting 'trade' agreement, and so on. I get the feeling that a direct attack
may not work. Water will find a way, as they say. With a direct attack against globalization,
what you're likely to face is major capital flight.
You might be able to make neoliberal globalization work for you (for your population, that
is), like Germany and the Scandinavians do, but that's a struggle, constant struggle. And it's
a competition; it will have to be done at the expense of other nations (see Greece, Portugal,
Central (eastern) Europe). And having an anti-neoliberal president is not enough; this would require
a major change, almost a U turn, in the whole governing philosophy. Forget the sanctity of 'free
market', start worshiping the new god: national interest
What an INTERESTING article -- So much that is right, so much that is wrong. An article you
can get your teeth into.
On globalisation: pretty spot-on (although I believe he exaggerates the US weakness in what he
calls "preconditions": there are still many well educated Americans, still good neighborhoods
(yes, sure it could be a lot better). He's against NAFTA & other neoliberal Trade self indulgences.
But then we come to his concept of "Sovietization" of the US. Perhaps it's mere semantics, but
I find the concept incoherent & suspiciously adapted to deliberately agitate US conservatives.
Example: "huge sectors of American economy are not private at all, that in fact they have been
slowly taken over by an ever growing state ownership and control"
This is nonsense on its face: the government spews out trillions to private actors to provide
goods & services. It does so, in part, because it has systematically privatized every government
function capable of returning a profit. The author can't see the actor behind the mask: how much
legislation is now written by & for the benefit of private interests ? (Obama care, Bush pharmaceutical
laws ?)
Of course, the author is correct on the US military-industrial complex: it is a sump of crime
& corruption. Yet he seems not to grasp that the problem is regulative capture. How is the Fiasco
of the F35 & MacDonald Douglas merely an issue for the Legislature alone & how does this circus
resemble the Soviet Union, beyond the fact that BOTH systems (like most systems) are capable of
gross negligence & corruption ?
I like what the author says about NATO, Japan, bases etc. Although he's a little naive if he
thinks NATO for instance is about "protecting" Europe. Yes, that's a part of it: but primarily
NATO etc exist as a tool/mask behind which the US can exert it's imperial ambitions against friend
& for alike.
The author does go off against welfare well that's to be expected: sadly I don't think he quite
gets the connection between globalisation & welfare .He also legitimately goes after tertiary
education, but seems to be (again) confused as to cause & effect.
The author is completely spot on with his sovietization analogy when he comes to the US security
state. Only difference between the Soviets & the US on security totalitarianism ? The US is much
better at it (of course the US has technological advantages unimaginable to the Soviets)
• Replies:
@Randal I agree with you that it's a fascinating piece, and I also agree with many of the points
you agree with.
But then we come to his concept of "Sovietization" of the US. Perhaps it's mere semantics, but
I find the concept incoherent & suspiciously adapted to deliberately agitate US conservatives.
Example: "huge sectors of American economy are not private at all, that in fact they
have been slowly taken over by an ever growing state ownership and control"
This is nonsense on its face: the government spews out trillions to private actors to provide
goods & services. It does so, in part, because it has systematically privatized every government
function capable of returning a profit. The author can't see the actor behind the mask: how much
legislation is now written by & for the benefit of private interests ? (Obama care, Bush pharmaceutical
laws ?)
I think part of the problem here might be a mistaken focus on "the government" as an independent
actor, when in reality it is just a mechanism whereby the rulers (whether they are a dictator,
a political party or an oligarchy or whatever), and those with sufficient clout to influence them,
get things done the way they want to see them done.
As such there is really not much difference between the government directly employing the people
who do things (state socialism), and the government paying money to companies to get the same
things done. Either way, those who use the government to get things done, get to say what gets
done and how. There are differences of nuance, in terms of organizational strengths and weaknesses,
degrees of corruption and of efficiency, but fundamentally it's all big government.
A more interesting question might be - how really different are these big government variants
from the small government systems, in which the rulers pay people directly to get things done
the way they want them to be done?
An excellent article. The points that resonated the most were:
For businesses to stay or come back to the US, companies must have educated labor force,
steady supply of talented, well-educated young people, excellent schools, and safe neighborhoods,
among other things. As of now most of these preconditions are missing.
This is an enormously difficult problem that will take years to resolve, and it will need a
rethink of education from the ground up + the political will to fight the heart of Cultural Bolshevism
and the inevitable 24/7 Media assault.
Drain the swamp in Washington: ban the lobbyists, make it a crime to lobby for private interest
in a public place, restructure procurement, introduce real competition, restore capitalism,
phase out any government subsidies to Universities, force them to compete for students, force
hospitals to compete for patients. Cut cut cut expenditure everywhere possible, including welfare.
Banning lobbyists should be possible but draining the rest of the swamp looks really complicated.
Each area would need to be examined from the ground up from a value for money – efficiency viewpoint.
It doesn't matter which philosophy each one is run on – good value healthcare is desirable whichever
system produces it.
Could we have ever imagined in our worst dreams that a system of mass surveillance would
be created and perfected in the USA. (see discussion on this in: Surveillance State, in
http://www.americamagazine.org/issue/surveillance-state
This one should be easy. The Constitution guarantees a right to privacy so just shut down the
NSA. Also shut down the vast CIA mafia (it didn't exist prior to 1947) and the expensive and useless
FED (controlling the money supply isn't the business of a group of private banks – an office in
the Treasury could easily match the money supply to economic activity).
This one should be easy. The Constitution guarantees a right to privacy so just shut down the
NSA. Also shut down the vast CIA mafia (it didn't exist prior to 1947) and the expensive and useless
FED (controlling the money supply isn't the business of a group of private banks – an office in
the Treasury could easily match the money supply to economic activity).
From Unz, I have learned that the US actually has a four-part government: the "Deep State"
part which has no clear oversight from any of the other three branches.
To put it in Marxist terms the interests of American society to survive and prosper came
into contradiction with the interests of capitalism as a system of production and with the
capitalists as a class who has no homeland, and for whom homeland is where it is easier to
make money.
Another add-on contradiction, comrade, is that the selfsame capitalist class expect their host
nation to defend their interests whenever threatened abroad. This entails using the resources
derived from the masses to enforce this protection including using the little people as cannon
fodder when deemed useful.
Donald Trump is the first top ranking politician who has realized this simple fact.
Come now, do you really believe that all these politicians who have gone to these world-class
schools don't know this? They simply don't care. They're working on behalf of the .1% who are
their benefactors and who will make them rich. They did not go into politics to take vows of poverty.
They just realize the need to placate the masses with speeches written by professional speechwriters,
that's all.
Insofar as Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid goes, those are the most democratic institutions
of all. It's money spent on ourselves, internally, with money being cycled in and out at the grassroots
level. Doctors, nurses, home-care providers, etc etc, all local people get a piece of the action
unlike military spending which siphons money upwards to the upper classes.
I'd rather be employed in a government job than unemployed in the private sector. That's not
the kind of "freedom" I'm searching for comrade.
@animalogic What an INTERESTING article -- So much that is right, so much that is wrong. An
article you can get your teeth into.
On globalisation: pretty spot-on (although I believe he exaggerates the US weakness in what
he calls "preconditions": there are still many well educated Americans, still good neighborhoods
(yes, sure it could be a lot better). He's against NAFTA & other neoliberal Trade self indulgences.
But then we come to his concept of "Sovietization" of the US. Perhaps it's mere semantics, but
I find the concept... incoherent...& suspiciously adapted to deliberately agitate US conservatives.
Example: "huge sectors of American economy are not private at all, that in fact they
have been slowly taken over by an ever growing state ownership and control"
This is nonsense on its face: the government spews out trillions to private actors to provide
goods & services. It does so, in part, because it has systematically privatized every government
function capable of returning a profit. The author can't see the actor behind the mask: how much
legislation is now written by & for the benefit of private interests ? (Obama care, Bush pharmaceutical
laws ?)
Of course, the author is correct on the US military-industrial complex: it is a sump of crime
& corruption. Yet he seems not to grasp that the problem is regulative capture. How is the Fiasco
of the F35 & MacDonald Douglas merely an issue for the Legislature alone...& how does this circus
resemble the Soviet Union, beyond the fact that BOTH systems (like most systems) are capable of
gross negligence & corruption ?
I like what the author says about NATO, Japan, bases etc. Although he's a little naive if he
thinks NATO for instance is about "protecting" Europe. Yes, that's a part of it: but primarily
NATO etc exist as a tool/mask behind which the US can exert it's imperial ambitions ...against
friend & for alike.
The author does go off against welfare...well that's to be expected: sadly I don't think he quite
gets the connection between globalisation & welfare....He also legitimately goes after tertiary
education, but seems to be (again) confused as to cause & effect.
The author is completely spot on with his sovietization analogy when he comes to the US security
state. Only difference between the Soviets & the US on security totalitarianism ? The US is much
better at it (of course the US has technological advantages unimaginable to the Soviets)
I agree with you that it's a fascinating piece, and I also agree with many of the points you
agree with.
But then we come to his concept of "Sovietization" of the US. Perhaps it's mere semantics,
but I find the concept incoherent & suspiciously adapted to deliberately agitate US conservatives.
Example: "huge sectors of American economy are not private at all, that in fact they have been
slowly taken over by an ever growing state ownership and control"
This is nonsense on its face: the government spews out trillions to private actors to provide
goods & services. It does so, in part, because it has systematically privatized every government
function capable of returning a profit. The author can't see the actor behind the mask: how
much legislation is now written by & for the benefit of private interests ? (Obama care, Bush
pharmaceutical laws ?)
I think part of the problem here might be a mistaken focus on "the government" as an independent
actor, when in reality it is just a mechanism whereby the rulers (whether they are a dictator,
a political party or an oligarchy or whatever), and those with sufficient clout to influence them,
get things done the way they want to see them done.
As such there is really not much difference between the government directly employing the people
who do things (state socialism), and the government paying money to companies to get the same
things done. Either way, those who use the government to get things done, get to say what gets
done and how. There are differences of nuance, in terms of organisational strengths and weaknesses,
degrees of corruption and of efficiency, but fundamentally it's all big government.
A more interesting question might be – how really different are these big government variants
from the small government systems, in which the rulers pay people directly to get things done
the way they want them to be done?
"... The essence of voting the lesser of two evils: "To comfortable centrists like pgl, the Democrats should be graded on a curve. As long as they're better than the awful Republicans, then they're good enough and beyond criticism." ..."
"... These Wall Street Democrats can rest assured that Democrats will surely get their turn in power in 4-8 years...after Trump thoroughly screws things up. And then Democrats will proceed to screw things up themselves...as we learned from Obama and Hillary's love of austerity and total disinterest in the economic welfare of the vast majority. ..."
"... In case you didn't notice, Democrats did nothing about the minimum wage 2009-2010. ..."
"... Many Democratic candidates won't even endorse minimum wage increase in states where increases win via initiative. They preferred to lose elections to standing up for minimum wage increases. ..."
Peter K.... The essence of voting the lesser of two evils: "To comfortable centrists like pgl,
the Democrats should be graded on a curve. As long as they're better than the awful Republicans,
then they're good enough and beyond criticism."
These Wall Street Democrats can rest assured that Democrats will surely get their turn in power
in 4-8 years...after Trump thoroughly screws things up. And then Democrats will proceed to screw
things up themselves...as we learned from Obama and Hillary's love of austerity and total disinterest
in the economic welfare of the vast majority.
To pgl and his ilk, Obama was great as long as he said the right things...regardless of what
he actually did. Hillary didn't even have to say the right things...she only had to be a Wall
Street Democrat for pgl to be enthusiastic about her.
In case you didn't notice, Democrats did nothing about the minimum wage 2009-2010.
At a minimum,
they could have taken their dominance then to enact increases for 2010-2016 or to index increases
to inflation. Instead, Pelosi, Reid and Obama preferred to do nothing.
Many Democratic candidates won't even endorse minimum wage increase in states where increases
win via initiative. They preferred to lose elections to standing up for minimum wage increases.
"... At some point the GOP has to decide how much of Trump's populist agenda they can stuff in the toilet without inducing an uncontrollable backlash. ..."
"... The reason Trump won the GOP nomination was exactly because he claimed to reject traditional GOP policies and approaches. ..."
"... If the GOP just go ahead with a traditional "rule for the rich" policy (because they won) there could be serious fireworks ahead - provided the Dems can pull out a populist alternative policy by the the next election. ..."
"... I have no idea what's going to happen, but my guess is that Trump and the Republicans are going to completely sell out the "Trump voters." ..."
"... But they still tried to push through Social Security privatization even though everyone is against it. ..."
"... If recent history is any guide, incumbents get a second term regardless of how bad the economy is. Clinton, Bush, and Obama were all reelected despite a lousy economy. The only exception in recent memory was Bush 41. ..."
"... Upper class tax cuts were central to his policies. Anybody who believed he was anything other than an standard issue Republican would buy shares in Arizona swampland. ..."
"... trump did indeed state that he would give bigger tax cuts to the rich, repeatedly. the genius of trump's performance is that by never having a clear position his gullible followers were able to fill in the gaps using their own hopes and desires. ..."
"... That is correct, but also the weakness in his support. They will almost certainly be disappointed as the exact interpretations and choices between incompatible promises turns out to be different from the individuals hopes and desires. ..."
"... And consider how dysfunction from laissez faire healthcare policy readoption leads to rising prices/costs above current trend to limit disposable income even more, it will be amazing if we do not have stagnation and worse for the bulk of society. ..."
"... Bush implemented and expanded a community health clinic system, that reallnwoukd be a nice infrastructure play for the US, but this Congress is more likely to disinvest here. They certainly don't want these do-gooder nonprofits competing against the doctor establishment. ..."
"... The question is first of all whether Trump can bully the Fed away from their current and traditional course (which would not allow much of a stimulus, before they cancelled it out with rate hikes). ..."
"... Second whether the Fed itself having been traditionally prone to support GOP presidents (see inconsistencies in Greenspan's policies during Clinton vs. Bush) will change its policies and allow higher inflation and wage growth than they have under any Dem president. ..."
"... The little people go to the credit channels to help finance the purchase of durables and higher education too. The Fed's actions themselves will see these credit prices ratchet, so nit good fir basic demand. Veblen goods will see more price rises as the buyers will have lots of rentier/lobbying gathered money to burn. ..."
At some point the GOP has to decide how much of Trump's populist agenda they can stuff in
the toilet without inducing an uncontrollable backlash.
The reason Trump won the GOP nomination was exactly because he claimed to reject traditional
GOP policies and approaches. It was the old tea-partiers insisting that their anti-rich/Anti-Wall
street sentiments be inserted into the GOP.
If the GOP just go ahead with a traditional "rule for the rich" policy (because they won)
there could be serious fireworks ahead - provided the Dems can pull out a populist alternative
policy by the the next election.
I have no idea what's going to happen, but my guess is that Trump and the Republicans are
going to completely sell out the "Trump voters."
George W. Bush wasn't completely horrible (besides Iraq, John Roberts, tax cuts for the rich,
the Patriot act and the surveillance state, Katrina, etc. etc. etc.). He was good on immigration,
world AIDS prevention, expensive Medicare drug expansion, etc.
But they still tried to push through Social Security privatization even though everyone
is against it.
To some extent Bush demoralized the Republican base and they didn't turn out in 2008.
If recent history is any guide, incumbents get a second term regardless of how bad the economy
is. Clinton, Bush, and Obama were all reelected despite a lousy economy. The only exception in
recent memory was Bush 41.
About the only thing that can derail Trump is a big recession in 2019.
"The reason Trump won the GOP nomination was exactly because he claimed to reject traditional
GOP policies and approaches."
While generally enthusiastically embracing them. Upper class tax cuts were central to his
policies. Anybody who believed he was anything other than an standard issue Republican would buy
shares in Arizona swampland.
He never came out directly saying or tweeting that he would give bigger tax cuts to the rich than
anybody else - he said he would give bigger tax cuts. It is true that people with a college education
had an easy time figuring him out even before the election. But the populist messages he campaigned
on were anti-establishment including suggesting that the "hedge-fund guys" were making a killing
by being taxed at a lower rate.
trump did indeed state that he would give bigger tax cuts to the rich, repeatedly. the genius
of trump's performance is that by never having a clear position his gullible followers were able
to fill in the gaps using their own hopes and desires.
"his gullible followers were able to fill in the gaps using their own hopes and desires"
That is correct, but also the weakness in his support. They will almost certainly be disappointed
as the exact interpretations and choices between incompatible promises turns out to be different
from the individuals hopes and desires. The reason Trump was able to beat even a Tea party
darling, was the backlash against big money having taken over the Tea party. The backlash against
Trump_vs_deep_state being "taken over by big money" interest will be interesting to observe, especially if
the Dems find the right way to play it.
Following up on Johnny Bakho's comment below, let's assume that average wage growth YoY for nonsupervisory
workers never reaches 3% before the next recession hits. Wage growth rates always decline in recessions,
usually by over 2%.
If in the next recession, we see actual slight nominal wage decreases, is a debt-deflationary
wage-price spiral inevitable? Or could there be a small decline of less than -1% without triggering
such a spiral.
"is a debt-deflationary wage-price spiral inevitable?"
Good question. It all depends on the response of policy makers. If we continue with the stupid
fiscal austerity that began in 2011, it may be inevitable. Which is why doing public infrastructure
investment is a very good idea.
And consider how dysfunction from laissez faire healthcare policy readoption leads to rising
prices/costs above current trend to limit disposable income even more, it will be amazing if we
do not have stagnation and worse for the bulk of society.
Bush implemented and expanded a community health clinic system, that reallnwoukd be a nice
infrastructure play for the US, but this Congress is more likely to disinvest here. They certainly
don't want these do-gooder nonprofits competing against the doctor establishment.
For Clinton dems, the ones the wiki revealed are con artists, doing for the peeps [like Bernie
stood for] is too far ideologically for the faux centrists.
They are neoliberals market monetarists who keep the bankers green and everyone else takes
the back seats.
At this point in time pretty much anything the policy makers do will be countered by the Fed.
The question is first of all whether Trump can bully the Fed away from their current and traditional
course (which would not allow much of a stimulus, before they cancelled it out with rate hikes).
Second whether the Fed itself having been traditionally prone to support GOP presidents
(see inconsistencies in Greenspan's policies during Clinton vs. Bush) will change its policies
and allow higher inflation and wage growth than they have under any Dem president.
As long as the FED thinks the natural rate of the employment to population ratio is only 60% -
you'd be right. But then the FED is not thinking clearly.
like many of my fellow socialists, i fulminated about bernanke's coddling of banks and asset holders.
i was somewhat wrong. bernanke was a evidently a strong voice for banking regulation and an end
to the moral hazard of TBTF. it is a pity that obama did not listen to him.
The little people go to the credit channels to help finance the purchase of durables and higher
education too. The Fed's actions themselves will see these credit prices ratchet, so nit good
fir basic demand. Veblen goods will see more price rises as the buyers will have lots of rentier/lobbying
gathered money to burn.
Will the Fed use rulemaking to control bubbling in the financial asset marketplaces as they
wont want to rause rates too much. I hope they are paying attention
the article contain at least one blatant lie which discredits its connect: the assertion the Sony
attack was from North Korea. No mentioning of Flame and Stixnet. Another proof that NYT is a part
of Clinton campaign and became a neocons mouthpiece...
Notable quotes:
"... How many of us have signed petitions to exonerate Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning for letting us know what our govt was doing? Didn't they do us all, and democracy, a great service? ..."
"... I'm happy to know how the DNC operated, the astounding and unprecedented conflation of a national party committee with one candidate's campaign organization. ..."
"... What they were doing to Bernie Sanders, and the use they were making of national media was just wrong. ..."
"... Clinton herself was involved (via her neocon undersecretary, formerly Cheney's chief foreign policy aide) in overthrowing the elected president of Ukraine, a friend of Russia, and installing a US-capitalist friendly fellow in his stead. ..."
"... What goes around comes around. If we wanted to stop all this cyber warfare, the time to do it was by treaty BEFORE we risked Iranian lives with the Stuxnet virus. ..."
"... The release of e-mails was embarrassing for Secretary Clinton and the Democratic Party, but I don't think it tipped the election. How many longtime Democratic voters stayed home on November 9th because of the release of these e-mails? How many working class voters switched their vote because of the release of these e-mails? ..."
"... If the hacking had tampered with voting, I would be extremely concerned, but since it only involved email systems, I am not concerned. ..."
"... The hacked and subsequently published emails revealed the dishonest, deceitful, and unethical practices of the Democrats, especially in the treatment of Sanders, who should have ditched the Democrats run for president as an Independent. ..."
"... The emails also revealed that Obama was a participant in HRC's use of a nongovernmental email system when he stated emphatically that the first time he had ever heard of it was when the media first reported it. ..."
"... That's not the first and probably not the last time he will lie to the public. And the emails revealed the satanic practices of Podesta. The published emails made the election interesting and entertaining. But it is over and mow its time to put this issue to rest, accept the fact that Donald Trump is our next President, the leader of the freest county in the free world, and get on with governing this blessed great nation. Thank you. ..."
"... I suppose Hillary's email server could have been hacked like this too. Could this be the reason for Comey's stern reprimand of her? It is a little ironic, isn't it, that the DNC, while down playing Hillary's issues with her private server and criticizing Comey for his handling of the investigation, should itself suffer a damaging security breach of its own servers at the hands of a foreign power, which was exactly Comey's concern. Not to mention the fact that the NYT, which told us enough was enough with Hillary's email, is now up in arms about exactly that issue with the shoe on the other foot ..."
"... I am struggling with how to react to this, just as i do with the Edward Snowden disclosures. On the one hand Russian meddling in a US election is certainly a concern, and should be investigated. On the other hand the disclosures laid bare things many people had suspected, let the sunlight in, so to speak. ..."
"... Would Hillary even have had the nomination were it not for the favoritism shown by the DNC to her campaign at the expense of the Sanders campaign? What was more meddlesome, the Russian hack and release or the DNC's unfair treatment of Bernie? There is no suggestion that the leaked documents were altered. The effect of the hack was to reveal the truth. Is that the Russian goal, to delegitimize the election process by revealing the truth? ..."
"... I suppose we finally got a taste of our own medicine -- countless governments overthrown and elections influenced at the hand of the United States. Not fun is it? Perhaps we can learn a lesson from this. ..."
An aspect that truly surprises me is the hopeless ineptitude of the DNC response (which could
easily have parallels in the RNC).
Irrespective of who the cyber-attacker is, it's astounding in this day and age that sensitive
organizations do not pre-arm themselves with the highest security, and treat every sign of interference
(eg, an actual FBI WARNING PHONE CALL) as a major alarm.
Sadly, that this response is probably replicated all over the place underscores a theory I've
held for some time: Technology will kill democracy. Maybe it already has.
I'm surprised at what's missing here. How many of us have signed petitions to exonerate Edward
Snowden and Chelsea Manning for letting us know what our govt was doing? Didn't they do us all,
and democracy, a great service?
I'm happy to know how the DNC operated, the astounding and unprecedented
conflation of a national party committee with one candidate's campaign organization.
What they
were doing to Bernie Sanders, and the use they were making of national media was just wrong.
Assange
and Putin (if he was involved) revealed the truth. And since Clinton took no care to guard her
private emails, mixed with public communications, how much sympathy is she owed?
Clinton herself
was involved (via her neocon undersecretary, formerly Cheney's chief foreign policy aide) in overthrowing
the elected president of Ukraine, a friend of Russia, and installing a US-capitalist friendly
fellow in his stead. We do this sort of thing all the time, so if the Russians "interfere" in
our electoral process by revealing true stuff (far short of fomenting a coup like we did in Ukraine),
isn't that just tit for tat? We even hacked into the communications of European leaders and international
organizations. We were the first to use cyber warfare (Stuxnet, v. Iran), so how can we play holier
than thou? What goes around comes around. If we wanted to stop all this cyber warfare, the time
to do it was by treaty BEFORE we risked Iranian lives with the Stuxnet virus.
The release of e-mails was embarrassing for Secretary Clinton and the Democratic Party, but
I don't think it tipped the election. How many longtime Democratic voters stayed home on November
9th because of the release of these e-mails? How many working class voters switched their vote
because of the release of these e-mails?
The bigger issue for me is that because we are now politicizing this hacking (i.e. making the
argument that the hacking helped Republicans), many Republicans are opposed to investigating it.
If the hacking had tampered with voting, I would be extremely concerned, but since it only
involved email systems, I am not concerned.
The hacked and subsequently published emails revealed
the dishonest, deceitful, and unethical practices of the Democrats, especially in the treatment
of Sanders, who should have ditched the Democrats run for president as an Independent.
The emails
also revealed that Obama was a participant in HRC's use of a nongovernmental email system when
he stated emphatically that the first time he had ever heard of it was when the media first reported
it.
That's not the first and probably not the last time he will lie to the public. And the emails
revealed the satanic practices of Podesta. The published emails made the election interesting
and entertaining. But it is over and mow its time to put this issue to rest, accept the fact that
Donald Trump is our next President, the leader of the freest county in the free world, and get
on with governing this blessed great nation. Thank you.
I suppose Hillary's email server could have been hacked like this too. Could this be the reason
for Comey's stern reprimand of her? It is a little ironic, isn't it, that the DNC, while down
playing Hillary's issues with her private server and criticizing Comey for his handling of the
investigation, should itself suffer a damaging security breach of its own servers at the hands
of a foreign power, which was exactly Comey's concern. Not to mention the fact that the NYT, which
told us enough was enough with Hillary's email, is now up in arms about exactly that issue with
the shoe on the other foot
I am struggling with how to react to this, just as i do with the Edward Snowden disclosures. On
the one hand Russian meddling in a US election is certainly a concern, and should be investigated.
On the other hand the disclosures laid bare things many people had suspected, let the sunlight
in, so to speak.
Would Hillary even have had the nomination were it not for the favoritism shown
by the DNC to her campaign at the expense of the Sanders campaign? What was more meddlesome, the
Russian hack and release or the DNC's unfair treatment of Bernie? There is no suggestion that
the leaked documents were altered. The effect of the hack was to reveal the truth. Is that the
Russian goal, to delegitimize the election process by revealing the truth?
I suppose we finally got a taste of our own medicine -- countless governments overthrown and
elections influenced at the hand of the United States. Not fun is it? Perhaps we can learn a lesson
from this.
The agent could have walked over to the DNC headquarters and shown the DNC IT consultant his
badge. Or he could have invited the DNC IT consultant to his office--confirming his true identity.
Instead, the two communicated for several months just by phone, and as a result, the DNC IT consultant
did not fully believe he was speaking to an FBI agent, and so he did not act as aggressively to
search for the possible cyber intrusion.
She lost, get over it. Yes the Electoral College is obsolete. Yes some voting machines can
be hacked, but no-one is claiming that in states with tight results. Let's see what the official
investigation says, and who says it.
For better or worse Mr. Trump will be our next President because he won the election. Personally
I'm delighted that he may damp down the over-the-top Russophobia that is swirling around DC, "defense"
contractor Congressional shills, & the offices of the NYT but nowhere else in the country.
It's time for progressives to emerge from Obama-daze and convince the rest of the country that
they have a better vision for this country's future than that offered by conservatives/reactionaries.
One that doesn't involve bombing hapless foreigners. Articulate your policies as best you can,
learn from your defeats and from your victories. Onward!
If the hacking had tampered with voting, I would be extremely concerned, but since it only
involved email systems, I am not concerned. The hacked and subsequently published emails revealed
the dishonest, deceitful, and unethical practices of the Democrats, especially in the treatment
of Sanders, who should have ditched the Democrats run for president as an Independent. The emails
also revealed that Obama was a participant in HRC's use of a nongovernmental email system when
he stated emphatically that the first time he had ever heard of it was when the media first reported
it. That's not the first and probably not the last time he will lie to the public. And the emails
revealed the satanic practices of Podesta. The published emails made the election interesting
and entertaining. But it is over and mow its time to put this issue to rest, accept the fact that
Donald Trump is our next President, the leader of the freest county in the free world, and get
on with governing this blessed great nation. Thank you.
"... Can you please explain to me why you are thinking that this was a hack, not a leak by an insider? ..."
"... Yes, of course, Russians are everywhere, much like Jews in traditional anti-Semitic propaganda. ..."
"... Or in good McCarthyism tradition, they are under each bed. This evil autocrat Putin (who actually looks like yet another corrupt neoliberal ruler, who got Russia into WTO mousetrap and invests state money in the USA debt) manages to get everywhere, control everything and at the same time (German elections, Ukraine, Syria, world oil prices, Chechnya Islamic insurgence, US Presidential election, US stock market, you name it.) Amazing fit for a man over 60. ..."
"... And citing NYT article as for Russian hacks is probably not so much different from citing The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to support anti-Semitic propaganda. NYT was and still is one of the most enthusiastic supporters of Hillary campaign. Hardly a neutral observer. ..."
"... This level of anti-Russian hysteria that several people here are demonstrating is absolutely disgusting. Do you really want a military confrontation with Russia in Syria as most neocons badly want (but would prefer that other fought for them in the trenches) ? ..."
Former British Ambassador and current Wikileaks operative Craig Murray recently said he has
met the person who leaked DNC and Clinton campaign emails, and they aren't Russian.
While he is highly critical of Wikileaks, he suggests that without NSA coming forward with
hard data obtained via special program that uncover multiple levels of indirection, those charges
are just propaganda and insinuations.
And BTW after the fact it is usually impossible to discover who obtained the information, as
they use multiple levels of indirection and Russia might be just one of those indirection levels.
Use of Russian IP-space or Russian IPS might be just an attempt to create a false trail and to
implicate a wrong party.
As in any complex case you should not jump to conclusions so easily.
Or you can explain why you believe strange Faux news conspiracy stories with absolutely no evidence
that this person was in a position to hack the computers? Or why do you believe the obvious hugely
conflicted statements from Wikileaks operatives, who would never want to admit that they were
played by the Russians? Or a guy like Snowden who's life depend on Putins charity? Why would those
sources make anybody question the clear evidence already presented?
The fact that NSA is not going to publish all its evidence, is not a surprise. No need to tell
the Russians and other hackers how they can avoid detection. But it is not just the government
that conclude Russian involvement. Private company experts have reached the same conclusion. The
case for a Russian government hack is about as good as it can get.
Yes, of course, Russians are everywhere, much like Jews in traditional anti-Semitic propaganda.
Or in good McCarthyism tradition, they are under each bed. This evil autocrat Putin (who actually
looks like yet another corrupt neoliberal ruler, who got Russia into WTO mousetrap and invests
state money in the USA debt) manages to get everywhere, control everything and at the same time
(German elections, Ukraine, Syria, world oil prices, Chechnya Islamic insurgence, US Presidential
election, US stock market, you name it.) Amazing fit for a man over 60.
And citing NYT article as for Russian hacks is probably not so much different from citing
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to support anti-Semitic propaganda. NYT was and still
is one of the most enthusiastic supporters of Hillary campaign. Hardly a neutral observer.
This level of anti-Russian hysteria that several people here are demonstrating is absolutely
disgusting. Do you really want a military confrontation with Russia in Syria as most neocons badly
want (but would prefer that other fought for them in the trenches) ?
That's what this hysteria is now about, I think.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron -> likbez... , -1
The NSA is very good at finding the source of intrusion attempts because they happen all the time
every day from China, Russia, North Korea and just little island backwaters in the Pacific.
Doing
something to stop or punish the perpetrators is what is hard. Individual US installation instances
must each be protected by their own firewalls and then still monitored for unusual variations
in traffic patterns through firewalls to detect IP spoofing.
"... But "bastard neoliberalism" that Trump represents in his internal economic policy probably is not a solution for the nations problems. It is too early to say what will be the level of his deviation from election promises, but judging for his appointments it probably will be considerable -- up to a complete reverse on certain promises. ..."
"... So I view his election as the next logical step (after the first two by Bush II and Obama) toward military dictatorship. Previous forms of "Inverted totalitarism" -- a neoliberal version of Bolshevism (or, more correctly, Trotskyism -- many neocons were actually former Trotskyites ) seems to stop working. Neoliberal ideology was discredited in 2008. All three: Bolshevism, Trotskyism and neoliberalism might also be viewed as just different flavors of Corporatism. ..."
"... After 2008 crisis, neoliberalism in the USA continues to exist in zombie state: as a non-dead dead, so it will be inevitably replaced by something else. Much like Bolshevism after 1945. How soon it will happen and what will be the actual trigger (the next oil crisis which turns into another round of Great Recession?) and what will be the successor is anybody guess. Bolshevism in the USSR lasted till 1991 or 46 years. The victory on neoliberalism in the Cold War was in 1991 so if we add 50 years then 2041 might be the date. ..."
I think the shift from New Deal Capitalism to neoliberalism proved to be fatal for the form
of democracy that used to exist in the USA (never perfect, and never for the plebs).
Neoliberalism as a strange combination of socialism for the rich and feudalism for the poor
is anathema for democracy even for the narrow strata of the US society who used to have a say
in the political process. Like Bolshevism was dictatorship of nomenklatura under the slogan of
"Proletarians of all countries, unite!", neoliberalism is more like dictatorship of financial
oligarchy under the slogan "The financial elite of all countries, unite!")
In this sense Trump is just the logical end of the process that started in 1980 with Reagan,
or even earlier with Carter.
And at the same time [he is] the symptom of the crisis of the system, as large swats of population
this time voted against status quo and that created the revolutionary situation when the elite
was unable to govern in the old fashion. That's why, I think, Hillary lost and Trump won.
But "bastard neoliberalism" that Trump represents in his internal economic policy probably
is not a solution for the nations problems. It is too early to say what will be the level of his
deviation from election promises, but judging for his appointments it probably will be considerable
-- up to a complete reverse on certain promises.
So I view his election as the next logical step (after the first two by Bush II and Obama)
toward military dictatorship. Previous forms of "Inverted totalitarism" -- a neoliberal version
of Bolshevism (or, more correctly, Trotskyism -- many neocons were actually former Trotskyites
) seems to stop working. Neoliberal ideology was discredited in 2008. All three: Bolshevism, Trotskyism
and neoliberalism might also be viewed as just different flavors of Corporatism.
After 2008 crisis, neoliberalism in the USA continues to exist in zombie state: as a non-dead
dead, so it will be inevitably replaced by something else. Much like Bolshevism after 1945. How
soon it will happen and what will be the actual trigger (the next oil crisis which turns into
another round of Great Recession?) and what will be the successor is anybody guess. Bolshevism
in the USSR lasted till 1991 or 46 years. The victory on neoliberalism in the Cold War was in
1991 so if we add 50 years then 2041 might be the date.
And the slide toward military dictatorship does not necessary need to take a form of junta,
which takes power via coup d'état. The control of the government by three letter agencies ("national
security state") seems to be sufficient, can be accomplished by stealth, and might well be viewed
as a form of military dictatorship too. So it can be a gradual slide: phase I, II, III, etc.
The problem here as with Brezhnev socialism in the USSR is the growing level of degeneration
of elite and the growth of influence of deep state, which includes at its core three letter agencies.
As Michail Gorbachev famously said about neoliberal revolution in the USSR "the process already
started in full force". He just did not understand at this point that he already completely lost
control over neoliberal "Perestroika" of the USSR. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perestroika
In a way, the US Presidents are now more and more ceremonial figures that help to maintain
the illusion of the legitimacy of the system. Obama is probably the current pinnacle of this process
(which is reflected in one of his nicknames -- "teleprompter" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/22/obama-photo-caption-contest-teleprompter_n_1821154.html)
.
You probably could elect a dog instead of Trump and the US foreign policy will stay exactly
the same. This hissy fits about Russians that deep state gave Trump before December 19, might
be viewed as a warning as for any potential changes in foreign policy.
As we saw with foreign policy none of recent presidents really fully control it. They still
are important players, but the question is whether they are still dominant players. My impression
is that it is already by-and-large defined and implemented by the deep state. Sometimes dragging
the President forcefully into the desirable course of actions.
"... Republican leaders in Congress are already sending Trump a subtle but clear warning: accept our business-as-usual Chamber of Commerce agenda or we will join Democrats to impeach you. ..."
"... Impeachment has been the goal of Democrats since the day after Trump won the election, and the Republican establishment will use the veiled threat as leverage to win concession after concession from the Trump White House. ..."
"... There are at least four Trump campaign promises which, if not dropped or severely compromised, could generate Republican support for impeachment: Trump's Supreme Court appointments, abandoning the Trans Pacific Partnership, radical rollback of Obama regulatory projects, and real enforcement of our nation's immigration laws. ..."
"... On regulatory rollback, Congress can legitimately insist on negotiating the details with Trump. But on the other three, immigration, the TPP, and Supreme Court nominees, Trump's campaign promises were so specific - and so popular - that he need not accept congressional foot-dragging. ..."
"... Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell announced this week he will oppose Trump's tax reforms. Senator Lindsey Graham is joining Democrats in sponsoring new legislation to protect the "Dreamers" from deportation after their unlawfully granted legal status and work permits expire. Senator Susan Collins will oppose any restrictions on Muslim refugees, no matter how weak and inadequate the vetting to weed out jihadists. Senator Lamar Alexander aims to protect major parts of Obamacare, despite five years of voluminous Republican promises to "repeal and replace" it if they ever had the power to do so. ..."
"... on the House side, we have the naysayer-in-chief, Speaker Paul Ryan, who refused to campaign with Donald Trump in Wisconsin, and who has vowed to obstruct Trump's most important and most popular campaign promise - an end to open borders and vigorous immigration law enforcement. ..."
"... Donald Trump won a electoral mandate to change direction and put American interests first, beginning with border security. If the congressional Republican establishment chooses to block the implementation of that electoral mandate, it would destroy not only Trump's agenda, it would destroy the Republican Party. ..."
Several months ago I was asked what advice I would give to the Trump campaign.
I said, only half joking, that he had better pick a vice presidential candidate the establishment
hates more than it hates him. That would be his only insurance against impeachment. Those drums have
already begun to beat, be it ever so subtly.
Is anyone surprised how quickly the establishment that Donald Trump campaigned against has announced
opposition to much of his policy agenda? No. But few understand that the passionate opposition includes
a willingness to impeach and remove President Trump if he does not come to heel on his America First
goals.
Ferocious opposition to Trump from the left was expected and thus surprises nobody. From the comical
demands for vote recounts to street protests by roving bands of leftist hate-mongers and condescending
satire on late-night television, hysterical leftist opposition to Trump is now part of the cultural
landscape.
But those are amusing sideshows to the main event, the Republican establishment's intransigent
opposition to key pillars of the Republican president's agenda.
Republican leaders in Congress are already sending Trump a subtle but clear warning: accept our
business-as-usual Chamber of Commerce agenda or we will join Democrats to impeach you.
If you think talk of impeachment is insane when the man has not even been sworn into office yet,
you have not been paying attention. Impeachment has been the goal of Democrats since the day after
Trump won the election, and the Republican establishment will use the veiled threat as leverage to
win concession after concession from the Trump White House.
What are the key policy differences that motivate congressional opposition to the Trump agenda?
There are at least four Trump campaign promises which, if not dropped or severely compromised, could
generate Republican support for impeachment: Trump's Supreme Court appointments, abandoning the Trans
Pacific Partnership, radical rollback of Obama regulatory projects, and real enforcement of our nation's
immigration laws.
On regulatory rollback, Congress can legitimately insist on negotiating the details with Trump.
But on the other three, immigration, the TPP, and Supreme Court nominees, Trump's campaign promises
were so specific - and so popular - that he need not accept congressional foot-dragging.
Yet, while the President-elect 's transition teams at the EPA, State Department and Education
Department are busy mapping ambitious changes in direction, Congress's Republican leadership is busy
doubling down on dissonance and disloyalty.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell announced this week he will oppose Trump's tax reforms.
Senator Lindsey Graham is joining Democrats in sponsoring new legislation to protect the "Dreamers"
from deportation after their unlawfully granted legal status and work permits expire. Senator Susan
Collins will oppose any restrictions on Muslim refugees, no matter how weak and inadequate the vetting
to weed out jihadists. Senator Lamar Alexander aims to protect major parts of Obamacare, despite
five years of voluminous Republican promises to "repeal and replace" it if they ever had the power
to do so.
And then, on the House side, we have the naysayer-in-chief, Speaker Paul Ryan, who refused to
campaign with Donald Trump in Wisconsin, and who has vowed to obstruct Trump's most important and
most popular campaign promise - an end to open borders and vigorous immigration law enforcement.
It is no exaggeration to say that Trump's success or failure in overcoming the opposition to immigration
enforcement will determine the success or failure of his presidency. If he cannot deliver on his
most prominent and most popular campaign promise, nothing else will matter very much.
So, the bad news for President Trump is this: If he keeps faith with his campaign promises on
immigration, for example to limit Muslim immigration from terrorism afflicted regions, which is within
his legitimate constitutional powers as President, he will risk impeachment. However, his congressional
critics will face one enormous hurdle in bringing impeachment charges related to immigration enforcement:
about 90 percent of what Trump plans to do is within current law and would require no new legislation
in Congress. Obama disregarded immigration laws he did not like, so all Trump has to do is enforce
those laws.
Now, if you think talk of impeachment is ridiculous because Republicans control Congress, you
are underestimating the depth of Establishment Republican support for open borders.
The first effort in the 21st century at a general amnesty for all 20 million illegal aliens came
in January 2005 from newly re-elected President George Bush. The "Gang of Eight" amnesty bill passed
by the US Senate in 2013 did not have the support of the majority of Republican senators, and now
they are faced with a Republican president pledged to the exact opposite agenda, immigration enforcement.
And yet, do not doubt the establishment will sacrifice a Republican president to protect the globalist,
open borders status quo.
The leader and spokesman for that establishment open borders agenda is not some obscure backbencher,
it is the Republican Speaker of the House. Because the Speaker controls the rules and the legislative
calendar, if he chooses to play hardball against Trump on immigration he can block any of Trump's
other policy initiatives until Trump abandons his immigration enforcement goals.
What all this points to is a bloody civil war within the Republican Party fought on the battlefield
of congressional committee votes.
Donald Trump won a electoral mandate to change direction and put American interests first, beginning
with border security. If the congressional Republican establishment chooses to block the implementation
of that electoral mandate, it would destroy not only Trump's agenda, it would destroy the Republican
Party.
"... "Earlier this week, I met separately with FBI [Director] James Comey and DNI Jim Clapper, and there is strong consensus among us on the scope, nature, and intent of Russian interference in our presidential election," the message said, according to officials who have seen it. ..."
"... Comment: The FBI now flip-flops from its previous assessment: FBI rejects CIA assessment that Russia influenced presidential election ..."
FBI and National Intelligence chiefs both agree with the CIA assessment that Russia interfered with
the 2016 US presidential elections partly in an effort to help Donald Trump win the White House,
US media report.
FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper are both convinced
that Russia was behind cyberattacks that targeted Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton
and her campaign chairman, John Podesta,
The Washington Post and reported Friday, citing a message sent by CIA Director John Brennan
to his employees.
"Earlier this week, I met separately with FBI [Director] James Comey and DNI Jim Clapper,
and there is strong consensus among us on the scope, nature, and intent of Russian interference in
our presidential election," the message said, according to officials who have seen it.
"The three of us also agree that our organizations, along with others, need to focus on completing
the thorough review of this issue that has been directed by President Obama and which is being led
by the DNI," it continued.
"... To whom do US intelligence agencies owe protection against hackers? The DNC was informed that the Russians or someone pretending to be the Russians was on them. To put your political dirty tricks or your apprehensions about the possible discovery of apparent pay-to-play games in your client's foundation in your emails after being warned was just plain foolish. ..."
"... The Clintons' venality has been an open secret for 30 years, though Dem-leaning pundits prefer to ignore it or attribute it to the evil right wing conspiracy. From the Arkansas arrangements permitting the purchase of influence by engaging as attorney the wife of the AG or the Governor, the miraculous commodity investment, the Marc Rich and other pardons all stunk. ..."
"... That the Clinton Foundation and its generous support for Clinton political operators might be a pay-to-play operation was not a surprise to longtime observers. I thought it was admirably bold and clever myself. Nobody else has been able to organize a tax-exempt political slush fund under personal control except even in Illinois where we have a lot of smart lawyers in politics. I suspect we will see a lot more political slush funds disguised as foundations in the future. ..."
"... We also need to think about what political parties actually are. Then are not government agencies or acting on behalf of government agencies or the people at large. Political parties are large private lobbying firms for a set of loosely affiliated private interests that promote an agenda and communications expressly triangulated to satisfy both their donor class and voting majority constituencies. They are more like corporations with owners, employees, and clients than any public entity. ..."
"... Former British Ambassador and current Wikileaks operative Craig Murray recently said he has met the person who leaked DNC and Clinton campaign emails, and they aren't Russian. ..."
"... And BTW after the fact it is usually impossible to discover who obtained the information, as they use multiple levels of indirection and Russia might be just one of those indirection levels. Use of Russian IP-space or Russian IPS might be just an attempt to create a false trail and to implicate a wrong party. ..."
It was only after listening to the Donna Brazile interview that I decided to comment on the hacking
because of how wrong that Donna Brazile was in so many ways. What responsibility do you think
that the Federal government should have for protecting the data of a private political operation?
What legal or regulatory responsibility do you think that the Federal government has towards the
protection of data for private civilian entities? The second question is rhetorical only to put
the first question in perspective since they are materially exactly the same thing according to
law. How difficult do you think it is to avoid exposure of incriminating or covert E-mails simply
by not having such things?
To whom do US intelligence agencies owe protection against hackers? The DNC was informed that
the Russians or someone pretending to be the Russians was on them. To put your political dirty
tricks or your apprehensions about the possible discovery of apparent pay-to-play games in your
client's foundation in your emails after being warned was just plain foolish.
The Clintons' venality
has been an open secret for 30 years, though Dem-leaning pundits prefer to ignore it or attribute
it to the evil right wing conspiracy. From the Arkansas arrangements permitting the purchase of
influence by engaging as attorney the wife of the AG or the Governor, the miraculous commodity
investment, the Marc Rich and other pardons all stunk.
HRC was elected senator from NY despite
that. That the Clinton Foundation and its generous support for Clinton political operators might
be a pay-to-play operation was not a surprise to longtime observers. I thought it was admirably
bold and clever myself. Nobody else has been able to organize a tax-exempt political slush fund
under personal control except even in Illinois where we have a lot of smart lawyers in politics.
I suspect we will see a lot more political slush funds disguised as foundations in the future.
THANKS! We better get used to Republicans, at least until they "d'oh" their way out of political
power just like the Democrats did. Democrats will never get it back on their own.
I think there was a serious lack of IT competence in the DNC playing a big role. One being with
the obvious incompetence of their cyber-security contractor and another the lack of supervision
or procedures set for this person:
I agree that the procedures and rules at the FBI could have been much better. Why the FBI agent
didn't (or maybe (s)he did) send the information up higher in the chain (all the way to the President)
is a bit of a mystery. Hacking of one of our two major parties should have been Presidential level
info, or at least cabinet level.
How about the possibility of not even having any E-mails incriminating Democrats of political
corruption? Would that have been to hard? I am not saying that they should not be corrupt, just
don't put it in an E-mail for Christ's sake.
[Interesting that Putin is the bad guy here for exposing the behavior of the DNC. Why so much
talk of Russians and so little talk of what was in those Emails?]
The 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak is a collection of Democratic National Committee
(DNC) emails leaked to and subsequently published by WikiLeaks on July 22, 2016. This collection
included 19,252 emails and 8,034 attachments from the DNC, the governing body of the United States'
Democratic Party.[1] The leak includes emails from seven key DNC staff members, and date from
January 2015 to May 2016.[2] The leak prompted the resignation of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz
before the Democratic National Convention.[3] After the convention, DNC CEO Amy Dacey, CFO Brad
Marshall, and Communications Director Luis Miranda also resigned in the wake of the controversy.[4]
WikiLeaks did not reveal its source; a self-styled hacker going by the moniker Guccifer 2.0
claimed responsibility for the attack. On July 25, 2016, the FBI announced that it would investigate
the hack[5][6][7][8][9][10][11] The same day, the DNC issued a formal apology to Bernie Sanders
and his supporters, stating, "On behalf of everyone at the DNC, we want to offer a deep and sincere
apology to Senator Sanders, his supporters, and the entire Democratic Party for the inexcusable
remarks made over email," and that the emails did not reflect the DNC's "steadfast commitment
to neutrality during the nominating process."[12] On November 6, 2016, WikiLeaks released a second
batch of DNC emails, adding 8,263 emails to its collection.[13]
On December 9, 2016, the CIA told U.S. legislators that the U.S. Intelligence Community concluded
Russia conducted operations during the 2016 U.S. election to assist Donald Trump in winning the
presidency.[14] Multiple U.S intelligence agencies concluded people with direct ties to the Kremlin
gave WikiLeaks hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee...
...Bernie Sanders' campaign
In the emails, DNC staffers derided the Sanders campaign.[45] The Washington Post reported:
"Many of the most damaging emails suggest the committee was actively trying to undermine Bernie
Sanders's presidential campaign. Basically, all of these examples came late in the primary-after
Hillary Clinton was clearly headed for victory-but they belie the national party committee's stated
neutrality in the race even at that late stage."[46]
In a May 2016 email chain, the DNC chief financial officer (CFO) Brad Marshall told the DNC
chief executive officer, Amy Dacy, that they should have someone from the media ask Sanders if
he is an atheist prior to the West Virginia primary.[46][47] In another email, Wasserman Schultz
said of Bernie Sanders, "He isn't going to be president."[45]
On May 21, 2016, DNC National Press Secretary Mark Paustenbach sent an email to DNC Spokesman
Luis Miranda mentioning a controversy that ensued in December 2015 when the National Data Director
of the Sanders campaign and three subordinate staffers accessed the Clinton campaign's voter information
on the NGP VAN database.[48] (The party accused Sanders' campaign of impropriety and briefly limited
their access to the database. The Sanders campaign filed suit for breach of contract against the
DNC; they dropped the suit on April 29, 2016.)[47][49][50] Paustenbach suggested that the incident
could be used to promote a "narrative for a story, which is that Bernie never had his act together,
that his campaign was a mess." (The suggestion was rejected by the DNC.) [46][47] The Washington
Post wrote: "Paustenbach's suggestion, in that way, could be read as a defense of the committee
rather than pushing negative information about Sanders. But this is still the committee pushing
negative information about one of its candidates."...
...Financial and donor information
The New York Times wrote that the cache included "thousands of emails exchanged by Democratic
officials and party fund-raisers, revealing in rarely seen detail the elaborate, ingratiating
and often bluntly transactional exchanges necessary to harvest hundreds of millions of dollars
from the party's wealthy donor class. The emails capture a world where seating charts are arranged
with dollar totals in mind, where a White House celebration of gay pride is a thinly disguised
occasion for rewarding wealthy donors and where physical proximity to the president is the most
precious of currencies."[60] As is common in national politics, large party donors "were the subject
of entire dossiers, as fund-raisers tried to gauge their interests, annoyances and passions."[60]
In a series of email exchanges in April and May 2016, DNC fundraising staff discussed and compiled
a list of people (mainly donors) who might be appointed to federal boards and commissions.[61]
Center for Responsive Politics senior fellow Bob Biersack noted that this is a longstanding practice
in the United States: "Big donors have always risen to the top of lists for appointment to plum
ambassadorships and other boards and commissions around the federal landscape."[61] The White
House denied that financial support for the party was connected to board appointments, saying:
"Being a donor does not get you a role in this administration, nor does it preclude you from getting
one. We've said this for many years now and there's nothing in the emails that have been released
that contradicts that."...
That does not make Putin a good guy. I was not a fan of Snowden's either. But it is easier for
me to avoid incriminating myself in Emails than it is to get a foreign leader half way around
the world to not expose my self-incrimination if it is in his self-interest to do so and he has
the resources to do so.
We also need to think about what political parties actually are. Then are not government agencies
or acting on behalf of government agencies or the people at large. Political parties are large
private lobbying firms for a set of loosely affiliated private interests that promote an agenda
and communications expressly triangulated to satisfy both their donor class and voting majority
constituencies. They are more like corporations with owners, employees, and clients than any public
entity.
So a bunch of nothing burgers about how the sausage is made. You don't say that there is actually
people in the DNC that have their own personal favorite among the primary candidates - shocking???
And campaign donations in exchange for the ability to gain influence -- almost half a chocking
as the K-Street project - and a quarter as shocking as the revelation that donating to the Clinton
foundation could NOT give the donors what they wanted from the State Department (what an absurdly
incompetent scheme of corruption - how could we let her run the gobinment).
I am sure that the Russian governments hack of the GOP didn't find anything like that - and
that's the reason they didn't make those emails public.
The general advice that you should not send anything by email that you don't want the public
to know should have been headed by all involved. Maybe the DNC could learn from Hillary - who
had > 30K emails examined and not a single one where she had said anything not good for public
consumption.
"...Maybe the DNC could learn from Hillary - who had > 30K emails examined and not a single one
where she had said anything not good for public consumption."
[Now you are starting to come around.
NO, I did not find anything in the Emails shocking. None of it was a surprise at all to me.
However, it was enough for a lot of other people to be influenced in their voting (likely to stay
home and maybe it helped the Green Party get a few more votes), otherwise no one would care that
they were hacked.
Observer's comment just down thread shows that he got it. Now he was not a Hillary supporter
and more likely than not a Libertarian of sorts, but the principle here is universal, simple risk
management where there was nothing to be gained and everything to lose.
Also, going to war over the hacked Emails of any political party is probably off the table:<)
Where Hillary made a mistake was making an enemy that had one of the worlds most aggressive state
sponsored internet hacking programs (China and the US being the only ones that are more capable,
but still less aggressive and more covert).]
You have exhaustively proven that there was no crime or wrong doing committed by the DNC or Hillary.
Thanks.
You have provided evidence that politics is politics and like sausage making you don't want
to actually see it up close and personal.
Nothing here, nothing at all.
Except for Marshall McLuhan's observation that the media is the message. In this case the Russian
leaked emails to Assange lead Wikileaks calculated to dribble out over the months and weeks before
the November election to suggest there were illegalities and criminal behavior being covered up
by Hillary and the DNC at EXACTLY the same time Donald Trump is jetting around the country telling
everybody who listened that the election was rigged, Hillary is a crook, and the MSM was out to
get him.
Wow, how did you miss that and the implications derived from it?
Former British Ambassador and current Wikileaks operative Craig Murray recently said he has
met the person who leaked DNC and Clinton campaign emails, and they aren't Russian.
While he is highly critical of Wikileaks, he suggests that without NSA coming forward with
hard data obtained via special program that uncover multiple levels of indirection, those charges
are just propaganda and insinuations.
And BTW after the fact it is usually impossible to discover who obtained the information, as
they use multiple levels of indirection and Russia might be just one of those indirection levels.
Use of Russian IP-space or Russian IPS might be just an attempt to create a false trail and to
implicate a wrong party.
As in any complex case you should not jump to conclusions so easily.
ilsm -> im1dc... , -1
Nothing Ron says is clearing.
The e-mail thing is about safeguarding and preserving public records. The content of mishandled records is not an issue.
The public demanded to know what government does. Congress passed the federal records act. The crime has nothing to do with content.
That is one felony Comey could complain about justice whitewashing. The elements of friendly information released must never be discussed, that would make the
breeches worse. Except in closed, secure rooms with no electronic bugging devices.
"... These allegations were followed Wednesday by a press briefing in which White House spokesman Josh Earnest declared that media outfits in the US, in reporting on the Democratic Party emails released by WikiLeaks, "essentially became the arms of Russian intelligence." ..."
"... Later that day, President Obama threatened to retaliate against Russia, telling National Public Radio, "I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections, that we need to take action and we will." ..."
"... The Times followed up its inflammatory article with an editorial Thursday all but accusing the president-elect of acting as a Russian agent. ..."
"... There are bitter and raging conflicts within the state, and a faction of the military-intelligence apparatus is determined that there be no retreat from an aggressive confrontation with Russia. This is connected to anger over the debacle of the CIA-led regime-change operation in Syria. ..."
"... Bound up with this internecine conflict within the ruling class, there is a concerted effort to politically bludgeon the American people into supporting further military escalation, both in the Middle East and against Russia itself. ..."
The American population is being subjected to a furious barrage of propaganda by the media and
political establishment aimed at paving the way to war.
The campaign was sharply escalated this week, beginning with Wednesday's publication of a lead
article in the New York Times . Based entirely on unnamed sources and flimsy and concocted
evidence, it was presented as definitive proof of Russia's hacking of Democratic Party emails and
waging of "cyberwar" against the United States.
These allegations were followed Wednesday by a press briefing in which White House spokesman
Josh Earnest declared that media outfits in the US, in reporting on the Democratic Party emails released
by WikiLeaks, "essentially became the arms of Russian intelligence."
On Thursday, Earnest declared that president-elect Trump had encouraged "Russia to hack his opponent
because he believed it would help his campaign." Later that day, President Obama threatened to
retaliate against Russia, telling National Public Radio, "I think there is no doubt that when any
foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections, that we need to take action and
we will."
These warmongering comments by the Obama administration were accompanied by editorials in leading
US and international newspapers denouncing Trump's accommodative stance toward Russia and clamoring
for a more aggressive response to the alleged hacking. News reports, based on unnamed intelligence
officials, breathlessly proclaim that Russian President Vladimir Putin directly ordered and oversaw
the hacking.
The Times followed up its inflammatory article with an editorial Thursday all but accusing
the president-elect of acting as a Russian agent. "There could be no more 'useful idiot,' to
use Lenin's term of art, than an American president who doesn't know he's being played by a wily
foreign power," the Times declared. The editorial further defined Russia as "one of our oldest, most
determined foreign adversaries," adding, "Kremlin meddling in the 2016 election" justifies "retaliatory
measures."
The declarations by the Times and other media outlets combine all of the noxious elements
of 1950s McCarthyism, with capitalist Russia replacing the Soviet Union: hysterical denunciation
of "wily" Russia, shameless lying and attacks on domestic opponents as spies, traitors and agents
of foreign governments.
There are bitter and raging conflicts within the state, and a faction of the military-intelligence
apparatus is determined that there be no retreat from an aggressive confrontation with Russia. This
is connected to anger over the debacle of the CIA-led regime-change operation in Syria. Trump
has packed his cabinet with generals and is planning a massive escalation of war, but he has also
indicated a preference for greater accommodation with Russia.
Bound up with this internecine conflict within the ruling class, there is a concerted effort
to politically bludgeon the American people into supporting further military escalation, both in
the Middle East and against Russia itself.
The propaganda campaign alleging Russian interference in the US election parallels a related media
blitzkrieg claiming that Syrian government troops, backed by Russia, are carrying out massacres as
they retake the Syrian city of Aleppo.
The Times ' lead editorial on Thursday, titled "Aleppo's Destroyers: Assad, Putin, Iran,"
declares: "After calling on Mr. Assad to 'step aside' in 2011, Mr. Obama was never able to make it
happen, and it may never have been in his power to make it happen, at least at a cost acceptable
to the American people." The front-page lead of Thursday's Times bemoans the fact that efforts
to whip up public support for US military intervention in Syria have "not resonated" as much as previous
propaganda campaigns.
The international press has joined in the hysteria. An op-ed in Germany's Der Spiegel bitterly
complains that "Obama sought a diplomatic, not a military solution" to the crisis in Syria. It "made
him popular, both in the United States and here [in Germany]," the piece states, but adds that such
"self-righteousness is wrong."
Such media propaganda campaigns are not new. Without exception, they have preceded every bloody
military adventure: the attempts to blame Afghanistan for the September 11 terrorist attacks in the
run-up to that country's invasion in 2001; the lying claims about "weapons of mass destruction" before
the 2003 invasion of Iraq; and the reports of an imminent massacre of civilians in Benghazi that
preceded the US bombing and destruction of Libya in 2011.
The difference now, however, is that this campaign is directed not at a virtually defenseless
and impoverished former colony, but at Russia, the world's second-ranked nuclear power. None of the
figures carrying out this campaign care to explain how a war against Russia should be fought, how
many people will die, and how such a war could avoid a nuclear exchange leading to the destruction
of human civilization.
Behind the banner headlines and vituperative editorials, real steps are being taken to prepare
for warfare on a scale not seen for 60 years. Earlier this year, US Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark
A. Milley told the Association of the United States Army that the military must prepare for wars
against great powers, which will be "very highly lethal, unlike anything our Army has experienced
since World War II."
The campaign that has developed over the past two weeks makes clear what the policy of a Clinton
administration would have been. The Democratic Party and its allied media outlets have rooted their
opposition to Trump not on the basis of his losing the popular vote by nearly three million ballots,
or that he is appointing a cabinet dominated by right-wing, reactionary billionaires, bankers, business
executives and generals, but on the charge that he is "soft" on Russia. That is, the Democratic Party
has managed to attack Trump from the right.
Whatever the outcome of the conflict within the state, the American ruling class is preparing
for war. The dissolution of the USSR 25 years ago was greeted with enraptured declarations of an
era of perpetual peace, in which a world under the unrivaled hegemony of the United States would
be free of the wars that plagued mankind in the 20th century. Now, after a quarter century of bloody
regional conflicts, the blood-curdling declarations of the press make it clear that a new world war
is in the making.
Among broad sections of workers and young people, there is deep skepticism toward government
lies and hostility to war. However, this opposition can find no reflection within any faction of
the political establishment. The building of a new anti-war movement, based on the international
unity of the working class in opposition to capitalism and all the political parties of the ruling
class, is the urgent task.
Last week we reported that the State of Georgia had traced an attempted break-in to its voter
registration database to none other than the famous Russian government agency, the Department of
Homeland Security.
Now it has been revealed that Kentucky and West Virginia "have confirmed suspected cyberattacks
linked to the same U.S. Department of Homeland Security IP address as last month's massive attack
in Georgia". There must be some way to blame Moscow:
While there could be an "innocent" explanation for such attacks (testing network security, for
example), the Department of Homeland Security did not inform any of these states - before or
after the attacks - that they had been conducted, for security-checking purposes or otherwise. In
other words: These states still don't know why DHS targeted, and they're still waiting for an
answer:
In the past week, the Georgia Secretary of State's Office has confirmed 10 separate
cyberattacks on its network over the past 10 months that were traced back to DHS addresses.
"We're being told something that they think they have it figured out, yet nobody's really
showed us how this happened," Kemp said. "We need to know."
He says the new information from the two other states presents even more reason to be
concerned.
"So now this just raises more questions that haven't been answered about this and continues to
raise the alarms and concern that I have," Kemp said.
Georgia's Secretary of State says he has already sent an appeal to the incoming Trump
administration, asking for assistance in resolving this bizarre string of cyber attacks.
"... Danielle Ryan is an Irish freelance writer, journalist and media analyst. She has lived and traveled extensively in the US, Germany, Russia and Hungary. Her byline has appeared at RT, The Nation, Rethinking Russia, The BRICS Post, New Eastern Outlook, Global Independent Analytics and many others. She also works on copywriting and editing projects. Follow her on Twitter or Facebook or at her website www.danielleryan.net. ..."
According to the anonymous sources inside the anonymous US intelligence agency,
Putin's objectives were multifaceted, but the whole thing began as a "vendetta"
against Hillary Clinton because she said some mean things about him a few
times. Putin is also an "immature 12 year-old child," a former US official with
links to the defense industry, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed
(with high confidence).
The high level, anonymous and completely trustworthy sources also told a major
US news agency that Putin himself had piloted a specially-designed Russian spy
plane across the Atlantic to personally direct the still-ongoing hacking
operations from the air.
via GIPHY
Satellite images seen by a separate anonymous NASA whistleblower are believed
to show Putin in the cockpit of the spy plane alongside his co-pilot Boris, a
lifelike robotic bear which has been under secret development in the depths of
Siberia and has been programmed to attack Putin's enemies on command using a
variety of lethal methods.
The NASA whistleblower did not provide journalists with photographic evidence,
but the editors had a chat about it in their morning meeting and concluded that
it's probably still true.
In fact, the American news agency could not verify any of the claims from the
officials who commented for the story, but given that their sources used the
term "high confidence" they took this to mean the evidence must be "nearly
incontrovertible" and relayed the information to the public with this
implication. An understandable decision, since, as we all know, only 100
percent factual information is ever released by anonymous intelligence
officials.
Okay, let's rewind.
Obviously that bit about the bear and the plane was
fake news. And maybe a few other bits, too. But it all demonstrates a point.
I've provided you with about the same amount of evidence as NBC has in its
story this week
claiming Putin personally rigged
the US election:
I made some allegations, I cited anonymous sources and then I conveyed it to
you readers as "nearly incontrovertible" and suggested no further digging or
investigation, or even a bit of healthy skepticism, was necessary.
Journalism is dying
There was a time when journalists needed more than 'maybes' and 'probablys'
before deciding what their sources told them was "incontrovertible" and
delivering half-baked conspiracy theories to the public. That time has
apparently long gone.
Imagine for a moment that RT published a story about, oh, let's say Barack
Obama personally hacking into Putin's computer. Now imagine the only evidence
RT provided was "anonymous FSB officials" and told its readers the story was
therefore practically indisputable because these anonymous sources were
"confident" in the legitimacy of their secret evidence. Imagine the laughs that
would get from sneering Western journalists. Well, that's pretty much exactly
what NBC did. And they're not alone. The
Washington Post
has been at
it too,
reporting on a "secret" CIA assessment that Russia worked to get Donald
Trump elected, quoting anonymous "top officials" and like NBC, providing no
evidence.
Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but for something to be presented to the
public as indisputable fact, there must be evidence made available to back it
up. Neither the CIA or the FBI have provided any such evidence to the public.
Perhaps the saddest thing though is having to acknowledge that all our debates
over fake news and real news really don't matter because the very people we are
told to trust are the people who will most adeptly use the public's concerns
over fake news to manipulate them. The CIA, for example, is hardly known for
its long history of telling the truth. Its employees are literally trained in
the art of deception and disinformation. They are hardly averse to creating a
bit of fake news or making up 'evidence' where needed. Anything they say or do
can be forgiven once someone utters the words "national security".
NBC's story claimed Putin not only wanted to embarrass Clinton with the DNC
leaks, but to highlight corruption in the American political system; the emails
showing, for example, how the DNC colluded with the Clinton campaign to ensure
Clinton, not Bernie Sanders, would be the Democratic nominee.
Now, what better way to encourage people to ignore the corruption in
the system than to focus their attention on the idea that Putin is the one who
told them about it? Are people really reading these stories and convincing
themselves that the CIA is the most credible source of public information on
what the Russians are doing?
Clinton's long-shot
We've been hearing about Russian hacking for months, long before the election
results in November, so why the sudden confidence in all this new and secret
evidence? Why the new assertions that Putin himself directed the hacking? Look
at your calendar. The Electoral College votes on Monday and it may be Clinton's
last hope. It's a long shot, but in true Clinton character, she won't go down
without a fight to the last gasp. Her best hope is to convince the Electoral
College that Trump's win was influenced by a foreign power, is therefore
illegitimate and that national security will be at stake if he takes office.
Amazingly, in the midst of all this, while Clinton's camp is still trying to
get her elected through back-door tactics, Obama has pretty much called the
election results
legitimate .
Members of the Electoral College are expected to vote the way their states
voted, but they are not required to. If Clinton can get enough members to flip
their votes, Trump is deprived of the 270 votes he needs to become president.
That's what this is really all about - and the media is serving as Clinton's
willing accomplice.
Danielle Ryan is an Irish freelance writer, journalist and media analyst.
She has lived and traveled extensively in the US, Germany, Russia and Hungary.
Her byline has appeared at RT, The Nation, Rethinking Russia, The BRICS Post,
New Eastern Outlook, Global Independent Analytics and many others. She also
works on copywriting and editing projects. Follow her on Twitter or Facebook or
at her website www.danielleryan.net.
Donald Trump won the electoral college at least in part by promising to bring coal jobs
back to Appalachia and manufacturing jobs back to the Rust Belt. Neither promise can be honored
– for the most part we're talking about jobs lost, not to unfair foreign competition, but to
technological change. But a funny thing happens when people like me try to point that out:
we get enraged responses from economists who feel an affinity for the working people of the
afflicted regions – responses that assume that trying to do the numbers must reflect contempt
for regional cultures, or something.
Is this the right narrative? I am no longer comfortable with this line:
for the most part we're talking about jobs lost, not to unfair foreign competition, but
to technological change.
Try to place that line in context with this from
Noah Smith:
Then, in the 1990s and 2000s, the U.S opened its markets to Chinese goods, first with Most
Favored Nation trading status, and then by supporting China's accession to the WTO. The resulting
competition from cheap Chinese goods contributed to vast inequality in the United States, reversing
many of the employment gains of the 1990s and holding down U.S. wages. But this sacrifice on
the part of 90% of the American populace enabled China to lift its enormous population out
of abject poverty and become a middle-income country.
Was this "fair" trade? I think not. Let me suggest this narrative: Sometime during the
Clinton Administration, it was decided that an economically strong China was good for both the
globe and the U.S. Fair enough. To enable that outcome, U.S. policy deliberately sacrificed manufacturing
workers on the theory that a.) the marginal global benefit from the job gain to a Chinese worker
exceeded the marginal global cost from a lost US manufacturing job, b.) the U.S. was shifting
toward a service sector economy anyway and needed to reposition its workforce accordingly and
c.) the transition costs of shifting workers across sectors in the U.S. were minimal.
As a consequence – and through a succession of administrations – the US tolerated implicit
subsidies of Chinese industries, including national industrial policy designed to strip production
from the US.
And then there was the currency manipulation. I am always shocked when international economists
claim "fair trade," pretending that the financial side of the international accounts is irrelevant.
As if that wasn't a big, fat thumb on the scale. Sure, "currency manipulation" is running the
other way these days. After, of course, a portion of manufacturing was absorbed overseas. After
the damage is done.
Yes, technological change is happening. But the impact, and the costs, were certainly accelerated
by U.S. policy.
It was a great plan. On paper, at least. And I would argue that in fact points a and b above
were correct.
But point c. Point c was a bad call. Point c was a disastrous call. Point c helped deliver
Donald Trump to the Oval Office. To be sure, the FBI played its role, as did the Russians. But
even allowing for the poor choice of Hilary Clinton as the Democratic nominee (the lack of contact
with rural and semi-rural voters blinded the Democrats to the deep animosity toward their candidate),
it should never have come to this.
As the opioid epidemic sweeps through rural America, an ever-greater number of drug-dependent
newborns are straining hospital neonatal units and draining precious medical resources.
The problem has grown more quickly than realized and shows no signs of abating, researchers
reported on Monday. Their study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, concludes for the first time
that the increase in drug-dependent newborns has been disproportionately larger in rural areas.
The latest causalities in the opioid epidemic are newborns.
The transition costs were not minimal.
My take is that "fair trade" as practiced since the late 1990s created another disenfranchised
class of citizens. As if we hadn't done enough of that already. Then we weaponized those newly
disenfranchised citizens with the rhetoric of identity politics. That's coming back to bite us.
We didn't really need a white nationalist movement, did we?
Now comes the big challenge: What can we do to make amends? Can we change the narrative? And
here is where I agree with Paul Krugman:
Now, if we want to have a discussion of regional policies – an argument to the effect that
my pessimism is unwarranted – fine. As someone who is generally a supporter of government activism,
I'd actually like to be convinced that a judicious program of subsidies, relocating government
departments, whatever, really can sustain communities whose traditional industry has eroded.
The damage done is largely irreversible. In medium-size regions, lower relative housing
costs may help attract overflow from the east and west coast urban areas. And maybe a program
of guaranteed jobs for small- to medium-size regions combined with relocation subsidies for very
small-size regions could help. But it won't happen overnight, if ever. And even if you could reverse
the patterns of trade – which wouldn't be easy given the intertwining of global supply chains
– the winners wouldn't be the same current losers. Tough nut to crack.
Bottom Line: I don't know how to fix this either. But I don't absolve the policy community
from their role in this disaster. I think you can easily tell a story that this was one big policy
experiment gone terribly wrong.
"... this will probably be in tomorrow's washington post. "how putin sabotaged the election by hacking yahoo mail". and "proton" and "putin" are 2 syllable words beginning with "p", which is dispositive according to experts who don't want to be indentified. ..."
"... [Neo]Liberals have gone truly insane, I made the mistake of trying to slog through the comments the main "putin did it" piece on huffpo out of curiosity. Big mistake, liberals come across as right wing nutters in the comments, I never knew they were so very patriotic, they never really expressed it before. ..."
"... Be sure and delete everything from your Yahoo account BEFORE you push the big red button. They intentionally wait 90 days to delete the account in order that ECPA protections expire and content can just be handed over to the fuzz. ..."
"... It's a good thing for Obama that torturing logic and evasive droning are not criminal acts. ..."
"... "Relations with Russia have declined over the past several years" I reflexively did a Google search. Yep, Victoria Nuland is still employed. ..."
"... With all the concern expressed about Russian meddling in our election process why are we forgetting the direct quid pro quo foreign meddling evidenced in the Hillary emails related to the seldom mentioned Clinton Foundation or the more likely meddling by local election officials? Why have the claims of Russian hacking received such widespread coverage in the Press? ..."
"... I watched it too and agree with your take on it. For all the build up about this press conference and how I thought we were going to engage in direct combat with Russia for these hacks (or so they say it is Russia, I still wonder about that), he did not add any fuel to this fire. ..."
"... The whole thing was silly – the buildup to this press conference and then how Obama handled the hacking. A waste of time really. I don't sense something is going on behind the scenes but it is weird that the news has been all about this Russian hacking. He did not get into the questions about the Electoral College either and he made it seem like Trump indeed is the next President. I mean it seems like the MSM was making too much about this issue but then nothing happened. ..."
this will probably be in tomorrow's washington post. "how putin sabotaged the election
by hacking yahoo mail". and "proton" and "putin" are 2 syllable words beginning with "p",
which is dispositive according to experts who don't want to be indentified.
[Neo]Liberals have gone truly insane, I made the mistake of trying to slog through the
comments the main "putin did it" piece on huffpo out of curiosity. Big mistake, liberals come
across as right wing nutters in the comments, I never knew they were so very patriotic, they never
really expressed it before.
Be sure and delete everything from your Yahoo account BEFORE you push the big red button. They
intentionally wait 90 days to delete the account in order that ECPA protections expire and content
can just be handed over to the fuzz.
I don't think I've looked at my yahoo account in 8-10 years and I didn't use their email; just
had an address. I don't remember my user name or password. I did get an email from them (to my
not-yahoo address) advising of the breach.
I was amazed as I watched a local am news show in Pittsburgh recommend adding your cell phone
number in addition to changing your password. Yeah, that's a great idea, maybe my ss# would provide
even more security.
I use yahoo email. Why should I move? As I understood the breach it was primarily a breach
of the personal information used to establish the account. I've already changed my password -
did it a couple of days after the breach was reported. I had a security clearance with DoD which
requires disclosure of a lot more personal information than yahoo had. The DoD data has been breached
twice from two separate servers.
As far as reading my emails - they may prove useful for phishing but that's about all. I'm
not sure what might be needed for phishing beyond a name and email address - easily obtained from
many sources I have no control over.
So - what am I vulnerable to by remaining at yahoo that I'm not already exposed to on a more
secure server?
Yeah, it isn't like Mr. 'We go high' is going to admit our relationship has declined because
we have underhandedly tried to isolate and knee cap them for pretty much his entire administration.
Are you referring to Obama's press conference? If so, I am glad he didn't make a big deal out
of the Russian hacking allegations - as in it didn't sound like he planned a retaliation for the
fictional event and its fictional consequences. He rose slightly in stature in my eyes - he's
almost as tall as a short flea.
With all the concern expressed about Russian meddling in our election process why are we forgetting
the direct quid pro quo foreign meddling evidenced in the Hillary emails related to the seldom
mentioned Clinton Foundation or the more likely meddling by local election officials? Why have
the claims of Russian hacking received such widespread coverage in the Press?
Why is a lameduck
messing with the Chinese in the South China sea? What is the point of all the "fake" news hogwash?
Is it related to Obama's expression of concern about the safety of the Internet? I can't shake
the feeling that something is going on below the surface of these murky waters.
I watched it too and agree with your take on it. For all the build up about this press conference
and how I thought we were going to engage in direct combat with Russia for these hacks (or so
they say it is Russia, I still wonder about that), he did not add any fuel to this fire.
He did
respond at one point to a reporter that the hacks from Russia were to the DNC and Podesta but
funny how he didn't say HRC emails. Be it as it may, I think what was behind it was HRC really
trying to impress all her contributors that Russia really did do her in, see Obama said so, since
she must be in hot water over all the money she has collected from foreign governments for pay
to play and her donors.
The whole thing was silly – the buildup to this press conference and then
how Obama handled the hacking. A waste of time really. I don't sense something is going on behind
the scenes but it is weird that the news has been all about this Russian hacking. He did not get
into the questions about the Electoral College either and he made it seem like Trump indeed is
the next President. I mean it seems like the MSM was making too much about this issue but then
nothing happened.
Unfortunately the nightly news is focusing on Obama says Russia hacked the DNC and had it in
for Clinton!!! He warned them to stay out of the vote! There will be consequences! Russia demands
the evidence and then a story about the evidence. (This one might have a few smarter people going
"huh, that's it?!?!")
I do like the some private some public on that consequences and retaliation thing. You either
have to laugh or throw up about the faux I've got this and the real self-righteousness. Especially
since it is supposedly to remind people we can do it to you. Is there anyone left outside of America
who doesn't think they already do do it to anyone Uncle Sam doesn't want in office and even some
they do? Mind you I'm not sure how many harried people watching the news are actually going to
laugh at that one because they don't know how how much we meddle.
"... Shorter Paul Krugman: nobody acted more irresponsibly in the last election than the New York Times. ..."
"... Looks like Putin recruited the NYT, the FBI and the DNC. ..."
"... Dr. Krugman is feeding this "shoot first, ask questions later" mentality. He comes across as increasingly shrill and even unhinged - it's a slide he's been taking for years IMO, which is a big shame. ..."
"... It is downright irresponsible and dangerous for a major public intellectual with so little information to cast the shadow of legitimacy on a president ("And it means not acting as if this was a normal election whose result gives the winner any kind of a mandate, or indeed any legitimacy beyond the bare legal requirements.") This kind of behavior is EXACTLY what TRUMP and other authoritarians exhibit - using pieces of information to discredit institutions and individuals. Since foreign governments have and will continue to try to influence U.S. policy through increasingly sophisticated means, this opens the door for anyone to declare our elections and policies as illegitimate in the future. ..."
"... Any influence Russian hacking had was entirely a consequence of U.S. media obsession with celebrity, gotcha and horse race trivia and two-party red state/blue state tribalism. ..."
"... Without the preceding, neither Trump nor Clinton would have been contenders in the first place. Putin didn't invent super delegates, Citizens United, Fox News, talk radio, Goldman-Sachs, etc. etc. etc. If Putin exploited vulnerabilities, it is because preserving those vulnerabilities was more important to the elites than fostering a democratic political culture. ..."
"... It's not a "coup". It's an election result that didn't go the way a lot of people want. That's it. It's probably not optimal, but I'm pretty sure that democracy isn't supposed to produce optimal results. ..."
"... All this talk about "coups" and "illegitimacy" is nuts, and -- true to Dem practice -- incredibly short-sighted. For many, voting for Trump was an available way to say to those people, "We don't believe you any more. At all." Seen in that light, it is a profoundly democratic (small 'd') response to elites that have most consistently served only themselves. ..."
"... Post Truth is Pre-Fascism. The party that thinks your loyalty is suspect unless you wear a flag pin fuels itself on Post Truth. Isnt't this absurdity the gist of Obama's Russia comments today!?! ..."
"... Unless the Russians or someone else hacked the ballot box machines, it is our own damn fault. ..."
"... The ship of neo-liberal trade sailed in the mid-2000's. That you don't get that is sad. You can only milk that so far the cow had been milked. ..."
"... The people of the United States did not have much to choose between: Either a servant of the Plutocrats or a member of the Plutocratic class. The Dems brought this on us when they refused to play fair with Bernie. (Hillary would almost certainly have won the nomination anyway.) ..."
"... The Repubs brought this on, by refusing to govern. The media brought this on: I seem to remember Hillary's misfeasances, once nominated, festering in the media, while Trump's were mentioned, and then disappeared. (Correct me if I'm wrong in this.) Also, the media downplayed Bernie until he had no real chance. ..."
"... The government brought this on, by failing to pursue justice against the bankers, and failing to represent the people, especially the majority who have been screwed by trade and the plutocratic elite and their apologists. ..."
"... The educational system brought this on, by failing to educate the people to critical thought. For instance: 1) The wealthy run the country. 2) The wealthy have been doing very well. 3) Everybody else has not. It seems most people cannot draw the obvious conclusion. ..."
"... Krugman is himself one of those most useful idiots. I do not recall his clarion call to Democrats last spring that "FBI investigation" and "party Presidential nominee" was bound to be an ugly combination. Some did; right here as I recall. Or his part in the official "don't vote for third party" week in the Clinton media machine....thanks, hundreds of thousands of Trump votes got the message. ..."
"... It's too rich to complain about Russia and Wikileaks as if those elements in anyway justified Clinton becoming President. Leaks mess with our democracy? Then for darn sure do not vote for a former Sec. of State willing to use a home server for her official business. Russia is menacing? Just who has been managing US-Russia relations the past 8 years? I voted for her anyway, but the heck if I think some tragic fate has befell the nation here. Republicans picked a better candidate to win this thing than we Democrats did. ..."
"... The truth of the matter is that Clinton was a very weak candidate with nothing to offer but narcissism ("I'm with her"). It's notable that Clinton has still not accepted responsibility for her campaign, preferring to throw the blame for the loss anywhere but herself. Sociopathy much? ..."
[ I find it terrifying, simply terrifying, to refer to people as "useful idiots" after all
the personal destruction that has followed when the expression was specifically used in the past.
To me, using such an expression is an honored economist intent on becoming Joseph McCarthy.
]
To demean a person as though the person were a communist or a fool of communists or the like,
with all the personal harm that has historically brought in this country, is cruel beyond my understanding
or imagining.
Well, not really. For example he referred to "the close relationship between Wikileaks and Russian
intelligence." But Wikileaks is a channel. They don't seek out material. They rely on people to
bring material to them. They supposedly make an effort to verify that the material is not a forgery,
but aside from that what they release is what people bring to them. Incidentally, like so many
people you seem to not care whether the material is accurate or not -- Podesta and the DNC have
not claimed that any of the emails are different from what they sent.
ZURICH - If Putin the Thug gets away with crushing Ukraine's new democratic experiment and
unilaterally redrawing the borders of Europe, every pro-Western country around Russia will be
in danger....
Yup, like the other elections, the bases stayed solvent and current events factored into the turnout
and voting patterns which spurred the independent vote.
When people were claiming Clinton was going to win big, I thought no Republican and Democratic
voters are going to pull the lever like a trained monkey as usual. Only difference in this election
was Hillary's huge negatives due entirely by her and Bill Clinton's support for moving manufacturing
jobs to Mexico and China in the 90s.
To Understand Trump, Learn Russian http://nyti.ms/2hLcrB1
NYT - Andrew Rosenthal - December 15
The Russian language has two words for truth - a linguistic quirk that seems relevant to our
current political climate, especially because of all the disturbing ties between the newly elected
president and the Kremlin.
The word for truth in Russian that most Americans know is "pravda" - the truth that seems evident
on the surface. It's subjective and infinitely malleable, which is why the Soviet Communists called
their party newspaper "Pravda." Despots, autocrats and other cynical politicians are adept at
manipulating pravda to their own ends.
But the real truth, the underlying, cosmic, unshakable truth of things is called "istina" in
Russian. You can fiddle with the pravda all you want, but you can't change the istina.
For the Trump team, the pravda of the 2016 election is that not all Trump voters are explicitly
racist. But the istina of the 2016 campaign is that Trump's base was heavily dependent on racists
and xenophobes, Trump basked in and stoked their anger and hatred, and all those who voted for
him cast a ballot for a man they knew to be a racist, sexist xenophobe. That was an act of racism.
Trump's team took to Twitter with lightning speed recently to sneer at the conclusion by all
17 intelligence agencies that the Kremlin hacked Democratic Party emails for the specific purpose
of helping Trump and hurting Hillary Clinton. Trump said the intelligence agencies got it wrong
about Iraq, and that someone else could have been responsible for the hack and that the Democrats
were just finding another excuse for losing.
The istina of this mess is that powerful evidence suggests that the Russians set out to interfere
in American politics, and that Trump, with his rejection of Western European alliances and embrace
of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, was their chosen candidate.
The pravda of Trump's selection of Rex Tillerson, head of Exxon Mobil, as secretary of state
is that by choosing an oil baron who has made billions for his company by collaborating with Russia,
Trump will make American foreign policy beholden to American corporate interests.
That's bad enough, but the istina is far worse. For one thing, American foreign policy has
been in thrall to American corporate interests since, well, since there were American corporations.
Just look at the mess this country created in Latin America, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia and
the Middle East to serve American companies.
Yes, Tillerson has ignored American interests repeatedly, including in Russia and Iraq, and
has been trying to remove sanctions imposed after Russia's seizure of Crimea because they interfered
with one of his many business deals. But take him out of the equation in the Trump cabinet and
nothing changes. Trump has made it plain, with every action he takes, that he is going to put
every facet of policy, domestic and foreign, at the service of corporate America. The istina here
is that Tillerson is just a symptom of a much bigger problem.
The pravda is that Trump was right in saying that the intelligence agencies got it wrong about
Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction.
But the istina is that Trump's contempt for the intelligence services is profound and dangerous.
He's not getting daily intelligence briefings anymore, apparently because they are just too dull
to hold his attention.
And now we know that Condoleezza Rice was instrumental in bringing Tillerson to Trump's attention.
As national security adviser and then secretary of state for president George W. Bush, Rice was
not just wrong about Iraq, she helped fabricate the story that Hussein had nuclear weapons.
Trump and Tillerson clearly think they are a match for the wily and infinitely dangerous Putin,
but as they move foward with their plan to collaborate with Russia instead of opposing its imperialist
tendencies, they might keep in mind another Russian saying, this one from Lenin.
"There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience," he wrote. "A scoundrel may be
of use to us just because he is a scoundrel."
Putin has that philosophy hard-wired into his political soul. When it comes to using scoundrels
to get what he wants, he is a professional, and Trump is only an amateur. That is the istina of
the matter.
If nothing else, Russia - with a notably un-free press - has shrewdly used our own 'free press'
against US.
RUSSIA'S UNFREE PRESS
The Boston Globe - Marshall Goldman - January 29, 2001
AS THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION DEBATES ITS POLICY TOWARD RUSSIA, FREEDOM OF THE PRESS SHOULD BE
ONE OF ITS MAJOR CONCERNS. UNDER PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN THE PRESS IS FREE ONLY AS LONG AS IT
DOES NOT CRITICIZE PUTIN OR HIS POLICIES. WHEN NTV, THE TELEVISION NETWORK OF THE MEDIA GIANT
MEDIA MOST, REFUSED TO PULL ITS PUNCHES, MEDIA MOST'S OWNER, VLADIMIR GUSINSKY, FOUND HIMSELF
IN JAIL, AND GAZPROM, A COMPANY DOMINATED BY THE STATE, BEGAN TO CALL IN LOANS TO MEDIA MOST.
Unfortunately, Putin's actions are applauded by more than 70 percent of the Russian people. They
crave a strong and forceful leader; his KGB past and conditioned KGB responses are just what they
seem to want after what many regard as the social, political, and economic chaos of the last decade.
But what to the Russians is law and order (the "dictatorship of the law," as Putin has so accurately
put it) looks more and more like an old Soviet clampdown to many Western observers.
There is no complaint about Putin's promises. He tells everyone he wants freedom of the press.
But in the context of his KGB heritage, his notion of freedom of the press is something very different.
In an interview with the Toronto Globe and Mail, he said that that press freedom excludes the
"hooliganism" or "uncivilized" reporting he has to deal with in Moscow. By that he means criticism,
especially of his conduct of the war in Chechnya, his belated response to the sinking of the Kursk,
and the heavy-handed way in which he has pushed aside candidates for governor in regional elections
if they are not to Putin's liking.
He does not take well to criticism. When asked by the relatives of those lost in the Kursk
why he seemed so unresponsive, Putin tried to shift the blame for the disaster onto the media
barons, or at least those who had criticized him. They were the ones, he insisted, who had pressed
for reduced funding for the Navy while they were building villas in Spain and France. As for their
criticism of his behavior, They lie! They lie! They lie!
Our Western press has provided good coverage of the dogged way Putin and his aides have tried
to muscle Gusinsky out of the Media Most press conglomerate he created. But those on the Putin
enemies list now include even Boris Berezovsky, originally one of Putin's most enthusiastic promoters
who after the sinking of the Kursk also became a critic and thus an opponent.
Gusinsky would have a hard time winning a merit badge for trustworthiness (Berezovsky shouldn't
even apply), but in the late Yeltsin and Putin years, Gusinsky has earned enormous credit for
his consistently objective news coverage, including a spotlight on malfeasance at the very top.
More than that, he has supported his programmers when they have subjected Yeltsin and now Putin
to bitter satire on Kukly, his Sunday evening prime-time puppet show.
What we hear less of, though, is what is happening to individual reporters, especially those
engaged in investigative work. Almost monthly now there are cases of violence and intimidation.
Among those brutalized since Putin assumed power are a reporter for Radio Liberty who dared to
write negative reports about the Russian Army's role in Chechnia and four reporters for Novaya
Gazeta. Two of them were investigating misdeeds by the FSB (today's equivalent of the KGB), including
the possibility that it rather than Chechins had blown up a series of apartment buildings. Another
was pursuing reports of money-laundering by Yeltsin family members and senior staff in Switzerland.
Although these journalists were very much in the public eye, they were all physically assaulted.
Those working for provincial papers labor under even more pressure with less visibility. There
are numerous instances where regional bosses such as the governor of Vladivostok operate as little
dictators, and as a growing number of journalists have discovered, challenges are met with threats,
physical intimidation, and, if need be, murder.
True, freedom of the press in Russia is still less than 15 years old, and not all the country's
journalists or their bosses have always used that freedom responsibly. During the 1996 election
campaign, for example, the media owners, including Gusinsky conspired to denigrate or ignore every
viable candidate other than Yeltsin. But attempts to muffle if not silence criticism have multiplied
since Putin and his fellow KGB veterans have come to power. Criticism from any source, be it an
individual journalist or a corporate entity, invites retaliation.
When Media Most persisted in its criticism, Putin sat by approvingly as his subordinates sent
in masked and armed tax police and prosecutors. When that didn't work, they jailed Gusinsky on
charges that were later dropped, although they are seeking to extradite and jail him again. along
with his treasurer, on a new set of charges. Yesterday the prosecutor general summoned Tatyana
Mitkova, the anchor of NTV's evening news program, for questioning. Putin's aides are also doing
all they can to prevent Gusinsky from refinancing his debt-ridden operation with Ted Turner or
anyone else in or outside of the country.
According to one report, Putin told one official, You deal with the shares, debts, and management
and I will deal with the journalists. His goal simply is to end to independent TV coverage in
Russia. ...
"Unfortunately, Putin's actions are applauded by more than 70 percent of the Russian people"
Exactly; the majority of people are so stupid and/or lazy that they cannot be bothered understanding
what is going on; and how their hard won democracy is being subjugated. But thank God that is
in Russia not here in the US - right?
"Pravda" is etymologically derived from "prav-" which means "right" (as opposed to "left", other
connotations are "proper", "correct", "rightful", also legal right). It designates the social-construct
aspect of "righteousness/truthfulness/correctness" as opposed to "objective reality" (conceptually
independent of social standards, in reality anything but). In formal logic, "istina" is used to
designate truth. Logical falsity is designated a "lie".
It is a feature common to most European languages that rightfulness, righteousness, correctness,
and legal rights are identified with the designation for the right side. "Sinister" is Latin for
"left".
If you believe 911 was a Zionist conspiracy, so where the Paris attacks of November 2015, when
Trump was failing in the polls as the race was moving toward as you would expect, toward other
candidates. After the Paris attacks, his numbers reaccelerated.
If "ZOG" created the "false flag" of the Paris attacks to start a anti-Muslim fervor, they
succeeded, much like 911. Bastille day attacks were likewise, a false flag. This is not new, this
goes back to when the aristocracy merged with the merchant caste, creating the "bourgeois". They
have been running a parallel government in the shadows to effect what is seen.
There used to be something called Usenet News, where at the protocol level reader software could
fetch meta data (headers containing author, (stated) origin, title, etc.) independently from comment
bodies. This was largely owed to limited download bandwidth. Basically all readers had "kill files"
i.e. filters where one could configure that comments with certain header parameters should not
be downloaded, or even hidden.
The main application was that the reader would download comments in the background when headers
were already shown, or on demand when you open a comment.
Now you get the whole thing (or in units of 100) by the megabyte.
A major problem is signal extraction out of the massive amounts of noise generated by the media,
social media, parties, and pundits.
It's easy enough to highlight this thread of information here, but in real time people are
being bombarded by so many other stories.
In particular, the Clinton Foundation was also regularly being highlighted for its questionable
ties to foreign influence. And HRC's extravagant ties to Wall St. And so much more.
The media's job was to sell Trump and denounce Clinton. The mistake a lot of people make is thinking
the global elite are the "status quo". They are not. They are generally the ones that break the
status quo more often than not.
The bulk of them wanted Trump/Republican President and made damn sure it was President. Buffering
the campaign against criticism while overly focusing on Clinton's "crap". It took away from the
issues which of course would have low key'd the election.
Not much bullying has to be applied when there are "economic incentives". The media attention
economy and ratings system thrive on controversy and emotional engagement. This was known a century
ago as "only bad news is good news". As long as I have lived, the non-commercial media not subject
(or not as much) to these dynamics have always been perceived as dry and boring.
I heard from a number of people that they followed the campaign "coverage" (in particular Trump)
as gossip/entertainment, and those were people who had no sympathies for him. And even media coverage
by outlets generally critical of Trump's unbelievable scandals and outrageous performances catered
to this sentiment.
First, let me disclose that I detest TRUMP and that the Russian meddling has me deeply concerned.
Yet...
We only have assertions that the Russian hacking had some influence. We do not know whether
it likely had *material* influence that could have reasonably led to a swing state(s) going to
TRUMP that otherwise would have gone to HRC.
Dr. Krugman is feeding this "shoot first, ask questions later" mentality. He comes across
as increasingly shrill and even unhinged - it's a slide he's been taking for years IMO, which
is a big shame.
It is downright irresponsible and dangerous for a major public intellectual with so little
information to cast the shadow of legitimacy on a president ("And it means not acting as if this
was a normal election whose result gives the winner any kind of a mandate, or indeed any legitimacy
beyond the bare legal requirements.") This kind of behavior is EXACTLY what TRUMP and other authoritarians
exhibit - using pieces of information to discredit institutions and individuals. Since foreign
governments have and will continue to try to influence U.S. policy through increasingly sophisticated
means, this opens the door for anyone to declare our elections and policies as illegitimate in
the future.
It is quite clear that the Russians intervened on Trump's behalf and that this intervention had
an impact. The problem is that we cannot actually quantify that impact.
"We only have assertions that the Russian hacking had some influence."
Any influence Russian hacking had was entirely a consequence of U.S. media obsession with
celebrity, gotcha and horse race trivia and two-party red state/blue state tribalism.
Without the preceding, neither Trump nor Clinton would have been contenders in the first
place. Putin didn't invent super delegates, Citizens United, Fox News, talk radio, Goldman-Sachs,
etc. etc. etc. If Putin exploited vulnerabilities, it is because preserving those vulnerabilities
was more important to the elites than fostering a democratic political culture.
But this is how influence is exerted - by using the dynamics of the adversary's/targets organization
as an amplifier. Hierarchical organizations are approached through their management or oversight
bodies, social networks through key influencers, etc.
I see this so much and it's so right wing cheap: I hate Trump, but assertions that Russia intervened
are unproven.
First, Trump openly invited Russia to hack DNC emails. That is on its face treason and sedition.
It's freaking on video. If HRC did that there would be calls of the right for her execution.
Second, a NYT story showed that the FBI knew about the hacking but did not alert the DNC properly
- they didn't even show up, they sent a note to a help desk.
This was a serious national security breach that was not addressed properly. This is criminal
negligence.
This was a hacked election by collusion of the FBI and the Russian hackers and it totally discredits
the FBI as it throwed out chum and then denied at the last minute. Now the CIA comes in and says
PUTIN, Trump's bff, was directly involved in manipulating the timetable that the hacked emails
were released in drip drip form to cater to the media - creating story after story about emails.
It was a perfect storm for a coup. Putin played us. And he will play Trump. And God knows how
it ends. But it doesn't matter b/c we're all screwed with climate change anyway.
"It was a perfect storm for a coup. Putin played us. And he will play Trump. And God knows how
it ends. But it doesn't matter b/c we're all screwed with climate change anyway."
It's not a "coup". It's an election result that didn't go the way a lot of people want.
That's it. It's probably not optimal, but I'm pretty sure that democracy isn't supposed to produce
optimal results.
All this talk about "coups" and "illegitimacy" is nuts, and -- true to Dem practice --
incredibly short-sighted. For many, voting for Trump was an available way to say to those people,
"We don't believe you any more. At all." Seen in that light, it is a profoundly democratic (small
'd') response to elites that have most consistently served only themselves.
Trump and his gang will be deeply grateful if the left follows Krugman's "wisdom", and clings
to his ever-changing excuses. (I thought it was the evil Greens who deprived Clinton of her due?)
Post Truth is Pre-Fascism. The party that thinks your loyalty is suspect unless you wear a
flag pin fuels itself on Post Truth. Isnt't this absurdity the gist of Obama's Russia comments
today!?!
"On Wednesday an editorial in The Times described Donald Trump as a "useful idiot" serving Russian
interests." I think that is beyond the pale. Yes, I realize that Adolph Hitler was democratically
elected. I agree that Trump seems like a scary monster under the bed. That doesn't mean we have
too pee our pants, Paul. He's a bully, tough guy, maybe, the kind of kid that tortured you before
you kicked the shit out of them with your brilliance. That's not what is needed now.
What really is needed, is a watchdog, like Dean Baker, that alerts we dolts of pending bills and
their ramifications. The ship of neo-liberal trade bullshit has sailed. Hell, you don't believe
it yourself, you've said as much. Be gracious, and tell the truth. We can handle it.
The experience of voting for the Hill was painful, vs Donald Trump.
The Hill seemed like the least likely aristocrat, given two choices, to finish off all government
focus on the folks that actually built this society. Two Titans of Hubris, Hillary vs Donald,
each ridiculous in the concept of representing the interests of the common man.
At the end of the day. the American people decided that the struggle with the unknown monster
Donald was worth deposing the great deplorable, Clinton.
The real argument is whether the correct plan of action is the way of FDR, or the way of the industrialists,
the Waltons, the Kochs, the Trumps, the Bushes and the outright cowards like the Cheneys and the
Clintons, people that never spent a day defending this country in combat. What do they call it,
the Commander in Chief.
My father was awarded a silver and a bronze star for his efforts in battle during WW2. He was
shot in the face while driving a tank destroyer by a German sniper in a place called Schmitten
Germany.
He told me once, that he looked over at the guy next to him on the plane to the hospital in
England, and his intestines were splayed on his chest. It was awful.
What was he fighting for ? Freedom, America. Then the Republicans, Ronald Reagan, who spent the
war stateside began the real war, garnering the wealth of the nation to the entitled like him.
Ronald Reagan was a life guard.
Anthony Weiner
Podesta
Biden (for not running)
Tim Kaine (for accepting the nomination instead of deferring to a latino)
CNN and other TV news media (for giving trump so much coverage- even an empty podium)
Donna Brazile
etc.
The people of the United States did not have much to choose between: Either a servant of the
Plutocrats or a member of the Plutocratic class. The Dems brought this on us when they refused
to play fair with Bernie. (Hillary would almost certainly have won the nomination anyway.)
The Repubs brought this on, by refusing to govern. The media brought this on: I seem to
remember Hillary's misfeasances, once nominated, festering in the media, while Trump's were mentioned,
and then disappeared. (Correct me if I'm wrong in this.) Also, the media downplayed Bernie until
he had no real chance.
The government brought this on, by failing to pursue justice against the bankers, and failing
to represent the people, especially the majority who have been screwed by trade and the plutocratic
elite and their apologists.
The educational system brought this on, by failing to educate the people to critical thought.
For instance: 1) The wealthy run the country. 2) The wealthy have been doing very well. 3) Everybody
else has not. It seems most people cannot draw the obvious conclusion.
The wealthy brought this on. For 230 years they have, essentially run this country. They are
too stupid to be satisfied with enough, but always want more.
The economics profession brought this on, by excusing treasonous behavior as efficient, and
failing to understand the underlying principles of their profession, and the limits of their understanding.
(They don't even know what money is, or how a trade deficit destroys productive capacity, and
thus the very ability of a nation to pay back the debts it incurs.)
The people brought this on, by neglecting their duty to be informed, to be educated, and to
be thoughtful.
Anybody else care for their share of blame? I myself deserve some, but for reasons I cannot
say.
What amazes me now is, the bird having shown its feathers, there is no howl of outrage from
the people who voted for him. Do they imagine that the Plutocrats who will soon monopolize the
White House will take their interests to heart?
As far as I can tell, not one person of 'the people' has been appointed to his cabinet. Not
one. But the oppressed masses who turned to Mr Trump seem to be OK with this.
I can only wonder, how much crap will have to be rubbed in their faces, before they awaken to
the taste of what it is?
Eric377 : , -1
Krugman is himself one of those most useful idiots. I do not recall his clarion call to Democrats
last spring that "FBI investigation" and "party Presidential nominee" was bound to be an ugly
combination. Some did; right here as I recall. Or his part in the official "don't vote for third
party" week in the Clinton media machine....thanks, hundreds of thousands of Trump votes got the
message.
It's too rich to complain about Russia and Wikileaks as if those elements in anyway justified
Clinton becoming President. Leaks mess with our democracy? Then for darn sure do not vote for
a former Sec. of State willing to use a home server for her official business. Russia is menacing?
Just who has been managing US-Russia relations the past 8 years? I voted for her anyway, but the
heck if I think some tragic fate has befell the nation here. Republicans picked a better candidate
to win this thing than we Democrats did.
The truth of the matter is that Clinton was a very weak candidate with nothing to offer
but narcissism ("I'm with her"). It's notable that Clinton has still not accepted responsibility
for her campaign, preferring to throw the blame for the loss anywhere but herself. Sociopathy
much?
This has made me cynical. I used to think that at least *some* members of the US political
elite had the best interests of ordinary households in mind, but now I see that it's just ego
vs. ego, whatever the party.
As for democracy being on the edge: I believe Adam Smith over Krugman: "there is a lot of ruin
in a nation". It takes more than this to overturn an entrenched institution.
I think American democracy will survive a decade of authoritarianism, and if it does not, then
H. L. Mencken said it best: "The American people know what they want, and they deserve to get
it -- good and hard."
The agitprop out of the White House isn't working these days, thanks to the advent of fake
news of course. Following weeks of hysteria, following Donald J. Trump's triumphant victory of
Hillary Clinton and Obama's legacy, Obama took to the podium for one last time to divide
Americans -- this time invoking the revered late President Ronald Reagan -- saying he'd be
'rolling over in his grave' now had he known that over a third of republicans approve of Putin in
some random poll.
If Obama truly wants to know why Americans are willing to accept the words of Putin,
undoubtedly a strong man leader, over his -- he should take a look in the mirror and then gander
over to his computer to re-read all of the Wikileaks from John Podesta's email that Putin so
graciously made available to us all. They speak volumes about the corruptness and the rot
permeating in our capitol. Even without the emails, we see the neocon strategy of persistent war
and deceit hollowing out this nation -- devouring its resources, emptying its treasury, and there
is nothing redeeming about it.
During the press conference, Obama provided his media with incontrovertible evidence that
Russia was behind the WikiLeaks, saying 'not much happens in Russia without Putin's approval.'
Russia has a land mass of 6,592,800 sq miles and Putin controls every single inch of it. This is
retard level thinking.
Moreover, Obama says he told Putin to 'cut it out' when he last saw him in China, warning him
of serious consequences. Luckily for us, Putin got scared and ceased all further hackings.
However, the damage had already been done and the Wikileaks released.
I suppose this type of lazy thinking appeals to a certain subset of America, else why would he
make such infantile statements?
The Divider in Chief, one last time reminding himself and the press that XENOPHOBIA against
Russians is good. The Russians are a useless sort, who produce nothing of interest, a very small
and weak country, only capable of wiping out the entirety of America 10x over via very large
nuclear detonations. Oh, and you pesky republicans love Putin because you're sooo political.
This is what some might call 'idiotic diplomacy', mocking and deriding a rival nation to the
point of war, a war that could exterminate life on planet earth for at least a millennia. Genius.
Assuming these "rogue-Electors" from the Electoral College
get a briefing on the "Russian election-hack" from the CIA
, and assuming the
Electors have a few working brain cells, and assuming they care, here are the top 11
questions they should ask the CIA presenter.
Questions One through Three (repeated with enthusiasm and fervor):
Are you just
going to feed us generalities and tell us you can't detail specifics because that would
compromise your methods and personnel? We can read the generalities in the Washington
Post, whose owner, Jeff Bezos, chief honcho at Amazon, has a $600 million contract with
the CIA to provide cloud computing services, so he and the Post and the CIA are in bed
together.
Question Four:
We need a precise
distinction here. How did "Russia hacked the DNC, Hillary, Podesta, and Weiner emails
and fed the emails to WikiLeaks who released them" suddenly morph into "Russia hacked
the election vote"?
Question Five:
The security systems
that protected the DNC, Hillary, Podesta, and Weiner emails were so feeble a child could
have gotten past them in a few minutes. Why should we assume high-level Russian agents
were involved?
Question Six:
Not only does the CIA
have a history of lying to the American people, lying is part of your job description.
Why should we believe you? Take your time. We can have food brought in.
Question Seven:
We're getting the
feeling you're talking down to us as if we're the peasants and you're the feudal barons.
Why is that? Do you work for us, or do we work for you? Once upon a time, before you
went to work for the Agency, were you like us, or were you always arrogant and
dismissive?
Question Eight:
Let's put aside for a
moment the question of who leaked all those emails. What about the substance and content
of the emails? Was all that forged or was it real? If you claim there was forgery, prove
it. Put a dozen emails up on that big screen and take us through them, piece by piece,
and show us where and how the forgery occurred. By the way, why didn't you allow us to
bring several former NSA analysts into this briefing? Are we living in the US or the
USSR?
Question Nine:
Are you personally a
computer expert, sir? Or are you merely relaying what someone else at the CIA told you?
Would you spell your name for us again? What is your job description at the Agency? Do
you work in public information? Are you tasked with "being convincing"?
Question Ten:
Do you think we're
completely stupid?
Question Eleven:
Let's all let our
hair down, okay? Forget facts and specifics. Of course we want to overthrow the election
and install Hillary Clinton in the Oval Office. So do you. We're on the same team. But
we need you to give us something, anything. So far, this briefing is embarrassing. Once
we get out of here, we want to tell a few persuasive lies. Give us a Russian name, any
name. Or a location in Russia we can use. The brand name of a Russian vodka. Caviar.
Something that sounds Russian. Make up a code with letters and numbers. Help us out. How
about the name of an American who who's actually a Russian spy? You could shoot him
later today in a "gun battle at a shopping mall." That would work.
Good luck.
(To read about Jon's mega-collection,
Power
Outside The Matrix
,
click here
.)
We encourage you to share and republish our reports, analyses,
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Contributed by Jon Rappoport of
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The author of an explosive collection,
THE
MATRIX REVEALED , Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the
29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an
investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health
for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines
in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics,
health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world.
Podesta essentially gave up his email due to committed by him blunder: sending his password to the
attacker. As such it was far from high-end hacking, which can be attributed to intelligence
agencies. It is more like a regular, primitive phishing expedition
which became successful due to Podesta blunder. So this is not hacking but phishing
expedition... That makes big difference.
Notable quotes:
"... The DNC hackers inserted the name of the founder of Russian intelligence, in Russian, in the metadata of the hacked documents. Why would the G.R.U., Russian military intelligence do that? ..."
"... If the hackers were indeed part of Russian intelligence, why did they use a free Russian email account, or, in the hack of the state election systems, a Russian-owned server? Does Russian intelligence normally display such poor tradecraft? ..."
"... Why would Russian intelligence, for the purposes of hacking the election systems of Arizona and Illinois, book space on a Russian-owned server and then use only English, as documents furnished by Vladimir Fomenko, proprietor of Kings Servers, the company that owned the server in question, clearly indicate? ..."
"... Numerous reports ascribe the hacks to hacking groups known as APT 28 or "Fancy Bear" and APT 29 or "Cozy Bear." But these groups had already been accused of nefarious actions on behalf of Russian intelligence prior to the hacks under discussion. Why would the Kremlin and its intelligence agencies select well-known groups to conduct a regime-change operation on the most powerful country on earth? ..."
"... The joint statement issued by the DNI and DHS on October 7 2016 confirmed that US intelligence had no evidence of official Russian involvement in the leak of hacked documents to Wikileaks, etc, saying only that the leaks were " consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts." Has the US acquired any evidence whatsoever since that time regarding Russian involvement in the leaks? ..."
It is being reported that John Podesta, Chairman of the defeated $1.2 billion Clinton presidential
campaign, is supporting the call by various officials, including at least forty Electors, that the
members of the Electoral College be given a classified intelligence briefing on the alleged Russian
hacking before the College votes on December 19.
In the event such a briefing comes to pass, it might be helpful if the Electors had some informed
questions to ask the CIA
The DNC hackers inserted the name of the founder of Russian intelligence, in Russian,
in the metadata of the hacked documents. Why would the G.R.U., Russian military intelligence
do that?
If the hackers were indeed part of Russian intelligence, why did they use a free Russian
email account, or, in the hack of the state election systems, a Russian-owned server?
Does Russian intelligence normally display such poor tradecraft?
Why would Russian intelligence, for the purposes of hacking the election systems of Arizona
and Illinois, book space on a Russian-owned server and then use only English, as documents furnished
by Vladimir Fomenko, proprietor of Kings Servers, the company that owned the server in question,
clearly indicate?
Numerous reports ascribe the hacks to hacking groups known as APT 28 or "Fancy Bear" and
APT 29 or "Cozy Bear." But these groups had already been accused of nefarious actions on
behalf of Russian intelligence prior to the hacks under discussion. Why would the Kremlin
and its intelligence agencies select well-known groups to conduct a regime-change operation on
the most powerful country on earth?
It has been reported in the New York Times , without attribution, that U.S. intelligence
has identified specific G.R.U. officials who directed the hacking. Is this true, and if so, please
provide details (Witness should be sworn)
The joint statement issued by the DNI and DHS on October 7 2016 confirmed that US intelligence
had no evidence of official Russian involvement in the leak of hacked documents to Wikileaks,
etc, saying only that the leaks were " consistent with the methods and motivations
of Russian-directed efforts." Has the US acquired any evidence whatsoever since that time
regarding Russian involvement in the leaks?
Since the most effective initiative in tipping the election to Donald Trump was the intervention
of FBI Director Comey, are you investigating any possible connections he might have to Russian
intelligence and Vladimir Putin?
by
Gary Leupp
Mainstream TV news anchors including MSNBC's Chris Hayes are reporting as fact---with
fuming indignation---that Russia (and specifically Vladimir Putin) not only sought to
influence the U.S. election (and---gosh!---promote "doubt" about the whole legitimacy
of the U.S. electoral system) but to throw the vote to Donald Trump.
The main
accusation is that the DNC and Podesta emails leaked through Wikileaks were provided
by state-backed Russian hackers (while they did not leak material hacked from the
Republicans). I have my doubts on this. Former U.S. ambassador to Uzbekistan and
torture whistle-blower Craig Murray, a friend of Julian Assange, has stated that the
DNC emails were leaked by a DNC insider whose identity he knows. The person, Murray
contends, handed the material over to him, in a D.C. park. I have met Murray, admire
and am inclined to believe him. (I just heard now that John Bolton, of all people,
has also opined this was an inside job.)
Putin Lashes Out At Obama: "Show Some Proof Or Shut Up"
Tyler Durden
Dec 16, 2016 9:09 AM
0
SHARES
Putin has had enough of the relentless barrage of US accusations that he, personally,
"hacked the US presidential election."
The Russian president's spokesman, Dmitry
Peskov, said on Friday that the US must either stop accusing Russia of meddling in its
elections or prove it. Peskov said it was "indecent" of the United States to
"groundlessly" accuse Russia of intervention in its elections.
"You need to either stop talking about it, or finally show some kind of
proof. Otherwise it just looks very indecent
", Peskov told Reporters in Tokyo
where Putin is meeting with Japan PM Abe, responding to the latest accusations that
Russia was responsible for hacker attacks.
Peskov also warned that Obama's threat to "retaliate" to the alleged Russian hack is
"against both American and international law", hinting at open-ended escalation should
Obama take the podium today at 2:15pm to officially launch cyberwar against Russia.
Previously, on Thursday, Peskov told the AP the report was "
laughable
nonsense
", while Russian foreign ministry spox Maria Zakharova accused "Western
media" of being a "shill" and a "mouthpiece of various power groups", and added that
"it's not the general public who's being manipulated," Zakharova said. "the general
public nowadays can distinguish the truth. It's the mass media that is manipulating
themselves."
Meanwhile, on Friday Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister told state television
network, Russia 24, he was "dumbstruck" by the NBC report which alleges that Russian
President Vladimir Putin was personally involved in an election hack.
The report cited U.S. intelligence officials that now believe with a "high level of
confidence" that Putin became personally involved in a secret campaign to influence the
outcome of the U.S. presidential election.
"I think this is just silly, and the
futility of the attempt to convince somebody of this is absolutely obvious,"
Lavrov added, according to the news outlet.
As a reminder,
last night Obama vowed retaliatory
action against Russia for its meddling in the US
presidential election last month. "I think there is no doubt that when any foreign
government tries to impact the integrity of our elections that we need to take action
and we will at a time and place of our own choosing," Obama told National Public Radio.
US intelligence agencies in October pinned blame on Russia for election-related
hacking. At the time, the White House vowed a "proportional response" to the
cyberactivity, though declined to preview what that response might entail. Meanwhile,
both President-elect Donald Trump, the FBI,
and the ODNI
have dismissed the CIA's intelligence community's assessment, for the
the same reason Putin finally lashed out at Obama: there is no proof.
That, however, has never stopped the US from escalating a geopolitical conflict to
the point of war, or beyond, so pay close attention to what Obama says this afternoon.
According to an
NBC report
, a team of analysts at Eurasia Group said in a note on Friday that they
believe the outgoing administration
is likely to take action which could result
in a significant barrier for Trump's team once he takes office in January
.
"It is unlikely that U.S. intelligence reports will change Trump's intention to
initiate a rapprochement with Moscow,
but the congressional response following
its own investigations could obstruct the new administration's effort
," Eurasia
Group analysts added.
At the same time, Wikileaks offered its "validation" services, tweeting that "
Obama
should submit any Putin documents to WikiLeaks to be authenticated to our standards if
he wants them to be seen as credible.
"
Obama should submit any Putin documents to WikiLeaks to be
authenticated to our standards if he wants them to be seen as credible.
And orchestrated by Mossad/CIA Millions upon millions of
ordinary folks just got up and voted to take out the trash, and
by God their will be done. If we don't remove the cancerous
tumors now, they will regrow and regroup and in our weakened
state it will be GAME OVER.
The sad part is they are spinning this as election tampering when
in fact there was none, some decent human beings found out the
truth of how corrupt, evil, and treasonous these people are and
wanted the American public to know.
You can tell they are
desperate now, I just hope the law enforcement community is ready
to uphold their oath.
False testimony to Congress on NSA surveillance programs
[
edit
]
Excerpt of James Clapper's testimony before the Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence
On March 12, 2013, during a
United
States Senate
Select
Committee on Intelligence
hearing, Senator
Ron
Wyden
quoted the keynote speech at the 2012
DEF
CON
by the director of the NSA,
Keith
B. Alexander
. Alexander had stated that "Our job is foreign
intelligence" and that "Those who would want to weave the story that we have
millions or hundreds of millions of dossiers on people, is absolutely
false From my perspective, this is absolute nonsense." Senator Wyden then
asked Clapper, "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or
hundreds of millions of Americans?" He responded "No, sir." Wyden asked "It
does not?" and Clapper said "Not wittingly. There are cases where they could
inadvertently, perhaps, collect, but not wittingly."
[30]
When
Edward
Snowden
was asked during his January 26, 2014 TV interview in Moscow
what the decisive moment was or why he blew the whistle, he replied: "Sort
of the breaking point was seeing the Director of National Intelligence,
James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress. Seeing that really
meant for me there was no going back."
[31]
This is the man reponsible for the newest lie to the American people. Are
you serious?
This asshole jack off obozo wants to start WW3 with Russia for Soros and all
his globalist neocon pals BEFORE he leaves office. His pals shoveled out way
too much money to get that dirty corrupt, crooked pig Hillary elected. The
anti-Trump street protests, riots, burning, pillaging and looting didn't work.
The recount directed by the Hillary stooge Jill Stein actually got Trump more
votes so this didn't work. So now we go with "fake news" accusations against
Russia and Putin. The assholes in our goverment pushing this theme are the
dirty fucking crooks we voted against by voting for Donald Trump. They won't go
down without a fight. So today at 2:15PM ET Obozo will do his best to get the
actual war with Russia on deck!!!
The war mongering neocons won't stop until we have
literally minutes to live. Russia has underground facilitities for 70% of the
citizens in the Russian Federation. In the US only the so-called elites have
some underground place to hide. Like that would save them anyway as it would be
delayed death from Cobalt bombs. We peons and serfs will simply be vaporized
immediately into non-existance. Obozo and his minions and handlers know this
and don't give a fuck.
Obozo and those around him are insane and believe that a
nuclear war with Russia is winnable. The truth is that the world will not even
be fit for human life after a full scale nuclear, chemical and biological
exchange. Who thinks it stops at nuclear? Russia inherited the WMD arsenal of
the Soviet Union. There are enough chemical and biological weapons in the
Russian Federation to kill everyone on earth twenty times.
This is real simple. Obama and Hillary got their asses kicked by Putin in the
Ukraine, Crimea, and Syria because Putin was honest and acted out of integrity
and real concern for his people, and Obama and Hillary were evil and
pathological liars and up to no good, and acted out of a lust for power,
control over others, and stealing their resources. And now the two pathetic
losers want revenge. And this is their vile attempt at trying to get it.
We're laughing at you Hillary and Obama. You are a disgrace to your country and
the human race.
You must remember something here - we laid it on for Vlad / Serg. Our
governments made it so easy for them to play the white knights, they didn't
even need to try. Russian administration is just like any other - the
machine - but we fucked up so tragically bad in our foreign policy conduct
that just going against the unilateral actions of US / NATO / UN has won
Russians major support in Western societies, sick to the back teeth of the
media game BS.
Our elites came to believe that the world is theirs. That
they can take what they want. Citizenry hasn't been best pleased due to
cognitive dissonance ("shining house on the hill" =/= 500k dead Iraqis
"worth it"). Enter the Russians: central admin personnel = expert level 120,
conservative social values, non-interventionist foreign policy, always
stressing legality / due process. They showed us up. Simple as. They were
the first to dare point at our naked emperors.
They also have guns. Lots of guns, and big ones too. We will never really
fight them head on - we wouldn't stand a chance. Not with their society
coalescing around the govt, and ours hating the guts out of our elites. We'd
get stomped.
To quote Joseph Goebbels "If you tell a lie big enough and keep
repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." There are several
things going on. MSM and deep state were counting on a Hillary Clinton victory
and continued US bellicose posturing against Russia. The deep state is also
apoplectic about the military debacle in Syria. The ministry of propaganda-
corporate media (owned by 6 large corporations; Link:
www.wakingtimes.com/2015/08/28/the-illusion-of-choice-90-of-american-media-controlled-by-6-corporations
)
has been saturating the airwaves and social media with ongoing stories about
Russian "hacking" which are probably nonsense. A far more likely scenario is
this "hacking" was carried out by people with intimate knowledge of Hillary
Clinton's background, her email correspondence and location of servers where
this information was stored/archived, such as people in the FBI, CIA, DHS or
State Dept. These hacked messages were then forwarded to Judicial Watch,
WikiLeaks or contacts in Russia or China to cover their tracks.
This might be of interest-
Former NSA Officer – CIA Lying About Russians Hacking DNC By Jim W. Dean Dec
14, 2016; Link:
www.veteranstoday.com/2016/12/14/former-nsa-officer-cia-lying-about-russians-hacking-dnc
Bottom line is that fierce battles are going on between completing
economic factions who run the US. Both groups are pursuing increasingly
reckless and bellicose foreign policies which are likely to lead to direct
military confrontations with Russia and China.
I'm a cyber security professional with over 30 years experience and several
certifications. Hackers with apparent Russian ties (not necessarily the
Russian government) have been involved in global hacking efforts for many
years. So have the Chinese. So has everyone else, including the US.
None of
this may be true at all, because hackers that know what they're doing never
leave a trail behind. EVER. And if they do leave a trail, it's almost always
a false flag -- which means that what you think you see is not actually where
it came from. It's highly unlikely that sophisticated hackers connected with
the Russian government would be stupid enough to leave anything behind that
identified who they were or where they operated from.
I'm calling BS on this whole thing, for two reasons. One -- the
"election" wasn't hacked, the DNC was -- and their extremely dirty laundry
aired. We now know for certain that the Democrats are a bunch of liars,
thieves, and hooligans that could care less about the country. And two -- the
politicization of this by Obama is nauseating. The likelihood that anyone knows
for certain that the Russian government was behind it is about zero or less.
Yesterday, Julian Assange emphatically stated on Sean Hannity's radio show that
the Russians had absolutely no involvement in the Wikileaks hacks. I'll
believe Assange before the Obama administration or US media shills. Assange
has never been proven wrong.
The Associated Press and the New York Times are repeating, word for word,
whatever CIA and CIA-in-Chief says, and then all Vatican-controlled
newspapers are printing the AP and NYT articles. Big dose of CIA in my
local newspaper today, and yesterday, and every day since, at least,
Merrimack College pointed the way toward The One True Propaganda, with its
junior-professor-of-how-Hollywood-and-TV-portray-overweight-people's
omniscient and omnipotent list of "Fake News Sites". Still waiting for the
Pope to endorse this list: maybe when Rome Freezes Over.
The article nails an important point. The purpose of this exercise is to
sabotage any Trump attempts for a rapprochement with Russia. Peace with major
powers is bad for business and Obama's Zionist masters need war to advance
their one world government plans.
Obama knows no moral compass and will
do anything, say anything, to get the treats from his masters that a faithful
lap dog believes it deserves.
Some of the racist quotes here I can't uptick, that said it was classic Obama
from the trump speech telling EVERYONE in advance what he was going to do
military wise. That is disapointing. Lets assume that China, Russia, and many
other capable state actors did hack Hillary's server? Lets go the route of
occums razor and assume that as a truth. That does not excuse the behavior and
sheer stupidity of:
Setting up an illegal server anyway, AFTER hillary
requested and was denied a phone like the POTUS.
Emails show NSA rejected Hillary Clinton's request for secure smartphone
So let us start here! Keep in mind she lost numerous devices, the stupid
cunt kept loosing her phones and misplacing them.
Then Hillary hell bent on having her own private communication system
circumvents the DOS and sets up her own! At the point where that decision was
made there was no longer any attack against the United States of America but
instead an attack against a politician leaking state level data on a non-secure
media. If anyone should be held accountable it should be Hillary despite
INTENT, yes Hillary.
But it gets better folks!
Then we have the DNC and Weiner hacks, and the DNC and the RNC are not
actual offices of government, There is no fucking .gov address behind the DNC
or GOP. The nice lady who runs the local GOP isn't a vetted government
employee and used some poor habits in her handling of data, she was ignorant of
a BCC and the security of doing so. (to her credit she learned quickly) ***
side note
And then finally there was Weiners emails. These emails were on a
non-government device/computer and seemed to have been traversed by yahoo. So
you have these stupid fucking people doing the following: Using Yahoo, DNC,
and Gov systems utilizing the same passwords. BUT IT GETS BETTER
So now a phishing attack at one account podesta becomes a swiss cheese
attack as numerous vectors are exploited, did the Russians hack weiner and put
the emails on his device? It is with password complexity, password expiration,
and non-passowrd reuse that government can ensure that you don't use the same
password on Yahoo that you use at .gov sites. It is by using multi-factor
authentication and geo location that a .gov account can be authenticated and
authorized.
But what we have is a bunch of assholes who mishandled the peoples data or
governmnet data and it was never their personal data! It was either the data
of the united states in which case Hillary should be fucking charged or it was
not and she is a stupid fucking victim like the other billion or so yahoo
hacks.
So now we got Obama just like Trump said, telling the world what we are
going to do before we do it for optimal results.. lets tell russia in
advance.. we will attack at noon...for what has been characterized as yoga
emails on non-government systems by the attorney general.
This is why I hate the elites, this is why I never needed Russia to do
anything to votes against these incompetent and ridiculous assholes.
As Obama leaves offce remember that this observation is concise and made
from an educated and unbiased persepctive of handling government data.
The echo cjhamber that Obama lives in has become as insular as that of
Hillary. And damn these people for their confusion of conviction with fact.
And finally.. we beat the democrats in PA the good old fashioned way.. we were
grassroots and not astro-turf.
***** The local GOP website was being cyber-squated when I volunteered, an
email of so from me on blacklisting it and there ads would not have shut them
down, but it would have hit them in the pocket and caused monetary disruption,
they released the expired domain and stopped squatting, the local head of the
GOP, defintly not .gov but "GOP" was being blocked by email systems because she
would send out GOP emails to an email list with 100 or so recipients and the
spam filters thought it was spam or a virus. So I explained to her how to use
BCC tools, and our communication improved. I didn't want my email shared with
everyone anyway! But the DNC and GOP ain't fucking government.. at best these
people are like televangelists which is like hollywood for ugly people.
I can say this, I have an ENORMOUS respect for the local GOP, I have come to
like many of them. I don't agree with them on everything but never has so few,
worked so hard, to empower so many more to volunteer and win an election. And
to their credit shown the right way changed, they didn't piss and moan.
Good observations, sir. People like you are the reason ZH is so useful for
enlightenment.
I should add that if Hillary was claiming to lose her
phone, then Hillary probably wasn't losing her phone all the time. She was
probably periodically destroying it to destroy evidence. Burn phones or
burners are a common technique among criminals to minimize the evidence
available if/when they get caught.
Looks to me like Obola and his cabal are trying to cause as much friction as
possible with Russia before he leaves office.
This garbage allegation about
Putin being personally involved in hacking the US election, the recent
announcement of supplying more weapons to terrorists in Syria, recent wild
allegations of Russian genocide in Syria (whilst ignoring Syrian people waving
and cheering when the SAA arrived in Allepo) and threats to begin a cyberwar
are all designed to do this.
Obama has acted like a CIA employee for 8 years. He lied to get into office
and he's lied ever since, just like the CIA teaches its employees to do. The
CIA is not bound by US or international law and they could give a shit about
our Constitution, our laws, or our elections, as long as their preferred
candidate gets in of course. Are we currently any better than the Nazis?
Conquering other countries is the same regardless if you do it covertly or
not, regardless of how many lies you say or not. These people must be stopped.
Unfortunately it might take mass civil unrest to bring the changes we need.
Stealing the election from Trump and handing it to a criminal like Clinton may
be the spark. Let's hope there are enough people left with integrity and
intelligence in DC to do the right thing.
There is no concept of a open courtroom to decide contentious technical issues
like. This . Cozy bear, whatever bear
'more than i can' bear. A jury of fair minded people can decide when a good
adversarial courtroom encounter occurs.
I would like to see Trey Gowdy defending Putin against whatever CIA stooge they
send up. Obama has a lot of gall to complain about hacking when Hillary,
Podesta, and the run DNC gang was so careless that a very amateur
hacking/phishing effort would be sufficient to do this break in. Then there is
the assertion that some disgruntled democratic people leaked the whole works-
from the inside- being mad at Hillary over Bernie I guess.
If the US wants as gentlemen agreement not to read each others mail, maybe
we could pursue that but hacking Putin and sending NGO's to undermine him, the
numerous color revolutions from George Soros in Ukraine, Georgia, ... make it
seem to me that Putin is the aggrieved party here, now being threatened by
Obama personally. Everybody snoops on everybody. Israel, Russia, US and the
five eyes, China, ... but when it gets personal like this Putin Obama threat
thing, we could cross a line, like an obscure assassination of the Austrian
Archduke by some Serbian did. Putin is a serious fellow and not somebody to
threaten without consequences. We may think he sees it as just posturing, and
we better hope it stops right there. If the Clinton mob can't win, they may
decide to bring the house down on everybody.
Obama: "I am, of course, not speaking about the real, live Vladimir Putin. I
am speaking about our CIA cardboard-cutout caricature of Vladimir Putin. We
ALWAYS have a number of cardboard-cutouts in stock, of various people, to blame
for whatever goes wrong next.
"....while Russian foreign ministry spox Maria Zakharova accused "Western
media" of being a "shill" and a "mouthpiece of
various power groups
",
and added that "it's not the general public who's being manipulated," Zakharova
said. "
the general public nowadays can distinguish the truth
. It's the
mass
media that is manipulating themselves
.""
Can you effin believe
such a statement made by the Russian gubmint - and that it is
true
?
This whole affair screams one thing and one thing only: politics. And dirty,
childish, Democrat politics at that. COULD the Russian government have hacked
the DNC? Sure, anything is possible. Is it likely? NO. Government-sponsored
hackers don't leave telltale signs as to who they are, they leave false flags
and a trail of breadcrumbs that lead nowhere or to places they want you to
think the hack came from. Anyone smart enough to hack the DNC isn't going to
do anything to reveal who they are. Not even accidentally.
The overseers of the U.S. intelligence community have not embraced a CIA assessment that Russian
cyber attacks were aimed at helping Republican President-elect Donald Trump win the 2016 election,
three American officials said on Monday.
While the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) does not dispute the CIA's analysis
of Russian hacking operations, it has not endorsed their assessment because of a lack of conclusive
evidence that Moscow intended to boost Trump over Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, said the officials,
who declined to be named .
An ODNI spokesman declined to comment on the issue.
"ODNI is not arguing that the agency (CIA) is wrong, only that they can't prove intent," said
one of the three U.S. officials. "Of course they can't, absent agents in on the decision-making in
Moscow."
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, whose evidentiary standards require it to make cases that
can stand up in court, declined to accept the CIA's analysis – a deductive assessment of the available
intelligence – for the same reason, the three officials said
But all of them, without exception, accept that the Democrats' server was hacked by Russia, and
that it was Russia who leaked the information through Wikileaks, and that Russia also hacked the
Republicans but declined to release incriminating or influential material it had in its possession.
There is, to my knowledge, no evidence of this, either.
Vladimir Putin's Valdai Speech at the XIII Meeting (Final Plenary Session) of the Valdai International
Discussion Club (Sochi, 27 October 2016)
As is his usual custom, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a speech at the final session
of the annual Valdai International Discussion Club's 13th meeting, held this year in Sochi, before
an audience that included the President of Finland Tarja Halonen and former President of South Africa
Thabo Mbeki. The theme for the 2016 meeting and its discussion forums was "The Future in Progress:
Shaping the World of Tomorrow" which as Putin noted was very topical and relevant to current developments
and trends in global politics, economic and social affairs.
Putin noted that the previous year's Valdai Club discussions centred on global problems and crises,
in particular the ongoing wars in the Middle East; this fact gave him the opportunity to summarise
global political developments over the past half-century, beginning with the United States' presumption
of having won the Cold War and subsequently reshaping the international political, economic and social
order to conform to its expectations based on neoliberal capitalist assumptions. To that end, the
US and its allies across western Europe, North America and the western Pacific have co-operated in
pressing economic and political restructuring including regime change in many parts of the world:
in eastern Europe and the Balkans, in western Asia (particularly Afghanistan and Iraq) and in northern
Africa (Libya). In achieving these goals, the West has either ignored at best or at worst exploited
international political, military and economic structures, agencies and alliances to the detriment
of these institutions' reputations and credibility around the world. The West also has not hesitated
to dredge and drum up imaginary threats to the security of the world, most notably the threat of
Russian aggression and desire to recreate the Soviet Union on former Soviet territories and beyond,
the supposed Russian meddling in the US Presidential elections, and apparent Russian hacking and
leaking of emails related to failed US Presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton's conduct as
US Secretary of State from 2008 to 2012.
After his observation of current world trends as they have developed since 1991, Putin queries
what kind of future we face if political elites in Washington and elsewhere focus on non-existent
problems and threats, or on problems of their own making, and ignore the very real issues and problems
affecting ordinary people everywhere: issues of stability, security and sustainable economic development.
The US alone has problems of police violence against minority groups, high levels of public and private
debt measured in trillions of dollars, failing transport infrastructure across most states, massive
unemployment that either goes undocumented or is deliberately under-reported, high prison incarceration
rates and other problems and issues indicative of a highly dysfunctional society. In societies that
are ostensibly liberal democracies where the public enjoys political freedoms, there is an ever-growing
and vast gap between what people perceive as major problems needing solutions and the political establishment's
perceptions of what the problems are, and all too often the public view and the elite view are at
polar opposites. The result is that when referenda and elections are held, predictions and assurances
of victory one way or another are smashed by actual results showing public preference for the other
way, and polling organisations, corporate media with their self-styled "pundits" and "analysts" and
governments are caught scrambling to make sense of what just happened.
Putin points out that the only way forward is for all countries to acknowledge and work together
on the problems that challenge all humans today, the resolution of which should make the world more
stable, more secure and more sustaining of human existence. Globalisation should not just benefit
a small plutocratic elite but should be demonstrated in concrete ways to benefit all. Only by adhering
to international law and legal arrangements, through the charter of the United Nations and its agencies,
can all countries hope to achieve security and stability and achieve a better future for their peoples.
To this end, the sovereignty of Middle Eastern countries like Iraq, Syria and Yemen should be
respected and the wars in those countries should be brought to an end, replaced by long-term plans
and programs of economic and social reconstruction and development. Global economic development and
progress that will reduce disparities between First World and Third World countries, eliminate notions
of "winning" and "losing", and end grinding poverty and the problems that go with it should be a
major priority. Economic co-operation should be mutually beneficial for all parties that engage in
it.
Putin also briefly mentioned in passing the development of human potential and creativity, environmental
protection and climate change, and global healthcare as important goals that all countries should
strive for.
While there's not much in Putin's speech that he hasn't said before, what he says is typical of
his worldview, the breadth and depth of his understanding of current world events (which very, very
few Western politicians can match), and his preferred approach of nations working together on common
problems and coming to solutions that benefit all and which don't advantage one party's interests
to the detriment of others and their needs. Putin's approach is a typically pragmatic and cautious
one, neutral with regards to political or economic ideology, but one focused on goals and results,
and the best way and methods to achieve those goals.
One interesting aspect of Putin's speech comes near the end where he says that only a world with
opportunities for everyone, with access to knowledge to all and many ways to realise creative potential,
can be considered truly free. Putin's understanding of freedom would appear to be very different
from what the West (and Americans in particular) understand to be "freedom", that is, being free
of restraints on one's behaviour. Putin's understanding of freedom would be closer to what 20th-century
Russian-born British philosopher Isaiah Berlin would consider to be "positive freedom", the freedom
that comes with self-mastery, being able to think and behave freely and being able to choose the
government of the society in which one lives.
The most outstanding point in Putin's speech, which unfortunately he does not elaborate on further,
given the context of the venue, is the disconnect between the political establishment and the public
in most developed countries, the role of the mass media industry in reducing or widening it, and
the dangers that this disconnect poses to societies if it continues. If elites continue to pursue
their own fantasies and lies, and neglect the needs of the public on whom they rely for support (yet
abuse by diminishing their security through offshoring jobs, weakening and eliminating worker protection,
privatising education, health and energy, and encouraging housing and other debt bubbles), the invisible
bonds of society – what might collectively be called "the social contract" between the ruler and
the ruled – will disintegrate and people may turn to violence or other extreme activities to get
what they want.
An English-language transcript of the speech can be found at
this link .
On watching the "Keiser Report " on the imperial blowback against independent media, it strikes me
that the MSM are as to the Papacy as the new media are to Martin Luther:
"... That those scheming Russians were clever enough to hack into voting machines, but not clever enough to cover their tracks? ..."
"... It's strangely reminiscent of the days of the Red scare, minus the Reds. ..."
"... The displaced machinists in the industrial midwest, whose votes helped put Trump in the White House, believe that free trade deals are responsible for their economic woes and they never trusted Clinton's turn against the TPP. ..."
"... was Clinton's campaign for you, bereft of principle and pathologically concerned with "optics" at the expense of substance. ..."
"... They were so confident of their inevitable victory that they wrote off the old industrial states in favor of luring upscale suburbanites who normally vote Republican. They hoped they would be so revolted by Trump that they would vote for her, but they didn't. ..."
"... It's panic over loss of control. They aren't pondering ways to make things better for the American people. Not in the Beltaway. Not the duoploy. The handwringing is strictly about control and pasification of the population. ..."
"... The long, long list of dodgy-donors to The Clinton Foundation told large numbers of Democrat voters everything they needed to know about a potential Hillary Clinton presidency. This, and the 'knifing' of Bernie, sealed her fate. ..."
"... America will never, and should never, forgive Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. ..."
"... At last! Someone on this newspaper talking common sense. ..."
"... Absurd! She was a rich white hawkish neolib who has no one but herself and the Democratic Pary to blame for the terrible loss which will seal the supreme court for years. Face facts!! She couldn't even beat Trump and was widely viewed as a fraud. ..."
"... The person who lost the Presidential Election in USA is Hillary Clinton. She, like Blair is a war monger. I, if I had a vote, would not have voted for her. ..."
"... If she had been elected we would have had bigger and better wars in the Middle East. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan never ended despite Obama calling the Iraq war a "strategic mistake". One that continued for another eight years. To those two we have added Syria and Lybia. ..."
"... " ...reflecting on how baseless our self-image as the world's greatest democracy is. " The rest of the world has known that for decades. ..."
"... I don't understand how accurate reporting by Wikileaks of politicians' emails is considered 'interference' with the US elections. To me, it seems helpful. If a US newspaper made the report, they would probably get a prize. If a foreign organization made the report, so what? People abroad are free (I hope) to comment on US matters, and people in the US are free to read it or not. ..."
"... Perhaps they mean the Guardian's politics. Identity politics has been thoroughly rejected and instead of learning from the experience, Guardian has been electing to throw more of the same tactics, except louder ..."
"... Americans across the political spectrum are happy to use Putin to distract them from reflecting on how baseless our self-image as the world's greatest democracy is. ..."
"... You're absolutely right. Putin is the boogeyman for every ill, real or purported, of his own society, and when the American political system and its institutions prove to be broken, Putin gets to be the boogeyman for that, too. What a powerful man! He must be pleased. ..."
"... This is an ultimate truth because it explains why Merkel will not be elected. These days Putin is in full control of the world and is responsible for everything. ..."
"... Let's thank Hillary for that. There is a very good news: on the 20th January we'll cut all Saudi supply channels to the IS and kill all the bastards within 2 months. ..."
"... In the modern world it is enough to do nothing to be a good man, eg if Bush, Blair, Obama and Clinton didn't create ISIS, the world would be a much better place. You do not even need to be smart to understand this. ..."
"... It's crazy. Even if the Russian hacking claims are legitimate, the leaks still revealed things about the Democrats that were true. It's like telling your friend that their spouse is cheating on them, and then the spouse blaming you for ruining the marriage. ..."
"... The Clinton campaign spent like drunken sailors, on media. This is a new role for the media giants that took care of Clinton's every need, including providing motivational research and other consultants. ..."
"... The ongoing scenario that now spins around Putin as a central figure is a product of "after shock media". ..."
"... To weave fictional reality in real time for a mass audience is a magnum leap from internet fake news. This drama is concocted to keep DNC from going into seclusion until the inauguration. ..."
"... Doug Henwood is absolutely correct. This obsession with the supposed foreign interference is baseless. All the real culprits operate within our own system. ..."
"... Trump's embrace of Russia and decision to end the neocon-neoliberal agenda of regime change skewer two of the corporate establishment's cash cows - arms sales to the numerous conflicts in the Middle East initiated by the corporate cabal, and arms sales to NATO and all the new post Cold War NATO members to continue the buildup of armaments on Russia's borders." ..."
"... I'd love to be pleasantly surprised, and I note that already Trump's campaign has put down TWO odious political dynasties, AND the TPP -- all very healthy developments. ..."
"... The only thing that kept the contest somehow close was the unprecedented all-media fear campaign against Trump. ..."
"... It was always Hillary's election to lose and she lost it simply because she was not to be trusted. Her very public endorsement by gangster capitalist Jay-Z told you all you needed to know about who she represented. ..."
"... I was dubious before, but I'm now actively concerned. This crop of Democrats and their deep state cohorts are unhinged and dangerous. They see me and my families' lives as an externality in their eventual war with Russia. As Phyrric a victory as there could possibly be. They are psychotic; not only waging countless coups and intelligence operations abroad, but now in plain sight on American soil. The mainstream media seems to invoke the spirit of Goebbels more vividly with each passing day. Their disdain and manipulation of the general populace is chilling. They see us not as people to be won-over, but as things to be manipulated, tricked and coerced. Nothing new for politicians (particularity the opposition) - but the levels here are staggering. ..."
"... January couldn't come soon enough - and I say that as strong critic of Trump. ..."
"... A good article to counterbalance the reams of rubbish we are hearing in the US election post-mortem. Anyone who had neural activity should have known that when you steal the candidacy, you certainly won't get the votes. Clinton effectively handed the election to Trump by not having the humility, humanity and honesty to admit defeat by Benie Sanders. ..."
"... There's always the possibility of course, that the US establishment realised Clinton's blatant warmongering wasn't 'good for business'. ..."
"... So maybe, they thought, we can get the Russkies 'on side', deal with China (ie. reduce it to a 'client state'/ turn it into an ashtray) - and then move on Russia and grab all those lovely resources freed up by global warming.... ..."
"... Only her campaign volunteers knew, her message to the public was "dont vote for Trump" which translates to, I could lose to him, vote for me! ..."
"... The Podesta emails confirmed what many people already suspected and knew of Hillary and her campaign. Those who were interested in reading them had to actually look for them, since MSM was not reporting on them. It's not as if an avid MSNBC or CNN watcher was going to be exposed. ..."
"... It's hilarious how the major Left outlets (Washington Post) are now telling it's readers how Russia is to blame for people voting against Hillary due to the Podesta emails, when they didn't even report on the emails in the first place. ..."
"... EVERYTHING about the system all halfway decent people detest, is summed up in the figure of Hillary Clinton. ..."
"... Like Donald said, she had 'experience', but it was all BAD 'experience'. ..."
"... she is a frail, withered old woman who needs to retire - def the wrong democrat choice, crazy -- Berni.S would have won if for them - he is far more sincere ..."
"... "The displaced machinists... believe that free trade deals are responsible for their economic woes and they never trusted Clinton's turn against the TPP. But that was Clinton's campaign for you, bereft of principle and pathologically concerned with "optics" at the expense of substance." ..."
"... This argument is as asinine as the one the author opposes. It was a collusion of events that led to this result, including the failure of both parties to adapt to an evolving economic and social climate over decades. The right wing hailing the collapse of liberalism as a result of decades of liberal mismanagement conveniently forget their own parties have held the reins for half that time, and failed just as miserably as the left.... ..."
"... It's quite bizarre to see "progressives" openly side with the military industrial complex, which is threatened by a president elect weary of more warfare. ..."
"... It's to be expected from career politicians like McCain who is kicking and screaming, but it's shameful to see supposed liberally-minded people help spread the Red Scare storyline. ..."
"... Obama has behaved dreadfully, first he or his office gets one of its poodles namely MI6 to point the finger at Putin re cyberwar, which was swiftly followed by the International Olympic Committee looking at Russia for 2012 Olympic games, the elections in the US and the Democrats CIA coming out with unsubstantiated nonsense (funny how they never like, providing collaborative evidence - on this or anything that supposedly Russia has done) then there is Syria, and Obama and the Democrats were the cheerleader for regime change, because they have been out manoeuvred in that sphere. All of it in less than a week. ..."
"... If Obama, the administration, and the CIA were smart they would have realised that a concerted effort to blame Putin / Russia would be seen for what it is - a liar and one of trying to discredit both the outcome of the US elections, the dislike of HRC, and her association with Wall St. - she raised more money for her campaign than Trump and Sanders put together (if the Democrats had chosen Sanders, then they would have stood a chance) and that their hawk would not be in a position to create WW111 - thank goodness. The Democrats deserved what they got. ..."
"... This organ of the liberal media (no scare quotes required - it is socially liberal and economically neoliberal), along with many others, dogmatically supported Clinton against Sanders to the point of printing daily and ridiculous dishonesty, even going so far as to make out as if anyone who supports any form of wealth redistribution is a racist, sexist, whitesplaining dude-bro. ..."
"... The Wikileaks emails proved the votes were rigged against Sanders, it why Debbie W Shulz had to resign ..."
"... The election was close, and if one less thing had gone wrong for Hillary she would have won. However I think an important thing that lost her the election was identity politics. She patronized Afro-Americans and Hispanics, by tell them that because they are Trump-threatened minorities, they should vote for her. In the same vein, gays and women were supposed to vote for her. But what she was really telling these groups was that they should revel in their supposed victimhood, which was not a great message. ..."
"... Completely agreed! The onus for defeat belongs to the Democrat party leadership as well. Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders both understood where the momentum of the election was headed before anyone else did. The election was won and lost in the white blue collar Midwest. A place that decided that diet corporatism is decidedly worse than a populist right wing extremist. ..."
"... No one here believed the ridiculous about-face Hillary pulled on the question of the TPP. I guarantee you Bernie would have cleaned Trump's clock in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and perhaps Ohio and Iowa. ..."
"... "Our self-image as the world's greatest democracy...." Well, speaking for myself and plenty of other Americans, I never said anything like that about us. In fact, like a lot of people I wish we would stick to our own business, quit trying to be the world's cop, and cease meddling in other countries' affairs. ..."
"... Assuming that it really was the Russians who done it, I guess they had a better game plan than the Saudis. ..."
"... Her 'deplorables' comment was every bit as telling as Mitt Romney's '47%'. We really needed to know about her 'public versus private positions', even if it only confirmed what everybody already knew. I am not 100% sure the system made the worst choice in raising up Donald Trump. ..."
"... The American voters heard a steady stream of these arguments. Some may have simply ignored them. Others took them into consideration, but concluded that they wanted drastic change enough to put them aside. White women decided that Trump's comments, while distasteful, were things they'd heard before. ..."
"... Reliance on the sanctity of racial and gender pieties was a mistake. Not everyone treats these subjects as the holiest of holies. The people who would be most swayed by those arguments never would have voted for Trump anyways. ..."
"... Colin Powell said Clinton destroys everything she touches with hubris. Seeing as how she destroyed the democrat "blue wall" and also had low turnout which hurt democrats down the ticket I agree. ..."
"... All this hysteria about the USA and Russia finally working together than apart doesn't help either for it appears that the [neoliberal] lefties want a perpetual war rather than peace. ..."
"... The CIA being outraged about a foreign state intervening in an election is quite funny. They have intervened so many times, especially in Latin America, to install puppet regimes. ..."
"... As for hacking... does anybody believe the CIA has never hacked anybody? ..."
Hillary Clinton was the symbol of neoliberal globalization and contept of neoliberal for common
poeple (aka deplorable). That's why she lost. this is more of the first defeat of neoliberal
candidate in the USA then personal defeat of Hillary. She was just a symbol, or puppet, if you wish.
... ... ...
And what exactly are the claims made by these Putin-did-it stories? That were it not for Russian
chicanery, Hillary Clinton would have won the popular vote by five million and not almost three million?
That displaced machinists on the banks of Lake Erie were so incensed by the Podesta emails that they
voted for Trump instead of Clinton? That Putin was pulling FBI director James Comey's strings in
his investigation of the Clinton emails? That those scheming Russians were clever enough to hack
into voting machines, but not clever enough to cover their tracks?
It's strangely reminiscent of the days of the Red scare, minus the Reds.
... ... ...
The displaced machinists in the industrial midwest, whose votes helped put Trump in the White
House, believe that free trade deals are responsible for their economic woes and they never trusted
Clinton's turn against the TPP. But that was Clinton's campaign for you, bereft of principle
and pathologically concerned with "optics" at the expense of substance.
They were so confident of their inevitable victory that they wrote off the old industrial
states in favor of luring upscale suburbanites who normally vote Republican. They hoped they would
be so revolted by Trump that they would vote for her, but they didn't.
... ... ...
Of course there are questions about our voting machines. The American balloting system is a chaotic
mess, with an array of state and local authorities conducting elections under a vast variety of rules
using technologies ranging from old-fashioned paper ballots to sleek touch-screen devices.
The former take forever to count, and the latter are unauditable – we can have no idea whether
the counts are accurate. The whole system is a perfect example of a quote attributed (probably falsely)
to Joseph Stalin: "The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide
everything." It's not a system that inspires trust, but we barely discuss that.
It's panic over loss of control. They aren't pondering ways to make things better for the
American people. Not in the Beltaway. Not the duoploy. The handwringing is strictly about control
and pasification of the population.
And you're shocked? I'm shocked you expected more.
The really amazing story about the presidential elections 2016 was actually not Clinton or Trump.
It was how close the US actually got to get its first socialist, or factually rather social-democratic
president. Americans are craving for more justice and equality.
And no, Clinton does not stand for any "left values". Therefore the media favored her.
The long, long list of dodgy-donors to The Clinton Foundation told large numbers of Democrat
voters everything they needed to know about a potential Hillary Clinton presidency. This, and
the 'knifing' of Bernie, sealed her fate. A reincarnated Tricky Dicky would have trounced
her, too.
Weird in your mind only. A letter just before the election suggesting that Clinton might be indicted?
And was she? Of course not. Match the letter's release with the polls at the time to see it's
influence.
Clinton's problems such as her email server were nothing compared to all the baggage that Trump
carries, yet Trump's problems were blithely ignored by many because they thought Trump would make
a difference.
At last! Someone on this newspaper talking common sense.
For the last twenty years, (way before we even knew Putin's name) the Republican Party have
promoted, fomented and instigated the most ludicrous lies and calumnies about the Democratic Party
and particularly Hilary Clinton, who they quite rightly recognised as a future Democratic Presidential
candidate.
They have politicised: education, defense, Federal Parks, water, race, religion and even the
air we breath in their efforts to ensure victory and to this end, they bought and paid for populist
uprisings against Democratic politicians, like the now abandoned Tea Party.
The problem was that even when Republicans were elected, they obviously couldn't keep their
own nonsensical promises to their now rabid audience who no longer trusted their own elected Government.
When Trump, a disestablishment, anti-Government candidate came along, the electorate (naively)
saw a possibility of the change they have been promised.
Of course the Russians prefer Trump over Clinton, since they can see the destruction he can
cause their geopolitical adversary and Putin would say as much as he can to support Trump...errr....even
though it would be counter-productive with conservative voters...but it is unlikely that he bears
anywhere near the blame that the Republican Party does, who foolishly allowed their own 'attack
dog' to bite them on the arse.
I'm sorry to say that the Republican Party (and the US) has to suck this one up and admit...(to
mix my hackneyed metaphors) that they've blown themselves up with their own petard!
I think with hindsight Bernie Sanders is going to be blamed for dividing the Democratic Party
and bolstering the Republican propaganda against the Clintons. If only we had stuck together with
Clinton we wouldn't be facing the Trump disaster now. Hillary Clinton is not evil and she was
very highly qualified--to paraphrase Brando, we could have had progress instead of a disaster,
which is what we have now.
Absurd! She was a rich white hawkish neolib who has no one but herself and the Democratic
Pary to blame for the terrible loss which will seal the supreme court for years. Face facts!!
She couldn't even beat Trump and was widely viewed as a fraud.
You fool, the Libertarian party is the largest third party in the US and they mostly take votes
from the Republicans. Stop blaming third parties when their existence demonstrably helps the Democrats.
Or perhaps you dream of a world where conservatives still support their third party just as much
as they ever did but lefties all move in perfect lockstep? If so, it's time for a reality check.
Up jumped Hilary Benn with the theory that Jeremy Corbyn had caused the Brexit vote. His resignation
and the denunciation of 172 Labour MP's based on an "indisputable fact" that nobody believes to
be true today. The person who lost the Presidential Election in USA is Hillary Clinton. She,
like Blair is a war monger. I, if I had a vote, would not have voted for her.
If she had been elected we would have had bigger and better wars in the Middle East. The
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan never ended despite Obama calling the Iraq war a "strategic mistake".
One that continued for another eight years. To those two we have added Syria and Lybia. The
west, like Russia, is dabbling in other people's wars. They have been made one hundred times worse.
What Hillary would not have dabbled in is the industrial decline in the "Rust Belt" states.
She is proposing to do nothing. So they had the prospect of no rectification at home with yet
more wars abroad. No wonder they stayed at home. Hillary and Nu Labour are the same: belligerancy
in the Middle East coupled with tame pussy cat against failing capitalism at home. The middle
east has got total destruction from the west and total nothingness but austerity (ie more failure)
as the action plan for capitalism. They are on the "same page" then!
I don't understand how accurate reporting by Wikileaks of politicians' emails is considered
'interference' with the US elections. To me, it seems helpful. If a US newspaper made the report,
they would probably get a prize. If a foreign organization made the report, so what? People abroad
are free (I hope) to comment on US matters, and people in the US are free to read it or not.
It could be argued that only reporting democratic emails is distorting the truth: I'd say its
a step towards the whole truth. I welcome all disclosures that are pertinent to a good decision
by US voters.
Perhaps they mean the Guardian's politics. Identity politics has been thoroughly rejected
and instead of learning from the experience, Guardian has been electing to throw more of the same
tactics, except louder
Citizens of the UK are by far the most heavily surveilled in the western world. This has been
the case since long before the ubiquitous introduction of CCTV cameras.
Americans across the political spectrum are happy to use Putin to distract them from
reflecting on how baseless our self-image as the world's greatest democracy is.
You're absolutely right. Putin is the boogeyman for every ill, real or purported, of his
own society, and when the American political system and its institutions prove to be broken, Putin
gets to be the boogeyman for that, too. What a powerful man! He must be pleased.
Only, the thing is, the American political system and its institutions - American democracy
- weren't undermined overnight. It took several decades and it was done by Americans who weren't
so keen on democracy. Can't fob that off on Putin, try as they might.
If American power takes a big fat fall like Humpty Dumpty, don't look to Vladimir Putin, look
in a fucking mirror. That's where you'll find the culprit.
This is an ultimate truth because it explains why Merkel will not be elected. These days Putin
is in full control of the world and is responsible for everything.
Let's thank Hillary for that. There is a very good news: on the 20th January we'll cut all
Saudi supply channels to the IS and kill all the bastards within 2 months.
In the modern world it is enough to do nothing to be a good man, eg if Bush, Blair, Obama
and Clinton didn't create ISIS, the world would be a much better place. You do not even need to
be smart to understand this.
Your Donald.
From where you'd rather be.
With love.
It's crazy. Even if the Russian hacking claims are legitimate, the leaks still revealed things
about the Democrats that were true. It's like telling your friend that their spouse is cheating
on them, and then the spouse blaming you for ruining the marriage.
The Clinton campaign spent like drunken sailors, on media. This is a new role for the media
giants that took care of Clinton's every need, including providing motivational research and other
consultants.
The ongoing scenario that now spins around Putin as a central figure is a product of "after
shock media". Broadcast media bounced America back and forth from sit-com to gun violence
for decades, giving fiction paramount value. To weave fictional reality in real time for a
mass audience is a magnum leap from internet fake news. This drama is concocted to keep DNC from
going into seclusion until the inauguration.
Doug Henwood is absolutely correct. This obsession with the supposed foreign interference
is baseless. All the real culprits operate within our own system.
Maybe, in four years, Trump's administration can oversee a secure election. Unlike the Obama folks,
who seem to make a calamity out of any project bigger than making a sandwich.
This hullabaloo really highlights the disdain the establishment has for the American voter. They
thought they had it tied up. They thought they had pulled one over on the American people. They
are not interested in what the voter actually wants.
And this raises questions about why our servicemen and women are making sacrifices. The establishment
story-line talks about our brave soldiers dying so we can have free elections. Or something like
that. The establishment does not care about free and fair elections. In fact, this hullabaloo
should have demonstrated to everybody that the establishment does not respect or accepts the results
of elections that don't go their way.
Look at WikiLeaks. They died so Hillary could present her ever-so-clever "tick-tock on Libya"
and make fools think she's a constructive foreign policy force.
H. Clinton would have started a war against Russia in Syria come January; and war against Russia
in The Ukraine shortly after. Trump could yet end civilization as we know it: thereagain the CIA
might 'JFK' him early doors before he's able to.
Fully agree with you. Trump's victory is certain to have incalculable consequences for life on
earth. I believe he will give Netenyahu the green light to use tactical nuclear weapons against
Iranian nuclear and military facilities. I am no fan of Trump.
American 'exceptionalism;' The World's Policeman; The greatest country on earth. Descriptions
believed and espoused by the USA. So Exceptional is America that it claims a God-given right to
interfere with or sabotage political parties, foriegn governments (democratically-elected or not)
and sovereign states anywhere it chooses. Now we have the hilarious spectacle of a historically
blood-drenched CIA (Fake News Central) squawking and squealing completely fabricated nonsense
about Kremlin interference in Trump's election victory. Tell that to the tens of millions slaughtered
in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and the many other nations and people's around the globe who have
had first hand experience of American Exceptionalism. You could not make it up..
Arguably, Clinton and the DNC themselves showed very little respect for democracy, as we know
from leaks. And now they are whining because of a democratic outcome they don't like.
We should discuss two things:
- the content of the mails
- and the ethical question: did the hacker, whoever it is, did democracy rather a service than
a disservice? From when on is a piece of information so valuable that its origins don't matter
anymore?
Media, at least in times when msm still had some moral clout, often relied in their investigative
journalism on source which by themselves were not necessarily ethically bona fide - but the public
interest, the common good benefited by the information.
Had Clinton won the election and we only found out now about the trickery that aided in her
success we would have a major dilemma. We would have to have endless discussions now about her
legitimacy.
I am one who firmly believes that Clinton lost this election because of Clinton's and the DNC's
ineptitude and hubris.
But that doesn't mean the Russians weren't running a psy-ops campaign of fake news stories
and misinformation about Clinton and this election on Facebook.
Which was more responsible for Clinton's loss? Most probably Clinton's ineptitude but the fake
news campaigns on Facebook had some effect. It needs to be addressed...
But hadn't Hillary made it personal by saying Trump was Putin's puppet etc?
She even refused to state whether she'd seek to impose a no-fly zone over Syria; this despite
leading Generals telling her it would mean going to war with Russia and Syria.
Given all that, it's hardly surprising the Russian Duma broke into spontaneous applause upon
the confirmation of her defeat. She'd very much cast herself as the enemy of Russia in the campaign.
With the naming of Rex Tillerson, a close business, and personal, friend of Putin, to be Secy.
of State I am not sure the argument can be made that she was wrong in her assessment.
This article is absolutely right. Trump was not a good candidate and for him to beat Clinton should
be setting alarm bells ringing in Democrat HQ. The left though does have an entrenched culture
of deluding itself and convincing itself that its a victim of things beyond its control. That
lack of self awareness and inability to be brutally honest with itself is a major reason why the
left wins many fewer elections than the left. It is also why there are never shock wins for the
Democrats or Labour because they always assume too much. The Tories and Republicans are very good
at understanding their weaknesses and mitigating them to win elections.
It's absurd to consider Clinton and the mainstream Democrats as part of "the Left". Even the best
of the Democrats are generally more on the Right than on the Left, in that they are pro-capitalist
and defend the national interests of U.S. imperialism. Add to that their almost unanimous support
for the settler colony called "Israel" and there's very little leftism to be found among them.
Cunning of Putin to go back in time and persuade the framers of the US constitution to institute
an electoral college, so that he could put his own candidate in place all those hundreds of years
later.
No. Both candidates fought an election under the same rules. In the run up to the vote, Hillary's
spokesmen often argued that even if the vote was close, they had the electoral college sewn up.
She has nobody to blame but herself.
There are plenty of villains who contributed to the electoral downfall of HRC, mostly, though,
it's HRC who is primarily responsible, with a big assist from an arrogant & politically inept
DNC. Hillary won a bare majority of women, plus the average income of Trump voters exceeded that
of Hillies' supporters. Then all the groundwork for the deplorables was laid by Bill, who got
rid of Glass-Steagell. Too much is being made of the machinist from Erie & the deplorables generally
& if the Dems don't take a serious look at themselves we'll have Agent Orange for 8 rather than
4 deplorable years.
For goodness sake, it is not foreign governments , it is information. With advance of social media
and internet it became so much harder to control the information that gets out.
That is where we are in a post-propaganda world. You are not only receiving your government approved
daily portion of brainwashing but propaganda and brainwashing and information from various sources,
all with their various interests. It is your job a s an individual to decide what to believe.
You can't put the jinni back in the box.
It is all about a narrative to suit the agenda. Had Trump outspent Clinton 2:1 he would now be
reviled as the candidate of arms industry, pharmaceuticals and big banks. Had Clinton defeated
him it would be celebrated as a successful setback for the aforementioned industries; the intelligence
of the voters would have been praised. But then supposedly, Clinton was more supported by disadvantaged
groups, albeit they then also would be disadvantaged with regards to their education.
It will always end up in absurdity. However, the notion that "Putin" (never with first name,
or Mr, preferably pronounced "Poot'n") decided the US presidency is, interesting.
Usually the issue simply is, crap candidate, crap result.
Had Sanders been the candidate and had he lost to Trump, I doubt very much he'd have started all
this blaming the Russians nonsense.
Ultimately, Hilary had terrible trustworthiness ratings from nearly 25 years in frontline politics;
every shortcoming ruthlessly exploited along the way by her and her husband's political opponents.
Ignoring all that historic baggage(dating back to the early '90s) as irrelevant and blaming defeat
on the Russians makes everyone supporting that theory look equally absurd.
In the 2016 Presidential election, in the 49 States other than California, Trump won the popular
vote and enough electoral votes to win the election.
In California, the most populous State in America, the popular vote was so overwhelmingly in favor
of Hillary Clinton that she ended up winning the overall popular vote.
The electoral college is working exactly as the Founding Fathers intended.
In Shakespeare's book "Julius Caesar" the dictator was told not to go to the Capitol where he
will be murdered. His wife warned him, the soothsayer warned him but he ignored it. Caesar's wisdom
was consumed in confidence...confidence that he will be crowned king, confidence that all Romans
(most stupid people then) loved him, and confidence that those who surround him are his 'friends.'
He adamantly went to the Capitol and was murdered.
Clinton ignored most rural areas and I totally agree with the writer along this line "They
were so confident of their inevitable victory that they wrote off the old industrial states in
favor of luring upscale suburbanites who normally vote Republican." Clinton and her team paid
dearly for it just like Caesar did. Blaming Russian for the loss is like "You made me do it."
In the UK, Rupert Murdoch accesses a Prime Minister as readily as any government minister and
wields at least as much influence. At least he is open and honest about this. Similar oligarchs
exert their power more discretely. Murdoch's an Australian born US citizen (for business reasons)
with a truly global empire.
A country's big rich have always ruled it's politics. Imperial powers have intervened
in their spheres of influence . But now the big rich are international and, it seems,
1st world electorates are getting a taste of what 3rd world people have become used to.
What strikes me is the reluctance of the US political elite (including Obama) to intervene,
even when there's a suspicion of vote rigging. The right of the rich and powerful to control the
electoral process (as they have long done) trumps the national-interest (US v. rival powers)
side of politics.
Hilary Clinton won the popular vote. More people voted for her. What is the deal with the electoral
college? How is it possible to have such a huge discrepancy between the two. What is the point
of blaming the candidate when they can lose while winning?
And what is the point of blaming the candidate for their campaign when large numbers of Americans
are prepared to believe the most random bullshit? What did you want her to do, lie more often?
Because apparently, that's what it takes.
From my comment above... "In the 2016 Presidential election, in the 49 States other than California,
Trump won the popular vote and enough electoral votes to win the election.
In California, the most populous State in America, the popular vote was so overwhelmingly in favor
of Hillary Clinton that she ended up winning the overall popular vote.
The electoral college is working exactly as the Founding Fathers intended."
The election is decided by Electoral Votes. Everyone including Hillary knew that. Complaining
that she won the popular vote while losing in the Electoral College would be similar to the loser
of a soccer match complaining they lost 1-nil even though they outshot the victor by a 6-1 margin.
Whine all you want about the popular vote, it is irrelevant.
Hillary Clinton visited Arizona in the last week of the election, while visiting Wisconsin
ZERO times in the general election campaign. The trip to Arizona was a waste of time.
She lost because she was a horrible candidate with terrible strategy. All these people bleating
about "Putin" and or the "popular vote" make me laugh.
With respect, you're going to have to back up some of those claims in the second paragraph and
how they could apply to Russia.
As for the first paragraph, a few things come to mind.
Firstly, it's a huge simplification - there are things like public interest laws to be borne
in mind when talking about the press having to obey the law. I don't think there is much doubt
that this was in the public interest. I mean what Clinton did with the email server was actually
illegal. If someone hacked into a mob boss' computer, got evidence of his/her crimes, and leaked
them to the press, would you criticise the hacker or the mob boss?
Secondly, how on earth was this selectively released to favour one side? How do you favour
one side over the other when you only have information on one side. You are literally saying that
you shouldn't report on one side's wrongdoings if you can't find anything wrong about the other's!
If these are genuine - which absolutely no-one to do with Clinton has denied - then that is all
there is to it. Reality isn't partisan.
Or are you talking about how it was released? You mean dumped en masse onto Wikileaks? How
was that showing bias in any way? I just don't understand what you are trying to claim here.
Finally this comment makes me suspect you don't appreciate the American political climate:
But, given the result, the section of the press that would investigate hasn't got the money
or power to do so. You can be assured the Fox network would have devoted billions to the investigation
had HRC won though.
Fox News aren't the only people with money - indeed, Clinton vastly outspent Trump in the election...
by roughly half a billion(!) dollars.
O -- The Director of the CIA says it, then it must be true? Forgive me, but isn't this an organisation
created to spread disinformation around the world, overthrow foreign governments, and subvert
democracy? Which elections in the world has the CIA not tried to influence? Time Magazine openly
boasts that the US government and agencies had a direct role in securing the election of President
Yeltsin (who sold off a significant share of the country's assets under US advice, and plunged
Russia into the worst recession since the 1930s). Hillary Clinton openly supported the management
of the elections for the Palestine National Authority in 2006. Bill Clinton openly agitated for
the overthrow of President Aristide.
Now that the CIA's most assiduous supporters have lost office, up pops the CIA, blaming the Russians,
like we were in some bad 1950s Cold War pastiche. Get real. Take responsibility for your own failures,
Democrats. Time to cleanse the stables.
Where is even the proof of Russian propaganda? It all seems to come from an "Anonymous source",
without verfication I don't see how this is any more legitimate than the rest of the post truth
fake news out there that people believe just because it confirms their biases.
The CIA claim to know that Russian hackers leaked the Clinton campaign emails to Assange. You
can, of course, disbelieve them, but they're not a random anonymous source exactly.
Putin extremely powerful man. Make regime change in Amerika without needing invasion or rebels.
Soon regime change also in many Europan countries by sending copies of emails to small room in
embassy of little country in London.
You know how powerful Putin? Last week even show finger to Chuck Norris! Chuck Norris now call
Putin "sir".
Thank you, Doug Henwood for pointing out what the wholly-owned corporate "pundits" choose not
to divulge to coincide with their own agendas.
Hillary was a disastrous choice for the "Democratic" party, but the vast majority of Democratic
politicians were just too feckless to support Bernie Sanders, so now we have an equally terrible
choice in Donald Trump.
That Clinton and Trump even competed for the presidency is in itself an indication of just
how disconnected and undemocratic U.S. politics has become.
Moreover, as Henwood (a frequent and unsparing critic of Clinton, Inc. over the years) has
pointed out both Democrats and Republicans are supporting the Russia conspiracy theory in a cowardly
attempt to distract the U.S. public from the real and far more dire crisis, which is Washington's
enormous political dysfunction not Russia's complicity. (Read Henwood's essay: Stop Hillary! Vote
no to a Clinton Dynasty in Harper's Magazine, November 2014 - one article a month is free for
reading).
Yes, the electoral college is a ridiculous throwback to slavery which should be abolished,
but its dissolution is just one of many things I'd like to see eradicated from a governing body
that has long stopped representing the interests of working class Americans; unless, of course
you have the influence and money for such access.
The non-violent and powerful Black Lives Matter, Moral Mondays in North Carolina and Standing
Rock protesters (reinforced by U.S. veterans and other supporters) have demonstrated that change
is possible if we're carefully focused on uprooting and replacing government corruption.
The West support for regimes like Israel and Saudi Arabia makes it hard to present a credible
case against Putin on any issues but, rigging the election is just absurd. These days people are
more clued up and know Hillary lost because she was not trusted, carried baggage and was funded
by big banks. It is rather worrying that we've gone backward and Nazi propaganda tactics are the
norm again.
There was a 50/50 chance the Democrats would take the fall from grace; both parties are out of
touch with mainstream, middle-class America, it's just coincidence Trump manifested himself when
he did. Neither party had a good message or a good messenger; the dark phenomenon of Trump could
have come from either party, the nation was so desperate for change. Yet the GOP really maneuvered
for Jeb Bush to begin with; the Democrats, with a significantly smaller field, laid their bet
on Clinton. The public's rejection of both Bush and Clinton left the door open for a GOP interloper,
Trump; and Clinton was pushed on the Democrats rather than Sanders.
Even the GOP will have buyers remorse if/when they cannot temper Trump.
As someone who wanted Hilary to win, it is difficult to disagree with any of this.
If she couldn't beat Trump - who about three times a day said something idiotic or repugnant,
then she really was the wrong candidate
Since he won Trump has actually sounded miles more sensible. I can't help feel that if he had
adopted his current tone before the election that he would have won by a landslide
"This was the strategy not because Clinton was was incompetent; it was the strategy because all
available data pointed to the fact that it was working."
What a joke.
She had a billion dollars in her campaign fund. The money she spent on "data" was just money
flushed down the sewer. (No doubt various Clinton hangers-on got very nice "consulting" fees.)
She was a Democrat who publicly bragged about her devotion to **Henry Kissinger**.
She lost to **Donald Trump**. I think even Martin O'Malley could've beaten Trump; I'm certain
Sanders could. Only Hillary Clinton had the "magic" necessary to lose to a casino and real estate
huckster.
She was always a lousy candidate, and she's an incompetent politician as well. Dems can face
that, face reality, or keep going as they are, in which case there won't **be** a Democratic Party
before long.
Agreed. HRC, DNC and the Clintonistas are the only ones responsible for her loss. But there's
more to their post-election pushback than just shifting the blame, a lot more.
Demonizing Russia isn't just about seeking a scapegoat. Trump's embrace of Russia and decision
to end the neocon-neoliberal agenda of regime change skewer two of the corporate establishment's
cash cows - arms sales to the numerous conflicts in the Middle East initiated by the corporate
cabal, and arms sales to NATO and all the new post Cold War NATO members to continue the buildup
of armaments on Russia's borders.
That's a lot of anticipated arms sales and a lot of every bit as anticipated political "donations"
from the corporate establishment.
" Trump's embrace of Russia and decision to end the neocon-neoliberal agenda of regime change
skewer two of the corporate establishment's cash cows - arms sales to the numerous conflicts in
the Middle East initiated by the corporate cabal, and arms sales to NATO and all the new post
Cold War NATO members to continue the buildup of armaments on Russia's borders."
That's a mighty optimistic forecast, but it's not impossible. I think Trump is likely to be
a disaster, and even if he isn't, an unleashed Republican gang is a horrible thing to imagine.
Still, I'd love to be pleasantly surprised, and I note that already Trump's campaign has put
down TWO odious political dynasties, AND the TPP -- all very healthy developments.
Hillary Clinton lost because the majority of the voters were nauseated by her by her fake perma-
smile which might as well have been installed by cosmetic surgery. The well rehearsed, worn-out,
hollow on-message crap she spouted had zilch credibility and as much resonance. She had nothing
to say to the electorate.
That the Clinton spent about twice as much as the Trump camp in this case did not work to her
favour: every appearance on tv made her lose voters.
The only thing that kept the contest somehow close was the unprecedented all-media fear
campaign against Trump.
I have never had any doubt that that Trump would get the job. What surprised me though, is
that only one in 200 eligible voters bothered with the Green's Jill Stein: they are supposedly
relatively highly committed to their causes.
Another mistake of the Clinton campaign, btw. was to focus on scandal. My experience of 45
years of campaigning tells me "scandal" does not win any campaigns.
99% of the weapons in the Trump arsenal were Trumped up Hillary "scandals"
They did not decide it. Neither did the new "sexual victim" paraded every couple of days by
the Clinton camp. Scandal and counter-scandal are part of every campaign and ignored by non-committed
voters.
What did it for Trump was, that he spoke unscripted, thus came across a somewhat more genuine,
and at least acknowledged the victims of de-industrialisation, for which he could not be blamed,
but Clinton could. Clinton did not have anything she could present apart from "better equipped
because of experience" - with an undistinguished actual record. The name Clinton can be blamed
for the plight of the "rust-belt".
Americans have paid a heavy price because of free trade deals and they want a different direction.
In the last 15 years there is a noticeable difference in opportunity and wages and most of our
politicians don't care. Hillary lost this because she supported most free trade and outsourcing
jobs to India and China. They DNC has a chance to reform but they choose not to. I hope Bernie
starts a new party and leaves the neo liberals behind. Who knows where Trump will take us but
if he adds to the swamp he will be a one term president. Right now it looks like he is repaying
his Wall Street fundraisers and big oil super pacs. Our politicians deserve the embarrassment
for ignoring our citizens struggles.
Steven Mnuchin with ties to Wall Street stepped in when no one else would and fund raised for
Trump. Mnuchin is picked as secretary of treasury. Big oil supported Cruz and moved to Trump with
a few superpacs that Kellyanne Conway managed. Both Wall Street and energy will be deregulated.
Also tax reform for corporations. He will have to follow through on new trade deals, tax on imports
and immigration or he will only help the 1%. We will see if he follows through...
I bet in Moscow they're quite enjoying this notion Putin can simply dismiss any govt on earth
by simply letting loose a few hackers and propagandists. And probably thinking if only.
The west looks like its collectively losing its marbles. Political systems, like tastes and
fashion change naturally over time. Our two party systems struggle to cope with any change, thus
the bewildered politicians within these parties lash out.
On November 25, 2016, the Obama administration said the results from November 8, "accurately reflect
the will of the American people." The following day, the White House released another statement
saying, "the federal government did not observe any increased level of malicious cyberactivity
aimed at disrupting our electoral process on Election Day."
And? Does anybody claim that any foreign power hacked the voting machines themselves?
The claim is that Russian directed operatives hacked the DNC, etc. in an attempt to find embarrassing
material that would damage Clinton's candidacy. They succeeded.
Doug Henwood trying to beat the Bernie Sanders drum. What I heard from Bernie Sanders Townhall
in Wisconsin is that people blamed illegal immigrants for their situation. Deep down inside they
have been Trump supporters for a while. That is why Trump won Wisconsin.
A Labour MP is claiming that Putin also fixed the Brexit vote - which also shows how people will
blame anyone but themselves for losing a vote. There is not one Clinton supporter who would have
complained about the result had she won the Electoral College and lost the popular vote.
That is not to say that the system should not be changed but Democrats and/or Clintonites should
not try to change it retrospectively. That would mean chaos.
Totally agree with this article by Mr. Henwood. If Democrats, and Republicans for that matter,
want to go on a wild goose chase to blame Russians for the election outcome, with basically no
hard evidence to back their claim, rather than look at the real reasons why they lost (disaffected
angry citizens and not being able to compete with Trump because they chose lousy candidates) then
they deserve to continue losing their future elections. So be it.
If she had not spent so much time calling Trump a Misogynist while taking money from Saudi Arabia
then maybe , just maybe she would have not come across as the most deceitful and toxic candidate
the US has ever seen.
Hillary Clinton lost Pennsylvania, Michigan & Wisconsin solely because of NAFTA & TPP. Bill &
Hillary Clinton supported NAFTA. Hillary Clinton had a history of supporting TPP & Obama was actively
pushing it. When Hillary Clinton changed her position on TPP people in the old industrial heartland
were not convinced that was sincere. The Russians were not responsible for Hillary, Bill & Obama's
history of support for trade deals that facilitate moving jobs to low wage countries that suppress
unions, allow unsafe working conditions & don't have meaningful environmental regulations.
Julian Assange denies that the Russian government was the source of the hacked emails
to and from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta that WikiLeaks published. Of course, there's
no way of knowing if he's telling the truth – but regardless of their source, how much influence
did they have on the election outcome?
oh, right
so when the Wikileaks reveals evilness of the conservatives, it's good, but when the liberals
get revealed, he's not telling the truth?
give me a break.
Wikileaks is a neutral source, not a conservative or a liberal one.
I agree with you. However may I add that the point is not whether Assange is of good character
or whether Wikileaks is left or right. The point is has any Wikileaks releases been proven false
in the last 10 years or so?
Wikileaks is a neutral source, not a conservative or a liberal one.
Bull. Assange dripped, dripped, dripped the leaks so that it would do maximum damage to Clinton.
Whether he has conservative or liberal leanings is irrelevant. What in incontrovertible, however,
is that he has an anti-Clinton bias.
What the leaks revealed is exactly the kind of internal policy debates, calibration of message,
and gossipy venting that occurs in any political campaign. Only out of context did they appear
damaging.
The other big elephant in the room is that nearly half of those eligible to vote did not. Instead,
the hysterical US media engage the gullible populace in yet another game of mass distraction,
and soon Putin will be forgotten and all will salivate over the Oscar nominations. Thus the United
States of Amnesia will settle into its usual addictive habit of running after any "news" that
holds the promise of distractive entertainment. Never mind the nation's democracy... "We amuse
ourselves to death" (Neil Postman).
Otto Bismarck once said: "laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made"
To paraphrase, I guess you could also say the same about elections. Leaks revealing behind
the curtains shenanigans of any election would turn most stomachs. After seeing this election
I may become a vegetarian.
Too right. It was always Hillary's election to lose and she lost it simply because she was
not to be trusted. Her very public endorsement by gangster capitalist Jay-Z told you all you needed
to know about who she represented.
I used to work for an American oil company. Clinton was the one thing that united Democrats and
Republicans over lunch time chats. She was unsuitable, and unfit for office. People voted not
necessarily for Trump, but against Clinton. Don't blame Trump for this result. Blame the democrats
and their poor candidates. So far I like his choice of cabinet members. Except for the banker
they are men that create wealth by providing work for talented people. Not something the Guardian
understands.
So your prime character witness for Hillary Clinton is.....Bill Clinton.
Good luck with that.
FYI mishandling protectively marked documents is wrongdoing, which James Comey testified that
she had. Had it been ANYBODY other than a presidential candidate their feet wouldn't have touched
the floor.
What the author fails to emphasize is the degree to which Dem. party 'insiders' like DWSchulz
and DBrazile and so on sabotaged their own nomination process by biasing the pre-primary and primary
contests in favor of Clinton in subtle and stupidly obvious ways.
Had this been a contest between Trump and B. Sanders, M. O'Malley, J. Biden, E. Warren, etc.
there would have been no Podesta emails to care hack, no home server to investigate, etc. By tipping
the scales in favor of Clinton early, parts of the Dem. party caused the current outcome.
I was dubious before, but I'm now actively concerned. This crop of Democrats and their deep
state cohorts are unhinged and dangerous. They see me and my families' lives as an externality
in their eventual war with Russia. As Phyrric a victory as there could possibly be. They are psychotic;
not only waging countless coups and intelligence operations abroad, but now in plain sight on
American soil. The mainstream media seems to invoke the spirit of Goebbels more vividly with each
passing day. Their disdain and manipulation of the general populace is chilling. They see us not
as people to be won-over, but as things to be manipulated, tricked and coerced. Nothing new for
politicians (particularity the opposition) - but the levels here are staggering.
January couldn't come soon enough - and I say that as strong critic of Trump.
There is an update to yesterday's Guardian article. Update: David Swanson interviewed Murray today,
and obtained additional information. Specifically, Murray told Swanson that: (1) there were two
American leakers ... one for the emails of the Democratic National Committee and one for the emails
of top Clinton aide John Podesta; (2) Murray met one of those leakers; and (3) both leakers are
American insiders with the NSA and/or the DNC, with no known connections to Russia.
"Putin didn't win this election for Trump. Hillary Clinton did"
Nailed it. If the Democrats had fielded someone who actually represented the people (and who
spoke the truth) instead of a corporate shill, the outcome would have been very different.
They had the ideal candidate in Sanders and they fucked him out of it. But have they learned
anything? I seriously doubt it.
Mrs Clinton is not blaming others. She never did. It's the CIA - backed by the 17 US intelligence
agencies - that's saying Russia interfered with the election process in the USA.
In UK as well, the MI6 said something similar a few weeks ago. Germany is also concerned about
the next elections in France and Germany. If any of this was true then it would be a serious threat
against democracy in Western countries.
So who's blaming who? Deep cheaters or bad loosers? The CIA could be wrong but is probably
correct this time. Trying to bury this unanimous call from western secret services under contempt
is significant by itself.
" It's the CIA - backed by the 17 US intelligence agencies - that's saying Russia interfered with
the election process in the USA. "
Way to parrot FAKE NEWS.
That is a COMPLETE LIE. Unless you honestly believe that agencies like the DEA and NASA's "intelligence"
conclusively found "proof" that does not exist. That TALKING POINT was a lie when CLINTON'S CAMPAIGN
originated it, and it is STILL a lie.
But hey, it's only wrong when the "bad guys" on the "other team" spread fake news and engage
in intellectual dishonesty, right? When it's the "good guys" it's just a case of the "ends justify
the means" and perfectly acceptable, right?
"Mrs Clinton is not blaming others. She never did."
Bullshit. Just last week she resurfaced (can't she grasp the idea of the graceful exit?) to
yammer on about the menace of "fake news". Because of course we all know that before 2016, all
American elections have been exercises in fair-mindedness and scrupulous devotion to truth.
It's funny how media simply refuses to admit that Trump did it.
Russians, Hilary, polar bears - none of them had anything to do with it - HE WON.
Live with it.
The clickbait headline is frustrating. No serious person is accusing Russia of having caused Clinton's
loss. Instead, serious people (including, thankfully, leading Republicans) are demanding that
we take a thoughtful and comprehensive look at the evidence that Russia intended to influence
the election. That's a necessary step for protecting our democracy and it's irresponsible to ascribe
political motives to that task.
There was a good article in The Intercept the other regarding the CIA's unsubstantiated (and subserviently
published by the media) claims of Russian interference - how it has essentially become a willy-waving
contest between the CIA and the FBI in the wake of the elections; how the CIA is an inherently
untrustworthy organisation and the media allowing "senior officials" to dictate the news with
empty leaks and no evidence (while shouting the loudest about fake news) is folly.
Very true. It takes an abysmal candidate to lose against (quoting Jimmy Dore here:) Donny Tinyhands.
It takes a special brand of dense to run
- for Wall Street (against reinstatement of Glass Steagall)
- for a direct military confrontation with nuclear power Russia (wich Clinton's pet-project of
no-fly zones in Syria would have signified)
- for trade deals (nobody bought Clinton was suddenly against that)
and expect the DEMOCRATIC base to turn out.
Jesus Christ, Donny ran to the left of Hillary on all three issues. Not that anyone trusts him
to keep any promise, but at least he didn't outright spit in the face of the people who want less
war, less neoliberalism and less Wall Street cronyism while running for election.
No Democratic candidate worth his/her name would have lost against Trump, not even if the Axis
of Evil (whoever that currently is) had hacked all their emails, photobooks and private porn-flicks,
in which they starred, and had them all run nonstop 24/7 on every screen on Earth.
I'm shocked!!! Aren't the Russians to blame for everything???
My t.v breaking, the rain outside, brexit, Donald trump, the Iraq war, the death of Jesus, those
damn Russians, nothing is safe around those monsters.
Hilarious
I am so sick and tired of hearing those whining elite democrats gone incessantly about white
males , the FBI , Putin , Russia , stupid red state citizens , etc., etc ..
I want say ' Shut the fuck up -- ..... and look in the bloody mirror ' .
I am a classic liberal .... always have been ..... always will be ...... and I don't know what
you would like to call these corrupt , elitist , contemporary democrats but you certainly can
not call them real liberals .
I call them designer democrats . They care only for their particular pet issues and they ongoing
pursuit of notions of their own superiority . They routinely generalize in highly sexist and racist
fashions and through the use of political correctness seek to silence all of their critics .
I , simply , loath them .
They sabotaged Bernie Sanders campaign . Bernie Sanders ..... the nicest , most caring man
to come along in American politics in the past 50 years . Not since , FDR , John and Robert Kennedy
have we seen such hope for average people .
But oh , no ..... Bernie was an outsider ..... not part of their corrupt , elite club . He
was a threat to their ongoing party . He had to go .
They didn't give a shit about what was good for the people . They only cared about themselves
and their exploitation of the Democratic Party and it's traditional status ..... and their vulgar
corruption of genuine liberalism for their own purposes .
The Democratic Party establishment will now undergo a long , long overdue cleansing . The Clintons
are the first to go as they should be . Two total career political scoundrels , if ever there
were any . Lies and secrecy were all that you ever got from them aside form the horrific repeal
of the 'Glass-Steggall Act ' and the Stock Trade Modernization Bill which lead to the licensing
of the financial elite to plunder the economy , ruin the lives of countless average Americans
and turn the economy into a complete casino .
Elitist to the core , they were .
Imagine an elite , spoon fed , self-interested urbanite like Hillary Clinton telling some poor
white male schmuck living in some small town , who for economic reasons has never had a good full
time time and works 3 temporary part-time jobs to pay the bills that he is privileged .
Bloody ridiculous --
Talk about overt sexism . Talk about overt racism .
It's these kinds of behaviours that doomed Hillary Clinton .
She only has herself to blame .
If she really had cared about average people she would have not sabotaged Bernie Sanders and
she would have stepped aside back in June when every poll indicated the she could not beat Trump
and that Bernie could beat him by 10 to 15 points .
Now , we the people are stuck with a Trump presidency ..... something which you can pretty
much be assured is going to be un mitigated disaster in ways that we can't even begin to imagine
yet .
Lord help us .
Good-bye Democratic Party elites ..... don't let the fucking door hit on the way out .
I wish I could say that it was nice knowing you but it wasn't .
Go off to your designer lives and pontificate about what is good for people ..... a subject
that you know little about and really don't give a damn .
Go back to Davos and party with the financial global elite for they are really your people
.... your kind . Certainly , average hardworking , genuinely liberal people are not .
Liberalism exists for all people not just the self-anointed few .
Have you noticed how recently the 'we are not racist and you are' left have started to use the
Chinese and Russians as convenient foreign bogeymen to scare the people with?
Awkward economic figures, blame the Chinese.
Awkward diplomatic issues or you lost a vote, blame the Russians.
The problem with this is that our media then amplifies these attacks on China and Russia, they
hear them, and they start to resent it and respond. And our future relations with two major world
powers are made worse than they needed to be.
A good article to counterbalance the reams of rubbish we are hearing in the US election post-mortem.
Anyone who had neural activity should have known that when you steal the candidacy, you certainly
won't get the votes. Clinton effectively handed the election to Trump by not having the humility,
humanity and honesty to admit defeat by Benie Sanders.
He was not a perfect choice, but he could have been a candidate who was everything that Trump
wasn't - uncorrupted, honest, and with a clearly thought out and principled agenda.
All Trump was facing was someone as entitled and establishment as he was,. but with less of
what passes for 'the human touch' across the pond.
There's always the possibility of course, that the US establishment realised Clinton's
blatant warmongering wasn't 'good for business'.
The Russians are no doubt aware that the US has to try and cut the Gordian knot - Washington
cannot face down China and Russia at the same time; and the two countries are mutually supportive
in the UN and are developing many economic projects together.
So maybe, they thought, we can get the Russkies 'on side', deal with China (ie. reduce
it to a 'client state'/ turn it into an ashtray) - and then move on Russia and grab all those
lovely resources freed up by global warming....
Seems to me like the Clinton agenda of big oil, big banks and alot of lies won the WH. Hillary's
big corporate donors are on Trumps transition team. Surely they didnt want her to win, since she
adopted Sanders regulatory, tax the wealthy platform, hence Clinton was duped with marketing strategy
which turned voters off, she was reduced to name calling over promotong policy...what did she
represent? Only her campaign volunteers knew, her message to the public was "dont vote for
Trump" which translates to, I could lose to him, vote for me!
The Podesta emails confirmed what many people already suspected and knew of Hillary and her
campaign. Those who were interested in reading them had to actually look for them, since MSM was
not reporting on them. It's not as if an avid MSNBC or CNN watcher was going to be exposed.
So, if you were seeking them out, A: you probably already suspected those things and B: you
weren't going to vote for Hillary to begin with.
It's hilarious how the major Left outlets (Washington Post) are now telling it's readers
how Russia is to blame for people voting against Hillary due to the Podesta emails, when they
didn't even report on the emails in the first place.
FINALLY sanity intrudes. For one article and one day. But hey , progress is progress. Trump will
NOT be what you think him to be. He will be far better. He will still do things you don't like,
but not REALLY bad things. :-)
There was no reason to vote for Clinton as the article says. She offered nothing except the
entitlement of HER. It wasn't enough. Thank The Gods. EVERYTHING about the system all
halfway decent people detest, is summed up in the figure of Hillary Clinton. And evidently
(and I stand to be corrected) she didn't even have the stones not to melt down on election night
and Podesta had to go out there and be a complete buffoon.
Trump might be an unknown but Clinton and her used up party were a complete known. Like
Donald said, she had 'experience', but it was all BAD 'experience'. Trump might not fix the
problems but at least he's going to try. Clinton didn't even see the problems.
she is a frail, withered old woman who needs to retire - def the wrong democrat choice, crazy -- Berni.S would have won if for them - he is far more sincere
Here is the key paragraph: "The displaced machinists... believe that free trade deals are
responsible for their economic woes and they never trusted Clinton's turn against the TPP. But
that was Clinton's campaign for you, bereft of principle and pathologically concerned with "optics"
at the expense of substance." Funny the author fails to notice that that describes to a T
Trump's campaign, and actually his whole life. That description applies to Trump several orders
of magnitude moreso than it applies to Hillary Clinton's life. If you think Trump is really interested
in bringing jobs, especially good paying jobs back, you are willfully blind.
"Putin didn't win this election for Trump. Hillary Clinton did"
Trump won, he played the game brilliantly to the rules (including the electoral college system),
Clinton lost (you can't win it for the opposition, you can just lose, and the Democrats didn't
put out their best hope) and Putin was irrelevant in terms of any interference (although maybe
Trump voters would rather the US develop a better relationship with Russia, but that's down to
Trump in playing that card).
This argument is as asinine as the one the author opposes. It was a collusion of events that
led to this result, including the failure of both parties to adapt to an evolving economic
and social climate over decades. The right wing hailing the collapse of liberalism as a result
of decades of liberal mismanagement conveniently forget their own parties have held the reins
for half that time, and failed just as miserably as the left....
It's quite bizarre to see "progressives" openly side with the military industrial complex,
which is threatened by a president elect weary of more warfare.
It's to be expected from career politicians like McCain who is kicking and screaming, but
it's shameful to see supposed liberally-minded people help spread the Red Scare storyline.
The Democrats are in full blown tantrum mode, throwing teddies out of their pram and spitting
dummies across the room, because their warmonger and deceitful candidate HRC, didn't win, that's
why there has been all this bad news nonsense about Putin and/or Russia since last week.
Obama has behaved dreadfully, first he or his office gets one of its poodles namely MI6 to
point the finger at Putin re cyberwar, which was swiftly followed by the International Olympic
Committee looking at Russia for 2012 Olympic games, the elections in the US and the Democrats
CIA coming out with unsubstantiated nonsense (funny how they never like, providing collaborative
evidence - on this or anything that supposedly Russia has done) then there is Syria, and Obama
and the Democrats were the cheerleader for regime change, because they have been out manoeuvred
in that sphere. All of it in less than a week.
If Obama, the administration, and the CIA were smart they would have realised that a concerted
effort to blame Putin / Russia would be seen for what it is - a liar and one of trying to discredit
both the outcome of the US elections, the dislike of HRC, and her association with Wall St. -
she raised more money for her campaign than Trump and Sanders put together (if the Democrats had
chosen Sanders, then they would have stood a chance) and that their hawk would not be in a position
to create WW111 - thank goodness. The Democrats deserved what they got.
This organ of the liberal media (no scare quotes required - it is socially liberal and economically
neoliberal), along with many others, dogmatically supported Clinton against Sanders to the point
of printing daily and ridiculous dishonesty, even going so far as to make out as if anyone who
supports any form of wealth redistribution is a racist, sexist, whitesplaining dude-bro.
Or more precisely the Superdelegates and the Democratic National Committee did. Her Goldman/Morgan
Stanley speechs were in 2013 ffs, they all knew she had form and was 'viewed as an insider' as
Obama put it in The New Yorker interview.
The election was close, and if one less thing had gone wrong for Hillary she would have won.
However I think an important thing that lost her the election was identity politics. She patronized
Afro-Americans and Hispanics, by tell them that because they are Trump-threatened minorities,
they should vote for her. In the same vein, gays and women were supposed to vote for her. But
what she was really telling these groups was that they should revel in their supposed victimhood,
which was not a great message.
Completely agreed! The onus for defeat belongs to the Democrat party leadership as well. Donald
Trump and Bernie Sanders both understood where the momentum of the election was headed before
anyone else did. The election was won and lost in the white blue collar Midwest. A place that
decided that diet corporatism is decidedly worse than a populist right wing extremist.
No one here believed the ridiculous about-face Hillary pulled on the question of the TPP.
I guarantee you Bernie would have cleaned Trump's clock in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan,
and perhaps Ohio and Iowa.
"Our self-image as the world's greatest democracy...." Well, speaking for myself and plenty
of other Americans, I never said anything like that about us. In fact, like a lot of people I
wish we would stick to our own business, quit trying to be the world's cop, and cease meddling
in other countries' affairs.
If we do that, then I could care less about our image or what the rest of the world thinks.
Let some other country be the "leader of the Free World." Who died and left the US in charge,
anyway? Not one war we have fought since WWII has been worth the price of one drop of American
blood.
Assuming that it really was the Russians who done it, I guess they had a better game plan
than the Saudis. I consider the Russians to have done us a favor of sorts by exposing Hillary's
secret Wall Street speeches and the machinations of the DNC. Her 'deplorables' comment was
every bit as telling as Mitt Romney's '47%'. We really needed to know about her 'public versus
private positions', even if it only confirmed what everybody already knew. I am not 100% sure
the system made the worst choice in raising up Donald Trump.
And even so, if it takes four years of Trump to remove the people who thought Hillary was a
good candidate from power in the Democratic Party, it may work out for the best in the long run.
And if it takes four years of Trump to show the people who voted for Trump that Republican ideologues
can only make their problems worse, so be it. It's mostly the hubris that amuses me at this point.
They thought they were the pros. They had the money. They had the ground game. All they did wrong
was to preselect and preordain a candidate nobody wanted.
abuses women, advances the cause of racism, attacks women's rights, is xenophobic
The American voters heard a steady stream of these arguments. Some may have simply ignored
them. Others took them into consideration, but concluded that they wanted drastic change enough
to put them aside. White women decided that Trump's comments, while distasteful, were things they'd
heard before.
Reliance on the sanctity of racial and gender pieties was a mistake. Not everyone treats
these subjects as the holiest of holies. The people who would be most swayed by those arguments
never would have voted for Trump anyways.
Colin Powell did not advise Clinton to do that, and even if he did she was a fool to take his
advice when her boss Obama explicitly told her not to keep a private server. Colin Powell
said Clinton destroys everything she touches with hubris. Seeing as how she destroyed the democrat
"blue wall" and also had low turnout which hurt democrats down the ticket I agree.
Zero evidence other than "he said, she said" regarding any involvement of Russian espionage agencies
in the U.S. elections but the left, incredulous once the result didn't go their way, are now clinging
to anything to divert attention from the issues that HRC ignored and Trump embraced.
All this hysteria about the USA and Russia finally working together than apart doesn't
help either for it appears that the [neoliberal] lefties want a perpetual war rather than peace.
The CIA being outraged about a foreign state intervening in an election is quite funny. They
have intervened so many times, especially in Latin America, to install puppet regimes.
As for hacking... does anybody believe the CIA has never hacked anybody?
Anyway, had the emails not existed, there would have been nothing with which to help Trump.
The Democrats have only themselves to blame. Bernie Sanders or ANY other candidate without the
Clintons baggage could have done a better job f beating Trump. They wanted Hillary at all cost;
they lost!
A major threat to liberty is the assault on the right to discuss political issues, seek out alternative
information sources, and promote dissenting ideas and causes such as non-interventionism in foreign
and domestic affairs. If this ongoing assault on free speech succeeds, then all of our liberties
are endangered.
One of the most common assaults on the First Amendment is the attempt to force public policy organizations
to disclose their donors. Regardless of the intent of these laws, the effect is to subject supporters
of controversial causes to harassment, or worse. This harassment makes other potential donors afraid
to support organizations opposing a popular war or defending the rights of an unpopular group.
Many free speech opponents support laws and regulations forbidding activist or educational organizations
from distributing factual information regarding a candidate's positions for several months before
an election. The ban would apply to communications that do not endorse or oppose any candidate. These
laws would result in the only sources of information on the candidate's views being the campaigns
and the media.
Recently the Federal Election Commission (FEC) rejected a proposal to add language exempting books,
movies, and streaming videos from its regulations. The majority of FEC commissioners apparently believe
they should have the power, for example, to ban Oliver Stone's biography of Edward Snowden, since
it was released two months before the election and features clips of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump
discussing Snowden.
The latest, and potentially most dangerous, threat to the First Amendment is the war on "fake
news." Those leading the war are using a few "viral" Internet hoaxes to justify increased government
regulation - and even outright censorship - of Internet news sites. Some popular websites, such as
Facebook, are not waiting for the government to force them to crack down on fake news.
Those calling for bans on "fake news" are not just trying to censor easily-disproved Internet
hoaxes. They are working to create a government-sanctioned "gatekeeper" (to use Hillary Clinton's
infamous phrase) with the power to censor any news or opinion displeasing to the political establishment.
None of those wringing their hands over fake news have expressed any concern over the fake news stories
that helped lead to the Iraq War. Those fake news stories led to the destabilizing of the Middle
East, the rise of ISIS, and the deaths of millions.
The war on "fake news" has taken a chilling turn with efforts to label news and opinion sites
of alternative news sources as peddlers of Russian propaganda. The main targets are critics of US
interventionist foreign policy, proponents of a gold standard, critics of the US government's skyrocketing
debt, and even those working to end police militarization. All have been smeared as anti-American
agents of Russia.
Just last week, Congress passed legislation creating a special committee, composed of key federal
agencies, to counter foreign interference in US elections. There have also been calls for congressional
investigations into Russian influence on the elections. Can anyone doubt that the goal of this is
to discredit and silence those who question the mainstream media's pro-welfare/warfare state propaganda?
The attempts to ban "fake news;" smear antiwar, anti-Federal Reserve, and other pro-liberty movements
as Russian agents; and stop independent organizations from discussing a politician's record before
an election are all parts of an ongoing war on the First Amendment. All Americans, no matter their
political persuasion, have a stake in defeating these efforts to limit free speech.
dirtscratcher
Snípéir_Ag_Obair ,
Dec 13, 2016 11:45 AM
For the MSM to declare war on 'fake news' they would have to shoot themselves in the head (instead
of the foot). A delightful idea, now that I think about it.
Traditional left is equal protection under the law, against imperial war and, most importantly,
pro-justice for the working and middle classes (i.e., against off-shoring mfg, etc.).
All this nonsense PC and identity politics is designed to divide the left (the working class)
on the core issues.
from my Easter European point of view (after a decade spent in the USSA) - Democrats seem much
more Stalininst and totalitarian than Republicans. $hitlery really reminds me of former prez Milosevic's
ugly wife (she was also politically involved and as totalitarian as $hitlery)
They are not "pro-immigration", they are against an intrusive police state that use illegal immigration
as an excuse to adopt artificial measures. Do you find logic that in many states you have in parallel
1) Welfare for refugees & illegal immigrants
2) Other government services as well
3) Money use to crack down on business with spot checks to see if they hire illegal immigrants
4) Money use to increase the patrols along the border or even build a wall
5) Naturalization of illegal immigrants after a few years of residence
Usually when the media organize a debate it's always rigged
On one side you will have the guy/woman who say that Westerners are selfish because they need
to offer more to those who arrive and adapt themselves to the new migrants
On the other side the guy/woman who will say that we are at war with Islam, that they have
wage a war on us with this invasion and that some asses need to be kick out overthere, Assad,
Ghadafi, Iran, you can name them, martial law is necessary to defend ourself by bombing them.
The fake news accusation is possible to counter. ... Let them call you a 'Fake News' website all
they want. ..
Post and publish well researched and truthful news and then let MSM do your advertising for
you. ... Call yourself "Fake News - 'Something'" and let the MSM lying fuckers send you traffic.
When they say fake news said this, that or something else and people search you out to hear all
your 'fake news' and discover your reports are more on the mark than all the fictional gibberish
MSM is trying to feed them, MSM loses it's audience even more.
Truth has a way of bubbling to the top. ..... Just look at the story of ZeroHedge.
Send in the lawyers if you have to.
Live Hard, Sue The Deep Pockets Of MSM When They Lie, Die Free
Enough with "the Russians" already. This "Russian Disinformation" and "Russian Hacking" stuff
is getting more ridiculous by the day.
First, don't let the irony escape you that most, if not all, of the pundits breathlessly blaming
the Russians for "fake news" and "election interference" are the very ones who were saying that Hillary
Clinton was a shoe-in for president. They're the ones who were providing her campaign with questions
in advance, and allowing her people to approve/disapprove of articles.
Secondly, many of the entities blamed for spreading "Russian propaganda" were the ones with the
audacity to tell the truth about the Clinton crime family and spread knowledge of the information
released by Wikileaks. Obviously, I'm not including
those Macedonian college kids in this, but keep in mind that they weren't doing it for the Russians
– they were doing it to make money.
This isn't about the Russians at all, which anyone with half a brain realizes is absolutely ridiculous.
Here's what this really is.
This is a war on the Trump presidency. It's an attempted coup.
Maybe it's even another effort to outright steal the presidency from Trump. Maybe there's someone
with a lot of money to throw into this "OMG THE RUSSIANS" rhetoric who really hates Russia and who
really wanted Hillary Clinton to be the President. Maybe his name rhymes with "Doros." I don't know
this for sure, but it's at least a more likely story than "The Russians" hacking our election and
deliberately spreading propaganda.
It's important to note that the MSM lost every single bit of their remaining credibility during
the last election and they're desperate to get it back. It reminds me of a high school kid who gets
caught doing something she shouldn't, who then makes up stories about another group of kids to get
people talking about them instead of her. The MSM can't accept the fact that Hillary Clinton lost,
despite their dishonest but enthusiastic efforts to steal the election for her. They'll
collude with whoever they have to in order to become relevant again.
Do you really have any doubt that they'll collude with whoever they have to in order to become
relevant again?
About "The Russians"
The whole plotline about "the Russians" really took off when the
Washington Post published an article listing a couple hundred websites as Russian "fake news"
sites. (I know the owners of quite a few of these sites personally -as in, we've shared meals and
wine together – and I can tell you, they're as American as apple pie." The Washington Post later
backtracked on the accusations but did not retract the article.
Except that when you consider that evidence by definition is definitive and the NYT admits everything
they have is circumstantial, then, doesn't that completely negates the headline? The article is sheer
speculation, just like the WaPo article that named the "fake news" sites.
What's more, the FBI completely disagrees with the CIA, and they've been very public about it.
They don't believe that there is well, evidence . I'll quote
from WaPo here .
The competing messages, according to officials in attendance, also reflect cultural differences
between the FBI and the CIA The bureau, true to its law enforcement roots, wants facts and tangible
evidence to prove something beyond all reasonable doubt. The CIA is more comfortable drawing inferences
from behavior.
"The FBI briefers think in terms of criminal standards - can we prove this in court," one of
the officials said. "The CIA briefers weigh the preponderance of intelligence and then make judgment
calls to help policymakers make informed decisions. High confidence for them means 'we're pretty
damn sure.' It doesn't mean they can prove it in court."
Give me a break. That, ladies and gentlemen, is why you should never, ever believe anything the
Washington Post refers to as investigative journalism. They have no idea what proof or evidence even
means.
There's a psy-op, all right, but it isn't "the Russians" perpetrating it.
It's the CIA (keep in mind that psyops is part of their job) working hand in hand with the MSM.
You just have to laugh at some of these headlines and quotes.
For your entertainment, enjoy the following round-up of headlines promoting the "Blame Russia"
sentiment.
Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House (
source )
House passes intelligence bill enhancing efforts against Russia (
source )
Where's the outrage over Russia's hack of the US election?" (
CNN )
Fake News, Russians, and Election Reversal (
Town Hall )
A Powerful Russian Weapon: The Spread of False Stories (
NY Times )
DID RUSSIAN AGENTS INFLUENCE THE U.S. ELECTION WITH FAKE NEWS? (
Vanity
Fair)
Experts Say Russian Propaganda Helped Spread Fake News During Election (
NPR )
Media Wakes Up To Russia's 'Fake News' Only After It Is Applied Against Hillary (
Forbes )
And then, have an eyeroll at some very silly quotes
From an interview on NPR:
"But let's remember, this was a very close vote where just, you know, a few tens of thousands
of votes in a few states ended up making the difference. So I don't know, if you believe that
the kind of information that crashes through all of our social media accounts affects how we think
and potentially how we vote, I think you would conclude that this kind of stuff does matter."
(
source )
From the NY Times:
"RT [Russia Today] often seems obsessed with the United States, portraying life there as hellish.
On the day President Obama spoke at the
Democratic National Convention , for example, it emphasized scattered demonstrations rather
than the speeches. It defends the Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, as an underdog
maligned by the established news media." (
source )
From a secret mystery source on CNN:
"There was no way that any one could have walked out of there with that the evidence and conclude
that the Russian government was not behind this." (
source )
From CBS:
Responding to intelligence officials' report that Russia
tried to influence the U.S. presidential election in favor of President-elect Donald Trump,
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Arizona) on Sunday said he doesn't know
what to make of Mr. Trump's dismissal of the issue.
"I don't know what to make of it because it's clear the Russians interfered," he told CBS'
"Face the Nation." "Whether they intended to interfere to the degree that they were trying to
elect a certain candidate, I think that's a subject of investigation. But facts are stubborn things.
They did hack into this campaign." (
source )
Politico reported:
"Donald Trump's insult-laced dismissal of reports that the CIA believes Russia hacked the 2016
election to help him is rattling a spy community already puzzled over how to gain the ear and
trust of the incoming president." (
source )
While some of the efforts are laughable, the end result could be incredibly serious.
And by serious, I mean devastating. It could result in civil war. It could result in World War
III.
Despite the inadvertent hilarity, this is a blatant effort to keep President-Elect Trump out of
the White House and to silence the opposition.
We learned that some people will do anything to remain in power.
We're watching them do anything right now.
Never has an election been so vehemently contested. Never has our country been so divided. If
the election results are cast aside, what do you really think will happen? Do you think Trump supporters
will just sigh and accept it?
And what about Russia?
Just a few months ago, we were
on the verge of war with them . By scapegoating "The Russians," if this psy-op is successful,
and Trump is kept out of office, what do you think is going to happen with tensions between the two
countries?
Enough with "the Russians" already. The real conspiracy is happening right here in America.
Glenn Greenwald
notes that – in the face of Trump and Brexit (which were
primarily caused by
economic
policies which have created
massive inequality ) – the Democratic National committee is trying to blame everybody and everything
but their own status quo policies and candidates which rig the system for the fatcats and hurt the
little guy:
The indisputable fact is that prevailing institutions of authority in the West, for decades,
have relentlessly and with complete indifference stomped on the economic welfare and social security
of hundreds of millions of people. While elite circles gorged themselves on globalism, free trade,
Wall Street casino gambling, and endless wars (wars that enriched the perpetrators and sent the
poorest and most marginalized to bear all their burdens), they completely ignored the victims
of their gluttony, except when those victims piped up a bit too much - when they caused a ruckus
- and were then scornfully condemned as troglodytes who were the deserved losers in the glorious,
global game of meritocracy.
***
A
short, incredibly insightful, and now more relevant than ever post-Brexit Facebook note by
the Los Angeles Times's Vincent Bevins wrote that "both Brexit and Trump_vs_deep_state are the very, very
wrong answers to legitimate questions that urban elites have refused to ask for 30 years." Bevins
went on: "Since the 1980s the elites in rich countries have overplayed their hand, taking all
the gains for themselves and just covering their ears when anyone else talks, and now they are
watching in horror as voters revolt."
For those who tried to remove themselves from the self-affirming, vehemently pro-Clinton elite
echo chamber of 2016, the warning signs that Brexit screechingly announced were not hard to see.
Two short
passages
from
a Slate interview I gave in July summarized those grave dangers: that opinion-making elites
were so clustered, so incestuous, so far removed from the people who would decide this election
- so contemptuous of them - that they were not only incapable of seeing the trends toward Trump
but were unwittingly accelerating those trends with their own condescending, self-glorifying behavior.
***
The warning lights were flashing in neon for a long time, but they were in seedy places that
elites studiously avoid. The few people who purposely went to those places and listened,
such as Chris Arnade , saw and heard them loud and clear. The ongoing failure to take heed
of this intense but invisible resentment and suffering guarantees that it will fester and strengthen.
This was the last paragraph of my July article on the Brexit fallout:
Instead of acknowledging and addressing the fundamental flaws within themselves, [elites]
are devoting their energies to demonizing the victims of their corruption, all in order to
delegitimize those grievances and thus relieve themselves of responsibility to meaningfully
address them. That reaction only serves to bolster, if not vindicate, the animating perceptions
that these elite institutions are hopelessly self-interested, toxic, and destructive and thus
cannot be reformed but rather must be destroyed. That, in turn, only ensures there will be
many more Brexits, and Trumps, in our collective future.
***
Democrats have already begun flailing around trying to blame anyone and everyone they can
find - everyone except themselves - for last night's crushing defeat of their party.
You know the drearily predictable list of their scapegoats: Russia, WikiLeaks, James Comey,
Jill Stein, Bernie Bros, The Media, news outlets (including, perhaps especially, The Intercept)
that sinned by reporting negatively on Hillary Clinton. Anyone who thinks that what happened
last night in places like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Michigan can be blamed on any of that
is drowning in self-protective ignorance so deep that it's impossible to express in words.
***
Put simply, Democrats knowingly chose to nominate a deeply unpopular, extremely vulnerable,
scandal-plagued candidate, who - for very good reason - was widely perceived to be a protector
and beneficiary of all the worst components of status quo elite corruption. It's astonishing
that
those of us who tried frantically to warn Democrats that nominating Hillary Clinton was a huge
and scary gamble - that all empirical evidence showed that she could lose to anyone
and Bernie Sanders would be a much stronger candidate, especially in this climate - are now
the ones being blamed: by the very same people who insisted on ignoring all that data and nominating
her anyway.
But that's just basic blame shifting and self-preservation. Far more significant is what
this shows about the mentality of the Democratic Party. Just think about who they nominated:
someone who - when she wasn't dining with Saudi monarchs and being feted in Davos by tyrants
who gave million-dollar checks - spent the last several years piggishly running around to Wall
Street banks and major corporations cashing in with $250,000 fees for 45-minute secret speeches
even though she had already become unimaginably rich with book advances while her husband already
made tens of millions playing these same games. She did all that without the slightest apparent
concern for how that would feed into all the perceptions and resentments of her and the Democratic
Party as corrupt, status quo-protecting, aristocratic tools of the rich and powerful: exactly
the worst possible behavior for this post-2008-economic-crisis era of globalism and destroyed
industries.
***
Trump vowed to destroy the system that elites love (for good reason) and the masses hate
(for equally good reason), while Clinton vowed to manage it more efficiently. That, as Matt
Stoller's
indispensable article in The Atlantic three weeks ago documented, is the conniving choice
the Democratic Party made decades ago: to abandon populism and become the party of technocratically
proficient, mildly benevolent managers of elite power. Those are the cynical, self-interested
seeds they planted, and now the crop has sprouted.
Indeed, the Dems re-elected Mrs. Status Quo – Nancy Pelosi – as minority leader. And Pelosi
claims :
I don't think people want a new direction.
Similarly, outgoing Senate minority leader Harry Reid
says
:
I don't think the Democratic Party is in that big of trouble.
I mean, if Comey kept his mouth shut, we would have picked up a couple more Senate seats and
we probably would have elected Hillary.
Of course, the whole claim that Russia hacked the U.S. election
is baseless as
is the whole
hysterical
claim that Russian propaganda swung the election.
But it's not just America
After Brexit and Italexit – with a potential
Frexit looming on the horizon – the status quo in Europe is also trying to shift attention (look,
squirrel!) from their failed policies to boogeymen.
For example, European leaders
are
also
claiming that Russian propaganda is interfering with European values.
And Germany's incredibly unpopular Social Democratic party is
claiming
that Russia might hack its election.
A former British cabinet member
alleges that Russian hackers "probably" swayed the Brexit vote.
And Washington Post national security reporter at Adam Entous told BBC this week that a CIA official
claims that Russia hacked
the Brexit vote, and the vote in Ukraine (starting around 1:09:58).
What's next the status quo starts blaming their electoral losses on little green men?
"... By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Jointly published with New Economic Perspectives ..."
"... This Russia stuff isn't about Trump but about the Democrats pleading with people not to look at the man behind the curtain. ..."
"... Propaganda only works when people are aware there is no curtain. At this point, the Wizard of Oz has been revealed, and unlike Baum's creation, he has no redeeming qualities. Telling everyone to look at the big giant head again fails. ..."
"... Putin is not the one responsible for manipulating Democrats into an intensely pro-Wall Street, anti-working class political posture that loses elections. ..."
"... The working class wants jobs and job security – not simply income. ..."
"... The baggage you speak of actually began with Reagan when from a government position of high privilege he actually sneered at government as the employer of last resort with his statement belittling "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you." Which a subservient press took and ran with to make sure it settled into everyone's subconscious. It's helpful to revisit the rise of Ronald Reagan, and to remember that Obama took him as his role model, not FDR. ..."
"... The New Democrats will likely go the way of the blue dog Democrats. Their Republican voters will ask themselves why should they vote for a powerless Republican-lite, and they will simply die politically. ..."
"... New Democrats are really moderate republicans. For the democrat party to survive and get back their base, they have to adopt progressive democrat ideas. Electing Schumer as their senate leader is a mistake. He represents all that is bad about the democrat party. ..."
December 12, 2016 by
Yves Smith By
Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of
economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Jointly published with
New Economic Perspectives
On December 10, 2016, a New York Times
article entitled "Democrats Have a New Message: It's the Economy First" that unintentionally
revealed that the Party's "centrist" leadership and the paper remain clueless about how to improve
the economy and why the "centrist" leadership needs to end its long war against the working class.
This is how the paper explained the five "centrist" leaders' framing of the problem.
It was a blunt, plain-spoken set of senators who gathered last Monday at the Washington home
of Senator Heidi Heitkamp, Democrat of North Dakota, dining on Chinese food as they vented frustration
about the missteps of the
Democratic Party .
To this decidedly centrist group, the 2016 election was nothing short of a fiasco: final proof
that its national party had grown indifferent to the rural, more conservative areas represented
by Democrats like Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Joe Donnelly of
Indiana and Jon Tester of Montana, who attended the dinner. All face difficult re-election races
in 2018.
This non-centrist group was a gathering of five New Democrats. President Obama self-identified
himself as a New Democrat. The Clintons and Al Gore are leaders of the New Democrats. The leadership
of the Democratic National Committee was, and remains, New Democrats. On economic issues such as
austerity, jobs, and full employment, the New Democrats are far more extreme than the (stated) views
of Donald Trump. The New Democrats are infamous for their close ties with Wall Street. This means
that the paper's description of the Chinese nosh is as clueless as the five New Democrats kvetching
about policy "missteps" that they championed for decades. Of course, neither the paper nor the non-centrists
mentioned that critical fact. The blindness of the non-centrists to the fact that it is their policies
that launched the long war by the New Democrats against the working class is matched by the blindness
of the paper.
The kvetching may have been "blunt," but it was also dishonest. The five New Democrats know that
they will likely be replaced in the 2018 elections by Republicans who share the New Democrats' anti-working
class dogmas. What was really going on was an extended cry of pain about the five senators' fear
of losing their jobs.
Note that the paper never tells you what the five New Democrats so bluntly identified as the New
Democrats' "missteps" or what new policies they believed needed to be adopted by the Party.
This failure is particularly bizarre because the paper says that its reportage is based on sources
that the paper agreed to keep anonymous so that they could speak frankly about this meeting over
Chinese food. That combination of supposed frankness from the sources gained by the grant of anonymity
so them could describe in detail the purported bluntness by the gang of five should have produced
some epic, specific condemnations of the Democratic Party's leadership by the New Democrats. Instead,
it produced mush. Focusing on the "economy" is the right general idea for any political party, but
it is so general a word that it is close to meaningless without identifying the specific policy changes
that the five New Democrats now support and oppose. The mushy reportage provides a thin gruel to
the reader.
Most of all, they lamented, Democrats had simply failed to offer a clarion message about the
economy with appeal to all 50 states.
"Why did the working people, who have always been our base, turn away?" Mr. Manchin said in
an interview, recounting the tenor of the dinner conversation.
And the "clarion message about the economy" that they proposed that the Democratic Party make
was? You would have thought that little detail would (a) be critical to the article and (b) would
be something that the five New Democrats would have been eager to publicize without any need for
anonymity. Conversely, if even after the disastrous election, from their perspective, the five New
Democrats could not compose that "clarion" call, then the real problem is that the New Democrats'
economic dogmas prevent them from supporting such a "clarion" pro-worker policy.
The second sentence of the quotation is equally embarrassing to the New Democrats. It purportedly
recounts "the tenor of the dinner conversation." The first obvious question is – how did each of
these five New Democrats answer that that question? That is what the readers would want to know.
Even with the grants of anonymity to multiple sources the paper inexplicably presents only the vaguest
hints as to the five Senators' explanation for why the New Democrats waged their long war on the
working class.
Notice also the unintentional humor of the five New Democrats finally asking themselves this existential
question in 2016 – after the election. The New Democrats began their long war on the working class
over 30 years ago. Tom Frank published his famous (initial) book warning that the New Democrats'
war on the working class would prove disastrous in 2004. The five New Democrats are shocked, shocked
that the working class, after 30 years of being abused by the New Democrats' anti-worker policies
and after being vilified for decades by the New Democrats, overwhelmingly voted against the Nation's
most prominent New Democrat, Hillary Clinton. None of the five New Democrats appears to have a clue,
even after the 2016 election, why this happened.
The article and the five New Democrats fail to discuss the anti-working class policies that they
have championed for decades. Job security is the paramount issue that drives voting by many members
of the working class. The New Democrats and the Old Republicans share a devotion to the two greatest
threats to working class job security – austerity and the faux free trade deals. This makes
it ironic that the paper sought out the Party faction leaders who have been so wrong for so long
as supposedly being the unique source of providing the right answers now. If the five New Democrats
had engaged in introspection and were prepared to discuss their disastrous, repeated policy failures
that would have been valuable, but the New Democrats admit to making zero errors in the article.
The paper's understanding of economics and jobs is so poor that it wrote this clunker.
But even liberals believe Democrats must work harder to compete for voters who lean to the
right, if only to shave a few points off the Republican Party's margin of victory in rural America.
In some cases, they said, that may mean embracing candidates who hold wildly different views from
the national party on certain core priorities.
First, the phrase and the implicit logic in the use of the phrase "even liberals" reverses reality.
It is progressives who have consistently called for the Democratic Party to return to its role as
a party that champions working people.
Second, the issue is generally not who "leans to the right." Indeed, the 2016 election should
have made clear to the paper the severe limits on the usefulness of the terms "right" and "left"
in explaining U.S. elections. Jobs are not a right v. left issue.
Third, the paramount policy priority – jobs – is the same regardless of whether one focuses on
economic or political desirability. So, how long does it take for the article, and the five New Democrats
to discuss "jobs?" Given the fact that they vented at length about the fear that they would begin
to lose their jobs within two years, the subject of job security should have been paramount to the
five New Democrats. The article, however, never even mentioned jobs or any of the related critical
concepts – austerity, the faux trade deals, or the refusal to provide full employment. Further,
the article did not comment on the failure of the New Democrats to even mention these any of these
four concepts.
"A Clarion Message about the Economy with Appeal to all 50 States"
Here is UMKC's economics department's long-standing proposal to every American political party:
Our party stands for full employment at all times. We will make the federal government the
guaranteed employer of last resort for every American able and wanting to work. We recognize that
the United States has a sovereign currency and can always afford to ensure full employment. We
recognize that austerity typically constitutes economic malpractice and is never a valid excuse
for rejecting full employment. The myth that we help our grandchildren by consigning their grandparents
and parents to unemployment is obscene. The opposite is true.
The working class wants jobs and job security – not simply income. Working class people overwhelmingly
want to work. Working class males who are unable to find secure, full time work often become depressed
and unmarriageable. If you want to encourage marriage and improve the quality of marriages, full
employment and job security are vital policies. There are collateral advantages to providing full
employment. Full employment can reduce greatly the "zero sum" fears about employment that can tear
a society apart. Each of these outcomes is overwhelmingly supported by Americans.
Good economics is not a "right" v. "left" issue. Austerity is terrible economics. The fact that
we have a sovereign currency is indisputable and there is broad agreement among finance professionals
that such a currency means that the federal government budget is nothing like a household. The major
party that first adopts the federal full employment guarantee will secure a critical political advantage
over its rivals. Sometimes, good economics is good politics.
It is critical that existing Democrat leadership goes into retirement. Finagling the Clintons
back into the WH, delays this by 4, 8 or more years. Besides generating immense animosity. This
could be easily accomplished if all Democrat leadership retires at 65 immediately, to live on
their Social Security and Medicare (if they think those are still important).
ah, but there was a "clarion message". It was "we care not even about the 1%, but the 0.01%.
The rest of you can piss off".
Which is why Dems got dumped.
I suspect this meeting was functionally similar to the ecclesiastic kvetching when folks began
to believe the world was a sphere some 600 years ago. I can imagine them thinking: unemployment
(as they measure it) is low, housing prices are jumping, and boy, look at that stock market –
how did our base constituency lose its way?
As long as the Democratic Party leadership thinks
this way, the party is useless and should be abandoned. I might suggest that Bill, Yves, Randy
Wray, and others get to work educating them, but like flat-earthers, these folks not only live
in willful ignorance, they would very much like to cast that crowd on the pyre of false-news purveyors
lest they lead even more of the faithful astray.
I have to fully agree with Prof. Black's assessment; thought this when they reelected Nancy
"my son works at Countrywide" Pelosi and doubled down on their identity politics. (David Harvey
disposes of identity politics in a single sentence in his latest book.)
But in this Lewis Carroll universe, "Work harder to compete for Republican votes" doesn't mean
steal Trump's jobs-related thunder but give in on things like fracking a la Madame Heitkamp, or
discover an enthusiasm for guns like Manchin, or run anti-abortion stalwarts like Donnelly. That's
why the reporter couldn't depart from the vague mush–the "centrists'" solution to the Democrats'
debacle is to become Republicans.
My folks are bible thumping, Fox News watching, prolife, and anti-gay marriage voters.
They were all set to vote for Bernie, not because they agreed with him on everything, but because
he was fighting for people like them and he was honest. They would have burned in H-E-double-hockey-sticks
before voting for Clinton though. Judging by the polls during the primaries and the eventual outcome,
they were far from alone in their assessment. Too bad the dimwit DC Dems can't be bothered to
actually talk to people like them.
They sort of do talk to people like your relatives, but partisanship is strong. Plenty of local
Democrats can diagnose and propose solutions caused by the GOP but will worship Trump if he had
a "D" next to his name. Claire McCaskill probably receives enough praise from partisan plebes
for no payment she assumes all the plebes should love her. For conservative types, Sanders not
being in the other tribe was a huge selling point.
The fundamental power diagram of politics is that groups of donors select groups of politicians
to fight for the interests of the donors. The complication in democracy is that the voters select
which politicians will rule. So the donors are like a client, the politicians like a lawyer and
the voters are like a jury. A talented politician is one who can cunningly convince voters to
set her guilty donors free.
So all these New Democrats are doing is suggesting ways to better plead to the jury. But they
are in no way questioning the donors or whether they should continue to push policies that only
serve the donors' best interests
One revolutionary feature of Donald Trump's campaign was that he was his own donor and so was
very free to directly appeal to what is in the best interests of the working class voters he targeted:
economic nationalism.
Conversely the most problematic feature of the Trump campaign was that he was running as the
head of a party that did have plenty of donors and he was openly contradicting plenty of these
donors' interests. But Trump correctly calculated that the only way to power in America was to
hijack one of the two legacy parties.
In some ways Bernie Sanders attempted a similar feat, although I remain skeptical about whether
he really was trying to win. If Sanders had become President, he would be facing the same problems
that Trump now faces; how to rule a party whose policies fundamentally diverge in many areas from
what you have promised to deliver.
And so until the Democrat change donors – specifically by announcing that as a party they will
only accept small donations and adopt some of the Trump tactics to reduce campaign spending –
nothing will change except the sound bites. Many working class people realized exactly how flawed
Trump was but they rolled the dice for one reason only – no one owned Trump. Or as
Henry Kissinger put it:
"This president-elect, it's the most unique that I have experienced in one respect. He has
absolutely no baggage," Kissinger told CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS." "He has no obligation to
any particular group because he has become president on the basis of his own strategy."
Kissinger is smart so he makes these words sound blasé but I can assure you they strike fear
into the hearts of America's elite. But only when we hear these same elites expressing fear of
the entire Democratic party (like they did about Bernie Sanders) will we know something fundamental
has changed for the better.
Some very good insights. I would be curious to know your thoughts on when the repub/Trump split
comes, which way will FOX tilt? Right now FOX is all Trump, but after a year or two of insinuations
that Trump is a Pro Putin commie, I suspect the masterful propagandists that make so much of our
beliefs will either cause the actual downfall of Trump, or will more than neuter him.
Trump was selected by Republican voters despite Fox not being his BFF. Trump is the GOP, and
Republican voters support their own. 41 called Reagan a practitoner of Voodoo economics. Yes,
this was an appeal to the Southern strategy. Attacks on Trump that say he's not a "true conservative"
will never work. Trump is a known clown. He can't embarrass himself, and I think it's important
to remember Iraq happened. What did the average Republican voter take from that? Putin Fear Fest
is very similar to the events of 2002.
Periodically, new tribal arrangements need to be made. Romney was given a chance. He failed,
so the GOP voters selected someone new. Republicans hate Democrats. Attacks levied by Democrats
will always be brushed off.
Videos could emerge of Trump swearing allegiance to Putin at an orgy, and Republican voters
wouldn't care.
This Russia stuff isn't about Trump but about the Democrats pleading with people not to look
at the man behind the curtain.
Yes Republicans stick together plus they think Trump is most likely to accomplish their "small
government" goals and so they support Trump (this is probably true, the establishment supported
Hillary, but many a Republican votes party line for one of their own).
Hillary did well with defense contract related Republicans, but they are clustered. The ones
in hideously over priced McMansions in Virginia and Maryland are terrified of spending being redirected.
They have mortgages to pay, and if Trump thinkers with defense spending whether through cutting
cutting or moving, Northern Virginia will become a land of white elephants. Northern Virginia
might have incomes, but outside of old town Alexandria, it's a dump of out of control suburban
sprawl.
No one sane would live there by choice. The costs are too high to relocate a corporate operation
or even grow one. Republicans in Wisconsin don't care.
Oh, I agree with your overall points. I was just wondering specifically about Murdoch and if
his contrariness will make FOX pro Russian ((in the face of overwhelming repub foreign policy
establishment against Trump)), or will FOX be the "repub" anti Russain brand. It will be interesting
when being "conservative" means you like Putin .
And I remember how many rabidly anti communists where having conniptions when Reagan met with
Gorbachev in Iceland. But Reagan was well ensconced in the establishment. Can Trump alone end
the red menace?
? – "Trump was selected by Republican voters despite Fox not being his BFF. " Hannity and O'Reilly
segments this past cycle were one hour propaganda news feeds for Trump.
As far as Fox goes from what I understand they are currently split - with Kelly Megyn (I know),
Brit Hume, and Chris Wallace being anti-Trump while Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs are pro-Trump bigly.
This is a smart balancing of Fox's short term need for viewers versus their longer-term policy
requirements. But there can be no doubt that Rupert Murdoch is rabidly anti-Trump - he even gave
that raving NeverTrump lunatic Louise Mensch a website called HeatStreet.
From glancing at the National Review it seems the GOPe think they are being generous by admitting
defeat and magnanimously getting behind Trump's cultural agenda while insisting conservatives
stay in charge of economic and foreign policy. But this is no change at all since the Republicans
have always been offering the working classes empty cultural issues.
I imagine the Republicans see this as a Tour de France with them being the huge peloton while
Trump is a lone breakaway attacker who they will soon swallow back up and totally co-opt.
I don't think the MSM are that good at propaganda; if they were Trump wouldn't be President!.
For example now they have launched this Trump + Putin campaign but Trump responds by picking a
fight with China. But the MSM is aghast and totally support the Chinese position! So they accuse
Trump of carrying water for Russia put there's the entire MSM all lined up with buckets of Chinese
water on their heads!
I suppose at some point several top GOP Senators (McCain, Flake) and a bottom (Lindsey Graham)
will leave the party and caucus with the Democrats to ensure legislative gridlock. I believe if
Trump really tried he could get a House of Representatives that supports him. I don't see how
he herds the Senate though.
Propaganda only works when people are aware there is no curtain. At this point, the Wizard
of Oz has been revealed, and unlike Baum's creation, he has no redeeming qualities. Telling everyone
to look at the big giant head again fails.
The msm and the Democrats don't know how to function moving forward because building trust
will take years of effort, and many of the specific personalities are done. They can never be
attached to a competitive effort without undermining the effort. If they hope to retake their
spot, when FB seemed trendy and not a mom hangout, they need people to forget about the curtain,
but it's impossible. Instead they will whine about wicked witches of the North.
Even Trump won because the GOP misfits were sheepdogs for Jeb. Whatever else Trump was, he
wasn't part of Jeb's curtain. Shouting Trump is a fraud doesn't work as long as you then scream
"pay no mind to the strings on my back." I think Rufio could have made more noise if he wasn't
such an obvious beta as he attacked Jeb, but one could argue he betrayed Jeb. People don't like
that kind of thing.
Bernie proved that there is plenty of money for candidates with the right intent and policies.
What you say, that dems can't win without its moneyed donor class, is a notion that has been
used to bludgeon democrats into conservatism and passivity.
Bernie blasted your assertion about campaign finance to bits.
As to the dems "figuring something out," the dem leadership doesn't need to figure anything
out. They are perfectly happy serving the 1%. It's the rest of the democrats who need to figure
that out about their leadership and take action, whether it is tossing the leadership or starting
a new party.
According to an NYT article about his campaign, Sanders was not running to win until after
his popularity started to skyrocket. Initially he was still attending the Senate and was not campaigning
fulltime.
It was just an attempt to spread his liberal policy message nationwide. But how to control
the party as President when it's opposed to him on policy? That's what "political revolution"
meant. If Congress opposed Trump, he will have a rally of thousands in the district of any difficult
legislator blaming him or her for not letting Trump make America great again.
Similarly Sanders
can campaign to either get a Dem majority, it he hadn't got one in 2016, by 2018. Or to increase
it or make it more liberal. This is what he did when the city council opposed him in Burlington,
Vermont. Within a year he got one which was much more pliable. The progressives never got a majority
but he went from Obama-style gridlock to a working government.
One correction: Bernie Sanders is not a liberal. He is a democratic socialist. It's not a minor
point, particularly because liberals deliberately obfuscate the difference to con voters.
Liberals believe in hierarchy. I'm pretty confident Bernie Sanders is an egalitarian. That
matters, when it comes to policy and governance, as well as core values.
Putin is not the one responsible for manipulating Democrats into an intensely pro-Wall Street,
anti-working class political posture that loses elections.
I agree - if the "old" parties act like the old neoliberal parties, they can't solve our current
predicament. While our predicament isn't a new one, just a new version of an old problem, retreading
the past 20 or 30 years isn't going to do the trick.
Gov't as employer as last resort is a huge leap from the goals of full employment and job security.
This is promoted here and elsewhere without any rationale. Someone will have to explain why this
is the only possible solution.
Plus the quality of the jobs in the private sector is often horrible (of course not all but
many). There is a reason everyone wants a government job. And unless the government sector forces
the private sector to improve the quality of their jobs (ie living wages and ACTUALLY enforce
overtime and safety and etc. not to mention all the contract work going on that isn't EVEN jobs)
it will remain so. Quality of jobs matters.
Not really, but try explaining the opposite. How can we have full employment without gov't
employment as last resort? Granted you can have "goals" all you want if you ignore them, but we'll
put that aside and assume you are not disingenuous.
Everything else has been tried and failed, miserably. Companies sit on piles of cash without significant
hiring. Tax incentives get gamed easily.
Offering employment is the simplest, most targeted solution that effectively cuts the rest of
the employers out of the hostage taking business.
The working class wants jobs and job security – not simply income.
I rather like the term used here instead of jobs , people want a livelihood. In the
USA, that get's shortened into jobs, and then later short changed again into things like minimum
wage. One could have fully employment and terrible livelihood. Only the Japanese could put up
with 50+ years of being economic animals. Anyone who thinks full employment is going to solve
issues like income inequality has been eating mushrooms picked from the cow pasture.
I just don't even like the idea of "good jobs" - so limited and so American.
For example, Jobs won't save us from Climate Change, it's not just a money issue. Hence Livelihood,
as in lets make sure the bastards who made this mess die before we do, then we;ll have some justice
to make our miserable end more bearable.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/12/links-121216.html#comment-2725938
Full employment is the growth argument. Both would be beneficial but I would prefer the switch
to income/leisure. Shorter work week, more leisure activities, less consumption, less growth.
Ditto. Government doesn't need to provide jobs where people go to the office and get paid to
sit on their rear end all day – we already have enough of those in the public and private sectors.
I'd like to see a basic income guarantee with some sort of mandatory work required to get it.
Something like the draft where people are called up to work for a certain period of time on a
rotating basis but also giving them some say in what sort of job they get to do. One year you
work at job x for a period of time, train your replacement and then get a bunch of time off. The
next year you can try something different at job y.
Mandatory work everything is work. Yes, you can have call up for people who want to do a stint/internship
learning large scale community construction, infrastructure, plumbing, electrical, etc.
Still, there needs to be jobs where people sit on their back sides part of a day some prefer
working in offices and some are only able to work in offices.
But stretch the imagination: Community service runs the gamut: people to clean up streets,
keep gutters open, scrape up weeds, maintain plantings, paint, repair; assisting children, seniors
and animals; art etc. I am not a musician nor actor but would appreciate having free/low cost
local enrichment programs. Public schools (the ones left) could be used in the evening for free
classes: electronics, woodworking, engine/household repair, cooking, nutrition, etc.
And yes, there will be a need for people who sit on their rear ends to help organize and track
activities. :)
And don't get me wrong about the rear end sitting – I don't mean those types of jobs shouldn't
exist, I just mean that when you show up at the office you ought to have some actual work to do.
And going to meetings deciding what work others should be doing doesn't count. I've worked at
a few where I was required to be there for eight hours a day but only had four hours of work to
do, and not for lack of asking.
One can only read the whole internet so many times a day ;)
What nonsense it is to generalize what the working class as a whole wants (and really this
probably should include everyone who works for a living). Some want jobs, some income. If everyone
only wanted jobs no mothers would ever stay home to raise children etc..
Everything is work, everything is a job. If you take care of an elderly relative, it's duty
(unpaid labor), if you take care of an elderly stranger it's a job. If you raise your own children,
it's duty (unpaid labor), if raise others children, it's a job.
Elites are claiming more and more work is duty and of course it should be unpaid not to mention
volunteerism.
If there was an income guarantee, most would labor their days away as work contributes to social
connection and provides personal satisfaction.
If there was an income, I imagine social life would be richer as more people could be artists
(festivals!), performers (community theater!), work in schools (art, music, construction classes)
etc.
And, of course, it is the government that is the issuer of this sovereign currency that they
cannot run out of. Or are you suggesting that the government give the $$ to the private sector,
which will, of course, trickle it on down? We could call it, I don't know, how about 'quantitative
easing'?
Another reason to prefer the government (which, after all, is "us") to administer jobs-for-all
is providing jobs that do useful things for society which could not be provided on a for-profit
basis. Um, like daycare, medical care, public utilities, eldercare, voter registration, education,
making things that are repairable, and then repairing them when they need it, organic agriculture,
humane animal husbandry, saving the monarch butterflies, *manual* residential snow shoveling -
all those things that 'cost too much' for a for-profit business to do.
Exactly, HotFlash. And, notice that so many of these livelihoods, child and eldercare, teaching,
repair persons, garbage collectors, snow plow operators, have been relegated to the level of 'minimum
wage jobs,' and the people that perform these necessary services consigned to the ranks of 'too
dumb to be innovators or investment bankers.'
We have been conned into mumbling to our military, 'thank you for your service,' as they get
to board flights before us. Why not honor trash collectors and the women who clean the toilets
in our workplaces and the workers who are out on the county roads and interstates at 2am in a
blizzard, keeping the roads clear so we don't have to be inconveniences? Where would our society
be without them?
Douglas Adams was only being partially facetious when he had the an advanced civilization wiped
out because
they shipped out their phone cleaners on rocket-ships (ala the Marching Morons). It was his
subtle rebuke to both Kornbluth and the Ayn Randian/neo-conservative of that time, as well as
the general vapid consumerist society.
As to the military, I always favored the Coast Guard, they risk their lives to save other humans,
not help the MIC and Empire.
I think explaining govt-as-employer-of last-resort becomes easy once a few misconceptions are
corrected and a few realities sink in. But it's no small thing for the realities to sink in -
everything we've been taught, or encouraged to assume, is working against us. Conventional, responsible
wisdom is that the wealth one has that didn't come from the government is "earned" and any activity
that "earns" money is inherently productive and being productive is good - it makes one worthy.
People think of "money" as the stuff passed around in big green wads in the movies, that comes
into being through work an ingenuity (unless the govt commits the sin of "just printing it").
Distribution may not be "fair" but it at least follows certain intuitive laws or forces, that
have a vague sense of morality associated with them (e.g., money is earned through productivity
which means whoever has it by definition earned it, e.g. MH point on FIRE sector). It is a tautology
- but a powerful one. People don't think of money as the product of accounting, a two
sided coin created literally from a balance sheet - debits and credits, assets and liabilities
- and that commercial banks can conjure "money" - pump it into circulation - simply by marking
an asset in their ledger. People don't know that banks issue loans (create assets) out of nothing
all the time (i.e., loans without corresponding deposits or reserves, loaning what they don't
"have"). The asset becomes revenue-generating through interests and fees, which, if non-liquidating,
are the precise opposite of "productive."
It is so difficult for this to sink in because our society organizes itself as if this weren't
true. Speaking personally, it takes a persistent, systematic re-organization of how we process
facts and arguments. We hear something like a "sovereign currency can never run out" as a justification
for universal income or govt-as-employer-of-last-resort, and it triggers a deeply embedded sense
that somehow this would send the economy spinning of the rails. But once it sinks in that "money"
is just an asset/liability, and its entry into private circulation is purely a matter of public
policy (not private "productivity"), at least then you're asking the right question: how should
a sovereign inject currency into private circulation? Maybe no one answer is universally right
at all times and in all circumstances .. but at this point debt is outpacing actual productivity,
which means it must be written down (MH argument) and/or there needs to be an injection on the
debtor side to try to catch up (e.g., jobs program or universal income). Which is why it is so
nonsensical for the govt to "print money" in the form of transferring assets in the form of increasing
bank reserves, as if bank lending depends on reserves at all it's like trying to fill a pool
but flooding your sink). At least that's how I make sense of it still may botch the details,
but at least once you strip away the cultural/social/moral baggage, it becomes more of a matter
of simple economic logic that doesn't need a larger explanation. If you want to fill the pool,
fill the pool, not the sink. But the baggage is real - which is why it really does seem to be
a matter of letting the realities sink in.
The baggage you speak of actually began with Reagan when from a government position of high
privilege he actually sneered at government as the employer of last resort with his statement
belittling "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you." Which a subservient press took
and ran with to make sure it settled into everyone's subconscious. It's helpful to revisit the
rise of Ronald Reagan, and to remember that Obama took him as his role model, not FDR.
This battle has been ongoing in American politics probably since way back before the Great
Depression, but that's as far back as some of us remember our parents telling us about. I love
Bill Black because he's the kind of Democrat I thought I was. This new crowd makes me sick. It's
appropriate that Obama's murder weapons are called drones. That's what the New Democrats are:
drones.
The New Democrats will likely go the way of the blue dog Democrats. Their Republican voters
will ask themselves why should they vote for a powerless Republican-lite, and they will simply
die politically.
They care about staying a Senator. They care about themselves first and only, and will suck
up to and serve whoever provides the money that allows them to hold onto their seats.
Voters in these red states voted for change, above all else. They voted for a nut job because
they finally heard a candidate speaking to their issues and concerns, something their Senators,
apparently, have not done.
There will soon be so few democrats remaining that we should give some serious consideration
to a sequestration solution of giving them their own land, with no fossil fuel degradation, clean
water from the glaciers, a tiny house, a pouch of seeds, and a sustainable truck garden, no cars
trucks or bicycles, a fig tree in the middle of town. They could either pay taxes or not, as they
felt motivated, and provide their own services regardless as not to be a burden. We could gather
them up and have a long march to their new home; it would be hravenly! The rest of us could peacefully
proceed to hell.
This is mind blowing. Granted I didn't follow the link to the full story - but how on earth
is this even news , even under the pathetic standards of election post mortems? New dems
concoct self-admiring story, posture as the ones who "get it." Feed it to reporter, who agrees
to attribute anonymously of course (so it has the feel of insiders and not high schoolers). I'm
guessing what these courageous centrists really mean with the confused prescription to court voters
who "lean right" is to appeal on social/cultural issues. Scold "elitist identity politics" of
the national party as a distraction from the "economic message" (which of course will be the same
assault on decency it always has been). So "economy first" would mean attack/exploit social liberalism
and call it a "fight" for the economic plight of the every-man/woman. The beauty is you get to
sound angry on behalf of voters without an iota of accountability or reflection, without ever
having to answer for shallow, self-serving policies and abject failure.
Note that the paper never tells you what the five New Democrats so bluntly identified as
the New Democrats' "missteps" or what new policies they believed needed to be adopted by the Party.
This failure is particularly bizarre because the paper says that its reportage is based on sources
that the paper agreed to keep anonymous so that they could speak frankly about this meeting over
Chinese food. . .
The five New Democrats were: Democrats like Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Claire McCaskill
of Missouri, Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Jon Tester of Montana, at a dinner held at the Washington
home of Senator Heidi Heitkamp, Democrat of North Dakota.
So, not anonymous at all.
Here is the key part to understanding the plight of the politician / narcissist that feels
the wrath of voters.
. . . All face difficult re-election races in 2018.
There is nothing worse than being ignored, but fail to understand that what they themselves
fear, being ignored with no jawb, the peasants have been living with for decades. Hypocrite is
the word and these are vacuous human beings that care only about themselves no matter what emotional
fakery they use.
Um . what the five New Democrats so bluntly identified as the New Democrats' "missteps" or what
new policies they believed needed to be adopted by the Party
Um, noun (subject)-verb-object. what (noun) was identified as (verb) "missteps" and "'policies"
(objects) eg. the 5 did not identify the missteps or policies.
Comical. The first line in Bill's post gets the NYT headline wrong.
On December 10, 2016, a New York Times article entitled "Democrats Have a New Message: It's
the Economy First"
The actual headline is "Democrats Hone a New Message: It's the Economy Everyone ". A small
detail for sure, which implies from The NYT it's a purveyor of fake news, because honing implies
a refinement of a message already being said, and is contradicted within two words, by the word
"new". It is possible that the headlines keep changing and that Bill's was up when he quoted them,
which would solidify their reputation of fake news purveyors.
Getting back to the meat of Bill's post.
This failure is particularly bizarre because the paper says that its reportage is based
on sources that the paper agreed to keep anonymous so that they could speak frankly about this
meeting over Chinese food. That combination of supposed frankness from the sources gained by the
grant of anonymity so them could describe in detail the purported bluntness by the gang of five
should have produced some epic, specific condemnations of the Democratic Party's leadership by
the New Democrats. Instead, it produced mush . . .
Going to the NYT article here is the reference to anonymous sources, so I freely admit to being
wrong about Bill's anonymous Chinese food eating party (or wake) attendees being the fatuous five.
The party, these senators said, had grown overly fixated on cultural issues with limited
appeal to the heartland. They criticized Hillary Clinton's campaign slogan, "Stronger Together,"
as flat and opaque, according to multiple people present at the dinner, some of whom spoke on
the condition of anonymity .
This is the NYT's only reference to anonymity and furthers it's reputation of a fake news purveyor
as the word "some" implies that some would go on record but either couldn't be found or weren't
asked.
The rest of the article segues into a pity party, from those that weren't there.
Moderate Democrats are not alone in their sense of urgency about honing a new economic message.
After a stinging loss to Donald J. Trump, liberals in the party are also trying to figure out
how to tap into the populist unrest that convulsed both parties in 2016. Only by making pocketbook
issues the central focus, they say, can Democrats recover in the 2018 midterm elections and unseat
Mr. Trump in 2020.
"We need to double down and double down again on the importance of building an economy not
just for those at the top, but for everyone ," said Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts,
a high-profile progressive who is seen as a leading potential opponent for Mr. Trump.
Elizabeth Warren doesn't realize that those at the top stole it from everyone else, and quadrupling
down on building an economy that works for those at the top won't work for those at the bottom
or anyone else except for those at the top.
Beyond that, they expect wide variance in how officeholders handle Mr. Trump and his agenda,
from moderates who seek out accommodation to blue-state leaders who pursue total war . Their emerging
message is likely to focus on protecting Medicare and Social Security, attacking income inequality
and political corruption , and blocking legislation that might restrict access to health care.
"Likely" and "might" are weasel words. How likely are those that live and breath corruption
to cut off their own supply?
The whole article is a mix of real and fake news and some days I like my comedy, black.
"So, how long does it take for the article, and the five New Democrats to discuss "jobs?" Given
the fact that they vented at length about the fear that they would begin to lose their jobs within
two years, the subject of job security should have been paramount to the five New Democrats."
I'm still chuckling. It's sort of like five roosters in a chicken coop that only has room for
one, all vying to become Chanticleer.
We in the UK had thirteen years of ' New Labour ' which was Tony Blair's repositioning of the
old Labour Party to turn it into a right of centre Thatcherite, neoliberal, let's privatise everything
party, thus abandoning the working class in the process . Exactly as Bill Black describes re the
Democrats . The problem as I see it is hydra headed , but here are the headings as it were :
1. A political shift to the right is also a psychological one, separating the ' doing okays
' from the ' left behinds ' and in the process reducing ( if not eliminating ) empathy from the
' doing okays ' for the ' left behinds ' . So intentional or otherwise this is a ' divide and
rule ' policy, by government that has given rise to Global Trump_vs_deep_state. In the process the electability
of a left-wing candidate as a leader – Saunders, Corybyn – has been made impossible under the
present set up.
2. Automation. The power of labour hasn't just been weakened by this rightward shift . It has
been severely weakened by the onward march of capital embracing new technologies of every type
and as we all know none of the productivity gains from this have benefitted labour, nor will they
in the future.
3. Bill Black is right a government is not like a household, but the daily message that we
' tax in order to spend ' is a deeply rooted belief system and just trying ( as I do ) to explain
why this is not the case is, I imagine , like Copernicus trying to explain the actual motion of
the earth around the sun. They just don't get it. It goes against common sense .
The election of Trump is not the beginning of the end it is end of the beginning. This is not
a polite, dinner party conversation, it's going to turn ugly rather quickly and, just like the
Crash of 2008 no-one will have seen it coming.
Re automation: I know the CEOs are pushing replacing people with robots. But none of them can
give you an answer to this question: Which robots are going to buy your products? And the fact
that none of them can even think this far ahead means they are just as clueless as the New Dems.
Maybe they can't see it coming but plenty of us can. I keep telling my friends they better start
preparing for any and all emergencies because the future ain't gonna be pretty.
The Times writes: "Why did the working people, who have always been our base, turn away?" Mr.
Manchin said in an interview, recounting the tenor of the dinner conversation.
This is the same Joe Manchin whose daughter, Heather Bresch, heads up Mylan of recent EpiPen
monopoly pricing fame.
Maybe Democratic voters are realizing that the elected Democrats are concerned about taking
care of their own well-connected class, but working people are a group ignored most of the time
and catered to, verbally, only 2/4/6 years.
Can we get a re-post on a previous BB primer on MMT? I studied (bachelors) econ, I have read
L. Randal Wray's MMT book but I find the concepts of a sovereign currency hard to explain to
outsiders who are mostly inundated with globalism, "free trade" etc.
Wray, whatever his importance to the MMT world as a theorist, is a terrible explainer. Cullen
Roche (who disagrees with the UMKC economists on the prescriptive points of the theory, such as
the job guarantee) does a far better job explaining it to the beginner on his site Pragmatic Capitalism.
Sometimes it does not matter how well you explain that a sovereign country need not raise taxes
before spending can take place because some people will never change their beliefs no matter how
well those beliefs are challenged. It is almost as difficult as trying to change someone's religious
beliefs.
U.S. level sovereign countries. Russia could do it. Brazil and Indonesia could, but most "sovereign"
countries would have problems with international trade if they tried this. Iran maybe could do
it.
I fear many people believe the U.S. is a higher character version of the UK or France, so when
you try to explain this, they don't quite grasp the U.S. is a continent spanning power and don't
grasp why the dollar has value. The U.S. isn't the indispensable nation. It's the nation that
can check out. Other nation states don't have this luxury. Despite the decline of industrial production,
the U.S. makes that or could easily. American exceptionalism isn't the moral garbage Obama pushes.
It's sovereignty in the modern world.
For people without a background in Econ I highly recommend theses youtube playlists. They are
filtered into different categories and are very good explainers.
The Dems are hoping that they'll be back in office as soon as the Repubs screw up. And it's
quite possible since people don't have a choice other that the duopoly. We have to start building
other parties to give ourselves a choice. But will we do it? How?
They didn't lose because more people voted rep.
They lost because 10mm that voted for big o in 2008 stayed home, didn't vote for anybody for pres,
or went 3rd party in other words, ABC, or anybody but Clinton.
A few will some day emulate Bernie, but this leap of faith means no banker money. Not many of
these senior dems
new blood, please!
I find the spectacle of these despicable excuses for Senators being deeply concerned for their
own job security quite heart-warming. Thanks, Prof Black, goes great with coffee.
But why, oh why, if they are that scared about their jobs, can't they get a clue? Are they
still afraid of Hillary? Afraid that they would have to do honest work? Or do they still truly
believe that the working class is just muttons?
There aren't corporate board jobs waiting for losers without years of direct labor on behalf
of corporate backers. Backbenchers who simply enjoy the celebrity of DC and follow corporate directives
aren't relevant once they lose.
Certain ones retire to avoid the stench of losing (Evan Bayh, now officially a loser) and can
manage decent jobs, but what does a loser bring to corporate pr especially when they are replaceable
faces? A retired astronaut will come cheaper and present far less chance of scandal.
And the Democrats already keep trying that same old trick of hating their base. Heidi Heitkamp
is about as far right as one can go. What's next? Resurrecting Pinochet to run in Florida?
I did click on the link, and the Krugman's first sentence was "The CIA, according to The
Washington Post, has now determined that hackers working for the Russian government worked to
tilt the 2016 election to Donald Trump."
At least Krugman didn't write, "According to reliable sources" as many people would not view
the CIA and WaPo as reliable sources.
The thrust of the Krugman op-ed is that Clinton lost by such a small margin in some states,
it could have been the alleged Russian influence that made the difference.
And it could have been because she was a lousy candidate with many concerns about her judgment
and ethics (Libya, Iraq, Clinton Foundation, 150K Wall Street speeches, possible selling of favors
during SOS, email evidence destruction, cheating on a debate with prior knowledge of debate questions
from Donna Brazile, for TPP then against it.).
Krugman should be taking the Democratic leadership to task for foisting their marginal candidate
on the electorate and the failure of the existing Democratic President to do much for the voters
in his eight years in office.
I remember going to a lecture/book signing by Paul Krugman about 12 years ago and he seemed
to be a decent and thoughtful academic.
Perhaps winning the Nobel branded economics prize was not good for him?
Or maybe there is something in the drinking water at the Times, that like the Shadow, has the
ability to "cloud men's minds"?
I view Krugman the same way I view the inquisitors of the Holy Roman Empire – they are the
"true" believers, and as such have a duty to defend the sacredness of the church (i.e., the democratic
party – it is INCAPABLE OF ERROR).
Krugman's indoctrination into the religion of economics would
put the indoctrination of Jesuits to shame. Krugman is simply incapable of examining his indoctrination
and in that respect can't even match Greenspan, who at least owned up to the flaw in his (Greenspan's)
ideology.
Democrats are perfect, ergo any critique of Obama, ACA, employment, droning, et al is racism and
any critique of Hillary is sexism – Krugman: ANY disagreement means your stupid.
"Working class people overwhelmingly want to work. Working class males who are unable to find
secure, full time work often become depressed and unmarriageable"
As always, Bill Black is spot-on, but the above sentence can be extended by eliminating the
words "working class." The reason Trump won is not only because of blue collar workers. White
collar workers in jeopardy of losing their job due to H-1B visas heard Trump's promise that he
would stop visa abuse.
And Democratic leaders still have not realized that a non-criminal candidate, e.g. Jim Webb,
would have trounced Trump due to his sheer normality. They were in too much of a hurry to crown
their queen. Joe "more of the same" Biden is not the answer.
The Democratic Party might disappear for the most part unless it dumps identity politics and
re-embraces workers and unions.
The problem can be stated quite simply: New Democrats pay close attention to the ministrations
of George Soros, AIPAC, and Wall Street. The policies flow from the dollars these entities provide.
It's the rationale solution. I believe even indirect elections would produce a better class
of Senators. The pomp of the Senate is corrupting. Each Senator fancies himself or herself President.
If Hillary could almost make it and an empty suit such as Obama could make it, the Senator from
the great state of (insert state) definitely could, so they need to keep the money spigots open
and not offend voters in other states.
Indirectly elected Senators would likely be former state house Speaker types or people who
have had more than back benching jobs and never felt the thrill of winning statewide. They wouldn't
entertain delusions of becoming President.
An added benefit is people would pay more attention to state house races. Fixing potholes would
not be sufficient for reelection.
Senate corruption is not about pomp as it is really about Citizens United. That senators have
weak malleable egos that money easily corrupts is disguised by the pomp of the Senate.
Anyone who has ever run for local or state public office knows that local races are treated
like the bush leagues and minor leagues of baseball where the campaign manager acts like a scout
for the party apparatus. Each party has their loyalists and, to borrow a great metaphor, Inquisition-era
Klugmans, who guard the gates and dole out monies to influence the local media and voters.
Thrown to the wayside are the actual beliefs of democracy; as the religion of money is the
only thing recognized. The rationale decision is to reconnect with the ideas of principal. It's
not going to be easy. As this article demonstrates, everyone involved in it is completely void
of any principal thought.
And yet I wonder. Bill Black's critique and commentators on this post provide evidence that
general principals are thought about. How then, could indirect elections tap into this vein and
eschew our vacuous and archaic Senator class?
The House Democrats re-elected Pelosi and company virtually unchallenged. I think they are
so used to losing that they view keeping majorities in the east and west coast states as victory.
HEY! THAT MEANS THAT ANY CATEGORY OF WORKERS DEFINED OUTSIDE THE FED SETUP IS ELIGIBLE FOR
SEPARATE STATE LABOR ORGANIZING SETUP!!!!!!!!!!!!
State labor setup could add something oh, so every day practicable. State NLRB substitute could
MANDATE certification elections upon a finding of union busting. States should also take union
busting as seriously in criminal law as fed takes taking a movie in the movies - that FBI warning
on your DVD comes alive and you are gone for couple of years if caught.
But mandating certification elections has so much more an everyday, natural businesslike feel
that it could sail relatively smoothly through state legislatures. Nota bene: Wisconsin mandates
re-certification of public employees unions annually (51% of membership required; not just voters)
- nothing too alien about mandating union elections.
State set up might ACTUALLY go the last practical mile and actually force employers to actually
bargain with certified unions - which refusal to bargain remains the last impassable barrier associated
with the fed no-enforcement mechanism. See Donald Trump in Vegas.
So I think one of the main issues out there is even understanding what middle-class means.
A key example of this can be found in this piece where the difficulties that Swiss watch makers
are facing is because of the struggling middle-class. Completely baffling I have never known anybody
in the "middle class" to even be thinking of buying a Rolex Oyster watch. There are many other
things that they would do with $5k before buying a watch.
I think the media and policy makers are mistaking the struggles of people who are making over
$250k a year (or local equivalent) as the struggles of the middle class.
I think this is an interesting column discussing whether or not economists should be focused
as much on income distribution as total income growth. I think what the Democratic party has completely
missed is that the period fo time that the Trump voters view as "When America Was Great" was a
period when GDP growth was high (3%-4%) but more importantly, a record percentage of it was being
allocated to the middle-class.
Trump's big challenge will be routing the current 3% GDP growth to his voters as he has promised
to. I have not seen or heard any concrete policy proposals that will accomplish this, so there
should be a yawning wide door for the Democrats to march through 2 and 4 years from now if they
can figure out how to turn on the light to discover where that door is. Right now the Democrats
are just fighting with the Republicans on how the money should be distributed among the top 10%
instead of looking at revisiting their policies form scratch.
Sanders was on the right track, but went to far on key things such as free university. I think
most Americans would agree that college should have some value that is paid for, but it should
be much less than $60k/year tuition. The rest of the developed world doesn't have massive student
debt issues because their colleges and universities are typically in the $3k to $20k/year tuition
and many professional programs (lawyers, doctors etc.) are structured as long undergraduate programs
instead of 4-year undergraduate program just being a weeding out process before you even get into
the professional program.
Free college is popular. Most people went to free public schools. Your argument against college
is the same argument against elementary school. If you want more STEM graduates as a society,
pay for it.
One small quibble: IMHO it is an issue of left vs. right. Unfortunately the US has no `left'
and the only options ever presented are right vs. even-further-right.
"Second, the issue is generally not who "leans to the right." Indeed, the 2016 election should
have made clear to the paper the severe limits on the usefulness of the terms "right" and "left"
in explaining U.S. elections. Jobs are not a right v. left issue."
Until Democrat Party leadership disavows their neoliberal, financial strip-mining, progressive
voters are challenged by identity politics. How can one remain a Democratic loyalist under those
circumstances?
The video begins with the March of Dimes funded development of the polio vaccine. Edward Murrow
asks Jonas Salk, "Who owns the patent on this vaccine?" Salk famously answered, "The people, I'd
say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?"
The video ends with his Salk's son repeating what his father said to him: "What is more important?
The human value of the dollar or the dollar value of the human?"
These questions are not valid when corporate oligarchs control the puppet strings of both political
parties.
Presumably, that's because neoliberals have bought into the Chicago School theory of human
capital, "the stock of knowledge, habits, social and personality attributes, including creativity,
embodied in the ability to perform labor so as to produce economic value."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_capital
Since economic value is intended for the shareholder, neoclassical and neoliberal policies
are intended to achieve the same outcome: to decrease the dollar value of the human.
Prof Black says that Al Gore is "the [co]leader of the New Democrats." That was true in 1988-1992.
But some people sometimes learn a thing or two over a quarter-century. In Gore's case, he learned
something yuuuge: that global warming is the central issue of our time for *everyone*. Yet Prof.
Black, the Democrats new, old, and middleaged, every single commenter on this posting, not to
mention the Five coal-state Senators whining about "the economy," not a one of all of them had
a single word about the most important (perhaps the *only* important issue) of our times. Does
anyone doubt that, had the Democrats been forced to nominate him in the contested convention that
I had so hoped for, the campaign, its outcome, and our present discussion would be quite different?
I believe Gore was a less talented version of his father under the spell of Tipper who was
usually on a crusade against naughty language. Left to his own devices, Gore is alright, but it
takes him a while. He was garbage in 2000.
Wow! I respect Bill Black,so much so that if I was a billionaire respite with household name
recognition to promote my ascension to the big house, my cabinet would have hopefully been blessed
with his inclusion. I get the monetary sovereignty reality and am equally frustrated over the
disconnect most people have digesting the difference between public and private debt. Unfortunately
long standing cultural beliefs continually propogandized are hard to change, so without a very
established credentialed leader, like maybe some of those new democats, and a host of other well
respected influential cohorts supporting this counter intuitive reversal of perception, the reality
that our governments finances are nothing akin to a households will only be reckognized by a very
small group of open minded heterodox academics and truth seeking objective journalists, like the
folks here at Naked Capitalism. I assume some unsavory corporate benefactors of energy , banking,
and the sometimes comically nefarious cast of charachters running the various military industrial
enterprises, obviously dependent upon government accomodations, contracts, and unlimited revolving
door exposures, must have some inherent comprehension of the governments monetary sovereignty.
Though i am sure, just like justice and law, to them its two tier. Whether we want to admit it
or not, class is a big divider, and those benefitting from our current insanity stand on some
shaky shoulders. They need institutions that are self affirming and equally prescribed to regardless
of class. Religion helps the downtrodden with hope and morality; equally comforting to the plutocrats
that be are the multiple arenas upholding assumptions espousing limited federal government coffers,
conforming the masses to be humble and aquiescent, but more importantly incentivizes a hard working
competitive ethic that the powers that be easily exploit for ever more profits.
Now the divergence between me and Professor Black comes where he implores that people just want
to work, anotherwords have a secure job. What that job is and what it pays isnt the priority,
the idea they have a structured format to adhere to and anchor their societal existence is whats
paramount. I dont buy it! . I get it, here at Naked Capitalism isnt the place for anecdotal exploits,
so i dont want to bore anybody with my angry history. But experiences do correspond to attitudes
and policy persuasions. Briefly, I own a small business, I hate it, I simply have to continue
with it because otherwise I am in the street. The Great Recession gutted my savings, opportunities,
and networks, while age, personal obligations, and finances precludes any restructuring. Surely
many middle aged middle class americans share my frustrations, and the future isnt looking any
brighter. That being said, work for the sake of doing something integrated for a minimal pay check
to stay relevant and in the "system" isnt what's needed. Productive opportunities that engage
those that are idle and prone to self destructive behaviors might be socially responsible, and
obviously our federal government can provide funding for that, even though this cooperative idea
might sound too much like socialism. Young people surely need educational opportunities and structured
paths to engage in that will lead to either being productive or aid searching for better sustainable
ventures that balance our proclivity to turn nature into profits for the few. Point is, obviously
society is a growth in progress and each new generation needs guidance finding ways to spend time
assuring they and their societal members are continuing to build upon and improve the quality
of everybodies lives. Sometimes profit can be a great motivator for this, and other times not.
I am not sure if Prof. Black is expanding his definition of work. Maybe instead of getting into
debt for an education, vocational or academic, people should be paid a living wage to receive
an education at the beginning of their occupational lives, or like me, they need help restructuring
due to public policy that destroyed their economic and occupational existences.. Bernie tried
to introduce these concepts, but fear of deficits and lacking funds took center stage. Bernie,
who obviously knows the truth because of Stephanie Kelton, got cold feet with regards to attempting
an honest discusion, reverting instead to increased taxing to find funding. Sorry , until the
definition of "work" is broadened, i'm not in favor of collectively indoctrinating unfortunate
able bodied persons into a government work program that serves as a wage floor for some make for
work job. Something like the Orange Oompa Loompa's proposed border wall? The entire concept sounds
way too Orwelian for me.
New Democrats are really moderate republicans. For the democrat party to survive and get back
their base, they have to adopt progressive democrat ideas. Electing Schumer as their senate leader
is a mistake. He represents all that is bad about the democrat party. People are tired of being
screwed by Neoliberal policies. We need a new deal for the 99%. Those voters that were conned
by Trump are in for a rude awaking, and it won't take too long. American voters are very fickle.
Not long ago the republican party was portrayed as on life support. It didn't take long for that
to change. If democrats are smart they will quit living in the past and become more progressive.
They only need to support their base to make big changes happen.
"... What is ALREADY going on with Trump, Dems, Russia is fascinating – and he is NOT EVEN SWORN in yet!!! WOW! The war mongers are REALLY panicking . Anti commie – its the new politically correct viewpoint . ..."
"... adding: "a party of buck-passing juveniles that have no vision for the future " ..."
"... Republicans have an agenda. It's terrible but they have one. Democrats represent rule by the professional class, including bankers. That's it. Publicly, they're for rainbows, good things and bringing people together. ..."
"... Several of my Democratic friends are simultaneously convinced that Trump is a Russian stooge and outraged that he won't listen to his daily national security briefings. ..."
"... No. First, access was granted by .. Hillary and Podesta and their own idiocy ( her with the server, him with the pas*word) . IMO we are entitled to know what was in the emails. It certainly did not change my vote nor did it change the vote of anyone I know. ..."
"... I think both Clinton and Trump would be terrible presidents but it has been obvious since she lost that Hillary is unable to accept this to the point of mental illness. First she tried to have her proxies do some damage and when that did not work, she counters with this. ..."
"... The anti-Trump tapes . And the one with former Miss Universe – is she an American now? Do you call that 'foreign' intervention? "Former Miss Universe tries to steal election for HIllary!!!" ..."
Hillary: " Where is Steiner?!?!?!? " I don't envy whoever's gonna have to take her aside
and tell her it's really over. Poor Bill
If you boil down what Clinton and the Clintonites are saying, Putin stole the election from her,
and Trump is a Russian agent of influence. The first is a casus belli , and the second is
treason. The first demands a response at the very least of recalling our Ambassador from Moscow.
That hasn't happened, which tells you that the people responsible for such things (Obama) don't take
Clinton's casus belli seriously. The second calls for a solution "by any means necessary"
(exactly as Clinton's previous claim, that Trump is a fascist, does).
"By any means necessary" would include anything from a
von Stauffenberg solution
(no doubt the CIA has a wet team) all the way up to a coup. (This last is hard to imagine, since
a coup demands occupying physical space with armed force. Who could Clinton call on?)
So what the Clintonites have settled on is trying get the Electoral College to reverse the election.
I can't imagine this coming to anything, since the majority of the electors - since Trump won the
election - are Republicans
If I were a Trump voter, and a bunch of electors, on data that is this uncertain, and which
even if it is true amounts to "telling the truth about Hillary and Democrats" were to give the
election to Clinton I would be furious.
I would consider it a violation of democratic norms: an overturning of a valid election result
because elites didn't like the result.
And while I'm not saying they should, or I would (nor that I wouldn't), many will feel that
if the ballot box is not respected, then violence is the only solution.
If faithless electors give the election to Clinton, there will be a LOT of violence as a result,
and there might even be a civil war.
Ian is Canadian; then again, installing Clinton in office by retroactively changing the
election rules is a "cross the Rubicon" moment. At least in Maine, I wouldn't picture a Civil War,
but I would picture shattered windows in every Democrat headquarters in the state, and then we'd
go on from there. Welsh concludes:
This is where Nazi/Fascist/Hitler/Camps rhetoric leaves you. Nothing is off the table.
Either decide you mean it, or calm down and take shit off the table that is going to get a
lot of people dead if you pull it off.
Exactly.
"CIA admits it broke into Senate computers; senators call for spy chief's ouster" [
McClatchy (Re Silc)]. Fooled ya! From 2013. I'm so old I remember when anonymous CIA soruces
weren't always revered as truth-tellers.
What is ALREADY going on with Trump, Dems, Russia is fascinating – and he is NOT EVEN SWORN
in yet!!! WOW! The war mongers are REALLY panicking . Anti commie – its the new politically correct
viewpoint .
Yes, there is something weird going on with these stories that the CIA appears to be spreading.
MOA is saying the MSN is falsely reporting China is flying nukes it doesn't have in planes all
over the place. Just a guess but bet this too comes from CIA
China threatening us with nukes and Russia stealing our elections. The fake news B.S. quotient
is off the richter scale. Makes you yearn for the good old days when all we had to worry about
was WMD in Iraq.
except Putin & his dominant party in the Russian gov are not Commie, Putin is a right-wing
authoritarian. I suppose Putin, Trump, & HClinton could each be labeled within the right-wing
authoritarian category.
politicalcompass certaintly categorized HClinton & Trump as right-wing authoritarian, & HClinton
was closer to Trump on the graph, than she was to Sanders (left-wing libertarian)
I'd expect this 'reds under the bed' fear mongering from Fox News, not from WaPo. Guess the
Wapo is to the Dems what Fox News is to the GOP. Clarifying election, indeed.
Really? Check out where Saints Jack and Bobby were during the red scare craze of the 50's.
Freedom of speech wasn't their pet project. I know but "Dallas 1963", but there whereabouts in
the 1950's aren't the product of conspiracy theory. For the fetishists, their red hunter status
has to be ignored. Bobby was a full fledged inquisitor for McCarthy.
The Dems are throwing on the golden oldies in an attempt to relive the glory of the past.
what drives me crazy about the Russian hacking conspiracy theory is that there actually WAS
a conspiracy to steal the 2016 election, as carefully documented by Greg Palast and Brad Friedman.
It consisted of the crosscheck purge of the voting rolls, voter suppression and vapour voting
machines. That no Democrat is talking about this tells me that the party is done for.
Good points, and yes, that ticks me off as well. The D Party continues to sit on their thumbs
and do bupkiss about real voting issues while issuing Red Scare Menace 3.0.
Why bother voting Democratic? They're not going to do one blasted thing for the proles. They
haven't for years and years.
Republicans have an agenda. It's terrible but they have one. Democrats represent rule by
the professional class, including bankers. That's it. Publicly, they're for rainbows, good things
and bringing people together.
Yes, the tin foil hat theory is that this all stems from the situation in Syria The CIA's aka
HRC"s Syria regime change is a failure. The CIA had high hopes, now dashed. The only chance for
war with Russia is to get HRC installed. The recount failed. So, Plan B.
There is a politico article from the wake of the 2014 disaster where elite Dems promised Hillary
would save them. An incredible amount of money, time, and reputations was put behind a loser,
not just a loser but a person who lost to Donald Trump. Anyone who donated any thing to the Clinton
effort should be crazy about Clinton Inc's conduct, so Clinton Inc needs to blame everyone but
themselves.
Let's just say for the sake of argument that the CIA and the Democrats have massively overplayed
their hand in these accusations against Russia. I suspect it wouldn't take all that much to bring
it all down like a house of cards, with a major scandal ensuing in its wake. Let's say that the
anonymous CIA source, assuming it was legit, has badly misrepresented what evidence, circumstantial
or otherwise, is there. They're "all-in" on this now. People will have to resign or get fired
within these organizations after Trump takes over because of this, wouldn't they? If their careers
are on the line, who knows what they'll resort to in order to save their own skins? Maybe this
play at flipping the Electoral College was the game all along.
The Clintons were abysmal candidates before emails were uttered. Hillary significantly under
performed Gore in 2000 in New York by a significant margin despite a candidate too extreme for
Peter King.
Every doubt about Hillary's electability was based in fact and OBVIOUS to anyone who spent
more than half a second taking the election seriously. Every Hillary primary voter who isn't a
already spectacular crook failed as citizens by putting forth a clown such a Hillary. There are
no ways around this.
Hillary just lost to Donald Trump because "liberals" are too childish to take politics seriously,
even her centrist supporters should have seen she is a clod. Of course, most centrists would stop
being centrists if they possessed critical thinking skills.
This is no less than trying to latch onto something that excuses their failures as citizens
and human beings.
Several of my Democratic friends are simultaneously convinced that Trump is a Russian stooge
and outraged that he won't listen to his daily national security briefings.
In light of the risible 'fake news' meme and NC's invocation of media related laws, here's
a reminder of another law you may find useful –
Sturgeon's Law .
Sci fi writer Theodore Sturgeon was told by a critic that 90% of scifi was crap and he retorted
that 90% of everything was crap. You just need to know how to find the good stuff.
Seems like this fake 'fake news' news (c) 2016 is primed to blow up right in the face
of entities like The Times, as more and more people see that half of what they purvey
as news is as likely to be B.S. as anything coming from an alternative, or even fringe website.
What's more is that they are driving the point home that their news stories can't
be trusted, with the very same 'fake news' story they are trying to use to emphasize how comparatively
real their news is. The irony levels are off the scale. It's uncharted territory.
In order to accept this is any kind of deal ( I do not support Trump nor did I vote for him)
there are so many hidden premises you have to accept it is laughable
First let's assume that Putin himself donned a Mr Robot Hoodie and hacked the server and printed
the emails and gave them to Assange who was sitting next to him.
SO WHAT?
Is the American public so gullible? Was that somehow unfair?
No. First, access was granted by .. Hillary and Podesta and their own idiocy ( her with the
server, him with the pas*word) . IMO we are entitled to know what was in the emails. It certainly
did not change my vote nor did it change the vote of anyone I know.
It's not like all the anti-Trump tapes etc were not strategically timed to influence the election.
IS it OK if Americans do it?
Second, all they could do with Trump was run past business stuff. He did not have a public
policy record to reveal the man was not in government service.. she was. My view is that if the
public was so influenced by the emails, which had some absolutely appalling details, none of which
were forged, then they were entitled to be ,even if Hitler himself had done the hacking.
It is disheartening that , less than a month after the NYT said maybe we were biased and we
promise to be more careful they are again acting as propagandists and not pointing out all the
absurd hidden premises that must be accepted to manufacture an issue. I am still waiting for the
Times report on her "fake news" that she was under fire- obviously a story designed to influence
primary voters.
I think both Clinton and Trump would be terrible presidents but it has been obvious since she
lost that Hillary is unable to accept this to the point of mental illness. First she tried to
have her proxies do some damage and when that did not work, she counters with this.
I never recall anyone saying that the Democratic party has an absolute right to control the
flow of information in the world. AS much as i despise Trump and his stone age cabinet, I am starting
to think he is less pathological about this than her. Perhaps if this latest gambit fails she
will go the way of Lady Macbeth,
The anti-Trump tapes . And the one with former Miss Universe – is she an American now? Do you call that 'foreign'
intervention? "Former Miss Universe tries to steal election for HIllary!!!"
Beverly,
=== quote ===
Just the fact that Trump has now said he thinks the CIA's cyber forensics team is the same group that tries to determine the
nuclear capacity of other countries is itself scary–and revealing. He doesn't recognize and obvious distinctions even about
incredibly important things, doesn't understand the concept of expertise, and can't distinguish between important and unimportant
things.
=== end of quote ===
Two points:
1. After Iraq WMD false claim CIA as agency had lost a large part of its credibility, because it is clear that it had succumbed
to political pressure and became just a pocket tool in the dirty neocon political games. At this time the pressure was from
neocons in Bush administration. Don't you think that it is possible that this is the case now too ?
2. It's not the job of CIA to determine who and how hacked DNC computers or any other computers in the USA. CIA mandate
is limited to foreign intelligence and intelligence aggregation and analysis. It is job of FBI and NSA, especially the latter,
as only NSA has technical means to trace from where really the attack had come, if it was an attack.
So any CIA involvement here is slightly suspect and might point to some internal conflicts within Obama administration.
It is unclear why Obama had chosen CIA Also as CIA and State Department are closely linked as CIA operatives usually use diplomatic
cover that request looks a little bit disingenuous as Hillary used to work for State Department. In this case one of the explanation
might be that it can be attributed to the desire to create a smoke screen and shield Clintons from pressure by rank-and-file
Hillary supporter (and donors) to explain the devastating defeat in electoral college votes against rather weak, really amateur
opponent.
"... Multiple CIA sources are now denouncing the Washington Post for knowingly reporting misleading national security intelligence. Intelligence insiders said no one in the Agency or in the FBI, who is running at least one parallel inquiry, has ruled out a possible internal leak within the Democratic National Committee from actor(s) inside the United States who funneled private DNC emails to WikiLeaks. ..."
Apparently CIA has finally figured out that their asses are toast. CIA has fed a constant stream
of half truths and outright rabrications to US MSM and are now turning on WaPo. CIA also has killer
drones and military powers they have no right to exercise. Apparently the rats are turning on each
other. Let the trials and subsequent executions begin.
LONG LIVE THE REPUBLIC
However, the FBI reported they did not find evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the Russian
Government did such a thing. The POST reported that a secret CIA report had been presented to lawmakers
on Capitol Hill allegedly saying there was information linking Russia to the election hackings in
favor of President-elect Trump.
Now, the CIA is saying the POST got it wrong in fact, they allegedly lied. At this point I think
the whole thing is a mess, and I don't see how the American people can decipher the "real" news from
the "fake" news.
Multiple CIA sources are now denouncing the Washington Post for knowingly reporting misleading
national security intelligence. Intelligence insiders said no one in the Agency or in the FBI, who
is running at least one parallel inquiry, has ruled out a possible internal leak within the Democratic
National Committee from actor(s) inside the United States who funneled private DNC emails to WikiLeaks.
Worth noting that Ukrainian associations have been deeply embedded in most large US cities
since the early 1950s. Not unlike the AIPAC propaganda wing that pulls the strings in the
US government.
And having a KNOWN perjurer (James Clapper) presiding over this farce
of an "investigation" is just the icing on the cake.
"Senator Wyden
then asked Clapper, "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on
millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" He responded "No,
sir." Wyden asked "It does not?" and Clapper said "Not wittingly.
There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, collect, but
not wittingly."
Then it was revealed by Edward Snowden that, why yes, in fact the
NSA does collect data on HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE HERE IN
AMERICA (probably all) and not "unwittlingly"...on fucking
purpose...snaring both Obama and Clapper in their fabricated stories
otherwise known as lies.
Clapper perjured himself before Congress,
a felony.
The next month, a Senate subcommittee launched an investigation
and found no proof of any subversive activity. Moreover, many of
McCarthy's Democratic and Republican colleagues, including
President Dwight Eisenhower, disapproved of his tactics ("I will
not get into the gutter with this guy," the president told his
aides). Still, the senator continued his so-called Red-baiting
campaign. In 1953, at the beginning of his second term as
senator, McCarthy was put in charge of the Committee on
Government Operations, which allowed him to launch even more
expansive investigations of the alleged communist infiltration
of the federal government. In hearing after hearing, he
aggressively interrogated witnesses in what many came to
perceive as a blatant violation of their civil rights. Despite a
lack of any proof of subversion, more than 2,000 government
employees lost their jobs as a result of McCarthy's
investigations.
"Have you no sense of decency, sir?"
In April 1954, Senator McCarthy turned his attention to
"exposing" the supposed communist infiltration of the armed
services. Many people had been willing to overlook their
discomfort with McCarthyism during the senator's campaign
against government employees and others they saw as "elites";
now, however, their support began to wane. Almost at once, the
aura of invulnerability that had surrounded McCarthy for nearly
five years began to disappear. First, the Army undermined the
senator's credibility by showing evidence that he had tried to
win preferential treatment for his aides when they were drafted.
Then came the fatal blow: the decision to broadcast the
"Army-McCarthy" hearings on national television. The American
people watched as McCarthy intimidated witnesses and offered
evasive responses when questioned. When he attacked a young Army
lawyer, the Army's chief counsel thundered, "Have you no sense
of decency, sir?" The Army-McCarthy hearings struck many
observers as a shameful moment in American politics.
The Fall of Joseph McCarthy
By the time the hearings were over, McCarthy had lost most of
his allies. The Senate voted to condemn him for his
"inexcusable," "reprehensible," "vulgar and insulting" conduct
"unbecoming a senator." He kept his job but lost his power, and
died in 1957 at the age of 48.
"... The authenticity of the content of the hacked/leaked emails were never in doubt. Several DNC lackeys, including the chair of the democratic national committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, were fired on the grounds of bias, fraud and even conspiracy to commit criminal acts. ..."
"... Their desperation makes them very dangerous, especially while still ostensibly in charge of many elements of gov't and, of course, the entrenched MSM. ..."
"... So can we now accept that the Russians hacked Hillarys server? Seems before the election, the Demorats kept trying to deny it happened. ..."
"... What about the DHS trying to Hack the Georgia Election Computer System? ..."
"... Not just gossip, an un-named official (not an official statement by the department head) stating with "confidence" (not evidence), off the record but reported in every major fish-wrap, that Russian hackers were interfered in our elections, AND inferring that they knew the motives/intentions behind this conjured crime. ..."
"... If there were ANY evidence, the Dems would have paraded it out in front of us loudly and proudly the second they found it. Instead, they prefer making jacka$$es out of themselves (and our country) with innuendo-based trial balloons, as everyone in the world capable of critical thinking laughs at them (us). ..."
"... So we are still "shooting the messenger"? Nobody wants to discuss the content of the Podesta emails, even though they have not been discredited in any way. ..."
Russians did not affect my votes against HRC. HRC did: Whitewater. Mena. Foster. Waco. OKC.
Ruby Ridge. Her continuing career and liberty is proof of a Conspiracy.
Gucifer said, that it was open. The sysadmin said, that it was unmodified Windows business
suite server.
Who needs more to get in, as a standard MS product? I am convinced every intelligence
agency on this earth (yes, Zimbabwian agency as well), has a copy of all emails there.
The authenticity of the content of the hacked/leaked emails were never in doubt. Several
DNC lackeys, including the chair of the democratic national committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz,
were fired on the grounds of bias, fraud and even conspiracy to commit criminal acts.
Hillary Clinton herself can be indicted on lying under oath to Congress, conspiracy to commit
criminal acts (Paying agitators to assault the supporters of her opponents), election fraud (See
Veritas), contravening the Federal Records Act, Improper handling of classified documents, and
I won't even go into Pizzagate, Saudi funding and the Clinton Foundation, or I'll be here typing
all night.
Where it gets interesting (actually vomit-inducing disgusting), just as Julian Assange alluded,
is inside the Podesta emails that colludes with Huma Abedin's dirty laundry on her/Weiner's laptop.
The missing (deleted) emails, the references to paedophile activities and snippets of pay-for-play
inside the Clinton Foundation. These are not just embarrassing or technicalities that can be woven
into excuses, but information that could bring hanging back as the ultimate form of justice for
the perpetrators.
So, these cretins are doing what they glanced at in The Art of War: That the best defense is
offence. They are going all out full retard to save their lives using every asset they have in
the msm, intelligence, politics and oligarchy.
Look how fast they moved with H.R.6393 to criminalize alternative news. To discredit the leaked
information, to discredit the source, to attack anyone who publishes or mentions them. They will
not stop because they cannot stop. This isn't a subsidy for the failing msm, that's a bonus, this
is a fight for their existence because they have committed crimes that not a single decent person
in the world can abide. It is so horrific, I still have trouble with believing it, but the circumstantial
evidence is overwhelming.
Where this will lead is obvious -- a distraction first from the content of the leaks, false
accusations and attacks on Russia and anyone who talks about it, leading to the biggest false
accusation of all: Trump as a (willing or unwilling) foreign agent which amounts to treason and
therefore unfit to be president. Bring the hammer down on the stock market at the same time and
we have a conflagration erupting from the already boiling cauldron of American society. Too much
conjecture? Maybe.
No, you articulated what I was alluding to a few posts above (I posted before reading yours).
Their desperation makes them very dangerous, especially while still ostensibly in charge of
many elements of gov't and, of course, the entrenched MSM.
They'll create the crisis they vow to not let go to waste. Any excuse to seize ultimate
power.
No, I can't accept that the Russian's hacked Hillary's server. Not until I see some evidence.
Just repeating the same gossip a million times is not providing evidence.
Not just gossip, an un-named official (not an official statement by the department head) stating
with "confidence" (not evidence), off the record but reported in every major fish-wrap, that Russian
hackers were interfered in our elections, AND inferring that they knew the motives/intentions
behind this conjured crime.
If there were ANY evidence, the Dems would have paraded it out in front of us loudly and
proudly the second they found it. Instead, they prefer making jacka$$es out of themselves
(and our country) with innuendo-based trial balloons, as everyone in the world capable of critical
thinking laughs at them (us).
This tactic is so brutally transparent that I really fear what they are really up to......or
maybe they are this stupid?
So we are still "shooting the messenger"? Nobody wants to discuss the content of the Podesta
emails, even though they have not been discredited in any way. Classic divert and deflect
tactics which a Libtard MSM enjoys being a part of.
They probably forgot about Snowden revelation way too soon...
Either Russian intelligence officials have suddenly become extremely efficient at disrupting national
elections in the world's largest democracies or the establishment leaders of those democracies have
intentionally launched a coordinated, baseless witch hunt as a way to distract voters from their
failed policies. We have our suspicions on which is more likely closer to the truth...
Either way, per Reuters
, Germany's domestic intelligence agency is reporting a "striking increase" in Russian propaganda
and disinformation campaigns aimed at destabilizing German society, and targeted cyber attacks against
political parties.
"We see aggressive and increased cyber spying and cyber operations that could potentially endanger
German government officials, members of parliament and employees of democratic parties," Hans-Georg
Maassen, head of the BfV spy agency, said in statement.
Maassen, who raised similar concerns about Russian efforts to interfere in German elections
last month, cited what he called increasing evidence about such efforts and said further cyber
attacks were expected.
The agency said it had seen a wide variety of Russian propaganda tools and "enormous use of
financial resources" to carry out "disinformation" campaigns aimed at the Russian-speaking community
in Germany, political movements, parties and other decision makers.
The goal was to spread uncertainty, strengthen extremist groups and parties, complicate the
work of the federal government and "weaken or destabilise the Federal Republic of Germany".
Like accusations made by Hillary and Obama in the U.S., German politicians, including Chancellor
Angela Merkel, have asserted that Russian intelligence agents and media outlets have attempted to
spread "fake news" in an effort to "fan popular angst over issues like the migrant crisis." Of course,
it can't simply be that voters disagree with Merkel's "open border" policies which have resulted
in a massive influx of migrants that have been linked to increasing crime, terrorist attacks and
sexual assaults on German citizens...that would just be silly and racist and xenophobic.
German officials have accused Moscow of trying to manipulate German media to fan popular angst
over issues like the migrant crisis , weaken voter trust and breed dissent within the European
Union so that it drops sanctions against Moscow.
But intelligence officials have stepped up their warnings in recent weeks, alarmed about the
number of attacks.
Last month, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she could not rule out Russia interfering
in Germany's 2017 election through Internet attacks and misinformation campaigns.
Estonian Foreign Minister Sven Mikser on Thursday said he expected Russia to continue a campaign
of "psychological warfare" and spreading false information after the cyber attacks launched during
the U.S. election.
"It's a pretty safe bet that they will try to do it again," he told Reuters in Hamburg at a
meeting of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. "They will try to surprise
us. That's something that we should be very careful to look at and try to protect ourselves from."
While we have absolutely no doubt in Merkel and Obama's assertions that Russia has been able to
successfully sabotage national elections, it is curious that, in the U.S., Russian efforts were only
successful in certain states where voters had been disproportionately hurt by past Clinton policies
(e.g. WI, MI, PA, OH) but not in other swing states like Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado.
Exactly. The whole Putin did it narrative in the MSM is government propaganda. Nato bullshit Deep
State military industrial complex trying very hard to get the Sheeple to believe in their leaders.....
The biggest defeat for globalists would be that Europe will start looking east, towards Russia,
instead of West. Follow the money for these German politicians: bet the "Open Society Foundation"
from George Soros will be mentioned regularly.
The world would be a better place if Russia actualy did all the things they have been accused
of instead of the CIA and Germany making all this shit up.
One thing is for certain the NWO was working on Russia at the time of the election, which Clinton
was meant to be a guaranteed winner - expcept the Soros-Neocon-Clinton-DNC cabal totally fucked
up their rigging, not realising how popular Trump actually was.
NOW they are in total fucking panic trying to think of ways to get Trump out.
These neocon fucktard New World Order proponents were trying to corner Russia, remove Putin
and make Russia kow tow to the NWO and accept their new overlords. EXCEPT it was and is a total
fucking stupid idea because the result would have been nuclear war - Russia would never ever bend
to the USA and the NWO - they were totally dreaming if they believed that. And the result would
have been a military alliance between China and Russia - with Europe and the USA and Russia in
ashes.
The world dodge a nuclear bullet when Trump won. So now, having failed to overturn the
election through Stein recounts and rigging (the judges wouldn't play along) they have to go the
whole demonise Russia thing, as was their original plan. And they want to push it fast before
the EU breaks up, as the sheeple wake the fuck up to these neocon Oligarch overlords.
My bet is a major False Flag attack somewhere outrageous blamed on Russia.
These fucking neocons like Soros, Israel, Germany, Clintons and all their backers and cabal
either are totally stupid or just don't give a fuck, knowing that nuclear war is a real possibility
- AND that the USA CANNOT defend itself against nuclear attack , despite all the wankery about
their defense systems.
So these people know there is a chance of laying waste to the USA - and they don't care, it
is worth it for their NWO.
Considering that the Russians are Hollywood's favorite general purpose villains (as opposed to
the practitioners of the religion of peace, or Mexican criminals), this is hardly unexpected,
dontcha think?
last week I read that the german government was aware of the NSA spying at least since 2001. No
outrage here. Outrage only occurs if you don't have any evidence, and it's the russians. Do you
know how most of german elections are held? Paper ballots, ID-cards and lists of citizens who
are elligible to vote. There's definitely some hacking possible... Hate your politicians,
often!
Not only did they know that the NSA spied on the German government -including Merkel's mobile-
the German BND along with the NSA spied on the rest of Europe: policitians, EU officials and European
businesses.
While I will agree that if you knew where to look, in a basic fashion, everything he brought
to light was already known or knowable, at least.
The thing Snowden did was brought all the pieces together, stole the graphics (great visualizing
tools), program names and working details and evidence that these things are all possible and
on-line. ..... He brought the story together and made it very public. .........
Not something that Boos Hamilton, the CIA or the NSA would have wanted. ..
well, whatever you might think about Russian influence in the US...
... Russian influence on and in Germany (and all other european countries) is a quite different
affair. one little factoid: the so called "Russlands-Deutsche"( * ), i.e. "Russian-Germans" number
somewhere between two and three million , in Germany. we are talking here about at least one million
that speaks Russian better then German, and reads/watches Russian News
here, on this continent, we are btw somewhat used to external influences, be them Russian or
US ones
I forecasted to "Haus" some years ago that eventually the German political "status-quo" would
start to point out the Russian influence on "Alternative für Deutschland". That moment is nearly
there
again: US Americans might be somewhat confused about foreign influences on their political
matters
here , it has been a reality during the whole of the Cold War and after, from both the US and
Russia
just some examples:
the reports over the last years about the German parliament being spied upon and hacked by
both the CIA and the Russian intelligence services are completely plausible. Merkel was holding
up her phone... and alleged that the CIA was spying on her. again, very plausible
the EU org in Brussels was hacked/spied upon by the British intelligence services, too. again,
very plausible. indeed, now that the Brexit talks begin in a confrontational manner... there are
even more reasons for the British GCHQ to spy on Brussels
They are caled "Spaetaussiedler" Ghordius. There are about the same number of Turks in Germany.
It is true the prison population of Germany is largely Serbs, Turks, Spaetaussiedler and New Arrivals.
I hear Russian but after having millions of Russian soldiers in Germany since 1945 and huge
Russian influence back into the 18th Century that is not unusual. You can get Tax Forms in Russian
but not English.
Berlin always was the capital of the East never of the West which Adenauer cleverly placed
on the Rhine rather than the Spree. Berlin has always had to consider Russia because ONLY in the
years 1919-1939 and 1990-2016 has Germany NOT shared a border with Russia in the past 250 years.
It is German Aggression that twice brought Russian troops to Berlin
Sandmann, as often, you try to "soften the blow" of my message with some tidbits that are often
completely irrelevant
they don't call themselves "Spätaussiedler". They call themselves Russlands-Deutsche, i.e.
Russian-Germans
their prison population is irrelevant, here. their right to vote in the German election is
they read Russian News, they watch RT in Russian, they hold up signs like "Putin save us",
and they are quite confused, to boot, and pawns in this "game"
some Germans, when they arrived, made jokes that some of those Russian-Germans hardly qualified
to "Germanness", up to saying things like "all families that in the 19th Century had once a German
Shephard as pet". but this is too, irrelevant
fact is that their numbers are substantial. fact is that they are influenced by their media
consumption from Russia. fact is that they were used to see Putin and Merkel as good friends...
until they weren't anymore, and since then they are bombarded with news how Merkel is the source
of all evils, in Europe
fact is also that the political establishments in Germany were, up to now, not that fond to
tell them anything that would make them too confused because... they are voters, too. and in a
political setup like Germany's, you don't tell hard truths to voters, and you don't insult them
as dupes
nevertheless, fact is that Russian (and US, note) influence on Germany's politics is substantial,
including that on the Russlands-Deutsche in Germany
I don't think anyone is denying the fact that Germany has become a playball of foreign powers
ever since it lost WW1, yes the first, not the second one was already desicive in that.
Now, no matter how many German-Russians there are in Germany they are still citizens of your
country, else they would not have been allowed to come back. The question for Germany needs to
be looking ahead into the future, become aware that it is dependent or even controlled by other
greater powers, a status it lost, one century ago. Its citizens should start to raise the question
which side is better for us, should we work more closely with continental Russia, with all its
ressources and land? Or should we work closer with martim ZATO? What has that relationship really
done for us, what have we truly benefitted from it?
Once there is a serious discussion going on about it, Germans will surely never support an
atlantcist such as Merkel. For the time being, I'm glad there are German-Russians at least one
branch of German society that is keenly aware of the dire situation your country is in.
" no matter how many German-Russians there are in Germany they are still citizens of your country,
else they would not have been allowed to come back "
do you live in some alternate reality planet? check yourself on this your assumption
we are talking about Russian citizens that were granted German citizenship when arriving in
Germany because of their German ancestry
the "Return of the Russian-Germans" to Germany has gone on since before and after WWI, and
the only thing that stopped it for a while was the Iron Curtain
nevertheless, it was a German policy to grant them citizenship on arrival
and no, your "Merkel the Atlanticist" is a tad... extreme. it's not about Russia or "ZATO",
here
Right, else they would not have been granted citizenship, I don't see why we should disagree on
that subject.
Regarding Merkel is not an Atlanticist, I would like a bit more of an argument just calling
it extreme but not providing information as to why is not making your argument very strong. I
have plenty of reasons to believe she is: "Allowing nuclear weaopns to be stationed in Germany
against the will of the Bundestag, not being the slightest bit affected by the NSA spying scandal,
supporting sanctions to Russia that hurt German business much more than British or American...the
list goes on and on."
samjam7, do you ever check on what you believe ? let's take only this: " (Merkel) allowing nuclear
weapons to be stationed in Germany against the will of the Bundestag "
just googled it. already in the second hit I get this:
" The Bundestag decided in March 2010 by a large majority, that the federal government should
'press for the withdrawal of US nuclear weapons from Germany.' Even the coalition agreement between
the CDU and FDP, the German government in 2009 had promised the withdrawal of nuclear weapons
from Büchel. "
that's the German Bundestag pressing/instructing the German executive to "do something" in
that direction, yes
that's not the German Bundestag doing a law , which is the very thing it could do, being a
lawgiver
saying "the will of the Bundestag" in this is just that: propaganda. and you fell for it
the true will of the Bundestag is expressed in law. the rest is "please, try to...", so that
your "Merkel is going against the will of..." is just... stretching the truth
in the same way, there is a substantial difference between welcoming citizens of other countries
because of their ancestry and granting them citizenship versus: "they already had that German
citizenship"
Where in the above statement did I talk of law? You Germans always need everything 'schwarz auf
weiss' or its wrong....
I spoke of will and to be honest even your quote that you thankfully looked up, proofs without
any doubt that the parliament had a will, namely not to station more nuclear weapons in Büchel.
Now that the Bundestag doesn't fight with Merkel over it 'i.e. pass a law' is related to the political
system of Germany and that its major parties are co-opted and prefer to nod off Merkel's politics
than resist it. Also it is highly questionable whether the German Parliament has the authority
to decide on these matters, as it delves into the grey area of who actually decides what kind
of troops are stationed in Germany, Merkel or the US/UK?
To call that Propaganda though is unwarranted and rather weak, or how more clearly can a Parliament
demonstrate its will?
"... William Casey (CIA Director), "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false."? ..."
"... if an organization has lost trust of national security affairs it should be DISBANDED ..."
"... ...so why did Debbie Wassername-Schultz resign if the hacks were untrue about her non-neutrality toward Bernie Marx in favor of Hillary Crony? Is this not a usurpation of the peoples will and an affront to "democracy" everywhere? ..."
"... How is it that a "charity" is only a "charity" as long as the people running this "charity" remain in power? Everyone suddenly becomes "less charitable" because she lost? Why is that? Can't they say cronyism and be done with it? ..."
"... The entire story is based on a leak from Senate Staff on SSCI alleging what they were told in a briefing by CIMC. What SSCI was told is that there is no evidence of who was the hacker. Because Russia is one of many possibilities, somebody on SSCI who leaked to WaPo concluded for himself that the hacker was Russia. That is not what they were told. The vitriol should be directed toward WaPo and their Senate SSCI source. ..."
"... As the Obama Administration falls apart, expect the various players to begin to look out for themselves. ..."
"... Obama is hanging everyone out to dry in the futile attempt to save his own 'legacy'. ..."
"... Truman signed its charter. The original intent was to assemble and study Information, period. Truman later remarked he would never have done so had he known it would go amok. Instead, it became a weapon of the Deep State. It is now a direct threat to the American Republic. ..."
"... Ah, yes. The CIA The folks who claimed that Sony was hacked by North Korea, when a private security firm was able to directly finger the disgruntled ex-employees responsible. ..."
"... The CIA is run by neocons, who are upset that their stooge Hillary lost the election and Trump, the elected President-to-be, is making a direct pivot towards accomodation with their arch-enemy Vladimir Putin. ..."
"... Meanwhile, the receivers of the DNC leaks know who they got the information from, and swear publicly that that also was an inside leak. But if it were an inside leak, then it couldn't call the results of the election into question. Only interference by a Foreign Power can do that. ..."
"... Same for the Nameless One. Does she want to admit that her own bureaucracy prefers that she not sit on the throne, or does she like the idea of blaming a sinister foreign entity for her loss? ..."
"... If the Russians did it, is Obama twisting the knife in the Clinton's back? The email leaks were a false flag attack against the Clintons perpetrated by Obama to remove them from the power matrix, and install himself as head of the Democrat party, free from their influence, and free to move that party in the direction he wants as it's defacto leader. ..."
"... John Swinton, Chief editorial writer of the New York Times from 1860 to 1870: "There is no such thing as a free press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who would dare to write his honest opinions. The business of the journalist is to destroy truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell himself, his country, and his race, for his daily bread. We are tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping jacks; they pull the strings, we dance; our talents, our possibilities, and our lives are the property of these men. We are intellectual prostitutes." ..."
"... Clinton's is a common defense of the CIA: namely, the American people should stop criticizing the CIA because they don't know what it really does. This, of course, is the heart of the problem in the first place. An agency that is above criticism is also above moral behavior and reform. Its secrecy and lack of accountability allows its corruption to grow unchecked. ..."
"... The CIA's response to this growing knowledge and criticism follows a typical historical pattern.(Indeed, there are remarkable parallels to the Medieval Church's fight against the Scientific Revolution.) The first journalists and writers to reveal the CIA's criminal behavior were harassed and censored if they were American writers, and tortured and murdered if they were foreigners. ..."
"... Another common apologetic is that "the world is filled with unsavory characters, and we must deal with them if we are to protect American interests at all." There are two things wrong with this. First, it ignores the fact that the CIA has regularly spurned alliances with defenders of democracy, free speech and human rights, preferring the company of military dictators and tyrants. ..."
"... Second, this argument begs several questions. The first is: " Which American interests?" The CIA has courted right-wing dictators because they allow wealthy Americans to exploit the country's cheap labor and resources. But poor and middle-class Americans pay the price whenever they fight the wars that stem from CIA actions, from Vietnam to the Gulf War to Panama. ..."
"... The other begged question is: "Why should American interests come at the expense of other peoples' human rights?" The CIA should be abolished, its leadership dismissed and its relevant members tried for crimes against humanity. ..."
"... Craig Murray: "[...] the mad CIA allegations against Russia and now claiming – incredibly – that the CIA believe the FBI is deliberately blocking the information on Russian collusion. " I wasn't aware of this CIA allegation against the FBI, it's quite astonishing. ..."
"... Craig Murray: "[...] this rubbish has been the lead today in the Washington Post in the US and the Guardian here, and was the lead item on the BBC main news. " No one should be surprised that The Guardian is up to its neck in publishing ... garbage ..."
A little simple logic demolishes the CIA's claims. The CIA claim they "know the individuals"
involved. Yet under Obama the USA has been absolutely ruthless in its persecution of whistleblowers,
and its pursuit of foreign hackers through extradition. We are supposed to believe that in the
most vital instance imaginable, an attempt by a foreign power to destabilise a US election, even
though the CIA knows who the individuals are, nobody is going to be arrested or extradited, or
(if in Russia) made subject to yet more banking and other restrictions against Russian individuals?
Plainly it stinks.
The anonymous source claims of "We know who it was, it was the Russians" are beneath contempt.
The CIA has lots of evidence (both collected and manufactured) which is then misconstrued through
politiczed analysis and dissemination to serve their own and their primary customer's personal
interests.
Back during the Reagan administration, someone casually told me "We spend more on disinformaion
than we do on information" - I doubt things have changed that much since then.
Correct me if Im wrong; but i thought the law prohibits the CIA from operations and investigations
on home soil. That is the job for the FBI. Why is the CIA commenting on computer systems that
were hacked in the US of A? There are at least a dozen other agencies (just as worthless) that
this would fall under their jurisdiction.
If the Russians had anything to do with the hacked emails, which are only accusations, they
did the American people a great service by exposing the evil of the DNC, HRottenC and their
MSM minions, none of whom could care less about their ethics violations. They are only upset
because they were caught. Their supporters have been had by their own kind and their leaders
are now redirecting their exposure onto the Russians and Trump to keep their sheep misdirected
from the real problems, HRC and Obama.
we all know what happened to the boy who cried "wolf" when none were there... by the time there
actually _were_ wolves, no one believed him...
the CIA has lost the plot and cried "wolf" too many times for anyone to believe them anymore...
if an organization has lost trust of national security affairs it should be DISBANDED
Well it is a wide open "bear trap"...lol...(to use a metaphor) sitting there out in the open
un-camouflaged for everyone with two brain cells left in their heads to see...and at some point
someone is going to ask...
...so why did Debbie Wassername-Schultz resign if the hacks were untrue about her non-neutrality
toward Bernie Marx in favor of Hillary Crony? Is this not a usurpation of the peoples will
and an affront to "democracy" everywhere?
How is it that a "charity" is only a "charity" as long as the people running this "charity"
remain in power? Everyone suddenly becomes "less charitable" because she lost? Why is that?
Can't they say cronyism and be done with it?
Yezzz, let the progressive tears flow, they taste wonderful ;-)
The Brit Ambassador has the wrong target, because he was caught by Fake News.
The entire story is based on a leak from Senate Staff on SSCI alleging what they were
told in a briefing by CIMC. What SSCI was told is that there is no evidence of who was the
hacker. Because Russia is one of many possibilities, somebody on SSCI who leaked to WaPo concluded
for himself that the hacker was Russia. That is not what they were told. The vitriol should
be directed toward WaPo and their Senate SSCI source.
As the Obama Administration falls apart, expect the various players to begin to look
out for themselves. Do not be surprised if in the next few days, Brennan or someone else
at the agency sets the record straight and throws some 'shade' on WaPo and Obama.
Obama is hanging everyone out to dry in the futile attempt to save his own 'legacy'.
Whoever might have been a loyal soldier and who fell on his sword if requested to do so
is not going to do it anymore. Obama is a child who cannot accept that he has been an abject
failure, so he is getting desperate to create some false historical record.
I remember Zerohedge reporting on a meeting last year with US Senator McCain and Arab terrorists
that included photos . These terrorists were on the US most wanted list. Too bad
that Canadian reporter did not mention that.
I'd say this entire campaign is far too clunky and clumsy to be executed by the CIA
The CIA has done some incredibly evil shit in the past so I wouldn't put something like this
past them, however they are far more professional generally than this from my limited exposure
and what I've researched about activities of the agency.
The "CIA" has outlived its usefulness. It needs to be broken up and disbanded.
Truman signed its charter. The original intent was to assemble and study Information,
period. Truman later remarked he would never have done so had he known it would go amok. Instead,
it became a weapon of the Deep State. It is now a direct threat to the American Republic.
Our spy and security apparatus didn't defeat the Soviet Union's "evil empire" so much as it
emulated it, using Orwell and Huxley as roadmaps, rather than warnings.
Maybe it wasn't the Russians. Who else could it possibly be? Not the CIA! Not in good ol USA.
Maybe it was Aliens! After all the UK Mail thought as much with Kennedy. Or maybe Bush and
his clan are the Aliens. All I can say is Trump better never let the CIA instead of Secret
Service guard him and his motorcade!
The CIA Kennedy assassination theory is a prominent John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy
theory. The CIA's potential involvement was frequently mentioned during the 1960s and 1970s
when the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was involved in plots to assassinate foreign
leaders, particularly Fidel Castro.[1][2] According to author James Douglass, Kennedy was
assassinated because he was turning away from the Cold War and seeking a negotiated peace
with the Soviet Union.[3][4] Accusations and confessions of and by alleged conspirators,
as well as official government reports citing the CIA as uncooperative in investigations,
have at times renewed interest in these conspiracy theories.
Ah, yes. The CIA The folks who claimed that Sony was hacked by North Korea,
when a private security firm was able to directly finger the disgruntled ex-employees responsible.
Let's break this down some more. The CIA is run by neocons, who are upset that
their stooge Hillary lost the election and Trump, the elected President-to-be, is making a
direct pivot towards accomodation with their arch-enemy Vladimir Putin.
Meanwhile, the FBI is stacked with political employees and their career hirees installed
under GW Bush, and leans strongly against the Democrats, to the point of deliberately leaking
damaging evidence against the Democratic candidate the week before the election . . . granted
that there wouldn't have been any information to leak, if Hillary had followed the laws and
policies of her federal position.
Meanwhile, the receivers of the DNC leaks know who they got the information from, and
swear publicly that that also was an inside leak. But if it were an inside leak, then
it couldn't call the results of the election into question. Only interference by a Foreign
Power can do that.
But to the extent that the Russians DID lobby against Hillary, they did so completely openly.
If you read an article in Russia Today in favor of Trump or against Hillary, you can hardly
claim to be deceived.
The Russians are allowed to have an opinion; we can't stop that. What they aren't
allowed to do is to vote, or to contribute money to the candidates' campaigns (here we will
lightly skip over the millions donated to Hillary's campaign by Israeli dual citizens, the
Saudis, the Australians, Nigeria, VietNam, India, Haiti . . .).
What did you expect them to say? "Uh, yes, Mr. President, it was us, actually." Of course
they are going to point the finger elsewhere. Especially to someplace that cannot be pressured.
You would too, if placed in the same position. Same for the Nameless One. Does she
want to admit that her own bureaucracy prefers that she not sit on the throne, or does she
like the idea of blaming a sinister foreign entity for her loss?
And even if Russia did it, it's not like they made anything up. Come on, people. Realpolitik.
The CIA (Central Insanity Agency) IS the United States government. It controls all of the other
so-called independent intelligence agencies. Would the CIA lie to overturn the 2016 Presidential
elections? Well, the CIA are the very same people who: <
for decades have had hundreds of nationally and internationally prominent so-called
journalists on the CIA payroll and controlled the stories reported by Western Mainstream
Conporate News Media;
assassinated President John F. Kennedy because they were furious about the failure of
their insane Bay of Pigs fiasco, the peaceful resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis, etc.,
etc., etc.;
faked the Gulf of Tonkin intelligence to get the United States Congress to pass the
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution giving the bloodthirsty Generals and Admirals and President Lyndon
B. Johnson the false flag incident to drastically escalate the Vietnam War–closely located
to the Golden Triangle's highly coveted rich heroin supplies–and all of the attendant decades
of lying about that war;
destabilized Afghanistan to encourage invasion by the Soviet Union;
created, supported and armed the Sunni Mujahideen, which morphed into Al Qaeda following
the Gulf War, to fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan;
encouraged President Jimmy Carter to admit the Shah of Iran to create the pretext for
decades of enmity between Iran and the United States and destroy Jimmy Carter's Presidency;
encouraged Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait to give President George H. W. Bush the pretext
to declare war on Iraq;
were behind the 9/11/2001 false flag attacks on the World Trade Center towers, and their
destruction with controlled explosives demolitions charges, and the Pentagon and then lied
that it was all an Al Qaeda plot;
lied about Al Qaeda's role in 9/11/2001 to justify the invasion of Afghanistan with
its highly coveted, rich poppy fields for heroin production;
lied about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify President George W. Bush's war
of aggression against Iraq;
created, finances, arms and supports ISIS;
plans and carries out false flag operations to influence public opinion;
lie about whatever whenever it suits their agenda;
controls the 'narratives' in the Feral gangster government's organs of state propaganda
(mainstream & social media and entertainment oligopoly);
And far, far more. But, I got tired of typing and I don't want to bore the readers. The
point being that they are ALL professional liars and the love of truth and the American Republic
is not in them.
Yes, of course the CIA would lie to overturn the 2016 Presidential elections.
If the Russians did it, is Obama twisting the knife in the Clinton's back?
The email leaks were a false flag attack against the Clintons perpetrated by Obama to remove
them from the power matrix, and install himself as head of the Democrat party, free from their
influence, and free to move that party in the direction he wants as it's defacto leader.
Blaming the leaks on the Russians gains obfuscation of Obama's chief foreign policy failure
as President.... drawing a red line, then failing to act when it was crossed, which signaled
to the world that he was an impudent little bitch that could be ignored in a world that understands
only one thiing..... strength.
John Swinton, Chief editorial writer of the New York Times from 1860 to 1870: "There
is no such thing as a free press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who would
dare to write his honest opinions. The business of the journalist is to destroy truth, to lie
outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell himself, his country,
and his race, for his daily bread. We are tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes.
We are jumping jacks; they pull the strings, we dance; our talents, our possibilities, and
our lives are the property of these men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
Clinton's is a common defense of the CIA: namely, the American people should stop criticizing
the CIA because they don't know what it really does. This, of course, is the heart of the problem
in the first place. An agency that is above criticism is also above moral behavior and reform.
Its secrecy and lack of accountability allows its corruption to grow unchecked.
Furthermore, Clinton's statement is simply untrue. The history of the agency is growing
painfully clear, especially with the declassification of historical CIA documents. We may not
know the details of specific operations, but we do know, quite well, the general behavior of
the CIA These facts began emerging nearly two decades ago at an ever-quickening pace. Today
we have a remarkably accurate and consistent picture, repeated in country after country, and
verified from countless different directions.
The CIA's response to this growing knowledge and criticism follows a typical historical
pattern.(Indeed, there are remarkable parallels to the Medieval Church's fight against the
Scientific Revolution.) The first journalists and writers to reveal the CIA's criminal behavior
were harassed and censored if they were American writers, and tortured and murdered if they
were foreigners.
However, over the last two decades the tide of evidence has become overwhelming, and the
CIA has found that it does not have enough fingers to plug every hole in the dike. This is
especially true in the age of the Internet, where information flows freely among millions of
people. Since censorship is impossible, the Agency must now defend itself with apologetics.
Clinton's "Americans will never know" defense is a prime example.
Another common apologetic is that "the world is filled with unsavory characters, and we must
deal with them if we are to protect American interests at all."
There are two things wrong with this. First, it ignores the fact that the CIA has regularly
spurned alliances with defenders of democracy, free speech and human rights, preferring the
company of military dictators and tyrants.
The CIA had moral options available to them, but did not take them.
Second, this argument begs several questions. The first is: " Which American interests?" The CIA has courted right-wing dictators because they allow wealthy Americans to exploit
the country's cheap labor and resources. But poor and middle-class Americans pay the price whenever they fight the wars that stem
from CIA actions, from Vietnam to the Gulf War to Panama.
The other begged question is: "Why should American interests come at the expense of other
peoples' human rights?" The CIA should be abolished, its leadership dismissed and its relevant members tried for
crimes against humanity.
Our intelligence community should be rebuilt from the ground up, with the goal of collecting
and analyzing information. As for covert action, there are two moral options.
The first one is to eliminate covert action completely. But this gives jitters to people worried about the Adolf Hitlers of the world. So a second
option is that we can place covert action under extensive and true democratic oversight. For example, a bipartisan Congressional Committee of 40 members could review and veto all
aspects of CIA operations upon a majority or super-majority vote.
Which of these two options is best may be the subject of debate, but one thing is clear:
like dictatorship, like monarchy, unaccountable covert operations should die like the dinosaurs
they are.
Craig Murray: "[...] the mad CIA allegations against Russia and now claiming – incredibly –
that the CIA believe the FBI is deliberately blocking the information on Russian collusion.
"
I wasn't aware of this CIA allegation against the FBI, it's quite astonishing.
The FBI and CIA are both utterly corrupt, as is every other faction of the Obola Administration
including the Marxist slimeball himself at the very top, but what we see here are factions
throwing allegations against each other.
Craig Murray: "[...] this rubbish has been the lead today in the Washington Post in the US
and the Guardian here, and was the lead item on the BBC main news. "
No one should be surprised that The Guardian is up to its neck in publishing ... garbage
written by Jonathen Freedland. After all it's been "the progressive Left's" house newspaper
for years and is known as " The Grauniad " by dissenters.
What is truly bad is that the BBC are coming out of the closet and once again revealing
their own Left-wing Establishment bias by running fake news stories on its TV news channel.
"... President-elect Donald Trump, in an exclusive interview with " Fox News Sunday ," decried as "ridiculous" the CIA's reported assessment that Russia intervened in the election to boost his candidacy – describing the claim as another "excuse" pushed by Democrats to explain his upset victory. ..."
President-elect Donald Trump, in an exclusive interview with "
Fox News
Sunday ," decried as "ridiculous" the CIA's reported assessment that Russia intervened in
the election to boost his candidacy – describing the claim as another "excuse" pushed by Democrats
to explain his upset victory.
"It's just another excuse. I don't believe it," Trump said. " Every week it's another excuse.
We had a massive landslide victory, as you know, in the Electoral College."
Trump spoke with Fox News' Chris Wallace in the president-elect's first Sunday show interview
since winning the election.
"... If the CIA is actually stupid enough to believe this, the US is without a competent intelligence agency. Of course, the CIA didn't say and doesn't believe any such thing. The fake news stories in the presstitute media are all sourced to unnamed officials. Former British ambassador Craig Murray described the reports accurately: "bullshit." ..."
"... Fake news is the presstitute's product. Throughout the presidential primaries and presidential campaign it was completely clear that the mainstream print and TV media were producing endless fake news designed to damage Trump and to boost Hillary. We all saw it. We all lived through it. What is this pretense that Russia is the source of fake news? ..."
"... We have had nothing but fake news from the presstitutes since the Klingon regime. Fake news was used against Yugoslavia and Serbia in order to cloak the Clinton's war crimes. ..."
"... Ironic, isn't it, that it is those who purport to be liberal and progressive who are responsible for the revival of McCarthyism in America. Moreover, the liberal progressives are institutionalizing McCarthyism in the US government. There is clearly a concerted effort being made to define truth as fake news and to define lies as truth. ..."
Speaking of fake news, the latest issue of the National Enquirer at the supermarket checkout is
giving the mainstream presstitute media a run for the money: "Castro's Deathbed Confession: I Killed
JFK. How I framed Oswald."
That's almost as good as the fake news going around the presstitute media, such as the TV stations,
the Washington Post, New York Times, and Guardian-yes, even the former leftwing British newspaper
has joined the ranks of the press prostitutes-that the CIA has concluded that "Russian operatives
covertly interfered in the election campaign in an attempt to ensure the Republican candidate's victory."
If the CIA is actually stupid enough to believe this, the US is without a competent intelligence
agency. Of course, the CIA didn't say and doesn't believe any such thing. The fake news stories in
the presstitute media are all sourced to unnamed officials. Former British ambassador Craig Murray
described the reports accurately: "bullshit."
So who is making the stories up, another anonymous group tied to Hillary such as PropOrNot, the
secret, hidden organization that released a list of 200 websites that are Russian agents?
Fake news is the presstitute's product. Throughout the presidential primaries and presidential
campaign it was completely clear that the mainstream print and TV media were producing endless fake
news designed to damage Trump and to boost Hillary. We all saw it. We all lived through it. What
is this pretense that Russia is the source of fake news?
We have had nothing but fake news from the presstitutes since the Klingon regime. Fake news was
used against Yugoslavia and Serbia in order to cloak the Clinton's war crimes.
Fake news was used against Osama bin Laden, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia in
order to cloak the Bush regime's war crimes.
Fake news was used against Libya and Syria in order to cloak the Obama regime's war crimes.
Without fake news these three blood-drenched presidencies would have been hauled before the War
Crimes Commission, tried, and convicted.
Can anyone produce any truthful statement from the presstitute media about anything of importance?
MH-17? Crimea? Ukraine?
Ironic, isn't it, that it is those who purport to be liberal and progressive who are responsible
for the revival of McCarthyism in America. Moreover, the liberal progressives are institutionalizing
McCarthyism in the US government. There is clearly a concerted effort being made to define truth
as fake news and to define lies as truth.
"... As Pam Martens reports, another imbecile has now composed a list of 200 suspect professors who also dissent from the official bullshit fed to the American people. ..."
"... In an effort to regain control over Americans' minds, they are attempting to define dissenters and truth-tellers as "Russian agents." Why "Russian agents"? Because they hope that their fake news portrait of Russia as America's deadly enemy has taken hold and will result in the public turning away from those of us labeled "Russian agents." ..."
As Pam Martens reports, another imbecile has now composed a list of 200 suspect professors who also
dissent from the official bullshit fed to the American people.
The official government purveyors of fake news in the US and their presstitute agents are concerned
that they are losing control over the explanations given to the American people.
In an effort to regain control over Americans' minds, they are attempting to define dissenters and
truth-tellers as "Russian agents." Why "Russian agents"? Because they hope that their
fake news portrait of Russia as America's deadly enemy has taken hold and will result in the public
turning away from those of us labeled "Russian agents."
"... At the present moment, it is practically obligatory to slam Russia and Putin at every opportunity even though Moscow is too militarily weak and poor to fancy itself a global adversary of the U.S. ..."
"... Candidate Donald Trump appeared to recognize that fact before he began listening to Michael Flynn, who has a rather different view. Hopefully the old Trump will prevail. ..."
"... Blaming Russia, which has good reasons to be suspicious of Washington's intentions, is particularly convenient for those many diverse inside the Beltway interests that require a significant enemy to keep the cash flowing out of the pockets of taxpayers and into the bank accounts of the useless grifters who inhabit K-Street and Capitol Hill. ..."
...Does the name Judith Miller ring any bells? And the squeaks of rage coming from
the U.S. Congress over being lied to is also something to behold as the federal
government has been acting in collusion with the media to dish up falsehoods
designed to start wars since the time of the Spanish-American conflict in 1898,
if not before.
The fake news saga is intended to discredit Donald Trump, whom
the media hates mostly because they failed to understand either him or the
Americans who voted for him in the recent election. You have to blame somebody
when you are wrong so you invent "fake news" as the game changer that explains
your failure to comprehend simple truths. To accomplish that, the clearly
observable evidence that the media was piling on Donald Trump at every
opportunity has somehow been deliberately morphed into a narrative that it is
Trump who was
attacking the media, suggesting that it was all self-defense on the part of
the Rachel Maddows of this world, but anyone who viewed even a small portion of
the farrago surely will have noted that it was the Republican candidate who was
continuously coming under attack from both the right and left of the
political-media spectrum.
There are also some secondary narratives being promoted, including a
pervasive argument that Hillary Clinton was somehow the victim of the news
reporting due specifically to fake stories emanating largely from Moscow in an
attempt to not only influence the election but also to subvert
America's democratic institutions. I
have observed that if such a truly ridiculous objective were President
Vladimir Putin's desired goal he might as well relax. Our own Democratic and
Republican duopoly has already been doing a fine job at subverting democracy by
assiduously separating the American people from the elite Establishment that
theoretically represents and serves them.
Another side of the mainstream media lament that has been relatively
unexplored is what the media chooses not to report. At the present moment, it
is practically obligatory to slam Russia and Putin at every opportunity even
though Moscow is too militarily weak and poor to fancy itself a global
adversary of the U.S.
Instead of seeking a new Cold War, Washington should
instead focus on working with Russia to make sure that disagreements over
policies in relatively unimportant parts of the world do not escalate into
nuclear exchanges. Russian actions on its own doorstep in Eastern Europe do not
in fact threaten the United States or any actual vital interest. Nor does
Moscow threaten the U.S. through its intervention on behalf of the Syrian
government in the Middle East. That Russia is described incessantly as a threat
in those areas is largely a contrivance arranged by the media, the Democratic
and Republican National Committees and by the White House.
Candidate Donald
Trump appeared to recognize that fact before he began listening to Michael
Flynn, who has a rather different view. Hopefully the old Trump will prevail.
Blaming Russia, which has good reasons to be suspicious of Washington's
intentions, is particularly convenient for those many diverse inside the
Beltway interests that require a significant enemy to keep the cash flowing out
of the pockets of taxpayers and into the bank accounts of the useless grifters
who inhabit K-Street and Capitol Hill.
Neoconservatives are frequently
described as ideologues, but the truth is that they are more interested in
gaining increased access to money and power than they are in promulgating their
own brand of global regime change.
Russophobia/Putinophobia is as big as it is because it is a rare issue where the
mainstream right, the left and the political class all agree, albeit for different reasons. The
mainstream right is anti Russia because of the Cold War and Russia's support for Iran, Venezuela
and Cuba. The left hates Russia because of Pussy Riot, humiliating Obama and Merkel in the
Ukraine, Snowden, supporting anti immigrant politicians like Le Pen and Wilders, jailing/killing
pro Western Russian politicians, the gay stuff and especially for Trump. The political class
hates Russia simply because it is a rival to US power in Europe and the Middle East. Put all
three together, and you get a political consensus for Russophobia.
At the end of the day, however, Russophobia or even Putinophobia is a minority position in the
US; or else Trump wouldn't have been elected. And a huge chunk of the people who voted for
Hillary are blacks and hispanics, who don't give a rat's ass about Russia and probably couldn't
even find it on a map.
Before Pussy Riot/Ukraine/Snowden/Gays/Trump there was even a lot of sympathy in the US media for
victims of Chechen terrorism, especially after the Beslan school thing. As late as the 2012
election, Obama was mocking Mitt Romney's Russophobia.
@35 Trump is a big unknown. I think Paul Craig Roberts said it best - give Trump 6 months
and then form an opinion. I'm not too optimistic however; Trump's policies could flop and
the hawks could weasel their warmongering in (IRAN + CHINA + ????)
For the moment, I think Tillerson is a far far better pick than Guilliani, Romney or Bolton.
I hope that he will acquire the position. He seems to be smart, but also seems to have good
character (considering.)
Of course, the inauguration is a few weeks off, so the concern about a soft coup are real ones,
especially when the CIA is throwing out the Russia claims.
OT (sorry, but I really don't care about so-called 'leaks' and 'hacks'):
Trump chooses Exxon CEO Tillerson as Secretary of State.
Kind of makes me wonder...what if we see the emergence of a new confrontation, between a 'fossil
fuel' block comprising the US, Russia and OPEC, and a 'renewables' block of China, the EU and
pretty much everyone else? Yep, I admit that's a very long shot.
John Bolton, dutifully reading from the CIA's Yellow Cake playbook
"I'm obviously aware that people are quite focused on the economy rather than foreign
policy issues, but that is something that should and can be altered as people see the
nature of the grave threats around the world that we face. We estimate that once Iraq acquires
fissile material -- it could fabricate a nuclear weapon within one year."
MIC IS NOW IN CONTROL OF DEFENSE, NSA, CIA AND STATE, AND GOLDMAN IS IN CONTROL OF TREASURY,
COMMERCE, OMB, NEC AND FED. THIS IS THE NEO-CON END-GAME: THE 1998-2001 SOFT COUP-HARD COUP, THAT
TOOK AMERICA DOWN.
All we need is Ari Fleischer in the role of Bolton's spox to the media, lol. "Mr. Fleischer,
please come to the red phone service desk, you have a call waiting."
It's all monkey-brain now!
There's something very fishy about the choices of Rex Tillerson and John Bolton for SoS and Deputy
SoS respectively.
Tillerson has major potential conflicts of interest that the Senate will scrutinize including
the award he received from Putin. I'm seriously questioning how Tillerson will get Senate approval.
On the other hand, John Bolton, is very popular with most Republicans and hawkish Democrats and
will have no problem whatsoever.
I believe this strange combination is a red flag that perfectly illustrates Trump's strategy,
which is one of the following:
1. Either Trump deliberately chose someone with close ties to Russia and Putin because he knows
he won't be approved by the Senate, and his first choice from the start, John Bolton, will pass
with flying colors;
2. Or William Engdahl is right that the Neocon strategy is pivoting and adapting to present
circumstances:
His job will be to reposition the United States for them to reverse the trend to disintegration
of American global hegemony, to, as the Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz Project for the New American
Century put it in their September, 2000 report, "rebuild America's defenses."
To do that preparation, a deception strategy that will fatally weaken the developing deep
bonds between Russia and China will be priority. It's already begun. We have a friendly phone
call from The Donald to Vladimir the Fearsome in Moscow. Russian media is euphoric about a
new era in US-Russia relations after Obama. Then suddenly we hear the war-mongering NATO head,
Stoltenberg, suddenly purr soothing words to Russia. Float the idea that California Congressman
and Putin acquaintance, Dana Rohrabacher, is leaked as a possible Secretary of State. It's
classic Kissinger Balance of Power geopolitics–seem to ally with the weaker of two mortal enemies,
Russia, to isolate the stronger, China. Presumably Vladimir Putin is not so naïve or stupid
as to fall for it, but that is the plot of Trump's handlers. Such a strategy of preventing
the growing Russia-China cooperation was urged by Zbigniew Brzezinski in a statement this past
summer.
Let's not forget that the first time Trump was asked during the campaign who he gets foreign
policy advice from; the first name that popped up was JOHN BOLTON, and he praised him as being
tough. John Bolton was strongly allied with Dick Cheney. Steve Yates, another Neocon, was Cheney's
China advisor and is Trump's as well. After reading Engdahl's article, I wrote my own opinion
of the Neocon strategy based on Engdahl's and you can read it on the Saker's site here:
http://thesaker.is/his-own-man-or-someones-puppet/
But if you find it difficult to read without paragraphs: scroll down through the comments on
the Saker's own opinion of Engdahl's piece as that's where my original comment appeared with paragraphs.
Something stinks about this Tillerson/Bolton combination. You can read my theory on why Neocons
are pivoting to a new strategy of divide and conquer as Engdahl believes, and it has to do with
the growing economic bond between China and Iran as well and killing two birds with one stone;
invading Iran to contain China and sabotage OBOR.
Note as well, that in courting Russia to isolate China and weaken the growing cooperation between
China and Russia, as Engdahl puts it, Russia will ultimately lose its own influence, unless of
course Netanyahu has made Putin an offer he can't refuse, since Netanyahu has been courting Putin
for quite some time already; and this is very bizarre, since Putin frustrated Netanyahu's plan
for Syria.
So Bolton will be Tillerson's vice-SoS. How much more Neocon can you get? And you seriously believe
Trump will 'clean the Augean Stables', 'drain the swamp' and 'open a new book' in foreign policy,
esp. relations with Russia? Dream on.
" BARACK OBAMA, WITH THE COOPERATION OF SOME IN THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY, ARE TRYING TO DISCREDIT TRUMP BEFORE THE ELECTION"
Notable quotes:
"... The whole "blame Russia" movement to account for Hillary's unexpected failure to win the Presidency got a new shot in the arm with today's announcement that Obama ordered: ..."
"... The stupidity of this is profound. If this review leads to the "discovery" that Russia is carrying out espionage activities in the United States then we have passed the threshold of learning that there is gambling in a casino. ..."
"... The real irony in all of this is that Wikileaks, thanks to the hack of the DNC and John Podesta emails, exposed the reality of Democrats working surreptitiously to tamper with and manipulate the election. Here are the highlights from that leak: ..."
"... Best approach is to slaughter Donald for his bromance with Putin, but not go too far betting on Putin re Syria. ..."
"... Blaming Russia for Hillary's flame out is absurd. The Russians did not create and lie about Hillary's server. They did not force her to back the multilateral trade agreements, such as NAFTA and TPP. They didn't set up the Clinton Foundation as a cash cow for the Clinton family. They did not force her to advocate imposing a No Fly Zone in Syria and having been a cheerleader for past wars, including Iraq and Libya. Vladimir Putin did not slip her a mickey and cause her to pass out at the 9-11 memorial, which fueled concerns about her health. And they did not infect her lungs and cause her to have extended coughing jags. They did not cause her to call Americans deplorables. They did not make her say that the coal industry should be shutdown. With that kind of record, coupled with her shrieking, screechy voice, why are folks surprised that she did not win? ..."
"... So now Democrats and several Republicans are in a lather over the Russians stealing the election for Trump. The list of conspiracy theorists pushing this nonsense include John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Angus King of Maine, Brent Budowsky and Adam Schiff. I defy anyone, to explain to me how Russian meddling gave Trump the win. ..."
"... The realities are this. First, as noted in the Budowsky email, the Clinton campaign came up with the idea of accusing Trump of being a stooge of Russia. They thought they'd get political bang out of that. They didn't. ..."
"... Second, the hack of the DNC emails confirmed that the suspicions of many that the DNC and Hillary were collaborating to screw over Bernie and rig the election. That was not fake news. Cold, unwelcomed truth. That's when this drum beat about the big, bad Russians started meddling in our election started. Why? To distract attention away from the ugly reality that the DNC and Hillary were cheating. ..."
"... The subsequent Wikileaks avalanche of Podesta emails reinforced as fact the existing suspicion that the media was in the bag for Hillary. ..."
"... I would recommend you assemble a short reading list of everything surrounding President Kennedy's full acceptance of responsibility after the Bay of Pigs, beginning with the substance and tone of his unequivocal taking of responsibility and ending with his huge rise in the polls, to nearly 90% favorable ratings, after he did this. ..."
"... And then I would suggest she plan the equivalent and take full, absolute and unequivocal responsibility for making a mistake with the private emails and give an honest, direct, explanation of the reasons I believe she used those private emails. . . . ..."
"... Give Budowsky credit for one thing, if Hillary had followed his advice she might have won the election. But she was too busy exploiting the rules of a rigged game and trying to smear Trump as a Russian agent while failing to exercise genuine, sincere personal responsibility. ..."
"... Barack Obama appears to be actively working to discredit the Trump election and has enlisted the intelligence community in the effort. How else to explain this disconnect? Yesterday, as noted above, Obama directed the intelligence community to: ..."
"... I heard from a knowledgeable friend in September that Hillary's campaign was pressing the Obama White House to lean on the intel community and put something out blaming her woes on the Russians. That led to the October statement. And now we have the CIA via a SECRET report (that is leaked to the public) insisting that Trump's victory came because of the Russians. ..."
"... This is a damn lie. The CIA is now allowing itself to be used once again for blatant political purposes. The politicization became a real problem under Bush. Let's not forget that these are the same cats who insisted it was a slam dunk that were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The same group who missed the rise of ISIS. ..."
"... Also worth reminding ourselves that the head of the ironically titled "Intelligence Community" is a proven liar. Jim Clapper lied to the Senate about the NSA spying on Americans three years ago (December 2013) : ..."
"... "Congressional oversight depends on truthful testimony – witnesses cannot be allowed to lie to Congress," wrote representatives James Sensenbrenner, Darrell Issa, Trent Franks, Raul Labrador, Ted Poe, Trey Gowdy and Blake Farenthold, citing "Director Clapper's willful lie under oath." ..."
"... There is a consistent pattern in the Obama Administration of lying to the American people, especially when it comes to National Security matters. The NSA is not an isolated case. We also have Benghazi, Syria and Libya as other examples of not telling the truth and misrepresenting facts. ..."
"... In my lifetime, going on 60 years, I have never seen such a display of incompetence as is being manifested by Barack Obama and mental midgets that surround him. ..."
"... What they can say for sure is that the DNC and Podesta emails were hacked. Those hacked emails were passed to WIKILEAKS. Those emails were then released to the public. What the intel community will be hard pressed to prove is that the Russian Government conceived of and directed such a campaign. This is the true information operation to meddle in the U.S. election, but that isn't Russia. That's Obama. ..."
UPDATE–PLEASE SEE BELOW. BOTTOMLINE, BARACK OBAMA, WITH THE COOPERATION OF SOME IN THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY, ARE TRYING
TO DISCREDIT TRUMP BEFORE THE ELECTION.
Let me stipulate up front that both the United States and Russia engage in
covert and clandestine information
operations. It is called espionage. It is but one aspect of the broader intelligence activity also known as spying. Time for all
you snowflakes in America to grow up and get a grip and deal with with reality. If the respective intelligence organizations in either
country are not doing this they are guilty of malpractice and should be dismantled.
There are two basic types of espionage activity–Covert refers to an operation that is undetected while in progress, but the outcome
may be easily observed. Killing Bin Laden is a prime example of a "covert" operation. A Clandestine Operation is something that is
supposed to be undetected while in progress and after completion. For example, if the U.S. or Russia had a mole at the top of the
National Security bureaucracy of their respective adversary, communicating with that mole and the mole's very existence would be
clandestine.
So, the alleged Russian meddling in our election–was it covert or clandestine?
The whole "blame Russia" movement to account for Hillary's unexpected failure to win the Presidency got a new shot in the
arm with today's announcement that
Obama ordered:
a full review into hacking by the Russians designed to influence the 2016 election, White House Homeland Security and Counterterrorism
Adviser Lisa Monaco said Friday.
The stupidity of this is profound. If this review leads to the "discovery" that Russia is carrying out espionage activities
in the United States then we have passed the threshold of learning that there is gambling in a casino.
The real irony in all of this is that Wikileaks, thanks to the hack of the DNC and John Podesta emails, exposed the reality
of Democrats working surreptitiously to tamper with and manipulate the election. Here are the highlights from that leak:
DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz Calls Sanders Campaign Manager Jeff Weaver an "A–" and a "Liar"
In May the Nevada Democratic State Convention became rowdy and got out of hand in a fight over delegate allocation. When Weaver
went on CNN and denied any claims violence had happened, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, once she was notified of the exchange, wrote
"Damn liar. Particularly scummy that he never acknowledges the violent and threatening behavior that occurred."
Highlighting Sanders' Faith
One email shows that a DNC official contemplated highlighting Sanders' alleged atheism - even though he has said he is not an
atheist - during the primaries as a possibility to undermine support among voters.
"It may make no difference but for KY and WA can we get someone to ask his belief," Brad Marshall, CFO of the DNC, wrote
in an email on May 5, 2016. "He had skated on having a Jewish heritage. I read he is an atheist. This could make several points
difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist."
Building a Narrative Against Sanders
"Wondering if there's a good Bernie narrative for a story which is that Bernie never ever had his act together, that his campaign
was a mess," DNC National Secretary Mark Paustenbach wrote in an email to National Communications Director Luis Miranda on May 21.
After detailing ways in which the Sanders camp was disorganized, Paustenbach concludes, "It's not a DNC conspiracy it's because they
never had their act together."
The release provides further evidence the DNC broke its own charter violations by favoring Clinton as the Democratic presidential
nominee, long before any votes were cast.
It was the Clinton spokesman, Robbie Mook, who launched the claim on July 24, 2016 that these leaks were done by the Russians
in order to help Trump:
The source of the leak has not been revealed, though Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, Robby Mook, said on ABC News' "This Week
With George Stephanopoulos" on Sunday that he believes the Russians were instrumental in it.
"Experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into the DNC, took all these emails and now are leaking them out through
these websites," Mook said Sunday. "It's troubling that some experts are now telling us that this was done by the Russians for the
purpose of helping Donald Trump."
The Clinton campaign started planning to smear Trump as a Putin stooge as early as December 2015. The Podesta emails showed clearly
that the Clinton campaign decided early on to clobber Trump for his "bromance" with Putin. It was Brent Buwdosky almost one year
ago (December 21, 2015) who proposed going after
Trump with the Russian card in an email to Podesta:
Putin did not agree to anything about removing Assad and continues to bomb the people we support. We pushed the same position
in 2012 (Geneva 1, which HRC knows all about) and Geneva 2 in 2014. Odds that Putin agrees to remove Assad are only slightly better
than the odds the College of Cardinals chooses me to someday succeed Pope Francis. Best approach is to slaughter Donald for his
bromance with Putin, but not go too far betting on Putin re Syria.
Going after Trump as a Russian stooge was in the Clinton playbook long before Trump won a primary. One the wedge issues for Clinton
with respect to Trump was Syria. Trump took a strong stand (which many thought would hurt him with Republicans) in declaring we should
not be trying to get rid of Assad and that America should cooperate with the Russians in fighting the Islamists. Clinton, by contrast,
called for imposing a No Fly Zone that would have risked a direct confrontation with Russia.
Blaming Russia for Hillary's flame out is absurd. The Russians did not create and lie about Hillary's server. They did not
force her to back the multilateral trade agreements, such as NAFTA and TPP. They didn't set up the Clinton Foundation as a cash cow
for the Clinton family. They did not force her to advocate imposing a No Fly Zone in Syria and having been a cheerleader for past
wars, including Iraq and Libya. Vladimir Putin did not slip her a mickey and cause her to pass out at the 9-11 memorial, which fueled
concerns about her health. And they did not infect her lungs and cause her to have extended coughing jags. They did not cause her
to call Americans deplorables. They did not make her say that the coal industry should be shutdown. With that kind of record, coupled
with her shrieking, screechy voice, why are folks surprised that she did not win?
So now Democrats and several Republicans are in a lather over the Russians stealing the election for Trump. The list of conspiracy
theorists pushing this nonsense include John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Angus King of Maine, Brent Budowsky and Adam Schiff. I defy
anyone, to explain to me how Russian meddling gave Trump the win.
The realities are this. First, as noted in the Budowsky email, the Clinton campaign came up with the idea of accusing Trump
of being a stooge of Russia. They thought they'd get political bang out of that. They didn't.
Second, the hack of the DNC emails confirmed that the suspicions of many that the DNC and Hillary were collaborating to screw
over Bernie and rig the election. That was not fake news. Cold, unwelcomed truth. That's when this drum beat about the big, bad Russians
started meddling in our election started. Why? To distract attention away from the ugly reality that the DNC and Hillary were cheating.
The subsequent Wikileaks avalanche of Podesta emails reinforced as fact the existing suspicion that the media was in the bag
for Hillary. But no amount of media help and foreign money could transform Hillary into a likeable candidate. She was dreadful
on the campaign trail and terrible at talking to the average American. Even her boy, Brent Budowsky, reluctantly acknowledged this
in an email to John Podesta on Wednesday, August 26,
2015 :
While I have been warning for some time about the dangers facing the Clinton campaign, aggressively in privately, tactfully in
columns, during this latest stage I have been publicly defending her with no-holds barred, and here is my advice based on the reaction
I have been receiving and the dangers I see coming to fruition.
I would recommend you assemble a short reading list of everything surrounding President Kennedy's full acceptance of responsibility
after the Bay of Pigs, beginning with the substance and tone of his unequivocal taking of responsibility and ending with his huge
rise in the polls, to nearly 90% favorable ratings, after he did this.
And then I would suggest she plan the equivalent and take full, absolute and unequivocal responsibility for making a mistake
with the private emails and give an honest, direct, explanation of the reasons I believe she used those private emails. . . .
She could say she was right anticipating this, but wrong in overreacting by trying to shield her private emails, and she takes
full responsibility for this, and apologizes to her supporters and everyone else, and now she has turned over all information, it
will ultimately be seen that there no egregious wrongs committed.
She needs to stop talking like a lawyer parsing legalistic words and a potential defendant expecting a future indictment, which
is how she often looks and sounds to many voters today. Instead, she should take full responsibility for a mistake with no equivocation,
and segue into the role of a populist prosecutor against a corrupted politics that Americans already detest ..and make a direct attack
against the Donald Trump politics of daily insults and defamations and intolerance against whichever individuals and groups he tries
to bully on a given day, and while defending some Republican candidates against his attacks, she should deplore their being intimidated
by his insults and offering pastel versions of the intolerance he peddles.
In other words, she should stop acting like a front-runner who cautiously tries to exploit the rules of a rigged game to her advantage,
and start acting like a fighting underdog who will fight on behalf of Americans who want a higher standard of living for themselves,
a higher standard of politics for the nation, and a higher level of economic opportunity and social justice for everyone.
Like JFK after the Bay of Pigs, the more responsibility she takes now the more she will succeed going forward.
Give Budowsky credit for one thing, if Hillary had followed his advice she might have won the election. But she was too busy
exploiting the rules of a rigged game and trying to smear Trump as a Russian agent while failing to exercise genuine, sincere personal
responsibility.
UPDATE –This is an extremely dangerous time now. Barack Obama appears to be actively working to discredit the Trump
election and has enlisted the intelligence community in the effort. How else to explain this disconnect? Yesterday, as noted above,
Obama directed the intelligence community to:
"conduct a full review of what happened during the 2016 election process. It is to capture lessons learned from that and
to report to a range of stakeholders," she said at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast with reporters. "This is consistent with
the work that we did over the summer to engage Congress on the threats that we were seeing."
The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency,
rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter.
Why do you order a review if the CIA has already made a factual determination? In fact, we were told in October that the whole
damn intelligence community determined the Russians did it.
USA Today reported this in October :
The
fact-checking website Politifact says Hillary Clinton is correct when she says 17 federal intelligence agencies have concluded
that Russia is behind the hacking.
"We have 17, 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyber
attacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin. And they are designed to influence our election. I find that deeply disturbing,"
Clinton said during
Wednesday's presidential debate in Las Vegas .
Trump pushed back, saying that Clinton and the United States had "no idea whether it is Russia, China or anybody else."
But Clinton is correct. On Oct. 7, the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence
issued
a joint statement on behalf of the U.S. Intelligence Community. The USIC is
made up of 16 agencies , in
addition to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
I heard from a knowledgeable friend in September that Hillary's campaign was pressing the Obama White House to lean on the
intel community and put something out blaming her woes on the Russians. That led to the October statement. And now we have the CIA
via a SECRET report (that is leaked to the public) insisting that Trump's victory came because of the Russians.
This is a damn lie. The CIA is now allowing itself to be used once again for blatant political purposes. The politicization
became a real problem under Bush. Let's not forget that these are the same cats who insisted it was a slam dunk that were weapons
of mass destruction in Iraq. The same group who missed the rise of ISIS.
"The ability of ISIL to not just mass inside of Syria, but then to initiate major land offensives that took Mosul, for example,
that was not on my intelligence radar screen," Obama told Zakaria, using the administration's term for the Islamic State terror group.
In a letter issued the day after a White House surveillance review placed new political pressure on the National Security Agency,
the seven members of the House judiciary committee said that James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, ought to face
consequences for untruthfully telling the Senate that the NSA was "not wittingly" collecting data on Americans.
"Congressional oversight depends on truthful testimony – witnesses cannot be allowed to lie to Congress," wrote representatives
James Sensenbrenner, Darrell Issa, Trent Franks, Raul Labrador, Ted Poe, Trey Gowdy and Blake Farenthold, citing "Director Clapper's
willful lie under oath."
There is a consistent pattern in the Obama Administration of lying to the American people, especially when it comes to National
Security matters. The NSA is not an isolated case. We also have Benghazi, Syria and Libya as other examples of not telling the truth
and misrepresenting facts.
In my lifetime, going on 60 years, I have never seen such a display of incompetence as is being manifested by Barack Obama
and mental midgets that surround him.
What they can say for sure is that the DNC and Podesta emails were hacked. Those hacked emails were passed to WIKILEAKS. Those
emails were then released to the public. What the intel community will be hard pressed to prove is that the Russian Government conceived
of and directed such a campaign. This is the true information operation to meddle in the U.S. election, but that isn't Russia. That's
Obama.
Larry C. Johnson is a former analyst at the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, who moved subsequently in 1989 to the U.S.
Department of State, where he served four years as the deputy director for transportation security, antiterrorism assistance training,
and special operations in the State Department's Office of Counterterrorism. He left government service in October 1993 and set up
a consulting business. He currently is the co-owner and CEO of BERG Associates, LLC (Business Exposure Reduction Group) and is an
expert in the fields of terrorism, aviation security, and crisis and risk management, and money laundering investigations. Johnson
is the founder and main author of No Quarter, a weblog that addresses issues of terrorism and intelligence and politics. NoQuarterUSA
was nominated as Best Political Blog of 2008.
"... There is no Russian involvement in the leaks of emails showing Clinton's corruption. Yet this rubbish has been the lead today in the Washington Post in the US and the Guardian here, and was the lead item on the BBC main news. I suspect it is leading the American broadcasts also. ..."
I have watched incredulous as the CIA's blatant lie has grown and grown as a media story – blatant
because the CIA has made no attempt whatsoever to substantiate it.
There is no Russian involvement
in the leaks of emails showing Clinton's corruption. Yet this rubbish has been the lead today in
the Washington Post in the US and the Guardian here, and was the lead item on the BBC main news.
I suspect it is leading the American broadcasts also.
Thanks for this– a much-needed Onion-esque satirical dig at the Globe/Post/NYT trifecta of
garbage. To base a headline on information gleaned from anonymous sources and unnamed officials
in secret meetings with unpublished agendas seems the most dangerous type of fake news there is.
The death of irony was greatly exaggerated, if you ask me.
Are we seeing a pattern here? Tillerson - a Putin counterpart and
recipient of Russia's Order of Friendship - to Moscow; Gov Branstad - farmin'
buddy of Premier Xi since the 1980s - to Beijing. And so forth.
Inside-the-Beltway folk are upset at the overturning of the established
order, in which diplomatic posts go to the biggest bundlers, regardless of
country knowledge. Lacking titles of nobility here in the Homeland, we need
an outlet for the well-connected to purchase a prestigious sinecure and a
black diplomatic passport. Otherwise a frightening Revolt of the Affluent
could roil our streets.
Still angling for the Court of St James myself - got any witticisms I
could share with the Queen?
Like it or not, Tillerson as secretary of "state" makes a fair amount of
sense.
His appointment would acknowledge, pretty overtly, that american foreign
"policy" is, always and everywhere, about energy.
We ignore human rights abuses in saudi arabia and overthrow Gadhafi when
he proposes demanding payment for oil in a gold-backed currency. Iraq. Assad
must "go" because of a pipeline. A biden boy gets a seat on the board of a
Ukranian energy company after a u. s. backed coup. The clinton foundation in
Nigeria.
And that's just the last decade or so of wars and "threats to american
interests." Maybe it's time we just got honest about it.
"... "Jake Sullivan, Clinton's policy director, was the only one in Clinton's inner circle who kept saying she would likely lose, despite the sanguine polling," Glenn Thrush says, citing Sullivan's friends. ..."
"... "He was also the only one of the dozen aides who dialed in for Clinton's daily scheduling call who kept on asking if it wasn't a good idea for her to spend more time in the Midwestern swing states in the closing days of the campaign." ..."
"... Clinton herself had a spat with other top party officials who wanted to run against Trump as emblematic of where crazy repubs were headed. Clinton said, 'no, be nice to republicans, only Trump matters and we want their voters.' ..."
"... The Clintons happily sacrificed the whole party to save themselves and in the end, they couldn't even accomplish THAT. What amazes me is that the chokehold that the Clintons had(still have?) was so tight that the party let it happen! ..."
Decent read from a democrat candidate in NC who ran for congress and got no help from DCCC. Makes
larger point about how they need to built out the organization with training, infrastructure for
campaigns. One remarkable bit is how there was a seat in TX district that hillary clinton won and
the party didn't even field a candidate!
A similar story about the final days of the SS Clintanic :
"Jake Sullivan, Clinton's policy director, was the only one in Clinton's inner circle who kept
saying she would likely lose, despite the sanguine polling," Glenn Thrush says, citing Sullivan's
friends.
"He was also the only one of the dozen aides who dialed in for Clinton's daily scheduling call
who kept on asking if it wasn't a good idea for her to spend more time in the Midwestern swing
states in the closing days of the campaign."
"They spent far more time debating whether or not Clinton should visit Texas and Arizona, two
states they knew she had little chance of winning, in order to get good press," Thrush says. Just
a week before Election Day, Clinton made a campaign stop in Tempe, Arizona.
Who knows whether the NYT's ten months of daily fake news about "inevitable Hillary" misled the
campaign, or the campaign misled the NYT?
One is reminded of the old nautical story about an imperious captain sailing on into a wall of
clouds, as the worried navigator watches the barometer dropping to 28 inches of mercury.
The NYT's job is to inject more mercury - problem solved! (we thought)
Building on lambert's favorite quote from atrios "they had ONE job!". Anecdotes like this from
politico really emphasize how they literally stopped trying to elect other democrats. It was ALL
about clinton and little else mattered. There was NO plan B!
Clinton herself had a spat with other top party officials who wanted to run against Trump as emblematic
of where crazy repubs were headed. Clinton said, 'no, be nice to republicans, only Trump matters
and we want their voters.'
The Clintons happily sacrificed the whole party to save themselves and in the end, they couldn't
even accomplish THAT. What amazes me is that the chokehold that the Clintons had(still have?) was
so tight that the party let it happen!
Personally I would like to see the Democratic Party go the way of the Whigs. They don't deserve
my time and effort when the elite go out of their way to stack the deck.
"... My perspective from across the ocean has always been that the McCarthy philosophy was the least admirable episode in recent US history. ..."
"... It's almost as if the West, or at least Western Elite circles who have strived to saturate the airways with Russia-the-bogey-man material since the year dot, can they, on the back of this one-sided propaganda machine, wheel-out blame directed towards Russia for .... well almost anything they desire. ..."
"... If only Barack Hussain Obama had not taken it upon his self to interfere in our referendum with his clear 'Back of the queue' threat, it may have been possible to not think he is a hypocrite. ..."
"... I suspect this is one last roll of the dice by the 'democrats' to keep Trump out of office. ..."
"... Obama is foolishly upping the ante, not on Putin, but on Trump. Trump's instinct will be to put a 10x hurt on Obama for this. Don't punk Trump. ..."
"... They are desperate to discredit the winner. It is as ineffective as any of his failed policies ..."
"... In other words, Obama admits he hasn't kept America secure versus 21st-century threats. ..."
"... Obama has said the intelligence agencies had the proof that Russia interfered with the election. With all their proof why order a review? Can't wait until Obama leaves office. ..."
"... what, is the USA the new Latin America, and Russia the new CIA ? forever meddling surreptitiously to undermine and overthrow other sovereign nation states democratic processes ? that's just so unfair ..."
"... It is a funny joke, but on the essence I would advise to read investigative report "The New Red Scare" in Harpers. The evidence of Russian government having anything to do with any hacks is literally non-existing. ..."
"... The US, heckler of the world for decades, stirring trouble wherever the dart falls, and yet Russian hackers and North Korean hookers are to blame for 99.9% of the worlds problems. Reality is, if the US didn't move past its own borders for 10 years the world would be already a much, much better place. ..."
"... The Guardian probably shouldn't go along in helping build the new McCarthyist, Cold War narrative, especially when it's just a bunch of US politicians and media figures repeating politically expedient, but factually unsupported claims. The Western media is trying to be Hearst Newspapers in the Spanish-American war. ..."
"... This is explicitly bad because it allows the suppression of dissent, of creating blacklists, the military industrial complex to further consolidate power, and to blame all sorts of domestic failures on shadowing foreign influence. ..."
"... But when Judith Miller, the NYT, George Bush and Hillary Clinton used fake news to kill hundreds of thousands, Obama told us to get over it, to "look forward and not backward." ..."
"... The United States has attempted to push its democratic ideologies on countries all over the world, using means much more direct than hacking. Yet they cannot take a fraction of what they dish out. If Russia is indeed intervening to aid nationalists around the world, then Russia is a friend and should be welcomed with open arms. Trump should do the same, and used the powers of the United States to undermine [neoliberal] leftists around the globe. ..."
Interesting - Obama never ordered an independent probe into 9/11 or invasion of Iraq or on the
Wall Street Collapse. Somehow Russian hacking seems to be more draconian than all the above.
And Russians somehow got into the brains of the disgruntled white population, and controlled
Trump's brain so that he would be voted to power. Then they still control Trump's brain so much
that he is wanting to let NATO countries pay for their security, make Japan, South Korea and everyone
else where US maintains its bases to pay for themselves.
And then suddenly there is a news of a thousand Russian athletes doing well in 2012 London
Olympics due to enhanced drugs. Until now, no one knew about this or heard about it.
It is not that I am supporting Russia all of a sudden. It is just that I am not supporting
the attempt to create enemies out of thin air and make them monstrous as needed, while covering
even more sinister schemes that need public attention.
Obama is part of the same system too that runs everything from behind the curtains. He still
is a good man. But he has only some much room to function within and survive.
A good man is not capable of bombing 7 countries in 8 years' time. People are too naive to believe
that someone could look as nice and sound as nice as Obama and push to advance the agenda of some
of the most evil and power-hungry megalomaniacs on the planet.
I don't know if the Russians provided Wikileaks with the actual emails or not but Wikileaks
like so many news organisations before them released info obtained illegally that they thought
the public had a right to know.
Now Assange has effectively been imprisoned in an Embassy in London for around 5 years on bogus
charges and his reputation was damaged by the same charges - Obviously Obama does not want to
give any credit to Assange and he knows he has played a part in this outrageous persecution.
This would also a could time to remind fellow commentators here about the Nuland - Pyatt conversation
that was recorded by Russia and released. This conversation showed the the involvement of two
high ranking US Politicians in the armed coup in Ukraine where an elected albeit corrupt leader
was forced to flee the country.
The period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from
1950 to 1956 and characterized by heightened political repression against supposed communists,
as well as a campaign spreading fear of their influence on American institutions and of espionage
by Soviet agents.
The third Red Scare? *clutches teddy bear*
Only one slight problem ...there aren't any reds in charge in Russia anymore.
My point being, there is no great ideological clash anymore. Assange volunteered the fact the
email data didn't come from the Russians. And whether Trump is better than Hillary is open to
debate.
My perspective from across the ocean has always been that the McCarthy philosophy was the
least admirable episode in recent US history. I doubt many people want to return to that
but surely, demonstrable evidence in either direction is the only antidote to accusations and
conspiracy theories, and is needed now more than ever in this supposed 'post truth' era.
Reply Share
I assume that Obama is being told to do this, and probably by the same people who backed the Clinton
individual for POTUS. The American people must be exceedingly dumb if they fall for this rubbish.
It's almost as if the West, or at least Western Elite circles who have strived to saturate
the airways with Russia-the-bogey-man material since the year dot, can they, on the back of this
one-sided propaganda machine, wheel-out blame directed towards Russia for .... well almost anything
they desire.
Problem is, are the public still eating out of their hands!?
Brext and the Trump victory is suggesting - not all of us by a long way.
If only Barack Hussain Obama had not taken it upon his self to interfere in our referendum
with his clear 'Back of the queue' threat, it may have been possible to not think he is a hypocrite.
what a joke, america has been 'interfering' (i.e. bombing and destroying) how many countries since
1945?? incredible hypocrisy and sickening double-standards.
War propoganda. Will the White Helmets be saving Russian civilians too? I suspect this is
one last roll of the dice by the 'democrats' to keep Trump out of office.
Obama has said the intelligence agencies had the proof that Russia interfered with the election.
With all their proof why order a review? Can't wait until Obama leaves office.
what, is the USA the new Latin America, and Russia the new CIA ? forever meddling surreptitiously
to undermine and overthrow other sovereign nation states democratic processes ? that's just so
unfair
It is a funny joke, but on the essence I would advise to read investigative report "The New
Red Scare" in Harpers. The evidence of Russian government having anything to do with any
hacks is literally non-existing.
The US, heckler of the world for decades, stirring trouble wherever the dart falls, and yet
Russian hackers and North Korean hookers are to blame for 99.9% of the worlds problems. Reality
is, if the US didn't move past its own borders for 10 years the world would be already a much,
much better place.
The Guardian probably shouldn't go along in helping build the new McCarthyist, Cold War narrative,
especially when it's just a bunch of US politicians and media figures repeating politically expedient,
but factually unsupported claims. The Western media is trying to be Hearst Newspapers in the Spanish-American
war.
This is explicitly bad because it allows the suppression of dissent, of creating blacklists,
the military industrial complex to further consolidate power, and to blame all sorts of domestic
failures on shadowing foreign influence. This is exactly what countries like Iran and North
Korea do. Bravo guys, for keep this story going for almost half a year with no substantial proof
whatsoever.
But when Judith Miller, the NYT, George Bush and Hillary Clinton used fake news to kill hundreds
of thousands, Obama told us to get over it, to "look forward and not backward." What a waste
of 8 years.
he suddenly discovered, 2-3 wks ago, that he was enthusiastic about space technology and exploration.
He (that is his ghost writers) published a 1 p. article about his love of space. Fact is, first
thing great-mind Obama did 8yrs ago is gut NASA's budget. He never mentioned space once in 8 yrs.
Suddenly, he is a fan. Creepy ... how does he deal with his hypocritical self every morning?
Political theatre. He will be out of office before anyone will even be asked to take office.
Its hilarious that The Guardian tries to frame US Intelligence as a single cohesive unit. Its
a splintered multi-headed hydra that will never act on this. Once again Obama brings righteous
powerful leadership to the act of being ineffective.
Starring:
Shirtless Putin
Legacy Obama
Hillary "I'm Not Trump" Clinton
Donald "OG Troll" Trump
Super Elite Genius Ninja Russian Hackers
The Poor Defenseless Victim DNC
John "Let's All Just Laugh at The Risotto Recipe and Not Pay Attention to any of my Other Emails"
Podesta
80's synth "rock" and really bright neon clothing
And featuring: Lou Diamond Phillips as.....Guccifer 2.0
The United States has attempted to push its democratic ideologies on countries all over the
world, using means much more direct than hacking. Yet they cannot take a fraction of what they
dish out. If Russia is indeed intervening to aid nationalists around the world, then Russia is
a friend and should be welcomed with open arms. Trump should do the same, and used the powers
of the United States to undermine [neoliberal] leftists around the globe.
No its by the letter actually. Libya, Yemen backed by US, Pakistan, Tunisia had some financial
and military backing. Obama is the drone king. And Ukraine well have you heard of Victoria nuland
before? Regime change in Ukraine cost the taxpayer 5 billion dollars
"... Outrageous how the Russians interfered with the Koch brothers and Soros's electoral process... ..."
"... No one, not the government agencies, not those ominous private security firms, no one presented even a shred of evidence for any involvement of the Russian government. Not even some lackluster ambiguous data, it was all anecdotal stuff, 'confidence' and fluffy rhetoric. ..."
"... The McCarthy-esque paranoia spread by the Clinton campaign to deflect from the content of those emails took foothold it seems. ..."
"... If the evidence were to hand, actually existed, it would have been all over the front pages of the WaPo, NYT and other major news outlets, not just in the US but everywhere else too. Investigating this 'evidence' is, to borrow William Gibson's simile, "Like planning to assassinate a figure out of myth and legend". The usual 'national security considerations' which have been and will continue to be adduced, as reasons for not publishing the evidence is pure triple-distilled BS and pretty much everyone knows that it's BS. ..."
Russia has always been the convenient whipping boy for the United States. We manufactured the
cold war because we needed an enemy to prop up our war economy. We built the Soviet Union into
this monolithic bogey man, spoiling to crush the west, enemies of "freedom," in order to keep
the west scared and pliant and in our pocket. After so-called communism collapsed, we found new
enemies in the middle east but they lacked the staying power. So now it's back to Russia. Maybe
the Russians did hack into the DNC. If so, they merely exposed the damning material. They didn't
write it.
Oh boy the knives are out against Russia, first I read about the 2012 Olympics which even if it
is true I would hold the British Olympic Committee responsible for the failure to find out about
the doping at the time of the Games and not 4 years later. I have just read US, Obama is now pointing
the finger at Russia for the outcome of the US Elections oh dear they are really scraping the
barrell to look for someone to blame instead of finding out why their own people decided to vote
for Trump. This is all typical American hyperbole and nonsense and a concerted effort on America's
efforts to orchestrate the next War.
America is so way behind with any modern services, they apparently do not have their bank cards
with pin or contactless as yet.
Unlucky failed mainstream media lost all confidence of its readership and are now broke. What
will they do next? ask for money saying that they're helping others whilst keeping most of it?
No one, not the government agencies, not those ominous private security firms, no one presented
even a shred of evidence for any involvement of the Russian government. Not even some lackluster
ambiguous data, it was all anecdotal stuff, 'confidence' and fluffy rhetoric.
But if it makes them happy....
The McCarthy-esque paranoia spread by the Clinton campaign to deflect from the content
of those emails took foothold it seems.
If the evidence were to hand, actually existed, it would have been all over the front pages
of the WaPo, NYT and other major news outlets, not just in the US but everywhere else too. Investigating
this 'evidence' is, to borrow William Gibson's simile, "Like planning to assassinate a figure
out of myth and legend". The usual 'national security considerations' which have been and will
continue to be adduced, as reasons for not publishing the evidence is pure triple-distilled BS
and pretty much everyone knows that it's BS.
Yeah sure, just like how it was 'all over the front pages' about what really happened on 9/11,
who was really involved etc.
And don't give me any of that conspiracy theory, tin-foil hat bs either...unless you are able
to be honest about this conspiracy: 19 or 20 strip-club lovin, don't-need-no-takeoff/landing-lessons
jihadists used box-cutters to overpower jet air planes and with the-luck-of-the-century HIT NOT
ONE....BUT TWO skyscrapers at the EXACT SPOT where the 47 concrete -steel inner columns were weak
enough to cause 'pancaking' of the undamaged 60-90 UNDAMAGED FLOORS. Collapsing (and pulverizing
concrete into dust) the building into itself.
And then weirdly enough a small cabal of PNAC signees who in writing had expressed that pax-americana
was going to be 'difficult unless a pearl harbor like event happens' had almost as much Luck-of-the-century
as the jihadists when......WA LA....into their lap.....a new pearl harbor.
Trying to blame one of the most flawed and undemocratic election process's in the Western hemisphere
on the Russians is laughable to the point of hysteria.
The dumb-ed down bigoted electorate is a direct result of decades of a two party political
system, backed up by a compliant media, that fosters mindless patriotism and ignorance rather
than enlightenment and intelligent discussion on the problems facing the country.
Never have I seen a better example of your own dog biting you on the arse!
But Clinton lost the election because the Republicans realised she was certain to be the Democratic
Presidential candidate fifteen years ago and they began their smear campaign against her right
there and then, and a lot of it stuck.
When you add to that tens of thousands on the left like me who voted for her...but would not
campaign for her because we didn't agree with her disastrous blunder in helping to overthrow Qaddafi
in Libya ( a country that is now a feudal backwater) and her stated goals of regime change in
Syria and all the while she had a domestic policy was cosying up to the bankers and Wall Street
elites, whilst ignoring blue collar Americans without jobs and prospects for their future...the
almost inevitable result is Trump as President of the United States.
'Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud, hatch out!'
The US will get what it deserves...and it deserves Trump I'm afraid.
"... Greenwald's take down is another hammer meets nail piece. The CIA are systemic liars. In fact, that's their job to move around in the shadows and deceive. They literally lie about everything. They lied about Iran/Contra, torture programs, their propensity for drug smuggling and dealing, infesting the media with agents, imaginary WMDs that launch war and massacre, mass surveillance of citizens, just to name a few. ..."
"... This is the agency who are in secret and anonymity, with no verifiable evidence, whispering rumors in the WaPoo and NYTimes' ears that the Russians made Hillary lose. What moron would take the CIA at its word anymore? Much less a major newspaper? Did I miss something, is it 1950 again? Methinks I've picked up the scent of fake news ..."
"... Apparently, all the morons who are still screaming about Trump, as if he alone will be in charge of the government and not his GOP handlers. Please keep in mind that the ardent Clinton supporters quite clearly reveal cult behavior, and anything that allows them to continue embracing their belief in their righteousness will be embraced without question or qualm. ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... The upside of these overtly political battles among intelligence agencies is that we are eroding away the idea that these are non-partisan institutions without overt political agendas. ..."
"... What Stengel and various mainstream media outlets appear to be arguing for is the creation of a "Ministry of Truth" managed by mainstream U.S. media outlets and enforced by Google, Facebook and other technology platforms. ..."
"... In other words, once these supposedly responsible outlets decide what the "truth" is, then questioning that narrative will earn you "virtual" expulsion from the marketplace of ideas, possibly eliminated via algorithms of major search engines or marked with a special app to warn readers not to believe what you say, a sort of yellow Star of David for the Internet age. ..."
"... The NC lawsuit against WaPo, like the lawsuit of Hedges et al. against provisions of the NDAA, marks a watershed moment for defending free speech in our country! I hope that my oft-expressed belief -- that we will soon need to revive samizdat ..."
"... According to a recent posting on Wolf Street, according to records, the Treasury has borrowed 4 trillion more between 2004-15, than can actually be accounted for in spending. This is because it is the borrowing and thus public obligations, which really matter to the powers that be. The generals just get their toys and wars as icing on the cake. It doesn't matter if they win, because there would be less war to spend it on. Eventually they will use "public/private partnerships" to take their piles of public obligations and trade for the rest of the Commons. ..."
"... Money needs to be understand as a public utility, like roads. We no more own it than we own the section of road we are using. It is like blood, not fat. ..."
"... The CIA whinging about a right wing president being installed by a foreign power might just be the greatest self-awareness fail ever! ..."
"... LOL at that! You'd think they were afraid trump might turn out to be the next Hugo Chavez! They must really, really love their program to help al Qaeda in Syria. ..."
"... The CIA lies as a matter of course, and now they're being propped up as the paragons of honesty, simply out of political expediency. Crazy days. ..."
"... Modern Democrats simply aren't a political party but fanatics of a professional sports club. If it wasn't the Russians, it would be referees or Bill Belichick at fault. I'm surprised they aren't mentioning "Comrade Nader" at all times. ..."
"... In fact, Trump's coalition looks remarkably similar to the one that Scott Walker put together in 2014. ..."
"... Obama in Spartanburg, SC in 2007: And understand this: If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I'm in the White House, I'll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself, I will walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America. Because workers deserve to know that somebody is standing in their corner. ..."
"... And the Dems wonder why the working class feel betrayed. ..."
Meet the Democrats' proto-Trumps Politico. "In three major states with a governor's
mansion up for grabs in 2018, a big-name, politically active billionaire or multimillionaire
is taking steps toward a run - [Democrat] donors looking to take matters into their own
hands after 2016's gutting losses."
The Evidence to Prove the Russian Hack emptywheel. The headline is a bit off, since the
post's subject is really the evidence required to prove the Russian hack. Some of
which does exist. That said, this is an excellent summary of the state of play. I take issue
with one point:
Crowdstrike reported that GRU also hacked the DNC. As it explains, GRU does this by sending
someone something that looks like an email password update, but which instead is a fake
site designed to get someone to hand over their password. The reason this claim is strong
is because people at the DNC say this happened to them.
First, CrowdStrike is a private security firm, so there's a high likelihood they're talking
their book, Beltway IT being what it is. Second, a result (DNC got phished) isn't "strong"
proof of a claim (GRU did the phishing). We live in a world where 12-year-olds know how to
do email phishing, and a world where professional phishing operations can camouflage themselves
as whoever they like. So color me skeptical absent some unpacking on this point. A second post
from emptywheel,
Unpacking the New CIA Leak: Don't Ignore the Aluminum Tube Footnote , is also well worth
a read.
Greenwald's take down is another hammer meets nail piece. The CIA are systemic liars.
In fact, that's their job to move around in the shadows and deceive. They literally lie about
everything. They lied about Iran/Contra, torture programs, their propensity for drug smuggling
and dealing, infesting the media with agents, imaginary WMDs that launch war and massacre,
mass surveillance of citizens, just to name a few.
They murder, torture, train hired mercenary proxies (who they are often pretending to oppose),
stage coups of democratically elected govt.'s, interfere with elections, topple regimes, install
ruthless puppet dictators, and generally enslave other nations to western corporate pirates.
They are a rogue band of pirates themselves.
This is the agency who are in secret and anonymity, with no verifiable evidence, whispering
rumors in the WaPoo and NYTimes' ears that the Russians made Hillary lose. What moron would
take the CIA at its word anymore? Much less a major newspaper? Did I miss something, is it
1950 again? Methinks I've picked up the scent of fake news
Conclusion: It isn't the Russians that are interfering with U.S. kangaroo elections, it's
the professionals over at the CIA
Apparently, all the morons who are still screaming about Trump, as if he alone will
be in charge of the government and not his GOP handlers. Please keep in mind that the ardent
Clinton supporters quite clearly reveal cult behavior, and anything that allows them to continue
embracing their belief in their righteousness will be embraced without question or qualm.
I've tried to point out on other blogs just how shaky that story in the Washington Post
is, and the response I get is something along the lines of, well, other outlets are also
reporting it, so it must be true. It does me no good to point out that this is the same tactic
used by the Bush administration in the run-up to the Iraq war. People will believe what they
want to believe.
It may help to point to the history of CIA influence at WaPoo. Counterpunch had a short
piece reminding everyone of Operation Mockingbird (going from memory on that name) where CIA
had reporters on staff at the paper directly taking orders and simultaneously on CIA payroll.
If questioned about CIA's motivation for hating trump, my best guess is that it is because
trump is undermining their project to overthrow assad in syria using nusra rebels. And also
because trump wants to be nice to russia.
I think there's some people in the cia that think they played a major role in winning the
cold war through their support for mujahadeen rebels in afghanistan. I suspect they think they
can beat putin in syria the same way. This is absolutely nutty.
The upside of these overtly political battles among intelligence agencies is that we
are eroding away the idea that these are non-partisan institutions without overt political
agendas.
There's a large number of people that will see through the facade. Right now, Trump supporters
are getting a lesson in how much resistance there can be within the establishment. I'm no Trump
supporter, but I think seeing what these institutions are capable of is a useful exercise for
all involved.
Apologies if this analysis by Robert Parry has already been shared here:
"What Stengel and various mainstream media outlets appear to be arguing for is the
creation of a "Ministry of Truth" managed by mainstream U.S. media outlets and enforced
by Google, Facebook and other technology platforms.
In other words, once these supposedly responsible outlets decide what the "truth"
is, then questioning that narrative will earn you "virtual" expulsion from the marketplace
of ideas, possibly eliminated via algorithms of major search engines or marked with a special
app to warn readers not to believe what you say, a sort of yellow Star of David for the
Internet age.
And then there's the possibility of more direct (and old-fashioned) government enforcement
by launching FBI investigations into media outlets that won't toe the official line. (All
of these "solutions" have been advocated in recent weeks.)
On the other hand, if you do toe the official line that comes from Stengel's public diplomacy
shop, you stand to get rewarded with government financial support. Stengel disclosed in
his interview with Ignatius that his office funds "investigative" journalism projects.
"How should citizens who want a fact-based world combat this assault on truth?" Ignatius
asks, adding: "Stengel has approved State Department programs that teach investigative reporting
and empower truth-tellers."
The NC lawsuit against WaPo, like the lawsuit of Hedges et al. against provisions of
the NDAA, marks a watershed moment for defending free speech in our country! I hope that my
oft-expressed belief -- that we will soon need to revive samizdat techniques to preserve
truth– may turn ou to be overly pessimistic.
Keep in mind the basis of this capitalist economy is Federal debt. They have to spend it
on something. The government doesn't even budget, which is to list priorities and spend according
to need/ability. They put together these enormous bills, add enough to get the votes, which
don't come cheap and then the prez can only pass or veto.
If they wanted to actually budget, taking the old line item veto as a template, they could
break these bills into all their various items, have each legislator assign a percentage value
to each one, put them back together in order of preference and the prez would draw the line.
"The buck stops here."
That would keep powers separate, with congress prioritizing and the prez individually responsible
for deficit spending. It would also totally crash our current "Capitalist" system.
According to a recent posting on Wolf Street, according to records, the Treasury has
borrowed 4 trillion more between 2004-15, than can actually be accounted for in spending. This
is because it is the borrowing and thus public obligations, which really matter to the powers
that be. The generals just get their toys and wars as icing on the cake. It doesn't matter
if they win, because there would be less war to spend it on. Eventually they will use "public/private
partnerships" to take their piles of public obligations and trade for the rest of the Commons.
Money needs to be understand as a public utility, like roads. We no more own it than
we own the section of road we are using. It is like blood, not fat.
LOL at that! You'd think they were afraid trump might turn out to be the next Hugo Chavez!
They must really, really love their program to help al Qaeda in Syria.
There are so many eye-rolling ironies in all this I think my eyeballs might just pop out
of their sockets. And the liberals going out of their way to tout the virtues of the CIA the
very same organization that never shied from assassinating or overthrowing a leftwing president/prime
minister it galls. The CIA lies as a matter of course, and now they're being propped up
as the paragons of honesty, simply out of political expediency. Crazy days.
Modern Democrats simply aren't a political party but fanatics of a professional sports
club. If it wasn't the Russians, it would be referees or Bill Belichick at fault. I'm surprised
they aren't mentioning "Comrade Nader" at all times.
My guess is donors are annoyed after the 2014 debacle and are having a hard time rationalizing
a loss to a reality TV show host with a cameo in Home Alone 2.
And understand this: If American workers are being denied their right to organize and
collectively bargain when I'm in the White House, I'll put on a comfortable pair of shoes
myself, I will walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America.
Because workers deserve to know that somebody is standing in their corner.
And the Dems wonder why the working class feel betrayed.
That ProPublica piece (
Suspected of Corruption at Home, Powerful Foreigners Find Refuge in the U.S. Pro Publica)
is brutal. Not only do we have to be the shittest corrupt country in the world but we have
to be a safe haven for ever other corrupt politician in the world as long as they have $$.
Can someone just make it all end? Please. There needs to be a maximum wealth where anything
you earn past it just gets automatically redistributed to the poor.
Thanks for the link – really important and scary things are going in congress concerning
'fake news' and Russian propaganda and HR 6393 is particularly bad. The EU is also taking steps
to counter 'fake news' as well. Obama claimed that some form of curation is required – and
it is happening quickly. People are suggesting that propornot has been debunked. That does
not matter anymore. The Obama regime and the MSM don't care – that have gotten the message
out.
And the people behind this are really deranged – check out Adam Schiff calling Tucker Carlson
a Kremlin stooge for even suggesting that there is no certainty that Russia leaked the emails
to Wikileaks.
After all, the media went all in for Hillary and spent huge amounts of time explaining why
Trump is unfit. But they lost.
And now our efforts on behalf of al Queada are failing in Syria and more hysteria ensues.
See for example:
The email saga lost a provable set of sources a long time ago. Before the files were given
to Wikileaks it was already too late to determine which people did it. So-called forensic evidence
of these computers only tell us that investigators either found evidence of a past compromise
or that people want us to believe they did. Since the compromise was determined after the fact,
the people with access could have done anything to the computers, including leave a false trail.
The core problem is that since security for all of these machines, including the DNC's email
server and most likely many of those from Team R, was nearly non-existent nearly nothing useful
can be determined. The time to learn something about a remote attacker, when it's possible
at all, is while the machine is being attacked – assuming it has never been compromised before.
If the attacker's machine has also been compromised then you know pretty much nothing unless
you can get access to it.
As far as physical access protection goes. If the machine has been left on and unattended
or is not completely encrypted then the only thing that might help is a 24 hour surveillance
camera pointed at the machine.
Forensic evidence in compromised computers is significantly less reliable than DNA and hair
samples. It's much too easy for investigators to frame another party by twiddling some bits.
Anyone that thinks that even well intentioned physical crime investigators have never gotten
convictions with bad or manipulated evidence has been watching and believing way too many crime
oriented mysteries. "Blindspot" is not a documentary.
As for projecting behaviors on a country by calling it a "state action", Russia or otherwise,
implying that there is no difference between independent and government sponsored actions,
that is just silly.
Apt observation from Gareth: "I believe the CIA is attempting to delegitimize Trump's election
so as to force him into a defensive position in which he will temper his dual goals of normalizing
relations with Russia and destroying the CIA's proxy armies of jihadists. We will see if Trump has
the guts to make some heads roll in the CIA He will remember that the last President who even
threatened to take on the CIA received a massive dose of flying lead poisoning. "
Essentially after WaPo scandal it is prudent to view all US MSM as yellow press.
Notable quotes:
"... The Post and the like are terrified over their loss of credibility just as the internet has destroyed their advertising. Interesting that their response to competition isn't to outdo the competition but to smother the competition with a lie. Their own fake news. ..."
"... As a moral American and supporter of free speech, I am going to make a list of online or print WaPo advertisers. Then I will communicate to them that I will never buy another thing from them as long as they advertise in the Washington Post. ..."
"... Open their ads in Firefox ad blocker. Then add them to the script and spam blacklist. ..."
"... The story serves many purposes. One is firing a shot across TrumpCo's bow: 'Submit to us or we'll delegitimate your election.' ..."
"... Another is excusing the Democratic Party establishment for losing the election, and thus diverting the wrath of the rank and file. ..."
"... About all we can do at the moment is remember to remember the names of the people who purveyed and supported the story, just as we should remember to remember the names of those who purveyed WMD stories. ..."
"... Job #1 always is suppressing the Sanders faction. Not beating Trump or the Republicans. They want control of their little pond. ..."
"... Personally, after what we did in Ukraine (essentially funding a revolution) I refuse to get the vapors because Russia apparently "helped" elect Trump by exposing (not forcing her to be a liar or cheat) Hillary. ..."
"... All of this crap about Russia, or the electoral college system is a distraction from the real issues at hand about our political system, which is a two party one oligarchy (ALEC) anti-democratic system. The rot runs from national presidential elections to the comptroller of the smaller city governments. ..."
"... If any candidate was capable of speaking to the working and middle class, then either Russia nor the the 0.01% who compose the oligarchy could control who wins in popular elections. What is really needed is to eliminate either the two party system, or democratize their methods of selecting candidates. ..."
"... Think Hillary played an unfair hand to Sanders? That was nothing compared to the shenanigans that get played at local level, state level, and Congress level to filter out populist candidates and replace them with machine / oligarchy pets. ..."
"... the idea that Saudi (or other Middle Eastern states) also intervened (with money), is not more credible? ..."
"... Yes, the NYT piece on Russian hacking is complete evidence free tripe. Not once do they say what evidence they base these accusations on, beyond the Cyrillic keyboard. The code for Cyrillic keyboard is, "fuzzy bear" et al. as the original reporting on the DNC hack and the company that ran security made clear that this was the one and only piece of concrete evidence the attacks by "fuzzy bear" et al. were perpetrated by the Russians. ..."
"... So based on a Cyrillic keyboard and the below quote, unnamed "American intelligence agencies know it was the Russians, really? ..."
"... Based on this it appears the NYTs definition of fake reporting is anything that isn't fed directly to it by unnamed experts or the USG and uncritically reported. ..."
"... I think these unnamed agencies are not going to have a very good working relationship with the orange overlord if they keep this up. They might not even be getting that new war they wanted for Christmas. ..."
"... It's as though the NYT and WaPo had these vast pools of accumulated credibility and they could go out on a limb here Oh wait - their credibility has been destroyed countless times over the past decade or so. One would think they'd realise: If you're in a ditch, the first thing to do is stop digging. ..."
"... The world is flat . Note: This is not me awarding a Thomas L. Friedman prize. In this case, I am simply sharing the article because I think it is hilarious. ..."
"... Nowhere, in any of this, is it mentioned that Clinton's illegal private email server (that got hacked) played any factor whatsoever. It just stinks so bad, I wonder how they can not smell what they are sitting in.. ..."
"... Summarizing a very plausible theory, NeoCon Coup Attempt: As Syria's Assad (with Russian help) is close to crushing HRC's jihadi Queda & Nusra rebels in Aleppo, the NeoCons are freaking out on both sides of the Atlantic. ..."
"... What to do? Jill's recount is floundering. So, last resort: Concoct Russia hacking myth to either delay Dec 19 EC vote or create more faithless electors. Result: A NeoCon like HRC or a NeoCon sympathizer is installed. ..."
"... Two biggest war hawks, McCain and Graham, are leading the Senate charges against Russia. All of this within days of Obama sending 200 MORE US troops to Syria and lifting the ban on more arms to the Syrian rebels, including anti-aircraft MANPADS. ..."
"... The recount farce makes me angry, and has made me resolve to never give Stein my vote again. ..."
"... That implies the NeoCon establishment views DJT and cabinet as a threat in any way, which is an extremely dubious premise. Occam's razor: Clinton and the media establishment that gifted the country DJT will do anything they can to cast the blame elsewhere. ..."
"... I'm not sure if that is a simpler explanation. I offer this: It's simpler to see that they are engaging in a struggle for now and the future – that means the neocons vs Trump. ..."
"... "The story reveals that a CIA assessment detailing this conclusion had been presented to President Obama and top congressional leaders last week." You read that? It's "detailed". None of us peasants will ever know what those "details" are, but its the f#ckin CIA, dude. ..."
"... The problem is we are expected to just trust the NYT and CIA without evidence??? Anybody remember WMD in Iraq?? The complete loss of credibility by the NYT and CIA over the last decade means I have to see credible evidence before I believe anything they say. ..."
"... Seems coordinated to me -- Globe/Times/WaPo. Double down for WaPoo who are now reporting from area 51 where they found Bigfoot sitting on a stockpile of Sadam's WMDs. Reading this article is surreal. The CIA, a terrorist outfit which our own former reporter (Bernstein) showed to be infesting our own newsroom, whispered in our ear that the Cold War 2.0 is going to escalate with or without the establishment coronation queen. ..."
"... "Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House" The link on WaPoo's site actually says a different headline so I am just sharing the headline itself. Not another secret assessment . no more passing notes in class, students. ..."
"... Robert Reich has posted the news that the Russians helped to secure the election for Trump on his FB page, to it seems much acclaim – perhaps I was foolish for having expected better from him. ..."
"... WaPo seems allied with the CIA-FIRE sector Clintonian group, while T may be more inclusive of the classic MICC-Pentagon sector which was asserting itself in Syria. ..."
"... Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, who is a close associate of Assange, called the CIA claims "bullshit", adding: "They are absolutely making it up." "I know who leaked them," Murray said. "I've met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it's an insider. It's a leak, not a hack; the two are different things. ..."
"... Although I'm convinced that the Republicans are, on average, noticeably worse than the Democrats, I agree with you. It is useful that there is no doubt about where Trump and the Congressional Republicans stand, which is on the side of the billionaires and the giant corporations. We've had 8 years of Obama's obeisance to the oligarchs, and millions of Americans still don't understand that this was happening. ..."
"... rhetoric that is beginning conspicuously to resemble the celebration by capitalist elites during the interwar years of German and Italian fascism (and even Stalinist communism) for their apparently superior economic governance. [12] ..."
"... I always knew Trump would be a disaster. However, Trump is a survivable disaster–with Hillary that would have been the end. ..."
"... If Trump has many Goldman guys, is it a case of 'keeping your enemies close?' ..."
"... First of all, the Democrats would use Clinton to suppress the left and to insist that Clinton was more electable. That would lead to a validation of the idea that the left has nowhere to go and set a precedent for decades with a 3 point formula: ..."
"... Suppress the left ..."
"... Accept money from Wall Street and move to the right with each election ..."
"... Use identity politics as a distraction. ..."
"... There were other dangers. Clinton wanted war with Russia. That could easily escalate into a nuclear conflict. With Trump, the risk is reduced, although given his ego, I will concede that anything is possible. We would also be seeing some very damaging neoliberal policies. ..."
"... The reality is that the US was screwed the moment Sanders was out of the picture. With Trump, at least it is more naked and more obvious. The real challenge is that the left has a 2 front war, first with the corporate Democrats, then the GOP. On the GOP side, Trump's supporters are going to wake up at some point to an Obama like betrayal, which is exactly what I expect will happen. ..."
"... There are elements of the Trump fan base already calling him out for the people he has appointed, which is a very encouraging sign. Trump's economic performance is what will make or break him. He has sold himself on his business acumen. Needless to say, I expect it will break him because he won't even try to do anything for his base. ..."
"... I like a lot of your analysis. "We would also be seeing some very damaging neoliberal policies." We could still yet under Trump, given the cabinet nominees. ..."
"... By dangerous and delegitimizing I assume you mean the results of the election will be reversed sometime in the next six weeks while the current establishment still has martial authority. ..."
"... Both sides now fear the other side will lock them up or, at the very least, remove them from power permanently. Why do I think this is not over? ..."
"... I am certainly not ready to rule out Moore's gut feeling. Capitalist Party + MSM + Clinton + Nuland + CIA has shown to be an equation that ends in color revolution ..or at least an attempted color revolution ..."
"... At the same time that the media hysteria over "fake news" has reached a fever pitch, yesterday the Senate passed the "Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act" , colloquially known as the Portman-Murphy Counter-Propaganda Bill, as part of the FY 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Conference Report. ..."
"... " establishing an interagency center housed at the State Department to coordinate and synchronize counter-propaganda efforts throughout the U.S. government." Our very own Ministry of Truth! ..."
"... Under Ukrainian law journalists that disagree with Kiev's policies are collaborators. They are subject to any mechanism Kiev can devise to stop them. In the case of RT Ruptly or the Guardian this means developing a strategy to ruin their reputations. The Interpreter was developed to that end. Kiev has gone so far as to petition the UK government to censure the Guardian for its coverage of events in Ukraine hoping to bully the publication into line. US broadcasters (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) have put RT on the same list as ISIS. ..."
"... This plan to censor opposing viewpoints in the US was intended to be executed during a Clinton presidency, and would've been almost impossible to stop under those circumstances. There is now a window of opportunity to fight back and ruin these clowns once and for all. ..."
"... These rallies are Trump's means of maintaining contact with his base, and making sure that he knows what they want. And a means of showing that he is trying to get it for them. If Hillary had bothered to do anything of the sort she would have been elected. Sanders did it and it was much appreciated. Trump's ego is huge but the rallies are much more than an ego-trip. ..."
"... Re: WP's response to Truthdig's retraction request. It seems as if they are doubling down on the "not our responsibility to verify the validity theme". My first reaction is that the WP is now the equivalent of the National Enquirer. What's next, a headline " I gave birth to Trump's Love Child". ..."
I believe the CIA is attempting to delegitimize Trump's election so as to force him into a
defensive position in which he will temper his dual goals of normalizing relations with Russia
and destroying the CIA's proxy armies of jihadists. We will see if Trump has the guts to make
some heads roll in the CIA He will remember that the last President who even threatened to
take on the CIA received a massive dose of flying lead poisoning.
This hysteria over Russia is getting downright dangerous. The people pushing that story will
seemingly stop at nothing to delegitimize the election results.
The Post's Marc Fisher was on the PBS Newshour last night. He talked about Alex Jones. They
probably didn't expect the pushback from Yves, Truthdig, etc. The Establishment often underestimates
dissenters.
Real fake news, like Jones, benefits from the fake news charge. Their readers hate the MSM.
I wonder if the same ethic can develop on the left.
The Post and the like are terrified over their loss of credibility just as the internet
has destroyed their advertising. Interesting that their response to competition isn't to outdo
the competition but to smother the competition with a lie. Their own fake news.
I heard Stephen Colbert lump Alex Jones together w/Wikileaks as if they were the same "fake
news". I have also repeatedly heard Samantha Bee refer to Julian Assange as a rapist. Sigh. Both
of those comments are "fake news". The allegations against JA are tissue thin and Wikileaks has
NEVER been challenged about the truth of their releases. Please correct me if I am wrong.
"just as the internet has destroyed their advertising." Shouldn't that be "destroyed their ability to sell advertising?"
As a moral American and supporter of free speech, I am going to make a list of online or print
WaPo advertisers.
Then I will communicate to them that I will never buy another thing from them as long as they
advertise in the Washington Post.
Open their ads in Firefox ad blocker. Then add them to the script and spam blacklist.
The Wapo's trying to steal Craigslist business with online job listings. Looks like an opportunity
to have some fun for creatives.
Boss WaPo OwnerMan Bezos is very rich. He bought WaPo as a propaganda outlet. He is prepared
to lose a lot of money keeping it "open for propaganda." Naming and shaming and boycotting every advertiser WaPo has could certainly embarass WaPo and
perhaps diminish its credibility-patina for Bezoganda purposes. It is certainly worth trying.
The WaPo brand also owns a lot of other moneymaking entities like Kaplan testing and test-prepping
I believe. It would be a lot harder to boycott those because millions of people find them to be
important. But perhaps a boycott against them until WaPo sells them off to non Bezos ownership
would be worth trying.
Perhaps a savage boycott against Amazon until Bezos fires everyone at WaPo involved in this
McCarthy-list and related articles . . . and humiliates them into unhireability anywhere else
ever again?
The Dem Liberals (Joan Walsh etc). on the twitter are going full throttle with this, it's a
twofer as Joan is using this to attack Sanders supporters for not being on the front lines of
Russia Fear.
The story serves many purposes. One is firing a shot across TrumpCo's bow: 'Submit to us or
we'll delegitimate your election.' (Apparently TrumpCo has not delivered a convincing submission
yet.)
Another is excusing the Democratic Party establishment for losing the election, and thus
diverting the wrath of the rank and file. Evidently it's also going to be used against the Sanders
faction of the Democrats. About all we can do at the moment is remember to remember the names
of the people who purveyed and supported the story, just as we should remember to remember the
names of those who purveyed WMD stories.
Personally, after what we did in Ukraine (essentially funding a revolution) I refuse to get
the vapors because Russia apparently "helped" elect Trump by exposing (not forcing her to be a
liar or cheat) Hillary.
Perhaps they should consider that it could be worse, a foreign nation could be arming people
and encouraging them to topple the government we have like what we're doing in Syria. It isn't
like the very sharp divisions elsewhere haven't resulted in civil war.
All of this crap about Russia, or the electoral college system is a distraction from the real
issues at hand about our political system, which is a
two party one oligarchy (ALEC) anti-democratic system. The rot runs from national presidential
elections to the comptroller of the smaller city governments.
If any candidate was capable of speaking to the working and middle class, then either Russia
nor the the 0.01% who compose the oligarchy could control who wins in popular elections. What
is really needed is to eliminate either the two party system, or democratize their methods
of selecting candidates.
Think Hillary played an unfair hand to Sanders? That was nothing
compared to the shenanigans that get played at local level, state level, and Congress level to
filter out populist candidates and replace them with machine / oligarchy pets.
The popular vs. electoral vote – look up the rules next time you play.
Recount – to investigate without much evidence is something senator McCarthy would do.
Russia – and the idea that Saudi (or other Middle Eastern states) also intervened (with money),
is not more credible?
Coincidentally, all these urgent initiatives will lead to replacing Trump with Hillary as president.
"I will tear down the very building just to achieve my Pyrrhic victory."
Thank you, sorry Dems, Boris Badunov did not swing the election. If you want *hard* evidence
(not fake news) of a foreign government influencing the election you might have a look at the
beheading, gay-killing, women-supressing tyrannical monarchy known as The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
and ask whether it made sense for them to be the *#1* contributor to your candidate.
Yes, the NYT piece on Russian hacking is complete evidence free tripe. Not once do they say
what evidence they base these accusations on, beyond the Cyrillic keyboard. The code for Cyrillic
keyboard is, "fuzzy bear" et al. as the original reporting on the DNC hack and the company that
ran security made clear that this was the one and only piece of concrete evidence the attacks
by "fuzzy bear" et al. were perpetrated by the Russians.
So based on a Cyrillic keyboard and the below quote, unnamed "American intelligence agencies
know it was the Russians, really?
"They based that conclusion, in part, on another finding - which they say was also reached
with high confidence - that the Russians hacked the Republican National Committee's computer systems
in addition to their attacks on Democratic organizations, but did not release whatever information
they gleaned from the Republican networks."
Based on this it appears the NYTs definition of fake reporting is anything that isn't fed directly
to it by unnamed experts or the USG and uncritically reported.
I think these unnamed agencies are not going to have a very good working relationship with
the orange overlord if they keep this up. They might not even be getting that new war they wanted
for Christmas.
It's as though the NYT and WaPo had these vast pools of accumulated credibility and they could
go out on a limb here Oh wait - their credibility has been destroyed countless times over the
past decade or so. One would think they'd realise: If you're in a ditch, the first thing to do is stop digging.
Especially when dealing with a President Trump. He's already made his distaste for the WaPo
clear. We are entering a new, crazy, dangerous era of press-presidential relations. All the more
reason for the newspapers to behave responsibly - is that too much to ask?
The world is flat .
Note: This is not me awarding a Thomas L. Friedman prize. In this case, I am simply sharing
the article because I think it is hilarious.
Also, Bradford deLong should be included with Krugman and Friedman, though the length and width
of deLong's connections don't seem to have the same acceleration, energy, or viscosity, as the
other two. There are also olfactory and temporal differences.
Come to think of it, I also don't think Krugman Turdman or Friedman
Flathead would have to grovel to Neera "I'm a loyal soldier" Tanden and John "Done, so
think about something else" Podesta to get a family member a "meritocratic" job.
If Russia is so dangerous, then anyone who mishandles classified information (say, by storing
it on a personal server) should be prosecuted, shouldn't they?
Nowhere, in any of this, is it mentioned that Clinton's illegal private email server (that
got hacked) played any factor whatsoever. It just stinks so bad, I wonder how they can not smell
what they are sitting in.. I also wonder just where the line is between those who actually buy
into this hysteria, and those who simply feel justified in using whatever means they can to discredit
Trump and overturn the election. I think there's a lot of overlap and grey area there in many
people's minds.
Summarizing a very plausible theory, NeoCon Coup Attempt: As Syria's Assad (with Russian help) is close to crushing HRC's jihadi Queda & Nusra rebels
in Aleppo, the NeoCons are freaking out on both sides of the Atlantic.
What to do? Jill's recount is floundering. So, last resort: Concoct Russia hacking myth to
either delay Dec 19 EC vote or create more faithless electors. Result: A NeoCon like HRC or a
NeoCon sympathizer is installed.
Two biggest war hawks, McCain and Graham, are leading the Senate charges against Russia.
All of this within days of Obama sending 200 MORE US troops to Syria and lifting the ban on
more arms to the Syrian rebels, including anti-aircraft MANPADS.
The recount farce makes me angry, and has made me resolve to never give Stein my vote again.
Apparently she's in opposition to much of her party leadership on this, so if they ditch her in
the future and get someone better I may consider voting for them again. The reality of Trump as
president is going to be bad enough, attempting to sabotage the transition isn't doing anyone
any favors. I don't like Obama at all, but he wants a clean, peaceful transfer of power, and on
that issue at least he's correct.
That implies the NeoCon establishment views DJT and cabinet as a threat in any way, which is
an extremely dubious premise. Occam's razor: Clinton and the media establishment that gifted the country DJT will do anything
they can to cast the blame elsewhere.
I'm not sure if that is a simpler explanation. I offer this: It's simpler to see that they are engaging in a struggle for now and the future – that means
the neocons vs Trump.
Hillary vs Trump, invoking Russia now, is about fighting the last war. That one was over more
than a month ago. It's more convoluted to say one team still desires to continue the fight.
"The story reveals that a CIA assessment detailing this conclusion had been presented to President
Obama and top congressional leaders last week." You read that? It's "detailed". None of us peasants will ever know what those "details" are,
but its the f#ckin CIA, dude.
The problem is we are expected to just trust the NYT and CIA without evidence??? Anybody remember
WMD in Iraq?? The complete loss of credibility by the NYT and CIA over the last decade means I
have to see credible evidence before I believe anything they say. But that is just me. From reading
the NYT comments on the OBama Russia election hack article, the NYT commenters have en mass swallowed
the story hook, line and sinker. They apparently don't need evidence and have completely loss
any sort of functioning long term memory.
Based on the fact that she was hidden more than actually performing on the campaign trail,
that is a possibility. She may have very well been our own puppet government member that some were ready to install
here just like we tend to do over in other nations. No real marbles needed since she wouldn't
actually be running things. It's come to my attention that we seem to be inching closer and closer
to third world here and those places rarely have vibrant democracies.
Seems coordinated to me -- Globe/Times/WaPo. Double down for WaPoo who are now reporting from
area 51 where they found Bigfoot sitting on a stockpile of Sadam's WMDs. Reading this article
is surreal. The CIA, a terrorist outfit which our own former reporter (Bernstein) showed to be
infesting our own newsroom, whispered in our ear that the Cold War 2.0 is going to escalate with
or without the establishment coronation queen.
"Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House" The link on WaPoo's site actually says a different headline so I am just sharing the headline
itself. Not another secret assessment . no more passing notes in class, students.
Robert Reich has posted the news that the Russians helped to secure the election for Trump
on his FB page, to it seems much acclaim – perhaps I was foolish for having expected better from
him.
Sifting the election through a Peter Turchin filter, Sanders' run was a response to 'popular
immiseration' while the choice-of-billionaires was 'intra-elite competition'. WaPo seems allied
with the CIA-FIRE sector Clintonian group, while T may be more inclusive of the classic MICC-Pentagon
sector which was asserting itself in Syria.
I needed
Jalen & Jacoby to sooth me to sleep last night, after seeing the last chart (Fig. 14.4) from
Turchin's latest book. You can see it by hitting Ctrl-End from this
pdf . If he's correct,
this election was just the warm-up for 2020. Crikey.
Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, who is a close associate of Assange,
called the CIA claims "bullshit", adding: "They are absolutely making it up." "I know who leaked them," Murray said. "I've met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly
not Russian and it's an insider. It's a leak, not a hack; the two are different things.
Although I'm convinced that the Republicans are, on average, noticeably worse than the Democrats,
I agree with you. It is useful that there is no doubt about where Trump and the Congressional
Republicans stand, which is on the side of the billionaires and the giant corporations. We've
had 8 years of Obama's obeisance to the oligarchs, and millions of Americans still don't understand
that this was happening.
I hope people will vigorously lobby their Representatives and Senators, and pay attention to
who the genuine progressives are in the 2018 primaries.
Like ordinary citizens, although for the opposite reasons, elites are losing faith in democratic
government and its suitability for reshaping societies in line with market imperatives. Public
Choice's disparaging view of democratic politics as a corruption of market justice, in the
service of opportunistic politicians and their clientele, has become common sense among elite
publics-as has the belief that market capitalism cleansed of democratic politics will not only
be more efficient but also virtuous and responsible. [11]
Countries like China are complimented
for their authoritarian political systems being so much better equipped than majoritarian democracy,
with its egalitarian bent, to deal with what are claimed to be the challenges of 'globalization'
-- a
rhetoric that is beginning conspicuously to resemble the celebration by capitalist elites during
the interwar years of German and Italian fascism (and even Stalinist communism) for their apparently
superior economic governance. [12]
Right, the euphemisms have been done away with. I always knew Trump would be a disaster. However,
Trump is a survivable disaster–with Hillary that would have been the end.
In the long run, a Clinton presidency would be far more damaging.
First of all, the Democrats would use Clinton to suppress the left and to insist that Clinton
was more electable. That would lead to a validation of the idea that the left has nowhere to go
and set a precedent for decades with a 3 point formula:
Suppress the left
Accept money from Wall Street and move to the right with each election
Use identity politics as a distraction.
A Trump victory forces questions on the conventional wisdom (not really wisdom), and forces
changes. At best, they can hope to shove another Obama that is attractive on the outside, but
will betray people, but even that will be harder because people now are more watchful. Not to
mention, the mainstream media has lost its power.
There were other dangers. Clinton wanted war with Russia. That could easily escalate into a
nuclear conflict. With Trump, the risk is reduced, although given his ego, I will concede that
anything is possible. We would also be seeing some very damaging neoliberal policies.
The reality is that the US was screwed the moment Sanders was out of the picture. With Trump,
at least it is more naked and more obvious. The real challenge is that the left has a 2 front
war, first with the corporate Democrats, then the GOP. On the GOP side, Trump's supporters are
going to wake up at some point to an Obama like betrayal, which is exactly what I expect will
happen.
There are elements of the Trump fan base already calling him out for the people he has appointed,
which is a very encouraging sign. Trump's economic performance is what will make or break him.
He has sold himself on his business acumen. Needless to say, I expect it will break him because
he won't even try to do anything for his base.
I like a lot of your analysis. "We would also be seeing some very damaging neoliberal policies."
We could still yet under Trump, given the cabinet nominees.
The left must be vigilant and smart. There is opportunity here, but sidetracking on fake news,
pop vote, etc. doesn't gain much in terms of opposition.
I think you're possibly right, and I just couldn't pull the lever to vote for Trump. Sometimes
we just have to be true to ourselves and hope it works out.
By dangerous and delegitimizing I assume you mean the results of the election will be reversed
sometime in the next six weeks while the current establishment still has martial authority.
All
the intelligent agencies are now in lock step over Russian intervention. How do they let this
result stand? Trump obviously realizes his win is now in play and has gone after those same agencies
pointing out their gross incompetence.
Both sides now fear the other side will lock them up or, at the very least, remove them from power
permanently. Why do I think this is not over?
Michael Moore agrees with you – something is, or might be (more accurate description of what
he is said to have said, I think), brewing, according to him, or rather, his intuition .
I am certainly not ready to rule out Moore's gut feeling.
Capitalist Party + MSM + Clinton + Nuland + CIA has shown to be an equation that ends in color
revolution ..or at least an attempted color revolution
What the State Department and MSM have pleasantly referred to in the past as a bloodless coup.
See Ukraine, Brazil, Argentina et al
At the same time that the media hysteria over "fake news" has reached a fever pitch, yesterday
the Senate passed the
"Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act" , colloquially known as the Portman-Murphy
Counter-Propaganda Bill, as part of the FY 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Conference
Report.
According to Senator Portman's press release, the Bill "will improve the ability of the United
States to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation by establishing an interagency center
housed at the State Department to coordinate and synchronize counter-propaganda efforts throughout
the U.S. government." The bill also creates a "grant program for NGOs, think tanks, civil society
and other experts outside government who are engaged in counter-propaganda related work."
While the passage of this bill seems very coincidentally timed given recent events, it was
actually introduced in March. Not sure whether it simply followed a normal legislative track,
or was brought back from the dead recently, etc.
" establishing an interagency center housed at the State Department to coordinate and synchronize
counter-propaganda efforts throughout the U.S. government." Our very own Ministry of Truth!
It is important to find work for our newly minted graduates of marketing, psychology and sociology
as well as those graduates of the communication school and the arts. The need of our post-industrial
information age is to make things up as opposed to just making things.
Our liberal nation has promised our children that after they have enslaved themselves through
student debt they will find work. The work they find is likely to be meaningful only to the creditors
who wish to be repaid.
The graduates will find idealistic rationales like patriotism or making
"'Merica Grate Again" to soothe their corrupted souls while keeping the fake news as fresh as
a steamy load.
Under Ukrainian law journalists that disagree with Kiev's policies are collaborators. They
are subject to any mechanism Kiev can devise to stop them. In the case of RT Ruptly or the
Guardian this means developing a strategy to ruin their reputations. The Interpreter was developed
to that end. Kiev has gone so far as to petition the UK government to censure the Guardian
for its coverage of events in Ukraine hoping to bully the publication into line. US broadcasters
(Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) have put RT on the same list as ISIS.
From yesterday's links but seems appropriate. This plan to censor opposing viewpoints in the
US was intended to be executed during a Clinton presidency, and would've been almost impossible
to stop under those circumstances. There is now a window of opportunity to fight back and ruin
these clowns once and for all.
That may be but what we are seeing now is just an echo of the Clinton/Soros plan, and not even
close to the disaster that would result from having Soros et al at the helm. My guess is that
the CIA are now simply using gullible Republicans (yes, there is certainly some redundancy there)
as useful idiots, but this dynamic significantly weakens the original plan.
Amy Davidson ends her article with this paragraph.
And that is why the rallies are likely to endure: to serve as calibrators of or infomercials
for what Trump believes that "the public" wants. One can waste a lot of time delving into the
question of Trump's psychological need for affirmation . What is politically more important is
how he might use the set piece of a cheering crowd to brush aside other considerations, particularly
those involving the checks on the Presidency, and the willingness of those in other areas of the
government, or in the White House itself, to exercise them. Should courts worry about "a lot of
angry people"? One important point not to let go of is that a crowd that the President assembles
and the broader public are two very different things, no matter how big the arena, or how filled
it is with love . A better opportunity to hear that public voice will come in two years, at the
midterm elections. Maybe those will surprise Trump.
News flash for Amy. When a narcissist uses the word "love" it doesn't mean what you think it
does. Those rallies are about training people to react emotionally in a way that is fulfilling
to Donald. Nothing more, nothing less.
A better opportunity to hear that public voice will come in two years, at the midterm elections.
Maybe those will surprise Trump.
We remind ourselves that no one can help us but us. We empower ourselves.
So, it goes for today, as it did in 2008. Such moderation!!! A better opportunity will come
in two years!!!! I said that to myself 8 years ago, but I didn't hear much of it from the media
then. And we (not just I) say that now.
As for crowds reacting and it being fulfilling for the one being looked up on – again, it's
the same human psychology, whether the guy on stage is a rock star, Lenin, Roosevelt, Pol Pot,
the next savior or Idi Amin. How much love is there for anyone in any long term relationship,
except to affirm and be affirmed by 'love' everyday, in small acts or otherwise, much less some
politicians you interact through abstractions, like, through the media or stories told to us.
"Those rallies are about training people to react emotionally in a way that is fulfilling to
Donald. Nothing more, nothing less."
These rallies are Trump's means of maintaining contact with his base, and making sure that
he knows what they want. And a means of showing that he is trying to get it for them. If Hillary
had bothered to do anything of the sort she would have been elected. Sanders did it and it was
much appreciated. Trump's ego is huge but the rallies are much more than an ego-trip.
Re: WP's response to Truthdig's retraction request. It seems as if they are doubling down on
the "not our responsibility to verify the validity theme". My first reaction is that the WP is
now the equivalent of the National Enquirer. What's next, a headline " I gave birth to Trump's
Love Child".
Patriotic Correctness is a useful term and concept. Otherwise, the article was extremely long-winded
and boring. Editor to writer: "I need you to fill 3,000 words worth of space with this 50-word
idea "
I don't consider Trump a compromise candidate and that's largely because I don't see him actually
moving the country forward in the right direction. Sanders, for me, would have been a compromise
from the point of view of he probably wouldn't have moved us far enough fast enough for me but
he would have set us leftward instead of ever rightward and that IS an improvement.
The mainstream media is doubling down on imagined pro-Russian heresies in a fashion not seen
since the Reformation. Back then the Catholic Church held a monopoly on ideology. They lost it
to an unruly bunch of rebellious Protestants who were assisted by the new technology of the printing
press.
Nowadays various non-conformist internet sites, with the help of the new technology of the
internet, are challenging the MSM's monopoly on the means of persuasion. To show how much things
have changed, back in the 60's, dissidents such as the John Birch Society were limited to issuing
pamphlets to expound on their theories of Russians taking over America. In a very ironic role-reversal,
today it is the increasingly desperate Washington Post that more closely matches the paranoia
of the John Birch Society as it accuses non-conformist media heretics – who are threatening the
MSM's monopoly on the means of persuasion - of allowing Russians to take over America.
But let's spare a thought for poor Jeff Bezos. He basically thought he was purchasing the medieval
equivalent of a Bishopry when he bought the WaPo. But now after running six anti-Trump editorials
each and every day for the past 18 months, in which his establishment clergy engaged in an ever
increasing hysteria-spiral trying to outdo each other in turning Trump into Hitler, it ends up
Bezos' side lost the election anyway. It's like he bought a Blockbuster store in 2008 and never
even thought about Netflix!
And so now the MSM is literally launching an Establishment Inquisition by issuing "indexes"
of prohibited heretical websites.
Where will this lead? The grossly paranoiac reading is the Establishment's Counter Reformation
is laying the ideological groundwork for a sort of coup d'etat to be followed by the rule of a
goodthink junta. In this case we have to start calculating how many divisions are loyal to Trump's
gang of generals versus how many are loyal to Obama's generals. A more moderate reading is that
with these anti-Russian headlines, the Establishment is attempting to pressure Trump to stay the
Establishment course on foreign policy and to appoint a SecState who is hostile to Russia. And
in the best case these crazy MSM ramblings are just the last gasps of soon to be extinct media
mammoths.
One thing you can say about Trump is that he is most certainly not a wuss. In the face of this
firestorm about Russian influence sources say Trump is going to nominate Rex Tillerson, who is
very pro-Putin, as Secretary of State!
I wonder what happens when they don't confirm any of his nominees? Is this a case of 'I will nominee so many you don't like, you will be forced to confirm at
least a few?'
Yes I do because Trump is reportedly naming NeoCon John Bolton as undersecretary. That's going
to be a package deal; if they reject Tillerson then Bolton is gone as well. The NeoCons are desperate
to get Bolton into the Administration.
Bolton's job will be to go on talk shows and defend Trump's policies. If he doesn't do it then
he gets fired.
And so from the rest of the world's point of view, Tillerson is the carrot but Bolton remains
in the background as the stick in case anyone starts thinking Trump is too soft and decides to
test him.
Praetorian Guard Redux. Any nation that embraces secret police will find itself ruled by them in short order.
Notable quotes:
"... Yes, the CIA's sterling reputation around the world for truth-telling and integrity might be sullied if someone doubts their claims... https://t.co/2uyQXvFdOK - Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 10, 2016 ..."
"... When is it hardest to get people not to blindly accept anonymous, evidence-free CIA claims? When it's very pleasing to believe them. - Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 10, 2016 ..."
"... "...there is no clear evidence - even now," said Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a member of the Trump transition team. "There's a lot of innuendo, lots of circumstantial evidence, that's it." ..."
"... "...Obama wants the report before he leaves office Jan. 20, Monaco said. The review will be led by [PROVEN LIAR] James Clapper, the outgoing director of national intelligence, officials said." ..."
"... Aside from its instigation of coups and alliances with right-wing juntas, Washington sought to more subtly influence elections in all corners of the world. And so did Moscow. Political scientist Dov Levin calculates that the "two powers intervened in 117 elections around the world from 1946 to 2000 - an average of once in every nine competitive elections. ..."
"... In the late 1940s, the newly established CIA cut its teeth in Western Europe, pushing back against some of the continent's most influential leftist parties and labor unions. In 1948, the United States propped up Italy's centrist Christian Democrats and helped ensure their electoral victory against a leftist coalition, anchored by one of the most powerful communist parties in Europe. CIA operatives gave millions of dollars to their Italian allies and helped orchestrate what was then an unprecedented, clandestine propaganda campaign : This included forging documents to besmirch communist leaders via fabricated sex scandals, starting a mass letter-writing campaign from Italian Americans to their compatriots, and spreading hysteria about a Russian takeover and the undermining of the Catholic Church. ..."
"... "We had bags of money that we delivered to selected politicians, to defray their political expenses, their campaign expenses, for posters, for pamphlets," recounted F. Mark Wyatt , the CIA officer who handled the mission and later participated in more than 2½ decades of direct support to the Christian Democrats. ..."
"... This template spread everywhere : CIA operative Edward G. Lansdale, notorious for his efforts to bring down the North Vietnamese government, is said to have run the successful 1953 campaign of Philippines President Ramon Magsaysay. Japan's center-right Liberal Democratic Party was backed with secret American funds through the 1950s and the 1960s. The U.S. government and American oil corporations helped Christian parties in Lebanon win crucial elections in 1957 with briefcases full of cash. ..."
"... In Chile, the United States prevented Allende from winning an election in 1964. "A total of nearly four million dollars was spent on some fifteen covert action projects, ranging from organizing slum dwellers to passing funds to political parties," detailed a Senate inquiry in the mid-1970s that started to expose the role of the CIA in overseas elections. When it couldn't defeat Allende at the ballot box in 1970, Washington decided to remove him anyway. ..."
"... Obama & The Presstitutes: Legalized DOMESTIC Propaganda to American Citizens The National Defense Authorization Act of July 2013 (NDAA) included an amendment that legalized the use of propaganda on the American public. The amendment - originally proposed by Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) and Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and passed – nullified the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which explicitly forbids information and psychological operations aimed at influencing U.S. public opinion. The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 allowed U.S. propaganda intended to influence foreign audiences to be used on the domestic population. ..."
"... This Russia CIA Program aimed at US Citizens is part of the OBAMA FRAUD to cover the crimes of Clinton et al. The MSM and especially the NYT is the epi-center of "Fake News" ..."
"... Hillary was a big threat to Russia security. Trump was willing to work with Russia. Does anyone really believe Russia has absolutely no part to play in Trump's win? Think again. ..."
"... Thinking is one thing. Proving it is another. And what do you "think" about the CIA and Victoria Nuland's role in toppling the elected government in the Ukraine? ..."
"... After a year of MSM propaganda and lies, you are now obsessed with "fake news" ironically the kind that totally obliterated your propaganda for the lies that they were. ..."
"... Go back to the 1960s. Phillp Graham and his wife rans Wa Post. Phillip got a young girl friend and started going off the reservation saying WaPo was becoming a mouthpiece for the See Eye Ah. He was going to divorce his wife. He then was commited to an insane asylum, released and then killed himself with a shotgun. ..."
"... There have to be good, patriotic Americans within CIA These intelligence reports are obvious fictions: The agitprop of a neocon/zionist Deep State that fully intends to expand the wars, target Iran and Russia, while sending American blood and treasure to pay their bill. ..."
"... Kennedy knew that the CIA was nothing but a group of Useless, Meddling, Lying Assholes, and made it known Publicly. Unfortunately for him, things didn't turn out all that well. "Wetwork" is never in shortage with that crew. ..."
"... Praetorian Guard Redux. Any nation that embraces secret police will find itself ruled by them in short order. ..."
"... Most CIA directors are/were members of the Rockefeller/CFR including: Morell, Petraeus, Hayden, Tenet, Deutch, Woolsey, Gates, Webster, Casey, Turner, Bush, Colby, Schlesinger, Helms, McCone and Allen Dulles. Also every Fed chairman since WW2. See member lists at cfr dot org. ..."
"... The domestic policies of both CFR wings are the same: the maintenance of the American Empire... There is no possibility of [outsiders] capturing power at the top of either party... ..."
Overnight the media propaganda wars escalated after the late Friday release
of an article by the Washington Post (which last week
admitted to using unverified, or fake, news in an attempt to smear other so-called "fake news" sites) according to which a secret
CIA assessment found that Russia sought to tip last month's U.S. presidential election in Donald Trump's favor, a conclusion presented
without any actual evidence, and which drew an extraordinary, and angry rebuke from the president-elect's camp.
"These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction," Trump's transition team said, launching
a broadside against the spy agency. "The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history.
It's now time to move on and 'Make America Great Again.' "
The Washington Post report comes after outgoing President Barack Obama
ordered a review of all cyberattacks that took place during the 2016 election cycle , amid growing calls from Congress for more
information on the extent of Russian interference in the campaign. The newspaper cited officials briefed on the matter as saying
that individuals with connections to Moscow provided WikiLeaks with email hacked from the Democratic National Committee, Democratic
nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign chief and others.
Without a shred of evidence provided, and despite Wikileaks' own on the record denial that the source of the emails was Russian,
the WaPo attack piece claims the email messages were steadily leaked out via WikiLeaks in the months before the election, damaging
Clinton's White House run. Essentially, according to the WaPo, the Russians' aim was to help Donald Trump win and not just undermine
the U.S. electoral process, hinting at a counter-Hillary intent on the side of Putin.
"It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia's goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to
help Trump get elected," the newspaper quoted a senior U.S. official briefed on an intelligence presentation last week to key
senators as saying. " That's the consensus view."
CIA agents told the lawmakers it was "quite clear" - although it was not reported exactly what made it "clear" - that electing
Trump was Russia's goal, according to officials who spoke to the Post, citing growing evidence from multiple sources.
And yet, key questions remain unanswered, and the CIA's report fell short of being a formal U.S. assessment produced by all 17
intelligence agencies the newspaper said, for two reasons. As we reported in November "
The "Fact" That 17 Intelligence Agencies Confirmed Russia is Behind the Email Hacks Isn't Actually A "Fact ", and then also because
aside from so-called "consensus", there is - once again - no evidence, otherwise the appropriate agencies would have long since released
it, and this is nothing more than another propaganda attempt to build tension with Russia. In fact, the WaPo admits as much in the
following text, which effectively destroys the article's entire argument :
The CIA presentation to senators about Russia's intentions fell short of a formal U.S. assessment produced by all 17 intelligence
agencies. A senior U.S. official said there were minor disagreements among intelligence officials about the agency's assessment,
in part because some questions remain unanswered.
For example, intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin "directing" the identified
individuals to pass the Democratic emails to WikiLeaks, a second senior U.S. official said. Those actors, according to the official,
were "one step" removed from the Russian government, rather than government employees. Moscow has in the past used middlemen to
participate in sensitive intelligence operations so it has plausible deniability.
* * *
"I'll be the first one to come out and point at Russia if there's clear evidence, but there is no clear evidence - even now,"
said Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a member of the Trump transition team.
"There's a lot of innuendo, lots of circumstantial evidence, that's it."
And since even the WaPo is forced to admit that intelligence agents don't have the proof that Russian officials directed the identified
individuals to supply WikiLeaks with the hacked Democratic emails, the best it can do is speculate based on circumstantial inferences,
especially since, as noted above, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has
denied links with Russia's government
, putting the burden of proof on the side of those who challenge the Wikileaks narrative. So far that proof has not been provided.
Nonetheless, at the White House, Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz said Obama called for the cyberattacks review earlier this
week to ensure "the integrity of our elections."
"This report will dig into this pattern of malicious cyberactivity timed to our elections, take stock of our defensive capabilities
and capture lessons learned to make sure that we brief members of Congress and stakeholders as appropriate," Schultz said.
Taking the absurdity to a whole new level, Obama wants the report completed before his term ends on January 20, by none other
than a proven and confirmed liar : " The review will be led by James Clapper, the outgoing director of national intelligence, officials
said. " In other words, the report that the Kremlin stole the election should be prepared by the time Trump is expected to be sworn
in.
"We are going to make public as much as we can," the spokesman added. "This is a major priority for the president."
The move comes after Democrats in Congress pressed the White House to reveal details, to Congress or to the public, of Russian
hacking and disinformation in the election.
On Oct. 7, one month before the election, the Department of Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence announced
that "the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of emails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political
organizations." "These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the U.S. election process," they said.
Trump dismissed those findings in an interview published Wednesday by Time magazine for its "Person of the Year" award. Asked
if the intelligence was politicized, Trump answered: "I think so."
"I don't believe they interfered," he said. "It could be Russia. And it could be China. And it could be some guy in his home in
New Jersey."
Worried that Trump will sweep the issue under the rug after his inauguration, seven Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee
called on Nov. 29 for the White House to declassify what it knows about Russian interference. The seven have already been briefed
on the classified details, suggesting they believe there is more information the public should know. On Tuesday this week, leading
House Democrats called on Obama to give members of the entire Congress a classified briefing on Russian interference, from hacking
to the spreading of fake news stories to mislead U.S. voters.
Republicans in Congress have also promised hearings into Russian activities once the new administration comes in.
Obama's homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco said the cyberinterference goes back to the 2008 presidential race, when both the
Obama and John McCain campaigns were hit by malicious computer intrusions.
* * *
An interesting aside to emerge from last night's hit piece and the Trump team response is that there is now a full blown turf
war between Trump and the CIA, as NBC's Chuck Todd observed in a series of late Friday tweets:
The implication in the Trump transition statement is that he doesn't believe a single thing from the CIA
To which Glenn Greenwald provided the best counterargument:
Yes, the CIA's sterling reputation around the world for truth-telling and integrity might be sullied if someone doubts
their claims...https://t.co/2uyQXvFdOK - Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald)
December 10, 2016
When is it hardest to get people not to blindly accept anonymous, evidence-free CIA claims? When it's very pleasing to
believe them. - Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald)
December 10, 2016
However, of the mini Tweetstorm, this was the most important aspect: the veiled suggestion that in addition to Russia, both the
FBI and the Obama presidency prevented Hillary from becoming the next US president...
While Obama's FBI director smeared Hillary, Obama sat on evidence of Russian efforts to elect Trump that had basis in evidence.
... which in light of these stunning new unproven and baseless allegations, she may very well have renewed aspirations toward.
* * *
So while there is no "there" there following the WaPo's latest attempt to fan the rarging fires of evidence-free propaganda, or
as the WaPo itself would say "fake news", here is why the story has dramatic implications. First, the only two quotes which matter:
"...there is no clear evidence - even now," said Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee
and a member of the Trump transition team. "There's a lot of innuendo, lots of circumstantial evidence, that's it."
* * *
"...Obama wants the report before he leaves office Jan. 20, Monaco said. The review will be led by [PROVEN LIAR] James
Clapper, the outgoing director of national intelligence, officials said."
And then the summary:
Announce "consensus" (not unanimous) "conclusion" based in circumstantial evidence now, before the Electoral College vote,
then write a report with actual details due by Jan 20.
Put a proven liar in charge of writing the report on Russian hacking.
Fail to mention that not one of the leaked DNC or Podesta emails has been shown to be inauthentic. So the supposed Russian
hacking simply revealed truth about Hillary, DNC, and MSM collusion and corruption.
Fail to mention that if hacking was done by or for US government to stop Hillary, blaming the Russians would be the most likely
disinformation used by US agencies.
Expect every pro-Hillary lapdog journalist - which is virtually all of them - in America will hyperventilate (Twitter is currently
on fire) about this latest fact-free, anti-Trump political stunt for the next nine days.
Or, as a reader put it, this is a soft coup attempt by leaders of Intel community and Obama Admin to influence the Electoral College
vote, similar to the 1960s novel " Seven Days in May
."
Once again it's a case of "watch the shiny object"... The "secret CIA report" seems to focus on who leaked the documents to Wikileaks
and not the content of those documents... The left have not refuted that the emails are real, just who leaked them to Assange...
Fuck 'em, if they keep Trump from the white house there will be revolution...
"Aside from its instigation of coups and alliances with right-wing juntas, Washington sought to more subtly influence elections
in all corners of the world. And so did Moscow. Political scientist
Dov Levin calculates that the "two powers intervened in 117 elections around the world from 1946 to 2000 - an average of once
in every nine competitive elections."
In the late 1940s, the newly established CIA cut its teeth in Western Europe, pushing back against some of the continent's
most influential leftist parties and labor unions. In 1948, the United States propped up Italy's centrist Christian Democrats
and helped ensure their electoral victory against a leftist coalition, anchored by one of the most powerful communist parties
in Europe. CIA operatives gave millions of dollars
to their Italian allies and helped orchestrate what was then
an unprecedented, clandestine propaganda campaign
: This included forging documents to besmirch communist leaders via fabricated sex scandals, starting a mass letter-writing
campaign from Italian Americans to their compatriots, and spreading hysteria about a Russian takeover and the undermining of the
Catholic Church.
"We had bags of money that we delivered to selected politicians, to defray their political expenses, their campaign expenses,
for posters, for pamphlets," recounted F. Mark Wyatt
, the CIA officer who handled the mission and later participated in more than 2½ decades of direct support to the Christian
Democrats.
This
template spread everywhere : CIA operative Edward G. Lansdale, notorious for his efforts to bring down the North Vietnamese
government, is said to have run the successful 1953 campaign of Philippines President Ramon Magsaysay. Japan's center-right Liberal
Democratic Party was backed with secret American funds through the 1950s and the 1960s. The U.S. government and American oil corporations
helped Christian parties in Lebanon win crucial elections in 1957 with briefcases full of cash.
In Chile, the United States prevented Allende from winning an election in 1964. "A total of nearly four million dollars
was spent on some fifteen covert action projects, ranging from organizing slum dwellers to passing funds to political parties,"
detailed a Senate
inquiry in the mid-1970s that started to expose the role of the CIA in overseas elections. When it couldn't defeat Allende at
the ballot box in 1970, Washington decided to remove him anyway."
A US Official has claimed the Russians are out to get Merkel in a cyber campaign.
A CIA probe confirms Moscow helped Trump win the election.
"In both cases, said the official, Mr. Putin's campaigns in both Europe and the US are intended to disrupt and discredit the
Western concept of democracy by promoting extremist candidates, parties, and political figures."
Both WAPO , & C.TODD would NOT be missed. Per Todd: "How helpful is it for the CIA's reputation around the world if the next US
questions their findings so publicly?"
Todd is concerned about The CIA's "Reputation" ?????? AS IF its current rep is wonderful??? - TODD: There is no "reputation"
to damage!!! Lame brain !!
17 intelligence agencies? Is this some dystopian record?
"There's a lot of innuendo, lots of circumstantial evidence, that's it."
So these 'intelligence' agencies are in the same boat as the pizzgate crowd. The main difference is after failing to produce
any actionable evidence the pizzagate crowd will loose interest and move on. We still have to give the bureaucrats at these intelligence
agencies a paycheck next month.
Russians are training the illegals in secret camps in the Sierra Madre mountains before they are released into the US. I was there
and saw it. Bigfoot was guarding the entrance.
Obama & The Presstitutes: Legalized DOMESTIC Propaganda to American Citizens The National Defense Authorization Act of July
2013 (NDAA) included an amendment that legalized the use of propaganda on the American public. The amendment - originally proposed
by Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) and Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and passed – nullified the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which explicitly forbids
information and psychological operations aimed at influencing U.S. public opinion. The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 allowed
U.S. propaganda intended to influence foreign audiences to be used on the domestic population.
Signed by .. Obama. This Act formalized systems in place covertly or ad hoc for some time.
Hillary was a big threat to Russia security. Trump was willing to work with Russia. Does anyone really believe Russia has
absolutely no part to play in Trump's win? Think again. They should and I think they did! Whether it was an illegal intervention
would be another question.
Thinking is one thing. Proving it is another. And what do you "think" about the CIA and Victoria Nuland's role in toppling
the elected government in the Ukraine? How about NATO expansion for decades under Clinton, Bush and Obama? Aren't these DIRECT
THREATS against Putin and Russia? Yes, they most certainly are. Fuck the CIA They do far more harm than good for the people in
the USA.
Hillary was a threat to life on Earth. She made it clear her intent was to wage war against Russia (and probably China). Obviously
the US has been conducting cyberwarfare, psyops and propaganda against Russia, as this has been documented in the past. Russia's
response may merely have been presenting authentic information via RT/Sputnik/etc. and putting clips of Putin online where he
sounds like a rational human being. In other words, they may be guilty of nothing more than providing Americans with the truth,
much as America did with the Soviets.
That was exactly what this brought to mind for me - a John F Kennedy moment, but not his assassination. I was thinking of an earlier
time well before this., ie, Nikita Krushev banging the table at the UN with his shoe. The state of the nation - people were in
a panic because Russia let it be known it was about to bring nuclear missiles into Cuba. It was a ploy by the Russians and Krushev
to de-escalate the tensions between the two countries over our attempt to take out Castro and the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
Fade to today. Why would the Russians care who won the presidency? Hillary the war monger or the Donald, the negotiator? Ahh,
maybe because we just brought into Turkey then consequently moved fifty nuclear missiles into position along Russia's border?
Who authorized and ordered that? Would that be any cause for worry by Russia or its citizenry? Is that or is it not total insanity?
Total fuckery? Obama and Hillary have put us four minutes away from a worldwide nuclear holocaust and now they are trying to make
Trump look like he was in bed with Putin. I don't know what Trump is but I do know he and Putin are the only two people on the
same wavelength right now, thank the electoral college.
You are delusional, dishonest, ignrorant, and proud of it. Fortunately, YOU LOST.
After a year of MSM propaganda and lies, you are now obsessed with "fake news" ironically the kind that totally obliterated
your propaganda for the lies that they were.
After a year of cackling laughter when every two bit dictator and NWO globalist bad mouthed Trump, like a child, you are OUTRAGED
that Russia might have not wanted Hillary to take power and make war against it. At least Russia didn't PUBLICALLY attempt to
influence an American election LIKE HILLARY'S NWO GOONS DID FROM THEIR EXECUTIVE OFFICES.
The popular vote: Ignoring fraud, which was proven in the Michigan recount, Hillary supporters are trying to make hay out of
her garnering 2.6 million more votes than Trump. Besides the fact that this is irrelevant in a campaign for the electoral college,
2.6 million votes is only somewhere @0.7% of the US population. That's hardly a mandate, especially when we consider she only
had that dubious edge over Trump, not the entire playing field. There were other candidate you know.
I'm sorry, I forgot, YOU LOST, and you think you can spoil our good time with the assertion that the better candidate was Hillary.
LOL, losers.
Trump is a wildcard, we all knew that when we voted for him.
Hillary is a witchcard and we all knew what she would do.
Bernie wasn't even a choice, Hillary had him as a straw man opponent.
Rand Paul to me was the best choice but establishment didn't want him, Gay media wanted Trump because they thought Hillary
could beat him and many of the Ron Paulers still butthurt over him endorsing Romney. Never mind Ron Paul didn't even put up a
fight when they robbed him of the nomination he won.
Go back to the 1960s. Phillp Graham and his wife rans Wa Post. Phillip got a young girl friend and started going off the reservation
saying WaPo was becoming a mouthpiece for the See Eye Ah. He was going to divorce his wife. He then was commited to an insane
asylum, released and then killed himself with a shotgun.
Phil's wife was the daughter of Eugene Meyer who ran The Fed.
Watergate was not what you were told. Nixon wanted tariffs and the Rockefellers (who myguess started the CIA - David was an
OSS officer in WW2) got mad at their boy Nixon. Nixon hated George Bush and did not trust him. All the info the Wa Post got on
Nixon was C**IIA info to Ben Bradley, editor of Wa Post, probably from George Bush. All of Nixons,relatively minor, dirt was passed
from See EYE Ah to Wa Post. Woodward and Bernstein just typed it up.
Bradley was brther in law to Cord Meyer (operation mockingbird). Cord's wife (Mary Pinchot-Meyer) had an ongoing affair with
JFK. After he was killed, she was gonna spill the beans like Marilyn Monroe. She was killed taking a walk. Ben BRadley and the
See EYE Ah rush to her apartment to get her diary.
the CIA has been arming Al Qaeda and (likely) 'ISIS'.
It is very probable US forces will be killed by these weapons.
Add to that the small issue of the hundreds of thousands of people, Christian and non-Salafist/non-Wahhabi Muslims murdered
by the Islamopsycho and Acadami etc. private western mercs.
There have to be good, patriotic Americans within CIA These intelligence reports are obvious fictions: The agitprop of
a neocon/zionist Deep State that fully intends to expand the wars, target Iran and Russia, while sending American blood and treasure
to pay their bill.
And now they are going to try to overturn an election in which Clinton not only lost by the rules of our system, but in which
Clinton's 'popular vote' win was the product of illegal immigrant and other fraudulent voting.
all of which means they are also willing to risk civil war.
Kennedy knew that the CIA was nothing but a group of Useless, Meddling, Lying Assholes, and made it known Publicly. Unfortunately
for him, things didn't turn out all that well. "Wetwork" is never in shortage with that crew.
Most CIA directors are/were members of the Rockefeller/CFR including: Morell, Petraeus, Hayden, Tenet, Deutch, Woolsey, Gates,
Webster, Casey, Turner, Bush, Colby, Schlesinger, Helms, McCone and Allen Dulles. Also every Fed chairman since WW2. See member
lists at cfr dot org.
"I have discussed Council on Foreign Relations Team A vs. Team B for 35 years. I have seen two anti-CFR people get through
the [presidential] screening... The domestic policies of both CFR wings are the same: the maintenance of the American Empire...
There is no possibility of [outsiders] capturing power at the top of either party..."
"... In principle, every router between the DNC server and Russia has the potential to be hacked, with a tunnel added to send the traffic somewhere else in the world with new source and destination addresses. This is known as router table poisoning. It is preventable but the mechanisms are rarely ever used because the security services want to be able to do this themselves. There are some nice logs of the NSA using this. ..."
"... In principle, someone at an ISP or backbone service could have had a laptop plugged into a switch or router to do the same thing, or lit up a strand of dark fibre to let some uber-wealthy business do this. And there's no shortage of uber-wealthy businesses who aren't keen on Democrats. This technique is used for local and remote network diagnostics, no reason it can't be used nefarious, it's not like the hardware cares why a wire is plugged in. ..."
"... Russia has an independent foreign policy and acts in what it perceives as it's own best interests. It has refused to become a vassal state of the West and is a threat to the Empire's full-spectrum dominance. Worst of all it has begun trading outside the $US in energy and other resources with China and Iran. ..."
"... Mainstream media are now busy repressing any news and any questioning about facts ..."
"... Western media are in full panic as Aleppo falls with all sorts of gruesome tales about the mistreatment of their favorite terrorists in Aleppo and a strange silence on the whereabouts of their '250K civilians' under siege ..."
"... I cant believe the Fake News outlets are still making a big deal about this issue. Obomber is leaving in a cloud of failure as he deserves ..."
"... "Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state." ― Noam Chomsky, Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda. ..."
"... New Canadian documentary - All Governments Lie. "It lucidly argues that powerful interests have been creating supercharged fake stories for decades to advance their own nefarious interests. And the institutional media have too often blithely played along." The Globe and Mail. ..."
"... No comments about Seth Rich the DNC staffer Assange hinted had leaked the Podesta emails to Wikileaks and was subsequently shot multiple times and died at 04:20 on a Washington DC street in a 'motiveless' crime in which none of his possessions were taken. ..."
"... The rise of the right wing in Europe is due to the fact that Social Democratic parties have completely sold out to neo-liberal agenda. ..."
"... So Putin's plan to undermine U.S. voter confidence was to simply show what actually happens behind the scenes at the DNC, how diabolical! ..."
"... Peter Schweizer, the author of Clinton Cash, has published a report that claims that that Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta was on the executive board of a foreign company that received $35 million from the Kremlin. "The company was a transparent Russian front, and how much Podesta was compensated - and for what - is unclear. In addition, Podesta failed to disclose his position on that board to the Federal government, as required by law," John Schindler of the Observer wrote. ..."
"... So it's true because the CIA said so. That's the gold standard for me. ..."
"... "Truth is Treason in the Empire of Lies" - Ron Paul ..."
"... At least Tucker Carlson is able to see through the BS and asks searching question. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRkeGkCjdHg ..."
"... President-elect Donald Trump's transition team said in a statement Friday afternoon that the same people who claim Russia interfered in the presidential election had previously claimed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. ..."
"... The neoliberal corporate machine is wounded but not dead. They will use every trick, ploy and opportunity to try to regain power. The fight goes on. ..."
"... Good occasion to substantiate the accusation which ,substantiated or not,will remind the "useful idiots" of the "change of regime " US policy and who started the Ukrainian crisis. ..."
"... Just another chapter in the sad saga of the Democrats unwillingness to admit they ran the worst candidate & the worst campaign in recent memory. It's not our fault! Them dirty Russkies did it! ..."
Well, if Rupert Mudroach, an American citizen, can influence the Australian elections, who gives a stuff about anyone else's
involvement in US politics?
The US loves demonising Russia, even supporting ISIS to fight against them.
The United States of Amnesia just can't understand that they are run by the military machine.
As Frank Zappa once correctly stated: The US government is just the entertainment unit of the Military.
Altogether the only thing people are accusing the Russians of is the WikiLeaks scandal. And in hindsight of the enormous media
bias toward Trump it really comes of as little more than leveling the playing field. Hardly the sort of democratic subversion
that is being suggested.
And of course there is another problem and that is in principle, the DNC server could have had malware in an e-mail that set
up a NAT entry that made the connecting computer appear somewhere else, with the entry deleted afterwards. Typically, IP table
modifications aren't logged, so this would not be detectable.
In principle, the DNC server could have had malware in an e-mail that ran a SED script at a specific time that changed any
occurrence of one IP address with another. Not sure anyone would bother with this, but it's why good system admins place so much
emphasis on securing logs. However, it's obvious we're not talking about good admins.
In principle, every router between the DNC server and Russia has the potential to be hacked, with a tunnel added to send the
traffic somewhere else in the world with new source and destination addresses. This is known as router table poisoning. It is
preventable but the mechanisms are rarely ever used because the security services want to be able to do this themselves. There
are some nice logs of the NSA using this.
In principle, someone along the way could tap into the fibre, spoofing IP addresses and injecting/sniffing packets. The US
even has a submarine designed for this, but optics aren't complex and any number of neo-phone phreaks could have the hardware.
In principle, someone at an ISP or backbone service could have had a laptop plugged into a switch or router to do the same
thing, or lit up a strand of dark fibre to let some uber-wealthy business do this. And there's no shortage of uber-wealthy businesses
who aren't keen on Democrats. This technique is used for local and remote network diagnostics, no reason it can't be used nefarious,
it's not like the hardware cares why a wire is plugged in.
In principle, the supposed destination machine could have been hacked to relay the packets in encrypted form to the South Pole
or a college campus in Texas. There are many examples of client machines being hacked to do this. It's basically what zombie machines
are in botnets.
In practice, it is flat-out guaranteed that none of the security agencies could distinguish this from a Russian attack. Nothing
in the area monitored could tell the difference. We know, for a fact, that college kids spoofing a scan from China have fooled
the DoD and NSA on previous occasions, it has caused international incidents.
So we have known forms of attack that are known to exist, aren't complex and in some cases are already used for attacks. They
are 100% untraceable.
Don't know about Russians, but in the early 2000's the Ukrainian hackers had some nasty viruses embedded in email attachments
that could fuckup ARM based computers.
Russia has an independent foreign policy and acts in what it perceives as it's own best interests. It has refused to become
a vassal state of the West and is a threat to the Empire's full-spectrum dominance. Worst of all it has begun trading outside
the $US in energy and other resources with China and Iran.
Mainstream media are now busy repressing any news and any questioning about facts, as the last battle in their support to jidaists
fighting the Syrian Army. This is the dark pit where our so called free press has fallen into.
Yep had a chat with an army mate yesterday asked him what the fcuk the supposed head of MI6 was on about regarding Russian support
for Syrian govt suggesting Russian actions made terrorism more likely here in UK. He shrugged his shoulders and said he hoped
Putin wiped the terrorists out...
Western media are in full panic as Aleppo falls with all sorts of gruesome tales about the mistreatment of their favorite terrorists
in Aleppo and a strange silence on the whereabouts of their '250K civilians' under siege
Of course no news on the danger to the civilians of W,Aleppo, who have been bombarded indiscriminately for months by the 'moderates'
in the east of the city or the danger to the civilians of Palmyra, Mosul or al Bab.
I cant believe the Fake News outlets are still making a big deal about this issue. Obomber is leaving in a cloud of failure as
he deserves.
I´ll still look for the Guardian articles on football which are excellent.
Cheers!
The Sanders movement inside the Democratic party did offer some hope but this was snuffed out by the DNC and the Clinton campaign
in collusion with the media. This is what likely caused her defeat in November and not some Kremlin intrigue.
"Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state."
― Noam Chomsky, Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda.
New Canadian documentary - All Governments Lie. "It lucidly argues that powerful interests have been creating supercharged fake
stories for decades to advance their own nefarious interests. And the institutional media have too often blithely played along."
The Globe and Mail.
No comments about Seth Rich the DNC staffer Assange hinted had leaked the Podesta emails to Wikileaks and was subsequently shot
multiple times and died at 04:20 on a Washington DC street in a 'motiveless' crime in which none of his possessions were taken.
Distract the masses with bullsh*t , nothing new...
Trump needs to double up on his personal security, he has doubled down on the CIA tonight bringing upmtheir bullsh*t on WMD. Thing
are getting interesting...
"If we can revert to the truth, then a great deal of one's suffering can be erased, because a great deal of one's suffering is
based on sheer lies. "
R. D. Laing
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
US politicians and the MSM depend on sheer lies.....
They are playing a game. They are playing at not playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they
will punish me. I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.
R. D. Laing
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
I'm sick of jumping through their hoops - how about you?
"Tin Foil Hat" Hillary--
"This is not about politics or partisanship," she went on. "Lives are at risk, lives of ordinary people just trying to go about
their days to do their jobs, contribute to their communities. It is a danger that must be addressed and addressed quickly."
We fail to see how Russian propaganda has put people's lives directly at risk. Unless, of course, Hillary is suggesting that
the increasingly-bizarre #Pizzagate swarm journalism campaign (which apparently caused a man to shoot up a floor tile in a D.C.
pizza shop) was conjured up by a bunch of Russian trolls.
And this is about as absurd as saying Russian trolls were why Trump got elected.
"It needs to be said," former counterintelligence agent John R. Schindler (who, by the way, believes Assange and Snowden are
both Russian plants), writes in the Observer, "that nearly all of the liberals eagerly pontificating about how Putin put Trump
in office know nothing about 21st century espionage, much less Russia's unique spy model and how it works. Indeed, some of the
most ardent advocates of this Kremlin-did-it conspiracy theory were big fans of Snowden and Wikileaks -- right until clandestine
Russian shenanigans started to hurt Democrats. Now, they're panicking."
(Nonetheless, #Pizzagate and Trump, IMHO, are manifestations of a population which deeply deeply distrusts the handlers and
gatekeepers of the status quo. Justified or not. And with or without Putin's shadowy fingers strumming its magic hypno-harp across
the Land of the Free. This runs deeper than just Putin.)
Fake news has always been around, from the fake news which led Americans to believe the Pearl Harbor attack was a surprise
and completely unprovoked .
To the fake news campaigns put out by Edward Bernays tricking women into believing cigarettes were empowering little phallics
of feminism. (AKA "Torches of Freedom.")
This War on Fake News has more to do with the elites finally realizing how little control they have over the minds of the unwashed
masses. Rather, this is a war on the freaks, geeks and weirdos who've formed a decentralized and massively-influential media right
under their noses.
and there may be some truth to that. An article says has delved into financial matters in Russia.
Kremlin Connection? The TRUTH About Hillary's Shady Ties To Russia REVEALED
Find out why insiders say Clinton has some explaining to do.
Americans have no idea just how closely Hillary Clinton is tied to the Kremlin! That's the shocking claim of a new report that
alleges the Democratic nominee is secretly pals with Vladimir Putin and his countrymen.
Peter Schweizer, the author of Clinton Cash, has published a report that claims that that Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta
was on the executive board of a foreign company that received $35 million from the Kremlin. "The company was a transparent Russian
front, and how much Podesta was compensated - and for what - is unclear. In addition, Podesta failed to disclose his position
on that board to the Federal government, as required by law," John Schindler of the Observer wrote.
As Radar previously reported, when Clinton was secretary of state, she profited from the "Russian Reset," a failed attempt
to improve relations between the U.S. and Russia.
chweizer wrote, "Many of the key figures in the Skolkovo process - on both the Russian and U.S. sides - had major financial ties
to the Clintons. During the Russian reset, these figures and entities provided the Clintons with tens of millions of dollars,
including contributions to the Clinton Foundation, paid for speeches by Bill Clinton, or investments in small start-up companies
with deep Clinton ties." Schweizer also details "Skolkovo," a Silicon Valley-like campus that both the U.S. and Russia worked
on for developing biomed, space, nuclear and IT technologies. He told the New York Post that there was a "pattern that shows a
high percentage of participants in Skolkovo who happen to be Clinton Foundation donors."
So it's true because the CIA said so.
That's the gold standard for me.
So let me be the first to thank Russia for providing us with their research.
Instead of assassination, coup or invasion, they simply showed us our leaders' own words when written behind the public's backs.
I'm no fan of Putin, but this was a useful bit of intelligence you've shared with us.
Happy Christmas, Vlad.
Next time why not provide us with the email of all our banks and fossil fuel companies; you can help us clean up both political
parties with one fell swoop that way.
The U.S. is getting what it deserves, IF Russia was even dumb enough to meddle. The government in this country has been meddling
in other countries' affairs sixty years, in the Middle East, in South America and other places we don't even know about. The result
is mayhem, all in the 'interests' of the U.S., as it is described.
Where's the gap in this logic:
A) The American public has been offered ZERO proof of hacking by the Russian government to alter our election.
B) Even if true, no one has disputed the authenticity of the emails hacked.
C) Therefore, the WORST Russia could have done is show us who are own leader are when they don't think we're listening.
D) Taken together, this article is pretty close to fake news, and gives us nothing that should outrage us much at this time --
unless we are trying to foment war with Russia or call for a military coup against the baboon about to take the oath of office.
Hacking by unnamed individuals. No direct involvement of the Russian government, only implied, alleged, etc. Seems to me that
if Hillary had obeyed the law and not schemed behind the scenes to sabotage Bernie S. there would have been nothing to leak! Really
this is all about being caught with fer fingers in the cookie jar. Does it matter who leaked it? Did the US public not have a
right to know what the people they were voting for had been up to? It's a bit like the governor of a province being filmed burgling
someone's house and then complaining that someone had leaked the film to the media, just when he was trying to get re-elected!
It is called passing the buck, and because of the underhanded undermining of Bernie Sanders, who was winning, we have Trump. Thank
you Democratic party.
I am disappointed that the Guardian gives so much prominence to such speculation which is almost totally irrelevant. Why would
we necessarily (a) believe what the superspies tell us and (b) even if it is true why should we care?
I am also very disappointed at the Guardians attitude to Putin, the elected leader of Russia, who was so badly treated by the
US from the moment he took over from Yeltsin. I was in Russia as a visitor around that time and it was obvious that Putin restored
some dignity to the Russian people after the disastrous Yeltsin term of office. If the US had been willing to deal with him with
respect the world could be a much better place today. Instead the US insisted in trying to subvert his rule with the support of
its supine NATO allies in order to satisfy its corporate rulers.
If this is true, the US can hardly complain. After all, the US has a long record of interfering in other countries' elections--including
CIA overthrow of elected governments and their replacement with murderous, oppressive, right-wing dictatorships.
If the worst that Russia did was reveal the truth about what Democratic Party figures were saying behind closed doors, I'd
say it helped correct the unbalanced media focus on preventing Trump from becoming President. Call it the globalization of elections.
First, the government has yet to present any persuasive evidence that Russia hacked the DNC or anyone else. All we have is that
there is Russian code (meaningless according to cyber-security experts) and seemingly baseless "conclusions" by "intelligence"
officials. In other words, fake news at this point.
Second, even if true, the allegation amounts to an argument that Russia presented us with facts that we shouldn't have seen.
Think about that for a while. We are seeing demands that we self-censor ourselves from facts that seem unfair. What utter idiocy.
This is particularly outrageous given that the U.S. directly intervenes in the governance of any number of nations all the
time. We can support coups, arm insurgencies, or directly invade, but god forbid that someone present us with unsettling facts
about our ruling class.
This nation has jumped the shark. The fact that Trump is our president is merely confirmation of this long evident fact. That
fighting REAL NEWS of emails whose content has not been disputed is part of our war on "fake news," and the top priority for some
so-called liberals, promises only worse to come.
>> Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said Russia had "succeeded" in "sow[ing] discord" in the
election, and urged as much public disclosure as is possible.
What utter bullshit. The DNC's own dirty tricks did that. Donna Brasille stealing debate questions and handing them to Hillary
so that she could cheat did that. The FBIs investigation into Hillary did that. Podesta's emails did that. The totally one-sided
press coverage (apart from Fox) of the election did that. But it seems the american people were smart enough to see through the
BS and voted for trump. Good for them.
And we're gonna need a lot more than the word of a few politicised so-called intelligence agencies to believe this russo-hacking
story. These are the same people who lied about Iraqi WMDs so they are proven fakers/liars. These are also the same people who
hack EVERYONE else so I, quite frankly, have no sympathy even of the story turns out to be true.
Announce "consensus" (not unanimous) "conclusion" based in circumstantial evidence now, before the Electoral College vote,
then write a report with actual details due by Jan 20.
Put a proven liar in charge of writing the report on Russian hacking.
Fail to mention that not one of the leaked DNC or Podesta emails has been shown to be inauthentic. So the supposed Russian hacking
simply revealed truth about Hillary, DNC, and MSM collusion and corruption.
Fail to mention that if hacking was done by or for US government to stop Hillary, blaming the Russians would be the most likely
disinformation used by US agencies.
Expect every pro-Hillary lapdog journalist - which is virtually all of them - in America will hyperventilate (Twitter is currently
on fire) about this latest fact-free, anti-Trump political stunt for the next nine days.
Or, as a reader put it, this is a soft coup attempt by leaders of Intel community and Obama Admin to influence the Electoral College
vote, similar to the 1960s novel "Seven Days in May."
When the Department Of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security release a joint
statement it is not without very careful consideration to the wording.
Therefore, to understand what is known by the US intelligence services one must analyse the language used.
This is very telling:
"The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona
are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts."
Alleged:
adjective [attributive]
said, without proof, to have taken place or to have a specified illegal or undesirable quality
Consistent:
adjective
acting or done in the same way over time
Method:
noun
a particular procedure for accomplishing or approaching something
Motivation:
noun
a reason or reasons for acting or behaving in a particular way
So, what exactly is known by the US intelligence services?
Well what we can tell is:
the alleged (without proof) hacks were consistent (done in the same way) with the methods (using a particular procedure) and motivations
(and having reason for doing so) with Russian State actions.
There is absolutely no certainty about this whatsoever.
Thank God Obama will be out of office soon. He is the biggest disappointment ever. He has ordered the death of THOUSANDS via drone
strikes in other people's countries and most of the deaths were innocent bystanders. If President Xi of China or Putin were to
do that we would all be calling them tyrannical dictators and accusing them of a back door invasions. But somehow people are brainwashed
into thinking its ok of the US president to do such things. Truly sickening.
Says the CIA the organisation set up to destabilise governments all over the world. Lol.....
Congratulations for keeping a straight face I hope Trump makes urgently needed personnel changes in the alphabet soup agencies
working against humanity for very many years.
This is an extremely dangerous game that Obama and the political elites are playing.
The American political elites - including senetors, bankers, investors, multinationals et al, can feel power and control slipping
away from them.
This makes them very dangerous people indeed - as self-preservation and holding onto power is their number one priority.
What they're aiming to do ( a child can see what's coming ), is to call into question the validity of Trump's victory and blame
the Russians for it.
The elites are looking to create chaos and insurrection, to have the result nullified and to vilify Putin and Russia.
American and Russian troops are already lined up and facing each other along the Eastern European borders and all it takes
is one small incident from either side.
And all because those that have ruled the roost for so many decades ( in the White house, the 2 houses of Congress and Wall
St ), simply cannot face losing their positions of power, wealth and political influence.
They're out to get Trump, the populists and President Putin.
This is starting to feel like an attempt to make the Trump presidency appear illegitimate. The problem is that it could actually
make the democrats look like sore losers instead. We've had the recount, now it's foreign interference. This might harm them in
2020.
I don't like that Trump won, but he did. The electoral college system is clearly in the constitution and all sides understood
and agreed to it at the campaign commencement. Also some, by no means all, of commenters saying that the popular vote should win
have also been on referendum BTL saying the result isn't a legitimate leave vote, make your minds up!
I don't want Trump and I wanted to remain but, by the rules, my sides lost.
Yet in August, Snowden warned that the recent hack of NSA tied cyber spies was not designed to expose Hillary Clinton, but rather
a display of strength by the hackers, showing they could eventually unmask the NSA's own international cyber espionage and prove
the U.S. meddles in elections around the world.
Will the CIA be providing evidence to support these allegations or is it a case of "just trust us guys"? In any event, hypocrisy
is a national sport for the Yanks. According to a Reuters article 9 August 2016 "NSA operations have, for example, recently delved
into elections in Mexico, targeting its last presidential campaign. According to a top-secret PowerPoint presentation leaked by
former NSA contract employee Edward Snowden, the operation involved a "surge effort against one of Mexico's leading presidential
candidates, Enrique Peña Nieto, and nine of his close associates." Peña won that election and is now Mexico's president.
The NSA identified Peña's cellphone and those of his associates using advanced software that can filter out specific phones
from the swarm around the candidate. These lines were then targeted. The technology, one NSA analyst noted, "might find a needle
in a haystack." The analyst described it as "a repeatable and efficient" process.
The eavesdroppers also succeeded in intercepting 85,489 text messages, a Der Spiegel article noted.
Another NSA operation, begun in May 2010 and codenamed FLATLIQUID, targeted Pena's predecessor, President Felipe Calderon.
The NSA, the documents revealed, was able "to gain first-ever access to President Felipe Calderon's public email account."
At the same time, members of a highly secret joint NSA/CIA organization, called the Special Collection Service, are based in
the U.S. embassy in Mexico City and other U.S. embassies around the world. It targets local government communications, as well
as foreign embassies nearby. For Mexico, additional eavesdropping, and much of the analysis, is conducted by NSA Texas, a large
listening post in San Antonio that focuses on the Caribbean, Central America and South America."
Breaking news! CIA admits people in USA aren't smart enough to vote for the person right person. Why blame Russians now?
Come on. Let's move on and enjoy the mess Trump will start. This is going to be worse than GWB.
We should all just enjoy the political comedy programs.
The CIA accusing a foreign power of interfering in the election of a showman for president - it would take me all day top cite
the times that this evil criminal organisation has interfered in the affairs of other countries, ordered assassinations, coups
etc. etc. etc
Yes like the "help" the CIA gave to the Taliban, Bin Laden and Co. when the Russians were in Afghanistan.
Then these dimwits from the CIA who taught Bin Laden and Co guerrilla warfare totally "missed" 9/11 and Twin Towers with all their
billions of funding.
So basically this is a total load of crap and if you think we are going to believe any reports vs. Russia these fools at the CIA
are going to publish then think again.
During the election our media was exposed as in essence a propaganda tool for the Democrat campaign and they continue the unholy
alliance after the election
Pathetic move from an organisation that created ISIS and is single handling every single conflict in the world. Here we have a
muppet president that for once wants to look after USA affairs internally and here we have a so alleged independent organisation
that wants to keep bombing and destabilising the world. Didn't Trump said he wanted to shake the FBI and CIA ? Who is going to
stop this machine of treachery ? : south America, middle east ...Asia ... they put their fingers on to create a problem- solution
caveat wereas is to create weapons contracts /farma or construction and sovereign debt . But it never tricles down to the layperson
..
"We are Not calling into question the election results"
next White House sentence - "Just the integrity.. " WTF
What more do you need to know - Bullshit Fake News.. propaganda, spoken by the youngest possible puppet boy White House Rep.
who almost managed to have his tie done up..
I am bookmarking this guy, for a laugh! White House Fake Newscaster ..:)
Worth watching the sides of his mouth onto his attempt to engage you with the eyes, but blinking way too much before, during
and after the word "Integrity".. FAKE!
His hand signals.. lmfao, so measured, how sweet.. now sack the sycophants --
People should know that these Breaking News stories we see in Western media on BBC, Guardian etc, about Russian interference are
in fact from Wash Post and NY Times quoting mysterious sources within the CIA
Of course we know that Wash Post and NY Times were completely objective during the election and didn't favor any party
Russia made Hillary run the most expensive campaign ever, spending 1.2 billion dollars.
Russia stole Hillary's message to the working people and gave her lousy slogans
My real comment is below, but work with me, for a moment.
So, since 2008, eh? Barack has thought carefully, with a legal mind.
Can't we somehow blame the Russians for the whole Economic collapse.. coming soon, Wall Street Cyber Crash, screwed up sKewed
up systems of Ponzi virus spiraling out of control..
blame the Russians , logic, the KGB held the FED at gunpoint and said "create $16.2 Trillion in 5 working days"
jeez, blame anything and anybody except peace prize guy Obama, the Pope, Bankers & Israel..
Now can we discuss the Security of the Pound against Cyber Attack.. what was it 6% in 2 minutes, early on Sunday morning, just
over month ago.. whoosh!
It seems more important than discussing an election where the result was always OBVIOUS!
And we called it, just like Kellyanne Conway..
Who is Huma Abedin? I wish to know and hear her talking to Kellyanne Conway, graciously in defeat.. is that so unreasonable?
********
Obama wishes to distract from exceedingly poor judgement, at the very minimum....
after his Greek Affair with Goldman Sachs.. surely.
As for his other Foreign Policy: Eternal Shame, founded on Fake News!
Obama the Fake News Founder to flounder over the Russians, who can prove that he, Obama supports & supported Terrorism!
Thus this article exists, to create doubt over the veracity of evidence to be presented over NATO's involvement in SYRIA! Obama
continues to resist, or loose face completely..
Just ask Can Dundar.... what he knows now and ask Obama to secure the release of Can Dundar's wife's passport, held for no
legitimate reason in Turkey! This outrageous stand off, from Erdogan & Obama to address their failures and arrogant disrespect
of Woman and her Legal Human Rights is Criminal.. & a Sickness of Mind that promotes Dictatorship!
Mainstream Media - Fake News.. for quite some time!
& Obama is guilty!
The one certainty of the US/EU led drive to remove an elected leader just in their 2nd year after an election that saw them
gain 47% of the popular vote was the Russki response, its borders were immediately at open 'threat' from any alliance. NATO or
otherwise, the deep sea ports of eastern Ukraine which had always been accessed by the Russki fleets would lose guaranteed access
etc....to believe the West was surprised by this action, would be to assume the US Generals were as stupid as the US administration,
they knew exactly the response of the Russkis & would have made no difference if their leader had been named Putin or Uncle Tom
Cobbly.
In some ways the Russkis partitioning of the East of Ukraine could well minimise the possibility of a world conflict as the
perceived threat is neutralised by the buffer.
The Russkis cyber doodah is no different to our own the US etc, they're all 'at it' & all attempt to inveigle the others in
terms of making life difficult.....not too sure Putin will be quite as comfortable with the Pres Elects 3 Trumpeteers though as
the new Pressie looks likely to open channels of communications but those negotiations might well see a far tougher stance......still,
in truth, all is never fair in love or war
.....that the CIA is not only suddenly involved, but suddenly at the forefront, may well reflect President-elect Trump's stated
policy intentions being far removed from those that the CIA has endorsed, and might be done with an eye toward undermining Trump's
position in those upcoming policy battles.
At the center of those Trump vs. CIA battles is Syria, as the CIA has for years pushed to move away from the ISIS war and toward
imposing regime change in Syria. Trump, by contrast, has said he intends to end the CIA-Saudi program arming the Syrian rebels,
and focus on fighting ISIS. Trump was even said to be seeking to coordinate anti-ISIS operations with Russia.
The CIA allegations could easily imperil that plan, as so long as the allegations remain part of the public discourse, evidence
or not, anything Trump does with respect to Russia is going to have a black cloud hanging over it. http://news.antiwar.com/2016/12/09/cia-claims-russia-intervened-to-get-trump-elected
/
Oh dear Obama trolls? Food for your starved thoughts:
Your degree of understanding IT is disturbing, especially given how dependent we are on it.
This is all very simple. The process by which you find out if and how a machine was hacked was clearly documented in the Russian
"Internet Audit", run by a group of Grey Hats.
Grey Hats: People concerned about security who perform unauthorized hacks for relatively benign purposes, often just notifying
people of how their system is flawed. IT staff have mixed reactions(!), the illegality is not disputed but the benefit of not
being hit by a Black Hat first can be considerable at times. Differentiation is rare, especially as some hacktivist groups belong
here, causing no damage beyond reputational by flagging activity that is not acceptable to the hacktivists.
Black Hats: These are the guys to worry about. These include actually destructive hacktivists. These are the ones who steal
data for malicious purposes, disrupt for malicious purposes and just generally act maliciously.
Nothing in reports indicates if the DNC hack was Grey Hat or Black Hat, but it should be obvious that there is a difference.
IP addresses and hangouts - worthless as evidence. Anyone can spoof the former, happens all the time (NMap used to provide
the option, probably still does), Grey Hats and Black Hats alike have the latter and may break into other people's. It's all about
knowing vulnerabilities.
That voting machines were even on the Internet is disturbing. That they and the DNC server were improperly configured for such
an environment is frightening - and possibly illegal.
The standard sequence of events is thus:
Network intrusion detector system identifies crafted packet attacking known vulnerability.
In a good system, the firewall is set to block the attack at that instant.
If the attacker scans the network, the only machine responding to such knocks should be a virtual machine running a honeypot
on attractive-looking port numbers. The other machines in the zone should technically violate the RFCs by not responding to ICMP
or generating recognized error codes on unused/blocked ports.
The system logger picks up an event that creates a process that shouldn't be happening.
In a good system, this either can't happen because the combination of permissions needed doesn't exist, or it doesn't matter because
the process is root jailed and hasn't the privileges to actually do any harm.
The file alteration logger (possibly Tripwire, though the Linux kernel can do this itself) detects that a process with escalated
privileges is trying to create, delete or alter a file that it isn't supposed to be able to change.
In a good system with mandatory access controls, this really is impossible. In a good system with logging file systems, it doesn't
matter as you can instruct the filesystem to revert those specific alterations. Even in adequate but feeble systems, checkpoints
will exist. No use in a voting system, but perfectly adequate for a campaign server. In all cases, the system logs will document
what got damaged.
The correct IT manager response is thus:
Find out why the firewall wasn't defaulting to deny for all unknown sources and for unnecessary ports.
Find out why the public-facing system wasn't isolated in the firewall's DMZ.
Find out why NIDS didn't stop the attack.
Non-public user mobility should be via IPSec using certificates. That deals with connecting from unknown IP addresses without
exposing the innards of the system.
Lock down misconfigured network systems.
Backup files identified by file alteration detection as corrupt for forensic purposes.
Revert files identified by file alteration detection as corrupt to last good version.
Close permission loopholes. Everything should run with the fewest privileges necessary, OS included. On Linux, kernel permissions
are controlled via capabilities.
Establish from the logs if the intruder came through a public-facing application, an essential LAN service or a non-essential
service.
If it's a LAN service, block access to that service outside the LAN on the host firewall.
Run network and host vulnerability scanners to detect potential attack vectors.
Update any essential software that is detected as flawed, then rerun the scanners. Repeat until fixed.
Now the system is locked down against general attacks, you examine the logs to find out exactly what failed and how. If that line
of attack got fixed, good. If it didn't, then fix it.
Password policy should prevent rainbow attacks, not users. Edit as necessary, lock accounts that aren't secure and set the password
control system to ban bad passwords.
It is impossible from system logs to track where an intruder came from, unsecured routers are common and that means a skilled
attacker can divert packets to anywhere. You can't trust brags, in security nobody is honest. The sensible thing is to not allow
such events in the first place, but when (not if) they happen, learn from them.
If the USA is to investigate the effect of foreign governments 'corrupting' the free decisions of the American people in elections,
perhaps they could look into the fact that for the past three decades every Republican candidate for president, after they have
won the nomination of their party, has gone to just one foreign country to pledge their firm commitment/allegiance to that foreign
power, for the purpose of shoring up large blocks of donors prior to the actual presidential election. The effect is probably
more 'corrupting' than any leak of emails!
Obama should confess to creating ISIS, sustaining ISIS & utilising ISIS as a proxy army to have them do things that he knew US
soldiers could never be caught doing!!!
They then spoon fed you bullshit propaganda about who the bad guys were, without ever being to properly explain why the US
armed forces were prevented from taking any hostile action against ISIS, until they were FORCED TO, that is, when Putin let the
the cat out of the bag!!!
Hilarious. One would've thought Obama of all presidents would be reluctant to delve too deeply into this particular midden. As
the author of the weakest and most incompetent American foreign policy agenda since Carter's, it's much the likeliest that if
China or Russia have been hacking US elections, then by far the biggest beneficiary will have been himself.
cdm Begin forwarded message: > From: Lynn Forester de Rothschild <[email protected]> > Date: May 28, 2015 at 9:44:12 AM
EDT > To: Nick Merrill <[email protected]>, "Cheryl Mills ([email protected])" <[email protected]> > Subject: FW:
POLITICO Playbook > > Morning, > I am sure you are working on this, but clearly, the opposition is trying to undercut Hillary's
reputation for honesty (the number one characteristic people look for in a President according to most polls) ..and also to benefit
from an attack on wealth that Dems did the most to start I am sure we need to fight back against both of these attacks. > Xoxo
> Lynn > > By Mike Allen (@mikeallen; [email protected]), and Daniel Lippman (@dlippman; [email protected]) > > > > QUINNIPIAC
POLL, out at 6 a.m., "Rubio, Paul are only Republicans even close to Clinton": "In a general election, ... Clinton gets 46 percent
of American voters to 42 percent for Paul and 45 percent of voters to 41 percent for Rubio." Clinton leads Christie 46-37 ...
Huckabee 47-40 ... Jeb 47-37 ... Walker 46-38 ... Cruz 48-37 ... Trump 50-32. > > --"[V]oters say 53-39 percent that Clinton is
NOT honest and trustworthy, but say 60-37 ... that she has strong leadership qualities. Voters are divided 48-47 ... over whether
Clinton cares about their needs and problems." > > --RNC's new chart - "'Dead Broke' Clintons vs. Everyday Americans": "Check
out the chart below to see how many households in each state it would take to equal the 'Dead Broke' Clintons."
http://bit.ly/1Avg8iE
Blind leading the Blind.. & Obama knows that very well after it was clear that Clinton was NEVER trusted by the Voters, which
makes Debbie and the DNC look like a complete bunch of..
Idiots?!?! STILL BLAMING The RUSSIANS.... instead of themselves!
She was and always will be unelectable due to exceedingly poor judgement, across the board.
Who is in charge of Internet security in the US government? Because it seems full of holes. Last time it was the Chinese and this
time it's the Russians, yet not one piece of evidence to say where hacks have come from. How much are these world class Internet
security people paid? And why do they still have a job? People sitting in their bedrooms on a pc from stores like staples have
hacked their security regularly.
In 2016, he said, the government did not detect any increased cyber activity on election day itself but the FBI made public
specific acts in the summer and fall, tied to the highest levels of the Russian government. "This is going to put that activity
in a greater context ... dating all the way back to 2008."
Extremely vague. Seems like there is no evidence at all to suggest any Russian involvement, but they need to pretend otherwise.
Blah, blah, blah, Weapons of mass destruction... Apollo mission, etc
Ole, Russians exposed the DNC emails, we knew about that. I though this should investigate Russians vote rigging, but I guess
not. I for once welcome anyone who hacks my government and exposes their skeletons, so I can see what kind of dirty garbage I
had leading or potentially leading my country.
Maybe the DNC should play fair and not dirty next time and put a candidate forward without skeletons that still reek of rotting
flesh.
Don't believe any of this at all.
American has been thee most corrupt and disgusting western nation for decades, run by people who are now being shown for who they
really are and they're shitting themselves big time. The stakes don't get higher than this.
What a total load of double talk. There is zero integrity in anything CIA says or does since the weapons of mass destruction deal
or before that it was the Iran Contra deal and before that it was the Bay of Pigs. Now we have this rigging os the election results
based on zero evidence. The whole thing is just idiocy. What is Obama trying to achieve?The end game will be for Obama to go down
in history as ... let's just say he is not the smartest tool in the shed when it comes to being a so called world leader. Well
done Obama you have now completely trashed what is left of your legacy.
"CIA concludes Russia interfered to help Trump win election – report "
You might as well ask accountants to do a study on wether it's worthwhile to use an accountant. Part of the CIAs job is to
influence elections around the world to get US-Corporation friendly gov'ts in to power. So yes of course they are going to say
that a gov't can influence elections, if they said otherwise then they'd be admitting they're wasting money.
So, it was the Russians! I knew it must've been them, they're so sneaky. All HFC had was the total backing of the entire establishment,
including prominent Republican figures, the total fawning support of the entire main-stream media machine which carefully controlled
the "she's got a comfortable 3 point lead maybe even double-digit lead" narrative and the "boo and hiss" pantomime slagging of
her opponent. Plus the endless funds from the crooked foundation and murderous fanatics from the compliant Gulf states, and lost.
But hey, do keep this going please, it'll help the Trumpster get a second term! Trump/Nugent 2020.
Good point. Add that the whole election was dogged is the most glaring media bias and suddenly Russia comes off as simply leveling
the playing field a bit
The 'secret' enquiry reported to Congress that the CIA concludes etc, etc, etc. Then yet more revelations from 'anonymous sources'
are quoted in the Washington Post and The New York Times reaching the same conclusions.....talk about paranoia, or are the Democrats
guilty of news fakery of the highest order to deny the US voters....
Ooh Obama...there's a little snag about this investigation.
In principle, the DNC server could have had malware in an e-mail that set up a NAT entry that made the connecting computer
appear somewhere else, with the entry deleted afterwards. Typically, IP table modifications aren't logged, so this would not be
detectable.
In principle, the DNC server could have had malware in an e-mail that ran a SED script at a specific time that changed any
occurrence of one IP address with another. Not sure anyone would bother with this, but it's why good system admins place so much
emphasis on securing logs. However, it's obvious we're not talking about good admins.
In principle, every router between the DNC server and Russia has the potential to be hacked, with a tunnel added to send the
traffic somewhere else in the world with new source and destination addresses. This is known as router table poisoning. It is
preventable but the mechanisms are rarely ever used because the security services want to be able to do this themselves. There
are some nice logs of the NSA using this.
In principle, someone along the way could tap into the fibre, spoofing IP addresses and injecting/sniffing packets. The U.S.
even has a submarine designed for this, but optics aren't complex and any number of neo-phone phreaks could have the hardware.
In principle, someone at an ISP or backbone service could have had a laptop plugged into a switch or router to do the same
thing, or lit up a strand of dark fibre to let some uber-wealthy business do this. And there's no shortage of uber-wealthy businesses
who aren't keen on Democrats. This technique is used for local and remote network diagnostics, no reason it can't be used nefarious,
it's not like the hardware cares why a wire is plugged in.
In principle, the supposed destination machine could have been hacked to relay the packets in encrypted form to the South Pole
or a college campus in Texas. There are many examples of client machines being hacked to do this. It's basically what zombie machines
are in botnets.
In practice, it is flat-out guaranteed that none of the security agencies could distinguish this from a Russian attack. Nothing
in the area monitored could tell the difference. We know, for a fact, that college kids spoofing a scan from China have fooled
the DoD and NSA on previous occasions, it has caused international incidents.
So we have known forms of attack that are known to exist, aren't complex and in some cases are already used for attacks. They
are 100% untraceable.
Of course the Americans would never interfere in other people's elections would they?...........I imagine the Russians wanted
to avoid a nuclear war with war monger Hilary & who can blame them?
Y'know really all they seem to be looking possibly guilty of is the wikileaks scandal. Compare that to the enormous media bias
regarding Trump and suddenly the Russians at worst come off as evening the playing field so as to help an election be less biased...
Paranoia about Russia has arrived at the laughable, almost like the fable of the boy who cried wolf! Even the way the CIA statement
is worded makes you smile. "silk purse sows ear"? Everyone is clutching at straws rather than looking down the barrel at the truth......that
folks is what is missing from Western Politics......"The Truth" --
Obama expected the review to be completed before he leaves office...
Really?? Obama wants a "deep review" of internet activities surrounding the elections of 2008, 2012, and 2016; and he wants
this done in less than 40 days? And it encompasses voting stations throughout the 50 states? That's the definition of political
shenanigans.
Seeing as how the CIA interfered with Ukraine before and during the overthrow of Yanukovich, and with Moscow protests a few years
ago...... seems like everyone is always trying to interfere with each-other. Hypocrisy abounds
This is not really a fight against Trump. That is lost. This is an intramural fight among Democrats.
This is desperate efforts by the corporate Democrats to hang on to power after Hillary (again) lost.
Excuses. Allegations without sources given, anonymous.
Remember that the same people used the same media contacts to spread fake news that the Podesta leaks were faked, and tried
to shift attention from what was revealed to who revealed it.
if the Ruskies did it, there's something funny: they did it on Obama's watch and her protege, Hillary, lost it. The system is
a real mess in this case.
Interesting link. It raises a particularly salient question: assuming the Russians did indeed do it - and after the whole CIA
yellow cake thing in Iraq, no one could possibly doubt national intelligence agencies any more - does it particularly matter?
Did the Russians write the emails? The betrayal of Sanders, the poor protection on classified materials, the cynical,
vicious nonsense spewed out by the HRC campaign, the media collusion with the DNC and HRC: did the Russians do these things too?
Or was that Clinton and the DNC? Silly question, I'm sure.
Well, chief, the Wisconsin recount is in and the results are staggering: after the recount, Clinton has gained on Trump by 3 votes...
and Trump gained on Clinton by a heady six votes. One begins to wonder at the 'Manchurian candidate' claim.
It is precisely charades like this that millions in the US and around the world have given up on the establishment. Business as
usual or rather lying as usual will only alienate more not-so-stupid citizens. It speaks volumes about their desperation that
they're are actually employing such obviously infantile tactics on the Russia even as they continue to paper over Hillary's tattered
past. The result of the investigation is totally predictable..................Yes, the Russians were involved in hacking the elections,
but..........for reasons of national security, details of the investigative process and evidence cannot be revealed.
If the Russians really wanted Trump to win that means they helped Hillary win the Democratic primaries because Bernie would have
beat Trump.. There was a mess of hanky-panky going on to defeat Bernie, and deflecting the blame to a foreign actor should keep
the demonstrators off the streets.
If someone is gullible enough to believe the Russians did it they'd also believe that Elvis made Bigfoot hack the DNC. That's
even more plausible since bigfoot is just a guy who spends so much time sitting at his computer he lost all interest in personal
hygiene.
The Democrats are really desperate to find anything they can use to challenge the results of the election.
Either way they look foolish - openly investigating the possibility of Russian hacking which acknowledges that their electoral
systems aren't well secured, OR look really foolish if they find anything (whether real or faked).
The big question now is if, and how much, they will fake the findings of the investigation so that they can declare the
election results wrong, and put Clinton into the White House.
Clearly, it is a case of desperate times calling for desperate measures. It is incredible that one man can make the largest Western
nation look so ridiculous in the eyes of the world.
Pot calling the kettle black. Reveal fully what the CIA get up to all over the planet. The phoney intel America has used to go
to war causing countries to implode. The selective way they release information to project the picture they want. I am not convinced
that Russia is any better or any worse than the USA.
I can understand the Russians wanting Obama in 2008 and 2012 because he is a weak leader and totally incompetent.
I can also understand Putin preferring DJT to HRC.
It's about time the planet settled down a little bit, Trump and Putin will do more for world peace in the next year than Obama
achieved in his 8 wasted years in charge.
The Democrats have yet to realise the reason for their demise was not the racists, the homophobes, the KKK, the Deplorables,
the misogynists, the xenophobes etc etc etc.
It was Hillary Clinton.
Get over it, move on, stop whining, get out of your safe room, put the puppy down, throw the play dough away, stop protesting,
behave like an adult.
As much as I am enjoying the monumental meltdown of the left, it is getting sad now and I am starting to feel very sorry for
you.
What a sad bunch of clowns. But the time is ripe. You and your sort are done Obama, Hillary Clinton, Juncker, Merkel, Hollande,
Mogherini, Kerry, Tusk, Nuland, Albright, Breedlove, SaManThe Power and the rest of the reptiles. With all respect - mwuahahaha!
- you will soon sink into the darkness of the darkest places of history, but you won't be forgotten, no you won't!
As for the Podesta email. John Podesta was so stupid that he gave out his password in a simple email scam that any 8 year old
kid could have conducted. I wouldn't be surprised if Assange did it himself. Assange will be celebrating at the demise of Hillary.
Guys! Your side lost the election. Get over it & stop looking for excuses.
I don't think it was the Russians, it was just a lot of people got sick of being told what to think & how to behave by your
side of politics.
It is because people who disagree with you are either ignored, shut-down or called names with weaponised words such as "racist,
bigot, xenophobe, homophobe, islamophobe, you name it. You go out onto the streets chanting mindless slogans aimed at shutting
down debate. You have infiltrated academia and no journalism graduate comes out of a western univerity without a 60 degree lean
to the left. People of alternative views to what is now the dominant social paradigm are not permitted to speak at universities.
Once they were the vanguard of dangerous ideas. Now they are just sheep pens.
You have infiltrated the mainstream media so of course people need to go to Info Wars, Breitbart & Project Veritas to get the
other side to your one-sided argument.
Your side of politics has regulated the very words we speak so that we can't even express a thought anymore without being chanted
down, or shut down, prosecuted or sued.
There was once a time when it was the left who spoke up for freedom of speech. It was the left who demanded that a man be judged
by the content of his character & not the color of his skin & it was once the right who used to be worried about the Russians
taking over our institutions.
Have a look at yourselves. Look at what you've become. You've stopped being the guardians of freedom & now you have become
the very anti-freedom totalitarians you thought you were campaigning against.
Bleating about the "popular vote" doesn't cut it either. That's like saying, the other side scored more goals than us but we
had possession of the ball more times. It is sad for you but it is irrelevant.
Trump won the election! Get over it!
Let's see what sort of job he does before deciding what to do next.
In principle, the DNC server could have had malware in an e-mail that set up a NAT entry that made the connecting computer
appear somewhere else, with the entry deleted afterwards. Typically, IP table modifications aren't logged, so this would not be
detectable.
In principle, the DNC server could have had malware in an e-mail that ran a SED script at a specific time that changed any
occurrence of one IP address with another. Not sure anyone would bother with this, but it's why good system admins place so much
emphasis on securing logs. However, it's obvious we're not talking about good admins.
In principle, every router between the DNC server and Russia has the potential to be hacked, with a tunnel added to send the
traffic somewhere else in the world with new source and destination addresses. This is known as router table poisoning. It is
preventable but the mechanisms are rarely ever used because the security services want to be able to do this themselves. There
are some nice logs of the NSA using this.
In principle, someone along the way could tap into the fibre, spoofing IP addresses and injecting/sniffing packets. The U.S.
even has a submarine designed for this, but optics aren't complex and any number of neo-phone phreaks could have the hardware.
In principle, someone at an ISP or backbone service could have had a laptop plugged into a switch or router to do the same
thing, or lit up a strand of dark fibre to let some uber-wealthy business do this. And there's no shortage of uber-wealthy businesses
who aren't keen on Democrats. This technique is used for local and remote network diagnostics, no reason it can't be used nefarious,
it's not like the hardware cares why a wire is plugged in.
In principle, the supposed destination machine could have been hacked to relay the packets in encrypted form to the South Pole
or a college campus in Texas. There are many examples of client machines being hacked to do this. It's basically what zombie machines
are in botnets.
In practice, it is flat-out guaranteed that none of the security agencies could distinguish this from a Russian attack. Nothing
in the area monitored could tell the difference. We know, for a fact, that college kids spoofing a scan from China have fooled
the DoD and NSA on previous occasions, it has caused international incidents.
So we have known forms of attack that are known to exist, aren't complex and in some cases are already used for attacks. They
are 100% untraceable.
Joe Biden unwittingly gave the game up when he spoke to the press with indignation of the Russian hacks. The US would respond
in kind with a covert cyber operation run by the CIA First of all it would be the NSA, not the CIA Secondly, it's not covert when
you tell the press! Oh Joe, you really let the Obama administration down with that gaffe! Who would believe them now? A lot of
people it would seem. Mainly those still reeling from an election they were so vested in
Unfortunately our media has lost all credibility.
For years we were told it was necessary to remove the dictator Assad in Syria. The result, a country destroyed, migrant crisis
that fuelled Brexit and brought EU to its knees.
Now they are going to sell the 'foreign entities decided the US election'.
It's just a sad situation
Syria has been destroyed because Western client states in the Middle East wanted this to happen. Assad had a reasonably successful
secular government and our medieval gulf state allies felt. threatened by his regime. there was the little business of a pipeline,
but of course that would be called a "conspiracy theory".
If Obama has resources to spend on investigations, he should be investigating why the US is providing guided missiles to the terrorist
in Syria. We had such great hopes for him, and he has proved to be totally useless as a president. Rather than giving us leadership
and guidance he is looking under his bed for spooks. Just another example of his incompetence at a time when we needed leadership.
Looking for proof of espionage will be like trying to prove a negative and only result in a possible or at best a likely type
of result for no purpose. It would just be another case of an unsupported accusation being thrown about.
Facing up to the question of who is supplying weapons to terrorist would require the courage to take on the Military Industrial
Complex and he hasn't got it. Trump will be different.
If the russians did interfere in the USA elections perhaps is a bit of poetic justice.
The USA has interfere in Latin America for over hundred years and they have given us Batista, Somoza, Trujillo, Noriega, Pinochet,
Duvaliers , military juntas in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Streener in Paraguay to name a few. They all were narcissists, racists
and insecure. The american people love this type of leader now they got him in the white house may be from Russia with love. Empires
get destroyed from within, look at Little Britain now, maybe the same will happen soon in the USA.
Viva China , is far from Latin America
So if the US managed to somehow get rid of Russia and China, what would they do then? How would it justify hundreds of billions
in defense spending? Just remember, the US military industry desperately needs an external enemy to exist. Without it, there is
no industry.
No I disagree. I don't think it was a conpriscy. It was just decades of misinformation, lies, usually perpertrated by our esteemed
foreign minister. The man is a buffoon , liar and incompetent. It is quite amusing to see how inept, Incompotent and totally unsuited
this man child is to public office.
Another red herring that smacks of desperation. The final death throes of a failed administration. These carefully chosen words
reveal a lot. The email leaks were "consistent with the methods and motivations" of Russian hackers. In layman's terms its the
equivalent of saying "we haven't got a clue who it was but it's the kind of thing they would probably do". Don't expect a smoking
gun because it doesn't exist, otherwise we would have known about it by now.
It's not just the US who has accused Putin of meddling in their domestic affairs. Germany and the UK have made the same allegations.
Are they wrong too?
I think anyone with reasonable intelligence would take each accusation on a case by case basis. There is no doubt that Russia
conducts cyber operations, as the US and UK and Germany does. There is also little doubt that significant Russophobia exists,
particularly since the failed foreign attempt of regime change in Syria that was thwarted by Russia. On that last point many citizens
of the West are coming to the realisation that a secular government in Syria is preferable to one run by jihadists installing
crude sharia law (Libya was certainly a lesson). Furthermore, if Hillary Clinton had succeeded one dreads to think of the consequences
of her no-fly-zone plans. Thankfully she didn't succeed, no doubt in part to wikileaks revelations, who for the record stated
that did not result from Russian hacks
Hows the election recount going? You know the one this paper kept going on about a few weeks ago in Wisconsin that was supposed
to be motivated by "Russian Hacking" in the election? Not very well but you have gone quiet. Also I see the Washington Post has
been forced to backtrack for implying news outlets like Breitbart are Russian controlled on the advice of their own lawyers....after
all calling someone a Russian agent without a shred of evidence is seriously libellous and they know it. Russian agents to blame
yeah ok Obama no doubt the Easter Bunny will be next in your sights you fraud.
Look no further than Hillarys private server. Classified information sent and received and Obam was part of it. Obama is a liar
and a fraud who is now blaming the Russians for crooked Hillarys loss.
Feed the flames of the war mongers that want Russia and Putin to be our bogeyman.Feed the military industrial complex more billions.The
U.S. Defense budget is already 10 times that of Russia ,feed NATO already on Russia's boarder with tanks ,troops and heavy weapons.i
did expect more from this pres,... The lies ,mis information and propaganda has worked so well since the end of WW2,upon a public
who has been fed those lies {and is to busy with sports ,gadgets,games, alcohol and other drugs }for 70 yrs by a compliant,for
profit lap dog media more interested in producing infotainment and profits than supplying information..If you don't think the
"public" isn't very poorly informed and will believe anything ,..just look at who the next prez will be..
I don't think it's true that Trump voters were less informed than Clinton voters. The public knows that they all lie, they simply
choose the one who's lies most appeal to them.
Unfortunately Obama is not leaving office with dignity.
This action is another attempt to delegitimize the election of Trump. We already have the recount farce going on.
If Republicans had tried to delegitimize the election of Obama we know what the reaction from media would have been. An outcry
against antidemocratic and racist behaviour
The corporate media is so predictable at this point. The news cranks up the anti-Russia hysteria while the guys over in entertainment
roll out a slick fantasy about anti-Nazi resistance. It all adds up to a big steaming pile of crap but you hope it will push enough
buttons to keep the citizens chained to their their desks for another quarter. Don't bet on it. As a great American said at another
time of upheaval, you can't fool everyone forever...
Kremlin Connection? The TRUTH About Hillary's Shady Ties To Russia REVEALED
Find out why insiders say Clinton has some explaining to do.
Americans have no idea just how closely Hillary Clinton is tied to the Kremlin! That's the shocking claim of a new report that
alleges the Democratic nominee is secretly pals with Vladimir Putin and his countrymen.
Peter Schweizer, the author of Clinton Cash, has published a report that claims that that Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta
was on the executive board of a foreign company that received $35 million from the Kremlin. "The company was a transparent Russian
front, and how much Podesta was compensated - and for what - is unclear. In addition, Podesta failed to disclose his position
on that board to the Federal government, as required by law," John Schindler of the Observer wrote.
As Radar previously reported, when Clinton was secretary of state, she profited from the "Russian Reset," a failed attempt
to improve relations between the U.S. and Russia.
chweizer wrote, "Many of the key figures in the Skolkovo process - on both the Russian and U.S. sides - had major financial ties
to the Clintons. During the Russian reset, these figures and entities provided the Clintons with tens of millions of dollars,
including contributions to the Clinton Foundation, paid for speeches by Bill Clinton, or investments in small start-up companies
with deep Clinton ties." Schweizer also details "Skolkovo," a Silicon Valley-like campus that both the U.S. and Russia worked
on for developing biomed, space, nuclear and IT technologies. He told the New York Post that there was a "pattern that shows a
high percentage of participants in Skolkovo who happen to be Clinton Foundation donors."
Sour grapes at the liberation of Aleppo and their loss of face.
I'm surprised they haven't started asking about the missing 250K civilians,who must even now be languishing in Assad's dungeons.
Keeping that one for tomorrow probably.
When Cheney used the terror alert levels to keep the US population in the constant state of fear, the Democrats denounced it as
fear mongering. Now they're embracing the same tactics in the constant demonization of Russia. Look, it's raining today! Russia
must be trying to control the weather in the US! Get them! Utterly ridiculous.
The US has been the most bloodthirsty, aggressive nation in my lifetime. Where the US goes we obediently follow. Yet as Obama
(7 countries he's bombed in his presidency, not bad for a Nobel Prize Winner) continues to circle Russia with NATO on their borders.
We're continually spun headline news that Russia is the aggressor and is continually meddling in foreign affairs. We are the aggressors,
we are the danger to ourselves and it's we who are run by megalomaniac elites who pump us full of fear and propaganda.
Malicious cyberactivity... has no place in international community... No? When West does it, then it's for democratic purposes?
But invading countries on a humanitarian pretense does? So Democrats are still looking to blame Russia for everything not going
their way I see. This rhetoric didn't work for Clinton in the election and it won't now. Stop with this nonsense
The Egyptian Empire lasted millenum,
The Greek and Roman Empires a thousand years, give or take.
The Holy Roman Empire centuries.
The British and French circa 200 years.
The USSR about 70, the USA 70 and counting
This is just the cyclical death throes of empires played out at ever increasing speed before our very eyes.
This is exactly why we should never move to electronic voting. Can you imagine the lengths the IPA would go to ensure their men
security the power they need to roll out their neoliberal agenda? As a tax-free right wing think tank composed of rich like Rinehart,
Murdoch, Forrest, et al. the sky's the limit.
The five stages of dealing with psychological trauma: Anger, Denial, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. Hillary and the Democrats
are still at stage one and two. Obama is only beginning stage one as events dawn on him.
I really do feel the established media and its elite hierarchy are vexed by both the Trump victory and Brexit here in the UK.
Now the media attention turns to a report on another of its perpetual campaigns, namely Russia, and corruption in sport.
I'm not going to doubt the 'findings', but I know humans are corrupt ALL over the world, but it does strike me that no Western
outlet, ever prints anything positive about Russia. I mean - nothing, zero!
If, indeed, the Russian government gathered the DNC and Podesta info released by Wikileaks, the Russians did the American people
a favor by pulling back the curtain on behind the scenes scheming by Clinton campaign potentates.
Of course, I don't believe the Democratic claim that Clinton lost the election because of the Russians and the FBI.
US backed a coup, or set up a coup, to overthrow the democratically elected government in Ukraine which led to war. Putin's payback
seems fully justified.
Oh my, a foreign country may have had a tiny influence on a US Election.
How about investigating the overthrow of the Democratically elected Govt in Ukraine, or the influence the US has had on the
Syrian Govt, or even in Australia, where the Chinese Govt donates massive amounts of money to Political Parties (note, there's
no link of course between Chinese Govt donations and Chinese Companies being able to buy most of Australia and employ Chinese
Nationals in Australia on Chinese conditions and 500,000 Chinese Nationals being able to buy Real Estate in Sydney alone... none
whatsoever).
I'm not a policy or think tank wonk, but isn't Russia just a euphemism for China. Aren't their geopolitical interests linked.
You just say Russia because China has us by the financial balls (I'm sure the Guardian would prefer to NOT be censored on the
mainland) right? Package it that way and I'm on board. My love of Dostoevsky goes out the window. Albeit I still think Demons
one of the best novels ever written. Woke me up.
I'm all in favor of delegitimizing the incoming semi-fascist Trump/Pence regime, and find Obama's talk of a smooth transition
disgusting. However, I reject the appeal to Russophobia or other Xenophobia.
BTW, Obama and his collaborators like Diane Feinstein have done a lot to prepare the legal basis for fascistic repression under
the new POtuS.
I already know what the comission will find. They will find evidences that Iraq holds vast ammonúnt of weapons of mass destruction!
Oh wait, that was already used.
Obama has been as useless as his predecessor young Bush. His policies generally are in tatters and the US neo cons evil fantasy
of full spectrum dominance has met its death in Syria. Bravo.
After an election cycle with proven collusion between the DNC/Hillary Clinton campaign and our media, our media has the nerve
to come up with the term 'fake news'.
Hypocrisy at its finest
Nobody does paranoia like the yanks. To the rest of the world, the unedifying spectacle of the world's biggest bullies, snoops,
warmongers, liars and hypocrites complaining about how unfair life is, is pretty nauseating. Most of America's problems are home-grown.
And the final report will conclude with something along the lines of:
'After a thorough, exhaustive investigation of all relevant evidence concerning the potential of foreign interference in the United
States electoral process, the results of the investigation have shown that, although there remain troubling questions about the
integrity of U.S. cyber-security which should prompt immediate Congressional review, there has been uncovered no conclusive evidence
to support the conjecture that cyber attacks originating with any foreign actor, state or individual had any significant effect
on the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election, and that there is no cause or justification for the American People to question
the fairness of or lose faith in the electoral process and laid out by and carried out according to the Constitution.'
I do Holiday cards too.
Georgia's Secretary of State is accusing someone at the Department of Homeland Security of illegally trying to hack its computer
network, including the voter registration database.
In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, copied to the full Georgia congressional delegation, Georgia Secretary
of State Brian Kemp alleges that a computer with a DHS internet address attempted to breach its systems.
http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/309530-state-of-georgia-allegedly-accusing-homeland-security-of-attempted-hack
Wake up and smell the BS, the hacking is being done by people a lot nearer home.....
Oh dear, the GOP seem to have forgotten what they were saying about Putin and the Kremlin a short while back:
The continuing erosion of personal liberty and fundamental rights under the current officials in the Kremlin. Repressive
at home and reckless abroad, their policies imperil the nations which regained their self-determination upon the collapse of
the Soviet Union. We will meet the return of Russian belligerence with the same resolve that led to the collapse of the Soviet
Union. We will not accept any territorial change in Eastern Europe imposed by force, in Ukraine, Georgia, or elsewhere, and
will use all appropriate constitutional measures to bring to justice the practitioners of aggression and assassination.
..... prohibiting "fake" or "false" news would be a cure worse than the disease, i.e., censorship by other means. The government
cannot be trusted with distinguishing fake from genuine news because it has ulterior motives. News the government dislikes would
be conflated with fakery, and news the government approved would be conflated with truthfulness. Private businesses like Facebook
cannot be trusted with distinguishing fake from genuine news because its overriding mission is to make money and to win popularity,
not to spread truth. It would suppress news that risked injury to its reputation or profits but leave news that did the opposite
undisturbed. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/dec/5/reflections-fake-news
/
Uh excuse me but that sort of introspection doesn't fly. She was flawless and the blame rests solely on Russia/alt-right/Sanders/Third
Parties/Racism/Misogyny/Alignment of the stars/etc/etc
I thnk the idea that russia has world domination is quite laughable, what else they gonna be blamed for next, reduction of giraffe
population!Lol
I think a teeny wee paranoia is setting in, or outright deliberate propaganda, too obvious
Is this worse than when the two CIA operatives were caught searching through files in the Offices of the British Labour Party
about thirty years ago. What goes around comes around.
The CIA hacks have been destabalisuping Government for a at least seventy years.
One thing is pretty obvious paper ballots and a different ballot for each is much harder to rig.
It is ironic it takes a despot life key Trump to bring the issue to a head AFTER unexpectedly won.
"Is this worse than when the two CIA operatives were caught searching through files in the Offices of the British Labour Party
about thirty years ago. What goes around comes around."
The CIA were caught hacking into the US Congressional computers just 6 or so months ago. Nothing came out of it.
Based on the fact that the US 2000 (and possibly 2004) election was outright stolen by George Bush Jr., perhaps the propagandists
in the White House and media ought to be looking for a "Russian connection" in regards to our illustrious former president.
I'm shocked--shocked--to hear that our close Russian allies have done anything to influence and undermine the stability of other
countries. Preposterous accusation! And to try to become huge winners in the Western Hemisphere, by cheating? Vitriolic nonsense!
Many posters here actually believe that Good Old Russia should just stick with what they do best. That's poison!
Rather like the Litvenenko inquiry...full of maybe's and possibilities, with not a shred of hard, factual proof shown - demonstrating
that the order came from the Kremlin.
It's just a total accident that Putin's most vocal opponents keep getting shot in the head, gunned down on bridges, suffering
'accidents' or strange miscarriages of (sometimes post-mortem) 'justice' and fall victim to radiological state-enacted terrorism
in foreign countries. No pattern there, whatsoever.
I am at a loss. On the one hand, I hear about Russian economy in tatters, gas station posing as a country, deep crisis, economy
the size of Italy, rusty old military toys, aircraft carrier smoking out the whole Northern hemisphere, etc. On the other hand,
I hear about Russian threat all the time, which must be countered by massive build up of the US and EU military, Russia successfully
interfering in the elections in the beacon of democracy, the US, with 20 times greater economy, with powerful allies, the best
armed forces in the world, etc. Are we talking about two different Russias, or is this schizophrenia, pure and simple?
It's always easy to find reasons to fear something, added to that the psychology of the unknown, and we have the makings of very
powerful propaganda. Whatever Russia's level of corruption, and general society, I feel I cannot trust the Western media anymore
100%. There seems to be a equally sinister hidden agenda deep within Western Elites - accessing Russia's land, political and potential
wealthly resources must surely be one of them!? The longterm Western agenda/mission?
The Democratic Party's problem is Russia, which the President is rightly putting front and center. All Russians are the summit
of eviality, and must be endlessly scapegoated in order for Democrats to regain power for the nation's greater good.
Democrats' problems have nothing to do with corruption, glaring conflicts of interest, favoritism, ass-licking editors, crappy
data, lacking enthusiasm, and horribly poor judgement.
None of these issues need to be publicly addressed, being of no consequence to independent voters, and the President, Guardian,
et al. must continue their silent -- and "independent" -- vigil on such silly topics, if Democrats are to have any hope of cultivating
enough mindless, enraged, and abandoned sheep to bring them future victories.
I admire Trump, Putin & Farage. Don't agree with them but I have admiration for them. They show all the cunning, calculating,
resourcefulness that put the European race on top. Liberals don't like that and want to see the own people fall to the bottom.
Thankfuly the neoliberal elite are finishedm
Absurd nonsense - the third anti-Russian story of the day. Very little of this has much traction because of the sheer volume of
misinformation coming out about Russia. there are very good cogent reasons why the Democrats lost the US election - none of them
have anything to do with Russia.
I can't see a thing wrong with reviewing the last three election cycles, if there is any doubt at all and to put speculation to
bed, it should be done.
So the US intelligence servies aren't doing similar operations?
If they werent, heads would roll as they have a considerable budget. Did we learn nothing from Edward Snowden? Are Russia just
better at this? I doubt it.
I think both sides conduct themselves in a despicable manner so please dont call me a Putin apologist. Well, feel free actually,
I could'nt care less.
Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election
US interference:
COUNTRY OR STATE Dates of intervention Comments
VIETNAM l960-75 Fought South Vietnam revolt & North Vietnam; one million killed in longest U.S. war; atomic bomb threats in
l968 and l969.
CUBA l961 CIA-directed exile invasion fails.
GERMANY l961 Alert during Berlin Wall crisis.
LAOS 1962 Military buildup during guerrilla war.
142 more rows
the vietnam fiasco alone is enough to disqualify america from any criticism about interference in internal affairs
they practically destroyed the country
The pathetic way the media are pushing this big-bad-Russians meme is a little depressing.
This "hack" is totally fictional, the wikileaks e-mails were almost certainly that...leaks. As most o their output has been
over the years. For 95% of the Wikileaks existence there have been absolutely zero connections with "the Kremlin", in fact they
have leaked stuff damaging to Russia before now.
The Russian's did not hack the DNC, or rig the election, this is yet another example of the political establishment hysterically
pointing fingers and making up lies when their chosen side loses an election.
I remember how North Korea was blamed for Sony hack. I think they were even cut from the internet for a day and there was all
this talk of punishing them. And then later it came out that very likely wasn't North Korea. Only the news cycle already moved
on and nobody cared.
Traditionally, the best Cold Warriors have been right-wing liberals. In the absence of policies that concretely benefit the people
they engage in threat inflation and demagoguery.
In 90s US set all figures in Russia - from president to news program anchor. Elections of 96 were ripped by American "advisors"
so that Eltsyn with 3% rating "won" them. It's payback time.
And yet the so-called "Russian trolls" (which is apparently anyone who exercise a modicum of skepticism) seem to be winning here
at CiF based on the number of likes per comment, which is likely why the NSA sponsored propagandists and clueless dopes are getting
so increasingly shrill.
If you take a wider view, this is all really about keeping the Dems in the game, trying to undo the Trump validity and give them
another go in 4 or so years. Really, seems quite desperate that a man that allowed 270000 wild horses to be sold for horsemeat
this year across the border to Mexico, brought HC in to his own cabinet having said 'she will say anything and do nothing', knowing
what a nightmare that would make, and is going to watch his healthcare get ripped to shreds, needs more accomplishments in his
last year, aka Obama, ergo, let's investigate the evil russians and their female athletes with male DNA ( you would think I am
making this stuff up, but I am not ) ... Come on Grandma, where are you when we need you most
we must somehow, subvert the despicable populace that elected trump. we must erase from history the conceding of president elect
clinton - newpeak from the ministry of truth. we'll get her into the white house if it takes more cash, lies, and corruption.
after all, who needs democracy in the democratic party when we have big brother. democracy just confuses the members. we'll send
the despicables through the ministry of love to re-educate them, of course, this IS 1984 after all....we will vote for you, the
intelligentsia of the left knows what is best for you.
"Malicious cyber activity, specifically malicious cyber activity tied to our elections , has no place in the international
community. Unfortunately this activity is not new to Moscow. We've seen them do this for years ... The president has made it clear
to President Putin that this is unacceptable."
Note how carefully it specifies that it is cyber activity tied to the american elections that is inappropriate. I presume that
is simply to avoid openly saying that mass-surveillance by the US government of everyone's private email, and social network accounts
doesn't come under that "no place in the international community" phrase. You know, one does wonder how these people's faces don't
come off in shame when whinning about potential interference by foreign governemnts after a full 8 years or so of constant revelations
of permanent spying and mass-surveillance by the US government of international leaders and ordinary citizens worldwide.
So the DNC was hacked - so what. Hacking is so common these days as to be expected. A quick perusal of the internet provides some
SIGNIFICANT hacks that deserved some consternation:
9/4/07 The Chinese government hacked a noncritical Defense Department computer system in June, a Pentagon source told FOX News
on Tuesday.
Spring 2011 Foreign hackers broke into the Pentagon computer system this spring and stole 24,000 files - one of the biggest
cyber-attacks ever on the U.S. military,
On the 12th of July 2011, Booz Allen Hamilton the largest U.S. military defence contractor admitted that they had just suffered
a very serious security breach, at the hands of hacktivist group AntiSec.
5/28/13 The confidential version of a Defense Science Board report compiled earlier this year reportedly says Chinese hackers
accessed designs for more than two dozen of the U.S. military's most important and expensive weapon systems.
June 2014 The UK's National Crime Agency has arrested an unnamed young man over allegations that he breached the Department
of Defense's network last June.
1/12/15 The Twitter account for U.S. Central Command was suspended Monday after it was hacked by ISIS sympathizers (OK twitter
accounts shouldn't be a big deal. Why does US CentCom even HAVE a twitter account???)
5/6/15 OPM hack: China blamed for massive breach of US government data
And so the neocon propaganda machine trundles on, churning out this interesting material day after day. The elephant in the room
is that if you get hacked you have no knowledge of this until your private stuff is all over the internet, and the chances of
finding out who did it are zilch. Everyone in IT security knows this.
Another "fake news" story. Does anybody with a pulse really believe that Russia hacked the DNC? The US Security Services admitted
that it was NOT Russia; the likelihood is that the leaks were provided to Wikileaks by insiders within the US Administration -
they wanted to ensure that Hillary did not win. None of the actual revelations were covered by the MSM, and "the Russians did
it" was a convenient distraction.
All people that on earth do dwell have no clue who hacked the DNC to the amusing end that Podesta's e-mails ended up on the internet,
but it suits a dangerous political narrative to demonise Russia until it becomes plain logical to attack them.
YES YES let attack Russia, YES YES YES, Russia Russia we should carry on attacking Russia. We the journalists are well paid by
the man from Australia. YES YES we must to carry on attacking Russia and forget the shit happening in other countries. YES YES
it is our duty.
Election hacking: Obama orders 'full review' of Russia interference
And I guess Obama has also ordered the Guardian to do a full court press of anti-Russian propaganda, just judging by the articles
pumped out on today's rag alone.
The US government is seemingly attempting the "Big Lie" tactic of Joseph Goebbels and instigating support in the public for
war against Russia. By repeating the completely unsubstantiated allegations that Russia has somehow "interfered with the election"
they hope, without any genuine basis, to strong arm the public into accepting a further ramping of tensions and starting yet another
illegal war for profit.
There's nothing wrong with conducting the investigation, but shouldn't it have been done before accusing Russia?
And aren't all the people cited in the article political appointees, Democrats or avowed Trump enemies, and then there's closing,
" A spokesman for the director of national intelligence declined to comment."
Surely of all the Orders Obama might issue during his last weeks in office, why does he choose to give a stupid Order that effectively
makes US some sort of Banana Republic? This man was/is more hype than real! At a stroke of a pen he seriously undermines the integrity
of the US Electoral System. Whatever credibility was left has now been eroded by these constant and silly claims that somehow
Russians installed Trump as President. Doesn't that make Trump some sort of Russian Agent?
Meanwhile MSM keeps on streaming some fake news and theories and then Obama Orders US intelligence to dig deeper. This is lunacy!
Obama certainly understands that Russia is not the reason why Trump was elected. However, he wants to create new obstacles on
the way of normalization of relations between the US and Russia and make it more difficult for Trump.
However, Trump is not a weak man, not a skinny worm; and he can hit these opponents back so hard that international court for
them (for invasions into sovereign countries) will lead to their life sentences.
Only two weeks ago the Obama Administration publicly stated there was no evidence of cybersecurity breaches affecting the electoral
process,
as reported in the NYT :
The administration, in its statement, confirmed reports from the Department of Homeland Security and intelligence officials
that they did not see "any increased level of malicious cyberactivity aimed at disrupting our electoral process on Election
Day."
The administration said it remained "confident in the overall integrity of electoral infrastructure, a confidence that was
borne out." It added: "As a result, we believe our elections were free and fair from a cybersecurity perspective."
Is there any limit to the ridicolous, Mr. Obama? what is this? a tragicomic play of the inept?
Here we are with the most childish fabrication that it must be the Russians' fault if Trump won the election. I'll be laughing
for an entire cosmic era! And all this after US publically announced that they were going to launch a devastating acher attack
against the badies: the Russians, which of course didn't work out. Come on, this is more comedy that a serious play.
What probably is going on, the readers can gather by having a look at the numberless articles that are being published by maistream
media against the Russians.
Why this histeric insurgence of Russofobia? Couldn't it be that it is intolerable for the US and their allies to see the Russians
winning in Aleppo, and most of all restoring peace and tollerance among the population returning to their abbandoned homes.
I think Hillary, in part, lost the election due to all the fake news being pumped out by the mainstream corporate media, doing
her bidding. People are tired of it, along with all the corruption and lies that came to the surface through the likes of Wikileaks.
Trump is a terrible alternative, but the only alternative people were given, so many went with it.
Now we see fake news making out the Russians to be the bad guys again, pumping out story after story, trying to propagandize the
population into sucking up these new memes. Russia has its problems, and will always act in its own self-interest, but it's nothing
compared to the tactics the US uses, bullying countries around the world to pander to its own will, desperately trying to maintain
its Empire.
The scripture tells us those who live by the sword will perish by it.
America was in the interference of other countries' elections before its ugly 2016 presidential election. Remember Ukraine
and Secretary Hillary Clinton's employee Victoria F****the EU Nuland in Ukraine. Now we have the makings of some kind of conflict
with Russia over its alleged meddling in America's elections. More global tension= More cash flowing into the US equity market,
money printing by another means.
I'd be surprised if the Russians weren't trying to affect the outcome of the election. The Brits had a debate in Parliament on
Trump, Obama made threats to the UK on the Brexit vote, so who knows what we're all doing in each others elections behind closed
doors while we are clear to do so publically.
The MSM's absolute refusal to address the leaks in a meaningful way (other than the stuff about recipes) suggests to be no
one felt it a big deal at the time.
Obama could realise that Hillary's viewes on Putin and Russia did not help her at all. People are not that stupid, they see well,
use own brains and not so easily impressed by whatever CNN says to them.
John McAfee said that any organization sophisticated enough to do these hacks is also sophisticated enough to make it look as
though any country they want did it. So it could have been anyone.
It's reported today on Ars Technica : ThyssenKrupp suffered a "professional attack"
The steelmaker, which makes military subs, says it was targeted from south-east Asia.
..the design of its plants were penetrated by a "massive," coordinated attack which made off with an unknown amount of "technological
know-how and research."
Neoliberals are just desperately losing ideological competition at home and abroad. They cannot convince people that they are
right because it's not what's going on.
It does not matter what some others say, it's what really goes on matters.
But there is innate, basic self-interest in all people (that does not depend on education, ethnicity, race) and people know it
instinctively well. They will not go against it even if all around will tell otherwise.
I love how this has now become solid fact. No confirmation, nothing official but it is no common fact that the Russians interfered.
How many reports do we hear about US interference with foreign countries infastructure through covert means.
Meh. Seems like tampering happens all the time. How many elections in South America did the USA fix? How many in the middle
east and Africa? I think this "russian's did it" rhetoric is counterproductive as it is stopping Democrats from doing the introspective
needed to really understand why HRC lost the election.
Imagine if the shoe were on the other foot and there was credible evidence that the Russians had rigged the election in favor
of the Democrat. The right-wing echo chamber would be having seizures! These people are UTTER HYPOCRITES. And they would obviously
rather win with the help of a hostile foreign power than try to preserve the integrity of our elections.
Russia may or may not have hacked the DNC. I'd like to find out. I hope the DNC aren't enough of doofusses to assume this wouldn't
be in the realm of possibility.
I presume that the U.S. has its own group of hackers doing the same Worldwide. This is not a criticism; I would expect the U.S.
intelligence community to learn what our rivals, and even some of our friends, are up to.
This is getting to be pretty lame. I have doubts that "Russia" could interfere to any great extent with our elections any more
than we could with theirs. Sure, individuals or organizations, and more than likely in THIS country, could do so. And they have,
as we saw with the DNC and Sanders campaign (and vice versa). Let's not go into an almost inevitable nuclear war over what is
quite possibly "fake news".
Russia did this, Russia did that
its getting very boring now, you have lost all credibility
you have cried wolf to many times
stop trying to manipulate us
When will the Democrats get it? It wasn't the Russians, who are blamed for everything, including the weather, by desperate Western
failed leaders, but an unsuitable candidate in Clinton, which lost them the Election. Bernie Sanders would have walked it.
Regarding the notorious "fuck the EU " on the part of the US "diplomat" Victoria Nuland "the State Department and the White House
suggested that an assistant to the deputy prime minister of Russia Dmitry Rogozin was the source of the leak, which he denied
" Wiki
Good occasion to substantiate the accusation which ,substantiated or not,will remind the "useful idiots" of the "change of regime
" US policy and who started the Ukrainian crisis.
Boy, oh boy, fake news is everywhere just read this headline!
Election hacking: Obama orders 'full review' of Russia interference
Which states as fact there was interference by Russia and that the investigation is to determine how bad it was. NO EVIDENCE WHAT SO EVER has been offered by anyone that Russia interfered in any way. FAKE NEWS!!
Voting machine hacking is a very serious problem but you generally need physical access to a voting machine to hack it.
Anyone notice thousands of Russians hanging around in Detriot, Los Angeles, etc election HQs? How about Clinton drones?
If the DNC hadn't rigged the primary we'd be celebrating president-elect Bernie. If they hadn't rigged the general Hillary
would have lost by a landslide.
1000 Russian athletes were doping in the 2012 Olympics - but it's taken until now to realise it?!
Russia influenced the 2016 US election?!
Russia is presently "influencing" the German elections?!
Russia is killing civilians and destroying hospitals with impunity in Syria?!
etc
Wow! Russia is taking over the world, it must be stopped, can anyone save us? Obama? Trump? NATO?
Look out! Russian armies are massing on the border ready to sweep into Europe.......arrhhh!
"..ex-prime minister Anthony Charles Lynton Blair of the United Kingdom, and Hillary Rodham Clinton of the United States
of America, have formally announced a new transatlantic political party to be named: The Neoliberal Elite Party for bitter
anti-Brexiters and sore anti-Trumpettes.
Rather rich coming from my country which has interfered in elections around the world for decades. I suppose it's only cheating
if the other team does it.
Not that they'll find any evidence. Just another chapter in the sad saga of the Democrats unwillingness to admit they ran the
worst candidate & the worst campaign in recent memory. It's not our fault! Them dirty Russkies did it!
"... Joe McCarthy rose to corrosive prominence at the midpoint of the 20th century by riding hysteria and spurring it on. The demagoguery was fueled not only by opportunistic politicians but also by media outlets all too eager to damage the First Amendment and other civil liberties in the name of Americanism and anti-communism. ..."
"... Most Democratic leaders, for their part, seem determined to implicitly - or even explicitly - scapegoat the Russian government for the presidential election results. Rather than clearly assess the impacts of Hillary Clinton 's coziness with Wall Street, or even the role of the FBI director just before the election, the Democratic line seems bent on playing an anti-Russia card. ..."
This country went through protracted witch hunts during the McCarthy era. A lot of citizens -
including many government workers - had their lives damaged or even destroyed. The chill on the First
Amendment became frosty, then icy. Democracy was on the ropes.
Joe McCarthy rose to corrosive prominence at the midpoint of the 20th century by riding hysteria
and spurring it on. The demagoguery was fueled not only by opportunistic politicians but also by
media outlets all too eager to damage the First Amendment and other civil liberties in the name of
Americanism and anti-communism.
Today, congressional leaders of both parties seem glad to pretend that Section 501 of the Intelligence
Authorization Act is just fine, rather than an odious and dangerous threat to precious constitutional
freedoms. On automatic pilot, many senators will vote aye without a second thought.
Yet by rights, with growing grassroots
opposition , this terrible provision should be blocked by legislators in both parties, whether
calling themselves progressives, liberals, libertarians, Tea Partyers or whatever, who don't want
to chip away at cornerstones of the Bill of Rights.
Most Democratic leaders, for their part, seem determined to implicitly - or even explicitly
- scapegoat the Russian government for the presidential election results. Rather than clearly assess
the impacts of Hillary Clinton
's coziness with Wall Street, or even the role of the FBI director just before the election,
the Democratic line seems bent on playing an anti-Russia card.
Perhaps in the mistaken belief that they can gain some kind of competitive advantage over the
GOP by charging Russian intervention for
Donald Trump 's victory, the
Democrats are playing with fire. The likely burn victims are the First Amendment and other precious
freedoms.
From Wikipedia article
Communist propaganda.
"....the term "propaganda" broadly refers to any publication or campaign aimed at promoting a cause
and is/was used for official purposes by most communist-oriented governments. Rooted in Marxist thought,
the propaganda of communism is viewed by its proponents as the vehicle for spreading the enlightenment
of working class people and pulling them away from the propaganda of their oppressors that reinforces
their exploitation, such as religion or consumerism. A Bolshevik theoretician, Nikolai Bukharin, in
his The ABC of Communism wrote:[1] The State propaganda of communism becomes in the long run a means
for the eradication of the last traces of bourgeois propaganda dating from the old régime; and it is
a powerful instrument for the creation of a new ideology, of new modes of thought, of a new outlook
on the world.
Similarly neoliberal propaganda is the vehicle of spreading neoliberal ideas and "neoliberal rationality"
inside the country and all over the world the reinforces key postulated of neoliberalism -- unlimited
"free market" for transnational corporations, deregulation, suppression of wages via "free movement
of labor" and outsourcing and offshoring, decimation of labor unions and organized labor in general
(atomization of working force"), "greed is good" memo, etc.
Like Communist propaganda during Brezhnev rule, neoliberal propaganda after 2008 is in crisis, and
it is natural to expect that neoliberal propagandists will resort to heavy handed tactic of McCarthyism
in a vain attempt to restore its influence.
Wall Street On Parade closely examined the report issued by PropOrNot, its related Twitter page,
and its registration as a business in New Mexico, looking for "tells" as to the individual(s) behind
it. We learned quite a number of interesting facts.
As part of its McCarthyite tactics, PropOrNot
has developed a plugin to help readers censor material from the websites it has blacklisted. It calls
that its YYYCampaignYYY. In that effort,
it lists an official address of 530-B Harkle Road, Suite 100, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505. That's
one of those agent addresses that serve as a virtual address for the creation of limited liability
corporations that want to keep their actual principals secret. The address has dozens of businesses
associated with it. There should also be a corresponding business listed in the online archives of
the business registry at the Secretary of State of New Mexico. However, no business with the words
Propaganda or PropOrNot or YYY exist in
the
New Mexico business registry, suggesting PropOrNot is using a double cloaking device to shield
its identity by registering under a completely different name.
PropOrNot's Twitter page provides a "tell" that its report may simply be a hodgepodge compilation
of other people's research that was used to arrive at its dangerous assertion that critical thinkers
across America are a clandestine network of Russian propaganda experts. Its
Tweet on
November 7 indicates that the research of Peter Pomerantsev, a Senior Fellow at the Legatum Institute
in London, who has also been cooperating
on research with the Information Warfare Project of the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA)
in Washington, D.C, inspired its efforts.
According to SourceWatch, the Legatum Institute "is a right-wing think tank promoting 'free markets,
free minds, and free peoples.' " SourceWatch adds that the Legatum Institute "is a project founded
and funded by the Legatum Group, a private investment group based in Dubai." According to the Internet
Archive known as the Wayback Machine, the Center for European Policy Analysis
previously
indicated it was an affiliate of the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA). We can see why
they might want to remove that affiliation now that the Koch brothers have been exposed as funders
of a very real network of interrelated websites and nonprofits.
According to
Desmog, NCPA has received millions of dollars in funding from right wing billionaires like the
Koch brothers and their related trusts along with the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the
Sarah Scaife Foundation
(heir to the Mellon fortune) along with corporations like ExxonMobil.
CEPA's InfoWar Project is currently listed as a "Related Project" at PropOrNot's website. Indeed,
there are numerous references within the report issued by PropOrNot that sound a familiar refrain
to Pomerantsev and/or CEPA. Both think the U.S. Congress is in denial on the rising dangers of Russian
propaganda and want it to take more direct counter measures. Pages 31 and 32 of the PropOrNot report
urge the American people to demand answers from the U.S. government about how much it knows about
Russian propaganda. The report provides a detailed list of specific questions that should be asked.
In the August 2016 report
released by CEPA (the same month the PropOrNot Twitter account was established) Pomerantsev and his
co-author, Edward Lucas, recommend the establishment of "An international commission under the auspices
of the Council of Europe on the lines of the Venice Commission" to "act as a broadcasting badge of
quality. If an official body cannot be created, then an NGO could play a similar advisory role."
On its website, PropOrNot recommends
a much stronger censorship of independent media websites, writing:
"We call on the American public to Obtain news from actual reporters,
who report to an editor and are professionally accountable for mistakes. We suggest NPR, the BBC,
the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Buzzfeed News, VICE, etc, and especially
your local papers and local TV news channels. Support them by subscribing, if you can!"
CounterPunch
was quick to point out that the Washington Post's former publisher, Philip Graham, supervised
a disinformation network for the CIA during the Cold War, known as Mockingbird. Graham was reported
to have died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his farm in 1963.
CEPA's website
indicates that on May 10 it hosted Senators Chris Murphy and Rob Portman to discuss "Russia's
sophisticated disinformation campaign." CEPA's President, A. Wess Mitchell is quoted as saying: "What's
missing is a significant effort on the part of the U.S. government. Not nearly enough has been done."
Six days after Washington Post reporter Craig Timberg ran his first PropOrNot story, he
published another article indicating that "Congressional negotiators on Wednesday approved an
initiative to track and combat foreign propaganda amid growing concerns that Russian efforts to spread
'fake news' and disinformation threaten U.S. national security." Quoted in the story was none other
than the very Senator who had met with CEPA in May on that very topic, Senator Rob Portman.
Portman is quoted as follows: "This propaganda and disinformation threat is real, it's growing,
and right now the U.S. government is asleep at the wheel." Among Portman's
top three donors to his 2016 Senate race were Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, two Wall Street behemoths
that would very much like to pivot the national debate to anything other than Wall Street power and
corruption.
"... Sorry, Brian, but you and your ilk sold your credibility for a full investment position in Hillary and Globalism. Your only recourse now is to attack and try to delegitamize those who call you out. ..."
Now this is rich. Brian Williams, the disgraced ex-NBC journalist who was literally fired for
falsely reporting that he was in a helicopter during the Iraq war that took on combatant fire, is
now going on a crusade against "fake news." On his MSNBC show last night, Williams decided to attack
retired General Flynn and Donald Trump for spreading "fake news" via their twitter accounts.
... ... ...
nuubee •Dec 9, 2016 11:42 AM
I'm going to start reading The Onion and taking it seriously now.
nope-1004 -> Pladizow •Dec 9, 2016 11:48 AM
At least he wasn't in real harms way, like Hillary, when she landed under sniper fire.
It's like [neo]Liberals are genetically compelled or something to accuse others of what they
themselves are actually doing. I've never seen anything this universally true for an entire group
of people suffering the same mental illness ([neo]liberalism).
- "A terrible moment a dozen years back during the invasion of Iraq when the helicopter
we were traveling in was forced down after being hit by an RPG." - NBC Nightly News, January
30, 2015
- "It was no more than 120 seconds later that the helicopter in front of us was hit." -
Brian Williams to Tim Russert on CNBC,
March 2005
- "I was instead following the aircraft" [that was struck by the RPG]. - NBC Nightly News,
Wednesday February 5, 2015
- Williams' original [March 26, 2003, NBC News] report indicated that a helicopter in front
of his was hit. -
PolitiFact
- NBC publishes a book [in 2003], "Operation Iraqi Freedom," in which they describe Williams'
experience, implying that his helicopter sustained fire. -
PolitiFact
- May 2008: Williams writes another [NBC News] blog, responding to a note from a soldier
who he met in Iraq. In this post, Williams indicates that he was in a helicopter that took
fire. -
PolitiFact
- "I've done some ridiculously stupid things under that banner, like being in a helicopter
I had no business being in Iraq with rounds coming into the airframe," he said [to Alec Baldwin
in March 2014] -
PolitiFact
- "We were in some helicopters. What we didn't know was, we were north of the invasion.
We were the northernmost Americans in Iraq. We were going to drop some bridge portions across
the Euphrates so the Third Infantry could cross on them. Two of the four helicopters were hit,
by ground fire, including the one I was in, RPG and AK-47. - Williams to Letterman on March
26, 2013 -
PolitiFact.
- In the initial NBC broadcast where he described his 2003 Iraq reporting mission, embattled
NBC anchor Brian Williams falsely claimed that "we saw the guy . . . [who] put a round through
the back of a chopper," which he further and incorrectly claimed was "the Chinook [helicopter]
in front of us." -
Breitbart
- "We flew over a bridge. He waved to the lead pilot very kindly. With that someone else
removed the tarp, stood up, and put a round through the back of a chopper missing the rear
rotor by four or five feet." - To Tom Brokaw on March 26, 2003 -
Breitbart
- "[Y]ou go back to Iraq, and I looked down the tube of an RPG that had been fired at us
and it hit the chopper in front of ours." - Williams to Fairfield University in 2007 -
Ace of Spades
SEAL Team 6 Tale
- "We have some idea which of our special operations teams carried this out," Williams said
on "The Late Show With David Letterman" the day after the raid [May 2, 2011]. "It happens to
be a team I flew into Baghdad with, on the condition that I would never speak of what I saw
on the aircraft, what aircraft we were on, what we were carrying, or who we were after." -
Huffington Post
- "Now, people might be hearing about SEAL Team 6," Williams said the next night, May 3,
2011, on "Nightly News." "I happen to have the great honor of flying into Baghdad with them
at the start of the war." -
Huffington Post
- "I flew into Baghdad, invasion plus three days, on a blackout mission at night with elements
of SEAL Team 6, and I was told not to make any eye contact with them or initiate any conversation,"
Williams said. (Three days after the U.S. invasion would have been March 22, 2003, not April
9, 2003, which was the day Williams broadcasted from the Baghdad airport.) - To David Letterman
in May of 2012 -
Huffinton Post
- In the 2012 "Late Show" appearance, Williams also recalled carrying a box of Wheat Thins,
which he said a hungry special operator dug into with a "hand the size of a canned ham." They
got to talking, and Williams told the commando how much he admired his knife. "Darned if that
knife didn't show up at my office a couple weeks later," Williams told Letterman. -
Huffington Post
- "About six weeks after the Bin Laden raid, I got a white envelope and in it was a thank-you
note, unsigned," Williams said on "Letterman" in January 2013. "And in it was a piece of the
fuselage of the blown-up Black Hawk in that courtyard. Sent to me by one of my friends." -
Huffington Post
- In February 2014, Williams elaborated on the helicopter gift in another media appearance,
this time on the sports talk show hosted by Dan Patrick. "It's one of the toughest things to
get," he said, "and the president has a piece of it as well It's made of a material most people
haven't seen or held in their hands." -
Huffington Post
Fall of the Berlin Wall
- "I've been so fortunate," he said during a 2008 forum at the Ronald Reagan Presidential
Library. "I was at the Brandenburg Gate the night the wall came down." -
CNN
- "Here's a fact: 25 years ago tonight, Tom Brokaw and I were at the Berlin Wall," Williams
said at a gala held on November 8, 2014. -
CNN
The Pope
- "I was there during the visit of the pope," Williams said [in 2002]. -
CNN
- While delivering the commencement address at Catholic University that year [2004], Williams
said the "highlight" of his time at the school "was in this very doorway, shaking hands with
the Holy Father during his visit to this campus." -
CNN
Katyusha Rocket Fire
- "There were Katyusha rockets passing just beneath the helicopter I was riding in," he
told a student interviewer from Fairfield (Conn.) University that year [2007]. -
Washington Post
- "When you look out of your hotel window in the French Quarter and watch a man float by
face down, when you see bodies that you last saw in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, and swore to yourself
that you would never see in your country," Williams told Eisner [in 2006], who suggested in
the interview that Williams emerged from former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw's shadow with his
Katrina coverage. -
USA Today
- In Williams's telling, the pathos of the scene extended to his crew's access to food.
"We were desperate for food and drink. But not like the people we were seeing in the streets,"
he said in the documentary "In His Own Words: Brian Williams on Hurricane Katrina." -
Washington Post
Puppy Rescue
- "I remember one such house fire - the structure was fully involved with flames and smoke.
I was wearing a breathing apparatus, conducting a search on my hands and knees, when I felt
something warm, squishy and furry on the floor of a closet. I instinctively tucked it in my
coat." -
October 2011, USA Today
- "All I ever did as a volunteer fireman was once save two puppies." -
January 2007, Esquire
Christmas Tree Robbery
In a 2005 interview with Esquire magazine, Williams said a thief drew on him in the 1970s
- leaving him "looking up at a thug's snub-nosed .38 while selling Christmas trees out of the
back of a truck." –
NY Post
Quitting College
- "One day, I'm at the copy machine in the White House and Walter Mondale comes up behind
me and clears his throat. A classic throat-clearing. I thought people only did that in movies,
but it turns out vice-presidents do it, too. Anyway, it makes for an exceptionally good morning,
and I run from the White House to the GW campus for class. I'm still wearing my West Wing hard
pass on a chain, and when my professor sees it, he admits that he's only been to the White
House on the public tour. And I thought to myself, This is costing me money that I don't have,
and I'm a young man in too much of a hurry. So I left school." - Brian Williams to
Esquire , 2005
- But then a friend invited him to drive to Washington, D.C., for a weekend, and everything
changed. Smitten with the city and its youthful energy, Williams decided to move there. He
transferred what credits he could from Brookdale to Catholic University and took a job in the
public relations department to help pay his expenses. He landed an internship at the White
House, and when that ended, he answered an ad for a clerking job at a broadcasting association.
- 2009,
New Jersey-Star Ledger
It's just amazing what a shameless loser this guy has always been. I was surprised that they even
fired him for contriving this story, that is after all, what they do. The whole idea behind embedding
journalists was to make them part of the team, which prevents subjective journalism (not that
there was a risk of that happening with him) and turning the war into a fictionalized patriotic
orgy of bullshit reality TV. This was a huge shame to the profession of journalism before you
factor in the lies and perpetual fabrication.
The only reason he was fired was due to the fact that we were in the throws of a giant national
masturbation frenzy over military aggression and the military and it's endeavors became untouchable
overnight. When they got pissed off during that time frame it definitely mattered, not so much
now. Now they are just screwing them and everybody else. These news anchors are absolutely disgusting,
just about every one of them. They all look like pumpkins and hookers. They need to lay off the
hairspray and man-makeup before throwing themselves into 170 degree acidic geyser (you don't want
it too hot).
These ratfuck pressitutes haven't noticed Clinton lost the election because we stopped buying
the MSM lies nothing there that's worthwhile to read based on his stupidity here.
Brian Willians has been discredited and should either retire or find another job. But also, and
I'm serious about this, Pizzagate is a ridiculous made-up bullshit story that is distracting everyone
from the real issues and the way that the Dems have fucked our whole civilization for real, not
just a few kids that likely never even happened.
Even if pizzagate is real it is far less important than the many real ways in which the elites
have fucked us all.
Brian Williams is a member of the Rockefeller/CFR along with Mika Brzezinski and Charles "Joe"
Scarborough. See member lists at cfr dot org.
"The fact that we will not reestablish [another] Walter Cronkite, because of technology...
does not mean we can't have people who are trusted. Brian Williams is sitting here , Charlie Gibson
and Katie Couric..."
With over a century of government schooling to dumb down the population, I'd say their lack of
tact is fairly well warranted, given the average length of attention span can likely be measured
in hours.
All we can do is tell the unawake to turn off the idiot box, stop ingesting Kellogg's etc etc.
Every day we win a few more battles, and one day come to realize the enemy are all lying on the
ground, motionless.
Obama orders review of cyber attacks on 2016 election – adviser
President Barack Obama directed US intelligence agencies to conduct a full review of cyber
attacks and foreign intervention into the 2016 election and deliver a report before he leaves
office, homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco said on Friday. Monaco told reporters the results
of the report would be shared with lawmakers and others. Obama leaves office on January 20. (Reuters)
remember, this has nothing to do with fake news. This has everything to do with competition. THe
MSM is getting too much competition from independent bloggers and opinions that don't follow their
narrative. Their goal now......figure out some way to shut them down.
And that's the entirety of the issue: if McCain had won in 2008, we'd have been hearing about
fake news then. It really is just that we had the audacity to disagree with the legacy media--who
for the first time in my memory broke every rule they had for themselves in appearing to cover
all sides--to try to corral the US public into voting for their candidate of choice. Even Fox
News was anti-Trump, for fuck's sake: did they not realize that gave away the game?!
Ironically, I feel if the media hadn't been so in-the-bag for Clinton from the start, I wouldn't
be surprised if she had won. The media lost her A LOT of votes by making it look like, whether
true or not, they had been bought off. (Yeah, I know they were. But they aren't supposed to APPEAR
it; Clinton should ask for a refund, in my opinion.)
So yeah; look forward to media licensing being floated, and somehow requiring credentials for
journalists (which will end with needing to be 'certified,' which will inevitably require an expensive
several year trip to your university daycare of choice.)
Will it work? Actually, for once, I have hope: I don't think it will. In fact, I suspect fairly
soon, someone is going to notice that Thomas Payne was probably the first purveyor of "fake news"
in this country, and that's a fucked up thing to be against as an American.
BS. If McCain won in 2008 we'd already be in an actual fucking hot war with Russia. 2008 was a
wet-dream for Soros and his boys. They got to win big or win FUCKING BIG.
The FBI found State Dept emails showing that Hillary Clinton went to "Orgy Island" at least
6 times - and at least once in the company of convicted pedo Jeffrey Epstein. (Bill Clinton went
there "at least 20 times" - those pesky progressives!)
You are the epitome of and exactly exactly the type of vile, disgusting, reprehensible Scum
at the bottom of the Swap. A bottom feeder at best.
The Presstitute Centrailized Media has been exposed for the farce that it is. The obvious denial
of it simply exposes the Sociopathic / Psychopathic Nature of you vile Scum Fucks.
Accept it. The Public has lost all respect for the Centrailzed Industrial Complex Presstitiute
Media.
The Libtards are desperate to attack Russia and start WW III, bailout Wall Street again and keep
the Swamp parasites in power in DC to keep the gravy train flowing.
MSM and Dem lies get Yuuuger every day...it's almost laughable but they are actually very dangerous
people and thus, we need to protect the 2nd to protect us from them if they get to desperate.
There has never been an actual media in America to begin with --- just go back and check out
the trash that the Pulitzer fellow wrote, and then realize why that prize is awarded to the riff-raff
who usually receive it.
Sorry, Brian, but you and your ilk sold your credibility for a full investment position
in Hillary and Globalism. Your only recourse now is to attack and try to delegitamize those who
call you out.
The gig is up for these MSM pantywaists and they know it. The only way they maintain viewership
is if the gov't shuts down the internet, which it may. These little fucktards like williams are
some of the biggest purveyors of bullshit in the history of mankind and they know we are on to
their game. No one is going back to believing anything these assholes say except for the most
partisan, retarded, misinformed of the US population.
the news organizations are all propped up to keep the global culture industry operational. If
they were to be displaced by conscious consumers of worth while real news, like the kind that's
now starting to make it's way through the alternative media, they would only exist for viewers
who were being groomed for social unrest. Oh wait, that's what their doing now isn't it?
This is the opportunity to wake people up that you care about. If nothing else you can show that
the news is all coordinated. There is no possibility that in a free competitive market every org
would repeat the same message from the same perspective.
I have taken advantage of the oligarchs sloppiness. People who thought I was crazy two years
ago are now acknowledging I was right. I have delivered news to people and two weeks later it
was a breaking story. Take the opportunity and bring a few more people over.
The only truly fake news is the US MSM. This bullshit that is called "news" is filled with omissions,
distortions, half truths, bald faced lies and fabrications. This is the "official narrative" the
Kool Aid that we are all supposed to drink. Remember how the MSM colluded with the Bush Administration's
neocons to sell the bullshit Iraq WMD story that was presented to the UN by Colin Powell? Total
bullshit. How can anyone believe anything that is fed to us from the MSM.
Ironic but the guy I'm going to tell you about was featured on 60 minutes. You know what I
love is when the US State Department or the MSM quotes the UK Britain-based Syrian Observatory
for Human Rights. This is a little old man in a dingy apartment in a slum Arab neighborhood in
London. This old fucking guy claims to know whats going on in Syria. Actually this is a neocon
propaganda mill for the CIA It's comments, suggestions and conclusions are solely based upon
an official narrative created by the CIA and sold to us through the MSM.
Look at the pre-election coverage and non-stop polling data talked about by all the MSM boneheads
including this Brian Williams jack off. Donald Trump was continously slammed, over and over again
by *all of them.*The exception was Sean Hannity. Now look at the partial list of donors to crooked
Hillary's campaign.
The list of donors to the Clinton campaign included many of the most powerful media institutions
in the country - among the donors: Comcast (which owns NBC, and its cable sister channels, such
as MSNBC); James Murdoch of News Corporation (owner of Fox News and its sister stations, among
many other media holdings); Time Warner (CNN, HBO, scores of other channels); Bloomberg; Reuters;
Viacom; Howard Stringer (of CBS News); AOL (owner of Huffington Post); Google; Twitter; The Washington
Post Company; George Stephanopoulos (host of ABC News' flagship Sunday show); PBS; PRI; the Hearst
Corporation and others (
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/37451-the-clinton-foundation-and-the-... ).
Trump is correct when he says the US media is crooked. It's all fucking fake news!!
Post election- I now watch local news for traffic and weather in the morning. But fuck them
I will not listen to the MSM talking heads or anything else on the crooked MSM. To know whats
going on in the world I now watch RT which presents an objective and honest perspective of what's
really going on in the world. Of course they call RT fake news, or Russian propaganda. All I can
say is they can go fuck themselves! I am sick and tired of the lies and bullshit which is the
official US narrative as presented by our 100% crooked MSM!
The real fake news is presented by the liars in our MSM!
Lol makes no difference now ... I left the MSM, never read it anymore.
I am no longer misinformed by them - that's a bonus.
I now prefer news from other nations because domestically it is all the fucking same from the
libtards and progressives of more people murdered because of some shit they created. Still get
drug addicts committing crime just like all them illegal immigrants because with no money you
have to commit a crime to exist. We all know that domestically your bankers are robbing you and
that the politicians are lying pieces of shit.
So why would I want to read what I already know? Nope don't need it.
Bye, bye NBC and the rest of you I can predict what the stories you will run with tomorrow
because they are the same fucking lies like the past 30 years.
Attack the MSM by attacking their ability to sell advertising.
"That newspaper you are advertising in has been wrong on everything, from going into Iraq to
recommending that loser Hillary Clinton to the final election results. If you are advertising
in that dishonest discredited rag, your product or service is being tarnished by association.
"
"Just watch President Elect Trump's Thank You Tour speech. Tens of thousands of people loudly
booed the press and the media that were there. You really want to spend your money buying ads
from those discredited losers?"
The neocons and fascist Democrat factions are joining forces looks like and as desperate as can
be. They've lied since day one, bombed RNC offices, beat innocent people up at Trump rallys, published
non-stop fake news, and now pull the "Russian agent" theory out of their closet.
Most Americans laugh at these nuts but I think they are very scary and serious since they have
alot of money invested in Queeb Hillary and war with Russia.
The Washington Post ( fake news organization) is reporting that the CIA secretly informed the
senate last week that there was Russian interference in our election and that it was Russia's
goal to ensure the election of Donald Trump. Apparently the house was informed in September and
was questioned if this should be made public and the Republicams said no, according to the Washington
Post - the source identified himself as " DNC in deep shit" . /Sarc.
Rachel Maddow was gleefully reporting on this tonight, as if it somehow vindicated her and
her morally bankrupt colleagues from the fact that they should have been reporting on this rather
than the Russians, since it is an American election and it is their job to investigate and report
the news.
Of course Obama has decided to keep this information secret, although, 7 "Democratic " senators
were requesting that the Obama administration released PARTS of the findings of the investigation
which can only lead one to question which PARTS they would prefer to keep from the American public
and why. It also is a concern of national security that national secrets are ending up on the
Washington Post- maybe they received this information from Russia.
Mitch McConell was reported to have been dismissive of the allegations as a result of the lack
of agreement over the evidence among the 17 security agencies involved, the lack of any source
directly linking the Russian government to releasing DNC hacked emails to the Wikileaks
This also begs to question Rachel Maddow on her lack of outrage of the behavior of the DNC in
colluding with the press and rigging the primary. As if to say, since Russia revealed the information
and the wrong doing of the DNC, it is not a question of if the behavior of the DNC was just or
unjust.
Nor does it vindicate any Hillary supporter, it does not legitimize what the DNC, the press,
or Hillary Clinton did.
Leave it to the incompetent Washington Post and MSNBC and Rachel Maddow to completely miss
the ball again.
Is it surprising to anyone that Russia did not wish for world war 3?
We don't have to be too concerned about fake news pumped out by Russia and other evil doers. That
job is being well handled already by NBC, CNN, the New York Times, and others.
In this post-truth world, these openly left-biased media organizations can rival Pravada of
the old Soviet Union in their laughable news reports, lack of integrity, and willingness to suppress
news they don't want known while publishing outright propaganda.
In a democracy where citizens must make informed decisions about governments, politicians and
issues, it seems to me that the people behind these corrupt media outlets are just debasing their
country; I imagine they at least get well paid for their treachery.
Curious how, having destroyed their own credibility and lost so many viewers and readers, these
organizations are now attacking their new, smaller divergent rivals on the internet.
The Liberal Leftist and the MSM created the terms Alt-Right and Fake News to distort real news
and make them fit into their political agenda! They use this to discredit Conservatives in an
effort to shut down Alternative and Conservatist News Media, especially on the Internet and Talk
Radio to end competition! They want Free Speech for the Left and Censorship for the Right! The
truth is that people discovered their plot and it backfired!!!
Mainstream media lost all credibility with We the People!!!
"... All of the "The Russians are Coming" nonsense is coming from Democrat party organs and mouthpieces. Not Trump and his media allies. ..."
"... An excellent article from Mark. This Alexandra Chalupa sounds like a real piece of work. These Cold Warriors seem to have red-colored glasses and see commies everywhere they look. ..."
"... Of course, there was that old experiment ( Kohler et al ) where they had people wearing different colored goggles for some time, then asked participants to take them off. And what happened? The participants continued to see in those hues. ..."
"... Wait a second, so there was ..."
"... CIA has been whipping ethnic Ukies into a patriotic frenzy for decades with social clubs that seep revanchist propaganda. ..."
"... HR 6393: "(Sec. 501) This title establishes an executive branch interagency committee to counter active measures by the Russian Federation to exert covert influence over peoples and governments (with the role of the Russian Federation hidden or not acknowledged publicly) through front groups, covert broadcasting, media manipulation, disinformation or forgeries, funding agents of influence, incitement, offensive counterintelligence, assassinations, or terrorist acts. The committee shall expose falsehoods, agents of influence, corruption, human rights abuses, terrorism, and assassinations carried out by the security services or political elites of the Russian Federation or their proxies." ..."
"... Plus, that will add $160 million, IIRC, to The Deficit. ..."
"... Two things this article curiously doesn't seem to mention. The first is Victoria Nuland, who must be a close Hillary confidante, and architect of the coup in Ukraine ..."
"... So your food for thought is that the Russian state behaves rationally in the face of an aggressive military power? Of course, they are hacking everything. If they weren't before the NSA revelations (where the U.S. vacuums up everything and then has no safeguards on what they grab; Congress has had testimony about NSA employees using their power to stalk people), they were afterwards. ..."
"... Here's some food for thought. John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Hillary Clinton all tried to make a country of 145 million or so people with numerous internal problems a major campaign platform. Not one of them is President. Could there be a connection? ..."
"... As one of the people who consistently calls bull hockey about the claims that the wikileaks releases of the DNC and Podesta emails are the results of Russian government hackers, I will hereby agree with the idea that Russia is hacking everything they can get their hands on. Mind you I believe that every major government from the US to China to Germany to India are hacking everything they can get their hands on. And that every government knows that about all the rest. As far as I am concerned anyone who doesn't believe that is beyond naive. ..."
"... But thinking that every major government had access to Clinton's emails, Boeing's files, and knows what internet videos Obama/May/Merkel/Putin/Castro have accessed more than once is not the same thing as thinking they are stupid enough or have decent strategic reasons to make that public knowledge by releasing damaging but not destroying emails concerning the massive stupidity and arrogance of one candidate for President and her core people. ..."
"... There is only one reason that the meme about Fake News is being pushed now – the people who have been pushing fake news for awhile to promote their agendas have lost the control they thought they had over the public and now worry about them rebelling. If fake news were important Judith Miller wouldn't have a job or a book deal and the opportunity to promote that book. Hell Murdoch wouldn't have a media empire. ..."
"... I don't know why so many so-called movers and shakers want war with Russia, but it is clear that anyone getting in the way of that goal is now in the cross hairs. ProporNOT may be more about Ukrainian support, but the people who promoted them are about the reasons it was being used in the first place. ..."
"... Eastern European fascists running propaganda web sites for the Whappo, indeed. ..."
"... If you read Matt Stoller's excellent piece from The Atlantic ..."
"... I don't see "Banana Republican" Trump as a fascist - he is in many ways an exemplar of Caudillismo , a charismatic, populist, but authoritarian oligarch. ..."
"... Nance used fake news about Clinton speeches to propagate the fake news that the Podesta emails were fake. ..."
"... Was amused to see that naturalnews (one of the sites listed in propornot – it looks like I guess a right wing alternative medicine type site) is offering a $10k reward for unmasking propornot but I don't think anyone's ever going to be able to collect. ..."
"... Why? Because they take the site seriously on its claim of being composed of 30 members and will only pay out for the identities of at least ten. I think it's just one, maybe two guys. ..."
"... There are dots to connect – the WP article, Congressional Section 501 activity, Senators McCain/Graham "leadership"; and most recently, Hillary's comments. Suspect coordination. Connect the dots. And then search for a motive. ..."
"... The national security state is concerned that Trump will seek mutually beneficial agreements with Russia. For evidence of the power of the national "security" state a tour of the Pentagon is not necessary. Tour Tyson Corner, Virginia, instead, for starters. ..."
"... And once Trump has established these agreements there will then be no stopping several Eastern European countries + Germany (of course) realizing where their economic interests really lie. Does anyone really believe that Germany is going to let itself be turned into an irradiated wasteland just to please a bunch of neocon paranoids ? ..."
"... That's what the neocons, the MIC, and all their shills, and enablers truly fear. Paradoxically this ludicrous attempt to revive McCarthyism may well end up actually ending the Cold War for good & all 25 years after it should have ended. ..."
"... From the article: "It's now been a few days, and the shock and disgust is turning to questions about how to fight back-and who we should be fighting against." ..."
"... How many people, world-wide, are involved and invested in the whole "taking over everything" machinery of "state security" and espionage and corporate hegemony? And who is this "we" who should be fighting? ..."
"... This book provides a detailed account of the ways in which the CIA penetrated and influenced a vast array of cultural organizations, through its front groups and via friendly philanthropic organizations like the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. The author, Frances Stonor Saunders, details how and why the CIA ran cultural congresses, mounted exhibits, and organized concerts. The CIA also published and translated well-known authors who toed the Washington line, sponsored abstract art to counteract art with any social content and, throughout the world, subsidized journals that criticized Marxism, communism, and revolutionary politics and apologized for, or ignored, violent and destructive imperialist U.S. policies. ..."
"... The CIA was able to harness some of the most vocal exponents of intellectual freedom in the West in service of these policies, to the extent that some intellectuals were directly on the CIA payroll. Many were knowingly involved with CIA "projects," and others drifted in and out of its orbit, claiming ignorance of the CIA connection after their CIA sponsors were publicly exposed during the late 1960s and the Vietnam war, after the turn of the political tide to the left. ..."
"... U.S. and European anticommunist publications receiving direct or indirect funding included Partisan Review, Kenyon Review, New Leader, Encounter and many others. Among the intellectuals who were funded and promoted by the CIA were Irving Kristol, Melvin Lasky, Isaiah Berlin, Stephen Spender, Sidney Hook, Daniel Bell, Dwight MacDonald, Robert Lowell, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, and numerous others in the United States and Europe. In Europe, the CIA was particularly interested in and promoted the "Democratic Left" and ex-leftists, including Ignacio Silone, Stephen Spender, Arthur Koestler, Raymond Aron, Anthony Crosland, Michael Josselson, and George Orwell. The CIA, under the prodding of Sidney Hook and Melvin Lasky, was instrumental in funding the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a kind of cultural NATO that grouped together all sorts of "anti-Stalinist" leftists and rightists. They were completely free to defend Western cultural and political values, attack "Stalinist totalitarianism" and to tiptoe gently around U.S. racism and imperialism. Occasionally, a piece marginally critical of U.S. mass society was printed in the CIA-subsidized journals. What was particularly bizarre about this collection of CIA-funded intellectuals was not only their political partisanship, but their pretense that they were disinterested seekers of truth, iconoclastic humanists, freespirited intellectuals, or artists for art's sake, who counterposed themselves to the corrupted "committed" house "hacks" of the Stalinist apparatus. ..."
"... It is impossible to believe their claims of ignorance of CIA ties. How could they ignore the absence in the journals of any basic criticism of the numerous lynchings throughout the southern United States during the whole period? How could they ignore the absence, during their cultural congresses, of criticism of U.S. imperialist intervention in Guatemala, Iran, Greece, and Korea that led to millions of deaths? How could they ignore the gross apologies of every imperialist crime of their day in the journals in which they wrote? They were all soldiers: some glib, vitriolic, crude, and polemical, like Hook and Lasky; others elegant essayists like Stephen Spender or self-righteous informers like George Orwell. Saunders portrays the WASP Ivy League elite at the CIA holding the strings, and the vitriolic Jewish ex-leftists snarling at leftist dissidents. When the truth came out in the late 1960s and New York, Paris, and London "intellectuals" feigned indignation at having been used, the CIA retaliated. Tom Braden, who directed the International Organizations Branch of the CIA, blew their cover by detailing how they all had to have known who paid their salaries and stipends (397-404). ..."
"... I have no answers for "what is to be done." ..."
"... It seems inevitable that perversion and corruption and greed will always eventually "trump" decency and comity, once a certain size and composition of a human population has been reached. ..."
"... One may hope that the general principle of eventual incompetence that seems to apply to even the Deep State activities might become more immanent. ..."
"... Dems didn't lose this elections because of "fake news". Dems lost because they did not prosecute the bankers who caused the 2008 financial crash, who fraudulently foreclosed on homes and are still engaged in fraud (see: Wells Fargo). imo. ..."
Great article but I'm unsure about the conclusion. ""This is the world the Washington Post
is bringing back to its front pages. And the timing is incredible-as if Bezos' rag has taken upon
itself to soften up the American media before Trump moves in for the kill. And it's all being
done in the name of fighting "fake news" and fascism.""
I was much more worried about this happening with Hillary at the helm. She seems more in line
with Soros and the Ukrainian extremists. Trump still seems to be interested in working with Putin
on things of mutual interest although he will probably find resistance in both US parties.
Yup. I'm still thinking "Make Ukraine Great Again" is not on Trump's agenda. But I'm just taking
things day by day. Still digesting Soros found some Nazis he likes. [Facebook "Like" gots it covered.
No new tweaking of social media required.]
However, I think it would be interesting if Trump investigated whether treason against Ukraine
is punishable by firing squad under US Treason Law. Since they've made it kinda personal.
Yeah, the piece is a bit uneven and the last bit a bit revealing of the author's own biases.
All of the "The Russians are Coming" nonsense is coming from Democrat party organs and mouthpieces.
Not Trump and his media allies.
The most effective neo-fascism that we see emerging everywhere is pretty consistently on the
erstwhile voices of the "left" affiliated with the Democrat Party which is double speak for the
New American Right. Indeed, by going back to the height of the cold war to make connections to
these shady organizations rather than modern day plutocrats (Amazonia and Googlie are low hanging
fruit), the author is employing misdirection. So, I will take this with a few grains of salt.
An excellent article from Mark. This Alexandra Chalupa sounds like a real piece of work.
These Cold Warriors seem to have red-colored glasses and see commies everywhere they look.
Of course, there was that old experiment (
Kohler et al ) where they had people wearing different colored goggles for some time, then
asked participants to take them off. And what happened? The participants continued to see in those
hues.
Wait a second, so there was foreign intervention in this election and there
were nefarious racists and eugenicists involved, but they weren't behind Trump,
but Clinton!?
/heavy sarcasm
Thank you very much for sharing this JLS! What a fasc inating read! The historical
context Ames provides is very intriguing and convincing.
"Convincing" is too strong. I would say rather suggestive, possibly persuasive. There is not
enough evidence to convince. More investigation is needed, and this might be a productive line
of inquiry, but it is too soon to talk about conclusions.
I am a huge fan of your website and donate as regularly as i can. I am appalled at what the
Washington Post did and its implications for free speech in the US going forward.
That said, I find this article defamatory in purpose, rather than informative. I do not believe
it meets the usual standards of Naked Capitalism: it is not fairly reasoned, nor based only on
relevant fact to the issue at hand. In my opinion, it is designed to smear and thus undermines
the considerable, unusual credibility of your website. I find it disturbing that it has been amplified
by its inclusion as a link. It does damage to the cause, rather than further it.
How so? First off, we know very little and Ames acknowledges that, but he uses historical context
to expand on that and build a case behind the PropOrNot / FPRI claims and their potential motives.
He fully admits he is working with that we've got. Maybe all these illustrations do just happen
to line up well and new information will change perception, but Ames discussion hits a lot of
typical looking benchmarks.
How is Mr Ames experience and the very place in which Chalupa works, what she says, as well
as the history of our countries actions upon others around the world and within not reasonable
to consider?
I'm sorry if incorrect but you seem like a troll without explaining yourself in specificity
further.
Disturbed voter, batshit Springtime-for-Hitler Ukies long predate Biden's involvement.
CIA has been whipping ethnic Ukies into a patriotic frenzy for decades with social clubs that
seep revanchist propaganda. The hapless Ukies were meant to be cannon fodder for hot war
on the USSR. When Russia molted and shed the USSR, Ukraine continued its Soviet degeneration but
the associations had a life of their own. That's how CIA clowns wound up proud owners of the Exclusion
Zone.
HR 6393: "(Sec. 501) This title establishes an executive branch interagency committee to
counter active measures by the Russian Federation to exert covert influence over peoples and governments
(with the role of the Russian Federation hidden or not acknowledged publicly) through front groups,
covert broadcasting, media manipulation, disinformation or forgeries, funding agents of influence,
incitement, offensive counterintelligence, assassinations, or terrorist acts. The committee shall
expose falsehoods, agents of influence, corruption, human rights abuses, terrorism, and assassinations
carried out by the security services or political elites of the Russian Federation or their proxies."
Two things this article curiously doesn't seem to mention. The first is Victoria Nuland,
who must be a close Hillary confidante, and architect of the coup in Ukraine .
The second thing is not so curious per se, but a common feature of articles about Russian hacking
accusations–they gloss over the fact that there is good evidence that the Russians are hacking
everything they can get their hands on. To assume otherwise is naive. Much of this evidence is
available in a recently-published book, The Plot to Hack America by Malcolm Nance.
He doesn't identify American news sources of being Russian stooges, but does describe how the
hacks on the DNC have FSB (the new KGB) fingerprints all over them. He also describes Trump's
ties to the Kremlin, as well as his advisors' business interests there. Food for thought.
So your food for thought is that the Russian state behaves rationally in the face of an
aggressive military power? Of course, they are hacking everything. If they weren't before the
NSA revelations (where the U.S. vacuums up everything and then has no safeguards on what they
grab; Congress has had testimony about NSA employees using their power to stalk people), they
were afterwards.
Here's some food for thought. John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Hillary Clinton all tried to
make a country of 145 million or so people with numerous internal problems a major campaign platform.
Not one of them is President. Could there be a connection?
As one of the people who consistently calls bull hockey about the claims that the wikileaks
releases of the DNC and Podesta emails are the results of Russian government hackers, I will hereby
agree with the idea that Russia is hacking everything they can get their hands on. Mind you I
believe that every major government from the US to China to Germany to India are hacking everything
they can get their hands on. And that every government knows that about all the rest. As far as
I am concerned anyone who doesn't believe that is beyond naive.
But thinking that every major government had access to Clinton's emails, Boeing's files,
and knows what internet videos Obama/May/Merkel/Putin/Castro have accessed more than once is not
the same thing as thinking they are stupid enough or have decent strategic reasons to make that
public knowledge by releasing damaging but not destroying emails concerning the massive stupidity
and arrogance of one candidate for President and her core people.
There is only one reason that the meme about Fake News is being pushed now – the people
who have been pushing fake news for awhile to promote their agendas have lost the control they
thought they had over the public and now worry about them rebelling. If fake news were important
Judith Miller wouldn't have a job or a book deal and the opportunity to promote that book. Hell
Murdoch wouldn't have a media empire.
I don't know why so many so-called movers and shakers want war with Russia, but it is clear
that anyone getting in the way of that goal is now in the cross hairs. ProporNOT may be more about
Ukrainian support, but the people who promoted them are about the reasons it was being used in
the first place.
Because big picture. Eurasia is inevitably coming together and it is the end of an era. Why
we thought we could prevent this from happening must be based on pure hubris. Everything has changed
so much in one century that even language makes no sense. Eastern European fascists running
propaganda web sites for the Whappo, indeed.
Hillary Clinton taking up the cause against fake news. Jesus. As Liz Warren said, personnel
is policy. You hire fascist nut cases, you create fascism. Hillary, you're so very patriotic.
If you read Matt Stoller's excellent piece from The Atlantic , "How the Democrats
Killed their Populist Soul" you'll see that Clintonism matches the corporatist model of fascism
as derided by Franklin Roosevelt in the late '30's, before mass-murder became associated with
the brand and when people like Charles Lindbergh were touting it as the "modern" way forward.
If you understand Clintonism as corporatist fascism, the DNC's affinity for Ukraine becomes more
and more logical.
I don't see "Banana Republican" Trump as a fascist - he is in many ways an exemplar of
Caudillismo , a charismatic, populist, but authoritarian oligarch.
I read that. I don't believe Nance said the Podesta emails were fake, just that there was a
possibility that those supplying the documents to Wikileaks could adulterate the documents or
introduce fabricated documents into the pipeline. Quite easy to do when leaking, what was it,
fifty thousand emails? And I still haven't heard a single persuasive argument to disprove that
the Russians hacked the DNC. Quite the contrary. The hacks originated from IP addresses known
to originate in the FSA (Fancy Bear) who have led a prodigious list of pro-Russian exploits against
targets throughout eastern Europe, including the Baltic states, Ukraine, and the German Bundestag.
Real-time adjustments from those IPs also occurred from the Moscow time zone, and some used cyrillic
keyboards.
Don't get me wrong: I disagree with the WaPo piece, and have read, commented, and financially
supported Naked Capitalism for quite a while now. And there's no faker news than that Iraq had
WMDs, a fact that the press has never quite overcome in the eyes of the public. But just because
spooky Intelligence Community people say that Russia hacked the DNC, doesn't make it not so. There
are way too many people on the left going off half-cocked. Have you noticed how since the "fake
news" imbroglio flamed up, MSM criticism of Trump's swampland cabinet picks have been quite muted?
The Intercept post has a
link
to the Nance tweet, which is still out there, saying
Malcolm Nance Retweeted KA Semenova
Official Warning: #PodestaEmails are already proving to be riddled with obvious forgeries
& #blackpropaganda not even professionally done.
He, Podesta, and the correspondents in the leaked emails never provided a single example and/or
proof that any email was forged. Also, I don't understand the technicality, but there is some
type of hash value associated with an email such that WL was able provide confirmation of those
emails where the hash value was intact. Instructions on how to replicate that confirmation process
were published at the time.
Was amused to see that naturalnews (one of the sites listed in propornot – it looks like
I guess a right wing alternative medicine type site) is offering a $10k reward for unmasking propornot
but I don't think anyone's ever going to be able to collect.
Why? Because they take the site seriously on its claim of being composed of 30 members
and will only pay out for the identities of at least ten. I think it's just one, maybe two guys.
There are dots to connect – the WP article, Congressional Section 501 activity, Senators
McCain/Graham "leadership"; and most recently, Hillary's comments. Suspect coordination. Connect
the dots. And then search for a motive.
The national security state is concerned that Trump will seek mutually beneficial agreements
with Russia. For evidence of the power of the national "security" state a tour of the Pentagon
is not necessary. Tour Tyson Corner, Virginia, instead, for starters.
And once Trump has established these agreements there will then be no stopping several
Eastern European countries + Germany (of course) realizing where their economic interests really
lie. Does anyone really believe that Germany is going to let itself be turned into an irradiated
wasteland just to please a bunch of neocon paranoids ?
Goodbye sanctions and then, shortly after, its bye, bye NATO bye bye.
That's what the neocons, the MIC, and all their shills, and enablers truly fear. Paradoxically
this ludicrous attempt to revive McCarthyism may well end up actually ending the Cold War for
good & all 25 years after it should have ended.
From the article: "It's now been a few days, and the shock and disgust is turning to questions
about how to fight back-and who we should be fighting against."
How many people, world-wide, are involved and invested in the whole "taking over everything"
machinery of "state security" and espionage and corporate hegemony? And who is this "we" who should
be fighting?
Fundamentals: The human siege of the planet is (it seems sort of clear) driving the biosphere
toward collapse as a sustainer of most human life. Ever more of the extractable entities of the
planet (mineral and living resources, "money" whatever that is, the day labor of most of us, on
and on) are being used, and used up, in service to what? a relatively few masters of manipulation
who are playing a game that most of the rest of us, were we able to focus and figure it out, would
recognize as murder and attempted murder as part of a war "we" did not enlist (most of us) to
participate in. The manipulators, both the ones sitting on extreme piles of wealth and the power
it provides, and the senior effectives in the various "agencies" that play out the game, what
the heck do they "want?" Other than "MORE"?
What motivates a Coors or Koch or Bezos or Brock or the various political figures and their
handlers and minions and "advisors?" This one little episode shows how completely it appears that
the whole species is screwed: "Who do we fight, and how?" Are "we" is the readers of NC? Some
few of whom are stooges and operatives for the Ministries of Truth who are tracking and recording
what transpires here and no doubt subtly injecting "influencers" into the discourse. Some are
just ordinary people, of varying degrees of insight and ability to influence the collective net
vector of human activity (for good or ill). Some are hoping to just find some awareness of and
comprehension of what-all is shaking on the Big Game Board of Life. In this moment, "we" depend,
in this one tiny instance among the great flood of chaos-induction and interest-seeking, on the
responses and pressures "our" hosts can bring to bear - threatening letters to the propagators
like WaPo and Craig Timberg, just one tumor in the vast cancer that afflicts the species, attempts
to link up with other parts of the too-small "good will, comity and deceny" population that is
fractioned and atomized and constantly seduced or frightened into going along with the larger
trend line, grabbing URLs and stuff I'm not smart enough to understand, all that. But the Big
People, the Deep State that "we" are subtly taught NOT to believe exists by various bits of sophistry,
is a lot better armed and equipped and always active - its operatives are paid, usually pretty
well, to be on the job all the time, operating their various and manifold, multifarious, often
ingenious, always disingenous operations, and always thinking up new ways to screw over and loot
and debase and oppress and enserf the rest of us.
Here's just one explication of how the Deep State operates:
This book provides a detailed account of the ways in which the CIA penetrated and influenced
a vast array of cultural organizations, through its front groups and via friendly philanthropic
organizations like the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. The author, Frances Stonor Saunders,
details how and why the CIA ran cultural congresses, mounted exhibits, and organized concerts.
The CIA also published and translated well-known authors who toed the Washington line, sponsored
abstract art to counteract art with any social content and, throughout the world, subsidized
journals that criticized Marxism, communism, and revolutionary politics and apologized for,
or ignored, violent and destructive imperialist U.S. policies.
The CIA was able to harness some of the most vocal exponents of intellectual freedom
in the West in service of these policies, to the extent that some intellectuals were directly
on the CIA payroll. Many were knowingly involved with CIA "projects," and others drifted in
and out of its orbit, claiming ignorance of the CIA connection after their CIA sponsors were
publicly exposed during the late 1960s and the Vietnam war, after the turn of the political
tide to the left.
U.S. and European anticommunist publications receiving direct or indirect funding included
Partisan Review, Kenyon Review, New Leader, Encounter and many others. Among the intellectuals
who were funded and promoted by the CIA were Irving Kristol, Melvin Lasky, Isaiah Berlin, Stephen
Spender, Sidney Hook, Daniel Bell, Dwight MacDonald, Robert Lowell, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy,
and numerous others in the United States and Europe. In Europe, the CIA was particularly interested
in and promoted the "Democratic Left" and ex-leftists, including Ignacio Silone, Stephen Spender,
Arthur Koestler, Raymond Aron, Anthony Crosland, Michael Josselson, and George Orwell.
The CIA, under the prodding of Sidney Hook and Melvin Lasky, was instrumental in funding
the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a kind of cultural NATO that grouped together all sorts
of "anti-Stalinist" leftists and rightists. They were completely free to defend Western cultural
and political values, attack "Stalinist totalitarianism" and to tiptoe gently around U.S. racism
and imperialism. Occasionally, a piece marginally critical of U.S. mass society was printed
in the CIA-subsidized journals.
What was particularly bizarre about this collection of CIA-funded intellectuals was not
only their political partisanship, but their pretense that they were disinterested seekers
of truth, iconoclastic humanists, freespirited intellectuals, or artists for art's sake, who
counterposed themselves to the corrupted "committed" house "hacks" of the Stalinist apparatus.
It is impossible to believe their claims of ignorance of CIA ties. How could they ignore
the absence in the journals of any basic criticism of the numerous lynchings throughout the
southern United States during the whole period? How could they ignore the absence, during their
cultural congresses, of criticism of U.S. imperialist intervention in Guatemala, Iran, Greece,
and Korea that led to millions of deaths? How could they ignore the gross apologies of every
imperialist crime of their day in the journals in which they wrote? They were all soldiers:
some glib, vitriolic, crude, and polemical, like Hook and Lasky; others elegant essayists like
Stephen Spender or self-righteous informers like George Orwell. Saunders portrays the WASP
Ivy League elite at the CIA holding the strings, and the vitriolic Jewish ex-leftists snarling
at leftist dissidents. When the truth came out in the late 1960s and New York, Paris, and London
"intellectuals" feigned indignation at having been used, the CIA retaliated. Tom Braden, who
directed the International Organizations Branch of the CIA, blew their cover by detailing how
they all had to have known who paid their salaries and stipends (397-404).
http://monthlyreview.org/1999/11/01/the-cia-and-the-cultural-cold-war-revisited/
And that is just one part of the "operations" put in motion by just "our" national rulers by
ONE of the "seventeen national security agencies" that apparently appear in the organization chart
of the US empire.
These mostly faceless people, from "wet workers" to "economic hit men" to analysts and office
workers and Station Chiefs and functionaries at DIA and NIA and NSA and the rest of the acronymists
of "state security," are "just doing their jobs," with more or less personal malevolence (William
Casey, Dick Cheney, the Dulleses, Kermit Roosevelt, on and on), seem to be working from a central
organizing principle: Control of minds and resources, in service to imperial and corporate and
personal dominion. What tools and actions and thought processes do ordinary people have, to fight
back or even resist against this kind of onslaught? "We" are told we are becoming responsible
to do our daily best, in among fulfilling our and our families' basic needs, and to minimize our
environmental impacts to at least slow the destruction, and also somehow to become aware, in a
world of dis- and dysinformation, of what is being done to us and our children and communities,
and "resist." And "fight back." Against who, and against what, and by what means, when you have
the "Googolverment," and all those millions of employees and managers and executives thereof,
on call and on task 24/7 looking for ever more subtle ways to data mine and monetize and manipulate
"us"? And in a feedback loop that has been ongoing since no doubt the earliest of "civilization"
cities and tribes and nations, the "arms race" both in straight military terms and in the sneaky-pete
realm of espionage and state security and "statecraft," "the Russians" and the Pakistanis and
Chinese and Israelites, and probably Brazilians and Zoroastrians, are all growing their own machinery
of consumption and dominance and destruction.
What's the model "we" are supposed to be working from? Some people here are looking for "investment
opportunities" to take advantage of the chaos and destruction, and there are many for those who
can see the patterns and buy in. But what would a "just and decent world" (at least the human
population) even look like, and is there anything in our DNA that moves enough of us toward that
inchoate model to even have a prayer of suppressing those darker and deadlier impulses and motivations
and goals?
I have no answers for "what is to be done." It seems inevitable that perversion and corruption
and greed will always eventually "trump" decency and comity, once a certain size and composition
of a human population has been reached. One may hope that the general principle of eventual incompetence
that seems to apply to even the Deep State activities might become more immanent. And try to build
little communities that don't depend on killable cyber connections for their interconnectedness.
And work on an "organizing principle" of their/our own, that has a chance of surviving the crushing
mass of energetic but negative energy that infects the species.
And thanks to our hosts, for doing their bit to face down the fokkers that would take us all
down if they could. It's a constant struggle, and no doubt they are more aware than even a Futilitarian
like myself of all the parasites and malignancies that are so increasingly active and invested
in looting what's left of "antidotes."
Yes you do, the part about little communities and ad-hoc organizing principles is spot-on;
that stuff works, it just grows slowly at first. It is also self-limiting, a valuable feature,
given the manifest evidence of how badly things can go wrong when communities are pushed to grow
beyond their capacities.
It seems inevitable that perversion and corruption and greed will always eventually "trump"
decency and comity, once a certain size and composition of a human population has been reached.
Decency and comity have their little flaws, too; both can obscure incidents of gross folly.
But yeah, population factors are just ferocious.
One may hope that the general principle of eventual incompetence that seems to apply to
even the Deep State activities might become more immanent.
Not to worry. Incompetence is on it! Any second now wait for it wait for it excuse me, my timepiece
seems to have frozen hmm. Well, it appears that "peak incompetence" has already arrived and done
the bulk of its work, we just haven't noticed all of the results yet. We are now in that phase
between the giant's stumble and their final impact on the ground.
All this is normal, predictable, and as it should be (even the unfortunate parts); it's entropy.
It would be wiser to abandon bivalent moralities and just evaluate each circumstance on its merits,
and do our best.
That Ukrainian nationalists are behind propornot seems clear; that they're from the Nazified
wing seems implausible. Would the Bandera crowd be likely to think of putting a USS Liberty veterans'
website on a list of Russian propaganda outlets?
Ukrainian nationalists = Nazified Ukrainians. Israel is also involved so yes it makes a lot
of sense that the USS Liberty veterans' website on "the list". Might be time for Israel (and Genie
energy) to kiss the Golan Heights goodbye.
Yats and Porky are Jewish, so are some oligarchs who sponsor various neo-Nazi military formations.
Ihor Kolomoyskyi, for example, sponsors the Aidar Battalion. The bottom line is, the neo-Nazis
need to please their US government and Ukie oligarch sponsors in order to keep the dough flowing,
so Russians are the new Jews in Ukraine. Geopolitics makes for strange bedfellows.
Wikipedia has Yats being a member of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic and Porky belonging to the
Ukrainian Orthodox church. Not vouching for Wikipedia and knowing that history can produce some
interesting heritage, I thought I would point that out. Kolomoyskyi has dual citizenship with
Israel and of course infamous Clinton Foundation donor and Maidan supporter Victor Pinchuk was
raised by Jewish parents before sacking his own country.
The Forward certainly counts Porky as a Jew, and many Jewish organizations have attacked Yats
for concealing his Jewish roots. Given the rampant anti-antisemitism in Ukraine, can't really
blame them for concealing their identity. It was shortly before the Maidan that Mila Kunis went
back to her native Ukraine to promote her flick, and got called very unsavory names by some rabid
anti-Semites in Kiev.
" Dimitri - who asked NBC News not to use his real name - is one of dozens of teenagers in
the Macedonian town of Veles who got rich during the U.S. presidential election producing fake
news for millions on social media. "
heh. Dems didn't lose this elections because of "fake news". Dems lost because they did
not prosecute the bankers who caused the 2008 financial crash, who fraudulently foreclosed on
homes and are still engaged in fraud (see: Wells Fargo). imo.
Well that and passed a regressive health insurance bailout that required people to purchase
expensive and largely useless insurance; and showed their complete and utter contempt for working
Americans by ignoring the real state of the under and unemployment, and continued that contempt
by passing several job killing trade bills and attempting three other mega steroid versions of
same.
There are many reasons why the Democrats lost, but mostly it is because they stopped doing
little more than barely pretending to represent the interests of anyone outside of the wealthy
and corporate 'persons' who fund their campaigns and retirements. Protecting the banks and bankers
being only the clearest example.
I still don't see any of my favorite bloggers going after Bezos. I didn't even see him mentioned
until today. We are looking pretty timid so far in the face of Trump and Bezos (Trump from another
direction). No possibility of winning without fighting the war where it's taking place.
For Hire: Established corporation seeking experienced individuals in need of a challenge. Applicants
should have –
*at least 3 Yrs. experience of having their head head firmly up their backsides.
* a certificate from a licensed physician confirming applicants
mental impairment
* an ability to to obfuscate combined with no understanding of the terms 'cognitive dissonance'
'false moral equivalence' and 'logical fallacy'
Applicant must be at least 13 years old and show the capacity to convince 45% of America that
he or she is 30.
Earlier in this thread there was a comment from Claudia Riche claiming the Ames article is,
essentially, a smear job. I feel compelled to respond as I have direct personal knowledge of one
of his two main points, specifically re: the extreme right-wing tenor of the Foreign Policy Research
Institute, or FPRI in Philadelphia.
I worked at FPRI (yes, me the Marxist) in the mid-to-late 1970's, and was in contact with people
there through the early 1980's. I can testify that Ames's description of Strausz-Hupe and his
ideas are entirely accurate. I didn't know much about S-H when I first started working there,
but I figured out his age and original location probably made him a 3-way spook, at the least.
I could cite chapter and verse of the various associates and leading personalities that went through
there (including Alexander Haig) but I don't have the energy today.
Ames mentions that FPRI was driven off the Penn campus – well, only in the technical sense.
If you spit out the window you'd hit a university building, and many principals there were professors
at Penn, including Strausz-Hupe. Also, many Penn grad students passed through there, and undergrads
(like me).
For laughs, here is an interesting, if airbrushed, synopsis of the influence of FPRI by my
old friend Alan Luxenberg:
Here it is – sorry it didn't post immediately. BTW stuff not posting immediately doesn't necessarily
mean either (1) there is anything wrong with your comment, or (2) it got permanently eaten by
Skynet. Sometimes the algorithm for finding spam gets false positives for reasons that are not
entirely clear.
that was alot of investigative digging jerri-lynn -- so nice To see u surprise me twice in a
week. tremendous effort -thank you a post worth cross posting if it hasn't been already
This is indeed a great post, but I'm not the author. Mark Ames is the author. I just cross-posted
his fine work, which was originally published by AlterNet.
The CIA's apparent involvement reveals the immense danger and probable failure of expecting
a few managers to keep the sty clean.
Its not just in spookery that standards have collapsed. The world of professionals – doctors,
lawyers, accountants – has followed the same downward trajectory and it started in 1970 with demonetization
and the subsequent expansion of honorable greed.
It was in early 1970s that creative accounting and its penchant for creating wealth out of
nothing appeared.Then we saw these dodgy scorers appearing in court and swearing to the truth
of their new view. That infected the legal profession. The prosecutors were still willing to present
all their evidence for and against conviction to the Judge but the defense increasingly cheated,
led by the lawyer who tells his customers 'we never plead guilty,' and starts the creation of
a case beyond a reasonable doubt in place of the defendant's actual evidence.
It may be that doctors have so far escaped the moral collapse although on a recent visit to
hospital I saw the elevator lobbies infested with the army of capitalism in the shape of suited
drug salesmen trying to create obligations on the part of doctors.
We seem to have lost our way and for the time being its the man who cares only for the bottom
line who is winning the war of the world. He's the man who owns the newspaper that tells you every
bad thing is because of foreigners.
Typically Diaspora is more nationalistic the "mainland" population. This is very true about
Ukrainian Diaspora, which partially is represented by those who fought on the side of Germany in the WWII.
They are adamantly anti-Russian.
Notable quotes:
"... Here it also bears mentioning that it has been established that Yanukovych's Party of Regions transferred $200,000 to the far right Svoboda party and about $30,000 to the nationalist UNA-UNSO. This is serious money in Ukraine. ..."
"... Firstly, most Ukrainians don't give a shit about Bandera and the OUN. So if they're not speaking out against people using those symbols or slogans it's not because they support them, but because they're more concerned with issues of pure survival. ..."
"... And then these same fascists were whitewashed as noble freedom fighters by Western MSM simply because their interests happen to allign with the interests of the US, for the moment. ..."
"... Uh, no. I haven't noticed anyone here thinking that Russia is some sort of fighter for social and economic justice. Rather, we as a group are sick of noxious propaganda driven by American Exceptionalism. ..."
"... And speaking for myself, I find the rise of Russia to be potentially a very good thing for the US itself, if it manages to curtail the MIC-driven hegemonic drive, weakens its relative power, and forces it to focus its money and energies on pressing domestic issues. ..."
"... The idea of considering Putin to be anticapitalist is risible. Putin represents a limit on a US hegemonized economic order and the greater likelihood that some portion ..."
"... This is some insidious strawman and dishonest argumentation, speaking of "BS." Nowhere does this article state that the entire Maidan revolution was a "fascist coup"-that's you putting words in the author's mouth to make his article appear to be Russian propaganda. The author specifies names of top figures in power today with seriously disturbing neo-Nazi backgrounds-the speaker of Ukraine's parliament, its Interior Minister, and head of National Police. He never once calls it a "fascist coup". Using strawman to avoid having to answer these specific allegations is bad faith commenting. ..."
"... The false analogy to Occupy shows how dishonest your comment is. No one disputes that neo-Nazi leader Parubiy was in charge of Maidan's "self-defense"; and that neo-Nazi Right Sektor played a lead role in the confrontations with the Yanukovych authorities. ..."
"... I suspect that Mr. Kovpak is a member of the Ukrainian diaspora that first infested this country starting around 1945, and has since been trying to justify the belief that the wrong side won WWII. ..."
"... "The appalling corruption of Yanukovich was replaced by the appalling corruption of Yats and Poroschenko " ..."
"... Paruiby (Neo Fascist) was in charge before and after the Maidan for security – the trajectory of the bullets came from his peoples positions that shot the cops – analyzed over and over ..."
"... The Nazi Asov Battalion among other organizations supporting the Regime in Kiev has Nazi symbols, objectives and is one of the main forces armed and trained by American Military. ..."
"... The entire corrupt Kiev administration is Nazi and now it appears the Clinton Campaign has direct ties well beyond the $13 million she received in her Slush Fund from the Oligarchs in 2013. The driving force behind this entire Fake News Initiative and support for Hillary is becoming more visible each day. ..."
"... Not to mention the Ukrainian Nazis penchant for shelling civilians. Or will Kovpak (Ukrainian school perhaps? Did his grandfather emigrate with the other Ukrainian SS?) will repeat the canard that unbeknownst to the locals, the rebels are shelling themselves, using artillery shells that can 180 mid-flight? ..."
"... What is the liberals' talking point these days? "Not all Trump supporters are racist, but all of them decided that racism isn't a deal-breaker. End of story." Hillary's SoS-designate Nuland and Barry 0 decided that Ukie nazism wasn't a deal breaker. End of story. ..."
"... Ukrainian neo-fascists were an integral part of the Maidan (trained in Poland, US, and Canada). ..."
"... Yes, ordinary Ukrainians protested against corruption – but every U. government since 1991 has been corrupt. Yanukovich was no exception – but he was also not the worst one (do some research on J. Timoshenko). ..."
"... There is enough actual footage from Maidan that shows the presence of neo-nazi members on the square from the beginning. They were also the one who completed the violent overthrow of the government that happened on 2/21-22/14 – after a deal had been signed calling for early elections. The burning of 48 people in Odessa was probably done by angels, according to your likely analysis. ..."
"... So perhaps in the future instead of repeating a bunch of Russian talking points ..."
"... I was going to say something about how the CIA made Ukraine's Social Nationalist party change its name to Svoboda (freedom), to obscure the obvious Nazi connection, but instead I will just laugh at you. ..."
"... What a shocker that Jim Kovpak, the commenter who tries smearing this article as "repeating a bunch of Russian talking points" -- works for CIA-founded Voice of America and is a regular with Ukraine's "StopFake.org" which is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy , the CIA's color revolution "soft" arm - in other words, PropOrNot's folks. Can't make this stuff up. ..."
"... Wait, so in Kovpak's case our tax dollars are used to fund and disseminate propaganda to America's public, too? I am not shocked or anything, but rather amused that the vaunted American democracy and famously free media is beginning to resemble communist Bulgaria. ..."
"... Okay, but isn't it the case that many far-right leaders have migrated to parties closer to the center, such as People's Front? Svoboda's leaders have done this. Andriy Parubiy, Tetiana Chornovol, and Oleksandr Turchynov, for example, hold high positions in People's Front, but started out as members or Svoboda. If I'm not mistaken, People's Front also has strong connections to the far-right Volunteer Battalions. I believe People's Front has its own paramilitary branch too. ..."
"... What this tells me is that much of Ukraine's far-right may be masquerading as right-center. That's kind of like a political Trojan Horse operation. This way the fascists avoid standing out as far-right, but at the same time, move closer to the mechanisms of power within Ukraine's government. ..."
"... Here's an article by Lev Golinkin commenting on the far-right's strong and dangerous influence on Ukraine today. A fascist presence like this could easily be a powerful element in Ukrainian elections, very suddenly and unpredictably too. https://www.thenation.com/article/the-ukrainian-far-right-and-the-danger-it-poses/ ..."
"... This is getting darker and darker. As much as I dislike Trump I feel happier that Clinton didn't make it. The TINA party is the most reactionary thing by far! ..."
"... Sanders might have had a hard time driving as far left on FP as he did on domestic issues. I'm his constituent, and I have a letter from him from mid-'15 reiterating all the mainstream lies about Russia and Ukraine. ..."
Hello, I'm the blogger of Russia Without BS, a site you cited once in the stories about PropOrNot.
As I have recently written
on my blog
, I believe PropOrNot is most likely one person who is not linked to any real organization
group or intelligence agency. The individual is most likely what I call a cheerleader, which is
basically a person with no reasonable connection to some conflict, yet who takes a side and sort
of lives vicariously through their imagined "struggle."
That being said, you're probably not going to do yourself any favors claiming that Maidan was
a fascist coup and that fascists are in charge in Ukraine. Euromaidan was not started by right-wingers
(quite the opposite, actually), and they were not the majority of people there. Basically you
condemning Maidan is like someone condemning Occupy just because of the presence of neo-Nazis
and racists who were sometimes involved in certain Occupy chapters (this is well documented).
Without actually bothering to look at the issues involved, you are basically telling millions
of Ukrainians that they should have tolerated a corrupt, increasingly authoritarian government
that was literally stealing their future all because some right-wingers happened to latch on to
that cause too. Here it also bears mentioning that it has been established that Yanukovych's
Party of Regions transferred $200,000 to the far right Svoboda party and about $30,000 to the
nationalist UNA-UNSO. This is serious money in Ukraine.
As for the slogan, yes, Slava Ukraini, Heroiam Slava! has its origins in the OUN, but there
are some important things to consider when discussing Ukrainian history.
Firstly, most Ukrainians don't give a shit about Bandera and the OUN. So if they're not
speaking out against people using those symbols or slogans it's not because they support them,
but because they're more concerned with issues of pure survival. Look at the average salary
in Ukraine and look into some of the instances of corruption (some of which continue to this day),
and you'll understand why a lot of people aren't going to get up in arms about someone waving
the red and black flag. Most people have become very cynical and see the nationalists as provocateurs
or clowns, and thus they don't take them seriously enough.
Before you call this good points, please familiarize yourself with the (accurate) history of
the Maidan, Ukraine, neo-nazi presence in that country, and Russian history. Please Kovpak seems
to be an embodiment of what Ames tries to convey.
The more experienced observer listens to all sides; and all sides lie at least a little, if
only for their own comfort. Beyond that, subjectivity is inescapable, and any pair of subjectives
will inevitably diverge. This is not a malign intent, it's existential circumstance, the burden
of identity, of individual life.
My own (admittedly cursory) analysis happens to coincide with Jim Kovpak's first para (PropOrNot
being primarily a lone "cheerleader"). And I can see merit, and the call for dispassionate assessment,
in some of his other points. This does not mean I endorse Kovpak over Ames, or Ames over Kovpak;
both contribute to the searching discussion with cogent observation (and the inevitable measure
of subjective evaluation).
I thank both for their remarks, and also thank our gracious hosts ;).
No, but it was hijacked by fascists. It is sad that more democratic/progressive forces lost
out, but that's what happened. You seem to be trying to avoid recognizing this fact by affirming
the rightfulness of those who began the revolt. Their agency was removed not by Naked Capitalism
or Mark Ames, but by fascists who out maneuvered, spent, and gunned them. It's time to mourn,
not to defend a parasitic Frankenstein that is trying to develop a European fascist movement.
Goons from that movement assaulted and injured May Day demonstrators in Sweden this year and then
fled back to the Ukraine. They are dangerous and should not be protected with illusions.
Their agency was removed not by Naked Capitalism or Mark Ames, but by fascists who out maneuvered,
spent, and gunned them
And then these same fascists were whitewashed as noble freedom fighters by Western MSM
simply because their interests happen to allign with the interests of the US, for the moment.
Thus we have the ridiculous situation where supposedly reputable media like NYT and WaPoo
cheer on the Azov battalion and its brethren, and deny the very symbolism of the various Nazi
insignia and regalia featured on their uniforms. Jim makes some very good points, but he fell
way short in ignoring the role of the US MSM in this travesty.
And just in case someone tries to claim that we all make mistakes at times and that the MSM
made an honest mistake in regards to these neo-Nazi formations, the same thing has been happening
in Syria, where the US and its Gulf allies have armed extremists and have whitewashed their extremism
by claiming even Al Qaeda and its offshoots are noble freedom fighters.
Good on the parallel with Syria. The evolution, or distortion, of revolutionary movements as
they struggle to gain support and offensive power and then either are modified or jacked by "supporting"
external powers is not a cheering subject. The tendency to ignore that this has happened takes
two forms. One is what we are here discussing. The other is its opposite, as seen in, for example,
the way some writers try to maintain that there never was a significant democratic/progressive/humane
etc. element to the Syrian opposition.
Ukraine, as I understand it, is not monolith but has roughly 2 interest areas – western and
eastern – divided by the River Dnieper. The Western half is more pro-European and EU, the Eastern
half is more pro-Russia. The word "fascist" in Ukraine means something slightly different than
in means in the US and the EU. So I take your comment with a grain of salt, even though it is
interesting.
Ukraine's geographical location as the land "highway" between Europe and Asia has created a
long and embattled history there.
So perhaps in the future instead of repeating a bunch of Russian talking points because
you mistakenly think Russia is somehow opposed to US capitalism,
Uh, no. I haven't noticed anyone here thinking that Russia is some sort of fighter for
social and economic justice. Rather, we as a group are sick of noxious propaganda driven by American
Exceptionalism.
And speaking for myself, I find the rise of Russia to be potentially a very good thing
for the US itself, if it manages to curtail the MIC-driven hegemonic drive, weakens its relative
power, and forces it to focus its money and energies on pressing domestic issues.
Thirded. The idea of considering Putin to be anticapitalist is risible. Putin represents
a limit on a US hegemonized economic order and the greater likelihood that some portion
of the fruits of the Russian oligarchic capitalist effort will benefit Russians, not elites
tied to the US, because of his self-interested nationalism. Not much to cheer about but better
than where things were headed when Yeltsin was in power.
This is some insidious strawman and dishonest argumentation, speaking of "BS." Nowhere
does this article state that the entire Maidan revolution was a "fascist coup"-that's you putting
words in the author's mouth to make his article appear to be Russian propaganda. The author specifies
names of top figures in power today with seriously disturbing neo-Nazi backgrounds-the speaker
of Ukraine's parliament, its Interior Minister, and head of National Police. He never once calls
it a "fascist coup". Using strawman to avoid having to answer these specific allegations is bad
faith commenting.
The false analogy to Occupy shows how dishonest your comment is. No one disputes that neo-Nazi
leader Parubiy was in charge of Maidan's "self-defense"; and that neo-Nazi Right Sektor played
a lead role in the confrontations with the Yanukovych authorities. There is absolutely no
equivalent to this with Occupy at all. Where does this false analogy even come from? No where
does the author state that Maidan was ONLY fascists, that is again your strawman response. Maidan
had a lot of support from pro-western, pro-european, pro-liberal forces. But to deny the key and
often lead roles played by neo-fascists in the actual organization, "self defense" and violent
confrontations with the Yanukovych goons is gross whitewashing.
Much worse is the way you rationalize the fascist OUN salute by arguing that it means something
else now, or it's become normalized, etc. These are all the same bullshit arguments made by defenders
of the Confederate flag. "It means something different now." "it's about heritage/being a rebel!/individualism!"
There is no "but" to this, and anyone who claims so is an asshole of the first order. The salute
descends directly from collaborators in the Holocaust and mass-murder of Jews and Poles and collaboration
with Nazis. If people claim they don't understand its origins, then educate them on why it's so
fucked up, don't make excuses for them. Really disgusting that you'd try to rationalize this away.
There is no "but" and no excuse, period.
"Russia Without BS" is one hell of an ironic name for someone bs-ing like this. Your failure
to actually engage the article, setting up and knocking down strawmen instead, and evading, using
false analogies-reveal your own intellectual pathologies. Try responding to the actual text here,
and maybe you'll be taken seriously.
My thought was that this post was an example of the strawman fallacy. Yet certainly Mr. Kovpak
wasn't just shooting from the hip. That is, he thought about this thing, wrote it, looked it over,
and said "well enough" and posted it. Poor logic, or bad faith?
I think the tell was his characterization of the article as "repeating a bunch of Russian talking
points." What the hell is a "Russian talking point"? How do Ames' contentions follow said talking
points? Are he saying, perhaps, that Ames is another one of those Kremlin agents we've been hearing
about, or perhaps another "useful idiot"? Perhaps Ames – of all people – is a dupe for Putin,
right?
Hasbara, Ukrainian style. Bringing this junk onto NS, either this guy is alot of dumber than
he gives himself credit for, or he actually has no familiarity with NS, outside of the now- and
rightly-notorious WP/ProporNot blacklist. Probably the latter, since it looks like his comment
was a pre-masticated one-and-done.
I suspect that Mr. Kovpak is a member of the Ukrainian diaspora that first infested this
country starting around 1945, and has since been trying to justify the belief that the wrong side
won WWII.
I'm glad Jim Kovpak provided this background. I was very troubled to see Ames breezily smear
the Ukrainian uprising as "fascist," essentially writing off the protesters as U.S. proxies and
dismissing their grievances as either non-existent or irrelevant. Something similar has happened
in Syria, of course. Yes, the U.S. ruling blocs try to advance their interests in such places,
but if you ignore the people on the ground or dismiss them as irrelevant, you're just playing
into the hands of other tyrannical interests (in Syria: Assad, Putin, Hezbollah, etc.).
$5 billion spent over the past 25 years by the US in Ukraine (per Nuland). Yeah, they ain't
US proxies. Gla that you straightened that out for us.
The grievances in Ukraine are many and are legitimate. But that the people's anger was hijacked
by US-financed proxies is a fact. Nuland was caught dictating that Yats would be the new PM, and
darned if he didn't become just that. The appalling corruption of Yanukovich was replaced by the
appalling corruption of Yats and Poroschenko, and the country was plunged into a civil war. But
Yats and Porky are freedom-loving democrats! The old saying remains true: "They may be corrupt
SOBs, but they are our corrupt SOBs!"
Heck, for all the crocodile tears shed by the West about corruption and democracy, it has nurtured
corruption in Eastern Europe and looked the other way as democracy has been trampled. Including
in my native Bulgaria, where millions of dollars spent by the US and allied NGOs on promoting
and financing "free press" have seen Bulgaria's freedom of media ranking slip to third world levels.
But Bulgaria is a "democracy" because it is a member of the EU and NATO, and as such its elites
have done the bidding of its Western masters at the expense of Bulgaria's national interests and
the interests of its people. Ukraine is headed down that road, and all I can say to regular Ukrainians
is that they are in for an even bigger screwing down the road, cheer-led by the Western "democracies"
and "free" media.
Meddling by US hyperpower in the internal affairs and the replacement of one set of bastahds
with another set of bastahds that is beholden to the US is not progress, which is why we call
it out. After all the spilled blood and destruction sponsored by the US, can you honestly say
that Ukraine and Syria and Libya and Iraq are now better off, and that their futures are bright?
I can't, and I can't say that for my native country either. That's because this new version of
neocolonialism is the most destructive and virulent yet. And it is particularly insidious because
it fools well-meaning people, like yourself, into believing that it actually helps improve the
lives of the natives. It does not.
"The appalling corruption of Yanukovich was replaced by the appalling corruption of
Yats and Poroschenko "
That pretty much sums it up. Jim Kovpak does make some excellent points which help to understand
what the Ukranians are thinking. The discussion regarding the poor education system and potential
lack of knowledge of what certain symbolism refers to was really good. Sort of reminds me of the
Southerners in the US who still claim that the Stars and Bars is just about Southern heritage
and pride without bothering to consider the other ramifications and what the symbol means for
those who were persecuted at one time (and continuing to today). But yeah, I'm sure there are
those who think that that flag was just something the Duke boys used on the General Lee when trying
to outrun Roscoe.
All that being said, I don't believe anybody here thinks that Yanukovich was some paragon of
virtue ruling a modern utopia. The problem is that the new boss looks surprisingly familiar to
the old boss with the main difference being that the fruits of corruption are being funneled to
different parties with the people likely still getting the shaft.
If your a(just as many in the US are), it's quite possible they are also unaware of the current
US influence in their country, just as most US citizens are unaware of what the US has done in
other countries.
I'd be very interested in Jim Kovpak's thoughts on this.
$5 billion spent over the past 25 years by the US in Ukraine (per Nuland). Yeah, they
ain't US proxies. Gla[d] that you straightened that out for us.
Yes, it doesn't get any more blatant than that, and if anyone believes otherwise they are obviously
hooked on the officially sanctioned fake news, aka the MSM.
"Euromaidan was not started by right-wingers / Ukraine certainly does not have more right-wingers
than other Eastern European nations" silly at best!
Paruiby (Neo Fascist) was in charge before and after the Maidan for security – the trajectory
of the bullets came from his peoples positions that shot the cops – analyzed over and over
The Nazi Asov Battalion among other organizations supporting the Regime in Kiev has Nazi
symbols, objectives and is one of the main forces armed and trained by American Military.
The entire corrupt Kiev administration is Nazi and now it appears the Clinton Campaign
has direct ties well beyond the $13 million she received in her Slush Fund from the Oligarchs
in 2013. The driving force behind this entire Fake News Initiative and support for Hillary is
becoming more visible each day.
Your statements are pure propaganda and I would assume you work indirectly for Alexandra Chalupa!
Not to mention the Ukrainian Nazis penchant for shelling civilians. Or will Kovpak (Ukrainian
school perhaps? Did his grandfather emigrate with the other Ukrainian SS?) will repeat the canard
that unbeknownst to the locals, the rebels are shelling themselves, using artillery shells that
can 180 mid-flight?
"Basically you condemning Maidan is like someone condemning Occupy just because of the presence
of neo-Nazis and racists who were sometimes involved in certain Occupy chapters (this is well
documented)."
You must be kidding. Where to begin? Can we start with the simple fact that the Russian Foreign
Ministry wasn't handing out baked goods to Occupy protesters in NYC, egging them on as they tossed
molotov cocktails at police, who, strangely enough, refrained from shooting protesters until right
after a peaceful political settlement was reached? Coincidence or fate? Or maybe there is strong
evidence that right wing fanatics were the ones who started the shooting on that fateful day?
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31359021
And sorry, no matter how much Kovpak denies it, the muscle behind the "glorious revolution"
was a bunch of far-right thugs that make our American alt-right look like girl scouts. Andrei
Biletsky, leader of Azov Battalion and head of Ukraine's creatively named Social-National Assembly,
says he's committed to "punishing severely sexual perversions and any interracial contacts that
lead to the extinction of the white man."
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28329329
- Just like those hippies at Zuccotti Park, right?! Oh,and this guy received a medal from
Poroshenko.
I can keep going, but your "Maidan was just like Occupy!" argument pretty much speaks for itself.
Glory to the heroes indeed.
As someone who lived many years in Ukraine, speaks Ukrainian and Russian and knows personally
many of the people involved, yes, Ukrainians know full well the origin of the Nazi slogans that
the local Nazis spout.
That doesn't mean that the average frustrated euromaidan supporter is a Nazi, but Nazis bussed
in from Galicia did eventually provide the muscle, as it were, and the rest of the country were
willing to get in bed with them, appoint them to run ministries, and let them have independent
military units.
Those Nazis are perfectly happy to call themselves Nazis.
What is the liberals' talking point these days? "Not all Trump supporters are racist, but
all of them decided that racism isn't a deal-breaker. End of story." Hillary's SoS-designate Nuland
and Barry 0 decided that Ukie nazism wasn't a deal breaker. End of story.
To be fair, there is a fairly wide gap between 'racist' and 'violent racist of the KKK/Nazi
variety'.
Also (yes, partly preaching to the choir, but with a purpose), liberals are perfectly happy
to stay quiet about enormous income/prosecution/incarceration/kill rate differences, so long as
those targeted/affected can (bureau-/meritocratically) be described as 'druggies/criminals/"extremists"/uneducated-thus-
undeserving '. And to ignore drone bombing of brown people. Etc. So all the pearl-clutching/virtue-signaling
concerning racism is pretty easy to shrug off as concerning little more than a plea to express
one's support for racist policy in a PC fashion.
(Highly recommend The New Jim Crow , which I've only recently started reading, for no
good reason. Bizarre to realize that all of the stuff that's being reported on a little bit now
has been going on for 30 years now (30y of silence / wir-haben-es-nicht-gewusst wrt the structural
nature; note that any/all reporting that im/explicitly describes these issues as "scandals"/"excesses"
is part of the problem.)
WOW I guess we have democracy, so your comment got through. In a way, your post confirms the
existence of rabidly anti-Russian entities – the very point that Mark Ames makes. But you know,
there are people who know a thing or two about Russia and Ukraine, and can easily refute much
of your diatribe. (1) Ukrainian neo-fascists were an integral part of the Maidan (trained
in Poland, US, and Canada).
Yes, ordinary Ukrainians protested against corruption – but every U. government since 1991
has been corrupt. Yanukovich was no exception – but he was also not the worst one (do some research
on J. Timoshenko).
Corruption persists in U. today – and based on the now-required property disclosures by U.
politicians – may be even worse. It is likely correct that most U. don't give a damn about Bandera
– but most U. also do not have any power to do anything about the neo-nazis, as they are (at least
in the western part of the country) numerous, vocal, and prone to violence.
There is enough actual footage from Maidan that shows the presence of neo-nazi members
on the square from the beginning. They were also the one who completed the violent overthrow of
the government that happened on 2/21-22/14 – after a deal had been signed calling for early elections.
The burning of 48 people in Odessa was probably done by angels, according to your likely analysis.
(2) But it is your comments about the U. neo-nazi participation in the war that seem to clarify
who you really represent. This participation was not much discussed during the soviet times –
I only found out that they continued to fight against the soviet state long after the war ended
recently – from family members who witnessed it (in Belorussia, west. Ukr., and eastern Czechoslovakia).
Some of them witnessed the unspeakable cruelty of these Ukr. "troops" against villagers and any
partisans they could find. White-washing this period (or smearing soviet educational system) will
not help – there is plenty of historical evidence for those who are interested in the subject.
(3) What you say about the Russian state promoting this or that is just a scurrilous attack,
with no proof. Not even worth exploring. On the other hand, there are plenty of documented murders
of Ukr. journalists (google Buzina – a highly intelligent and eloquent Ukr. journalist, who was
gunned down in front of his home; there are quite a few others).
Ukr. in 2014 may have been protesting inept government, but what they ended up with is far
worse – by any measure, Ukr. standard of living has gone way down. But now, the industrial base
of the country has been destroyed, and the neo-nazi genie will not go back into the bottle any
time soon. Ukr. as a unified place did not exist until after WWI, and the great divisions – brought
starkly into contrast by the 2014 destruction of the state – cannot be papered over anytime soon.
Appreciate the points you bring up but if the Ukranians truly want an end to an exploitative
system, they probably are not going to get it by allying themselves with Uncle Sugar. The US provided
billions of dollars to foment the coup and our oligarchs expect a return on that investment –
they aren't going to suddenly start trust funds for all Ukranians out of the goodness of their
hearts. You are aware of that aren't you?
So perhaps in the future instead of repeating a bunch of Russian talking points
I was going to say something about how the CIA made Ukraine's Social Nationalist party
change its name to Svoboda (freedom), to obscure the obvious Nazi connection, but instead I will
just laugh at you.
Hahahahahaha!
What a shocker that Jim Kovpak, the commenter who tries smearing this article as "repeating
a bunch of Russian talking points" -- works for CIA-founded
Voice of America and is
a regular with Ukraine's
"StopFake.org"
which is
funded
by the National Endowment for Democracy , the CIA's color revolution "soft" arm - in other
words, PropOrNot's folks. Can't make this stuff up.
Wait, so in Kovpak's case our tax dollars are used to fund and disseminate propaganda to
America's public, too? I am not shocked or anything, but rather amused that the vaunted American
democracy and famously free media is beginning to resemble communist Bulgaria. The good news
is that by the 80's nobody believed the state and its propagandists, even on the rare occasion
they were telling the truth, and America's people seem to be a bit ahead of the curve already,
which may explain the "fake news" hysteria from the creators and disseminators of fake news.
Ukraine certainly does not have more right-wingers than other Eastern European nations,
but if you look at their polls and elections you see that the far-right in Ukraine does far
worse than it does in other Eastern and even Western European countries
Okay, but isn't it the case that many far-right leaders have migrated to parties closer
to the center, such as People's Front? Svoboda's leaders have done this. Andriy Parubiy, Tetiana
Chornovol, and Oleksandr Turchynov, for example, hold high positions in People's Front, but started
out as members or Svoboda. If I'm not mistaken, People's Front also has strong connections to
the far-right Volunteer Battalions. I believe People's Front has its own paramilitary branch too.
What this tells me is that much of Ukraine's far-right may be masquerading as right-center.
That's kind of like a political Trojan Horse operation. This way the fascists avoid standing out
as far-right, but at the same time, move closer to the mechanisms of power within Ukraine's government.
Here in America we saw something like that in the early 1990s, when KKK leader David Duke migrated
to the political mainstream by running for office as a Republican in Louisiana. Of course Duke
never changed his views, he just learned to dissemble himself in the way he sold his politics
to the public.
This is getting darker and darker. As much as I dislike Trump I feel happier that Clinton
didn't make it. The TINA party is the most reactionary thing by far!
Yes, these are dangerous people, as are most "true believers". I'm also becoming even more
disappointed at Ms, Clinton. For a while, she seemed to be keeping a little distance from her
dead-enders, but now that her and Bill are out back on the money trail (How much is enough?),
it doesn't look good.
Selling fear? Really? Isn't there a shelf life on that?
I'm not certain about the contents of that crock, good sir. We now live in a "culture" where
s–t IS gold. Otherwise, why are we now enduring a "popular press" full of "wardrobe malfunctions,"
new amazing bikini bodies, salacious gossip, and equally salacious "news?" (The Page Three was
shut down really because there was too much competition.)
Oh tempura, oh s'mores! (Latinate for "We're crisped!")
Indeed. The above article is great, great stuff and shows why some of us found Hillary more
disturbing than Trump. Therefore Ames' final assumption
And the timing is incredible-as if Bezos' rag has taken upon itself to soften up the
American media before Trump moves in for the kill.
seems a bit off. It's certainly true that Trump said news organizations should face greater
exposure to libel laws but one suspects this has more to do with his personal peevishness and
inability to take criticism than the Deep State-y motives described above. Clearly the "public
versus private" Hillary–Nixon in a pant suit–would have been just the person to embrace this sort
of censorship by smear and her connection with various shadowy exiles and in her own campaign
no less shows why Sanders' failure to make FP the center of his opposition was, if not a political
mistake, at least evidence of his limited point of view.
It's unlikely that anyone running this time would be able to change our domestic trajectory
but this fascism from abroad is a real danger IMO. In Reagan times some of us thought that Reagan
supported reactionary governments abroad because that's what he and his rogue's gallery including
Casey and North wished they could do here. The people getting hysterical over Trump while pining
for Hillary don't seem to know fascism when it's right in front of them. Or perhaps it's just
a matter of whose ox is going to be gored.
Sanders might have had a hard time driving as far left on FP as he did on domestic issues.
I'm his constituent, and I have a letter from him from mid-'15 reiterating all the mainstream
lies about Russia and Ukraine.
No surprise, ever since the US, and Biden, got involved in Ukraine. And it is even probable,
that people like that were behind the Kennedy assassination, that the US has admitted was a conspiracy,
that is still protected from "journalistic sunshine" under lock and key by the US government.
Thanks for giving this article its own post, and thanks to dcblogger for providing the
link in yesterday's Water Cooler.
Seems to me that this little bout of D-party/CIA incompetence, and/or incontinence, will finally
sound the death knell for the Operation Paperclip gang's plan. Good riddance.
"... The MSM has lost control of the narrative. The big dailies continue to hemorrhage ad revenue, month in and month out, year in and year out. Their existence going forward will be even more dependent on government assistance. Fake News is the pathetic death rattle of the neoliberal order. ..."
More importantly, the editor's note vaults into verbal gymnastics in an attempt to simultaneously
rationalize and distance itself from an obviously flawed primary source. Any data analysis is
only as good as the sum of its parts, and it's clear that PropOrNot's methodology was lacking.
The Post, of course, was merely reporting what PropOrNot said . Yet it used declarative
language throughout, sans caveat, lending credence to a largely unknown organization that lumps
together independent left-wing publications and legitimately Russian-backed news services. The
Post diminished its credibility at a time when media credibility is in short supply, and the non-apologetic
editor's note doesn't help.
Almost two weeks after its article ran, the Post ran a
sort of correction in the form of an editorial comment in italics pasted on top of the online
edition of Timberg's November 24 piece (where only those looking for the by then old original
story would find it). In that note, the editors say that the paper
did not name any of the sites [on PropOrNot's blacklist], does not itself vouch for the
validity of PropOrNot's findings regarding any individual media outlet, nor did the article
purport to do so. Since publication of the Post 's story, PropOrNot has removed some
of those sites from its list.
Of course, the damage was already done, as the original article achieved widespread circulation
via the Post 's wire service; it would be up to all those news organizations that bought
and ran the story, or reported their own versions of it, to make any correction.
Meanwhile, the facile dodge of "we didn't name the sites" ignores the reality that the Post
had prominently showcased PropOrNot and let its name vouch for the heretofore unknown group's
credibility. The paper didn't have to run the list; anyone with a smartphone could do a Google
search, find PropOrNot's website as the first listing, go to the homepage and find a link
button headed "The List."
And apparently plenty of readers did that. While thanks to the Post 's grant of anonymity,
PropOrNot's hidden principals remained safe from inquiring reporters and Russian hackers alike,
editors of sites named on its McCarthyite hit list quickly found themselves deluged with venomous
calls and emails. As Jeffrey St. Clair, a co-founder and editor of CounterPunch.org , another
site listed prominently as a propaganda tool, recalls, "The morning after the Post published
its article, I found 1,000 emails in my inbox, mostly hate mail and death threats."
Expert media commentators criticized the Post's handwave in the form of an editor's note
that it placed at the top of a story that is now history, as opposed to news. The mild concession
is likely to be read only by fans of the 199 sites that were defamed by the Post, and journalists
who've taken interest in the row and not the vast public that read the story through the post
and other major outlets, like USA Today, that re-reported or syndicated Timberg's piece.
It all depends upon who you follow on Twitter, but from my check-in's today, the WaPo is not
coming off well.
This whole 'fake news' mess is downright weird.
I have trouble understanding how anyone can govern, given the growing legitimacy problems.
It seems as if there are (very well greased) wheels within (extravagantly funded) wheels moving
behind the scenes.
Meanwhile, apparently Obama has formally requested that the Intel Community develop a 'consensus
report' about the role of the Russians in this most recent election (per Emptywheel). "Senior
officials' in Congress have already been briefed, and some are apparently leaking: this much smoke
signals a battle royale behind the scenes.
The worst possible outcome, IMVHO, is failing to investigate and come clean.
Every time our government is too gutless to deal with reality - whether WMD, or the Financial
Crisis - the legitimacy of government is further eroded. It would be helpful if Hillary renounced
the Presidency, and agreed that even if the election should be overturned, that she would defer
to some other person. The investigation should not be used as a recount, nor as a re-do. It should
function only to restore credibility to the US federal government, and for no other reason.
Unfortunately for Trump, if he blocks this kind of investigation, it will only diminish his
credibility, and weaken the very power he seeks to hold.
Life is full of paradoxes and mysteries; this one takes the cake.
I agree with your comment re Twitter, but Twitter is heavy with journalists who love the story
of a media fight. This is catnip to them.
The Washington Post story was tweeted far more heavily when it first ran than the follow-on
criticism was. The story proper got 14,800 comments. It was picked up by USA Today, CNN, and I
haven't even begun to track how many different other publishers. The original reach was at least
an order of magnitude, and probably two orders of magnitude, bigger than the discussion of the
itty bitty walkback.
Please see our Tip Jar in the right column. It tells you how to donate using a debit or credit
card, or send a check.
We had a recent emergency fundraiser, and some of that has already been allocated to extra
site coverage (to have others do more site-minding and content generation so as to free me up
to spend time on this stuff) and the other part (a bit more than half the total) is to fund expenses
for litigation.
Is this episode really Bezos carrying water for a faction of the deep state? They had to have
known that if you malign the entirety of the alt media-left and right that they'd show their teeny
little teeth.
I bet they feed this chump Timberg to the crocodiles ultimately. Meanwhile Mark Ames will ferret
out the weird nexus of Ukrainian Nazi types. But since the WaPo will take the heat and the public
will lose interest, nobody will care. But in the end the 4 or 5 folks who came up with this scheme
will have achieved their goals:
*Throw mud on non corporate news reportage.
*Fire a warning shot over Trumps bow
*Plant seeds with the population for the future when some ginned up provocation will again put
Russia in the crosshairs of a black propaganda campaign.
These archonic m_fers are relentless. Russia represents an independent power which absolutely
cannot be permitted by Empire. This is part of a long term strategy to box Russia in. They are
seen as the weaker of the Sino Russian partnership and are being targeted first.
Not having witnessed anything like this before I'm having trouble understanding the strategy
here. What potential end game is there in dealing directly with PropOrNot? Jim Moody's time is
valuable, Yves' time is valuable, but they seem likely to be a few nobodies who no one would have
paid any attention to if the Washington Post hadn't amplified the reach of their amateurish operation
by factor of a million.
I think you said it all there without maybe realizing it - PropOrNot may seem like
harmless nobodies and, left to their own devices and not given the oxygen of publicity that is
what they'd have remained.
But there are no accidents in life. The Washington Post (and do keep in mind its owner)
picked up on their output and played their tune on the Mighty Media Wurlitzer thereby amplifying
it. That alone is suggestive that PropOrNot may not be the two guys working out of their Mom's
basement which it is easy to think they might be.
Add in the fact that - worldwide now, I can tell you that even outside the U.S. this whole
"fake news" meme is still getting lots of airtime, the BBC in England is running 'Russia Hacked
the U.S. Election' stories right now as I watch and the Japanese language media has similar too
- what the Washington Post is seeking to do looks very well orchestrated and coordinated it means
that you must not take anything at face value here.
The MSM is all in. Last night the PBS Newshour ran the first in a series of stories
on FakeNews™, with favorably framed clips of Clinton and Sheryl Sandberg, and an extended
interview with Marc Fisher of the WaPo. Oddly, no mention of the PropOrNot fiasco.
It doesn't take a tin foil hat to believe the globalist-neocon-neolib-blob_thing feels it necessary
to delegitimize Trump and Trump's election in order to reassure its merry band of practitioners
that it's still biz as usual in the One World.
And tho it may seem a challenge to re-paint "Lying Hillary" as the beacon of truth, challenges
are what keep one motivated and ever stronger. No pain no gain.
P.S. Irony Of The Year Award goes to Russia for hacking and releasing real news. If we are
giving them the credit for DNC hacks and Hillary's secret private server discovery.
I went to a fundraiser last night where the very politically involved crowd was largely liberal
and one of the award presenters brought up 'fake news' during her speech. If I'm not mistaken
a member of this woman's family was one of Clinton's superdelegates. This 'fake news' meme is
definitely being spread far and wide.
We need to pursue the source of the defamation. See the BuzzFeed story yesterday, which is
generally very sympathetic to our position. Yet even that reporter says, Why have you gone after
the Post and not ProOrNot too?
I think this is at the very most six guys and probably more like two or three, for reasons
not worth taking the time to explain. And do not forget that the New Yorker said not only they
but other major pubs were shown the story and passed on it.
So the question is more: why did the Post pick up on obvious rubbish and treat it as newsworthy?
This may have less to do with grand conspiracy as much as a bad intersection of events, such as:
the Post under Bezos explicitly placing much more pressure on reporters to churn out stories quickly,
which means less fact checking; hysteria over Russia and fake news; and individual reporters and
editors seeing it as to their advantage to be in front of a hot area, no matter at what risk.
Recall the Post has run such nutty stories as one saying that Hillary's 9/11 collapse was due
to Putin poisoning her.
I think WAPO picked it up because they were obviously all in for Clinton during the election.
Whether Bezos was the hand behind this or not, WAPO has certainly focused on Trump. They even
admitted they were doing it as Bob Woodward disclosed in a Zero Hedge article. And of course,
WAPO assisted Clinton against Sanders with their coverage which has been documented many times.
Now Clinton is on the bandwagon of the fake news fiasco. She just gave a speech about it Thursday.
Thanks Yves (and Clive) for the responses. My concern is that if a shoddy three-man operation,
paired with a useful idiot MSM amplifier, can provoke a response that puts sites like NC on the
defensive and takes time from original reporting, it could be a template for quick-and-dirty future
attacks against independent media outlets. It seems like the amplifier is the only part of the
chain that can't just change domain names and set up shop somewhere else.
But I can see how ignoring them entirely isn't an optimal solution either. I'll keep throwing
my change in the tip jar and seeing how it all unfolds.
The PorN site is a dark site. We don't know who the principals are or where its funding comes
from. YYYYvesYYY also said NC needs to know what jurisdiction to file in in order to pursue PorN,
but that is not even known at this point. But in the Wapo response to TruthDig, Wapo stated they
did have "numerous" discussions with some persons at PorN before running the story.
So you got to shake the tree by the branches you can grab. The ball is now in Wapo's court
to state, "Journalistic integrity demands we do not reveal our sources in order to protect their
safety."
Meanwhile PorN is calling upon the entire USG security apparatus to investigate 200 websites
for Treason, but we are unsure about which country[government] Treason is being committed against
in One World. This doesn't sound like a very safe situation for simple minded provincial US citizen
homebodies.
I have been browsing your links for many years now – I find them well balanced, genuine, thought
provoking, and usually quite deep. And it is not just me – your quality is well recognized among
financial online community and punditry.
It is important you treat this thing with the right kind of attention. This is not mccarthian.
If it would be, you would be locked down in some hole in a secret location. This is somebody claiming
you have silicone tits and an extramarital affair with Michael Moore. Nobody gives a shit about
this, or their software, or WaPo and thir article – even if it gets 10 million retweets. Twitter
attention span is 1 minute.
Sure, sue everybody. But never give them an aureola of some dark sinister power. Ridicule them
every way of the step. Ridicule "newspapers of record". Ridicule retweets. Have fun with it. Find
new cases of such crap, where you personally are not affected. Help Melania Trump in her great
fight against online violence :-)
Just never concede to this as a "media fight" or "two versions of reality". This has nothing
to do with news or reality. Do not give them that ground. This is some insignificant ass claiming
you have fake tits, and it was picked up by an obsolete marketing tool called WaPo. A claim of
an extramarital affair with Michael Moore would probably get even more coverage and more retweets
and I bet some cable news discussions about public health consequences of missionary position
with such a voluptuous man.
We are fighting a legal battle and a political battle. The need to do both somewhat restricts
our degrees of freedom. The political battle is ultimately the far more important one, since the
"fake news" scare is part of a major push to restrict content on the web, by de facto rather than
de jure means.
you're kidding yourself, every time lately that I look at mainstream headlines the fake news
story is there near the top, can no longer stomach the news hour but another commenter says they're
doing a series think about all those proper folks demanding their kids not read alternative views?
The only consolation I can think of is that hillary lost because clearly this story was put out
in advance of her losing and would still be amplified had she won, .the outcome looks bleak either
way from here might as well fight it
I can tell you these fake news websites articles were heavily promoted here in Europe, so the
consequences are wide spread world wide.
I tried to explain the reasons and people behind ProporNot, but my comments were censored on
3 of the biggest digital newspapers in The Netherlands, some of them are in close contact with
Soros.
We have national elections in March 2017 and I can tell you the majority of the people are
mad as hell and they know the news presented to them in the MSM are/were heavily biased
towards Clinton. The MSM are sh*t scared what will happen in March 2017, an earthquake in the
political landscape. All the liberal political leaders are now suddenly promoting political stuff
that was unimaginable 2 years ago.
I have followed your website on and off the last 5 years and the idea that you are guided by
the Ruskies is absolutely preposterous even insane.
I just wonder, was Wapo so blinded by the total unexpected loss of Clinton that they keep on
publicing this nonsense or is it the trench war by Trump through his tweets. Wapo must have been
aware of the amateurish drivel from Propornot and took a big risk of being exposed as havily biased
and unprofessional with a heavy backlash.
Anyways, I would like to donate to you in this battle, do you accept Paypal as well.
I wish you and your team lots of success, Yves in this battle for truth.
However, if PropOrNot doesn't respond you might be able to get their Whois privacy provider
to get you the real owner's details – click on "File a Claim" at
https://www.domainsbyproxy.com/default.aspx
to see their process.
I realize that there were a number of right wing news outlets included in this de facto
censorship effort. But, they seem to be in a much stronger position than the left wing ones.
Wider distribution, less choosy about what they'll run, favored by the incoming power elite, etc.
Except, perhaps for a few paleocons-turned-libertarian-contrarians like Paul Craig Roberts. The
Drudge Report types seem less vulnerable.
I haven't been paying as much attention as I should to post a comment. But, first order, it
looks like this imbalance may pertain to targeting. No one could expect to dull the impact of
the Drudge Report by including it in an app of this kind. It is simply too prominent. Therefore,
dampening the influence of the Drudge Report (and similar sites) was not the point of this little
exercise.
Slurring the actual targets by including Drudge & company in the app seems . more the point.
Last night the PBS Newshour did a segment on "fake news." They are also participating in the
current PBS pledge drive. Perhaps they are hoping that George Soros will send them a big check.
One had hoped that the show would improve now that the election is over. One was wrong.
The MSM has lost control of the narrative. The big dailies continue to hemorrhage ad revenue,
month in and month out, year in and year out. Their existence going forward will be even more
dependent on government assistance. Fake News is the pathetic death rattle of the neoliberal order.
Short-termism is a real problem for the US politicians. It is only now the "teeth of dragon"
sowed during domination of neoliberalism since 80th start to show up in unexpected places. And reaction
is pretty predictable. As one commenter said: "Looks like the CIA's latest candidate for regime change
is the USA."
Notable quotes:
"... Divide and Control is being brilliantly employed once again against 'us'. The same tactics used against foreign countries are being used here at home on 'us'. ..."
"... Divide and Conquer, yes indeed, watch McCain and Graham push this Russian hacking angle hard. ..."
"... i regard this 'secret' CIA report, following on from the 'fake news' meme, to be another of what will become a never-ending series of attempts to deligitemize Trump, so that later on this year the coming economic collapse (and shootings, street violence, markets etc) can be more successfully blamed not only on Trump and his policies, but by extension, on the Russians. (a two-fer for the globalist statists) ..."
"... Nevermind that many states voting machines are on private networks and are not even connected to the internet. ..."
"... The Russians 'might' have influenced the election..... The American Government DID subvert and remove a democratically elected leader (Ukraine).Anyone see the difference there? ..."
"... Voted for Trump, but the Oligarcy picked him too. Check the connection between Ross and Trump and Wilburs former employer. TPTB laughs at all of us ..."
"... The sad facts are the CIA itself and it's massive propaganda arm has its gummy fingers all over this election and elections all over the planet. ..."
"... The Russians, my ass. ................. The CIA are famous for doing nefarious crap and blaming their handy work on someone else. Crap that usually causes thousands of deaths. ... Even in the KGB days the CIA was the king of causing chaos. ..... the KGB would kill a dissident or spy or two and the CIA in the same time frame would start a couple of wars killing thousands or millions. ..."
"... What makes people think the Post is believable? The truth has been hijacked by their self annihilating ideology. Honestly one would have to be dumb as a fence 'Post' (pun intended) to believe ANYTHING coming from this rag and the rest of these 'Fake News' MSM propaganda machines, good lord! ..."
"... As for the CIA, it was reported at the time to be largely purged under the Dubya administration, of consitutionalists and other dissidents to the 9-11 -->> total-war program. Stacked to the brim with with neocon cadres. ..."
"... Out of the 3,153 counties in this country, Hillary Clinton won only 480. A dismal and pathetic 15% of this country. The worst showing EVER for a presidential candidate. ..."
"... The much vaunted 2 million vote lead in the popular vote can be attributed to exactly 4 boroughs in NYC; Bronx, Queens, Manhattan, & Brooklyn ..."
"... 96 MILLION Americans were either too disgusted, too lazy, or too apathetic to even bother to go out and cast a vote for ANYONE in this election. ..."
"... Looks like the CIA's latest candidate for regime change is the USA. ..."
"... Clapper sat in front of congress and perjured himself. When confronted with his perjury he defended himself saying he told them the "least untruthful thing" he could - admitting he had not problem whatsoever about lying to Congress. ..."
"... There certainly is foreign meddling in US government policy but it is not coming from Russia. The countries that have much greater influence than Russia on 'our' government are the Sunni-dominated Persian Gulf oil states including the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and, of course, that bastion of human rights, Saudi Arabia. ..."
"... Oil money from these states has found its way into influentual think tanks including the Brookings Institution, the Atlantic Council, the Middle East Institute and the Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies and others. ..."
"... And also, there are arms sales. Arm sales to Saudi/Gulf States come with training. With training comes military ties, foreign policy ties and even intelligence ties. Saudi Arabia, with other Gulf oil states as partners, practically owns the CIA now. ..."
"... Reverse Blockade: emphatically insisting upon something which is the opposite of the truth blocks the average person's mind from perceiving the truth. In accordance with the dictates of healthy common sense, he starts searching for meaning in the "golden mean" between truth and its opposite, winding up with some satisfactory counterfeit. People who think like this do not realize that this effect is precisely the intent of the person who subjects them to this method. ..."
"... I recall lots of "consensus views" that were outright lies, bullshit and/or stupidity: "The Sun circles the Earth. The Earth is flat. Global cooling / next ice age (1970s). Global warming (no polar ice) 1990s-00's. Weapons of mass destruction." You can keep your doctor. ..."
"... The CIA, Pentagon and "intelligence" agencies need both a cleaning and culling ..."
"... Blacklist Promoted by the Washington Post Has Apparent Ties to Ukrainian Fascism and CIA Spying. ..."
"... This whopper of a story from the CIA makes the one fabricated about WMD's in Iraq that fooled Bush Jr. and convinced him to almost take this country down by violating the sage advice on war strategy from Sun-Tzu and Clausewitz and opening up a second front in Iraq almost child's play. ..."
"... At least with the WMD story they had false witnesses and some made up evidence! With this story, there is no "HUMINT (human intelligence) sources" and no physical evidence, just some alleged traces that could have been actually produced from the ether or if they knew ahead of time of Trump's possible win sent someone to Russia and had them actually run the IP routes for show. ..."
"... Bush was misled because the CIA management was scared of some of his budgetary saber rattles and his chasing after some CIA management. In this case, someone is really scared of what the people will find when the swam gets drained, if ever it gets done. This includes so-called "false flag conservatives" like Lindsey Graham and top Democrats "Cambridge 5 Admirers" salted in over the years into the CIA ..."
"... Trump has already signaled he is going hand them nearly unlimited power by appointing Pompeo in the first place. I would think they would be very happy to welcome the incoming administration with open arms. ..."
"... I could see it if they were really that pissed about Trumps proposed Russian re-set and maybe they are but even that has to be in doubt because of the rate at which Trump is militarizing his cabinet. ..."
"... In all reality Trump is a MIC, intelligence cabal dream come true, so why would they even consider biting the hand that feeds so well? Perhaps their is more going on here under the surface, maybe all the various agencies and bureaucracies are not playing nice, or together for that matter. ..."
"... after all the CIA and the Pentagon's proxy armies are already killing each other in Syria so one has to wonder in what other arenas are they clashing? ..."
"... The neocons are desperate. Their war monger Hitlery lost by a landslide now they fabricate all sorts of irrational BS. ..."
"... 'CIA Team B' ..."
"... 'Committee on the Present Danger' ..."
"... 'Office of Special Plans' ..."
"... Trump is a curious fellow. I've thought about this quite a bit and tried to put myself in his shoes. He has no friends in .gov, no real close "mates" he can depend on, especially in his own party, so he had to start from scratch to put his cabinet together. ..."
"... It could very well be that this was Trump & the establishment plan to con the American public from the start of course. I kind of doubt it, since the efforts of the establishment to destroy Trump was genuinely full retard from the outset and still continues. ..."
"... He would have done better to ignore the political divide to choose those who have spent their lives challenging the Deep State. My ignorance of US politics does not supply me with a complete picture, but Ron Paul, David Kucinich, Trey Gowdy, Tulsi Gabard and even turncoat Bernie Sanders would have been better to drain the swamp than the neocon zionists he has installed in power. ..."
It is worse than "shiny object." Human brains have a latency issue - the first time they hear
something, it sticks. To unstick something, takes a lot of counter evidence.
So, a Goebbels-like big lie, or shiny object can be told, and then it can take on a life of
its own. False flags operate under this premise. There is an action (false flag), and then false
narrative is issued into press mouthpieces immediately. This then plants a shiny object in sheeple
brains. It then takes too much mental effort for average sheeple to undo this narrative, so "crowds"
can be herded.
Six million dead is a good example of this technique.
Fortunately, with the internet, "supposed fake news sites like ZH" are spreading truth so fast
- that shiny stories issued by our Oligarch overlords are being shot down quickly.
Bezo's, who owns Washington Post, is taking rents by avoiding sales taxes; not that I'm a fan
of sales taxes. But, ultimately, Bezos is taking rental thefts, and he is afraid of Trump - who
may change the law, hence collapse the profit scheme of Amazon.
Cognitive Dissonance -> Oldwood •Dec 10, 2016 10:49 AM
Oldwood. I have a great deal of respect for you and your intelligent opinions.
My only concern is our constant and directed attention towards the 'liberals' and 'progressives'.
When we do so we are thinking it is 'them' that are the problem.
In fact it is the force behind 'them' that is the problem. If we oppose 'them', we are wasting
our energy upon ghosts and boogeymen.
Divide and Control is being brilliantly employed once again against 'us'. The same tactics
used against foreign countries are being used here at home on 'us'.
chunga -> Cognitive Dissonance •Dec 10, 2016 11:33 AM
I've been reading what the blue-teamers are saying over on the "Democratic Underground" site
and for a while they've been expressing it's their "duty" to disrupt this thing. They are now
calling Trump a "Puppet Regime".
Divide and Conquer, yes indeed, watch McCain and Graham push this Russian hacking angle
hard. Also watch for moar of the Suprun elector frauds pop out of the woodwork. The Russian
people must be absolutely galvanized by what's happening, USSA...torn into many opposing directions.
dark pools of soros -> chunga •Dec 10, 2016 1:38 PM
First tell them to change their name to the Progressive Party of Globalists. Then remind them
that many democrats left them and voted for Trump.. Remind them again and again that if they really
want to see blue states again, they have to actually act like democrats again
I assure you that you'll be banned within an hour from any of their sites
American Gorbachev -> Oldwood •Dec 10, 2016 10:12 AM
not an argument to the contrary, but one of elongating the timing
i regard this 'secret' CIA report, following on from the 'fake news' meme, to be another
of what will become a never-ending series of attempts to deligitemize Trump, so that later on
this year the coming economic collapse (and shootings, street violence, markets etc) can be more
successfully blamed not only on Trump and his policies, but by extension, on the Russians. (a
two-fer for the globalist statists)
with a political timetable operative as well, whereby some (pardon the pun :) trumped up excuse
for impeachment investigations/proceedings can consume the daily news during the run-up to the
mid-term elections (with the intent of flipping the Senate and possibly House)
these are very powerful, patient, and deliberate bastards (globalist statists) who may very
well have engineered Trump's election for the very purpose of marginalizing, near the point of
eliminating, the rural, christian, middle-class, nationalist voices from subsequent public debate
Oldwood -> American Gorbachev •Dec 10, 2016 10:21 AM
The problem is that once Trump becomes president, he will have much more power to direct the
message as well as the many factions of government agencies that would otherwise be used to substantiate
so called Trump failures. This is a calculated risk scenario for them, but to deny Trump the presidency
by far produces more positives for them than any other.
They will have control of the message and will likely shut down much of alternate media news.
It is imperative that Trump be stopped BEFORE taking the presidency.
sleigher -> overbet •Dec 10, 2016 10:00 AM
"I read one morons comment that the IP address was traced back to a Russian IP. Are people
really that dumb? I can post this comment from dozens of country IPs right now."
Nevermind that many states voting machines are on private networks and are not even connected
to the internet. IP addresses from Russia mean nothing.
kellys_eye -> Nemontel •Dec 10, 2016 9:40 AM
The Russians 'might' have influenced the election..... The American Government DID subvert
and remove a democratically elected leader (Ukraine).Anyone see the difference there?
Paul Kersey -> Nemontel •Dec 10, 2016 9:40 AM
"Most of our politicians are chosen by the Oligarchy."
And most of our politicians choose the Oligarchy. Trump's choices:
Anthony Scaramucci, Goldman Sachs
Gary Cohn, Goldman Sachs
Steven Mnuchin. Goldman Sachs
Steve Bannon, Goldman Sachs
Jared Kushner, Goldman Sachs
Wilbur Ross, Rothschild, Inc
The working man's choices.....very limited.
Paul Kersey -> Paul Kersey •Dec 10, 2016 10:27 AM
"Barack Obama received more money from Goldman Sachs employees than any other corporation.
Tim Geithner, Obama's first treasury secretary, was the protege of one-time Goldman CEO Robert
Rubin. "
"The more things change, the more they stay the same."
Nameshavebeench... -> Nemontel •Dec 10, 2016 11:53 AM
If Trump gets hit, the 'official story' of who did it will be a lie.
There needs to be a lot of online discussion about this ahead of time in preparation. If/when
the incident happens, there needs to be a successful counter-offensive that puts an end to the
Deep State. (take from that what you will)
We've seen the MO many times now;
Pearl Harbor
Iran in the 50's
Congo
Vietnam
Most of Latin America many times over
JFK
911
Sandy Hook
Boston Marathon 'Bombings'
Numerous 'mass shootings'
The patterns are well established & if Trump gets hit it should be no surprise, now the 'jackals'
need to be exterminated.
Also, keep in mind that everything we're hearing in all media just might be psyops/counter-intel/planted
'news' etc.
sgt_doom -> Nemontel •Dec 10, 2016 1:25 PM
Although I have little hope for this happening, ideally Trump should initiate full forensic
audits of the CIA, NSA, DIA and FBI. The last time a sitting president undertook an actual audit
of the CIA, he had his brains blown out (President John F. Kennedy) and the Fake News (CBS, NBC,
ABC, etc.) reported that a fellow who couldn't even qualify as marksman, the lowest category (he
was pencilled in) was the sniper.
Then, on the 50th anniversary of that horrible coup d'etat, another Fake News show (NPR) claimed
that a woman in the military who worked at the rifle range at Atsuga saw Oswald practicing weekly
- - absurd on the fact of it, since women weren't allowed at military rifle ranges until the late
1970s or 1980s (and I doublechecked and there was never a woman assigned there in the late 1950s).
Just be sure he has trustworthy bodyguards, unlike the last batch of phony Secret Service agents
(and never employ anyone named Elmer Moore).
2rigged2fail -> Nemontel •Dec 10, 2016 4:04 PM
Voted for Trump, but the Oligarcy picked him too. Check the connection between Ross and
Trump and Wilburs former employer. TPTB laughs at all of us
All these Russian interference claims require one to believe that the MSM and democrat machine
got out played and out cheated by a bunch of ruskies. This is the level of desperation the democrats
have fallen too. To pretend to be so incompetent that the Russians outplayed and overpowered their
machine. But I guess they have to fall on that narrative vs the fact that a "crazy" real estate
billionaire with a twitter account whipped their asses.
Democrats, you are morally and credulously bankrupt. all your schemes, agenda's and machinations
cannot put humpty dumpty back together again. So now it is another period of scorched earth. The
Federal Bureaucracy will fight Trump tooth and nail, joined by the democrats in the judiciary,
and probably not a few rino's too.
It is going to get ugly, like a machete fight. W. got a taste of it with his Plame affair,
the brouhaha over the AGA firings, the regime of Porter Goss as DCI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter_Goss
DuneCreature -> cherry picker •Dec 10, 2016 10:30 AM
The sad facts are the CIA itself and it's massive propaganda arm has its gummy fingers
all over this election and elections all over the planet.
The Russians, my ass. ................. The CIA are famous for doing nefarious crap and
blaming their handy work on someone else. Crap that usually causes thousands of deaths. ... Even
in the KGB days the CIA was the king of causing chaos. ..... the KGB would kill a dissident or
spy or two and the CIA in the same time frame would start a couple of wars killing thousands or
millions.
You said a mouth full, cherry picker. ..... Until the US Intel community goes 'bye bye' the
world will HATE the US. ... People aren't stupid. They know who is behind the evil shit.
... ... ..
G-R-U-N-T •Dec 10, 2016 9:39 AM
What makes people think the Post is believable? The truth has been hijacked by their self
annihilating ideology. Honestly one would have to be dumb as a fence 'Post' (pun intended) to
believe ANYTHING coming from this rag and the rest of these 'Fake News' MSM propaganda machines,
good lord!
Colborne •Dec 10, 2016 9:37 AM
As for the CIA, it was reported at the time to be largely purged under the Dubya administration,
of consitutionalists and other dissidents to the 9-11 -->> total-war program. Stacked to the brim
with with neocon cadres. So, that's the lay of the terrain there now, that's who's running
the place. And they aren't going without a fight apparently.
Interesting times , more and more so.
66Mustanggirl •Dec 10, 2016 9:40 AM
For those of us who still have a grip on reality, here are the facts of this election:
Out of the 3,153 counties in this country, Hillary Clinton won only 480. A dismal and
pathetic 15% of this country. The worst showing EVER for a presidential candidate. Are
they really trying to blame the Russians and "fake" news for THAT?? Really??
The much vaunted 2 million vote lead in the popular vote can be attributed to exactly
4 boroughs in NYC; Bronx, Queens, Manhattan, & Brooklyn, where Hillary racked up 2 million
more votes than Trump. Should we give credit to the Russians and "fake" news for that, too?
96 MILLION Americans were either too disgusted, too lazy, or too apathetic to even
bother to go out and cast a vote for ANYONE in this election. On average 100 Million Americans
don't bother to vote.The Russians and "fake" news surely aren't responsible for THAT!
But given this is a story from WaPo, I think will just give a few days until it is thoroughly
discredited.
max2205 -> 66Mustanggirl •Dec 10, 2016 11:04 AM
And she won CA by 4 million. She hates she only gets a limited amount of electoral votes..
tough shit rules are rules bitch. Suck it
HalEPeno •Dec 10, 2016 9:43 AM
Looks like the CIA's latest candidate for regime change is the USA.
Clara Tardis •Dec 10, 2016 9:45 AM
This is a vid from the 1950's, "How to spot a Communist" all you have to do is swap out commie
for: liberal, neocon, SJW and democrat and figure out they've about won....
This is the same CIA that let Pakistan build up the Taliban in Afganistan during the 1990s
and gave Pakistan ISI (Pakistan spy agency) hundreds of millions of USD which the ISI channeled
to the Taliban and Arab freedom fighters including a very charming chap named Usama Bin Laden.
The CIA is as worthless as HRC.
Fuck them and their failed intelligence. I hope Trump guts the CIA like a fish. They need a
reboot.
Yes We Can. But... -> venturen •Dec 10, 2016 10:08 AM
Why might the Russians want Trump? If there is anything to the stuff I've been reading about
the Clintons, they are like cornered animals. Putin just may think the world is a safer, more
stable place w/o the Clintons in power.
TRM -> atthelake •Dec 10, 2016 10:44 AM
If it is "on" then those doing the "collections" should be aware that a lot of people they
will be "collecting" have read Solzhenitsyn.
"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every
Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he
would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?"
Those doing the "collections" will have to choose and choose wisely the side they are on. How
much easier would it be for them to report back "Sorry, couldn't find them" than to face the wrath
of a well armed population?
Abaco •Dec 10, 2016 9:53 AM
The clowns running the intelligence agencies for the US have ZERO credibility. Clapper
sat in front of congress and perjured himself. When confronted with his perjury he defended himself
saying he told them the "least untruthful thing" he could - admitting he had not problem whatsoever
about lying to Congress. He was not fired or reprimanded in any way. He retired with a generous
pension. He is a treasonous basrtard who should be swinging from a lamppost. These people serve
their political masters - not the people - and deserve nothing but mockery and and a noose.
mendigo •Dec 10, 2016 9:56 AM
As reported on infowars:
On Dec 9 0bomber issued executive order providing exemption to Arms Export Control Act to permit
supplying weapons (ie sams etc) to rebel groups in Syria as a matter "essential to national security
"interests"".
Be careful in viewing this report as is posted from RT - perhaps best to wait for corraboaration
on front page of rededicated nyt to be sure and avoid fratrenizing with Vlad.
Separately Gabard has introduced bill : Stop Arming Terrorists Act.
David Wooten •Dec 10, 2016 9:56 AM
There certainly is foreign meddling in US government policy but it is not coming from Russia.
The countries that have much greater influence than Russia on 'our' government are the Sunni-dominated
Persian Gulf oil states including the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and, of course, that bastion
of human rights, Saudi Arabia.
Oil money from these states has found its way into influentual think tanks including the
Brookings Institution, the Atlantic Council, the Middle East Institute and the Georgetown Center
for Strategic and International Studies and others. All of these institutions should be registered
as foriegn agents and any cleared US citizen should have his or her clearance revoked if they
do any work for these organizations, either as a contractor or employee. And these Gulf states
have all been donating oil money to UK and US universities so lets include the foreign studies
branches of universities in the registry of foreign agents, too.
And also, there are arms sales. Arm sales to Saudi/Gulf States come with training. With
training comes military ties, foreign policy ties and even intelligence ties. Saudi Arabia, with
other Gulf oil states as partners, practically owns the CIA now. Arms companies who sell
deadly weapons to the Gulf States, in turn, donate money to Congressmen and now own politicians
such as Senators Graham and McCain. It's no wonder Graham wants to help his pals - er owners.
So what we have here ('our' government) is institutionalized influence, if not outright control,
of US foreign policy by some of the most vicious states on the planet,
especially Saudi Arabia - whose religious police have been known to beat school girls fleeing
from burning buildings because they didn't have their headscarves on.
As Hillary's 2014 emails have revealed, Qatar and Saudi Arabia support ISIS and were doing
so about the same time as ISIS was sweeping through Syria and Iraq, cutting off the heads of Christians,
non-Sunnis and just about anyone else they thought was in the way. The Saudi/Gulf States are the
driving force to get rid of Assad and that is dangerous as nuclear-armed Russia protects him.
If something isn't done about this, the Gulf oil states may get US into a nuclear war with Russia
- and won't care in the least.
Richard Whitney •Dec 10, 2016 10:10 AM
So...somehow, Putin was able to affect the election one way, and the endorsements for HRC and
the slander of Trump by and from Washington Post, New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, practically
every big-city newspaper, practically every newspaper in Europe, every EU mandarin, B Streisand,
Keith Olberman, Comedy Central, MSNBC, CNN, Lady Gaga, Lena Dunham and a wad of other media outlets
and PR-driven-celebs couldn't affect that election the other way.
Sounds unlikely on the face of it, but hats off to Vlad. U.S. print and broadcast media, Hollywood,
Europe...you lost.
seataka •Dec 10, 2016 10:11 AM
The Reverse Blockade
"Reverse Blockade: emphatically insisting upon something which is the opposite of the truth
blocks the average person's mind from perceiving the truth. In accordance with the dictates of
healthy common sense, he starts searching for meaning in the "golden mean" between truth and its
opposite, winding up with some satisfactory counterfeit. People who think like this do not realize
that this effect is precisely the intent of the person who subjects them to this method.
" page 104, Political Ponerology by Andrew M. Lobaczewski
more
just the tip -> northern vigor •Dec 10, 2016 11:51 AM
that car ride for the WH to the capital is going to be fun.
Arnold -> just the tip •Dec 10, 2016 12:12 PM
Your comment ticked one of my remaining Brain Cells.
I recall lots of "consensus views" that were outright lies, bullshit and/or stupidity:
"The Sun circles the Earth. The Earth is flat. Global cooling / next ice age (1970s). Global warming
(no polar ice) 1990s-00's. Weapons of mass destruction." You can keep your doctor.
The CIA, Pentagon and "intelligence" agencies need both a cleaning and culling. 50%
of the Federal govt needs to go.....now.
What is BEYOND my comprehension is how anyone would think that in Putin's mind, Trump would
be preferable to Hillary. She and her cronies are so corrupt, he would either be able to blackmail
or destroy her (through espionage and REAL leaks) any time he wanted to during her presidency.
Do TPTB think we are this fucking stupid?
madashellron •Dec 10, 2016 10:31 AM
Blacklist Promoted by the Washington Post Has Apparent Ties to Ukrainian Fascism and CIA
Spying.
I love this. Trump is not eager to "drain the swamp" and to collide with the establishment,
anyway he has no viable economic plan and promised way too much. However if they want to lead
a coup for Hilary with the full backing of most republican and democrat politicians just to get
their war against Russia, something tells me that the swamp will be drained for real when the
country falls apart in chaos.
northern vigor •Dec 10, 2016 10:36 AM
Fuckin' Obama interfered in the Canadian election last year by sending advisers up north to
corrupt our laws. He has a lot of nerve pointing fingers at the Russians.
I notice liberals love to point fingers at others, when they are the guilty ones. It must be
in the Alinsky handbook.
Pigeon -> northern vigor •Dec 10, 2016 10:38 AM
Called "projection". Everything they accuse others of doing badly, illegally, immorally, etc.
- means that is EXACTLY what they are up to.
just the tip -> northern vigor •Dec 10, 2016 11:35 AM
Trump should not only 'defund' them but should end all other 'programs' that are providing
funds to them. Drug trade, bribery, embezzelment, etc. End the CIA terror organization.
Skiprrrdog •Dec 10, 2016 10:49 AM
Putin for Secretary of State... :-)
brianshell •Dec 10, 2016 10:50 AM
Section 8, The congress shall have the power to...declare war...raise armies...navies...militia.
The National Security Act charged the CIA with coordinating the nation's intelligence activities
and correlating, evaluating and disseminating intelligence affecting national security.
Rogue members of the executive branch have overstepped their authority by ordering the CIA
to make war without congressional approval or oversight.
A good deal of the problems created by the United States, including repercussions such as terrorism
have been initiated by the CIA
Under "make America great", include demanding congress assume their responsibility regarding
war.
Rein in the executive and the CIA
DarthVaderMentor •Dec 10, 2016 10:59 AM
This whopper of a story from the CIA makes the one fabricated about WMD's in Iraq that
fooled Bush Jr. and convinced him to almost take this country down by violating the sage advice
on war strategy from Sun-Tzu and Clausewitz and opening up a second front in Iraq almost child's
play.
At least with the WMD story they had false witnesses and some made up evidence! With this
story, there is no "HUMINT (human intelligence) sources" and no physical evidence, just some alleged
traces that could have been actually produced from the ether or if they knew ahead of time of
Trump's possible win sent someone to Russia and had them actually run the IP routes for show.
Bush was misled because the CIA management was scared of some of his budgetary saber rattles
and his chasing after some CIA management. In this case, someone is really scared of what the
people will find when the swam gets drained, if ever it gets done. This includes so-called "false
flag conservatives" like Lindsey Graham and top Democrats "Cambridge 5 Admirers" salted in over
the years into the CIA
The fact that's forgotten about this is that if the story was even slightly true, it shows
how incompetent the Democrats are in running a country, how Barak Obama was an intentional incompetent
trying to drive the country into the ground and hurting its people, how even with top technologies,
coerced corrupted vendors and trillions in funding the NSA, CIA and FBI they were outflanked by
the FSB and others and why Hillary's server was more incompetent and dangerous a decision than
we think.
Maybe Hillary and Bill had their server not to hide information from the people, but maybe
to actually promote the Russian hacking?
Why should Trump believe the CIA? What kind of record and leadership do they have that anyone
other than a fool should listen to them?
small axe •Dec 10, 2016 10:55 AM
At some point Americans will need to wake up to the fact that the CIA has and does interfere
in domestic affairs, just as it has long sought to counter "subversion" overseas. The agency is
very likely completely outside the control of any administration at this point and is probably
best seen as the enforcement arm of the Deep State.
As the US loses its empire and gains Third World status, it is (sadly) fitting that the CIA
war to maintain docile populations becomes more apparent domestically.
Welcome to Zimbabwe USA.
marcusfenix •Dec 10, 2016 11:10 AM
what I don't understand is why the CIA is even getting tangled up in this three ring circus
freak show.
Trump has already signaled he is going hand them nearly unlimited power by appointing Pompeo
in the first place. I would think they would be very happy to welcome the incoming administration
with open arms.
I could see it if they were really that pissed about Trumps proposed Russian re-set and
maybe they are but even that has to be in doubt because of the rate at which Trump is militarizing
his cabinet. All these stars are not exactly going to support their president going belly
up to the bar with Putin. and since Trump has no military or civilian leadership experience (which
is why I believe he has loaded up on so much brass in the first place, to compensate) I have no
doubt they will have tremendous influence on policy.
In all reality Trump is a MIC, intelligence cabal dream come true, so why would they even
consider biting the hand that feeds so well? Perhaps their is more going on here under the surface,
maybe all the various agencies and bureaucracies are not playing nice, or together for that matter.
perhaps some have grown so large and so powerful that they have their own agendas? it's not as
if our federal government has ever really been one big happy family there have been many times
when the right hand did not know what the left hand was doing. and congress is week so oversight
of this monolithic military and intelligence entities may not be as extensive as we would like
to think.
after all the CIA and the Pentagon's proxy armies are already killing each other in Syria
so one has to wonder in what other arenas are they clashing?
and is this really all just a small glimpse of some secret war within, which every once in
a while bubbles up to the surface?
CheapBastard •Dec 10, 2016 11:34 AM
The neocons are desperate. Their war monger Hitlery lost by a landslide now they fabricate
all sorts of irrational BS.
However, there is no doubt the Russians stole my TV remote last week.
The Intel agencies have been politicized since the late 1970's; look up 'CIA Team B'
and the 'Committee on the Present Danger' and their BS 'minority report' used by the
original NeoCons to sway public opinion in favor of Ronald Reagan and the arms buildup of the
1980's, which led to the first sky-high deficits. It also led to a confrontational stance against
the Soviet Union which almost led to nuclear war in 1983: The 1983 War Scare Declassified
and For Real
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb533-The-Able-Archer-War-Scare-Decl...
The honest spook analysts were forced out, then as now, in favor of NeoCons with political
agendas that were dangerously myopic to say the least. The 'Office of Special Plans'
in the Pentagon cherry-picked or outright fabricated intel in order to justify the NeoCon/Israeli
wet-dream of total control of oil and the 'Securing the (Israeli) Realm' courtesy of invading
parts of the Middle East and destabilizing the rest, with the present mess as the wholly predictable
outcome. The honest analysts told them it would happen, and now they're gone.
This kind of organizational warping caused by agency politicization is producing the piss-poor
intel leading to asinine decisions creating untold tragedy; that the WaPo is depending upon this
intel from historically-proven tainted sources is just one more example of the incestuous nature
of the relations between Traditional Media and its handlers in the intel community.
YHC-FTSE •Dec 10, 2016 11:54 AM
This isn't a "Soft Coup". It's the groundwork necessary for a rock hard, go-for-broke, above
the barricade, tanks in the street coup d'etat. You do not get such a blatant accusation from
the CIA and establishment echo vendor, unless they are ready to back it up to the hilt with action.
The accusations are serious - treason and election fraud.
Trump is a curious fellow. I've thought about this quite a bit and tried to put myself
in his shoes. He has no friends in .gov, no real close "mates" he can depend on, especially in
his own party, so he had to start from scratch to put his cabinet together. His natural "Mistake"
is seeking people at his level of business acumen - his version of real, ordinary people - when
billionaires/multimillionaires are actually Type A personalities, usually predatory and addicted
to money. In his world, and in America in general, money equates to good social standing more
than any other facet of personal achievements. It is natural for an American to equate "Good"
with money. I'm a Brit and foreigners like me (I have American cousins I've visited since I was
a kid) who visit the States are often surprised by the shallow materialism that equates to culture.
So we have a bunch of dubious Alpha types addicted to money in transition to take charge of
government who know little or nothing about the principle of public service. Put them in a room
together and without projects they can focus on, they are going to turn on each other for supremacy.
I would not be surprised if Trump's own cabinet destroys him or uses leverage from their own power
bases to manipulate him.
Mike Pompeo, for example, is the most fucked up pick as CIA director I could have envisaged.
He is establishment to his core, a neocon torture advocate who will defend the worst excesses
of the intelligence arm of the MIC no matter what. One word from his mouth could have stopped
this bullshit about Russia helping Trump win the election. Nobody in the CIA was going to argue
with the new boss. Yet here we are, on the cusp of another attack on mulitple fronts. This is
how you manipulate an incumbent president to dial up his paranoia to the max and failing that,
launch a coup d'etat.
It could very well be that this was Trump & the establishment plan to con the American
public from the start of course. I kind of doubt it, since the efforts of the establishment to
destroy Trump was genuinely full retard from the outset and still continues. I think he was
his own man until paranoia and the enormity of his position got the better of him and he chose
his cabinet from the establishment swamp dwellers to best protect him from his enemies. Wrong
choices, granted, but understandable.
He would have done better to ignore the political divide to choose those who have spent
their lives challenging the Deep State. My ignorance of US politics does not supply me with a
complete picture, but Ron Paul, David Kucinich, Trey Gowdy, Tulsi Gabard and even turncoat Bernie
Sanders would have been better to drain the swamp than the neocon zionists he has installed in
power.
flaminratzazz ->YHC-FTSE •Dec 10, 2016 12:03 PM
I think he was his own man until paranoia and the enormity of his position got the better of
him,,
+1 I think he was just dickin around with throwin his hat in the ring, was going to go have fun
calling everyone names with outlandish attacks and lo and behold he won.. NOW he is shitting himself
on the enormity of his GREATEST fvkup in his life.
jomama ->YHC-FTSE •Dec 10, 2016 12:16 PM
Unless you can show how Trump's close ties to Wall St. (owes banks there around 350M currently
YHC-FTSE ->jomama •Dec 10, 2016 12:59 PM
My post is conjecture, obviously. The basis of my musings, as stated above, is the fact that the
establishment has tried to destroy Trump from the outset using all of their assets in his own
party, the msm, Hollyweird, intelligence and politics. A full retard attack is being perpetrated
against him as I type.
There is some merit to dividing the establishment, the Deep State, into two opposing sides.
One that lost power, priestige and funds backing Hillary and one that did not, which would make
Trump an alternative establishment candidate. But there is no proof that any establishment (MIC+Banking)
entity even likes Trump, let alone supports him. As for Israel, Hillary was their candidate of
choice, but their MO is they will always infiltrate and back both sides to ensure compliance.
blindfaith ->YHC-FTSE •Dec 10, 2016 12:36 PM
Do not underestimate Trump. I will grant that some of these picks are concerning. However, think
in terms of business, AND government is a business from top to bottom. It has been run as a dog
and pony show for years and look where we are. To me, I think his picks are strating to look like
a very efficient team to get the government efficient again. That alone must make D.C. shake in
thier boots.
YHC-FTSE ->blindfaith •Dec 10, 2016 1:08 PM
Underestimating Trump is the last thing I would do. I'm just trying to understand his motives
in my own clumsy way. Besides, he promised to "Drain the swamp", not run the swamp more efficiently.
ducksinarow •Dec 10, 2016 12:04 PM
From a non political angle, this is a divorce in the making. Then democrats have been rejected
in totallity but instead of blaming themselves for not being good enough, they are blaming a third
party which is the Russians. They are now engaging the Republican Party in a custody battle for
the "children". There are lies flying around and the older children know exactly what is going
on and sadly the younger children are confused, bewildered, angry and getting angrier by the minute.
Soon Papa(Obama) will be leaving which is symbolic of the male father figure in the African American
community. The new Papa is a white guy who is going to change the narrative, the rules of engagement
and the financial picture. The ones who were the heroes in the Obama narrative are not going to
be heroes anymore. New heroes will be formed and revered and during this process some will die
for their beliefs.
Back to reality, Trump needs to cleanse the CIA of the ones who would sell our nation to the
highest bidder. If the CIA is not on the side of America the CIA should be abolished. In a world
where mercenaries are employed all over the world, bringing together a culturally mixed agency
does not make for a very honest agency. It makes for a bunch of self involved countries trying
to influence the power of individuals. The reason Castro was never taken down is because it was
not in the interest of the CIA to do so. That is why there were some pretty hilarious non-attempts
on Castro's life over the years. It is not in the best interest of the CIA that Trump be president.
It is in the best interest of America that Trump is our President.
brane pilot •Dec 10, 2016 12:22 PM
Even the idea that people would rely on foreign governments for critical information during
an election indicates the bankruptcy of the corrupt US media establishment. So now they resort
to open sedition and defamation in the absence of factual information. The mainstream media in
the USA has become a Fifth Column against America, no different than the so-called 'social science'
departments on college campuses. Trump was America's last chance and we took it and no one is
going to take it away.
"... It appears that the globalists are scared of anything that resembles the truth that counters their incessant propaganda If there was ever a discovery process in a lawsuit against WAPO, I would imagine that all roads would lead to a Contelpro section of the CIA It's interesting that Wall Street on Parade has noted that Propornot has a double blind registration in New Mexico. ..."
"... Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. ..."
"... More and more it seems like USA, like the roman empire, needs barbarians at the gates to distract the plebs from internal structural problems. ..."
"... As long as Yeltsin allowed Wall Street to loot Russia of former soviet holdings, Russia was not "barbaric". Now that Putin has put a solid halt on said looting, Russia is again "barbarians" ..."
"... And by refusing to address the emails, other than to scream "Russian hackers," the corporate media were able to convince the Clinton cultists and other Third-Way believers that the information they contained was just another right-wing attack on The Anointed because (other than leftist, Russian-loving "fake news" sites), the right-wing media were the only ones paying it any attention. ..."
"... I am old enough to remember seeing in the news reel at my local theater in 1950 Joseph McCarthy holding up a piece of paper to the cameras and intoning in his inimitable droning voice, "I have here in my hand a list of 205 known members of the Communist Party who are working and shaping policy in the State Department." ..."
"... People's livelihoods and reputations were thereby smeared for life. Never did McCarthy back his claims with evidence, nor did he retract his scurrilous accusation. Now, tell me how what Jeff Bezos and co. are doing in this instance is in any significant way different from what McCarthy did to these people back in 1956. What finally put it squarely before the American public and finally earned McCarthy Congressional censure was when Boston attorney Joseph Welch asked McCarthy, "Have you no sense of decency, sir?" ..."
"... Here's the thing. Yes, RT is funded by the Russian government, and thus anything posted thereon needs to be considered with that in mind. Nevertheless, it is also where stories the corporates prefer to ignore are given attention. In other words, there is an irony that the Russians may, indeed, be trying to influence us, but if so, they appear to be doing it by subtly undermining the reliability of the corporate media. ..."
"... To put it another way, dismissing RT solely because of its funding source is no better than dismissing NC et al. as propaganda sites, and doing so is actually feeding the propaganda machine. After all, we don't know what percentage of the US media currently receives "grants" from US intelligence agencies, now, do we. ..."
"... In studying communications, there's a distinction between 'white' and 'black' propaganda. White propaganda is publishing truth that supports your cause. Black propaganda is, of course, slanderous lies. RT is white propaganda, so use it for the value it brings. ..."
"... Exactly. I'm a grown-up. I have a lot of practice reading critically and I'm quite capable of questioning sources and filtering bias. I don't need Jeff Bezos to protect me from Russkie BadThink. ..."
"... "does not itself vouch " You have to bear in mind this is not the Post talking, this is CIA CIA has blatantly used the Post as a their sockpuppet since they put Woodward in there to oust Nixon, and now they've got Bezos by the contractual balls. CIA has impunity in municipal statute and secret red tape so any answer you get from them means No fuck You. ..."
"... The NDAA legalized domestic propaganda in 2013 so when the public repudiated their chosen president Hillary Clinton, CIA immediately got to work work attacking Article 19. ..."
"... [M]aybe we should just lump them [WaPo] in with Breitbart and company. ..."
This is tantamount to an admission that not only did the Washington Post do no fact-checking,
but also that it does not consider fact-checking to be part of its job.
Another way to put it is to say that WaPoo is not in the business of investigation but instead
is in the business of regurgitation . WaPoo seems to think that reporting equals repeating.
We don't need people who repeat other people's words. We need reporters who are digging.
"This minimalist walk-back does not remedy the considerable damage [already] done to NC and
other sites." No, it certainly does not. Once the "defamatory cat" is out of the bag, you can't
exactly stuff the cat back in.
Proceed, young lady with your case. But as you move forward, do take measures to keep these
vampires from stealing your adaptive energies and health.
p.s. You know, this diminiishes WaPo to a mere "blog aggregator" when allows its "reporters"
such as Craig Timberg to merely "scrape and publish" posts from anonymous blogsites (not even
scraping from the laughable "gold standard" of truth on the internet: Wiki). These reporters aren't
writing, they are scraping. What a bunch of lazy fucks at WaPo!
And you know what I'd really like to do: kick this Craig Timberg character a new ass in a dark
alley. Yves, when you are done shredding WaPo and Timberg, I sincerely hope they won't be able
to sit down for a whole year.
p.s.s. that post (yd) about Wiki becoming the "gold standard" of 'fact-finding" and "truth"
on the internet was particularly disturbing. Even citations from academic journals (such as JAMA)
posted in Wiki are laden with flawed research suffering from poor design and methodology, draw
the wrong conclusions, reveal biases and conflicts of interest, show a lack of references etc.
Decades ago, there was a shift in much of the medical literature – a shift from "evidence-based"
to "consensus-based." The internet appears to be moving in the same direction, using various tools
and methodologies that allow "consensus-based" opinions (valued by the certain parties that be)
to be shaped as "facts" and "truth." When in fact, those opinions are anything but a truth.
. a shift from "evidence-based" to "consensus-based."
Yes. That's what I see as behind the browser flagging extensions, as if facts are subject to
majority vote, which would make them opinions, not facts. If wapoo prints an editorial opinion
on the editorial page, that's one thing. If wapoo prints editorial opinion masquerading as fact
on the front page, that is a different matter.
Wapoo's arrogant reply, in the form of an editor's note, to NC's letter isn't a surprising
first move for them. I trust NC's atty has already thought many, many steps ahead.
"The Post, which did not name any of the sites, does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot's
findings regarding any individual media outlet, nor did the article purport to do so."
You couldn't get a more weassely response. They admit they didn't fact check their sources,
they cowadly now hide behind the defence of not actully naming any of the sites, and then finally
try to play the "nothing to see here" defence of pretending the article didn't mean what it quite
clearly did mean when it was published.
Increasingly, challenging western govt output is seen as a form of rebellion. As Orwell said
. telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
One day I was listening to Bloomberg News on the car radio, when they aired a critical story
on a company where I had worked. The criticism was from a third party group. And then the next
news story began.
Stunned, I phoned the reporter and asked, "Where was the company's rebuttal, or refusal to
comment?"
He replied, "It was there, you just didn't hear it."
But I had listened with full attention, and it wasn't there. Maybe an editor had removed it
to shorten the clip.
This has been my experience with the MSM. They are always right. They make no mistakes. You
should believe them, not your lying eyes and ears.
"This has been my experience with the MSM. They are always right. They make no mistakes.
You should believe them, not your lying eyes and ears."
We have always been at war with Eurasia.
The Ministry of Truth hasn't, yet, been given the power to completely silence those of us who
don't stay within the confines of The Narrative. So their tactic is to portray us all as dangerous
disinformators like Emmanuel Goldstein.
In 1975, I went to the Soviet Union with a group of American tourists. At the time, I was working
as a volunteer for Ralph Nader. A few times, some of the people in our group had a chance to talk
to Soviet people in our hotels. The other Americans would give civics book explanations about
how the US government worked. Some of the Soviet people would question these explanations, saying
that they had heard from their government that the American government worked in a way that sounded
to me much more accurate and in line with the way Nader portrayed the US. Undemocratic regimes
are often fairly accurate in describing the faults of other governments, especially those of their
perceived enemies, while ignoring their own failings. I do not know exactly what Russian propaganda
the Washington Post is referring to, but I would not be surprised if various Russian sources simply
repeat the common criticisms of the toxic activities of the neoliberal establishment – an establishment
of which the Washington Post has been a long-time supporter. Why go through all of the trouble
of fabricating stories when the reality is as damning as anything you could make up? So rather
than the US sources in question spouting Russian propaganda, the Russians might simply be repeating
the criticisms they are hearing from the US.
This is tantamount to an admission that not only did the Washington Post do no fact-checking,
but that it does not consider fact-checking to be part of its job.
Ah, the Ratings Agencies "opinions" defense. Blithely ignorant of their own legally and historically
protected positions. I suspect this is exactly the defense the WP will run with. Effectively they
will assert their constitutional right as propagandists, to broadcast whatever they please in
the national interest.
is a new, private sector-led initiative
I would say not entirely. True, large private corporations are behind a lot of this, but what
is at stake is their authority to speak for, and their connections to, the state and Deep State.
On a more emotional level, what is at stake is status. Because really that is all the big newspapers
have anymore. Social status. Do not underestimate this currency. It is probably the most precious
form of capital there is and the Post, et al, will fight with their fingernails to avoid losing
it. Things could get pretty nasty. Good luck and give the bastards hell.
Long, long time, b/c of their policies. I figure my opinion doesn't count, my vote doesn't
count, but by golly, I will make every dollar I spend count. I buy locally when possible (ideally
both locally made/grown and locally-owned retail, although there is at least one local company
I will not patronize, for policy reasons) and have found alternate sources for things I can't
get around here, eg. Powell's for books and
Lehman's for tools and kitchen stuff. As a last resort I will comparison shop on Amazon and
then ask my local supplier to order the thing in for me (as I did with my water heater). Not one
nickel of mine will go to WaPo or Amazon. And I have told rellies, pls no Amazon gifts for our
household.
Long before the current series of events happened, there were excellent reasons to avoid buying
from Amazon.com. The horrific working conditions in Amazon.com warehouses should be enough to
prevent any person from buying from the company. I suppose many people still aren't aware of how
bad it is, so here's an example article:
As much as I would love to "boycott Amazon," it's not possible for several reasons. First,
being old and crippled, I can't run out to the nearest Target to buy stuff, and I definitely don't
have time or physical capacity to hop all over town trying to find some specialty item that doesn't
sell enough for most bricks-and-mortar retailers to carry. I do buy direct when it's possible,
but the fact of life is there's stuff you can only find on Amazon.
Second, I own and operate a small digitally-based book publishing company, and Amazon is our
major source of revenue. For me, boycotting Amazon would mean pulling my authors' work from distribution
there, which isn't an option. Likewise, consider Kindle owners with extensive libraries.
Frankly, I consider these calls to boycott some huge corporation the kind of symbolic action
that allows people to feel good about themselves while avoiding doing anything actually effective.
Like writing/emailing/phoning the editorial board of the local news media should they be broadcasting/publishing
this rubbish-preferably all three and multiple times. Given that many are connected to the same
major corporations as the Big Media, that strikes me as what really needs to be done.
After all, WaPo isn't doing this in an echo chamber. Their fiction was picked up by all the
major players and more than a few of the minor. The only way to counter public discourse is publicly.
On another subject-Yves and Lambert, if you'd like someone to run over your articles pre-publication
for a quick copyedit, you know where to find me. It's one of the non-monetary things I can donate.
Agree on symbolic action. I do buy from Amazon and either go to antiwar.com first (a mixed
site, but one I want to see endure) and click so they get a commission or go to smile.amazon.com
so my favorite small charity gets it.
Buying is NOT voting. I'm a citizen and not mainly just a consumer. Not buying from amazon
would hurt me more than them (especially as I like buying obscure second-hand books). There are
much better things I can do to be politically effective, including letters to the editor and contributions.
I do buy by preference from a third-party that doesn't distribute from Amazon warehouses if
the price is close. And there are many things I do choose to get locally or from others. But I
buy a heck of a lot from them especially books.
There should be a union of sorts, among those defamed. Join forces with some other reputable
smallish websites and create a consortium that pools resources to fight this sort of thing going
forward.
I think you should take the strongest, most aggressive stance possible given the huge number
of very important issues at stake. I will continue to support naked capitalism any way that I
can.
Yves, have you contacted Bill Moyers? He initially referred to the Post article without adequate
critical comment. He could and should remedy this. His voice would carry weight with the book
bag-toting NPR folks, who will be among the last to "doubt" the Post.
Excellent suggestion. I found NC when Bill Moyers recommended it on his old tv show when he
interviewed Yves and it has continued to open my eyes big time and I haven't been the same since.
Whenever I encounter a NYTimesbot or a BostonGlobebot or a Wapoobot or NPRbot (Blindly quoting
believers) I tell them I don't have time for MSM anymore after Bill Moyers recommended this incredibly
informative site and I tell them all about NC. I am so grateful for NC and Yves and Lambert and
all the other contributors for what you all do. I would be devastated if this horror damages you
(us) all. And Net Neutrality in general – Trump will go after it. WaPoo (love that) should be
taken way out to the woodshed, shamed, and publicized for how awful they (and so many others in
the MSM) have become. I will help in any way I can. And please stay well Yves and Lambert.
I found NC through Bill Moyers as well. Since he retired, i rarely look at the website and
never the FC page anymore since the content significantly decreased in quality and originality
imo after he retired. i know his name is still attached to the website and he still occasionally
submits articles, but i wonder how much oversight and content involvement he has with the operation
these days.
That should read, "since he retired from the tv show Moyers & Co and it went off the air".
The website still lists Bill Moyers as the managing editor. But the quality of the website noticeably
changed after the show left PBS in i think 2015.
It appears that the globalists are scared of anything that resembles the truth that counters
their incessant propaganda If there was ever a discovery process in a lawsuit against WAPO, I
would imagine that all roads would lead to a Contelpro section of the CIA It's interesting that
Wall Street on Parade has noted that Propornot has a double blind registration in New Mexico.
A propaganda holding company! This is allowed by the Whappo? It's a felony masquerading as
a farce and they can't get out of this like little Judy Miller pretending to be dumb. Judy Miller
is very sophisticated and so is the Whappo. Journalism isn't journalism if it does this sleazy
stuff. Since when does a newspaper "disclaim" its own news? It's totally outrageous. And the nerve
to say that PropOrNot insists on being anonymous. PropOrNot might as well be the Whappo itself.
Only sleazy purveyors of crap disclaim it. This is just asking for satire. Whappo deserves to
be ridiculed into oblivion.
just a quick check on the net produced a a site: dab-oracl.com and an atty named Donald Burleson
– stating that New Mexico is one of 17 states that enforce criminal libel and that you can file
to lift the veil on anonymity for defamation and have the perp arrested cool
It's in Santa Fe and the U of Magonia has a channeling portal there. The channeling portal
connects to alternate universes and higher order dimensions and all sorts of weird and unusual
stuff passes thru the portal. It's where craazyman finds out about lots of stuff and he may have
bumped(if that's right word) into these other channelers?
I'm 56, I was a 9 buck an hour cook in Boston in 1988 when Dukakis came out of Labor Day with
a 17 point lead.
The campaign wizards of Bush Senior came up some kind of 'Dukakis hates America ' baloney,
because of some other baloney about The Flag!! or The Pledge!!! For days, GWB Sr. came out in
front of a bunch of flags & said the Pledge, and the craven, sycophantic, grovelling media of
the day dutifully reported –
"In order to show '__Dukakis hates America___' Vice President Bush said the pledge of allegiance."
Anyone from that era remember all the liberal cloak rending and finger waving and furrowed
brows? Anyone remember that Fairness Doctrine thing??? Seriously – having some contract mouth
piece of the WAPO question NC is a badge of honor.
rmm.
But then I sigh; and, with a piece of scripture,
Tell them that God bids us do good for evil:
And thus I clothe my naked villany
With old odd ends stolen out of holy writ;
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.
Dukakis' loss was due to his weak response to a racist smear campaign that assigned him personal
responsibility for every poor decision made by the Massachusetts penal system.
His sin was failing to fight back with sufficient vigor. It's a good choice of anecdote for
this comments thread however. An object lesson if you will.
The Washington Post has responded, from the perspective of their own interests, in literally
the worst way possible.
They have essentially gone on record as admitting that publish articles that are defamatory
per se in a reckless manner, using a reckless (or non-existent) fact-checking and vetting process.
It's really unbelievable, and many of us in the legal community are scratching our heads, now,
wondering from whom The Washington Post is soliciting legal advice.
They wouldn't have deigned to respond at all if they weren't nervous about our attorney. But
I agree, this response is incredibly lame and not helpful to them from a legal or reputational
standpoint. They seem to think if they make a minimal gesture, NC and the other wronged sites
won't proceed. Bad assumption.
My grandfather was a political refugee. He escaped Bulgaria after being jailed one too many
times for having the audacity to disagree with the communist elites and its media organs, and
to do so in public. What I see happening here in the US, with dissent on the verge of being suppressed
or even criminalized, deeply concerns me because it reminds me of those bad old times. I respect
you guys and your willingness to stand up to power, in ways I can not adequately express. Thank
you.
Craig Timberg may be another example of the "son of more successful father" phenomenon who
in attempting to exceed their fathers, do great damage to others (other examples: G.W. Bush, Bill
Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, John McCain ).
" He was nearly 30 years old, borderline ancient for a beginning daily newspaper reporter.
Unlike other Capital staffers, he was a Naval Academy graduate with a master's degree in journalism,
and he was a Vietnam war combat veteran. And he could not type."
"I first noticed Bob's reporting talents from his incisive articles on a legal challenge to
compulsory chapel attendance at the U.S. service academies, filed by six Annapolis midshipmen
and a West Point cadet."
"The highlight of Bob's reporting was an interview with celebrated evangelist Billy Graham,
who shockingly characterized the students' lawsuit as a being "part of a planned attack against
all chaplains, to force them completely out of all services," and further suggested that the young
men were Communist dupes. Though Bob knew now that he had a good story, he still pressed on, asking
Graham if an atheist can become a good naval officer. "I can't comment on that," the preacher
answered."
So Timberg's father questioned a prominent person who was alleging "Communist dupes" against
military chaplains.
But his son does little vetting of the shadowy group PropOrNot as he goes for HIS story alleging
"Russian propagandists".
It may be too late for the son to learn from the father's example.
Good story. The son as a pale shadow of the father is, as you say, not an uncommon thing. Craig,
in this current example, doesn't seem to understand even the most basic, fundamental principles
of journalistic ethics or professional conduct. It's strange someone in the profession that long
could survive lacking that. Or maybe once you get on with a big name paper with a billionaire
owner, sucking up to the establishment is a get out of jail free card when it comes to ethics
and professional accountability.
I stopped ordering from Amazon two years ago after reading the stories about labor conditions
for warehouse employees. It is nothing more than brutal slave labor.
I used to at least read the headlines in the NYT and WaPo. Now I can not even stomach them.
So, the WaPo now admits that "journalism" is dead and stenography is the only purpose
their "platform" exists for.
The quaint institution of "journalism" existed to sort "fact" from "opinion" and made the important
distinction between the two. Opinions are like belly-buttons and assholes, everybody has one.
Facts are more difficult to discern, but are immutable and objective. As attributed to the late
Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, " Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
"
This is the death of the First Amendment - The ScAmazon model of purporting to be a "marketplace"
but refusing to vouch for the quality, safety, or authenticity of anything that they loudly and
slickly shill to profit from the work of others. It is disgusting, hollow, and amoral. It must
be brought to heel.
I suspect the MSM have always seen their ability to shape elections as their true "ring of
power." As you say this has been going on for a long time–certainly pre-internet. The fact that
Trump won despite their best efforts has likely shaken big media to the core. Which doesn't mean
Trump's election was a good thing or a bad thing but simply that they didn't get to pick.
Television will always be the most important medium when it comes to politics but the print
media now see their role as "influencers" under threat from the web. And given their financial
problems this may be the final existential threat. It's likely the Post editors knew perfectly
well what they were doing and how shoddy that story was. It was a shot across the bow.
Yves: What is going on here is deeply ingrained. We live in a country in which everyone's opinions
are now canonical, as we see with wonder about the candidate for the head of the EPA. Pruitt's
opinion counteracts years of research, because lawyers know all about science.
I was reminded of how ingrained these "narratives" are when I read the lead in the Talk of
the Town in the most recent New Yorker: Jeffrey Toobin on voting. He did a drive-by diagnosis
of Jill Stein as a narcissist. (But, but, but the New Yorker already declared Trump a narcissist.)
Then, in a couple of very curious sentences, he tries to accuse the Russians of tampering with
the U.S. election campaign while admitting it unlikely that foreigners hacked the vote count.
So you have two or three or four fake-news pieces strung together so as to assert power. That's
the long and the short of it. Just as Pruitt is an ignoramus about science, so Toobin as an ignoramus
about psychology. As Lambert often writes: Agnotology. I'd add: Agnotology to maintain the structures
of power.
We have been in this intellectual winter for a while: Liberals in denial, peddling psychobabble.
Rightwingers in denial, peddling resentment.
At the end of the 70s, we came to the US, believing western media to be the epitome of honesty
and truth (the belief itself based on plentiful pro-western propaganda, which we consumed unquestioningly).
The highly misleading anti-Soviet propaganda in the US at that time was a bit of a shock. Not
so much its existence, but its vicious nature. And the lies about "Russians are coming." Nothing
much has changed – the west still dislikes Russia, and will do all it can to discredit the country
(just watch out for the starting effort to ruin the 2018 futbal (soccer) games in Russia – anti-Sochi
hysteria was just a preview). The wapoo stunt may be crude, but it is not a demonstration of incompetence.
It does seem to be a part of concerted efforts to limit the free flow of information on the Internet.
As the "narrative" has gotten away from powers that be, a new way to censor information is needed.
Even Merkel said she'd want to address "fake news." Has everybodu forgotten operation Mockingbird
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
)? Nothing new under the sun – but the stakes are much higher now, as the west runs out of
options to maintain supremacy.
More and more it seems like USA, like the roman empire, needs barbarians at the gates to
distract the plebs from internal structural problems.
As long as Yeltsin allowed Wall Street to loot Russia of former soviet holdings, Russia
was not "barbaric". Now that Putin has put a solid halt on said looting, Russia is again "barbarians"
Want to have some fun? Next time someone starts ranting about "the Russians hacked our election,"
try tossing out "Well, we messed with theirs, so it seems only fair."
Post editorial/management probably doesn't have strong opinions - or any opinions - of the
sites impugned by PropOrNot, including Naked Capitalism, since it's unlikely these corporate drones
possess enough intellectual curiosity to actually look at them.
The problem is confirmation bias (in this case, offering an acceptable explanation for why
WaPo's Chosen Liberal lost the election, without having to look in the mirror) and shoddy careerist
journalism generally, which works so well for so many, and which can't be litigated away.
Banish Timberg, and you might as well put WaPO out of business.
I recall seeing somewhere in the initial flurry of tweets and comments on the subject that
someone had contacted Wapo and received a response from the editor or some such stating that "multiple
contacts" were made to PorNot for some sort of purpose, perhaps verification, fact checking, or
what ever it is newspapers do before breathlessly getting out the bold typeface and running a
"story". Wish I could find it again. But now it seems that was fake news.
The timing and placement of the "clarification" is rich. 14 days later slip in an "editor's
comment" buried in the old news pile. Your pet parrot wouldn't even notice.
Timburg is obviously another tool – like Judith Miller. His "editors" knew full well the story
was bullshit – "can't vouch for the validity" (because we can't be bothered to check our sources)
– and ran it anyway. So there was/is an agenda. And the media wonder why they are in such low
regard.
Yves, in your apology post with your attorney's letter, you stated this
I also hope, particularly for those of you who don't regularly visit Naked Capitalism,
that you'll check out our related pieces that give more color to how the fact the Washington
Post was taken for a ride by inept propagandists
My first reaction to this was "presumes facts not in evidence"
I don't believe the Post was taken in by anyone. They wanted to have a particular piece written
and they did. Why in the world would they back down now?
You're going to need more fundraisers because I'm guessing they'll be dragging this out. If
they can't beat you with fake news then they will drain your resources with a long-drawn out legal
process. Yes, I'm very cynical. Watched one of the bloggers I follow spend around $150,000 defending
themselves from a defamation case that never went to trail. The blogger was also a lawyer so could
help with her defense, had discounted legal assistance from an first amendment expert and an additional
attorney. They had a year of depositions with constant delays. $150,000 is not petty cash.
I know the circumstances are not the same but the Post has deep pockets. If they want to drain
NC and other independent news sources, they have the resources to go the distance.
Also please stop giving the newspapers excuses. The entire industry is pretty much consolidated.
I don't think they very much care about whether or not a newspaper makes money after they've leveraged
it with so much debt in order to purchase it in the first place. Or used their billions to simply
buy it. Either way that would seem to indicate that's about the write-off and controlling the
"narrative."
As an added bonus get rid of your workers due to "costs." Further narrowing the acceptable
narrative within the newsroom. Pretty soon, the entire industry is gutted just like other industries
in this country. (I'd argue that's most of the way done except for independent media.) That's
quite purposeful and just like other industries, it never had to be that way, even with the rise
of the Internet and "things" like Google ads and Facebook.
Stop giving them so much of the benefit of the doubt. They are engaged in a class war.
Even if somewhere down the line they were to apologize and give you a prominent byline, the
damage is already done with a good portion of their readership. Which was entirely the point.
" I don't believe the Post was taken in by anyone. "
I may wholeheartedly agree with you but there are good reasons for NC to be circumspect and
initially offer Wapoo the option of backing away and retracting gracefully; or as gracefully as
possible in this situation.
Yes, I'm in for the long haul wrt donations. Bernie's campaign showed the power of small donations.
You've put your finger on the "stupid, crazy, or evil" question.
Our esteemed hostess has chosen stupid, for reasons that seem good and sufficient. Crazy would
be apparent from past behavior, and we of the tinfoil hat legions can make a good case for evil
from the interests of the actors. But if nothing else, stupid is easily proved.
I think the main reason many here are giving the benefit of the doubt to WaPo is that it was
done so ineptly. The article reeks of carelessness and non-existent fact-checking and poor (or
non-existent) editorial overview. If it was part of a deliberate plot to smear it should have
been better written and they would have done a better job in covering themselves legally. Most
recent high profile libel claims – such as the Rolling Stones college rape hoax story – originated
from a mix of confirmation bias and incompetence, not (so far as we know) from a deliberate malign
plot.
Having said that, their refusal to come straight out and apologise when presented with the
facts is just digging themselves a deeper hole. I've no doubt the NC crew will go all the way
with this, I hope it proves deeply embarrassing for the WaPo, they are destroying their own reputation
and its entirely their fault.
I guess, on one level, it's intersting that the PTB saw the websites on the list as having
that much power and influence to sway the election to Trump due to telling the truth, frankly.
The truth clearly has no place in the US conversation anymore.
At any rate, most of here saw our main, favored websites on that McCarthyite witch hunt list
and thought: WOW. So we told the truth about Clinton and various other issues with this election,
and now we must be silenced.
Of course, it's pretty odd given the DNC hacked emails were really very revealing of many shady
(to say the least) things, and I've seen those emails quoted quite a bit by many rightwing sources.
And that info was, in fact, disseminated broadly to conservative voters. And I feel that those
emails, possibly along with Comey's last minute "reveal," probably swayed some still-on-the-fence
voters to either not vote for POTUS at all or to vote for Trump.
Frankly, it's risable in the extreme that this country has been drowning in rightwingnut propaganda
for the past 40+ years (or longer), and that's really what the rise of Trump is all about. As
opposed to others here, I frankly despise Trump and all he stands for, but I give him props where
due. He's kind of stupid but has this certain rat cunning about reading the moment and grabbing
it for his purposes. He saw that those who had lost the most in this country were ripe for the
plucking, and he went about using them for his own greedy means accordingly.
Railing against a handful of truth-telling lefty-ish blogs is amazing on one level. I doubt
that, even in the aggragate, many voters were swayed by the information provided. I think most
who read these blogs are already determined what we'll do, but we come to these sites for a breath
of fresh air, as it were.
That, for me, is what makes this attack so chilling. The last few small voices of reason and
sanity? And they have to be silenced? Brrrrrr . that's bitterly cold.
Keep up the good fight, Yves and friends. This is gonna be tough row to hoe, but I'm in it
to win it.
And by refusing to address the emails, other than to scream "Russian hackers," the corporate
media were able to convince the Clinton cultists and other Third-Way believers that the information
they contained was just another right-wing attack on The Anointed because (other than leftist,
Russian-loving "fake news" sites), the right-wing media were the only ones paying it any attention.
You have to give credit where it's due-they have had decades to perfect their method, and it
is very hard to counter it.
silicon valley does not know the meaning of trust. they have extracted it from every situation
they can, destroying everything they touch, without realizing what they have unleashed. this will
eventually be learned by all, the hard way.
I am old enough to remember seeing in the news reel at my local theater in 1950 Joseph
McCarthy holding up a piece of paper to the cameras and intoning in his inimitable droning voice,
"I have here in my hand a list of 205 known members of the Communist Party who are working and
shaping policy in the State Department."
People's livelihoods and reputations were thereby smeared for life. Never did McCarthy
back his claims with evidence, nor did he retract his scurrilous accusation. Now, tell me how
what Jeff Bezos and co. are doing in this instance is in any significant way different from what
McCarthy did to these people back in 1956. What finally put it squarely before the American public
and finally earned McCarthy Congressional censure was when Boston attorney Joseph Welch asked
McCarthy, "Have you no sense of decency, sir?"
Yikes,Yves! What a lame response from them. We all need to keep up the pressure, by any means.
This is one of those MSM errors that they hope will just go away, as evidenced by their hand waving
dismissal. We can't let it! I think letters to the editor-an avalanche- might do a world of good.
Murtaza HussainVerified account Dec 5
@MazMHussain
2003: Rifle-toting Americans barge into Iraq after reading viral Fake News story about weapons
of mass destruction.
------------------------------
This fake news story ranks up there with the rifle toting Americans that barge into Viet Nam after
the Fake News story about a US Navy warship that was attacked by the North Viet Namese Naval forces
in the Gulf of Tonkin.
PolitiFact is running a poll for "Lie of the Year"
here . There's a line for write in votes. I wrote in the Post's "Russian Propaganda " story.
I suggest you can do the same.
A true fake news refusal to retract. Extraordinary that WaPo's editors also claim "not to vouch"
for the veracity of whether or not RT.com is a "conduit for Russian propaganda". Really? RT is
sponsored by the Russian state, how could it not be such a "conduit"? WaPo has all but admitted
that it will print all the fake news it chooses to print. This reply is actually worse than the
original offense. Pure confection of arrogance and cowardice as only libertarians can produce.
But of course it doesn't matter if every last one of the news sources mentioned in the WaPo
article were in fact such conduits. The issue is the neo-Cold war, neo-McCarthyite campaign launched
over the last 2 years whose center of gravity lies clearly in the Clinton liberal Democrat camp.
We can only imagine how the campaign would conduct itself if Clinton had won the Presidency.
It was predictable they would come after the Left, only now they come on with less swag, but with
a pathetic sore loser grudge. A perusal of the Liberal sphere on HuffnPuff, Alternet, Salon and
such shows these still lost in a self-induced hysterical psychosis.
Right NOW is the time to for leftists and progressives to draw a clear line, and distance,
from American Liberalism and its blame the victim rhetoric.
Here's the thing. Yes, RT is funded by the Russian government, and thus anything posted
thereon needs to be considered with that in mind. Nevertheless, it is also where stories the corporates
prefer to ignore are given attention. In other words, there is an irony that the Russians may,
indeed, be trying to influence us, but if so, they appear to be doing it by subtly undermining
the reliability of the corporate media.
To put it another way, dismissing RT solely because of its funding source is no better
than dismissing NC et al. as propaganda sites, and doing so is actually feeding the propaganda
machine. After all, we don't know what percentage of the US media currently receives "grants"
from US intelligence agencies, now, do we.
In studying communications, there's a distinction between 'white' and 'black' propaganda.
White propaganda is publishing truth that supports your cause. Black propaganda is, of course,
slanderous lies. RT is white propaganda, so use it for the value it brings.
Exactly. I'm a grown-up. I have a lot of practice reading critically and I'm quite capable
of questioning sources and filtering bias. I don't need Jeff Bezos to protect me from Russkie
BadThink.
There's a sense in which that's true, of course. But it is a useful characterization? Is there
even any point to such a broad statement about a media outlet, other than to discredit work that
can't be discredited on more direct grounds?
State sponsorship of media organizations is not all that unusual. The BBC is primarily funded
by a tax levied on any British household that uses a television to receive a broadcast signal,
for example. Is the WaPo in the habit of describing the BBC as a "conduit for British propaganda"?
Am I acting as a useful idiot for the UK government every time I rehash an old Monty Python joke?
"does not itself vouch " You have to bear in mind this is not the Post talking, this is
CIA CIA has blatantly used the Post as a
their sockpuppet
since they put Woodward in there to oust Nixon, and now they've got Bezos by the contractual
balls. CIA has impunity in municipal statute and secret red tape so any answer you get from them
means No fuck You.
The NDAA legalized domestic propaganda in 2013 so when the public repudiated their chosen
president Hillary Clinton, CIA immediately got to work work attacking Article 19. CIA is
panicking because Hillary was going to get them the war they need to preserve CIA impunity for
the crime against humanity of systematic and widespread torture and murder in their global gulag
of secret death camps.
The ICC's investigation of US crimes against humanity has reached the critical point of referral
to the pre-trial chamber . The
ICC is under intense pressure from Russia and the global south to prove it's not afraid of US
criminals. Italian courts have got torturer Sabrina de Souza, and they're going to use her to
roll up the command chain. One way or another it's going to be open season on CIA torture cowards,
in universal jurisdiction with no statute of limitations. This is a far graver threat to CIA than
the family jewels. The international community is investigating CIA crimes, not avuncular Jim
Schlesinger or some gelded congressional committee. Like Francis Boyle says, the US government
is a criminal enterprise. And since COG was imposed it's got one branch, CIA
That's the background here. You're the Op in Red Harvest. Poisonville's the USA.
May I suggest that this site no longer link to The Wapoo for stories that are available elsewhere.
I personally would prefer to not go to their site at all, but they seem to make up a lot of the
links here.
I understand that sometimes this will be unavoidable, as the Wapoo is the only one doing a particular
story, but in cases where the story is carried at other sites, can you please link to those other
sites instead?
I live in New Zealand and start every day with NC because WaPo and it's like runs an agenda.
We all know that. I feel for you Yves but the site's strength is bringing together all those speaking
truth to power. The courts won't care about that and that route can drain you personally and financially.
Stay strong and play to your strengths. You have lots of support – perhaps more than you know.
The Second Phase of the Propaganda Fake News War: Economic Strangulation. What Comes Next?
by BAR editor and columnist Dr. Marsha Adebayo
"The public has determined that the corporate media is actually the purveyor of "fake news"
and turned to media organizations, such as BAR, Truthout and other outlets for information."
So, since the W.P. won't bear responsibility for what they publish, maybe we should just lump
them in with Breitbart and company. Just out of curiosity, did W.P. contact N.C. for comment before
they tried to smear your (and, by extension, our) reputation?
It's libel per se and an avalanche of lawsuits directed at PropOrNot and WaPo should be pretty
effective. Because WaPo did not retract there is no defense.
From a legal point of view, I wonder how the Executive Editor's (Marty Baron) tweeting of the
article plays against the assertion that "The Post does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot's
findings". Is that a case where he was speaking (tweeting) his own opinion, and not necessarily
that of his employer?
So if the WaPo doesn't consider validity checking of sources to be part of its job, then that
raises the obvious question in this case: WHY the (insert expletive of your choice) did they take
this site with anonymous authors, sweeping allegations and no evidence of any kind, and choose
to make a featured story out of it? There are hundreds or thousands of other sites just like it
out there. Why PropOrNot, and not any of the others?
In other words, if (as they claim) the story boils down to "some anonymous people on the Internet
made some unsubstantiated claims which may or may not be accurate", why did they decide it was
newsworthy at all, let alone worthy of the kind of prominence they gave it?
They might actually get off the hook for libel on the grounds that the lack of fairness and
impartiality wasn't malicious intent but part of their core values.
Am I the only one who remembered an "Andrew Watts" commenting on NC? And wasn't Aug 21 the
date ProporCrap started? And isn't the exchange between 'Andrew Watts' and 'timbers' of interest
given the WaPo reporter's name is Timberg?
How hard would it be, really, for two or three people with some know-how to engage in discussion,
get replies from comments, trace/track those people. Even one person hacked (and I'm virtually
certain I was this summer) could provide a large number of sites visited or 'linked'.
And it seems to me as well I sent a story to Lambert (and I wrote to Lambert something like
"You mean this isn't real?") that I took to be a real WaPo story re a major wrinkle in the Clinton
scandals that was part of a story link I got from Global Research, a story which also had a paragraph
referenced from Breibart which I didn't notice until my comment wasn't posted, so I went back
and looked. I assumed the comment was rejected due to the Breibart (sp?) reference. But what if
WaPo/Watts were fishing at NC and saw my follow-up comment to Lambert with only the WaPo link
and my question (assuming it was posted, which I do not remember)?
I wonder if Snopes has asked to be removed from PropOrNot's list of "related projects."
I contacted them to find out if they were going to ask themselves to be removed from that list,
but I have not heard back from them. I guess we'll find out something about their reputability.
I have spent the better
part of the last 10 years working diligently to investigate and relate information on
economics and geopolitical discourse for the liberty movement. However, long before I
delved into these subjects my primary interests of study were the human mind and the
human "soul" (yes, I'm using a spiritual term).
My fascination with economics and sociopolitical events has always been rooted in the
human element.
That is to say, while economics is often treated as a
mathematical and statistical field, it is also driven by psychology.
To know
the behavior of man is to know the future of all his endeavors, good or evil.
Evil is what we are specifically here to discuss.
I have touched on
the issue in various articles in the past including
Are Globalists Evil Or Just Misunderstood
, but with extreme tensions taking shape
this year in light of the U.S. election as well as the exploding online community
investigation of "Pizzagate," I am compelled to examine it once again.
I will not be grappling with this issue from a particularly religious perspective.
Evil applies to everyone regardless of their belief system, or even their lack of
belief. Evil is secular in its influence.
The first and most important thing to understand is this - evil is NOT simply
a social or religious construct, it is an inherent element of the human psyche.
Carl Gustav Jung was one of the few psychologists in history to dare write extensively
on the issue of evil from a scientific perspective as well as a metaphysical
perspective. I highly recommend a book of his collected works on this subject titled
'Jung On Evil', edited by Murray Stein, for those who are interested in a deeper view.
To summarize, Jung found that much of the foundations of human behavior are rooted in
inborn psychological contents or "archetypes." Contrary to the position of Sigmund
Freud, Jung argued that while our environment may affect our behavior to a certain
extent, it does not make us who we are. Rather, we are born with our own individual
personality and grow into our inherent characteristics over time. Jung also found that
there are universally present elements of human psychology. That is to say, almost every
human being on the planet shares certain truths and certain natural predilections.
The concepts of good and evil, moral and immoral, are present in us from birth and
are mostly the same regardless of where we are born, what time in history we are born
and to what culture we are born. Good and evil are shared subjective experiences. It is
this observable psychological fact (among others) that leads me to believe in the idea
of a creative design - a god. Again, though, elaborating on god is beyond the scope of
this article.
To me, this should be rather comforting to people, even atheists. For if there is
observable evidence of creative design, then it would follow that there may every well
be a reason for all the trials and horrors that we experience as a species. Our lives,
our failures and our accomplishments are not random and meaningless. We are striving
toward something, whether we recognize it or not. It may be beyond our comprehension at
this time, but it is there.
Evil does not exist in a vacuum; with evil there is always good, if one looks
for it in the right places.
Most people are readily equipped to recognize evil when they see it
directly. What they are not equipped for and must learn from environment is how to
recognize evil disguised as righteousness.
The most heinous acts in
history are almost always presented as a moral obligation - a path towards some "greater
good." Inherent conscience, though, IS the greater good, and any ideology that steps
away from the boundaries of conscience will inevitably lead to disaster.
The concept of globalism is one of these ideologies that crosses the line of
conscience and pontificates to us about a "superior method" of living.
It
relies on taboo, rather than moral compass, and there is a big difference between the
two.
When we pursue a "greater good" as individuals or as a society, the means are just as
vital as the ends. The ends NEVER
justify the means. Never. For if we
abandon our core principles and commit atrocities in the name of "peace," safety or
survival, then we have forsaken the very things which make us worthy of peace and safety
and survival. A monster that devours in the name of peace is still a monster.
Globalism tells us that the collective is more important than the individual,
that the individual owes society a debt and that fealty to society in every respect is
the payment for that debt.
But inherent archetypes and conscience tell us
differently. They tell us that society is only ever as healthy as the individuals
within it, that society is only as free and vibrant as the participants. As the
individual is demeaned and enslaved, the collective crumbles into mediocrity.
Globalism also tells us that humanity's greatest potential cannot be reached without
collectivism and centralization. The assertion is that the more single-minded a society
is in its pursuits the more likely it is to effectively achieve its goals. To this end,
globalism seeks to erase all sovereignty. For now its proponents claim they only wish to
remove nations and borders from the social equation, but such collectivism never stops
there. Eventually, they will tell us that individualism represents another nefarious
"border" that prevents the group from becoming fully realized.
At the heart of collectivism is the idea that human beings are "blank
slates;" that we are born empty and are completely dependent on our environment in order
to learn what is right and wrong and how to be good people or good citizens. The
environment becomes the arbiter of decency, rather than conscience, and whoever controls
the environment, by extension, becomes god.
If the masses are convinced of this narrative then moral relativity is only a short
step away. It is the abandonment of inborn conscience that ultimately results in evil.
In my view, this is exactly why the so called "elites" are pressing for globalism in the
first place. Their end game is not just centralization of all power into a one world
edifice, but the suppression and eradication of conscience, and thus, all that is good.
To see where this leads we must look at the behaviors of the elites
themselves, which brings us to "Pizzagate."
The exposure by Wikileaks during the election cycle of what appear to be coded emails
sent between John Podesta and friends has created a burning undercurrent in the
alternative media. The emails consistently use odd and out of context "pizza"
references, and independent investigations have discovered a wide array connections
between political elites like Hillary Clinton and John Podesta to James Alefantis, the
owner of a pizza parlor in Washington D.C. called Comet Ping Pong. Alefantis, for
reasons that make little sense to me, is listed as number 49 on GQ's
Most Powerful People In Washington list
.
The assertion according to circumstantial evidence including the disturbing child and
cannibalism artwork collections of the Podestas has been that Comet Ping Pong is somehow
at the center of a child pedophilia network serving the politically connected. Both
Comet Ping Pong and a pizza establishment two doors down called Besta Pizza use symbols
in their logos and menus that are listed on the
FBI's
unclassified documentation on pedophilia symbolism
, which does not help matters.
Some of the best documentation of the Pizzagate scandal that I have seen so far has
been done by David Seaman, a former mainstream journalist gone rogue.
Here is his
YouTube page
.
I do recommend everyone at least look at the evidence he and others present. I went
into the issue rather skeptical, but was surprised by the sheer amount of weirdness and
evidence regarding Comet Pizza. There is a problem with Pizzagate that is difficult to
overcome, however; namely the fact that to my knowledge no victims have come forward.
This is not to say there has been no crime, but anyone hoping to convince the general
public of wrong-doing in this kind of scenario is going to have a very hard time without
a victim to reference.
The problem is doubly difficult now that an armed man was arrested on the premises of
Comet Ping Pong while "researching" the claims of child trafficking. Undoubtedly, the
mainstream media will declare the very investigation "dangerous conspiracy theory."
Whether this will persuade the public to ignore it, or compel them to look into it,
remains to be seen.
I fully realize the amount of confusion surrounding Pizzagate and the assertions by
some that it is a "pysop" designed to undermine the alternative media. This is a
foolish notion, in my view. The mainstream media is dying, this is unavoidable. The
alternative media is a network of sources based on the power of choice and cemented in
the concept of investigative research. The reader participates in the alternative media
by learning all available information and positions and deciding for himself what is the
most valid conclusion, if there is any conclusion to be had. The mainstream media
simply tells its readers what to think and feel based on cherry picked data.
The elites will never be able to deconstruct that kind of movement with something
like a faked "pizzagate"; rather, they would be more inclined to try to co-opt and
direct the alternative media as they do most institutions. And, if elitists are using
Pizzagate as fodder to trick the alternative media into looking ridiculous, then why
allow elitist run social media outlets like Facebook and Reddit to shut down discussion
on the issue?
The reason I am more convinced than skeptical at this stage is because this has
happened before; and in past scandals of pedophilia in Washington and other political
hotbeds, some victims DID come forward.
I would first reference the events of the Franklin Scandal between 1988 and 1991. The
Discovery Channel even produced a documentary on it complete with interviews of alleged
child victims peddled to Washington elites for the purpose of favors and blackmail.
Meant to air in 1994, the documentary was quashed before it was ever shown to the
public. The only reason it can now be found is because an original copy was released
without permission by parties unknown.
I would also reference the highly evidenced
Westminster Pedophile Ring in the U.K.
, in which the U.K. government lost or
destroyed at least 114 related files related to the investigation.
Finally, it is disconcerting to me that the criminal enterprises of former Bear
Sterns financier and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his "Lolita Express" are
mainstream knowledge, yet the public remains largely oblivious. Bill Clinton is
shown on flight logs
to have flown on Epstein's private jet at least a 26 times; the
same jet that he used to procure child victims as young as 12 to entertain celebrities
and billionaires on his 72 acre island called "Little Saint James". The fact that
Donald Trump was also close friends with Epstein should raise some eyebrows - funny how
the mainstream media attacked Trump on every cosmetic issue under the sun but for some
reason backed away from pursuing the Epstein angle.
Where is the vast federal investigation into the people who frequented Epstein's
wretched parties? There is none, and Epstein, though convicted of molesting a 14 year
old girl and selling her into prostitution, was only slapped on the wrist with a 13
month sentence.
Accusations of pedophilia seem to follow the globalists and elitist politicians
wherever they go. This does not surprise me. They often exhibit characteristics of
narcissism and psychopathy, but their ideology of moral relativity is what would lead to
such horrible crimes.
Evil often stems from people who are empty.
When one abandons
conscience, one also in many respects abandons empathy and love. Without these elements
of our psyche there is no happiness. Without them, there is nothing left but desire and
gluttony.
Narcissists in particular are prone to use other people as forms of
entertainment and fulfillment without concern for their humanity. They can be vicious
in nature, and when taken to the level of psychopathy, they are prone to target and
abuse the most helpless of victims in order to generate a feeling of personal power.
Add in sexual addiction and aggression and narcissists become predatory in the
extreme. Nothing ever truly satisfies them. When they grow tired of the normal, they
quickly turn to the abnormal and eventually the criminal. I would say that pedophilia
is a natural progression of the elitist mindset; for children are the easiest and most
innocent victim source, not to mention the most aberrant and forbidden, and thus the
most desirable for a psychopathic deviant embracing evil impulses.
Beyond this is the even more disturbing prospect of cultism.
It is
not that the globalists are simply evil as individuals; if that were the case then they
would present far less of a threat. The greater terror is that they are also organized.
When one confronts the problem of evil head on, one quickly realizes that evil is within
us all. There will always be an internal battle in every individual. Organized evil,
though, is in fact the ultimate danger, and it is organized evil that must be
eradicated.
For organized evil to be defeated, there must be organized good.
I believe the liberty movement in particular is that good; existing in early stages,
not yet complete, but good none the less. Our championing of the non-aggression
principle and individual liberty is conducive to respect for privacy, property and
life. Conscience is a core tenet of the liberty ideal, and the exact counter to
organized elitism based on moral relativity.
Recognize and take solace that though we live in dark times, and evil men
roam free, we are also here. We are the proper response to evil, and we have been placed
here at this time for a reason. Call it fate, call it destiny, call it coincidence, call
it god, call it whatever you want, but the answer to evil is us.
"Out of the temporary evil we are now compelled to commit will emerge the
good of an unshakable rule, which will restore the regular course of the
machinery of the national life, brought to naught by liberalism. The result
justifies the means. Let us, however, in our plans, direct our attention not
so much to what is good and moral as to what is necessary and useful."
I should also point out those alledgedly behind The Protocols
are not the people the article is referring ie: those people are
typically found in any liberal establishment.
A good article, but it fails to deliver on these key aspects of
the matter:
Everyone knows from the Godfather and its genre
that there is a connection between loyalty, criminality and
power: Once you witness someone engaging in a criminal act, you
have leverage over them and that ensures their loyalty. But what
follows from that - which healthy sane minds have trouble
contemplating - is that the greater the criminality the greater
the leverage, and that because murderous paedophilia places a
person utterly beyond any prospect of redemption in decent
society, there in NO GREATER LOYALTY than those desperate to
avoid being outed. These must be the three corners of the
triangle - Power:Loyalty:Depravity through which the evil eys
views the world.
I always beleived in an Illuminati of sorts, however they
care to self identify. Until Pizzagate, I never understood that
murderous paedophilia, luciferian in style to accentuate their
own depravity, is THE KEY TO RULING THE EARTH
And another thing. If pizzagate is 'fake news' then it it
inconceivably elaborate - they'd have had to fake Epstein 2008,
Silsby 2010, Breitbart 2011, the 2013 portugese release of
podestaesque mccann suspects, as well as the current run of
wikileaks and Alefantis' instagram account - which had an avatar
photo of the 13 yr old lover of a roman emperor.
Is that much fake news a possibility? Or has this smoke been
blowing for years and we've all been too distracted to stop and
look for fire?
What floors me about the whole pizzagate thing is the evil staring us
right in the face. And then to realize that the libtards don't even
believe in evil at all, only "mental illness"!
Lesson #1: Do not waste your time figuring some things out. Things like evil
people are probably beyond a decent persons ability to understand and let's be
honest I don't want to feel any sympathy for them anyway.
Read a book years ago by Dr. Karl Menninger, a psychiatrist, titled
'Whatever happened to Sin?'
In it he talks of murder and that it is not a natural thing for man to
do,. However, when the burden of guilt is spread over many shoulders and
government condones the action, it becomes easier to bear.
When observing the results, such as soldiers returning from war, unstable
mentally, it is evident that evil has occured. It has been decades since I
read the book, so the words I wrote may not be verbatim.
Lurked ZH for years, just started reading the comments. This is worse than
Reddit's echo chamber. Bible quotes? 3 guys 1 hammer on liveleak has more
productive comments. Why not mention methods you've used to help people reach
their own conclusion about Pizzagate?
I had two slices of pizza for dinner. I had to try not to think of the poor
children walking innocently about the store who may at any moment fall victim
to a pedo. My gf said pizza places all over now need to keep a keen eye out for
the Posdesta Brothers and their Gang after all the stuff that has come out from
WikiLeaks and other sources about them.
The bible says God created evil and loosed it on us. The correct reading of
Genesis 4;1 is from the dead sea scrolls stating :
"And Adam knew his
wife Eve,
who was pregnant by Sammael [Satan]
, and she conceived and
bare Cain,
and he was like the heavenly beings, and not like earthly
beings,
and
she
said, I have gotten a man from
the angel of
the Lord."
So in Isaiah 45:7 we have this:
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the
LORD do all these
things
.
So my research shows evil was "grafted" into humans through
the unholy alliance and 2 seedline of people resulted.
Good article but an exception: evil doesn't reside in all of us, sin does.
Evil is the expression of wanton and intentional deception, injury,
degradation, and destruction and rarely self-recognizes or admits to God as
supreme. It may be DNA encoded. Sociopathy certainly is.
But you're so
right about the organized nature of it all, and for thousands of years. The
newly formed EU didn't advertise itself as the New Babylonia for nothing on
publicty posters, heralding the coming age of one tongue out of many and
fashioning its parliament building after the Tower of Bablyon:
Secret societies are cannibalizing us, and themselves, but members won't
know till it's too late that they'll also be eaten fairly early on. Of all
"people", they should know those in the pyramid capstone won't have enough
elbow room if they let in every Tom, Dick and Harry Mason.
I am sympatico with Brandon. I have always had similar interests, about the
soul, about ethics, about human behavior.
The reality is that evil is extant
in other human beings. The thought that your property manager is going to piss
in your OJ or fuck their BFF in your bed is abhorrent to most people, but not
all. There was an article this week about a married couple that had concerns
about their rental unit manager. And what did they find? He was fucking his BFF
(yes, of course it was another dude) in their bed. The good news is they got it
on video and moved. The bad news? This kind of attitude is rampant. People
don't give a shit about other people. They think the rules don't apply to them.
That they are special. The result is renting from some asshat that fucks in
your bed or pisses in your OJ. Or parents that wonder why little Johnny or
little Janie never move out of the house and are stoned and play video games
all day.
Evil exists, in varying forms. Sadly too many people continue to make
excuses for not only bad behavior but evil behavior. I don't think that way and
I don't live my life that way but I am fully aware of all the morons stumbling
through the world that do.
I think people are misunderstanding the setup theory. Nobody believes, at
least I hope not, that all of this art and bizarre behavior on the part of
these freaks was staged for the purposes of taking down the last of our free
media, but rather, they just took advantage of a situation where they knew
people were making accusations that couldn't be sufficiently backed up or even
prosecuted, and yet caused proven or contrived damages to people. If this is
the case, their intention,
with the help of intelligence agencies
, is
to frame alt-media for starting vigilante violence and the destruction of
innocent people's lives through promoting defamation against others.
I have
no doubt that our entire system is riddled with pedophilia and likely much
worse. They have also been getting away with this forever, so when we go for
the takedown we better have our ducks in a row. To do otherwise will just give
these sickos complete immunity and more decades will pass with them continuing
to prey on our children. Not only is this at stake but the fate of all the
children of this nation is at stake if we lose our media. We are in very
dangerous and treacherous times. When you go toe to toe with the professional
trade crafters you have to play smart or they will have you every time.
Once people have had enough exposure to NPDs or psychopaths you will vibe
them after a while. I imagine this is likely the case for anyone who has
worked as a trader, finance, politics, big commodity booms are bad, etc. We
have all encountered them somewhere. People should pay attention to how they
feel (yeah I know, people hate that word) when they are around people. I have
to pretend that I don't notice them because it is so apparent to me and
immediately.
The last time I picked one out at work, a few months later the creepy
bastard walked past me at night during a -20 blizzard, with next to no
visibility, knowing that I had an hour drive, and told me in super spooky
whisper.. "Don't hit a deer on your way home now." I found out later that a
bunch of horses had mysteriously died in his care and a bunch of other things
that confirmed my suspicions. I had a long battle with him so I eventually got
to understand him pretty well. I didn't have to hear the guy state a single
sentence or watch any body language, I just knew immediately because I could
feel his malevolence and threat in my stomach where we have a large nerve
cluster. Pay attention and you will know. Also their eye contact is all wrong
and too intense.
Globalism, is designed to make you poorer slowly over decades by allowing wages
and conditions to be for ever slowly reduced under the guise of free market
competition to funnel wealth ever upwards to the 1%.
"... One of the sites PropOrNot cited as Russian-influenced was the Drudge Report. ..."
"... The piece's description of some sharers of bogus news as "useful idiots" could " theoretically include anyone on any social-media platform who shares news based on a click-bait headline ," Mathew Ingram wrote for Fortune. ..."
"... But the biggest issue was PropOrNot itself. As Adrian Chen wrote for the New Yorker , its methods were themselves suspect, hinting at counter-Russian propaganda - ostensibly with Ukrainian origins - and verification of its work was nearly impossible. Chen wrote "the prospect of legitimate dissenting voices being labeled fake news or Russian propaganda by mysterious groups of ex-government employees, with the help of a national newspaper, is even scarier." ..."
"... Now, at least, the "national newspaper" has taken some responsibility, however the key question remains: by admitting it never vetted its primary source, whose biased and conflicted "work" smeared hundreds of websites, this one included, just how is the Washington Post any different from the "fake news" it has been deriding on a daily basis ever since its endorsed presidential candidate lost the elections? ..."
In the latest example why the "mainstream media" is facing a historic crisis of confidence among
its readership, facing unprecedented blowback following Craig Timberg November 24 Washington Post
story "
Russian propaganda effort helped spread 'fake news' during election, experts say ", on Wednesday
a lengthy editor's note appeared on top of the original article in which the editor not only distances
the WaPo from the "experts" quoted in the original article whose "work" served as the basis for the
entire article (and which became the most read WaPo story the day it was published) but also admits
the Post could not " vouch for the validity of PropOrNot's finding regarding any individual media
outlet", in effect admitting the entire story may have been, drumroll "fake news" and conceding the
Bezos-owned publication may have engaged in defamation by smearing numerous websites - Zero Hedge
included - with patently false and unsubstantiated allegations.
It was the closest the Washington Post would come to formally retracting the story, which has
now been thoroughly discredited not only by outside commentators, but by its own editor.
Editor's Note: The Washington Post on Nov. 24 published a story on the work of four
sets of researchers who have examined what they say are Russian propaganda efforts to undermine
American democracy and interests. One of them was PropOrNot, a group that insists on public anonymity,
which issued a report identifying more than 200 websites that, in its view, wittingly or unwittingly
published or echoed Russian propaganda. A number of those sites have objected to being included
on PropOrNot's list, and some of the sites, as well as others not on the list, have publicly challenged
the group's methodology and conclusions. The Post, which did not name any of the sites, does not
itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot's findings regarding any individual media outlet, nor
did the article purport to do so. Since publication of The Post's story, PropOrNot has removed
some sites from its list.
As The
Washingtonian notes , the implicit concession follows intense and rising criticism of the article
over the past two weeks. It was "
rife with obviously reckless and unproven allegations, " Intercept reporters Glenn Greenwald
and Ben Norton wrote, noting that PropOrNot, one of the groups whose research was cited in Timberg's
piece, "anonymous cowards." One of the sites PropOrNot cited as Russian-influenced was the Drudge
Report.
But the biggest issue was PropOrNot itself. As Adrian Chen
wrote for the New Yorker , its methods were themselves suspect, hinting at counter-Russian propaganda
- ostensibly with Ukrainian origins - and verification of its work was nearly impossible. Chen wrote
"the prospect of legitimate dissenting voices being labeled fake news or Russian propaganda by mysterious
groups of ex-government employees, with the help of a national newspaper, is even scarier."
Now, at least, the "national newspaper" has taken some responsibility, however the key question
remains: by admitting it never vetted its primary source, whose biased and conflicted "work" smeared
hundreds of websites, this one included, just how is the Washington Post any different from the "fake
news" it has been deriding on a daily basis ever since its endorsed presidential candidate lost the
elections?
The authors seems to miss the key observation: this is a sign of the crisis of neoliberal propaganda
model, which gave rise to Internet rumor mill. Rumor s (aka improvised news) became a prominent news
source if and only if official channels of information are not viewed as trustworthy. And blacklisting
alternative news sites does not help to return the trust. When it is gone it is gone. The same situation
in the past happened in Brezhnev's USSR. People just stopped to trust official newspapers and turned
to propaganda sites of Western =government such as BBC and voice of America for news. Soviet authorities
tried to jam them, but this did not stop Soviet people from trying to listen to then at nights, trying
to find frequencies that were not jammed.
Notable quotes:
"... Basically, everyone who isn't comfortably within the centrist Hillary Clinton/Jeb Bush spectrum is guilty. On its Twitter account, the group announced a new "plugin" that automatically alerts the user that a visited website has been designated by the group to be a Russian propaganda outlet. ..."
"... The group commits outright defamation by slandering obviously legitimate news sites as propaganda tools of the Kremlin. ..."
"... a big part of the group's definition for "Russian propaganda outlet" is criticizing U.S. foreign policy ..."
"... In sum: They're not McCarthyite; perish the thought. They just want multiple U.S. media outlets investigated by the FBI for espionage on behalf of Russia. ..."
"... PropOrNot is by no means a neutral observer. It actively calls on Congress and the White House to work "with our European allies to disconnect Russia from the SWIFT financial transaction system, effective immediately and lasting for at least one year, as an appropriate response to Russian manipulation of the election." ..."
"... In other words, this blacklisting group of anonymous cowards - putative experts in the pages of the Washington Post - is actively pushing for Western governments to take punitive measures against the Russian government and is speaking and smearing from an extreme ideological framework that the Post concealed from its readers. ..."
"... The Post itself - now posing as a warrior against "fake news" - published an article in September that treated with great seriousness the claim that Hillary Clinton collapsed on 9/11 Day because she was poisoned by Putin. ..."
"... Indeed, what happened here is the essence of fake news. The Post story served the agendas of many factions: those who want to believe Putin stole the election from Hillary Clinton; those who want to believe that the internet and social media are a grave menace that needs to be controlled, in contrast to the objective truth that reliable old media outlets once issued; those who want a resurrection of the Cold War. ..."
"... So those who saw tweets and Facebook posts promoting this Post story instantly clicked and shared and promoted the story without an iota of critical thought or examination of whether the claims were true, because they wanted the claims to be true. That behavior included countless journalists. ..."
One of the core functions of PropOrNot appears to be its compilation of a lengthy blacklist of
news and political websites that it smears as peddlers of "Russian propaganda." Included on this
blacklist of supposed propaganda outlets are prominent independent left-wing news sites such as Truthout,
Naked Capitalism, Black Agenda Report, Consortium News, and Truthdig.
Also included are popular libertarian hubs such as Zero Hedge, Antiwar.com, and the Ron Paul Institute,
along with the hugely influential right-wing website the Drudge Report and the publishing site WikiLeaks.
Far-right, virulently anti-Muslim blogs such as Bare Naked Islam are likewise dubbed Kremlin mouthpieces.
Basically, everyone who isn't comfortably within the centrist Hillary Clinton/Jeb Bush spectrum
is guilty. On its Twitter account, the group announced a new "plugin" that automatically alerts the
user that a visited website has been designated by the group to be a Russian propaganda outlet.
... ... ...
The group commits outright defamation by slandering obviously legitimate news sites as propaganda
tools of the Kremlin.
The group eschews alternative media outlets like these and instead recommends that readers rely
solely on establishment-friendly publications like NPR, the BBC, the New York Times, the Wall Street
Journal, the Washington Post, BuzzFeed, and VICE. That is becausea big part of
the group's definition for "Russian propaganda outlet" is criticizing U.S. foreign policy.
... ... ...
While blacklisting left-wing and libertarian journalists, PropOrNot also denies being McCarthyite.
Yet it simultaneously calls for the U.S. government to use the FBI and DOJ to carry out "formal investigations"
of these accused websites, "because the kind of folks who make propaganda for brutal authoritarian
oligarchies are often involved in a wide range of bad business." The shadowy group even goes so far
as to claim that people involved in the blacklisted websites may "have violated the Espionage Act,
the Foreign Agent Registration Act, and other related laws."
In sum: They're not McCarthyite; perish the thought. They just want multiple U.S. media outlets
investigated by the FBI for espionage on behalf of Russia.
... ... ...
PropOrNot is by no means a neutral observer. It actively calls on Congress and the White House
to work "with our European allies to disconnect Russia from the SWIFT financial transaction system,
effective immediately and lasting for at least one year, as an appropriate response to Russian manipulation
of the election."
In other words, this blacklisting group of anonymous cowards - putative experts in the pages
of the Washington Post - is actively pushing for Western governments to take punitive measures against
the Russian government and is speaking and smearing from an extreme ideological framework that the
Post concealed from its readers.
... ... ...
The Post itself - now posing as a warrior against "fake news" - published an article in September
that treated with great seriousness the claim that Hillary Clinton collapsed on 9/11 Day because
she was poisoned by Putin. And that's to say nothing of the paper's disgraceful history of convincing
Americans that Saddam was building non-existent nuclear weapons and had cultivated a vibrant alliance
with al Qaeda. As is so often the case, those who mostly loudly warn of "fake news" from others are
themselves the most aggressive disseminators of it.
Indeed, what happened here is the essence of fake news. The Post story served the agendas
of many factions: those who want to believe Putin stole the election from Hillary Clinton; those
who want to believe that the internet and social media are a grave menace that needs to be controlled,
in contrast to the objective truth that reliable old media outlets once issued; those who want a
resurrection of the Cold War.
So those who saw tweets and Facebook posts promoting this Post story instantly clicked and
shared and promoted the story without an iota of critical thought or examination of whether the claims
were true, because they wanted the claims to be true. That behavior included countless journalists.
"... When the narratives will become completely obsolete and incapable to persuade, except only a slightest minority, the fake democracy will become an open, brutal dictatorship. ..."
"... Many still wonder if the planet indeed slips towards a new Cold War. Despite that there is plenty of evidence that this is, unfortunately, already a fact, another incident came to verify this situation. ..."
"... The Western neoliberal establishment is exposed, revealing its real agenda: to challenge the alternative bloc driven by the Sino-Russian alliance. The 'democratic' Europe proceeded in a similar, unprecedented move recently. As reported by RT: "In a completely bonkers move this week, the EU Parliament approved a resolution to counter "Russian propaganda" and the "intrusion of Russian media" into the EU. The resolution was adopted with 304 MEPs voting in favor, 179 MEPs voting against it and 208 abstaining. The most bizarre part, however, is that the resolution lumped Russian media in with Islamist propaganda of the kind spread by terror groups like the so-called Islamic State. Thus Russian media is put on the same level with videos of ISIS beheadings and incitements to mass murder." ..."
"... In Cold War 2.0, the Western neoliberal establishment is forced to create the respective McCarthyism. Therefore, the new dogma has changed accordingly. It doesn't matter if an alternative medium provides a different view, away from the mainstream media propaganda. It doesn't matter if the Whistleblowers are telling the truth about the US dirty wars and mass surveillance of ordinary citizens. As long as the US empire and its allies are exposed by all these elements outside their Matrix control, these elements help Russia, therefore, they are doing 'Russian propaganda'. It's as simple as that. ..."
"... When the narratives will become completely obsolete and incapable to persuade, except only a slightest minority, the fake democracy will become an open, brutal dictatorship. ..."
Key insight:
When the narratives will become
completely obsolete and incapable to persuade, except only a slightest minority, the fake democracy
will become an open, brutal dictatorship.
When the narratives will become completely obsolete and incapable to persuade, except only a slightest
minority, the fake democracy will become an open, brutal dictatorship.
Many still wonder if the planet indeed slips towards a new Cold War. Despite that there is plenty
of evidence that this is, unfortunately, already a fact, another incident came to verify this situation.
The blacklist created by PropOrNot and provided to Washington Post, containing more than 200 websites
that are supposedly doing 'Russian propaganda', marks the start of a new McCarthyism era and verifies
beyond doubt the fact that we have indeed entered the Cold War 2.0.
Seeing that it's losing the battle of information, the establishment simply proceeded in one more
clumsy move that will only accelerate developments against it.
It really sounds like a joke to accuse anyone who opposes the US dirty wars and interventions
that brought so much chaos and distraction, for doing 'Russian propaganda', when you are the one
who supported and justified these wars through the most offensive propaganda, for decades.
Someone has to tell the mainstream media parrots that their dirty tricks don't work anymore. According
to a Gallup latest report, "Americans' trust and confidence in the mass media "to report the news
fully, accurately and fairly" has dropped to its lowest level in Gallup polling history, with 32%
saying they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media. This is down eight percentage
points from last year."
The mainstream mouthpieces are extremely predictable. They will rush to blame internet and alternative
media that flourished over the last fifteen years, for this unprecedented situation. Of course they
will. They don't want any alternative to their propaganda monopoly which was extremely effective
in guiding the sheeple during the past decades.
The Western neoliberal establishment is exposed, revealing its real agenda: to challenge the alternative
bloc driven by the Sino-Russian alliance. The 'democratic' Europe proceeded in a similar, unprecedented
move recently. As reported by RT: "In a completely bonkers move this week, the EU Parliament approved
a resolution to counter "Russian propaganda" and the "intrusion of Russian media" into the EU. The
resolution was adopted with 304 MEPs voting in favor, 179 MEPs voting against it and 208 abstaining.
The most bizarre part, however, is that the resolution lumped Russian media in with Islamist propaganda
of the kind spread by terror groups like the so-called Islamic State. Thus Russian media is put on
the same level with videos of ISIS beheadings and incitements to mass murder."
It has been mentioned in previous article that "While the EU and US were occupied with the war
against terrorism as well as with the dead-end wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas of the planet,
Putin had all the time to build his own mechanism against Western propaganda. Being himself a man
who had come to power with the help of media, he built his own media network which includes, for
example, the TV network Russia Today, according to the Western standards, and "invaded" in millions
of homes in the Western countries using the English language, promoting however the Russian positions
as counterweight to the Western propaganda monopoly."
In Cold War 2.0, the Western neoliberal establishment is forced to create the respective McCarthyism.
Therefore, the new dogma has changed accordingly. It doesn't matter if an alternative medium provides
a different view, away from the mainstream media propaganda. It doesn't matter if the Whistleblowers
are telling the truth about the US dirty wars and mass surveillance of ordinary citizens. As long
as the US empire and its allies are exposed by all these elements outside their Matrix control, these
elements help Russia, therefore, they are doing 'Russian propaganda'. It's as simple as that.
This latest desperate move of the establishment should alarm us all. Because it shows that the
establishment is in panic and therefore, more dangerous than ever.
When the narratives will become
completely obsolete and incapable to persuade, except only a slightest minority, the fake democracy
will become an open, brutal dictatorship.
"... What people see in Clinton is a candidate willing to travel any distance at any time if the fee for showing up is $225 k for an hour of work, or so; but who couldn't find the time or reason to visit Wisconsin before an election and actually ask people to vote for her. ..."
"... This does present possibilities, and was in fact the Clinton/DLC plan, although a plan dating back to the 1960s. The idea is to add to the identity groups that are currently the base of the Democratic Party college-educated urban professional socially progressive but economically moderate Republicans. This preserves the neoliberal system, but should create great economic opportunities for elite blacks, women, Latinos etc who really would rather get rich before socialism. ..."
"... I am willing to now designate non-college rural whites as a valid minority, without real privilege except very locally, economically moderate but socially conservative. They have been up for grabs to a degree for a long time, and way too much a major topic of discussion, as nobody knows what to do with them, nobody really wants them, but they are very dangerous, as we can see. ..."
"... The way he put it is that the neoliberal center-left's long-term political project since the '90s, as embodied in figures like the Clintons in the US and Blair in the UK, can be summed up as an effort to redefine the two-party system so that the nominally "left" party becomes a de facto ruling party representing the center-left and center-right, leaving the far right with a dangerously long leash to move the nominally "right" party ever closer toward an outright National Front-style fascist party, and ideally leaving a shattered and demoralized far left as what amounts to an ideological hostage of the center. ..."
"... Both Clinton's failure to defeat Trump and the Blairites' failure to take Labour back from Corbyn have been setbacks for this project, and in both countries the center-right has largely decided to remain for now in its old electoral bloc with the proto-fascists instead of jumping ship to a "left" party that hasn't yet been fully transformed into a well-oiled machine for neoliberal centrism. ..."
"... He'll do many things more or less exactly the way a Clinton administration would have done them, perhaps in some cases with enough of a superficial far-right veneer to create the perception of contrast (for instance future Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who supports vouchers for religious private schools but otherwise might as well be a member of Democrats for Education Reform) and in some cases with red meat to the far right on issues the neoliberal center doesn't particularly care about (i.e. who the hell knows what if anything he'll do on issues like abortion rights, about which he's been all over the map in the past depending what's in his immediate opportunistic interest). ..."
"... appointing figures from places like Goldman Sachs to positions of authority at institutions like the Treasury and the Fed is a thoroughly bipartisan commitment that doesn't make either major US party look any more left-wing or right-wing than the other. ..."
Dec 07, 2016 | http://crookedtimber.org/2016/11/28/the-day-after-brexit/#comment-699954
The Democratic left does not exist. Sanders is an independent who would never have been nominated
except to help rubber-stamp the inauguration of the donor-class candidate.
The Democrats do not have a left-candidate, or a slate of 'left candidates' around whom a left
might coalesce. That's the consequence of national Democratic priorities and the take-over of
the party by the Clinton crime family. There are no 'up and coming' Democrats. Those who are talented
are spotted and co-opted into the Clinton-controlled machine. The quid pro quo manner of doing
business is transparent. Very large sums change hands and almost always according to the laws,
in so far as the actual pay-offs are 'incidental' rather than clearly causal.
How many doctoral candidates in their thirties get paid $600 k per year for part-time work
and another $300 k per year plus stock options?
All of them, if the doctoral candidate happens to be named Chelsea Clinton. As I noted earlier,
Democrats regard outsourcing their interactions with young people and rural voters to Bernie Sanders
as a 'solution.'
What people see in Clinton is a candidate willing to travel any distance at any time if
the fee for showing up is $225 k for an hour of work, or so; but who couldn't find the time or
reason to visit Wisconsin before an election and actually ask people to vote for her.
Yes, it was close. But let's not forget who won and why and how. The president-elect has already
stolen parts of the Dem base and now he's after the rest. The traditional Dem coalition is already
fractured and if the new president does half as well as he did destroying two political dynasties
then Democrats may find themselves in an even deeper whole in 2018.
Like Labour, Democrats need to figure out whether they are the party of the working class,
or not.
There was no (or not much) 'working class surge' for Trump.
Well, there was, in that the internal composition of the Republican vote changed to be more white
non-college rural working class and a little less urban college-educated Republicans. I don't know
what the numbers are.
This does present possibilities, and was in fact the Clinton/DLC plan, although a plan dating
back to the 1960s. The idea is to add to the identity groups that are currently the base of the Democratic
Party college-educated urban professional socially progressive but economically moderate Republicans.
This preserves the neoliberal system, but should create great economic opportunities for elite blacks,
women, Latinos etc who really would rather get rich before socialism.
I am willing to now designate non-college rural whites as a valid minority, without real privilege
except very locally, economically moderate but socially conservative. They have been up for grabs
to a degree for a long time, and way too much a major topic of discussion, as nobody knows what to
do with them, nobody really wants them, but they are very dangerous, as we can see.
Hidari @ 108, Matt Christman of the podcast Chapo Trap House made almost this exact point in
a recent interview with NYU historian David Parsons
on Parsons' podcast The Nostalgia Trap. (Both
excellent podcasts, by the way.)
The way he put it is that the neoliberal center-left's long-term political project since the
'90s, as embodied in figures like the Clintons in the US and Blair in the UK, can be summed up as
an effort to redefine the two-party system so that the nominally "left" party becomes a de facto
ruling party representing the center-left and center-right, leaving the far right with a dangerously
long leash to move the nominally "right" party ever closer toward an outright National Front-style
fascist party, and ideally leaving a shattered and demoralized far left as what amounts to an ideological
hostage of the center.
Both Clinton's failure to defeat Trump and the Blairites' failure to take Labour back
from Corbyn have been setbacks for this project, and in both countries the center-right has largely
decided to remain for now in its old electoral bloc with the proto-fascists instead of jumping ship
to a "left" party that hasn't yet been fully transformed into a well-oiled machine for neoliberal
centrism. (Of course this is also pretty close to Quiggin's three-party system critique, depending
on the extent to which one treats the distinction between center-left and center-right as ever having
been particularly meaningful in the first place.)
Faustusnotes, bob mcmanus brings up more or less the same litany of actual tangible policy decisions
that I and others have brought up in the past, a kind of litany to which a typical center-leftist
response is obstinately ignoring it.
Another point US leftists have been making for many months now is that Trump himself isn't
actually a fascist, he's only pretending to be one , which you treated as a novel discovery at
#79 and to which your response was that Trump's neoliberal administration in practice will make neoliberal
Democrats somehow leftist by comparison, which is absolutely incorrect.
He'll do many things more or less exactly the way a Clinton administration would have done
them, perhaps in some cases with enough of a superficial far-right veneer to create the perception
of contrast (for instance future Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who supports vouchers for religious
private schools but otherwise might as well be a member of Democrats for Education Reform) and in
some cases with red meat to the far right on issues the neoliberal center doesn't particularly care
about (i.e. who the hell knows what if anything he'll do on issues like abortion rights, about which
he's been all over the map in the past depending what's in his immediate opportunistic interest).
But appointing figures from places like Goldman Sachs to positions of authority at institutions
like the Treasury and the Fed is a thoroughly bipartisan commitment that doesn't make either major
US party look any more left-wing or right-wing than the other.
I want to see a political decision to abandon the working class
NAFTA & TPP etc, big bank bailout no prosecutions, no mortgage relief, grossly inadequate structured
and targeted stimulus, low inflation low gov't spending with many gov't jobs cut, insurance and
provider friendly whirlpool of an expensive health care plan
The Democratic left does not exist. Sanders is an independent who would never have been nominated
except to help rubber-stamp the inauguration of the donor-class candidate.
The Democrats do not have a left-candidate, or a slate of 'left candidates' around whom a left
might coalesce. That's the consequence of national Democratic priorities and the take-over of
the party by the Clinton crime family. There are no 'up and coming' Democrats. Those who are talented
are spotted and co-opted into the Clinton-controlled machine. The quid pro quo manner of doing
business is transparent. Very large sums change hands and almost always according to the laws,
in so far as the actual pay-offs are 'incidental' rather than clearly causal.
How many doctoral candidates in their thirties get paid $600 k per year for part-time work
and another $300 k per year plus stock options?
All of them, if the doctoral candidate happens to be named Chelsea Clinton. As I noted earlier,
Democrats regard outsourcing their interactions with young people and rural voters to Bernie Sanders
as a 'solution.'
What people see in Clinton is a candidate willing to travel any distance at any time if the
fee for showing up is $225 k for an hour of work, or so; but who couldn't find the time or reason
to visit Wisconsin before an election and actually ask people to vote for her.
Yes, it was close. But let's not forget who won and why and how. The president-elect has already
stolen parts of the Dem base and now he's after the rest. The traditional Dem coalition is already
fractured and if the new president does half as well as he did destroying two political dynasties
then Democrats may find themselves in an even deeper whole in 2018.
Like Labour, Democrats need to figure out whether they are the party of the working class,
or not.
bob mcmanus 12.03.16 at 4:00 pm There was no (or not much) 'working class surge' for Trump.
Well, there was, in that the internal composition of the Republican vote changed to be more
white non-college rural working class and a little less urban college-educated Republicans. I
don't know what the numbers are.
This does present possibilities, and was in fact the Clinton/DLC plan, although a plan dating
back to the 1960s. The idea is to add to the identity groups that are currently the base of the
Democratic Party college-educated urban professional socially progressive but economically moderate
Republicans. This preserves the neoliberal system, but should create great economic opportunities
for elite blacks, women, Latinos etc who really would rather get rich before socialism.
I am willing to now designate non-college rural whites as a valid minority, without real privilege
except very locally, economically moderate but socially conservative. They have been up for grabs
to a degree for a long time, and way too much a major topic of discussion, as nobody knows what
to do with them, nobody really wants them, but they are very dangerous, as we can see.
Hidari @ 108, Matt Christman of the podcast Chapo Trap House made almost this exact point in
a recent interview with NYU historian David Parsons on Parsons' podcast The Nostalgia Trap.
(Both excellent podcasts, by the way.) The way he put it is that the neoliberal center-left's
long-term political project since the '90s, as embodied in figures like the Clintons in the US
and Blair in the UK, can be summed up as an effort to redefine the two-party system so that the
nominally "left" party becomes a de facto ruling party representing the center-left and
center-right, leaving the far right with a dangerously long leash to move the nominally "right"
party ever closer toward an outright National Front-style fascist party, and ideally leaving a
shattered and demoralized far left as what amounts to an ideological hostage of the center. Both
Clinton's failure to defeat Trump and the Blairites' failure to take Labour back from Corbyn have
been setbacks for this project, and in both countries the center-right has largely decided to
remain for now in its old electoral bloc with the proto-fascists instead of jumping ship to a
"left" party that hasn't yet been fully transformed into a well-oiled machine for neoliberal centrism.
(Of course this is also pretty close to Quiggin's three-party system critique, depending on the
extent to which one treats the distinction between center-left and center-right as ever having
been particularly meaningful in the first place.)
Faustusnotes, bob mcmanus brings up more or less the same litany of actual tangible policy
decisions that I and others have brought up in the past, a kind of litany to which a typical center-leftist
response is obstinately ignoring it. Another point US leftists have been making for many months
now is that Trump himself isn't actually a fascist, he's only pretending to be one , which
you treated as a novel discovery at #79 and to which your response was that Trump's neoliberal
administration in practice will make neoliberal Democrats somehow leftist by comparison, which
is absolutely incorrect. He'll do many things more or less exactly the way a Clinton administration
would have done them, perhaps in some cases with enough of a superficial far-right veneer to create
the perception of contrast (for instance future Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who supports
vouchers for religious private schools but otherwise might as well be a member of Democrats for
Education Reform) and in some cases with red meat to the far right on issues the neoliberal center
doesn't particularly care about (i.e. who the hell knows what if anything he'll do on issues like
abortion rights, about which he's been all over the map in the past depending what's in his immediate
opportunistic interest). But appointing figures from places like Goldman Sachs to positions of
authority at institutions like the Treasury and the Fed is a thoroughly bipartisan commitment
that doesn't make either major US party look any more left-wing or right-wing than the other.
"... "Smearing is not reporting," the RootsAction petition says. "The Washington Post 's recent descent into McCarthyism - promoting anonymous and shoddy claims that a vast range of some 200 websites are all accomplices or tools of the Russian government - violates basic journalistic standards and does real harm to democratic discourse in our country. We urge the Washington Post to prominently retract the article and apologize for publishing it." ..."
"... For one thing, PropOrNot wasn't just another source for the Post 's story. As The New Yorker noted in a devastating article on Dec. 1, the story "prominently cited the PropOrNot research." The Post 's account "had the force of revelation, thanks in large part to the apparent scientific authority of PropOrNot's work: the group released a 32-page report detailing its methodology, and named names with its list of 200 suspect news outlets . But a close look at the report showed that it was a mess." ..."
"... As The New Yorker pointed out, PropOrNot's criteria for incriminating content were broad enough to include "nearly every news outlet in the world, including the Post itself." Yet "The List" is not a random list by any means - it's a targeted mish-mash, naming websites that are not within shouting distance of the U.S. corporate and foreign policy establishment. ..."
"... As The New Yorker 's writer Adrian Chen put it: "To PropOrNot, simply exhibiting a pattern of beliefs outside the political mainstream is enough to risk being labeled a Russian propagandist." And he concluded: "Despite the impressive-looking diagrams and figures in its report, PropOrNot's findings rest largely on innuendo and conspiracy thinking." ..."
"... As much as the Post news management might want to weasel out of the comparison, the parallels to the advent of the McCarthy Era are chilling. For instance, the Red Channels list, with 151 names on it, was successful as a weapon against dissent and free speech in large part because, early on, so many media outlets of the day actively aided and abetted blacklisting, as the Post has done for "The List." ..."
"... Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wisconsin, who led the "Red Scare" hearings of the 1950s. ..."
"... So far The New Yorker has been the largest media outlet to directly confront the Post 's egregious story. Cogent assessments can also be found at The Intercept , Consortium News , Common Dreams , AlterNet , Rolling Stone , Fortune , CounterPunch , The Nation and numerous other sites. ..."
"... But many mainline journalists and outlets jumped at the chance to amplify the Post 's piece of work. A sampling of the cheers from prominent journalists and liberal partisans was published by FAIR.org under the apt headline " Why Are Media Outlets Still Citing Discredited 'Fake News' Blacklist? " ..."
"... When liberals have green-lighted a witch-hunt, right wingers have been pleased to run with it. President Harry Truman issued an executive order in March 1947 to establish "loyalty" investigations in every agency of the federal government. Joe McCarthy and the era named after him were soon to follow. ..."
After publishing a McCarthyistic "black list" that smears some 200 Web sites as "Russian propagandists,"
The Washington Post refuses to apologize - and other mainstream media outlets pile on, writes
Norman Solomon.
We still don't have any sort of apology or retraction from the Washington Post for
promoting "The List" - the highly dangerous blacklist that got a huge boost from the newspaper's
fawning coverage on Nov. 24. The project of smearing 200 websites with one broad brush wouldn't
have gotten far without the avid complicity of high-profile media outlets, starting with the
Post .
On Thursday - a week after the Post published its front-page news
article hyping the blacklist that was put out by a group of unidentified people called PropOrNot
- I sent a petition statement to the newspaper's executive editor Martin Baron.
The Washington Post building in downtown Washington, D.C. (Photo credit: Washington Post)
"Smearing is not reporting," the RootsAction
petition says. "The Washington Post 's recent descent into McCarthyism - promoting
anonymous and shoddy claims that a vast range of some 200 websites are all accomplices or tools
of the Russian government - violates basic journalistic standards and does real harm to democratic
discourse in our country. We urge the Washington Post to prominently retract the article
and apologize for publishing it."
After mentioning that 6,000 people had signed the petition (the number has doubled since then),
my email to Baron added: "If you skim through the comments that many of the signers added to the
petition online, I think you might find them to be of interest. I wonder if you see a basis for
dialogue on the issues raised by critics of the Post piece in question."
The reply came from the newspaper's vice president for public relations, Kristine Coratti Kelly,
who thanked me "for reaching out to us" before presenting the Post 's response, quoted
here in full:
"The Post reported on the work of four separate sets of researchers, as well as independent
experts, who have examined Russian attempts to influence American democracy. PropOrNot was one.
The Post did not name any of the sites on PropOrNot's list of organizations that it said
had - wittingly or unwittingly - published or echoed Russian propaganda. The Post reviewed
PropOrNot's findings and our questions about them were answered satisfactorily during the course
of multiple interviews."
Full of Holes
But that damage-control response was as full of holes as the news story it tried to defend.
For one thing, PropOrNot wasn't just another source for the Post 's story. As
The New Yorker noted in a
devastating article on Dec. 1, the story "prominently cited the PropOrNot research." The
Post 's account "had the force of revelation, thanks in large part to the apparent scientific
authority of PropOrNot's work: the group released a 32-page report detailing its methodology,
and named names with its list of 200 suspect news outlets . But a close look at the report showed
that it was a mess."
Contrary to the PR message from the Post vice president, PropOrNot did not merely
say that the sites on its list had "published or echoed Russian propaganda." Without a word of
the slightest doubt or skepticism in the entire story, the Post summarized PropOrNot's
characterization of all the websites on its list as falling into two categories: "Some players
in this online echo chamber were knowingly part of the propaganda campaign, the researchers concluded,
while others were 'useful idiots' - a term born of the Cold War to describe people or institutions
that unknowingly assisted Soviet Union propaganda efforts."
As The New Yorker pointed out, PropOrNot's criteria for incriminating content were
broad enough to include "nearly every news outlet in the world, including the Post
itself."
Yet "The List" is not a random list by any means - it's a targeted mish-mash, naming websites
that are not within shouting distance of the U.S. corporate and foreign policy establishment.
And so the list includes a few overtly Russian-funded outlets; some other sites generally aligned
with Kremlin outlooks; many pro-Trump sites, often unacquainted with what it means to be factual
and sometimes overtly racist; and other websites that are quite different - solid, factual, reasonable
- but too progressive or too anti-capitalist or too libertarian or too right-wing or just plain
too independent-minded for the evident tastes of whoever is behind PropOrNot.
As The New Yorker 's writer Adrian Chen put it: "To PropOrNot, simply exhibiting a
pattern of beliefs outside the political mainstream is enough to risk being labeled a Russian
propagandist." And he concluded: "Despite the impressive-looking diagrams and figures in its report,
PropOrNot's findings rest largely on innuendo and conspiracy thinking."
As for the Post vice president's defensive phrasing that "the Post did not
name any of the sites on PropOrNot's list," the fact is that the Post unequivocally promoted
PropOrNot, driving web traffic to its site and adding a hotlink to the anonymous group's 32-page
report soon after the newspaper's story first appeared. As I mentioned in my reply to her: "Unfortunately,
it's kind of like a newspaper saying that it didn't name any of the people on the Red Channels
blacklist in 1950 while promoting it in news coverage, so no problem."
Pushing McCarthyism
As much as the Post news management might want to weasel out of the comparison, the
parallels to the advent of the McCarthy Era are chilling. For instance, the Red Channels
list, with 151 names on it, was successful as a weapon against dissent and free speech in
large part because, early on, so many media outlets of the day actively aided and abetted blacklisting,
as the Post has done for "The List."
Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wisconsin, who led the "Red Scare" hearings of the 1950s.
Consider how the Post story described the personnel of PropOrNot in favorable terms
even while hiding all of their identities and thus shielding them from any scrutiny - calling
them "a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds."
But many mainline journalists and outlets jumped at the chance to amplify the Post
's piece of work. A sampling of the cheers from prominent journalists and liberal partisans was
published by FAIR.org under the apt headline "
Why Are Media Outlets Still Citing Discredited 'Fake News' Blacklist? "
FAIR's media analyst Adam Johnson cited enthusiastic responses to the bogus story from journalists
like Bloomberg's
Sahil Kupar
and MSNBC's
Joy Reid
- and such outlets as
USA Today ,
Gizmodo , the
PBS NewsHour ,
The Daily Beast ,
Slate ,
AP ,
The Verge and
NPR , which "all uncritically wrote up the Post 's most incendiary claims with little
or minimal pushback." On the MSNBC site, the Rachel Maddow Show's
blog "added another breathless write-up hours later, repeating the catchy talking point that
'it was like Russia was running a super PAC for Trump's campaign.'"
With so many people understandably upset about Trump's victory, there's an evident attraction
to blaming the Kremlin, a convenient scapegoat for Hillary Clinton's loss. But the Post
's blacklisting story and the media's amplification of it - and the overall political environment
that it helps to create - are all building blocks for a reactionary order, threatening the First
Amendment and a range of civil liberties.
When liberals have green-lighted a witch-hunt, right wingers have been pleased to run with
it. President Harry Truman issued an executive order in March 1947 to establish "loyalty" investigations
in every agency of the federal government. Joe McCarthy and the era named after him were soon
to follow.
In media and government, the journalists and officials who enable blacklisting are cravenly
siding with conformity instead of democracy.
Norman Solomon is co-founder of the online activist group RootsAction.org. His books include War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. He is the executive
director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.
This idea of casting dissidents as Russian Agent is directly from McCarthy play book.
And paradoxically resembles the practive of the USSR in which dissdents were demonized as "Agent
of the Western powers." The trick is a immanent part of any war propaganda efforts. So it is clear
the Cold War II had started...
Notable quotes:
"... As George Orwell predicted, telling the truth is now regarded by Western "democratic" governments as a hostile act. A brand new website, propornot.com, has just made its appearance condemning a list of 200 Internet websites that provide news and views at variance with the presstitute media that serves the governments' agendas . Does propornot.com's funding come from the CIA, the National Endowment for Democracy, or George Soros? ..."
"... In the West those who disagree with the murderous and reckless policies of public officials are demonized as "Russian agents." ..."
"... The presstitute Washington Post played its assigned role in the claim promoted by Washington that the alternative media consists of Russian agents. Craig Timberg, who appears devoid of integrity or intelligence, and perhaps both, is the WaPo stooge who reported the fake news that "two teams of independent researchers" - none of whom are identified - found that the Russians exploited my gullibility, that of CounterPunch, Professor Michel Chossudosky of Global Researh, Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, Justin Raimondo and that of 194 other websites to help "an insurgent candidate" (Trump) "claim the White House." ..."
"... Note the term applied to Trump - "insurgent candidate." That tells you all you need to know. ..."
"... Western governments are running out of excuses. Since the Clinton regime, the accumulation of war crimes committed by Western governments exceed those of Nazi Germany. Millions of Muslims have been slaughtered, dislocated, and dispossessed in seven countries. Not a single Western war criminal has been held accountable. ..."
"... The despicable Washington Post is a prime apologist for these war criminals. The entire Western print and TV media is so heavily implicated in the worst war crimes in human history that, if justice ever happens, the presstitutes will stand in the dock with the Clintons, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, Obama and their neocon operatives or handlers as the case may be. ..."
The "war on terror" has simultaneously been a war on truth. For fifteen years-from 9/11 to Saddam
Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction" and "al Qaeda connections," "Iranian nukes," "Assad's use
of chemical weapons," endless lies about Gadaffi, "Russian invasion of Ukraine"-the governments of
the so-called Western democracies have found it essential to align themselves firmly with lies in
order to pursue their agendas. Now these Western governments are attempting to discredit the truthtellers
who challenge their lies.
Russian news services are under attack from the EU and Western presstitutes as purveyors of
"fake news" . Abiding by its Washington master's orders, the EU actually passed a resolution
against Russian media for not following Washington's line. Russian President Putin said that the
resolution is a "visible sign of degradation of Western society's idea of democracy."
As George Orwell predicted, telling the truth is now regarded by Western "democratic" governments
as a hostile act. A brand new website, propornot.com, has just made its appearance condemning a list
of 200 Internet websites that provide news and views at variance with the presstitute media that
serves the governments' agendas
. Does propornot.com's funding come from the CIA, the National Endowment for Democracy, or George
Soros?
I am proud to say that paulcraigroberts.org is on the list.
What we see here is the West adopting Zionist Israel's way of dealing with critics. Anyone who
objects to Israel's cruel and inhuman treatment of Palestinians is demonized as "anti-semitic."
In the West those who disagree with the murderous and reckless policies of public officials are demonized
as "Russian agents." The president-elect of the United States himself has been designated a
"Russian agent."
This scheme to redefine truthtellers as propagandists has backfired. The effort to discredit truthtellers
has instead produced a catalogue of websites where reliable information can be found, and readers
are flocking to the sites on the list. Moreover, the effort to discredit truthtellers shows that
Western governments and their presstitutes are intolerant of truth and diverse opinion and are committed
to forcing people to accept self-serving government lies as truth.
Clearly, Western governments and Western media have no respect for truth, so how can the West
possibly be democratic?
The presstitute Washington Post played its assigned role in the claim promoted by Washington
that the alternative media consists of Russian agents. Craig Timberg, who appears devoid of integrity
or intelligence, and perhaps both, is the WaPo stooge who reported the fake news that "two teams
of independent researchers" - none of whom are identified - found that the Russians exploited my
gullibility, that of CounterPunch, Professor Michel Chossudosky of Global Researh, Ron Paul, Lew
Rockwell, Justin Raimondo and that of 194 other websites to help "an insurgent candidate" (Trump)
"claim the White House."
Note the term applied to Trump - "insurgent candidate." That tells you all you need to know.
You can read here what passes as "reliable reporting" in the presstitute
Washington Post .
Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept, which somehow escaped inclusion in The 200, unloads on Timberg
and the Washington Post
here .
Western governments are running out of excuses. Since the Clinton regime, the accumulation
of war crimes committed by Western governments exceed those of Nazi Germany. Millions of Muslims
have been slaughtered, dislocated, and dispossessed in seven countries. Not a single Western war
criminal has been held accountable.
The despicable Washington Post is a prime apologist for these war criminals. The entire Western
print and TV media is so heavily implicated in the worst war crimes in human history that, if justice
ever happens, the presstitutes will stand in the dock with the Clintons, George W. Bush and Dick
Cheney, Obama and their neocon operatives or handlers as the case may be.
Which purveys more "fake news" - RT.com on the one hand, or Fox News, MSNBC and CNN on the other?
I asked that question on reddit and my post was deleted.
A friend on Facebook made the mistake of posting two declamatory articles on the
India financial apocalypse under Modi with the snark line 'this is what passes for
democracy (sic) in the world now' and was notified just a day later by FB that their
Profile was 'Determined to be an unauthorized Business Space', and would then be shut
down, without any recourse, if they didn't provide a confirmed birth name and confirmed
cell phone number. Nyet spasiba, ...so their profile went immediately 404.
This FB purge masks the truth for what Modi really is, the Menem of India, for
privatization of Indian gold wealth, for taxation of outsourced high-tech workers, and
covering up the 100,000s of Hindu HIBs flying into the USA by the 747-load, taking away,
by some estimates 98% of new high-tech jobs, and 56% of existing high-tech jobs, where
American workers are being forced to train their Hindu replacements, then given a pink
slip and six months of COBRA and booted out.
[ASIDE: I was walking off frustration with Trump's financial picks today, and by
sheer fate met an older guy who had just been terminated before he reached his
employee-share pension age, by a company moving their assembly operations to China. He's
hoping to move to Idaho or Montana, where there are so many unemployed meth heads,
anyone who is clean and straight can find some kind of job that the Monkey Boys can't
get their hooks into.]
Hindus flooded the MSM back-office journalist pool, cratering American journalism
careers. Forbes, Wall Street Journal, The Street, ...all use Hindus to write their news,
bloat their comment section, and with more 'legal' Hindu H1Bs in editorial positions
within the USA, which is why in the Big Feu-faw since 9/11 fussing over Mexicans,
Muslims, Deadbeat Students and UnInsurable Elders, ...even with 95,000,000 Americans
unemployed, you will NEVER, EVER hear a single word about Hindus.
Nadella, Ellison, McDermott, Gelsinger, Besos, Zuckerberg, and Trump and his Cabinet
are all 100% behind UNLIMITED H1B 'legal' immigration for USA. (Amazon even had to put
cones around a dead PT minimum-wage worker, so their robots wouldn't crush his body,
then the other day, an 'addlebrained' employee jumped off the roof). With all the jobs
going to H1Bs, Trump will have to make America Great Again with his YUUGE infrastructure
program :
The Few, The Proud, The
Brave!
This is a very weak article from a prominent paleoconservative, but it is instructive what a mess he has in his head as for the
nature of Trump phenomenon. We should probably consider the tern "New Class" that neocons invented as synonym for "neoliberals". If
so, why the author is afraid to use the term? Does he really so poorly educated not to understand the nature of this neoliberal revolution
and its implications? Looks like he never read "Quite coup"
That probably reflects the crisis of pealeoconservatism itself.
Notable quotes:
"... What do these insurgents have in common? All have called into question the interventionist consensus in foreign policy. All have opposed large-scale free-trade agreements. ..."
"... the establishment in both parties almost uniformly favors one approach to war, trade, and immigration, while outsider candidates as dissimilar as Buchanan, Nader, Paul, and Trump, and to a lesser extent Sanders, depart from the consensus. ..."
"... The insurgents clearly do not represent a single class: they appeal to eclectic interests and groups. The foe they have all faced down, however-the bipartisan establishment-does resemble a class in its striking unity of outlook and interest. So what is this class, effectively the ruling class of the country? ..."
"... The archetypal model of class conflict, the one associated with Karl Marx, pits capitalists against workers-or, at an earlier stage, capitalists against the landed nobility. The capitalists' victory over the nobility was inevitable, and so too, Marx believed, was the coming triumph of the workers over the capitalists. ..."
"... The Soviet Union had never been a workers' state at all, they argued, but was run by a class of apparatchiks such as Marx had never imagined. ..."
"... Burnham recognized affinities between the Soviet mode of organization-in which much real power lay in the hands of the commissars who controlled industry and the bureaucratic organs of the state-and the corporatism that characterized fascist states. Even the U.S., under the New Deal and with ongoing changes to the balance between ownership and management in the private sector, seemed to be moving in the same direction. ..."
"... concept popularized by neoconservatives in the following decade: the "New Class." ..."
"... It consists of a goodly proportion of those college-educated people whose skills and vocations proliferate in a 'post-industrial society' (to use Daniel Bell's convenient term). We are talking about scientists, teachers, and educational administrators, journalists and others in the communication industries, psychologists, social workers, those lawyers and doctors who make their careers in the expanding public sector, city planners, the staffs of the larger foundations, the upper levels of the government bureaucracy, and so on. ..."
"... I have felt that this 'new class' is, so far, rather thin gruel. Intellectuals, verbalists, media types, etc. are conspicuous actors these days, certainly; they make a lot of noise, get a lot of attention, and some of them make a lot of money. But, after all, they are a harum-scarum crowd, and deflate even more quickly than they puff up. On TV they can out-talk any of the managers of ITT, GM, or IBM, or the administration-managers of the great government bureaus and agencies, but, honestly, you're not going to take that as a power test. Who hires and fires whom? ..."
"... Burnham had observed that the New Class did not have the means-either money or manpower-to wield power the way the managers or the capitalists of old did. It had to borrow power from other classes. Discovering where the New Class gets it is as easy as following the money, which leads straight to the finance sector-practically to the doorstep of Goldman Sachs. Jerry Rubin's journey from Yippie to yuppie was the paradigm of a generation. ..."
"... Yet the New Class as a whole is less like Carl Oglesby or Karl Hess than like Hillary Clinton, who arguably embodies it as perfectly as McNamara did the managerial class. ..."
"... Even the New Class's support for deregulation-to the advantage of its allies on Wall Street-was no sign of consistent commitment to free-market principles ..."
"... The individual-mandate feature of Obamacare and Romneycare is a prime example of New Class cronyism: government compels individuals to buy a supposedly private product or service. ..."
"... America's class war, like many others, is not in the end a contest between up and down. It's a fight between rival elites: in this case, between the declining managerial elite and the triumphant (for now) New Class and financial elites. ..."
"... Donald Trump is not of the managerial class himself. But by embracing managerial interests-industrial protection and, yes, "big government"-and combining them with nationalistic identity politics, he has built a force that has potential to threaten the bipartisan establishment, even if he goes down to defeat in November. ..."
"... The New Class, after all, lacks a popular base as well as money of its own, and just as it relies on Wall Street to underwrite its power, it depends on its competing brands of identity politics to co-opt popular support. ..."
"... Marx taught that you identify classes by their structural role in the system of production. I'm at a loss to see how either of the 'classes' you mention here relate to the system of production. ..."
"... [New] Class better describes the Never Trumpers. Mostly I have found them to be those involved in knowledge occupations (conservative think tanks, hedge fund managers, etc.) who have a pecuniary interest in maintaining the Global Economy as opposed to the Virtuous Intergenerational Economy that preceded. Many are dependent on funding sources for their livelihoods that are connected to the Globalized Economy and financial markets. ..."
"... "mobilize working-class voters against the establishment in both parties. " = workers of the world unite. ..."
"... Where the class conflict between the Working and Knowledge Classes begins is where the Knowledge Class almost unilaterally decided to shift to a global economy, at the expense of the Working Class, and to the self-benefit of the Knowledge Class. Those who designed the Global Economy like Larry Summers of Harvard did not invite private or public labor to help design the new Globalist Economy. The Working Class lost out big time in job losses and getting stuck with subprime home loans that busted their marriages and created bankruptcies and foreclosures. The Knowledge Class was mostly unscathed by this class-based economic divide. ..."
"... Trump's distinguishing ideology, which separates him from the current elite, is something he has summed up many times – nationalism vs. Globalism. ..."
"... The financial industry, the new tech giants, the health insurance industry are now almost indistinguishable from the government ruling elite. The old left–represented by Sanders–rails against this as big money coopting government, even while conservatives are exasperated by the unholy cabal of big business and big government in cohoots in the "progressive" remake of America. Both are right in a sense. ..."
"... The hyperconcentration of power in Washington and a few tributary locations like Wall Street and Silicon Valley, elite academia and the media–call that the New Class if you like–means that most of America–Main Street, the flyover country has been left behind. Trump instinctively – brilliantly in some ways – tapped into the resentment that this hyperconcentration of wealth and government power has led to. That is why it cuts across right and left. The elites want to characterize this resentment as backwards and "racist," but there is also something very American from Jefferson to Jackson to Teddy Roosevelt that revolts against being lectured to and controlled by their would-be "betters." ..."
"... The alienation of those left out is real and based on real erosion of the middle class and American dream under both parties' elites. The potentially revolutionary capabilities of a political movement that could unite right and left in restoring some equilibrium and opportunities to those left out is tremendous, but yet to be realized by either major party. The party that can harness these folks – who are after all the majority of Americans – will have a ruling coalition for decades. If neither party can productively harness this budding movement, we are headed for disarray, civil unrest, and potentially the dissolution of the USA. ..."
"... . And blacks who cleave to the democrats despite being sold down the tubes on issues, well, for whatever reason, they just have thinner skin and the mistaken idea that the democrats deliver – thanks to Pres. Johnson. But what Pres. Johnson delivered democrats made a mockery of immediately as they stripped it of its intent and used for their own liberal ends. ..."
"... Let's see if I can help Dreher clear up some confusion in his article. James Burnham's "Managerial Class" and the "New Class" are overlapping and not exclusive. By the Managerial Class Burnham meant both the executive and managers in the private sector and the Bureaucrats and functionaries in the public sector. ..."
"... The rise of managers was a "revolution" because of the rise of modernization which meant the increasing mechanization, industrialization, formalization and rationalization (efficiency) of society. Burnham's concern about the rise of the managerial revolution was misplaced; what he should have focused on was modernization. ..."
"... The old left–represented by Sanders–rails against this as big money coopting government, even while conservatives are exasperated by the unholy cabal of big business and big government in cohoots in the "progressive" remake of America ..."
"... . Some 3 – 5% of the population facing no real opposition has decided that that their private lives needed public endorsement and have proceeded to upend the entire social order - the game has shifted in ways I am not sure most of the public fully grasps or desires ..."
"... There has always been and will always be class conflict, even if it falls short of a war. Simply examining recent past circumstances, the wealthy class has been whooping up on all other classes. This is not to suggest any sort of remedy, but simply to observe that income disparity over the past 30 years has substantially benefitted on sector of class and political power remains in their hands today. To think that there will never be class conflict is to side with a Marxian fantasy of egalitarianism, which will never come to pass. Winners and losers may change positions, but the underlying conflict will always remain. ..."
"... State governments have been kowtowing to big business interests for a good long while. Nothing new under the sun there. Back in the 80s when GM was deciding where to site their factory for the new Saturn car line, they issued an edict stating they would only consider states that had mandatory seat belt use laws, and the states in the running fell all over each to enact those. ..."
"... People don't really care for the actions of the elite but they care for the consequences of these actions. During the 1960's, per capita GDP growth was around 3.5%. Today it stands at 0,49%. If you take into account inflation, it's negative. Add to this the skewed repartition of said growth and it's intuitive that many people feel the pain; whom doesn't move forward, goes backwards. ..."
"... People couldn't care for mass immigration, nation building or the emergence of China if their personal situation was not impacted. But now, they begin to feel the results of these actions. ..."
"... I have a simple philosophy regarding American politics that shows who is made of what, and we don't have to go through all the philosophizing in this article: Anyone who believes in same sex marriage has been brainwashed and is un-American and unreliable. Anyone who puts Israeli interests above America's is un-American. ..."
"... Re: Anyone who believes in same sex marriage has been brainwashed and is un-American and unreliable. Anyone who puts Israeli interests above America's is un-American. ..."
"... The first has nothing whatsoever to do with American citizenship. It's just a political issue– on which, yes, reasonable people can differ. However no American citizen should put the interests of any other country ahead of our own, except in a situation where the US was itself up to no good and deserved its comeuppance. And then the interest is not that of any particular nation, but of justice being done period. ..."
"... A lot of this "New Class" stuff is just confusing mis-mash of this and that theory. Basically, America changed when the US dollar replace gold as the medium of exchange in the world economy. Remember when we called it the PETRO-DOLLAR. As long as the Saudis only accepted the US dollar as the medium of exchange for oil, then the American government could export it's inflation and deficit spending. Budget deficits and trade deficits are intrinsically related. It allowed America to become a nation of consumers instead of a nation of producers. ..."
"... It's really a form of classic IMPERIALISM. To maintain this system, we've got the US military and we prop up the corrupt dictatorships in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Libya ..."
"... Yeah, you can talk about the "new class", the corruption of the banking system by the idiotic "libertarian" or "free market utopianism" of the Gingrich Congress, the transformation of American corporations to international corporations, and on and on. But it's the US dollar as reserve currency that has allowed it all to happen. God help us, if it ends, we'll be crippled. ..."
"... The Clinton Class mocks The Country Class: Bill Clinton, "We all know how her opponent's done real well down in West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. Because the coal people don't like any of us anymore." "They blame the president when the sun doesn't come up in the morning now," ..."
"... That doesn't mean they actually support Hillary's policies and position. What do they really know about either? These demographics simply vote overwhelmingly Democrat no matter who is on the ticket. If Alfred E. Newman were the candidate, this particular data point would look just the same. ..."
"... "On the contrary, the New Class favors new kinds of crony finance capitalism, even as it opposes the protectionism that would benefit hard industry and managerial interests." This doesn't ring true. Hard industry, and the managers that run it had no problem with moving jobs and factories overseas in pursuit of cheaper labor. Plus, it solved their Union issues. I feel like the divide is between large corporations, with dilute ownership and professional managers who nominally serve the interests of stock fund managers, while greatly enriching themselves versus a multitude of smaller, locally owned businesses whose owners were also concerned with the health of the local communities in which they lived. ..."
"... The financial elites are a consequence of consolidation in the banking and finance industry, where we now have 4 or 5 large institutions versus a multitude of local and regional banks that were locally focused. ..."
Since the Cold War ended, U.S. politics has seen a series of insurgent candidacies. Pat Buchanan prefigured Trump in the Republican
contests of 1992 and 1996. Ralph Nader challenged the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party from the outside in 2000. Ron Paul vexed
establishment Republicans John McCain and Mitt Romney in 2008 and 2012. And this year, Trump was not the only candidate to confound
his party's elite: Bernie Sanders harried Hillary Clinton right up to the Democratic convention.
What do these insurgents have in common? All have called into question the interventionist consensus in foreign policy. All
have opposed large-scale free-trade agreements. (The libertarian Paul favors unilateral free trade: by his lights, treaties
like NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership are not free trade at all but international regulatory pacts.) And while no one would
mistake Ralph Nader's or Ron Paul's views on immigration for Pat Buchanan's or Donald Trump's, Nader and Paul have registered their
own dissents from the approach to immigration that prevails in Washington.
Sanders has been more in line with his party's orthodoxy on that issue. But that didn't save him from being attacked by Clinton
backers for having an insufficiently nonwhite base of support. Once again, what might have appeared to be a class conflict-in this
case between a democratic socialist and an elite liberal with ties to high finance-could be explained away as really about race.
Race, like religion, is a real factor in how people vote. Its relevance to elite politics, however, is less clear. Something else
has to account for why the establishment in both parties almost uniformly favors one approach to war, trade, and immigration,
while outsider candidates as dissimilar as Buchanan, Nader, Paul, and Trump, and to a lesser extent Sanders, depart from the consensus.
The insurgents clearly do not represent a single class: they appeal to eclectic interests and groups. The foe they have all
faced down, however-the bipartisan establishment-does resemble a class in its striking unity of outlook and interest. So what is
this class, effectively the ruling class of the country?
Some critics on the right have identified it with the "managerial" class described by James Burnham in his 1941 book The Managerial
Revolution . But it bears a stronger resemblance to what what others have called "the New Class." In fact, the interests of this
New Class of college-educated "verbalists" are antithetical to those of the industrial managers that Burnham described. Understanding
the relationship between these two often conflated concepts provides insight into politics today, which can be seen as a clash between
managerial and New Class elites.
♦♦♦
The archetypal model of class conflict, the one associated with Karl Marx, pits capitalists against workers-or, at an earlier
stage, capitalists against the landed nobility. The capitalists' victory over the nobility was inevitable, and so too, Marx believed,
was the coming triumph of the workers over the capitalists.
Over the next century, however, history did not follow the script. By 1992, the Soviet Union was gone, Communist China had embarked
on market reforms, and Western Europe was turning away from democratic socialism. There was no need to predict the future; mankind
had achieved its destiny, a universal order of [neo]liberal democracy. Marx had it backwards: capitalism was the end of history.
But was the truth as simple as that? Long before the collapse of the USSR, many former communists -- some of whom remained socialists,
while others joined the right-thought not. The Soviet Union had never been a workers' state at all, they argued, but was run
by a class of apparatchiks such as Marx had never imagined.
Among the first to advance this argument was James Burnham, a professor of philosophy at New York University who became a leading
Trotskyist thinker. As he broke with Trotsky and began moving toward the right, Burnham recognized affinities between the Soviet
mode of organization-in which much real power lay in the hands of the commissars who controlled industry and the bureaucratic organs
of the state-and the corporatism that characterized fascist states. Even the U.S., under the New Deal and with ongoing changes to
the balance between ownership and management in the private sector, seemed to be moving in the same direction.
Burnham called this the "managerial revolution." The managers of industry and technically trained government officials did not
own the means of production, like the capitalists of old. But they did control the means of production, thanks to their expertise
and administrative prowess.
The rise of this managerial class would have far-reaching consequences, he predicted. Burnham wrote in his 1943 book, The Machiavellians
: "that the managers may function, the economic and political structure must be modified, as it is now being modified, so as
to rest no longer on private ownership and small-scale nationalist sovereignty, but primarily upon state control of the economy,
and continental or vast regional world political organization." Burnham pointed to Nazi Germany, imperial Japan-which became a "continental"
power by annexing Korea and Manchuria-and the Soviet Union as examples.
The defeat of the Axis powers did not halt the progress of the managerial revolution. Far from it: not only did the Soviets retain
their form of managerialism, but the West increasingly adopted a managerial corporatism of its own, marked by cooperation between
big business and big government: high-tech industrial crony capitalism, of the sort that characterizes the military-industrial complex
to this day. (Not for nothing was Burnham a great advocate of America's developing a supersonic transport of its own to compete with
the French-British Concorde.)
America's managerial class was personified by Robert S. McNamara, the former Ford Motor Company executive who was secretary of
defense under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. In a 1966 story for National Review , "Why Do They Hate Robert Strange McNamara?"
Burnham answered the question in class terms: "McNamara is attacked by the Left because the Left has a blanket hatred of the system
of business enterprise; he is criticized by the Right because the Right harks back, in nostalgia if not in practice, to outmoded
forms of business enterprise."
McNamara the managerial technocrat was too business-oriented for a left that still dreamed of bringing the workers to power. But
the modern form of industrial organization he represented was not traditionally capitalist enough for conservatives who were at heart
19th-century classical liberals.
National Review readers responded to Burnham's paean to McNamara with a mixture of incomprehension and indignation. It
was a sign that even readers familiar with Burnham-he appeared in every issue of the magazine-did not always follow what he was saying.
The popular right wanted concepts that were helpful in labeling enemies, and Burnham was confusing matters by talking about changes
in the organization of government and industry that did not line up with anyone's value judgements.
More polemically useful was a different concept popularized by neoconservatives in the following decade: the "New Class."
"This 'new class' is not easily defined but may be vaguely described," Irving Kristol wrote in a 1975 essay for the Wall
Street Journal :
It consists of a goodly proportion of those college-educated people whose skills and vocations proliferate in a 'post-industrial
society' (to use Daniel Bell's convenient term). We are talking about scientists, teachers, and educational administrators, journalists
and others in the communication industries, psychologists, social workers, those lawyers and doctors who make their careers in
the expanding public sector, city planners, the staffs of the larger foundations, the upper levels of the government bureaucracy,
and so on.
"Members of the new class do not 'control' the media," he continued, "they are the media-just as they are our educational
system, our public health and welfare system, and much else."
Burnham, writing in National Review in 1978, drew a sharp contrast between this concept and his own ideas:
I have felt that this 'new class' is, so far, rather thin gruel. Intellectuals, verbalists, media types, etc. are conspicuous
actors these days, certainly; they make a lot of noise, get a lot of attention, and some of them make a lot of money. But, after
all, they are a harum-scarum crowd, and deflate even more quickly than they puff up. On TV they can out-talk any of the managers
of ITT, GM, or IBM, or the administration-managers of the great government bureaus and agencies, but, honestly, you're not going
to take that as a power test. Who hires and fires whom?
Burnham suffered a stroke later that year. Although he lived until 1987, his career as a writer was over. His last years coincided
with another great transformation of business and government. It began in the Carter administration, with moves to deregulate transportation
and telecommunications. This partial unwinding of the managerial revolution accelerated under Ronald Reagan. Regulatory and welfare-state
reforms, even privatization of formerly nationalized industries, also took off in the UK and Western Europe. All this did not, however,
amount to a restoration of the old capitalism or anything resembling laissez-faire.
The "[neo]liberal democracy" that triumphed at "the end of history"-to use Francis Fukuyama's words-was not the managerial capitalism
of the mid-20th century, either. It was instead the New Class's form of capitalism, one that could be embraced by Bill Clinton and
Tony Blair as readily as by any Republican or Thatcherite.
Irving Kristol had already noted in the 1970s that "this new class is not merely liberal but truly 'libertarian' in its approach
to all areas of life-except economics. It celebrates individual liberty of speech and expression and action to an unprecedented degree,
so that at times it seems almost anarchistic in its conception of the good life."
He was right about the New Class's "anything goes" mentality, but he was only partly correct about its attitude toward economics.
The young elite tended to scorn the bourgeois character of the old capitalism, and to them managerial figures like McNamara were
evil incarnate. But they had to get by-and they aspired to rule.
Burnham had observed that the New Class did not have the means-either money or manpower-to wield power the way the managers
or the capitalists of old did. It had to borrow power from other classes. Discovering where the New Class gets it is as easy as following
the money, which leads straight to the finance sector-practically to the doorstep of Goldman Sachs. Jerry Rubin's journey from Yippie
to yuppie was the paradigm of a generation.
Part of the tale can be told in a favorable light. New Left activists like Carl Oglesby fought the spiritual aridity and murderous
militarism of what they called "corporate liberalism"-Burnham's managerialism-while sincere young libertarians attacked the regulatory
state and seeded technological entrepreneurship. Yet the New Class as a whole is less like Carl Oglesby or Karl Hess than like
Hillary Clinton, who arguably embodies it as perfectly as McNamara did the managerial class.
Even the New Class's support for deregulation-to the advantage of its allies on Wall Street-was no sign of consistent commitment
to free-market principles. On the contrary, the New Class favors new kinds of crony finance capitalism, even as it opposes the
protectionism that would benefit hard industry and managerial interests. The individual-mandate feature of Obamacare and Romneycare
is a prime example of New Class cronyism: government compels individuals to buy a supposedly private product or service.
The alliance between finance and the New Class accounts for the disposition of power in America today. The New Class has also
enlisted another invaluable ally: the managerial classes of East Asia. Trade with China-the modern managerial state par excellence-helps
keep American industry weak relative to finance and the service economy's verbalist-dominated sectors. America's class war, like
many others, is not in the end a contest between up and down. It's a fight between rival elites: in this case, between the declining
managerial elite and the triumphant (for now) New Class and financial elites.
The New Class plays a priestly role in its alliance with finance, absolving Wall Street for the sin of making money in exchange
for plenty of that money to keep the New Class in power. In command of foreign policy, the New Class gets to pursue humanitarian
ideological projects-to experiment on the world. It gets to evangelize by the sword. And with trade policy, it gets to suppress its
class rival, the managerial elite, at home. Through trade pacts and mass immigration the financial elite, meanwhile, gets to maximize
its returns without regard for borders or citizenship. The erosion of other nations' sovereignty that accompanies American hegemony
helps toward that end too-though our wars are more ideological than interest-driven.
♦♦♦
So we come to an historic moment. Instead of an election pitting another Bush against another Clinton, we have a race that poses
stark alternatives: a choice not only between candidates but between classes-not only between administrations but between regimes.
Donald Trump is not of the managerial class himself. But by embracing managerial interests-industrial protection and, yes,
"big government"-and combining them with nationalistic identity politics, he has built a force that has potential to threaten the
bipartisan establishment, even if he goes down to defeat in November.
The New Class, after all, lacks a popular base as well as money of its own, and just as it relies on Wall Street to underwrite
its power, it depends on its competing brands of identity politics to co-opt popular support. For the center-left establishment,
minority voters supply the electoral muscle. Religion and the culture war have served the same purpose for the establishment's center-right
faction. Trump showed that at least one of these sides could be beaten on its own turf-and it seems conceivable that if Bernie Sanders
had been black, he might have similarly beaten Clinton, without having to make concessions to New Class tastes.
The New Class establishment of both parties may be seriously misjudging what is happening here. Far from being the last gasp of
the demographically doomed-old, racially isolated white people, as Gallup's analysis says-Trump's insurgency may be the prototype
of an aggressive new politics, of either left or right, that could restore the managerial elite to power.
This is not something that conservatives-or libertarians who admire the old capitalism rather than New Class's simulacrum-might
welcome. But the only way that some entrenched policies may change is with a change of the class in power.
Daniel McCarthy is the editor of The American Conservative .
Excellent analysis. What is important about the Trump phenomenon is not every individual issue, it's the potentially revolutionary
nature of the phenomenon. The opposition gets this. That's why they are hysterical about Trump. The conservative box checkers
do not.
"Donald Trump is not of the managerial class himself. But by embracing managerial interests-industrial protection and, yes, "big
government"-and combining them with nationalistic identity politics, he has built a force that has potential to threaten the bipartisan
establishment, even if he goes down to defeat in November."
My question is, if Trump is not himself of the managerial class, in fact, could be considered one of the original new class
members, how would he govern? What explains his conversion from the new class to the managerial class; is he merely taking advantage
of an opportunity or is there some other explanation?
I'm genuinely confused by the role you ascribe to the 'managerial class' here. Going back to Berle and Means ('The Modern Corporation
and Private Property') the managerial class emerged when management was split from ownership in mid C20th capitalism. Managers
focused on growth, not profits for shareholders. The Shareholder revolution of the 1980s destroyed the managerial class, and destroyed
their unwieldy corporations.
You seem to be identifying the managerial class with a kind of cultural opposition to the values of [neo]liberal capitalism. And
instead of identifying the 'new class' with the new owner-managers of shareholder-driven firms, you identify them by their superficial
cultural effects.
This raises a deeper problem in how you talk about class in this piece. Marx taught that you identify classes by their
structural role in the system of production. I'm at a loss to see how either of the 'classes' you mention here relate to the system
of production. Does the 'new class' of journalists, academics, etc. actually own anything? If not, what is the point of ascribing
to them immense economic power?
I would agree that there is a new class of capitalists in America. But they are well known people like Sheldon Adelson, the Kochs,
Linda McMahon, the Waltons, Rick Scott the pharmaceutical entrepreneur, Mitt Romney, Mark Zuckerberg, and many many hedge fund
gazillionaires. These people represent the resurgence of a family-based, dynastic capitalism that is utterly different from the
managerial variety that prevailed in mid-century.
If there is a current competitor to international corporate capitalism, it is old-fashioned dynastic family capitalism. Not
Managerialism.
There is no "new class". That's simply a derogatory trope of the Right. The [neo]liberal elite– educated, cosmopolitan and possessed
of sufficient wealth to be influential in political affairs and claims to power grounded in moral stances– have a long pedigree
in both Western and non-Western lands. They were the Scribal Class in the ancient world, the Mandarins of China, and the Clergy
in the Middle Ages. This class for a time was eclipsed in the early modern period as first royal authority became dominant, followed
by the power of the Capitalist class (the latter has never really faded of course). But their reemergence in the late 20th century
is not a new or unique phenomenon.
In a year in which "trash Trump" and "trash Trump's supporters" are tricks-to-be-turned for more than 90% of mainstream journalists
and other media hacks, it's good to see Daniel McCarthy buck the "trash trend" and write a serious, honest analysis of the class
forces that are colliding during this election cycle.
Two thumbs way up for McCarthy, although his fine effort cannot save the reputation of those establishment whores who call
themselves journalists. Nothing can save them. They have earned the universality with which Americans hold them in contempt.
In 1976 when Gallup began asking about "the honesty and ethical standards" of various professions only 33% of Americans rated
journalists "very high or high."
By last December that "high or very high" rating for journalists had fallen to just 27%.
It is certain that by Election Day 2016 the American public's opinion of journalists will have fallen even further.
Most of your argument is confusing. The change I see is from a production economy to a finance economy. Wall Street rules, really.
Basically the stock market used to be a place where working folk invested their money for retirement, mostly through pensions
from unions and corporations. Now it's become a gambling casino, with the "house"-or the big banks-putting it's finger on the
roulette wheel. They changed the compensation package of CEO's, so they can rake in huge executive compensation–mostly through
stock options-to basically close down everything from manufacturing to customer service, and ship it off to contract manufacturers
and outside services in oligarchical countries like mainland China and India.
I don't know what exactly you mean about the "new class", basically its the finance industry against everyone else.
One thing you right-wingers always get wrong, is on Karl Marx he was really attacking the money-changers, the finance speculators,
the banks. Back in the day, so-called "capitalists" like Henry Ford or George Eastman or Thomas Edison always complained about
the access to financing through the big money finance capitalists.
Don't overlook the economic value of intellectual property rights (patents, in particular) in the economic equation.
A big chunk of the 21st century economy is generated due to the intellectual property developed and owned by the New Class
and its business enterprises.
The economic value of ideas and intellectual property rights is somewhat implied in McCarthy's explanation of the New Class,
but I didn't see an explicit mention (perhaps I overlooked it).
I think the consideration of intellectual property rights and the value generated by IP might help to clarify the economic
power of the New Class for those who feel the analysis isn't quite complete or on target.
I'm not saying that IP only provides value to the New Class. We can find examples of IP throughout the economy, at all levels.
It's just that the tech and financial sectors seem to focus more on (and benefit from) IP ownership, licensing, and the information
captured through use of digital technology.
"What do these insurgents have in common? All have called into question the interventionist consensus in foreign policy."
But today we have this: Trump pledges big US military
expansion . Trump doesn't appear to have any coherent policy, he just says whatever seems to be useful at that particular
moment.
[New] Class better describes the Never Trumpers. Mostly I have found them to be those involved in knowledge occupations (conservative
think tanks, hedge fund managers, etc.) who have a pecuniary interest in maintaining the Global Economy as opposed to the Virtuous
Intergenerational Economy that preceded. Many are dependent on funding sources for their livelihoods that are connected to the
Globalized Economy and financial markets.
Being white is not the defining characteristic of Trumpers because it if was then how come there are many white working class
voters for Hillary? The divide in the working class comes from being a member of a union or a member of the private non-unionized
working class.
Where the real class divide shows up is in those who are members of the Knowledge Class that made their living based on the
old Virtuous Economy where the elderly saved money in banks and the banks, in turn, lent that money out to young families to buy
houses, cars, and start businesses. The Virtuous Economy has been replaced by the Global Economy based on diverting money to the
stock market to fund global enterprises and prop up government pension funds.
The local bankers, realtors, private contractors, small savers and small business persons and others that depended on the Virtuous
Economy lost out to the global bankers, stock investors, pension fund managers, union contractors and intellectuals that propounded
rationales for the global economy as superior to the Virtuous Economy.
Where the class conflict between the Working and Knowledge Classes begins is where the Knowledge Class almost unilaterally
decided to shift to a global economy, at the expense of the Working Class, and to the self-benefit of the Knowledge Class. Those
who designed the Global Economy like Larry Summers of Harvard did not invite private or public labor to help design the new Globalist
Economy. The Working Class lost out big time in job losses and getting stuck with subprime home loans that busted their marriages
and created bankruptcies and foreclosures. The Knowledge Class was mostly unscathed by this class-based economic divide.
Beginning in the 50's and 60's, baby boomers were warned in school and cultural media that "a college diploma would become what
a high school diploma is today." An extraordinary cohort of Americans took this advice seriously, creating the smartest and most
successful generation in history. But millions did not heed that advice, cynically buoyed by Republicans who – knowing that college
educated people vote largely Democrat – launched a financial and cultural war on college education. The result is what you see
now: millions of people unprepared for modern employment; meanwhile we have to import millions of college-educated Asians and
Indians to do the work there aren't enough Americans to do.
Have to say, this seems like an attempt to put things into boxes that don't quite fit.
Trump's distinguishing ideology, which separates him from the current elite, is something he has summed up many times –
nationalism vs. Globalism.
The core of it is that the government no longer serves the people. In the United States, that is kind of a bad thing, you know?
Like the EU in the UK, the people, who fought very hard for self-government, are seeing it undermined by the erosion of the nation
state in favor of international beaurocracy run by elites and the well connected.
Both this article and many comments on it show considerable confusion, and ideological opinion all over the map. What is happening
I think is that the world is changing –due to globalism, technology, and the sheer huge numbers of people on the planet. As a
result some of the rigid trenches of thought as well as class alignments are breaking down.
In America we no longer have capitalism, of either the 19th century industrial or 20th century managerial varieties. Money
and big money is still important of course, but it is increasingly both aligned with and in turn controlled by the government.
The financial industry, the new tech giants, the health insurance industry are now almost indistinguishable from the government
ruling elite. The old left–represented by Sanders–rails against this as big money coopting government, even while conservatives
are exasperated by the unholy cabal of big business and big government in cohoots in the "progressive" remake of America. Both
are right in a sense.
The hyperconcentration of power in Washington and a few tributary locations like Wall Street and Silicon Valley, elite
academia and the media–call that the New Class if you like–means that most of America–Main Street, the flyover country has been
left behind. Trump instinctively – brilliantly in some ways – tapped into the resentment that this hyperconcentration of wealth
and government power has led to. That is why it cuts across right and left. The elites want to characterize this resentment as
backwards and "racist," but there is also something very American from Jefferson to Jackson to Teddy Roosevelt that revolts against
being lectured to and controlled by their would-be "betters."
The alienation of those left out is real and based on real erosion of the middle class and American dream under both parties'
elites. The potentially revolutionary capabilities of a political movement that could unite right and left in restoring some equilibrium
and opportunities to those left out is tremendous, but yet to be realized by either major party. The party that can harness these
folks – who are after all the majority of Americans – will have a ruling coalition for decades. If neither party can productively
harness this budding movement, we are headed for disarray, civil unrest, and potentially the dissolution of the USA.
I have one condition about which, Mr. Trump would lose my support - if he flinches on immigration, I will have to bow out.
I just don't buy the contentions about color here. He has made definitive moves to ensure that he intends to fight for US citizens
regardless of color. This nonsense about white racism, more bigotry in reality, doesn't pan out. The Republican party has been
comprised of mostly whites since forever and nearly all white sine the late 1960's. Anyone attempting to make hay out of what
has been the reality for than 40 years is really making the reverse pander. Of course most of those who have issues with blacks
and tend to be more expressive about it, are in the Republican party. But so what. Black Republicans would look at you askance,
should you attempt this FYI.
It's a so what. The reason you joining a party is not because the people in it like you, that is really beside the point. Both
Sec Rice and General Powell, are keenly aware of who's what it and that is the supposed educated elite. They are not members of
the party because it is composed of some pure untainted membership. But because they and many blacks align themselves with the
ideas of the party, or what the party used to believe, anyway.
It's the issues not their skin color that matters. And blacks who cleave to the democrats despite being sold down the tubes
on issues, well, for whatever reason, they just have thinner skin and the mistaken idea that the democrats deliver – thanks to
Pres. Johnson. But what Pres. Johnson delivered democrats made a mockery of immediately as they stripped it of its intent and
used for their own liberal ends.
I remain convinced that if blacks wanted progress all they need do is swamp the Republican party as constituents and confront
whatever they thought was nonsense as constituents as they move on policy issues. Goodness democrats have embraced the lighter
tones despite having most black support. That is why the democrats are importing so many from other state run countries. They
could ignore blacks altogether. Sen Barbara Jordan and her deep voiced rebuke would do them all some good.
Let's face it - we are not going to remove the deeply rooted impact of skin color, once part of the legal frame of the country
for a quarter of the nations populous. What Republicans should stop doing is pretending, that everything concerning skin color
is the figment of black imagination. I am not budging an inch on the Daughters of the American Revolution, a perfect example of
the kind of peculiar treatment of the majority, even to those who fought for Independence and their descendants.
________________
I think that there are thousands and thousands of educated (degreed)people who now realize what a mess the educational and
social services system has become because of our immigration policy. The impact on social services here in Ca is no joke. In the
face of mounting deficits, the laxity of Ca has now come back to haunt them. The pressure to increase taxes weighed against the
loss of manual or hard labor to immigrants legal and otherwise is unmistakable here. There's debate about rsstroom etiquette in
the midst of serious financial issues - that's a joke. So this idea of dismissing people with degrees as being opposed to Mr.
Trump is deeply overplayed and misunderstood. If there is a class war, it's not because of Mr. Trump, those decks were stacked
in his favor long before the election cycle.
--------
"But millions did not heed that advice, cynically buoyed by Republicans who–knowing that college educated people vote largely
Democrat–launched a financial and cultural war on college education. The result is what . . . employment; meanwhile we have to
import millions of college-educated Asians and Indians to do the work there aren't enough Americans to do."
Hmmmm,
Nope. Republicans are notorious for pushing education on everything and everybody. It's a signature of hard work, self reliance,
self motivation and responsibility. The shift that has been tragic is that conservatives and Republicans either by a shove or
by choice abandoned the fields by which we turn out most future generations - elementary, HS and college education. Especially
in HS, millions of students are fed a daily diet of liberal though unchecked by any opposing ideas. And that is become the staple
for college education - as it cannot be stated just how tragic this has become for the nation. There are lots of issues to moan
about concerning the Us, but there is far more to embrace or at the very least keep the moaning in its proper context. No, conservatives
and Republicans did engage in discouraging an education.
And there will always be a need for more people without degrees than with them. even people with degrees are now getting hit
even in the elite walls of WS finance. I think I posted an article by John Maulden about the growing tensions resulting fro the
shift in the way trading is conducting. I can build a computer from scratch, that's a technical skill, but the days of building
computers by hand went as fast it came. The accusation that the population should all be trained accountants, book keepers, managers,
data processors, programmers etc. Is nice, but hardly very realistic (despite my taking liberties with your exact phrasing). A
degree is not going to stop a company from selling and moving its production to China, Mexico or Vietnam - would that were true.
In fact, even high end degree positions are being outsourced, medicine, law, data processing, programming . . .
How about the changes in economy that have forced businesses to completely disappear. We will never know how many businesses
were lost in the 2007/2008 financial mess. Recovery doesn't exist until the country's growth is robust enough to put people back
to work full time in a manner that enables them to sustain themselves and family.
That income gap is real and its telling.
___________________
even if I bought the Karl Marx assessment. His solutions were anything but a limited assault on financial sector oligarchs
and wizards. And in practice it has been an unmitigated disaster with virtually not a single long term national benefit. It's
very nature has been destructive, not only to infrastructure, but literally the lifeblood of the people it was intended to rescue.
Let's see if I can help Dreher clear up some confusion in his article. James Burnham's "Managerial Class" and the "New Class"
are overlapping and not exclusive. By the Managerial Class Burnham meant both the executive and managers in the private sector
and the Bureaucrats and functionaries in the public sector.
There are two middle classes in the US: the old Business Class and the New Knowledge Class. A manager would be in the Business
Class and a Bureaucrat in the New Class.
The rise of managers was a "revolution" because of the rise of modernization which meant the increasing mechanization,
industrialization, formalization and rationalization (efficiency) of society. Burnham's concern about the rise of the managerial
revolution was misplaced; what he should have focused on was modernization.
The New Class were those in the mostly government and nonprofit sectors that depended on knowledge for their livelihood without
it being coupled to any physical labor: teachers, intellectuals, social workers and psychiatrists, lawyers, media types, hedge
fund managers, real estate appraisers, financial advisors, architects, engineers, etc. The New Knowledge Class has only risen
since the New Deal created a permanent white collar, non-business class.
The Working Class are those who are employed for wages in manual work in an industry producing something tangible (houses,
cars, computers, etc.). The Working Class can also have managers, sometimes called supervisors. And the Working Class is comprised
mainly of two groups: unionized workers and private sector non-unionized workers. When we talk about the Working Class we typically
are referring to the latter.
The Trumpsters should not be distinguished as being a racial group or class (white) because there are many white people who
support Clinton. About 95% of Blacks vote Democratic in the US. Nowhere near that ratio of Whites are supporting Trump. So Trumps'
support should not be stereotyped as White.
The number one concern to Trumpsters is that they reflect the previous intergenerational economy where the elderly lent money
to the young to buy homes, cars and start small businesses. The Global bankers have shifted money into the stock market because
0.25% per year interest rates in a bank isn't making any money at all when money inflation runs at 1% to 2% (theft). This has
been replaced by a Global Economy that depends on financial bubbles and arbitraging of funds.
"The old left–represented by Sanders–rails against this as big money coopting government, even while conservatives are exasperated
by the unholy cabal of big business and big government in cohoots in the "progressive" remake of America. Both are right
in a sense."
Why other couching this. Ten years ago if some Hollywood exec had said, no same sex marriage, no production company in your
town, the town would have shrugged. Today before shrugging, the city clerk is checking the account balance. When the governors
of Michigan, and Arizona bent down in me culpa's on related issue, because business interests piped in, it was an indication that
the game had seriously changed. Some 3 – 5% of the population facing no real opposition has decided that that their private
lives needed public endorsement and have proceeded to upend the entire social order - the game has shifted in ways I am not sure
most of the public fully grasps or desires.
Same sex weddings in US military chapels - the concept still turns my stomach. Advocates control the megaphones, I don't think
they control the minds of the public, despite having convinced a good many people that those who have chosen this expression are
under some manner of assault – that demands a legal change - intelligent well educated, supposedly astute minded people actually
believe it. Even the Republican nominee believes it.
I love Barbara Streisand, but if the election means she moves to Canada, well, so be it. Take your "drag queens" impersonators
wit you. I enjoy Mr. and Mrs Pitt, I think have a social moral core but really? with millions of kids future at stake, endorsing
a terminal dynamic as if it will save society's ills - Hollywood doesn't even pretend to behave royally much less embody the sensitivities
of the same.
There is a lot to challenge about supporting Mr. Trump. He did support killing children in the womb and that is tragic. Unless
he has stood before his maker and made this right, he will have to answer for that. But no more than a trove of Republicans who
supported killing children in the womb and then came to their senses. I guess of there is one thing he and I agree on, it's not
drinking.
As for big budget military, it seems a waste, but if we are going to waste money, better it be for our own citizens. His Achilles
heel here is his intentions as to ISIS/ISIL. I think it's the big drain getting ready to suck him into the abyss of intervention
creep.
Missile defense just doesn't work. The tests are rigged and as Israel discovered, it's a hit and miss game with low probability
of success, but it makes for great propaganda.
I am supposed to be outraged by a football player stance on abusive government. While the democratic nominee is turning over
every deck chair she find, leaving hundreds of thousands of children homeless - let me guess, on the bright side, George Clooney
cheers the prospect of more democratic voters.
If Mr. Trumps only achievements are building a wall, over hauling immigration policy and expanding the size of the military.
He will be well on his way to getting ranked one of the US most successful presidents.
I never understood why an analysis needs to lard in every conceivable historical reference and simply assume its relevance, when
there are so many non constant facts and circumstances. There has always been and will always be class conflict, even if it
falls short of a war. Simply examining recent past circumstances, the wealthy class has been whooping up on all other classes.
This is not to suggest any sort of remedy, but simply to observe that income disparity over the past 30 years has substantially
benefitted on sector of class and political power remains in their hands today. To think that there will never be class conflict
is to side with a Marxian fantasy of egalitarianism, which will never come to pass. Winners and losers may change positions, but
the underlying conflict will always remain.
State governments have been kowtowing to big business interests for a good long while. Nothing new under the sun there.
Back in the 80s when GM was deciding where to site their factory for the new Saturn car line, they issued an edict stating they
would only consider states that had mandatory seat belt use laws, and the states in the running fell all over each to enact those.
The split on Trump is first by race (obviously), then be gender (also somewhat obviously), and then by education. Even among
self-declared conservatives it's the college educated who tend to oppose him. This is a lot broader than simply losing some "new"
Knowledge Class, unless all college educated people are put in that grouping. In fact he is on track to lose among college educated
whites, something no GOP candidate has suffered since the days of FDR and WWII.
People don't really care for the actions of the elite but they care for the consequences of these actions. During the 1960's,
per capita GDP growth was around 3.5%. Today it stands at 0,49%. If you take into account inflation, it's negative. Add to this
the skewed repartition of said growth and it's intuitive that many people feel the pain; whom doesn't move forward, goes backwards.
People couldn't care for mass immigration, nation building or the emergence of China if their personal situation was not
impacted. But now, they begin to feel the results of these actions.
I have a simple philosophy regarding American politics that shows who is made of what, and we don't have to go through all
the philosophizing in this article: Anyone who believes in same sex marriage has been brainwashed and is un-American and unreliable.
Anyone who puts Israeli interests above America's is un-American.
EliteComic beat me to the punch. I was disappointed that Ross Perot, who won over 20% of the popular vote twice, and was briefly
in the lead in early 1992, wasn't mentioned in this article.
Re: Anyone who believes in same sex marriage has been brainwashed and is un-American and unreliable. Anyone who puts Israeli
interests above America's is un-American.
The first has nothing whatsoever to do with American citizenship. It's just a political issue– on which, yes, reasonable
people can differ. However no American citizen should put the interests of any other country ahead of our own, except in a situation
where the US was itself up to no good and deserved its comeuppance. And then the interest is not that of any particular nation,
but of justice being done period.
A lot of this "New Class" stuff is just confusing mis-mash of this and that theory. Basically, America changed when the US
dollar replace gold as the medium of exchange in the world economy. Remember when we called it the PETRO-DOLLAR. As long as the
Saudis only accepted the US dollar as the medium of exchange for oil, then the American government could export it's inflation
and deficit spending. Budget deficits and trade deficits are intrinsically related. It allowed America to become a nation of consumers
instead of a nation of producers.
Who really cares about the federal debt. REally? We can print dollars, exchange these worthless dollars with China for hard
goods, and then China lends the dollars back to us, to pay for our government. Get it?
It's really a form of classic IMPERIALISM. To maintain this system, we've got the US military and we prop up the corrupt
dictatorships in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Libya
Yeah, you can talk about the "new class", the corruption of the banking system by the idiotic "libertarian" or "free market
utopianism" of the Gingrich Congress, the transformation of American corporations to international corporations, and on and on.
But it's the US dollar as reserve currency that has allowed it all to happen. God help us, if it ends, we'll be crippled.
And damn the utopianism of you "libertarians" you're worse then Marxists when it comes to ideology over reality.
"State governments have been kowtowing to big business interests for a good long while. Nothing new under the sun there. Back
in the 80s when GM was deciding where to site their factory for the new Saturn car line, they issued an edict stating they would
only consider states that had mandatory seat belt use laws, and the states in the running fell all over each to enact those."
Ah, not it's policy on some measure able effect. The seatbelt law was debate across the country. The data indicated that it
did in fact save lives. And it's impact was universal applicable to every man women or child that got into a vehicle.
That was not a private bedroom issue. Of course businesses have advocated policy. K street is not a K-street minus that reality.
But GM did not demand having relations in parked cars be legalized or else.
You are taking my apples and and calling them seatbelts - false comparison on multiple levels, all to get me to acknowledge
that businesses have influence. It what they have chosen to have influence on -
I do not think the issue of class is relevant here – whether it be new classes or old classes. There are essentially two classes
– those who win given whatever the current economic arrangements are or those who lose given those same arrangements. People who
think they are losing support Trump versus people who think they are winning support Clinton. The polls demonstrates this – Trump
supporters feel a great deal more anxiety about the future and are more inclined to think everything is falling apart whereas
Clinton supporters tend to see things as being okay and are optimistic about the future. The Vox work also shows this pervasive
sense that life will not be good for their children and grandchildren as a characteristic of Trump supporters.
The real shift I think is in the actual coalitions that are political parties. Both the GOP and the Dems have been coalitions
– political parties usually are. Primary areas of agreement with secondary areas of disagreement. Those coalitions no longer work.
The Dems can be seen as a coalition of the liberal knowledge types – who are winners in this economy and the worker types who
are often losers now in this economy. The GOP also is a coalition of globalist corporatist business types (winners) with workers
(losers) who they attracted in part because of culture wars and the Dixiecrats becoming GOPers. The needs of these two groups
in both parties no longer overlap. The crisis is more apparent in the GOP because well – Trump. If Sanders had won the nomination
for the Dems (and he got close) then their same crisis would be more apparent. The Dems can hold their creaky coalition together
because Trump went into the fevered swamps of the alt. right.
I think this is even more obvious in the UK where you have a Labor Party that allegedly represents the interests of working
people but includes the cosmopolitan knowledge types. The cosmopolitans are big on the usual identity politics, unlimited immigration
and staying in the EU. They benefit from the current economic arrangement. But the workers in the Labor party have been hammered
by the current economic arrangements and voted in droves to get out of the EU and limit immigration. It seems pretty obvious that
there is no longer a coalition to sustain the Labor Party. Same with Tories – some in the party love the EU,immigration, globalization
while others voted out of the EU, want immigration restricted and support localism. The crisis is about the inability of either
party to sustain its coalitions. Those in the Tory party who are leavers should be in a political party with the old Labor working
class while the Tory cosmopolitans should be in a party with the Labor cosmopolitans. The current coalitions not being in synch
is the political problem – not new classes etc.
Here in the US the southern Dixiecrats who went to the GOP and are losers in this economy might find a better coalition with
the black, Latino and white workers who are still in the Dem party. But as in the UK ideological culture wars have become more
prominent and hence the coalitions are no longer economically based. If people recognized that politics can only address the economic
issues and they aligned themselves accordingly – the membership of the parties would radically change.
The Clinton Class mocks The Country Class: Bill Clinton, "We all know how her opponent's done real well down in West Virginia
and eastern Kentucky. Because the coal people don't like any of us anymore." "They blame the president when the sun doesn't come
up in the morning now,"
"Trump's voters were most strongly characterized by their "racial isolation": they live in places with little ethnic diversity.
"
During the primaries whites in more diverse areas voted Trump. The only real exception was West Virginia. Utah, Wyoming, Iowa?
All voted for Cruz and "muh values".
In white enclaves like Paul Ryans district, which is 91%, whites are able to signal against white identity without having to
face the consequences.
"All three major African, Hispanic, & Asian-American overwhelming support HRC in the election."
That doesn't mean they actually support Hillary's policies and position. What do they really know about either? These demographics
simply vote overwhelmingly Democrat no matter who is on the ticket. If Alfred E. Newman were the candidate, this particular data
point would look just the same.
"On the contrary, the New Class favors new kinds of crony finance capitalism, even as it opposes the protectionism that would
benefit hard industry and managerial interests."
This doesn't ring true. Hard industry, and the managers that run it had no problem with moving jobs and factories overseas
in pursuit of cheaper labor. Plus, it solved their Union issues. I feel like the divide is between large corporations, with dilute
ownership and professional managers who nominally serve the interests of stock fund managers, while greatly enriching themselves
versus a multitude of smaller, locally owned businesses whose owners were also concerned with the health of the local communities
in which they lived.
The financial elites are a consequence of consolidation in the banking and finance industry, where we now have 4 or 5 large
institutions versus a multitude of local and regional banks that were locally focused.
"... By Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics and Chairperson at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Originally published at The Frontline ..."
"... President Obama has been a fervent supporter of both these deals, with the explicit aim of enhancing and securing US power. "We have to make sure America writes the rules of the global economy. We should do it today while our economy is in the position of global strength. We've got to harness it on our terms. If we don't write the rules for trade around the world – guess what? China will!", he famously said in a speech to workers in a Nike factory in Oregon, USA in May 2015. But even though he has made the case for the TPP plainly enough, his only chance of pushing even the TPP through is in the "lame duck" session of Congress just before the November Presidential election in the US. ..."
"... The official US version, expressed on the website of the US Trade Representative, is that the TPP "writes the rules for global trade-rules that will help increase Made-in-America exports, grow the American economy, support well-paying American jobs, and strengthen the American middle class." This is mainly supposed to occur because of the tariff cuts over 18,000 items that have been written into the agreement, which in turn are supposed to lead to significant expansion of trade volumes and values. ..."
"... But this is accepted by fewer and fewer people in the US. Across the country, workers view such trade deals with great suspicion as causing shifts in employment to lower paid workers, mostly in the Global South. ..."
"... But in fact the TPP and the TTIP are not really about trade liberalisation so much as other regulatory changes, so in any case it is hardly surprising that the positive effects on trade are likely to be so limited. What is more surprising is how the entire discussion around these agreements is still framed around the issues relating to trade liberalisation, when these are in fact the less important parts of these agreements, and it is the other elements that are likely to have more negative and even devastating effects on people living in the countries that sign up to them. ..."
"... Three aspects of these agreements are particularly worrying: the intellectual property provisions, the restrictions on regulatory practices and the investor-state dispute settlement provisions ..."
"... All of these would result in significant strengthening of the bargaining power of corporations vis-à-vis workers and citizens, would reduce the power of governments to bring in policies and regulations that affect the profits or curb the power of such corporations ..."
"... So if such features of US-led globalisation are indeed under threat, that is probably a good thing for the people of the US and for people in their trading partners who had signed up for such deals. ..."
"... The question arises: is Trump evil? Or merely awful? If Trump is merely awful, then we are not faced with voting for the Lesser Evil or otherwise voting Third Party in protest. If we are faced with a choice between Evil and Awful, perhaps a vote for Awful is a vote against Evil just by itself. ..."
"... Trump has backpedaled and frontpedaled on virtually everything, but on trade, he's got Sanders-level consistency. He's been preaching the same sanity since the 90s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZpMJeynBeg ..."
"... While I do not disagree with your comments, they must be placed in proper context: there is no substantive difference between Mike Pence and Tim Kaine, and the people who staff the campaigns of Trump and Clinton are essentially the same. (Fundamentally a replay of the 2000 election: Cheney/Bush vs. Lieberman/Gore.) ..."
"... Great Comment. Important to knock down the meme that "this is the most significant or important election of our time" - this is a carbon copy of what we have seen half a dozen times since WW2 alone and that's exactly how our elite handlers want it. Limit the choices, stoke fear, win by dividing the plebes. ..."
"... Let's face it, trade without the iron fist of capitalism will benefit us schlobs greatly and not the 1%. I'm all for being against it (TPP etc) and will vote that way. ..."
"... We'd also have put in enough puppet dictators in resource rich countries that we'd be able to get raw materials cheaply. The low labor/raw material cost will provide a significant advantage for exports but alas, our 99% won't be able to afford our own products. ..."
"... the TPP will completely outlaw any possibility of a "Buy America" clause in the future! ..."
"... The cynic in me wonders if under say NAFTA it would be possible for a multinational to sue for lost profits via isds if TPP fails to pass. That the failure to enact trade "liberalizing" legislation could be construed as an active step against trade. the way these things are so ambiguously worded, I wonder. ..."
"... Here's Obama's actual speech at the Nike headquarters (not factory). http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/barackobama/barackobamatradenike.htm ..."
"... It should be noted that the Oregon Democrats who were free traitors and supported fast track authority were called out that day: Bonamici, Blumenauer, Schrader and Wyden. The only Oregon Ds that opposed: Sen. Merkley and Congressman DeFazio. ..."
"... The Market Realist is far more realistic about Oregon's free traitors' votes. http://marketrealist.com/2015/05/trans-pacific-partnership-affects-footwear-firms/ "US tariffs on footwear imported from Vietnam can range from 5% to 40%, according to OTEXA (Office of Textiles and Apparel). Ratification of the TPP will likely result in lower tariffs and higher profitability for Nike." ..."
"... So what's the incentive for Oregon's free traitors to support the TPP now? ..."
"... Perhaps they still need to show loyalty to their corporate owners and to the principle of "free trade". ..."
"... Obama: "We have to make sure America writes the rules of the global economy." ..."
"... Thank you, Mr. President, for resolving any doubts that the American project is an imperialist project! ..."
"... Yes, and I would add a jingoistic one as well. Manifest destiny, the Monroe doctrine, etc. are not just history lessons but are alive and well in the neoliberal mindset. The empire must keep expanding into every nook and cranny of the world, turning them into good consumerist slaves. ..."
"... Funny how little things change over the centuries. ..."
"... The West Is The Best, Subhuman Are All The Rest. The perpetual mantra of the Uebermensch since Columbus first made landfall. Hitler merely sought to apply the same to some Europeans. ..."
"... "How the West Came to Rule: The Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism", 2015, Alexander Anievas and Kerem Nisancioglu. ..."
"... The Dem candidate's husband made it appallingly clear what the purpose of the TPP is: "It's to make sure the future of the Asia-Pacific region is not dominated by China". ..."
"... Bill Clinton doesn't even care about "the rise of China". That's just a red herring he sets up to accuse opponents of TPP of soft-on-China treasonism. It's just fabricating a stick to beat the TPP-opponents with. Clinton's support for MFN for China shows what he really thinks about the "rise of China". ..."
"... Clinton's real motivation is the same as the TPP's real reason, to reduce America to colonial possession status of the anti-national corporations and the Global OverClass natural persons who shelter behind and within them. ..."
"... Obama. Liar or stupid? When Elizabeth Warren spoke out about the secrecy of the TPP, Obama, uncharacteristically, ran to the cameras to state that the TPP was not secret and that the charge being leveled by Warren was false. Obama's statement was that Warren had access to a copy so how dare she say it was secret. ..."
"... Obama (and Holder) effectively immunized every financial criminal involved in the great fraud and recession without bothering to run for a camera, and to this day has refused and avoided any elaboration on the subject, but he wasted no time trying to bury Warren publicly. The TPP is a continuation of Obama's give-away to corporations, or more specifically, the very important men who run them who Obama works for. And he is going to pull out all stops to deliver to the men he respects. ..."
"... It's a virtual "black market" of "money laundering" (sterilization). In foreign trade, IMPORTS decrease (-) the money stock of the importing country (and are a subtraction to domestic gDp figures), while EXPORTS increase (+) the money stock and domestic gDp (earnings repatriated to the U.S), and the potential money supply, of the exporting country. ..."
"... I don't WANT the US writing the rules of trade any longer. We know what US-written rules do: plunge worker wages into slave labor territory, guts all advanced country's manufacturing capability, sends all high tech manufacturing to 3rd world nations ..."
"... Time to toss the rules and re-write them for the greatest benefit of the greatest number of NON-wealthy and for the benefit of the planet/ecosystems, NOT for benefit of Wall St. ..."
By Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics and Chairperson at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru
University, New Delhi. Originally published at
The Frontline
There is much angst in the Northern financial media about how the era of globalisation led actively by the United States may well
be coming to an end. This is said to be exemplified in the changed political attitudes to mega regional trade deals like the Trans
Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) that was signed (but has not yet been ratified) by the US and 11 other countries in Latin America,
Asia and Oceania; and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Agreement (TTIP) still being negotiated by the US and the
European Union.
President Obama has been a fervent supporter of both these deals, with the explicit aim of enhancing and securing US power.
"We have to make sure America writes the rules of the global economy. We should do it today while our economy is in the position
of global strength. We've got to harness it on our terms. If we don't write the rules for trade around the world – guess what? China
will!", he famously said in a speech to workers in a Nike factory in Oregon, USA in May 2015. But even though he has made the case
for the TPP plainly enough, his only chance of pushing even the TPP through is in the "lame duck" session of Congress just before
the November Presidential election in the US.
However, the changing political currents in the US are making that ever more unlikely. Hardly anyone who is a candidate in the
coming elections, whether for the Presidency, the Senate or the House of Representatives, is willing to stick their necks out to
back the deal.
Both Presidential candidates in the US (Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton) have openly come out against the TPP. In Clinton's case
this is a complete reversal of her earlier position when she had referred to the TPP as "the gold standard of trade deals" – and
it has clearly been forced upon her by the insurgent movement in the Democratic Party led by Bernie Sanders. She is already being
pushed by her rival candidate for not coming out more clearly in terms of a complete rejection of this deal. Given the significant
trust deficit that she still has to deal with across a large swathe of US voters, it will be hard if not impossible for her to backtrack
on this once again (as her husband did earlier with NAFTA) even if she does achieve the Presidency.
The official US version, expressed on the website of the US Trade Representative, is that the TPP "writes the rules for global
trade-rules that will help increase Made-in-America exports, grow the American economy, support well-paying American jobs, and strengthen
the American middle class." This is mainly supposed to occur because of the tariff cuts over 18,000 items that have been written
into the agreement, which in turn are supposed to lead to significant expansion of trade volumes and values.
But this is accepted by fewer and fewer people in the US. Across the country, workers view such trade deals with great suspicion
as causing shifts in employment to lower paid workers, mostly in the Global South. Even the only US government study of the
TPP's likely impacts, by the International Trade Commission, could project at best only 1 per cent increase in exports due to the
agreement up to 2032. A study by Jeronim Capaldo and Alex Izurieta with Jomo Kwame Sundaram ("Trading down: Unemployment, inequality
and other risks of the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement", Working Paper 16-01, Global Development and Environment Institute, January
2016) was even less optimistic, even for the US. It found that the benefits to exports and economic growth were likely to be relatively
small for all member countries, and would be negative in the US and Japan because of losses to employment and increases in inequality.
Wage shares of national income would decline in all the member countries.
But in fact the TPP and the TTIP are not really about trade liberalisation so much as other regulatory changes, so in any
case it is hardly surprising that the positive effects on trade are likely to be so limited. What is more surprising is how the entire
discussion around these agreements is still framed around the issues relating to trade liberalisation, when these are in fact the
less important parts of these agreements, and it is the other elements that are likely to have more negative and even devastating
effects on people living in the countries that sign up to them.
Three aspects of these agreements are particularly worrying:
the intellectual property provisions,
the restrictions on regulatory practices
the investor-state dispute settlement provisions.
Three aspects of these agreements are particularly worrying: the intellectual property provisions, the restrictions
on regulatory practices and the investor-state dispute settlement provisions.
All of these would result in significant strengthening of the bargaining power of corporations vis-à-vis workers and citizens,
would reduce the power of governments to bring in policies and regulations that affect the profits or curb the power of such corporations
For example, the TPP (and the TTIP) require more stringent enforcement requirements of intellectual property rights: reducing
exemptions (e.g. allowing compulsory licensing only for emergencies); preventing parallel imports; extending IPRs to areas like life
forms, counterfeiting and piracy; extending exclusive rights to test data (e.g. in pharmaceuticals); making IPR provisions more detailed
and prescriptive. The scope of drug patents is extended to include minor changes to existing medications (a practice commonly employed
by drug companies, known as "evergreening"). Patent linkages would make it more difficult for many generic drugs to enter markets.
This would strengthen, lengthen and broaden pharmaceutical monopolies on cancer, heart disease and HIV/AIDS drugs, and in general
make even life-saving drugs more expensive and inaccessible in all the member countries. It would require further transformation
of countries' laws on patents and medical test data. It would reduce the scope of exemption in use of medical formulations through
public procurement for public purposes. All this is likely to lead to reductions in access to drugs and medical procedures because
of rising prices, and also impede innovation rather than encouraging it, across member countries.
There are also very restrictive copyright protection rules, that would also affect internet usage as Internet Service Providers
are to be forced to adhere to them. There are further restrictions on branding that would reinforce the market power of established
players.
The TPP and TTIP also contain restrictions on regulatory practices that greatly increase the power of corporations relative to
states and can even prevent states from engaging in countercyclical measures designed to boost domestic demand. It has been pointed
out by consumer groups in the USA that the powers of the Food and Drug Administration to regulate products that affect health of
citizens could be constrained and curtailed by this agreement. Similarly, macroeconomic stimulus packages that focus on boosting
domestic demand for local production would be explicitly prohibited by such agreements.
All these are matters for concern because these agreements enable corporations to litigate against governments that are perceived
to be flouting these provisions because of their own policy goals or to protect the rights of their citizens. The Investor-State
Dispute Settlement mechanism enabled by these agreements is seen to be one of their most deadly features. Such litigation is then
subject to supranational tribunals to which sovereign national courts are expected to defer, but which have no human rights safeguards
and which do not see the rights of citizen as in any way superior to the "rights" of corporations to their profits. These courts
can conduct closed and secret hearings with secret evidence. They do not just interpret the rules but contribute to them through
case law because of the relatively vague wording of the text, which can then be subject to different interpretations, and therefore
are settled by case law. The experience thus far with such tribunals has been problematic. Since they are legally based on "equal"
treatment of legal persons with no primacy for human rights, they have become known for their pro-investor bias, partly due to the
incentive structure for arbitrators, and partly because the system is designed to provide supplementary guarantees to investors,
rather than making them respect host countries laws and regulations.
If all these features of the TPP and the TTIP were more widely known, it is likely that there would be even greater public resistance
to them in the US and in other countries. Even as it is, there is growing antagonism to the trade liberalisation that is seen to
bring benefits to corporations rather than to workers, at a period in history when secure employment is seen to be the biggest prize
of all.
So if such features of US-led globalisation are indeed under threat, that is probably a good thing for the people of the US
and for people in their trading partners who had signed up for such deals.
I was watching a speech Premier Li gave at the Economic Club of NY last night, and it was interesting to see how all his (vetted,
pre-selected) questions revolved around anxieties having to do with resistance to global trade deals. Li made a few pandering
comments about how much the Chinese love American beef (stop it! you're killing me! har har) meant to diffuse those anxieties,
but it became clear that the fear among TPTB of people's dissatisfaction with the current economic is palpable. Let's keep it
up!
A federal appeals court on Tuesday threw out a $147 million civil price fixing judgment against Chinese manufacturers of
vitamin C, ruling the companies weren't liable in U.S. courts because they were acting under the direction of Chinese authorities.
The case raised thorny questions of how courts should treat foreign companies accused of violating U.S. antitrust law when
they are following mandates of a foreign government.
"I was only following orders" might not have worked in Nuremberg, but it's a-ok in international trade.
The question arises: is Trump evil? Or merely awful? If Trump is merely awful, then we are not faced with voting for the
Lesser Evil or otherwise voting Third Party in protest. If we are faced with a choice between Evil and Awful, perhaps a vote for
Awful is a vote against Evil just by itself.
Trump has already back peddaled on his TPP stance. He now says he wants to renegotiate the TTP and other trade deals. Whatever
that means. Besides, Trump is a distraction, its Mike Pence you should be keeping your eye on. He's American Taliban pure and
simple.
This is simply false. Trump has backpedaled and frontpedaled on virtually everything, but on trade, he's got Sanders-level
consistency. He's been preaching the same sanity since the 90s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZpMJeynBeg
Hillary wants to start a war with Russia and pass the trade trifecta of TPP/TTIP/TiSA.
While I do not disagree with your comments, they must be placed in proper context: there is no substantive difference between
Mike Pence and Tim Kaine, and the people who staff the campaigns of Trump and Clinton are essentially the same. (Fundamentally
a replay of the 2000 election: Cheney/Bush vs. Lieberman/Gore.)
Trump was run to make Hillary look good, but that has turned out to be Mission Real Impossible!
We are seeing the absolute specious political theater at its worst, attempting to differentiate between Hillary Rodham Clinton
and the Trumpster – – – the only major difference is that Clinton has far more real blood on her and Bill's hands.
Nope, there is no lesser of evils this time around . . .
Great Comment. Important to knock down the meme that "this is the most significant or important election of our time" -
this is a carbon copy of what we have seen half a dozen times since WW2 alone and that's exactly how our elite handlers want it.
Limit the choices, stoke fear, win by dividing the plebes.
Let's face it, trade without the iron fist of capitalism will benefit us schlobs greatly and not the 1%. I'm all for being
against it (TPP etc) and will vote that way.
>only 1 per cent increase in exports due to the agreement up to 2032.
At that point American's wages will have dropped near enough to Chinese levels that we can compete in selling to First World
countries . assuming there are any left.
We'd also have put in enough puppet dictators in resource rich countries that we'd be able to get raw materials cheaply.
The low labor/raw material cost will provide a significant advantage for exports but alas, our 99% won't be able to afford our
own products.
Naaah, never been about competition, since nobody is actually vetted when they offshore those jobs or replace American workers
with foreign visa workers.
But to sum it up as succinctly as possible: the TPP is about the destruction of workers' rights; the destruction of local and
small businesses; and the loss of sovereignty. Few Americans are cognizant of just how many businesses are foreign owned today
in America; their local energy utility or state energy utility, their traffic enforcement company which was privatized, their
insurance company (GEICO, etc.).
I remember when a political action group back in the '00s thought they had stumbled on a big deal when someone had hacked into
the system of the Bretton Woods Committee (the lobbyist group for the international super-rich which ONLY communicates with the
Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader, and who shares the same lobbyist and D.C. office space as the Group of Thirty,
the lobbyist group for the central bankers [Larry Summers, Timothy Geithner, Mario Draghi, Ernesto Zedillo, Bill Dudley, etc.,
etc.]) and placed online their demand of the senate and the congress to kill the "Buy America" clause in the federal stimulus
program of a few years back (it was watered down greatly, and many exemptions were signed by then Commerce Secretary Gary Locke),
but such information went completely unnoticed or ignored, and of course, the TPP will completely outlaw any possibility of
a "Buy America" clause in the future!
The cynic in me wonders if under say NAFTA it would be possible for a multinational to sue for lost profits via isds if
TPP fails to pass. That the failure to enact trade "liberalizing" legislation could be construed as an active step against trade.
the way these things are so ambiguously worded, I wonder.
In June 2016, "[TransCanada] filed an arbitration claim under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) over President
Obama's rejection of the pipeline, making good on its January threat to take legal action against the US decision.
According to the official request for arbitration, the $15 billion tab is supposed to help the company recover costs and damages
that it suffered "as a result of the US administration's breach of its NAFTA obligations." NAFTA is a comprehensive trade agreement
between the United States, Canada, and Mexico that went into effect in January 1, 1994. Under the agreement, businesses can challenge
governments over investment disputes.
In addition, the company filed a suit in US Federal Court in Houston, Texas in January asserting that the Obama Administration
exceeded the power granted by the US Constitution in denying the project."
It should be noted that the Oregon Democrats who were free traitors and supported fast track authority were called out
that day: Bonamici, Blumenauer, Schrader and Wyden. The only Oregon Ds that opposed: Sen. Merkley and Congressman DeFazio.
Obama's rhetoric May 5, 2015 at the Nike campus was all about how small businesses would prosper. Congresswoman Bonamici clings
to this rationale in her refusal to tell angry constituents at town halls whether she supports the TPP.
The Market Realist is far more realistic about Oregon's free traitors' votes.
http://marketrealist.com/2015/05/trans-pacific-partnership-affects-footwear-firms/
"US tariffs on footwear imported from Vietnam can range from 5% to 40%, according to OTEXA (Office of Textiles and Apparel). Ratification
of the TPP will likely result in lower tariffs and higher profitability for Nike."
That appeals to the other big athletic corporations that cluster in the Portland metro: Columbia Sportswear and Under Armour.
Yes, and I would add a jingoistic one as well. Manifest destiny, the Monroe doctrine, etc. are not just history lessons
but are alive and well in the neoliberal mindset. The empire must keep expanding into every nook and cranny of the world, turning
them into good consumerist slaves.
Funny how little things change over the centuries.
The West Is The Best, Subhuman Are All The Rest. The perpetual mantra of the Uebermensch since Columbus first made landfall.
Hitler merely sought to apply the same to some Europeans.
"How the West Came to Rule: The Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism", 2015, Alexander Anievas and Kerem Nisancioglu.
The Dem candidate's husband made it appallingly clear what the purpose of the TPP is: "It's to make sure the future of
the Asia-Pacific region is not dominated by China".
Would be nice if they had even a passing thought for those people in a certain North American region located in between Canada
and Mexico.
Bill Clinton doesn't even care about "the rise of China". That's just a red herring he sets up to accuse opponents of TPP
of soft-on-China treasonism. It's just fabricating a stick to beat the TPP-opponents with. Clinton's support for MFN for China
shows what he really thinks about the "rise of China".
Clinton's real motivation is the same as the TPP's real reason, to reduce America to colonial possession status of the
anti-national corporations and the Global OverClass natural persons who shelter behind and within them.
If calling the International Free Trade Conspiracy "American" is enough to get it killed and destroyed, then I don't mind having
a bunch of foreigners calling the Free Trade Conspiracy "American". Just as long as they are really against it, and can really
get Free Trade killed and destroyed.
Excellent post. Thank you. Should these so called "trade agreements" be approved, perhaps Investor-State Dispute Settlement
(ISDS arbitration) futures can be created by Wall Street and made the next speculative "Play-of-the-day" so that everyone has
a chance to participate in the looting. Btw, can you loot your own house?
Obama. Liar or stupid? When Elizabeth Warren spoke out about the secrecy of the TPP, Obama, uncharacteristically, ran to
the cameras to state that the TPP was not secret and that the charge being leveled by Warren was false. Obama's statement was
that Warren had access to a copy so how dare she say it was secret.
At the time he made that statement Warren could go to an offsite location to read the TPP in the presence of a member of the
Trade Commission, could not have staff with her, could not take notes, and could not discuss anything she read with anyone else
after she left. Or face criminal charges.
Yeah. Nothing secret about that.
Obama (and Holder) effectively immunized every financial criminal involved in the great fraud and recession without bothering
to run for a camera, and to this day has refused and avoided any elaboration on the subject, but he wasted no time trying to bury
Warren publicly. The TPP is a continuation of Obama's give-away to corporations, or more specifically, the very important men
who run them who Obama works for. And he is going to pull out all stops to deliver to the men he respects.
And add to that everything from David Dayen's book (" Chain of Title ") on Covington & Burling and Eric Holder and President
Obama, and Thomas Frank's book ("Listen, Liberals") and people will have the full picture!
It's a virtual "black market" of "money laundering" (sterilization). In foreign trade, IMPORTS decrease (-) the money stock
of the importing country (and are a subtraction to domestic gDp figures), while EXPORTS increase (+) the money stock and domestic
gDp (earnings repatriated to the U.S), and the potential money supply, of the exporting country.
So, there's a financial incentive (to maximize profits), not to repatriate foreign income (pushes up our exchange rate, currency
conversion costs, if domestic re-investment alternatives are considered more circumscribed, plus taxes, etc.).
In spite of the surfeit of $s, and E-$ credits, and unlike the days in which world-trade required a Marshall Plan jump start,
trade surpluses increasingly depend on the Asian Tiger's convertibility issues.
I don't WANT the US writing the rules of trade any longer. We know what US-written rules do: plunge worker wages into slave
labor territory, guts all advanced country's manufacturing capability, sends all high tech manufacturing to 3rd world nations
or even (potential) unfriendlies like China (who can easily put trojan spyware hard code or other vulnerabilities into critical
microchips the way WE were told the US could/would when it was leading on this tech when I was serving in the 90s). We already
know that US-written rules is simply a way for mega corporations to extend patents into the ever-more-distant future, a set of
rules that hands more control of arts over to the MPAA, rules that gut environmental laws, etc. Who needs the US-written agreements
when this is the result?
Time to toss the rules and re-write them for the greatest benefit of the greatest number of NON-wealthy and for the benefit
of the planet/ecosystems, NOT for benefit of Wall St.
"... The motive is there (discredit competition), the evidence is there per the above, the legal standing is explicit, the only thing that is technically unquantifiable is the damage done. ..."
"... Both Firefox and Chrome have added the option to open in a "private" or "incognito" window or tab, which also gets you around the monthly limit. ..."
"... What NYT/WaPo lose in people not paying to read, they apparently can make up from people willing to pay to have things published. ..."
"... 'The man' who shot one round into the floor* at Comet Pizza may be an actor, Edgar Maddison Welch, who has done various jobs in media, including playing a "raver/victim". ..."
"... Yves, I would very much question your description of The Washington Post being " taken for a ride." over this story. ..."
"... It's worth pointing out that the newspapers owner Jeff Bezos was hired by the Secretary of Defense to a rather sinister sounding organisation called the " Defense Innovation Advisory Board " in July. The Boards mission statement is to .."focus on new technologies and organizational behavior and culture." Also, in addition "identify innovative private-sector practices, and technological solutions that the DoD could employ in the future." ..."
"... In short, Bezos, and his companies are now part of the MIC. I believe Googles CEO is also on the same board. ..."
"... Am I supposed to accept then that the Washington Post really thinks that the work of PropOrNot is honestly and objectively carried out? I can't. ..."
"... Dan Rather was put in an impossible position by supporters of GW Bush, despite the accuracy of the accusation. In this case, instead, the Post intentionally credits accusations for which it can offer no support (or at least declines to do so). I'll conclude that the Post acted maliciously and spitefully, as in slander, until it gives me reason to think otherwise. No person or media outlet can disseminate such shocking and potentially damaging accusations without our demanding accountability. ..."
"... If you read section 501 of this year's intelligence authorization bill, it directs the President to set up an interagency committee to 'counter active measures by Russia to exert covert influence over peoples and governments.' So that shows you that senators from both parties are clearly concerned about Russian covert influence efforts. ..."
"... "Never assume malice when incompetence will explain the behavior." unless a lengthy history of errors having the same bias suggests otherwise. ..."
"... I've been a lifelong journalist, 10 years on a daily newspaper, 20 years freelancing for magazines. The Wapo story so blatantly violated fundamental journalistic standards I cannot believe any experienced editor would not have realized that. My only possible conclusion is that irresistible pressure was placed on editors to publish the story. ..."
"... You fake a document that contains the truth. When you discredit the document, you discredit the truth. Maneuvers like that show why Karl Rove really was (in his own special way) a genius. ..."
"... I followed the Bush Texas Air National Guard story in detail at the time, and the Rather story in particular, and posted on it a good deal. So far as I know, nobody ever claimed the $10,000 reward that Gary Trudeau offered for anybody who would come forward as an eye witness to Bush performing his TANG duties. ..."
"... Your comment is heavy on speculation including the notion that Bezos is directly controlling what goes into the Post. I'd say the tight little club that is mainstream journalism doesn't require government subversion in order to represent a MIC point of view. As Gore Vidal said re the deep state: they don't need to conspire since they all think alike anyway. ..."
"... With all due respect it isn't speculation that Bezos has been hired by the secretary of defence to the Defence innovation advisory board. I think you have to be very naive if you think he has little input into the editorial running of the paper. Why else buy a newspaper these days? They hardly make much money. ..."
"... The British Guardian for example has been running articles and pushing a campaign of "The Internet we want." Which seems to consist of all critiscms of what it believes being censored. ..."
"... As to Yves point about the amateur nature of this list, and the attack on sites like NC in the article, Yves shouldn't assume that all these people are geniuses. It won't be the first or the last time that powerful people who run businesses make complete fools of themselves. ..."
"... And Bezos is too busy to have much/any input into editorial decisions. Newscycles are far too rapid. Bezos might make clear what the general priorities and tone are, but he's not going to be involved in individual stories save on a very exceptional basis, and news of that would get out to reporters and make the journalism rumor mill in a bad way. Marty Peretz, who unlike Bezos was the publisher and editor in chief of the magazine he bought (the vastly smaller The New Republic) had pet priorities (Israel) and preferences (falling in love with smart young male senior editors and then becoming disenchanted with them in a couple of years and driving them out) that were widely known. ..."
"... These guys are so ludicrous that folks like Bellingcat are denouncing them. ..."
"... Carl Bernstein has done some pretty deep reporting on decades of links bw CIA and media: http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php ..."
"... Even he says there are not really any links bw CIA and WaPo as propaganda channel. As much as it'd be fun to fantasize about Bezos being an evil operator for the MIC, I am inclined toward Yves' narrative of incompetence, and an (unhealthy) dose of confirmation bias-seeking. ..."
"... Much as I would believe anything about Bezos/WP, the article is so amateurish its very hard to believe it is part of an active top-down conspiracy. I'd be more inclined to think that it 'became known' among WP staff that certain Very Important People believe in the Russian propaganda conspiracy and that any articles highlighting this are more likely to be published than others. ..."
"... Off the top of my head, some of the worst examples of journalistic libel recently have primarily been driven not by malice or conspiracies, but because of active confirmation bias. The journalist and editor strongly believes X to be true, therefore when a source comes up to provide a potentially juicy story confirming the reality and evil of X, then they leap on the source without any professional scepticism. The Rolling Stone college rape hoax comes to mind, as does a notorious case in Ireland which nearly destroyed investigative journalism in the main TV company. ..."
"... In this exclusive report, distinguished research psychologist Robert Epstein explains the new study and reviews evidence that Google's search suggestions are biased in favor of Hillary Clinton. He estimates that biased search suggestions might be able to shift as many as 3 million votes in the upcoming presidential election in the US. ..."
"... Zerohedge was listed as a "fake news" site but, as I'm sure many here know, they do great, hard hitting economic analysis and have had their projections and theories confirmed many times with a far better track record than the mainstream sites covering the same subject. ..."
"... I'm not sure the guys behind all this mind losing the discussion in the end. As often, even if the smeared news sites, including NC, win the debate, they'll still lose the communication war. ..."
"... The background to all this, the attempt by the Clintonites to draw on Cold War stink reserves (a National Ideological Reserve, sorta like the National Petroleum Reserve) and, if not its complete failure, than its failure to be decisively effective, makes me think we are witnessing signs of a decisive weakening in elite communication control. PropOrNot advances the process. ..."
"... We fully endorse Yves Smith's efforts. ..."
"... Additionally, we note that the only reason we haven't followed up with a similar action is because i) the allegations were beyond laughable – we have rejected all of them on the record, and ii) there are simply too much other events taking place in what should otherwise be a quiet end to the year taking place to focus on what may be a lenghty, if gratifying, legal process. ..."
The thing with raising money is you have to ask, ask, ask a lot, lot, lot.
So when you need more money to continue this fight, just publish an updated case-statement
with an ask, and the lot of us will turn over our digits to support the fight. Many hands make
light work, as my mother always says.
It's refreshing to have something to support that is worthwhile in both principle and actuality.
Plus, the Post is a nasty piece of work. Same for the Times . Disgraceful and
distasteful. They are only fun to peruse for the self-parody.
Class Action libel suit against WaPo and the propornot website seems reasonable. The motive
is there (discredit competition), the evidence is there per the above, the legal standing is explicit,
the only thing that is technically unquantifiable is the damage done.
If the damages can be determined by some reasonable methodology then perhaps there is enough
to make it worth bringing a suit.
Regarding paying for the news in general, I'm assuming there aren't too many readers who who
actually want to pay WaPo or the NYT for anything at this point.
Those sites and others in recent years have imposed a monthly free article limit and I find
that sometimes after clicking on stories linked to from here I run up against the limit.
I'm sure most people here are already aware of this, but just so you are never tempted to subscribe
to their crappy organizations, all you need to do to get around the limit is use a different browser
to open the link.
My name is Choung, I'm Korean(south Korea).
Korean have experienced this kind of things many many times under the military dictatorship,
and now we were suffering from new blacklist.
Our president is daughter of the past infamous dictator.
I have visited your site and linked many good pieces. Sometimes translated them.
Korean mainstream media don't handle this story,
So, l wrote some pieces about it in public site.
I strongly express solidarity with you on behalf of many progressive Koreans.
Of tangential interest is the "news" report, if Yahoo can be so described, of the man charged
with various and sundry for threatening the pizzaria "implicated" in the pedophilia allegations
swirling around in the overheated miasma that passes for "common wisdom" today.
Of importance is the framing of the "story." The man is alleged to have gone off on his "adventure"
as the result of "fake news site" reporting. The assault on journalism is now switching from a
pure smear to a flanking maneuver. Whether real or manufactured, this act will probably be spun
to support further crackdowns on dissenting points of view. Guilt by (manufactured) association
can hurt just as badly as real guilt. All this plays out in the court of public opinion, a notoriously
rickety edifice in the best of times. \
'The man' who shot one round into the floor* at Comet Pizza may be an actor, Edgar Maddison
Welch, who has done various jobs in media, including playing a "raver/victim". Look him up on IMDB. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2625901/bio
Yves, I would very much question your description of The Washington Post being " taken
for a ride." over this story.
It's worth pointing out that the newspapers owner Jeff Bezos was hired by the Secretary
of Defense to a rather sinister sounding organisation called the " Defense Innovation Advisory
Board " in July. The Boards mission statement is to .."focus on new technologies and organizational
behavior and culture." Also, in addition "identify innovative private-sector practices, and
technological solutions that the DoD could employ in the future."
In short, Bezos, and his companies are now part of the MIC. I believe Googles CEO is also
on the same board. These so called private corporations are now part of the US govt that
works in the field of black ops. Remember also that Amazon has major contracts with the govt to
provide cloud computing storage. This is fascism in all but name. It remains to be seen how long
the new President Mr Trump will want to trust these people as they did so much to try to defeat
him.
I beg to differ. No one would want to damage their credibility above all in undermining a narrative
(in Beltway-speak) that they are tying to promote.
Remember the Dan Rather scandal? Unlike this
case, the underlying fact set about George Bush was accurate, but Dan Rather falling for bogus
evidence not only forced Rather to resign, but
diverted attention from what should have been a scandal if properly reported and
confused any attempts to discuss it (as in the Rather evidence being bad made casual observers
think the dirt on Bush was untrue).
I was also struck by the statement that the Post was 'taken for a ride'. Am I supposed
to accept then that the Washington Post really thinks that the work of PropOrNot is honestly and
objectively carried out? I can't.
Dan Rather was put in an impossible position by supporters of GW Bush, despite the accuracy
of the accusation. In this case, instead, the Post intentionally credits accusations for which
it can offer no support (or at least declines to do so). I'll conclude that the Post acted maliciously
and spitefully, as in slander, until it gives me reason to think otherwise. No person or media
outlet can disseminate such shocking and potentially damaging accusations without our demanding
accountability.
And if you look at the what the Post
said to Consortium News (hat tip UserFriendly), it apparently considers just chatting with
a source for a bit an adequate basis for validating a smear against 200 publications. They effectively
admit they did no independent verification:
The reply came from the newspaper's vice president for public relations, Kristine Coratti
Kelly, who thanked me "for reaching out to us" before presenting the Post's response, quoted
here in full:
"The Post reported on the work of four separate sets of researchers, as well as independent
experts, who have examined Russian attempts to influence American democracy. PropOrNot was
one. The Post did not name any of the sites on PropOrNot's list of organizations that it said
had - wittingly or unwittingly - published or echoed Russian propaganda. The Post reviewed
PropOrNot's findings and our questions about them were answered satisfactorily during the course
of multiple interviews."
Speaking of, do you think your inclusion on the initial "PropOrNot" list is an example of malice
or incompetence? Could it be some half-assed algorithm scanned the web for sites linking to RT
(which I can remember at least one instance popping up in Water Cooler/Links), and called it a
day? That seems the most plausible to me, but it also seems plausible that there are many organizations
which would want to discredit NC.
I haven't seen "The List", but am confident that sites like Moon of Alabama and The Saker are
on it. Saker is explicitly pro-Russia (this is not a criticism per se; I found his pieces on the
Ukraine/Donbas crisis in 2014-15 to be more illuminating than most of the very little that one
could find in the US MSM, for example) and MoA is typically skeptical of US international military
adventures.
Pieces from both of these sites have been, from time to time, linked at the NC daily
news links page. Not sure, but there may be a few links over the past couple of years to items
at Russia Insider as well. It may be that 2nd order associations were enough to "merit" NC's inclusion
on "The List."
But last week Timberg was still touting his "independent experts" in an article on a proposed
new committee mandated in the 2017 intelligence authorization bill. He quoted Wyden:
If you read section 501 of this year's intelligence authorization bill, it directs the President
to set up an interagency committee to 'counter active measures by Russia to exert covert influence
over peoples and governments.' So that shows you that senators from both parties are clearly
concerned about Russian covert influence efforts.
Linking his earlier story with this information may be self-important stupidity on Timberg's
part, but stupidity does not actually preclude malice.
In any case, if senators are treating Russian influence as fact when we have yet to be shown
any proof of its existence that is a sign this article, be it folly or malice, needs further discrediting,
so thanks and more power to you!
That's an awful aphorism. Never discount one just because the other is a potential explanation,
especially if the pattern indicates they'll abdicate their core responsibilities for access and
relish going after those they resent for calling them out on it.
Having said that, one can see how you personally wouldn't want to risk libel, but I will make
no such assumptions about the likes of the beltway press.
I've been a lifelong journalist, 10 years on a daily newspaper, 20 years freelancing for magazines.
The Wapo story so blatantly violated fundamental journalistic standards I cannot believe any experienced
editor would not have realized that. My only possible conclusion is that irresistible pressure
was placed on editors to publish the story.
"Dan Rather was put in an impossible position by supporters of GW Bush, despite the accuracy
of the accusation."
Excuse me.
Rather (and CBS) had to admit that the documents used to make those accusations were fake.
How do you have "accurate accusations" when those accusations are based on faked documents?
Rather was not put in a bad positions by supporters of GW Bush.
He was put in a bad position by Dan Rather.
BTW, the Rather incident is a perfect illustration on how fake news gets reported. The underlying
accusation so matched Rather's world view that he decided to run with them without doing any sort
of fact checking. Or checking the reliability of the one source for the story.
Doing so would have prevented Rather from reporting that story and having to resign in disgrace.
This is why fact checking and verifying stories via multiple sources is so important when reporting
news.
It prevents reporting fake news.
The reason we have so much "fake news" is that too many reporters have abandoned basic journalistic
practices.
> How do you have "accurate accusations" when those accusations are based on faked documents?
You fake a document that contains the truth. When you discredit the document, you discredit
the truth. Maneuvers like that show why Karl Rove really was (in his own special way) a genius.
I followed the Bush Texas Air National Guard story in detail at the time, and the Rather story
in particular, and posted on it a good deal. So far as I know, nobody ever claimed the $10,000
reward that Gary Trudeau offered for anybody who would come forward as an eye witness to Bush
performing his TANG duties.
Your comment is heavy on speculation including the notion that Bezos is directly controlling
what goes into the Post. I'd say the tight little club that is mainstream journalism doesn't require
government subversion in order to represent a MIC point of view. As Gore Vidal said re the deep
state: they don't need to conspire since they all think alike anyway.
More likely the Post article is an example of journo dinosaurs striking out at websites they
now regard as their rivals. Print journalism has been brought low, financially, by the internet
and television.
The people who work at the Post don't dare attack television because they all
want to be on it. However the web is likely regarded as an easy target and I've long been under
the impression that mainstream journalists know practically nothing about the internet other than
Twitter and a few favored sites like Politico.
While it's potentially the greatest communication
medium ever devised, of course people visiting the internet have to bring their own truth filter.
Which is why some of us have landed here. NC seems serious about getting to the truth, and if
you don't like what's written you get to say so. What the MSM really resents is people thinking
for themselves.
With all due respect it isn't speculation that Bezos has been hired by the secretary of defence
to the Defence innovation advisory board. I think you have to be very naive if you think he has
little input into the editorial running of the paper. Why else buy a newspaper these days? They
hardly make much money.
I suspect that this outfit PropOrNot was set up before the election of Trump. They assumed
Clinton was going to win and this was the The begining of an onslaught against the so called alternative
media that was going to be waged once Hilary was safely inside the White House. Full regulation
of the Internet is their aim. This agenda has been pushed in other so called liberal newspapers.
The British Guardian for example has been running articles and pushing a campaign of "The Internet
we want." Which seems to consist of all critiscms of what it believes being censored.
As to Yves point about the amateur nature of this list, and the attack on sites like NC in
the article, Yves shouldn't assume that all these people are geniuses. It won't be the first or
the last time that powerful people who run businesses make complete fools of themselves.
I doubt
they thought they were going to be called out on it, and if Clinton won the election it didn't
really matter because they would have the power to come after the alternative media. Trumps election
has put a spanner in the works .for now. It remains to be seen if he will try to censor the Internet
under pressure from elites.
No it wasn't. They bought the URL only in late August. The first tweet was November 5. The
site appears to have been published at the earliest as of November 9, but from what I can tell,
it was November 18.
And Bezos is too busy to have much/any input into editorial decisions. Newscycles are far too
rapid. Bezos might make clear what the general priorities and tone are, but he's not going to
be involved in individual stories save on a very exceptional basis, and news of that would get
out to reporters and make the journalism rumor mill in a bad way. Marty Peretz, who unlike Bezos
was the publisher and editor in chief of the magazine he bought (the vastly smaller The New Republic)
had pet priorities (Israel) and preferences (falling in love with smart young male senior editors
and then becoming disenchanted with them in a couple of years and driving them out) that were
widely known.
Agree that Bezos is an unlikely instigator of this farce. More likely, from what we know about
the CIA/Mockingbird history, the person responsible is most likely a CIA plant at the senior editor
level.
I have to beg to differ re CIA plant. These guys are so ludicrous that folks like Bellingcat
are denouncing them. I won't link even here to the original site since that helps them in Google,
but just go look at the FAQ on the baddie's site or their Twitter feed. No one who was a pro in
any field would see them as serious. I have no idea what the reporter was smoking. But the article
reads as if they never did the most basic verification, like a web search. They didn't recognize
that the "report" which was The List, was already up and they either double down on or try to
cover for their mistake by "updating" the article saying the "report" went up Saturday November
26, when it had been up since at least November 18.
Even he says there are not really any links bw CIA and WaPo as propaganda channel. As much
as it'd be fun to fantasize about Bezos being an evil operator for the MIC, I am inclined toward
Yves' narrative of incompetence, and an (unhealthy) dose of confirmation bias-seeking.
Much as I would believe anything about Bezos/WP, the article is so amateurish its very hard
to believe it is part of an active top-down conspiracy. I'd be more inclined to think that it
'became known' among WP staff that certain Very Important People believe in the Russian propaganda
conspiracy and that any articles highlighting this are more likely to be published than others.
Off the top of my head, some of the worst examples of journalistic libel recently have primarily
been driven not by malice or conspiracies, but because of active confirmation bias. The journalist
and editor strongly believes X to be true, therefore when a source comes up to provide a potentially
juicy story confirming the reality and evil of X, then they leap on the source without any professional
scepticism. The Rolling
Stone college rape hoax comes to mind, as does a
notorious case in Ireland
which nearly destroyed investigative journalism in the main TV company.
Having said that, I think it is strongly likely that certain elements in the establishment
(probably the Clinton part of it) was actively pushing the Putin is Goebbels line for several
months – but I doubt there is any structured conspiracy – these things tend to just become part
of received wisdom, and there are plenty of bottom feeding journalists ready to join the parade.
Well, there's negligence, and then there's wanton, feckless, scurrilous, criminal negligence.
Recompense accordingly.
They certainly know or ought to know that, with the entire left field virtually empty, the
Bill of Rights in the round hole, and because they've foreclosed global working class solidarity
with walls, laws and red tape, (if that's too much of a stretch you don't belong), all they have
to do is squirm at us and we crash.
Well, there's negligence, and then there's wanton, feckless, scurrilous, criminal negligence.
Recompense accordingly.
They certainly know or ought to know that, with the entire left field virtually empty, the
Bill of Rights in the round hole, and because they've foreclosed global working class solidarity
with walls, laws and red tape, (if that's too much of a stretch you don't belong), all they have
to do is squirm at us and we crash.
"What the MSM really resents is people thinking for themselves."
Here are other examples of undoubtedly top-down suppression of anything other than the "kingmaker"
and corrupt status quo maintainer narratives owned by the six mega-corporations that control 90%
of what we see and hear.
The stealthy, Eric Schmidt-backed startup that's working to put Hillary Clinton in the White
House – October 09, 2015
An under-the-radar startup funded by billionaire Eric Schmidt has become a major technology
vendor for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, underscoring the bonds between Silicon Valley
and Democratic politics.
The Groundwork, according to Democratic campaign operatives and technologists, is part of efforts
by Schmidt -- the executive chairman of Google parent-company Alphabet -- to ensure that Clinton has
the engineering talent needed to win the election. And it is one of a series of quiet investments
by Schmidt that recognize how modern political campaigns are run, with data analytics and digital
outreach as vital ingredients that allow candidates to find, court, and turn out critical voter
blocs.
Research Proves Google Manipulates Autocomplete Suggestions to Favor Clinton – 12 Sep 2016
In this exclusive report, distinguished research psychologist Robert Epstein explains the new
study and reviews evidence that Google's search suggestions are biased in favor of Hillary Clinton.
He estimates that biased search suggestions might be able to shift as many as 3 million votes
in the upcoming presidential election in the US.
Ironically, Sputnick News IS, I believe, a Russian supported site, but just on a hunch and
noticing search autocompletion suggestion disparities myself, I had INDEPENDENTLY confirmed what
Epstein proved a month before the topic hit the on-line news.
I even emailed a few web sites about
it, but they didn't run with it AS THEY SHOULD HAVE as they would have scooped Sputnick News.
It was easy to prove, BTW. Google Trends data which is what is normally used to create autocomplete
suggestions on Google did not match the suggestions made, but the search autocomplete suggestions
on every other search engine DID.
YouTube and Facebook censorship against political conservative video bloggers (Google owns
YouTube)
Zerohedge was listed as a "fake news" site but, as I'm sure many here know, they do great,
hard hitting economic analysis and have had their projections and theories confirmed many times
with a far better track record than the mainstream sites covering the same subject.
My heartfelt support (and contribution) will be with you as you take on one of the most egregiously
insulting to its' readers and rot-riddled collection of hacks and mouthpieces. Now a propaganda
outlet but once at least a flaky effort at journalism, today,s Washington Post has earned an encounter
of the costly kind with a good lawyer or two, many times over.
.Illegitemi non carborundum! (Don't let the bastards wear you down!).
As I noted here this weekend, I have cancelled my subscription to the WaPo and will be sending
a check to NC in the amount of what I would have paid for it.
I am embarrassed that it took me so long to do so, but having been a subscriber since 1979
[except for when I lived elsewhere], the Post was rather a habit.
I specifically mentioned the Timberg story as the reason for my cancellation, and hope this
information will work its way up the Post food chain.
Also, Amazon is as dead to me as Walmart. I refuse to buy from either of them.
The "Fake News" story was vetted by editors at the WaPo before it was published. That they
published an article that no reputable High School paper would have touched with a 10 foot pole
speaks volumes. Hubris?.
Did they think that because it was published by the WaPo that no one would question it?
It was certainly a bold thing to do ( And stupid) unless the person or persons who decided to
publish this trash thought they had the kind of powerful backing that would protect them from
the consequences.
I expect the WaPo to try to weasel their way out of this embarassment and urge you not to back
down or compromise on your demands, if they don't get their noses rubbed in it they will crap
on you again.
When the National Enquirer has become more respectable than the WaPo ( And it is!) we are living
in strange times indeed.
If this effort begins to build a stronger alliance between truth telling internet sites -- thus
promoting change from the ground up -- perhaps it will lead to quicker consequences for Wapo and
others who pull this kind of stunt. If it becomes obvious that,
not only will your bogus story increase the traffic to these sites at the very time they are pointing
out what an idiot you are, but you also reliably get sued,
maybe it won't be as much fun anymore.
I'm not sure the guys behind all this mind losing the discussion in the end.
As often, even if the smeared news sites, including NC, win the debate, they'll still lose the
communication war.
The original revelation is buzzing around, and everybody loves it. If there is a rebuttal,
it will be a boring article nobody will comment. What people will remember is : "the russians
helped Trump win, and some fake news site like NC were their mouthpieces. I distinctly remember
the articles, even if the MSM now tries to hide the truth"
Not sure how to fight that, except with an even better message like : "There is a conspiracy
by the WP to smear independent reporting."
Sadly, I'm not sure it is possible to do that in all honestly. My opinion is that stupidity and
ignorance are at work here (and everywhere), not some well organised effort. And the thoughtful
voice is just boring.
I'm not so sure. This scandal might be something of a test of your argument, which predicts
that, similar to the horrible fate of Gary Webb, the named sites will forever have a residue of
doubt to deal with. Webb's story went the way it did because it was semiforgotten, drifting off
into the collective preconscious, vaguely malodorous. Surely that can be avoided here. Opportunities
for reminding readers of the farce and the revealed intentions of its promoters are abundant.
One thing to consider might be to put the WaPo under steady critical scrutiny. For example, as
above, the WaPo Whopper of the week.
The background to all this, the attempt by the Clintonites to draw on Cold War stink reserves
(a National Ideological Reserve, sorta like the National Petroleum Reserve) and, if not its complete
failure, than its failure to be decisively effective, makes me think we are witnessing signs of
a decisive weakening in elite communication control. PropOrNot advances the process.
Keep needling outlets that picked up the Post story and demanding a prominent apology for irresponsible
reporting. Send them the FAIR link, send them this one. Ask why they haven't reaffirmed their
commitment (sic) to basic journalistic principles . Be a damn nuisance. (I've often thought what
a pity it is that "public nuisance" has a prior signification.)
I'm relieved to know that James Moody will be representing Naked Capitalism in its authentic
quest to right an egregious (and either reckless or intentional, in my opinion) wrong committed
by a major newspaper of record that purports to represent the Fourth Estate.
Mr. Moody is technically competent, deeply experienced and highly ethical.
It's critical that the establishment-driven & coordinated assault on many credible alternative
media outlets be halted if free speech and free criticism (which mainstream media sources have
not only failed in protecting, but have willingly attempted to suppress views contrary to establishment-approved
concepts) is to survive in the United States and elsewhere.
There is a coordinated attempt by long-standing establishment media sources and government
to discredit and de-legitimize very authentic, well-intentioned and thought-provoking non-mainstream
media sources, which, if successful, would amount to nothing less than basic censorship and a
wholesale de-democratization of news reporting and editorializing.
That the Washington Post allowed for and even assisted a highly questionable and anonymous
source to cast a wide net of aspersions over so many clearly legitimate alternative media sources
(such as Naked Capitalism) is nothing short of shameful McCarthy-era attempts to stifle free political
expression of substance, and must be challengers if there's any hope in preserving the very system
of a free exchange of ideas and speech.
I can't believe the unfairness of this allegation made by this propaganda watchdog website.
I mean, if I were a Hillary supporter, I would be in tears over this. But as a Bernie supporter,
I have learned to get over my butthurt.
"You identified and thus denigrated Naked Capitalism, one of the sites targeted in the "study"
as one of the "right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding
potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal
of global financiers. The effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions
and promote fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia."
"shadowy cabal of global financiers" ???? We always use the stock symbols GS and JPM here.
WTF is shadowy about that?????????????? You can look the symbols up in Bloomberg!
Well, I guess maybe some fake news got posted here in the comments section, but I distinctly
recall discussing real news, like when Hillary compared Putin to Hitler, or the Cookie Monster
thing in Kiev. Or NATO scattering nukes around Eastern Europe. Or Soros and the CIA funding a
long term propaganda war in Eastern Europe. Even Fox News would call that fair and balanced fake
news. But at any rate, Russia shouldn't view any of this as hostile. That would just be childish.
Confirming the impression that the Z site monitors NC closely for useful content, Tyler Durden
now has a post up titled "Fake News" Site Threatens Washington Post With Defamation Suit, Demands
Retraction .
The post includes the Scribd document of Moody's letter.
Since the Z site reportedly generates a six-figure annual profit, you'd think this deep-pocketed
site would join the suit (should litigation regrettably become necessary). Whaddya say, Tyler(s)?
He's actually quite technically expert (as in he can take apart and analyze software) which
is why I don't get the aol.com either. Although he may have been an early aol.com user, and I
am told it is a nuisance to extract your contacts from aol.com, and he may have decided it was
not worth the fuss.
Now the post is "gray boxed" (pinned) on the Z site, making it one of two lead articles that
apparently are expected to generate a high level of interest and comments.
It's not monetary support, however, the story now ends thus,
We fully endorse Yves Smith's efforts.
Additionally, we note that the only reason we haven't followed up with a similar action
is because i) the allegations were beyond laughable – we have rejected all of them on the record,
and ii) there are simply too much other events taking place in what should otherwise be a quiet
end to the year taking place to focus on what may be a lenghty, if gratifying, legal process.
Pass the popcorn! Mr. Moody is a terrific lawyer. I just hope that if Aurora Advisors winds
up owning ScAmazon, the workers and suppliers start getting treated decently!
You're too nice to WaPo Yves, maybe this was incompetence but Bezos and WaPo are terrible and
they did too many hit pieces on Trump which included false information, so this is not a coincidence.
They are the fake news, and that's terrifying. Good luck and may you destroy them.
Good luck. I agree with your demands and hope that they are satisfied.
I gave up a long time ago on either the tv or mainstream print media as a source of credible
or factual news. There are some print publications out there that do a rather decent job at reporting
the news more accurately, but the ones I know of are mostly smaller local newspapers with very
limited budgets.
All the Bigs are propaganda pure and simple. I gave up reading the NYT and the WaPoo a long
long time ago. It would embarress a parrot to have either on the bottom of their cage to catch
their sh*t.
Where's Bezos? I'm still speculating this is Bezos' answer to Trump's birthing. Annoy the press
like hell. Let them whine and sue. Then save the country.
Addressing the Whappo's "incompetence" is genius bec. it cannot shake the label. It will stick
with them now, whereas if you had gone for the throat with an accusation of malice the Whappo
could have escaped all that disgust and resentment because to prove malice you have to prove intent.
Like fraud. It's hard to do.
It has been a difficult to watch these past 8 years under the continued conversion of whatever
was left of MSM being turned to merely a propaganda arm for the Executive branch. It is absolutely
hilarious that they had the audacity to write the article in the first place since MSM is the
only "real" fake news outlet. I do believe it will be a difficult road to achieve a full retraction
or even an acknowledgement because they will hide behind the concepts of editorial content. Nothing
they write is vetted or researched because they merely conjure articles to fit their preconceptions.
If nothing else, pushing back is still the right thing to do . just remember to not let it consume
you to the detriment of your continued good work on this site.
Does the threat of civil litigation even matter to an organization with Bezos' endless resources
to draw on? They would probably love the idea of a war of monetary attrition–they can't lose that
game. It seems to me the weak link might be the creators of the website itself. Unlike a hardened
target like the WaPo, they are unlikely to have such bottomless resources. The first step may
be to use investigation or litigation to strip away the anonymity of the publishers of the site,
probably by going after the hosting company, then to attack them directly. And if it turns out
that filing website whois papers via a proxy privacy service is 100% surefire, ironclad protection
from any legal accountability, then there really is no longer anything like accountability for
web publishing. If that is the case then there is nothing stopping you from retaliating in kind,
creating an anonymous website accusing Bezos of being a child pornographer or whatever and imploring
that he and his lawyers negotiate with you to have the accusations retracted at your pleasure.
Either filing whois papers for a domain using a privacy proxy is an unbreakable defense against
litigation, or it isn't.
My experience with journalists (as an organiser of non-profit activities) has convinced me
that nowadays they do little to no fact-checking. In one particular case I know of, mainstream
UK media including the Independent and the BBC publicized a man that, if they had simply bothered
doing a Google search on his name, they'd immediately realize he had zero credibility on the field
he was claiming expertise on.
This should hardly be a surprise to anyone who has followed the story of climate change, with
dozens of so-called "climate change" experts being allowed to write opinion pieces on mainstream
media, in spite of having no credentials, and sometimes having long credentials of having lobbied
for every dubious cause known to mankind, from the health safety of tobacco to the lack of issues
with pesticides.
The real issue is that it's getting damned near impossible for anyone to find out the truth
about any controversial issue without spending a long time researching the subject. And most people
don't have the time for this, and don't even know that they should regard the news on any controversial
issue, from any source, with great suspicion.
If one is serious about pursuit of a retraction and apology from Wapo, support for NC's cautious
approach is in order. It will not help the case being advanced to overstate with inferences about
WaPo's motives. Sticking to the already known objective facts will be enough to produce the desired
result, public discredit of WaPo by its own hand.
That's said with full sympathy for the feelings on WaPo, a publication that now ranks with
W. R. Hearst's in sheer depths of vileness. And that in general is rightfully laid at the door
of its libertardian owner Jeff Bezos, a man whose enterprises mark all that is most evil about
US capitalism today. But none of this belongs in the retraction / apology effort. As I see it,
the effort is designed to produce a specific effect from specific cause. That effort is best supported
by not second-guessing it at this point and over-loading it with meanings that can't be demonstrated
within the context of the effort. Let's give it a chance to run and review / critique the result
afterward.
Finally and for the record, this is said as someone with no sympathy for the Putin regime,
one that no leftist should have any truck with, "conscious or unconscious", especially from an
"anti-imperialist" POV. The Putin regime is right wing, capitalist, neo-nationalist, revanchist,
and neo-imperialist (and not at all "wannabe"). It supports with armed force a regime in Damascus
that has destroyed "its own country" to save itself. It IS a regime ideologically congruent with
Donald Trump's tendencies. IOW Putin's Russia is a lot like the United States in political coloration
right now.
Nevertheless, residents of the USA must first and foremost act against repression conducted
by their own government and its political agents such as WaPo. We can agree to disagree on Putin
while showing solidarity against domestic repression, especially of this poisonous neo-McCarthyite
type. That is only common sense. Our main opponent is always at home.
After more than a few decades of educational decline and loss of expertise, we have arrived
at the Age of Incompetence. That the WaPo would hire such nitwits is all the proof one needs.
The most reasonable hypothesis I can see is that the PropOrNot effort is a response by the
MSM to reassert information control, having lost it so spectacularly during the election. The
alternative media's counterstory has proven to be more faithful to reality than the picture presented
by elite journalists. Elite journalists themselves have been compromised by the Wikileaks revelations.
The MSM's reputation is in tatters and SOMETHING MUST BE DONE, at least until enough time has
gone by for the public to forget how truly dismally deceptive was their coverage.
A consistently suspicious pattern of MSM behavior is their incuriousness, and in the present
situation, one of the many of the herd of interrogatory elephants in the room is, why isn't the
MSM investigating the people who make up PropOrNot? (Or asking any of the questions NS has posed).
Would that not be newsworthy?
I agree with this assessment wholeheartedly. I am afraid that the strategy of the dem establishment
and their elite media allies over the next 4 years will be to regain narrative control via censorship,
rather than make any attempts at governing like small-d democrats.
The red baiting is popping out from all sides. Last week Amy Goodman interviewed Bernie – the
first (she basically ignored him through the primary). She started off with "you were considered
a fringe candidate " and he politely reminded her he has been in congress for 25 years. Then she
said that he had been red-baited during the primary by Clinton over Castro and the Sandinistas
and "could he speak some about Castro and Latin America?" And at every opportunity she reminded
the audience he was an independent, not a Democrat, "a socialist."
I have been told that Sarah Palin blew her chance to be Sec. of Interior, or VA, or whatever
it was because she criticized Trump for "crony capitalism" over the Carrier deal.
I'm totally confused about who our friends are these days.
How has "Beall's List" of so-called "predatory" open-access academic research publishers escaped
a similar lawsuit? Some of these publishers were shut down as a direct result of being named so
the list has undeniably done damage since being published in 2013. There seem to be strong parallels
between "Fake News" and "Fake Science" censorship efforts.
It's not unreasonable the Washington Post would confuse Naked Capitalism with a Porn site.
But not a Russian porn site, that's just not credible since Naked Capitalism is English.
They should just admit it they made up fake news. They probably never read anything on the
site - or even looked at the pictures of naked animals. Naked pussys. Lots of those. With garish
flash photography. It's enough to embarrass anybody with refined aesthetic sensibilities.
But it isn't Porn and it's not Russian. I've never seen a Russian pussy here. Usually they're
American or maybe from England. Sometimes they're even guys. That's kind of confusing, but a cat
is a cat to most people. I'm not a veterinarian anyway.
Fake news is the scourge of the internet. Fake news has been around a long time, as long as
there were newspapers in fact. It started in the 1700s and it kept going. Before that it was fake
but it was only passed by word of mouth.
Now there's fake pictures. Fake news with fake pictures can sometimes be art - but only if
you see it in the movies, where some drug addled lunatic pretends they're somebody else, then
they go into rehab after the movie is made and sometimes before. News should be real, in theory,
but in reality it isn't. Somebody makes it up but you don't always know who. That's why jourmalism
is so important, because you want the person making it up to be accurate! You don't want them
making up Porn and publishing that. Why pay for that? People make that up themselves evidently
and don't even need a newspaper.
So if they fell for the fake Porn angle here - thinking that Naked meant Porn, and from Russia
of all places! - that must mean they're either making it up or they don't know what real news
is from anywhere. Since it could be from other places besides Russia. If they went to a museum
they'd see naked things but not Porn. There's a museum of things but it's not news or porn, it's
just whatever. I'm just being honest. It doesn't have to be confusing, even for somebody who writes
and takes pictures.
The tendency towards consensus has been apparent in the mainstream media for forty plus years
, long before the internet came along and upset things. What has caused mass hysteria in those
circles is the sound of these other uncontrolled and uncontrollable voices . Years ago the only
comment section of a national newspaper was ' Letters to the Editor ' which the editor had the
veto over, never mind editorial responsibility for, and he / she took their job seriously ( in
my first hand experience ) . Those days are long gone . Imagine you are a young, or even a seasoned
journalist on one of these papers and you think you have the ear of the editor , the temptation
to bring forth a story ( ' scoop ' in old – fashioned newspaper speak ) that gives umpteen internet
sites a good kicking must be hard to resist. Trouble is the story was trashed before it hit the
ground . And so another nail goes in the coffin of the mainstream press .
Blast from the past. Bill Clinton position on illegal immegtation.
Notable quotes:
"... Today's Democratic Party also believes we must remain a nation of laws. We cannot tolerate illegal immigration and we must stop it. For years before Bill Clinton became President, Washington talked tough but failed to act. In 1992, our borders might as well not have existed. The border was under-patrolled, and what patrols there were, were under-equipped. Drugs flowed freely. Illegal immigration was rampant. Criminal immigrants, deported after committing crimes in America, returned the very next day to commit crimes again. ..."
"... President Clinton is making our border a place where the law is respected and drugs and illegal immigrants are turned away. We have increased the Border Patrol by over 40 percent; in El Paso, our Border Patrol agents are so close together they can see each other. Last year alone, the Clinton Administration removed thousands of illegal workers from jobs across the country. Just since January of 1995, we have arrested more than 1,700 criminal aliens and prosecuted them on federal felony charges because they returned to America after having been deported. ..."
"... However, as we work to stop illegal immigration, we call on all Americans to avoid the temptation to use this issue to divide people from each other. We deplore those who use the need to stop illegal immigration as a pretext for discrimination . And we applaud the wisdom of Republicans like Mayor Giuliani and Senator Domenici who oppose the mean-spirited and short-sighted effort of Republicans in Congress to bar the children of illegal immigrants from schools - it is wrong, and forcing children onto the streets is an invitation for them to join gangs and turn to crime. ..."
Democrats remember that we are a nation of immigrants. We recognize the extraordinary contribution
of immigrants to America throughout our history. We welcome legal immigrants to America. We support
a legal immigration policy that is pro-family, pro-work, pro-responsibility, and pro-citizenship
, and we deplore those who blame immigrants for economic and social problems.
We know that citizenship is the cornerstone of full participation in American life. We are
proud that the President launched Citizenship USA to help eligible immigrants become United States
citizens. The Immigration and Naturalization Service is streamlining procedures, cutting red tape,
and using new technology to make it easier for legal immigrants to accept the responsibilities
of citizenship and truly call America their home.
Today's Democratic Party also believes we must remain a nation of laws. We cannot tolerate
illegal immigration and we must stop it. For years before Bill Clinton became President, Washington
talked tough but failed to act. In 1992, our borders might as well not have existed. The border
was under-patrolled, and what patrols there were, were under-equipped. Drugs flowed freely. Illegal
immigration was rampant. Criminal immigrants, deported after committing crimes in America, returned
the very next day to commit crimes again.
President Clinton is making our border a place where the law is respected and drugs and
illegal immigrants are turned away. We have increased the Border Patrol by over 40 percent; in
El Paso, our Border Patrol agents are so close together they can see each other. Last year alone,
the Clinton Administration removed thousands of illegal workers from jobs across the country.
Just since January of 1995, we have arrested more than 1,700 criminal aliens and prosecuted them
on federal felony charges because they returned to America after having been deported.
However, as we work to stop illegal immigration, we call on all Americans to avoid the
temptation to use this issue to divide people from each other. We deplore those who use the need
to stop illegal immigration as a pretext for discrimination . And we applaud the wisdom of Republicans
like Mayor Giuliani and Senator Domenici who oppose the mean-spirited and short-sighted effort
of Republicans in Congress to bar the children of illegal immigrants from schools - it is wrong,
and forcing children onto the streets is an invitation for them to join gangs and turn to crime.
Democrats want to protect American jobs by increasing criminal and civil sanctions against
employers who hire illegal workers , but Republicans continue to favor inflammatory rhetoric over
real action. We will continue to enforce labor standards to protect workers in vulnerable industries.
We continue to firmly oppose welfare benefits for illegal immigrants. We believe family members
who sponsor immigrants into this country should take financial responsibility for them, and be
held legally responsible for supporting them.
"... Rather than join the struggle of imperial rivalries, the United States could use its emerging power to suppress those rivalries altogether. ..."
"... "a power unlike any other. It had emerged, quite suddenly, as a novel kind of 'super-state,' exercising a veto over the financial and security concerns of the other major states of the world." ..."
"... Peter Heather, the great British historian of Late Antiquity, explains human catastrophes with a saying of his father's, a mining engineer: "If man accumulates enough combustible material, God will provide the spark." So it happened in 1929. The Deluge that had inundated the rest of the developed world roared back upon the United States. ..."
"... "The originality of National Socialism was that, rather than meekly accepting a place for Germany within a global economic order dominated by the affluent English-speaking countries, Hitler sought to mobilize the pent-up frustrations of his population to mount an epic challenge to this order." ..."
"... He could not accept subordination to the United States because, according to his lurid paranoia, "this would result in enslavement to the world Jewish conspiracy, and ultimately race death." ..."
"... By 1944, foreigners constituted 20 percent of the German workforce and 33 percent of armaments workers (less than 9 percent of the population of today's liberal and multicultural Germany is foreign-born). ..."
"... The Hitlerian vision of a united German-led Eurasia equaling the Anglo-American bloc proved a crazed and genocidal fantasy. ..."
The United States might claim a broader democracy than those that prevailed in Europe. On the
other hand, European states mobilized their populations with an efficiency that dazzled some Americans
(notably Theodore Roosevelt) and appalled others (notably Wilson). The magazine founded by pro-war
intellectuals in 1914, The New Republic, took its title precisely because its editors regarded
the existing American republic as anything but the hope of tomorrow.
Yet as World War I entered its third year-and the first year of Tooze's story-the balance of power
was visibly tilting from Europe to America. The belligerents could no longer sustain the costs of
offensive war. Cut off from world trade, Germany hunkered into a defensive siege, concentrating its
attacks on weak enemies like Romania. The Western allies, and especially Britain, outfitted their
forces by placing larger and larger war orders with the United States. In 1916, Britain bought more
than a quarter of the engines for its new air fleet, more than half of its shell casings, more than
two-thirds of its grain, and nearly all of its oil from foreign suppliers, with the United States
heading the list. Britain and France paid for these purchases by floating larger and larger bond
issues to American buyers-denominated in dollars, not pounds or francs. "By the end of 1916, American
investors had wagered two billion dollars on an Entente victory," computes Tooze (relative to America's
estimated GDP of $50 billion in 1916, the equivalent of $560 billion in today's money).
That staggering quantity of Allied purchases called forth something like a war mobilization in
the United States. American factories switched from civilian to military production; American farmers
planted food and fiber to feed and clothe the combatants of Europe. But unlike in 1940-41, the decision
to commit so much to one side's victory in a European war was not a political decision by the U.S.
government. Quite the contrary: President Wilson wished to stay out of the war entirely. He famously
preferred a "peace without victory." The trouble was that by 1916, the U.S. commitment to Britain
and France had grown-to borrow a phrase from the future-too big to fail.
Tooze's portrait of Woodrow Wilson is one of the most arresting novelties of his book. His Wilson
is no dreamy idealist. The president's animating idea was an American exceptionalism of a now-familiar
but then-startling kind. His Republican opponents-men like Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge,
and Elihu Root-wished to see America take its place among the powers of the earth. They wanted a
navy, an army, a central bank, and all the other instrumentalities of power possessed by Britain,
France, and Germany. These political rivals are commonly derided as "isolationists" because they
mistrusted the Wilson's League of Nations project. That's a big mistake. They doubted the League
because they feared it would encroach on American sovereignty. It was Wilson who wished to
remain aloof from the Entente, who feared that too close an association with Britain and France would
limit American options. This aloofness enraged Theodore Roosevelt, who complained that the Wilson-led
United States was "sitting idle, uttering cheap platitudes, and picking up [European] trade, whilst
they had poured out their blood like water in support of ideals in which, with all their hearts and
souls, they believe."
Wilson was guided by a different vision: Rather than join the struggle of imperial rivalries,
the United States could use its emerging power to suppress those rivalries altogether. Wilson
was the first American statesman to perceive that the United States had grown, in Tooze's words,
into "a power unlike any other. It had emerged, quite suddenly, as a novel kind of 'super-state,'
exercising a veto over the financial and security concerns of the other major states of the world."
Wilson hoped to deploy this emerging super-power to enforce an enduring peace. His own mistakes
and those of his successors doomed the project, setting in motion the disastrous events that would
lead to the Great Depression, the rise of fascism, and a second and even more awful world war.
What went wrong? "When all is said and done," Tooze writes, "the answer must be sought in the failure
of the United States to cooperate with the efforts of the French, British, Germans and the Japanese
[leaders of the early 1920s] to stabilize a viable world economy and to establish new institutions
of collective security. Given the violence they had already experienced and the risk of even greater
future devastation, France, Germany, Japan, and Britain could all see this. But what was no less
obvious was that only the US could anchor such a new order." And that was what Americans of the 1920s
and 1930s declined to do-because doing so implied too much change at home for them: "At the hub of
the rapidly evolving, American-centered world system there was a polity wedded to a conservative
vision of its own future."
Widen the view, however, and the "forgotten depression" takes on a broader meaning as one of the
most ominous milestones on the world's way to the Second World War. After World War II, Europe recovered
largely as a result of American aid; the nation that had suffered least from the war contributed
most to reconstruction. But after World War I, the money flowed the other way.
Take the case of France, which suffered more in material terms than any World War I belligerent except
Belgium. Northeastern France, the country's most industrialized region in 1914, had been ravaged
by war and German occupation. Millions of men in their prime were dead or crippled. On top of everything,
the country was deeply in debt, owing billions to the United States and billions more to Britain.
France had been a lender during the conflict too, but most of its credits had been extended to Russia,
which repudiated all its foreign debts after the Revolution of 1917. The French solution was to exact
reparations from Germany.
Britain was willing to relax its demands on France. But it owed the United States even more than
France did. Unless it collected from France-and from Italy and all the other smaller combatants as
well-it could not hope to pay its American debts.
Americans, meanwhile, were preoccupied with the problem of German recovery. How could Germany achieve
political stability if it had to pay so much to France and Belgium? The Americans pressed the French
to relent when it came to Germany, but insisted that their own claims be paid in full by both France
and Britain.
Germany, for its part, could only pay if it could export, and especially to the world's biggest and
richest consumer market, the United States. The depression of 1920 killed those export hopes. Most
immediately, the economic crisis sliced American consumer demand precisely when Europe needed it
most. True, World War I was not nearly as positive an experience for working Americans as World War
II would be; between 1914 and 1918, for example, wages lagged behind prices. Still, millions of Americans
had bought billions of dollars of small-denomination Liberty bonds. They had accumulated savings
that could have been spent on imported products. Instead, many used their savings for food, rent,
and mortgage interest during the hard times of 1920-21.
But the gravest harm done by the depression to postwar recovery lasted long past 1921. To appreciate
that, you have to understand the reasons why U.S. monetary authorities plunged the country into depression
in 1920.
Grant rightly points out that wars are usually followed by economic downturns. Such a downturn occurred
in late 1918-early 1919. "Within four weeks of the Armistice, the [U.S.] War Department had canceled
$2.5 billion of its then outstanding $6 billion in contracts; for perspective, $2.5 billion represented
3.3 percent of the 1918 gross national product," he observes. Even this understates the shock, because
it counts only Army contracts, not Navy ones. The postwar recession checked wartime inflation, and
by March 1919, the U.S. economy was growing again.
As the economy revived, workers scrambled for wage increases to offset the price inflation they'd
experienced during the war. Monetary authorities, worried that inflation would revive and accelerate,
made the fateful decision to slam the credit brakes, hard. Unlike the 1918 recession, that of 1920
was deliberately engineered. There was nothing invisible about it. Nor did the depression "cure itself."
U.S. officials cut interest rates and relaxed credit, and the economy predictably recovered-just
as it did after the similarly inflation-crushing recessions of 1974-75 and 1981-82.
But 1920-21 was an inflation-stopper with a difference. In post-World War II America, anti-inflationists
have been content to stop prices from rising. In 1920-21, monetary authorities actually sought to
drive prices back to their pre-war levels. They did not wholly succeed, but they succeeded well enough.
One price especially concerned them: In 1913, a dollar bought a little less than one-twentieth of
an ounce of gold; by 1922, it comfortably did so again.
... ... ...
The American depression of 1920 made that decision all the more difficult. The war had vaulted
the United States to a new status as the world's leading creditor, the world's largest owner of gold,
and, by extension, the effective custodian of the international gold standard. When the U.S. opted
for massive deflation, it thrust upon every country that wished to return to the gold standard (and
what respectable country would not?) an agonizing dilemma. Return to gold at 1913 values, and you
would have to match U.S. deflation with an even steeper deflation of your own, accepting increased
unemployment along the way. Alternatively, you could re-peg your currency to gold at a diminished
rate. But that amounted to an admission that your money had permanently lost value-and that your
own people, who had trusted their government with loans in local money, would receive a weaker return
on their bonds than American creditors who had lent in dollars.
Britain chose the former course; pretty much everybody else chose the latter.
The consequences of these choices fill much of the second half of The Deluge. For Europeans, they
were uniformly grim, and worse. But one important effect ultimately rebounded on Americans. America's
determination to restore a dollar "as good as gold" not only imposed terrible hardship on war-ravaged
Europe, it also threatened to flood American markets with low-cost European imports. The flip side
of the Lost Generation enjoying cheap European travel with their strong dollars was German steelmakers
and shipyards underpricing their American competitors with weak marks.
Such a situation also prevailed after World War II, when the U.S. acquiesced in the undervaluation
of the Deutsche mark and yen to aid German and Japanese recovery. But American leaders of the 1920s
weren't willing to accept this outcome. In 1921 and 1923, they raised tariffs, terminating a brief
experiment with freer trade undertaken after the election of 1912. The world owed the United States
billions of dollars, but the world was going to have to find another way of earning that money than
selling goods to the United States.
That way was found: more debt, especially more German debt. The 1923 hyper-inflation that wiped
out Germany's savers also tidied up the country's balance sheet. Post-inflation Germany looked like
a very creditworthy borrower. Between 1924 and 1930, world financial flows could be simplified into
a daisy chain of debt. Germans borrowed from Americans, and used the proceeds to pay reparations
to the Belgians and French. The French and Belgians, in turn, repaid war debts to the British and
Americans. The British then used their French and Italian debt payments to repay the United States,
who set the whole crazy contraption in motion again. Everybody could see the system was crazy. Only
the United States could fix it. It never did.
Peter Heather, the great British historian of Late Antiquity, explains human catastrophes
with a saying of his father's, a mining engineer: "If man accumulates enough combustible material,
God will provide the spark." So it happened in 1929. The Deluge that had inundated the rest of the
developed world roared back upon the United States.
... ... ...
"The United States has the Earth, and Germany wants it." Thus might Hitler's war aims have been
summed up by a latter-day Woodrow Wilson. From the start, the United States was Hitler's ultimate
target. "In seeking to explain the urgency of Hitler's aggression, historians have underestimated
his acute awareness of the threat posed to Germany, along with the rest of the European powers, by
the emergence of the United States as the dominant global superpower," Tooze writes.
"The originality of National Socialism was that, rather than meekly accepting a place for
Germany within a global economic order dominated by the affluent English-speaking countries, Hitler
sought to mobilize the pent-up frustrations of his population to mount an epic challenge to this
order." Of course, Hitler was not engaged in rational calculation. He could not accept subordination
to the United States because, according to his lurid paranoia, "this would result in enslavement
to the world Jewish conspiracy, and ultimately race death." He dreamed of conquering Poland,
Ukraine, and Russia as a means of gaining the resources to match those of the United States.
The vast landscape in between Berlin and Moscow would become Germany's equivalent of the American
west, filled with German homesteaders living comfortably on land and labor appropriated from conquered
peoples-a nightmare parody of the American experience with which to challenge American power.
Could this vision have ever been realized? Tooze argues in The Wages of Destruction that Germany
had already missed its chance. "In 1870, at the time of German national unification, the population
of the United States and Germany was roughly equal and the total output of America, despite its enormous
abundance of land and resources, was only one-third larger than that of Germany," he writes. "Just
before the outbreak of World War I the American economy had expanded to roughly twice the size of
that of Imperial Germany. By 1943, before the aerial bombardment had hit top gear, total American
output was almost four times that of the Third Reich."
Germany was a weaker and poorer country in 1939 than it had been in 1914. Compared with Britain,
let alone the United States, it lacked the basic elements of modernity: There were just 486,000 automobiles
in Germany in 1932, and one-quarter of all Germans still worked as farmers as of 1925. Yet this backward
land, with an income per capita comparable to contemporary "South Africa, Iran and Tunisia," wagered
on a second world war even more audacious than the first.
The reckless desperation of Hitler's war provides context for the horrific crimes of his regime.
Hitler's empire could not feed itself, so his invasion plan for the Soviet Union contemplated the
death by starvation of 20 to 30 million Soviet urban dwellers after the invaders stole all foodstuffs
for their own use. Germany lacked workers, so it plundered the labor of its conquered peoples.
By 1944, foreigners constituted 20 percent of the German workforce and 33 percent of armaments
workers (less than 9 percent of the population of today's liberal and multicultural Germany is foreign-born).
On paper, the Nazi empire of 1942 represented a substantial economic bloc. But pillage and slavery
are not workable bases for an industrial economy. Under German rule, the output of conquered Europe
collapsed. The Hitlerian vision of a united German-led Eurasia equaling the Anglo-American bloc
proved a crazed and genocidal fantasy.
"... Expressing his overall objections to the TPP, Stiglitz said "corporate interests... were at the table" when it was being crafted. He also condemned "the provisions on intellectual property that will drive up drug prices" and "the 'investment provisions' which will make it more difficult to regulate and actually harm trade." ..."
"... The Democratic candidate, for her part, supported the deal before coming out against it , but for TPP foes, uncertainty about her position remains, especially since she recently named former Colorado Senator and Interior Secretary-and " vehement advocate for the TPP "-Ken Salazar to be chair of her presidential transition team. ..."
"... Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) said , "We have to make sure that bill never sees the light of day after this election," while Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) said at the American Postal Workers Union convention in Walt Disney World, "If this goes through, it's curtains for the middle class in this country." ..."
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has reiterated his opposition
to the Trans Pacific
Partnership (TPP), saying on Tuesday that President Barack Obama's push
to get the trade deal passed during the upcoming lame-duck session of Congress
is "outrageous" and "absolutely wrong."
Stiglitz, an economics professor at
Columbia University and chief economist of the Roosevelt Institute,
made the comments on CNN's "Quest Means Business."
His criticism comes as Obama aggressively
campaigns to get lawmakers to pass the TPP in the Nov. 9 to Jan. 3 window-even
as
resistance mounts against the 12-nation deal.
Echoing an
argument made by Center for Economic
and Policy Research co-director Mark Weisbrot, Stiglitz said, "At the lame-duck
session you have congressmen voting who know that they're not accountable anymore."
Lawmakers "who are not politically accountable because they're leaving may,
in response to promises of jobs or just subtle understandings, do things that
are not in the national interest," he said.
Expressing his overall objections to the TPP, Stiglitz said "corporate
interests... were at the table" when it was being crafted. He also condemned
"the provisions on intellectual property that will drive up drug prices" and
"the 'investment provisions' which will make it more difficult to regulate and
actually harm trade."
"The advocates of trade said it was going to benefit everyone,"
he added. "The evidence is it's benefited a few and left a lot behind."
Stiglitz has also been advising the
Hillary
Clinton presidential campaign. The Democratic candidate, for her part,
supported the deal before coming out
against it, but for TPP foes, uncertainty about her position remains, especially
since she recently
named former Colorado Senator and Interior Secretary-and "vehement
advocate for the TPP"-Ken Salazar to be chair of her presidential transition
team.
Opposition to the TPP also appeared Tuesday in Michigan and Florida, where
union members and lawmakers criticized what they foresee as the deal's impacts
on working families.
Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.)
said, "We have to make sure that bill never sees the light of day after
this election," while Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.)
said at the American Postal Workers Union convention in Walt Disney World,
"If this goes through, it's curtains for the middle class in this country."
We cannot allow this agreement to forsake the American middle class, while foreign governments
are allowed to devalue their currency and artificially prop-up their industries.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal is a bad deal for the American people. This historically
massive trade deal -- accounting for 40 percent of global trade -- would reduce restrictions on foreign
corporations operating within the U.S., limit our ability to protect our environment, and create
more incentives for U.S. businesses to outsource investments and jobs overseas to countries with
lower labor costs and standards.
Over and over we hear from TPP proponents how the TPP will boost our economy, help American workers,
and set the standards for global trade. The International Trade Commission report released last May
(https://www.usitc.gov/publications/332/pub4607.pdf)
confirms that the opposite is true. In exchange for just 0.15 percent boost in GDP by 2032, the TPP
would decimate American manufacturing capacity, increase our trade deficit, ship American jobs overseas,
and result in losses to 16 of the 25 U.S. economic sectors. These estimates don't even account for
the damaging effects of currency manipulation, environmental impacts, and the agreement's deeply
flawed Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) process.
There's no reason to believe the provisions of this deal relating to labor standards, preserving
American jobs, or protecting our environment, will be enforceable. Every trade agreement negotiated
in the past claimed to have strong enforceable provisions to protect American jobs -- yet no such
enforcement has occurred, and agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have
resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of American jobs. Former Secretary of Labor Robert
Reich has called TPP "NAFTA on steroids." The loss of U.S. jobs under the TPP would likely be unprecedented.
"... "No TPP - a certainty in case Donald Trump is elected in November - means the end of US economic hegemony over Asia. Hillary Clinton knows it; and it's no accident President Obama is desperate to have TPP approved during a short window of opportunity, the lame-duck session of Congress from November 9 to January 3." ..."
"... To me, the key to our economic hegemony lies in our reserve currency hegemony. They will have to continue to supply us to get the currency. Unless we have injected too much already (no scholars have come forth to say how much trade deficits are necessary for the reserve currency to function as the reserve currency, and so, we have just kept buying – and I am wondering if we have bought too much and there is a need to starting running trade surpluses to soak up the excess money – just asking, I don't know the answer). ..."
A response to Hillary Clinton's America Exceptionalist Speech:
1. America Exceptionalist vs. the World..
2. Brezinski is extremely dejected.
3. Russia-China on the march.
4. "There will be blood. Hillary Clinton smells it already ."
"No TPP - a certainty in case Donald Trump is elected in November
- means the end of US economic hegemony over Asia. Hillary Clinton knows
it; and it's no accident President Obama is desperate to have TPP approved
during a short window of opportunity, the lame-duck session of Congress
from November 9 to January 3."
To me, the key to our economic hegemony lies in our reserve currency
hegemony. They will have to continue to supply us to get the currency. Unless
we have injected too much already (no scholars have come forth to say how
much trade deficits are necessary for the reserve currency to function as
the reserve currency, and so, we have just kept buying – and I am wondering
if we have bought too much and there is a need to starting running trade
surpluses to soak up the excess money – just asking, I don't know the answer).
Regarding the push to pass the TPP and TISA I've been needing to get
this off my chest and this seems to be as good a time as any:
In the face of public opposition to the TPP and TISA proponents have
trotted out a new argument: "we have come too far", "our national credibility
would be damaged if we stop now." The premise of which is that negotiations
have been going on so long, and have involved such effort that if the
U.S. were to back away now we would look bad and would lose significant
political capital.
On one level this argument is true. The negotiations have been long,
and many promises were made by the negotiators to secure to to this
point. Stepping back now would expose those promises as false and would
make that decade of effort a loss. It would also expose the politicians
who pushed for it in the face of public oppoosition to further loss
of status and to further opposition.
However, all of that is voided by one simple fact. The negotiations
were secret. All of that effort, all of the horse trading and the promise
making was done by a self-selected body of elites, for that same body,
and was hidden behind a wall of secrecy stronger than that afforded
to new weapons. The deals were hidden not just from the general public,
not from trade unions or environmental groups, but from the U.S. Congress
itself.
Therefore it has no public legitimacy. The promises made are not
"our" promises but Michael Froman's promises. They are not backed by
the full faith and credit of the U.S. government but only by the words
of a small body of appointees and the multinational corporations that
they serve. The corporations were invited to the table, Congress was
not.
What "elites" really mean when they say "America's credibility is
on the line" is that their credibility is on the line. If these deals
fail what will be lost is not America's stature but the premise that
a handful of appointees can cut deals in private and that the rest of
us will make good.
When that minor loss is laid against the far greater fact that the
terms of these deals are bad, that prior deals of this type have harmed
our real economies, and that the rules will further erode our national
sovreignity, there is no contest.
Michael Froman's reputation has no value. Our sovreignity, our economy,
our nation, does.
"What "elites" really mean when they say "America's credibility is on
the line" is that their credibility is on the line. If these deals fail
what will be lost is not America's stature but the premise that a handful
of appointees can cut deals in private and that the rest of us will make
good."
Yes! And the victory will taste so sweet when we bury this filthy, rotten,
piece of garbage. Obama's years of effort down the drain, his legacy tarnished
and unfinished.
I want TPP's defeat to send a clear message that the elites can't count
on their politicians to deliver for them. Let's make this thing their Stalingrad!
Leave deep scars so that they give up on TISA and stop trying to concoct
these absurd schemes like ISDS.
sorry but i don't see it that way at all. 'they' got a propaganda machine
to beat all 'they' make n break reps all the time. i do see a desperation
on a monetary/profit scale. widening the 'playing field' offers more profits
with less risk. for instance, our Pharams won't have to slash their prices
at the risk of sunshine laws, wish-washy politicians, competition, nor a
pissed off public. jmo tho')
LOL "America's credibility" LOL, these people need to get out more. In
the 60's you could hike high up into the Andes and the sheep herder had
two pics on the wall of his hut: Jesus and JFK. America retains its cachet
as a place to make money and be entertained, but as some kind of beacon
of morality and fair play in the world? Dead, buried, and long gone, the
hype-fest of slogans and taglines can only cover up so many massive, atrocious
and hypocritical actions and serial offenses.
Clinton Inc was mostly Bill helping Epstein get laid until after Kerry
lost. If this was the reelection of John Edwards, Kerry's running mate,
and a referendum on 12 years of Kerronomics, Bill and Hill would be opening
night speakers at the DNC and answers to trivia questions.
My guess is Obama is dropped swiftly and unceremoniously especially since
he doesn't have much of a presence in Washington.
"It looks as if we'll be firing Tomahawk cruise missiles at Syria in
the coming days, and critics are raising legitimate concerns:"
"Yet there is value in bolstering international norms against egregious
behavior like genocide or the use of chemical weapons. Since President Obama
established a "red line" about chemical weapons use, his credibility has
been at stake: he can't just whimper and back down."
Obama did back down.
NIcholas Kristof, vigilant protector of American credibility through
bombing Syria.
Ah yes the credibility of our élites. With their sterling record on Nafta's
benefits, Iraq's liberation, Greece's rebound, the IMF's rehabilitation
of countries
We must pass TPP or Tom Friedman will lose credibility, what?
"... pro-TPPers "consciously seek to weaken the national defense," that's exactly what's going on. Neoliberalism, through offshoring, weakens the national defense, because it puts our weaponry at the mercy of fragile and corruptible supply chains. ..."
"... Now, when we think about how corrupt the political class has become, it's not hard to see why Obama is confident that he will win. ..."
"... I think raising the ante rhetorically by framing a pro-TPP vote as treason could help sway a close vote; and if readers try that frame out, I'd like to hear the results ..."
There are two reasons: First, they consciously seek to weaken the national
defense. And second, the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) system is
a
surrender of national sovereignty .
National Defense
This might be labeled the "Ghost Fleet" argument, since we're informed that
Paul Singer and Augustus Cole's techno-thriller has really caught the attention
of the national security class below the political appointee level, and that
this is a death blow for neoliberalism. Why? "The multi-billion dollar, next
generation F-35 aircraft, for instance, is rendered powerless after it is revealed
that Chinese microprocessor manufacturers had implanted malicious code into
products intended for the jet" (
Foreign Policy ). Clearly, we need, well, industrial policy, and we need
to bring a lot of manufacturing home.
From Brigadier General (Retired) John Adams :
In 2013, the Pentagon's Defense Science Board put forward a remarkable
report describing one of the most significant but little-recognized threats
to US security: deindustrialization. The report argued that the loss of
domestic U.S. manufacturing facilities has not only reduced U.S. living
standards but also compromised U.S. technology leadership "by enabling new
players to learn a technology and then gain the capability to improve on
it." The report explained that the offshoring of U.S. manufacturing presents
a particularly dangerous threat to U.S. military readiness through the "compromise
of the supply chain for key weapons systems components."
Our military is now shockingly vulnerable to major disruptions in the
supply chain, including from substandard manufacturing practices, natural
disasters, and price gouging by foreign nations. Poor manufacturing practices
in offshore factories lead to problem-plagued products, and foreign producers-acting
on the basis of their own military or economic interests-can sharply raise
prices or reduce or stop sales to the United States.
The link between TPP and this kind of offshoring has been well-established.
And, one might say, the link between neo-liberal economic policy "and this
kind of offshoring has been well-established" as well.
So, when I framed the issue as one where pro-TPPers "consciously seek
to weaken the national defense," that's exactly what's going on. Neoliberalism,
through offshoring, weakens the national defense, because it puts our weaponry
at the mercy of fragile and corruptible supply chains. Note that re-industrializing
America has positive appeal, too: For the right, on national security grounds;
and for the left, on labor's behalf (and maybe helping out the Rust Belt that
neoliberal policies of the last forty years did so much to destroy. Of course,
this framing would make Clinton a traitor, but you can't make an omelette without
breaking eggs. (Probably best to to let the right, in its refreshingly direct
fashion, use the actual "traitor" word, and the left, shocked, call for the
restoration of civility, using verbiage like "No, I wouldn't say she's a traitor.
She's certainly 'extremely careless' with our nation's security.")
ISDS
The Investor-State Dispute Settlement system is a hot mess (unless you represent
a corporation, or are one of tiny fraternity of international corporate lawyers
who can plead and/or judge ISDS cases).
Yves wrote :
What may have torched the latest Administration salvo is a well-timed
joint publication by Wikileaks and the New York Times of a recent version
of the so-called investment chapter. That section sets forth one of the
worst features of the agreement, the investor-state dispute settlement process
(ISDS). As we've described at length in earlier posts, the ISDS mechanism
strengthens the existing ISDS process. It allows for secret arbitration
panels to effectively overrule national regulations by allowing foreign
investors to sue governments over lost potential future profits in secret
arbitration panels. Those panels have been proved to be conflict-ridden
and arbitrary. And the grounds for appeal are limited and technical.
Here again we have a frame that appeals to both right and left. The very
thought of surrendering national sovereignty to an international organization
makes any good conservative's back teeth itch. And the left sees the "lost profits"
doctrine as a club to prevent future government programs they would like to
put in place (single payer, for example). And in both cases, the neoliberal
doctrine of putting markets before anything else makes pro-TPP-ers traitors.
To the right, because nationalism trumps internationalism; to the left, because
TPP prevents the State from looiking after the welfare of its people.
The Political State of Play
All I know is what I read in the papers, so what follows can only be speculation.
That said, there are two ways TPP could be passed: In the lame duck session,
by Obama, or after a new President is inaugurated, by Clinton (or possibly by
Trump[1]).
[OBAMA:] And hopefully, after the election is over and the dust settles,
there will be more attention to the actual facts behind the deal and it
won't just be a political symbol or a political football. And I will actually
sit down with people on both sides, on the right and on the left. I'll sit
down publicly with them and we'll go through the whole provisions. I would
enjoy that, because there's a lot of misinformation.
I'm really confident I can make the case this is good for American workers
and the American people. And people said we weren't going to be able to
get the trade authority to even present this before Congress, and somehow
we muddled through and got it done. And I intend to do the same with respect
to the actual agreement.
So it is looking like a very close vote. (For procedural and political
reasons, Obama will not bring it to a vote unless he is sure he has the
necessary votes). Now let's look at one special group of Representatives
who can swing this vote: the actual lame-ducks, i.e., those who will be
in office only until Jan. 3. It depends partly on how many lose their election
on Nov. 8, but the average number of representatives who left after the
last three elections was about 80.
Most of these people will be looking for a job, preferably one that can
pay them more than $1 million a year. From the data provided by OpenSecrets.org,
we can estimate that about a quarter of these people will become lobbyists.
(An additional number will work for firms that are clients of lobbyists).
So there you have it: It is all about corruption, and this is about as
unadulterated as corruption gets in our hallowed democracy, other than literal
cash under a literal table. These are the people whom Obama needs to pass
this agreement, and the window between Nov. 9 and Jan. 3 is the only time
that they are available to sell their votes to future employers without
any personal political consequences whatsoever. The only time that the electorate
can be rendered so completely irrelevant, if Obama can pull this off.
(The article doesn't talk about the Senate, but Fast Track passed the Senate
with a filibuster-proof super-majority, so the battle is in the House anyhow.
And although the text of TPP cannot be amended - that's what fast track means!
- there are still ways to affect the interpretation and enforcement of the text,
so Obama and his corporate allies have bargaining chips beyond Beltway sinecures.[2])
Now, when we think about how corrupt the political class has become,
it's not hard to see why Obama is confident that he will win. (
Remember , "[T]he preferences of economic elites have far more independent
impact upon policy change than the preferences of average citizens do.") However,
if the anti-TPP-ers raise the rhetorical stakes from policy disagreement to
treason, maybe a few of those 80 representatives will do the right thing (or,
if you prefer, decide that the reputational damage to their future career makes
a pro-TPP vote not worth it. Who wants to play golf with a traitor?)
Passing TPP after the Inaugural
After the coronation inaugural, Clinton will have to use more
complicated tactics than dangling goodies before the snouts of representatives
leaving for K Street. (We've seen that Clinton's putative opposition to TPP
is based on lawyerly parsing; and her base supports it. So I assume a Clinton
administration would go full speed ahead with it.) My own thought has been that
she'd set up a "conversation" on trade, and then buy off the national unions
with "jobs for the boys," so that they sell their locals down the river. Conservative
Jennifer Rubin has a better proposal , which meets Clinton's supposed criterion
of not hurting workers even better:
Depending on the election results and how many pro-free-trade Republicans
lose, it still might not be sufficient. Here's a further suggestion: Couple
it with a substantial infrastructure project that Clinton wants, but with
substantial safeguards to make sure that the money is wisely spent. Clinton
gets a big jobs bill - popular with both sides - and a revised TPP gets
through.
What Clinton needs is a significant revision to TPP that she can tout
as a real reform to trade agreements, one that satisfies some of the TPP's
critics on the left. A minor tweak is unlikely to assuage anyone; this change
needs to be a major one. Fortunately, there is a TPP provision that fits
the bill perfectly: investor state dispute settlement (ISDS), the procedure
that allows foreign investors to sue governments in an international tribunal.
Removing ISDS could triangulate the TPP debate, allowing for enough support
to get it through Congress.
Obama can't have a conversation on trade, or propose a jobs program, let
alone jettison ISDS; all he's got going for him is corruption.[3] So, interestingly,
although Clinton can't take the simple road of bribing the 80 represenatives,
she does have more to bargain with on policy. Rubin's jobs bill could at least
be framed as a riposte to the "Ghost Fleet" argument, since both are about "jawbs,"
even if infrastructure programs and reindustrialization aren't identical in
intent. And while I don't think Clinton would allow ISDS to be removed (
her corporate donors love it ), at least somebody's thinking about how to
pander to the left. Nevertheless, what does a jobs program matter if the new
jobs leave the country anyhow? And suppose ISDS is removed, but the removal
of the precautionary principle remains? We'd still get corporate-friendly decisions,
bilaterally. And people would end up balancing the inevitable Clinton complexity
and mush against the simplicity of the message that a vote for TPP is a vote
against the United States.
Conclusion
I hope I've persuaded you that TPP is still very much alive, and that both
Obama in the lame duck, and Clinton (or even Trump) when inaugurated have reasonable
hopes of passing it. However, I think raising the ante rhetorically by framing
a pro-TPP vote as treason could help sway a close vote; and if readers try that
frame out, I'd like to hear the results (especially when the result comes
from a letter to your Congress critter). Interestingly, Buzzfeed just published
tonight the first in a four-part series, devoted to the idea that ISDS is what
we have said it is all along: A surrender of national sovereignty.
Here's
a great slab of it :
Imagine a private, global super court that empowers corporations to bend
countries to their will.
Say a nation tries to prosecute a corrupt CEO or ban dangerous pollution.
Imagine that a company could turn to this super court and sue the whole
country for daring to interfere with its profits, demanding hundreds of
millions or even billions of dollars as retribution.
Imagine that this court is so powerful that nations often must heed its
rulings as if they came from their own supreme courts, with no meaningful
way to appeal. That it operates unconstrained by precedent or any significant
public oversight, often keeping its proceedings and sometimes even its decisions
secret. That the people who decide its cases are largely elite Western corporate
attorneys who have a vested interest in expanding the court's authority
because they profit from it directly, arguing cases one day and then sitting
in judgment another. That some of them half-jokingly refer to themselves
as "The Club" or "The Mafia."
And imagine that the penalties this court has imposed have been so crushing
- and its decisions so unpredictable - that some nations dare not risk a
trial, responding to the mere threat of a lawsuit by offering vast concessions,
such as rolling back their own laws or even wiping away the punishments
of convicted criminals.
This system is already in place, operating behind closed doors in office
buildings and conference rooms in cities around the world. Known as investor-state
dispute settlement, or ISDS, it is written into a vast network of treaties
that govern international trade and investment, including NAFTA and the
Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Congress must soon decide whether to ratify.
That's the stuff to give the troops!
NOTE
[1] Trump:
"I pledge to never sign any trade agreement that hurts our workers." Lotta
wiggle room there, and the lawyerly parsing is just like Clinton's. I don't
think it's useful to discuss what Trump might do on TPP, because until there
are other parties to the deal, there's no deal to be had. Right now, we're just
looking at
Trump doing A-B testing - not that there's anything wrong with that - which
the press confuses with policy proposals. So I'm not considering Trump because
I don't think we have any data to go on.
To pacify [those to whom he will corrupt appeal], Obama will
have to convince them that what they want will anyway be achieved, even
if these are not legally part of the TPP because the TPP text cannot be
amended.
He can try to achieve this through bilateral side agreements on specific
issues. Or he can insist that some countries take on extra obligations beyond
what is required by the TPP as a condition for obtaining a U.S. certification
that they have fulfilled their TPP obligations.
This certification is required for the U.S. to provide the TPP's benefits
to its partners, and the U.S. has previously made use of this process to
get countries to take on additional obligations, which can then be shown
to Congress members that their objectives have been met.
In other words, side deals.
[3] This should not be taken to imply that Clinton does not have corruption
going for her, too. She can also make all the side deals Obama can.
"... One of the main concerns with TTIP is that it could allow multinational corporations to effectively "sue" governments for taking actions that might damage their businesses. Critics claim American companies might be able to avoid having to meet various EU health, safety and environment regulations by challenging them in a quasi-court set up to resolve disputes between investors and states. ..."
"... These developments take place against the background of another major free trade agreement - the Trans Pacific Partnership ( TPP ) - hitting snags on the way to being pushed through Congress. ..."
"... "US Faces Major Setback" Well, actually, US corporations face a major setback. Average US citizens face a reprieve. ..."
TTIP negotiations have been ongoing since 2013 in an effort to establish a massive
free trade zone that would eliminate many tariffs. After 14 rounds of talks
that have lasted three years not a single common item out of
the 27 chapters being discussed has been agreed on. The United States has
refused to agree on an equal playing field between European and American companies
in the sphere of public procurement sticking to the principle of "buy American".
The opponents of the deal believe that in its current guise the TTIP is too
friendly to US businesses. One of the main concerns with TTIP is that it
could allow multinational corporations to effectively "sue" governments for
taking actions that might damage their businesses. Critics claim American companies
might be able to avoid having to meet various EU health, safety and environment
regulations by challenging them in a quasi-court set up to resolve disputes
between investors and states.
In Europe thousands of people supported by society groups, trade unions and
activists take to the streets expressing protest against the deal. Three million
people have signed a petition calling for it to be scrapped. For instance, various
trade unions and other groups have called for protests against the TTIP across
Germany to take place on September 17. A trade agreement with Canada has also
come under attack.
These developments take place against the background of another major
free trade agreement - the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)
- hitting snags on the way to being pushed through Congress. The chances
are really slim.
silverer •Sep 5, 2016 9:51 AM
"US Faces Major Setback" Well, actually, US corporations face a major
setback. Average US citizens face a reprieve.
"... Speaking to a local radio station before the joint rally, Farage urged Americans to "go out and fight" against Hillary Clinton. ..."
"... "I am going to say to people in this country that the circumstances, the similarities, the parallels between the people who voted Brexit and the people who could beat Clinton in a few weeks time here in America are uncanny," Farage told Super Talk Mississippi. "If they want things to change they have get up out of their chairs and go out and fight for it. It can happen. We've just proved it." ..."
"... It's not for me as a foreign politician to say who you should vote for ... All I will say is that if you vote for Hillary Clinton, then nothing will change. She represents the very politics that we've just broken through the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom. ..."
...the British politician, who was invited by Mississippi governor Phil Bryant, will draw parallels
between what he sees as the inspirational story of Brexit and Trump's campaign. Farage will describe
the Republican's campaign as a similar crusade by grassroots activists against "big banks and global
political insiders" and how those who feel disaffected and disenfranchised can become involved in
populist, rightwing politics. With Trump lagging in the polls, just as Brexit did prior to the vote
on the referendum, Farage will also hearten supporters by insisting that they can prove pundits and
oddsmakers wrong as well.
This message resonates with the Trump campaign's efforts to reach out to blue collar voters who
have become disillusioned with American politics, while also adding a unique flair to Trump's never
staid campaign rallies.
The event will mark the first meeting between Farage and Trump.
Arron Banks, the businessman who backed Leave.EU, the Brexit campaign group associated with the
UK Independence party (Ukip), tweeted that he would be meeting Trump over dinner and was looking
forward to Farage's speech.
The appointment last week of Stephen Bannon, former chairman of the Breitbart website, as
"CEO" of Trump's campaign has seen the example of the Brexit vote, which Breitbart enthusiastically
advocated, rise to the fore in Trump's campaign narrative.
Speaking to a local radio station before the joint rally, Farage urged Americans to "go out
and fight" against Hillary Clinton.
"I am going to say to people in this country that the circumstances, the similarities, the
parallels between the people who voted Brexit and the people who could beat Clinton in a few weeks
time here in America are uncanny," Farage told Super Talk Mississippi. "If they want things to change
they have get up out of their chairs and go out and fight for it. It can happen. We've just proved
it."
"I am being careful," he added when asked if he supported the controversial Republican nominee.
"It's not for me as a foreign politician to say who you should vote for ... All I will say is
that if you vote for Hillary Clinton, then nothing will change. She represents the very politics
that we've just broken through the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom."
"... As Mr. Buffet so keenly said it, There is a war going on, and we are winning. ..."
"... Just type `TPP editorial' into news.google.com and watch a toxic sludge of straw men, misdirection, and historical revisionism flow across your screen. And the `objective' straight news reporting is no better. ..."
"... "Why is it afraid of us?" Because we the people are perceived to be the enemy of America the Corporation. Whistleblowers have already stated that the NSA info is used to blackmail politicians and military leaders, provide corporate espionage to the highest payers and more devious machinations than the mind can grasp from behind a single computer. 9/11 was a coup – I say that because looking around the results tell me that. ..."
"... The fourth estate (the media) has been purchased outright by the second estate (the nobility). I guess you could call this an 'estate sale'. All power to the markets! ..."
Free Trade," the banner of Globalization, has not only wrecked the world's economy, it has left Western
Democracy in shambles. Europe edges ever closer to deflation. The Fed dare not increase interest
rates, now poised at barely above zero. As China's stock market threatened collapse, China poured
billions to prop it up. It's export machine is collapsing. Not once, but twice, it recently manipulated
its currency to makes its goods cheaper on the world market. What is happening?
The following two
graphs tell most of the story. First, an overview of Free Trade.
Capital fled from developed countries to undeveloped countries with slave-cheap labor, countries
with no environmental standards, countries with no support for collective bargaining. Corporations,
like Apple, set up shop in China and other undeveloped countries. Some, like China, manipulated its
currency to make exported goods to the West even cheaper. Some, like China, gave preferential tax
treatment to Western firm over indigenous firms. Economists cheered as corporate efficiency unsurprisingly
rose. U.S. citizens became mere consumers.
Thanks to Bill Clinton and the Financial Modernization Act, banks, now unconstrained, could peddle
rigged financial services, offer insurance on its own investment products–in short, banks were free
to play with everyone's money–and simply too big to fail. Credit was easy and breezy. If nasty Arabs
bombed the Trade Center, why the solution was simple: Go to the shopping mall–and buy. That remarkable
piece of advice is just what freedom has been all about.
Next: China's export machine sputters.
China's problem is that there are not enough orders to keep the export machine going. There comes
a time when industrialized nations simply run out of cash–I mean the little people run out of cash.
CEOs and those just below them–along with slick Wall Street gauchos–made bundles on Free Trade, corporate
capital that could set up shop in any impoverished nation in the world.. No worries about labor–dirt
cheap–or environmental regulations–just bring your gas masks. At some point the Western consumer
well was bound to run dry. Credit was exhausted; the little guy could not buy anymore. Free trade
was on its last legs.
So what did China do then? As its markets crashed, it tried to revive its export model, a model
based on foreign firms exporting cheap goods to the West. China lowered its exchange rates, not once
but twice. Then China tried to rescue the markets with cash infusion of billions. Still its market
continued to crash. Manufacturing plants had closed–thousands of them. Free Trade and Globalization
had run its course.
And what has the Fed been doing? Why quantitative easy–increase the money supply and lower short
term interest rates. Like China's latest currency manipulation, both were merely stop-gap measures.
No one, least of all Obama and his corporate advisors, was ready to address corporate outsourcing
that has cost millions of jobs. Prime the pump a little, but never address the real problem.
The WTO sets the groundwork for trade among its member states. That groundwork is deeply flawed.
Trade between impoverished third world countries and sophisticated first world economies is not merely
a matter of regulating "dumping"-not allowing one country to flood the market with cheap goods-nor
is it a matter of insuring that the each country does not favor its indigenous firms over foreign
firms. Comparable labor and environmental standards are necessary. Does anyone think that a first
world worker can compete with virtual slave labor? Does anyone think that a first world nation with
excellent environmental regulations can compete with a third world nation that refuses to protect
its environment?
Only lately has Apple even mentioned that it might clean up its mess in China. The Apple miracle
has been on the backs of the Chinese poor and abysmal environmental wreckage that is China.
The WTO allows three forms of inequities-all of which encourage outsourcing: labor arbitrage,
tax arbitrage, and environmental arbitrage. For a fuller explanation of these inequities and the
"race to the bottom," see
here.
Of course now we have the mother of all Free Trade deals –the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)–
carefully wrapped in a black box so that none of us can see what finally is in store for us. Nothing
is ever "Free"–even trade. I suspect that China is becoming a bit too noxious and poisonous. It simply
has to deal with its massive environmental problems. Time to move the game to less despoiled and
maybe more impoverished countries. Meanwhile, newscasters are always careful to tout TPP.
Fast Tracking is a con man's game. Do it so fast that the marks never have a chance to watch their
wallets. In hiding negotiations from prying, public eyes, Obama, has given the con men a bigger edge:
A screen to hide the corporations making deals. Their interest is in profits, not in public good.
Consider the media. Our only defense is a strong independent media. At one time,
newsrooms were not required to be profitable. Reporting the news was considered a community service.
Corporate ownership provided the necessary funding for its newsrooms–and did not interfere.
But the 70′s and 80′s corporate ownership required its newsrooms to be profitable. Slowly but
surely, newsrooms focused on personality, entertainment, and wedge issues–always careful not to rock
the corporate boat, always careful not to tread on governmental policy. Whoever thought that one
major news service–Fox–would become a breeding ground for one particular party.
But consider CNN: It organizes endless GOP debates; then spends hours dissecting them. Create
the news; then sell it–and be sure to spin it in the direction you want.
Are matters of substance ever discussed? When has a serious foreign policy debate ever been allowed
occurred–without editorial interference from the media itself. When has trade and outsourcing been
seriously discussed–other than by peripheral news media?
Meanwhile, news media becomes more and more centralized. Murdoch now owns National Geographic!
Now, thanks to Bush and Obama, we have the chilling effect of the NSA. Just whom does the NSA
serve when it collects all of our digital information? Is it being used to ferret out the plans of
those exercising their right of dissent? Is it being used to increase the profits of favored corporations?
Why does it need all of your and my personal information–from bank accounts, to credit cards, to
travel plans, to friends with whom we chat .Why is it afraid of us?
jefemt, October 23, 2015 at 9:43 am
As Mr. Buffet so keenly said it, There is a war going on, and we are winning.
If 'they' are failing, I'd hate to see success!
Isn't it the un-collective WE who are failing?
failing to organize,
failing to come up with plausible, 90 degrees off present Lemming-to-Brink path alternative plans
and policies,
failing to agree on any of many plausible alternatives that might work
Divided- for now- hopefully not conquered ..
I gotta scoot and get back to Dancing with the Master Chefs
allan, October 23, 2015 at 10:03 am
Just type `TPP editorial' into news.google.com and watch a toxic sludge of straw men, misdirection,
and historical revisionism flow across your screen. And the `objective' straight news reporting
is no better.
Vatch, October 23, 2015 at 10:36 am
Don't just watch the toxic sludge; respond to it with a letter to the editor (LTE) of the offending
publication! For some of those toxic editorials, and contact information for LTEs, see:
A few of the editorials may now be obscured by paywalls or registration requirements, but most
should still be visible. Let them know that we see through their nonsense!
TedWa, October 23, 2015 at 10:38 am
"Why is it afraid of us?" Because we the people are perceived to be the enemy of America
the Corporation. Whistleblowers have already stated that the NSA info is used to blackmail politicians
and military leaders, provide corporate espionage to the highest payers and more devious machinations
than the mind can grasp from behind a single computer. 9/11 was a coup – I say that because looking
around the results tell me that.
TG, October 23, 2015 at 3:27 pm
The fourth estate (the media) has been purchased outright by the second estate (the nobility).
I guess you could call this an 'estate sale'. All power to the markets!
Pelham, October 23, 2015 at 8:32 pm
Even when newsrooms were more independent they probably would not, in general, have reported
on free trade with any degree of skepticism. The recent disappearance of the old firewall between
the news and corporate sides has made things worse, but at least since the "professionalization"
of newsrooms that began to really take hold in the '60s, journalists have tended to identify far
more with their sources in power than with their readers.
There have, of course, been notable exceptions. But even these sometimes serve more to obscure
the real day-to-day nature of journalism's fealty to the corporate world than to bring about any
significant change.
CHRIS HEDGES: We're going to be discussing a great Ponzi scheme that not only defines not only
the U.S. but the global economy, how we got there and where we're going. And with me to discuss this
issue is the economist Michael Hudson, author of
Killing
the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Destroy the Global Economy. A professor of economics
who worked for many years on Wall Street, where you don't succeed if you don't grasp Marx's dictum
that capitalism is about exploitation. And he is also, I should mention, the godson of Leon Trotsky.
I want to open this discussion by reading a passage from your book, which I admire very much,
which I think gets to the core of what you discuss. You write,
"Adam Smith long ago remarked that profits often are highest in nations going fastest to
ruin. There are many ways to create economic suicide on a national level. The major way through
history has been through indebting the economy. Debt always expands to reach a point where it
cannot be paid by a large swathe of the economy. This is the point where austerity is imposed
and ownership of wealth polarizes between the One Percent and the 99 Percent. Today is not the
first time this has occurred in history. But it is the first time that running into debt has occurred
deliberately." Applauded. "As if most debtors can get rich by borrowing, not reduced to a condition
of debt peonage."
So let's start with the classical economists, who certainly understood this. They were reacting
of course to feudalism. And what happened to the study of economics so that it became gamed by ideologues?
HUDSON: The essence of classical economics was to reform industrial capitalism, to streamline
it, and to free the European economies from the legacy of feudalism. The legacy of feudalism was
landlords extracting land-rent, and living as a class that took income without producing anything.
Also, banks that were not funding industry. The leading industrialists from James Watt, with his
steam engine, to the railroads
HEDGES: From your book you make the point that banks almost never funded industry.
HUDSON: That's the point: They never have. By the time you got to Marx later in the 19th century,
you had a discussion, largely in Germany, over how to make banks do something they did not do under
feudalism. Right now we're having the economic surplus being drained not by the landlords
but also by banks and bondholders.
Adam Smith was very much against colonialism because that lead to wars, and wars led to public
debt. He said the solution to prevent this financial class of bondholders burdening the economy by
imposing more and more taxes on consumer goods every time they went to war was to finance wars on
a pay-as-you-go basis. Instead of borrowing, you'd tax the people. Then, he thought, if everybody
felt the burden of war in the form of paying taxes, they'd be against it. Well, it took all of the
19th century to fight for democracy and to extend the vote so that instead of landlords controlling
Parliament and its law-making and tax system through the House of Lords, you'd extend the vote to
labor, to women and everybody. The theory was that society as a whole would vote in its self-interest.
It would vote for the 99 Percent, not for the One Percent.
By the time Marx wrote in the 1870s, he could see what was happening in Germany. German banks
were trying to make money in conjunction with the government, by lending to heavy industry, largely
to the military-industrial complex.
HEDGES: This was Bismarck's kind of social – I don't know what we'd call it. It was a form
of capitalist socialism
HUDSON: They called it State Capitalism. There was a long discussion by Engels, saying, wait a
minute. We're for Socialism. State Capitalism isn't what we mean by socialism. There are two kinds
of state-oriented–.
HEDGES: I'm going to interject that there was a kind of brilliance behind Bismarck's policy
because he created state pensions, he provided health benefits, and he directed banking toward industry,
toward the industrialization of Germany which, as you point out, was very different in Britain and
the United States.
HUDSON: German banking was so successful that by the time World War I broke out, there were discussions
in English economic journals worrying that Germany and the Axis powers were going to win because
their banks were more suited to fund industry. Without industry you can't have really a military.
But British banks only lent for foreign trade and for speculation. Their stock market was a hit-and-run
operation. They wanted quick in-and-out profits, while German banks didn't insist that their clients
pay as much in dividends. German banks owned stocks as well as bonds, and there was much more of
a mutual partnership.
That's what most of the 19th century imagined was going to happen – that the world
was on the way to socializing banking. And toward moving capitalism beyond the feudal level, getting
rid of the landlord class, getting rid of the rent, getting rid of interest. It was going to be labor
and capital, profits and wages, with profits being reinvested in more capital. You'd have an expansion
of technology. By the early twentieth century most futurists imagined that we'd be living in a leisure
economy by now.
HEDGES: Including Karl Marx.
HUDSON: That's right. A ten-hour workweek. To Marx, socialism was to be an outgrowth of the reformed
state of capitalism, as seemed likely at the time – if labor organized in its self-interest.
HEDGES: Isn't what happened in large part because of the defeat of Germany in World War I?
But also, because we took the understanding of economists like Adam Smith and maybe Keynes. I don't
know who you would blame for this, whether Ricardo or others, but we created a fictitious economic
theory to praise a rentier or rent-derived, interest-derived capitalism that countered productive
forces within the economy. Perhaps you can address that.
HUDSON: Here's what happened. Marx traumatized classical economics by taking the concepts of Adam
Smith and John Stuart Mill and others, and pushing them to their logical conclusion.
Progressive
capitalist advocates – Ricardian socialists such as John Stuart Mill – wanted to tax away the land
or nationalize it. Marx wanted governments to take over heavy industry and build infrastructure to
provide low-cost and ultimately free basic services. This was traumatizing the landlord class and
the One Percent. And they fought back. They wanted to make everything part of "the market," which
functioned on credit supplied by them and paid rent to them.
None of the classical economists imagined how the feudal interests – these great vested interests
that had all the land and money – actually would fight back and succeed. They thought that the future
was going to belong to capital and labor. But by the late 19th century, certainly in America,
people like John Bates Clark came out with a completely different theory, rejecting the classical
economics of Adam Smith, the Physiocrats and John Stuart Mill.
HEDGES: Physiocrats are, you've tried to explain, the enlightened French economists.
HUDSON: The common denominator among all these classical economists was the distinction between
earned income and unearned income. Unearned income was rent and interest. Earned incomes were wages
and profits. But John Bates Clark came and said that there's no such thing as unearned income. He
said that the landlord actually earns his rent by taking the effort to provide a house and
land to renters, while banks provide credit to earn their interest. Every kind of income is thus
"earned," and everybody earns their income. So everybody who accumulates wealth, by definition, according
to his formulas, get rich by adding to what is now called Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
HEDGES: One of the points you make in
Killing
the Host which I liked was that in almost all cases, those who had the capacity to make money
parasitically off interest and rent had either – if you go back to the origins – looted and seized
the land by force, or inherited it.
HUDSON: That's correct. In other words, their income is unearned. The result of this anti-classical
revolution you had just before World War I was that today, almost all the economic growth in the
last decade has gone to the One Percent. It's gone to Wall Street, to real estate
HEDGES: But you blame this on what you call Junk Economics.
HUDSON: Junk Economics is the anti-classical reaction.
HEDGES: Explain a little bit how, in essence, it's a fictitious form of measuring the economy.
HUDSON: Well, some time ago I went to a bank, a block away from here – a Chase Manhattan bank
– and I took out money from the teller. As I turned around and took a few steps, there were two pickpockets.
One pushed me over and the other grabbed the money and ran out. The guard stood there and saw it.
So I asked for the money back. I said, look, I was robbed in your bank, right inside. And they said,
"Well, we don't arm our guards because if they shot someone, the thief could sue us and we don't
want that." They gave me an equivalent amount of money back.
Well, imagine if you count all this crime, all the money that's taken, as an addition to GDP.
Because now the crook has provided the service of not stabbing me. Or suppose somebody's held up
at an ATM machine and the robber says, "Your money or your life." You say, "Okay, here's my money."
The crook has given you the choice of your life. In a way that's how the Gross National Product accounts
are put up. It's not so different from how Wall Street extracts money from the economy. Then also
you have landlords extracting
HEDGES: Let's go back. They're extracting money from the economy by debt peonage. By raising
HUDSON: By not playing a productive role, basically.
HEDGES: Right. So it's credit card interest, mortgage interest, car loans, student loans. That's
how they make their funds.
HUDSON: That's right. Money is not a factor of production. But in order to have access to credit,
in order to get money, in order to get an education, you have to pay the banks. At New York University
here, for instance, they have Citibank. I think Citibank people were on the board of directors at
NYU. You get the students, when they come here, to start at the local bank. And once you are in a
bank and have monthly funds taken out of your account for electric utilities, or whatever, it's very
cumbersome to change.
So basically you have what the classical economists called the rentier class. The class
that lives on economic rents. Landlords, monopolists charging more, and the banks. If you have a
pharmaceutical company that raises the price of a drug from $12 a shot to $200 all of a sudden, their
profits go up. Their increased price for the drug is counted in the national income accounts as if
the economy is producing more. So all this presumed economic growth that has all been taken by the
One Percent in the last ten years, and people say the economy is growing. But the economy isn't growing
HEDGES: Because it's not reinvested.
HUDSON: That's right. It's not production, it's not consumption. The wealth of the One Percent
is obtained essentially by lending money to the 99 Percent and then charging interest on it, and
recycling this interest at an exponentially growing rate.
HEDGES: And why is it important, as I think you point out in your book, that economic theory
counts this rentier income as productive income? Explain why that's important.
HUDSON: If you're a rentier, you want to say that you earned your income by
HEDGES: We're talking about Goldman Sachs, by the way.
HUDSON: Yes, Goldman Sachs. The head of Goldman Sachs came out and said that Goldman Sachs workers
are the most productive in the world. That's why they're paid what they are. The concept of productivity
in America is income divided by labor. So if you're Goldman Sachs and you pay yourself $20 million
a year in salary and bonuses, you're considered to have added $20 million to GDP, and that's enormously
productive. So we're talking in a tautology. We're talking with circular reasoning here.
So the issue is whether Goldman Sachs, Wall Street and predatory pharmaceutical firms, actually
add "product" or whether they're just exploiting other people. That's why I used the word parasitism
in my book's title. People think of a parasite as simply taking money, taking blood out of a host
or taking money out of the economy. But in nature it's much more complicated. The parasite can't
simply come in and take something. First of all, it needs to numb the host. It has an enzyme so that
the host doesn't realize the parasite's there. And then the parasites have another enzyme that takes
over the host's brain. It makes the host imagine that the parasite is part of its own body, actually
part of itself and hence to be protected.
That's basically what Wall Street has done. It depicts itself as part of the economy. Not as a
wrapping around it, not as external to it, but actually the part that's helping the body grow, and
that actually is responsible for most of the growth. But in fact it's the parasite that is taking
over the growth.
The result is an inversion of classical economics. It turns Adam Smith upside down. It says what
the classical economists said was unproductive – parasitism – actually is the real economy. And that
the parasites are labor and industry that get in the way of what the parasite wants – which is to
reproduce itself, not help the host, that is, labor and capital.
HEDGES: And then the classical economists like Adam Smith were quite clear that unless that
rentier income, you know, the money made by things like hedge funds, was heavily taxed and put back
into the economy, the economy would ultimately go into a kind of tailspin. And I think the example
of that, which you point out in your book, is what's happened in terms of large corporations with
stock dividends and buybacks. And maybe you can explain that.
HUDSON: There's an idea in superficial textbooks and the public media that if companies make a
large profit, they make it by being productive. And with
HEDGES: Which is still in textbooks, isn't it?
HUDSON: Yes. And also that if a stock price goes up, you're just capitalizing the profits – and
the stock price reflects the productive role of the company. But that's not what's been happening
in the last ten years. Just in the last two years, 92 percent of corporate profits in America have
been spent either on buying back their own stock, or paid out as dividends to raise the price of
the stock.
HEDGES: Explain why they do this.
HUDSON: About 15 years ago at Harvard, Professor Jensen said that the way to ensure that corporations
are run most efficiently is to make the managers increase the price of the stock. So if you give
the managers stock options, and you pay them not according to how much they're producing or making
the company bigger, or expanding production, but the price of the stock, then you'll have the corporation
run efficiently, financial style.
So the corporate managers find there are two ways that they can increase the price of the stock.
The first thing is to cut back long-term investment, and use the money instead to buy back their
own stock. But when you buy your own stock, that means you're not putting the money into capital
formation. You're not building new factories. You're not hiring more labor. You can actually increase
the stock price by firing labor.
HEDGES: That strategy only works temporarily.
HUDSON: Temporarily. By using the income from past investments just to buy back stock, fire the
labor force if you can, and work it more intensively. Pay it out as dividends. That basically is
the corporate raider's model. You use the money to pay off the junk bond holders at high interest.
And of course, this gets the company in trouble after a while, because there is no new investment.
So markets shrink. You then go to the labor unions and say, gee, this company's near bankruptcy,
and we don't want to have to fire you. The way that you can keep your job is if we downgrade your
pensions. Instead of giving you what we promised, the defined benefit pension, we'll turn it into
a defined contribution plan. You know what you pay every month, but you don't know what's going to
come out. Or, you wipe out the pension fund, push it on to the government's Pension Benefit Guarantee
Corporation, and use the money that you were going to pay for pensions to pay stock dividends. By
then the whole economy is turning down. It's hollowed out. It shrinks and collapses. But by that
time the managers will have left the company. They will have taken their bonuses and salaries and
run.
HEDGES: I want to read this quote from your book, written by David Harvey, in
A Brief
History of Neoliberalism, and have you comment on it.
"The main substantive achievement of neoliberalism has been to redistribute rather than
to generate wealth and income. [By] 'accumulation by dispossession' I mean the commodification
and privatization of land, and the forceful expulsion of peasant populations; conversion of various
forms of property rights (common collective state, etc.) into exclusive private property rights;
suppression of rights to the commons; colonial, neocolonial, and the imperial processes of appropriation
of assets (including natural resources); and usury, the national debt and, most devastating
at all, the use of the credit system as a radical means of accumulation by dispossession. To
this list of mechanisms, we may now add a raft of techniques such as the extraction of rents from
patents, and intellectual property rights (such as the diminution or erasure of various forms
of common property rights, such as state pensions, paid vacations, and access to education, health
care) one through a generation or more of class struggle. The proposal to privatize all state
pension rights, pioneered in Chile under the dictatorship is, for example, one of the cherished
objectives of the Republicans in the US."
This explains the denouement. The final end result you speak about in your book is, in essence,
allowing what you call the rentier or the speculative class to cannibalize the entire society until
it collapses.
HUDSON: A property right is not a factor of production. Look at what happened in Chicago, the
city where I grew up. Chicago didn't want to raise taxes on real estate, especially on its expensive
commercial real estate. So its budget ran a deficit. They needed money to pay the bondholders, so
they sold off the parking rights to have meters – you know, along the curbs. The result is that they
sold to Goldman Sachs 75 years of the right to put up parking meters. So now the cost of living and
doing business in Chicago is raised by having to pay the parking meters. If Chicago is going to have
a parade and block off traffic, it has to pay Goldman Sachs what the firm would have made
if the streets wouldn't have been closed off for a parade. All of a sudden it's much more expensive
to live in Chicago because of this.
But this added expense of having to pay parking rights to Goldman Sachs – to pay out interest
to its bondholders – is counted as an increase in GDP, because you've created more product simply
by charging more. If you sell off a road, a government or local road, and you put up a toll booth
and make it into a toll road, all of a sudden GDP goes up.
If you go to war abroad, and you spend more money on the military-industrial complex, all this
is counted as increased production. None of this is really part of the production system of the capital
and labor building more factories and producing more things that people need to live and do business.
All of this is overhead. But there's no distinction between wealth and overhead.
Failing to draw that distinction means that the host doesn't realize that there is a parasite
there. The host economy, the industrial economy, doesn't realize what the industrialists realized
in the 19th century: If you want to be an efficient economy and be low-priced and under-sell
competitors, you have to cut your prices by having the public sector provide roads freely. Medical
care freely. Education freely.
If you charge for all of these, you get to the point that the U.S. economy is in today. What if
American factory workers were to get all of their consumer goods for nothing. All their food,
transportation, clothing, furniture, everything for nothing. They still couldn't compete with
Asians or other producers, because they have to pay up to 43% of their income for rent or mortgage
interest, 10% or more of their income for student loans, credit card debt. 15% of their paycheck
is automatic withholding to pay Social Security, to cut taxes on the rich or to pay for medical care.
So Americans built into the economy all this overhead. There's no distinction between growth and
overhead. It's all made America so high-priced that we're priced out of the market, regardless of
what trade policy we have.
HEDGES: We should add that under this predatory form of economics, you game the system. So
you privatize pension funds, you force them into the stock market, an overinflated stock market.
But because of the way companies go public, it's the hedge fund managers who profit. And it's those
citizens whose retirement savings are tied to the stock market who lose. Maybe we can just conclude
by talking about how the system is fixed, not only in terms of burdening the citizen with debt peonage,
but by forcing them into the market to fleece them again.
HUDSON: Well, we talk about an innovation economy as if that makes money. Suppose you have an
innovation and a company goes public. They go to Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street investment banks
to underwrite the stock to issue it at $40 a share. What's considered a successful float is when,
immediately, Goldman and the others will go to their insiders and tell them to buy this stock and
make a quick killing. A "successful" flotation doubles the price in one day, so that at the end of
the day the stock's selling for $80.
HEDGES: They have the option to buy it before anyone else, knowing that by the end of the day
it'll be inflated, and then they sell it off.
HUDSON: That's exactly right.
HEDGES: So the pension funds come in and buy it at an inflated price, and then it goes back
down.
HUDSON: It may go back down, or it may be that the company just was shortchanged from the very
beginning. The important thing is that the Wall Street underwriting firm, and the speculators it
rounds up, get more in a single day than all the years it took to put the company together. The company
gets $40. And the banks and their crony speculators also get $40.
So basically you have the financial sector ending up with much more of the gains. The name of
the game if you're on Wall Street isn't profits. It's capital gains. And that's something that wasn't
even part of classical economics. They didn't anticipate that the price of assets would go up for
any other reason than earning more money and capitalizing on income. But what you have had in the
last 50 years – really since World War II – has been asset-price inflation. Most middle-class families
have gotten the wealth that they've got since 1945 not really by saving what they've earned by working,
but by the price of their house going up. They've benefited by the price of the house. And they think
that that's made them rich and the whole economy rich.
The reason the price of housing has gone up is that a house is worth whatever a bank is going
to lend against it. If banks made easier and easier credit, lower down payments, then you're going
to have a financial bubble. And now, you have real estate having gone up as high as it can. I don't
think it can take more than 43% of somebody's income to buy it. But now, imagine if you're joining
the labor force. You're not going to be able to buy a house at today's prices, putting down a little
bit of your money, and then somehow end up getting rich just on the house investment. All of this
money you pay the bank is now going to be subtracted from the amount of money that you have available
to spend on goods and services.
So we've turned the post-war economy that made America prosperous and rich inside out. Somehow
most people believed they could get rich by going into debt to borrow assets that were going to rise
in price. But you can't get rich, ultimately, by going into debt. In the end the creditors always
win. That's why every society since Sumer and Babylonia have had to either cancel the debts, or you
come to a society like Rome that didn't cancel the debts, and then you have a dark age. Everything
collapses.
"... Furthermore, as Mark Kleiman sagely observes , the conventional case for trade liberalization relies on the assertion that the government could redistribute income to ensure that everyone wins - but we now have an ideology utterly opposed to such redistribution in full control of one party, and with blocking power against anything but a minor move in that direction by the other. ..."
A Protectionist Moment? : ... if Sanders were to make it to the White House, he would find
it very hard to do anything much about globalization - not because it's technically or economically
impossible, but because the moment he looked into actually tearing up existing trade agreements
the diplomatic, foreign-policy costs would be overwhelmingly obvious. ...
But it's also true
that much of the elite defense of globalization is basically dishonest: false claims of inevitability,
scare tactics (
protectionism causes depressions !), vastly exaggerated claims for the benefits of trade liberalization
and the costs of protection, hand-waving away the large distributional effects that are what standard
models actually predict. I hope, by the way, that I haven't done any of that...
Furthermore, as Mark Kleiman
sagely observes , the conventional case for trade liberalization relies on the assertion that
the government could redistribute income to ensure that everyone wins - but we now have an ideology
utterly opposed to such redistribution in full control of one party, and with blocking power against
anything but a minor move in that direction by the other.
So the elite case for ever-freer trade is largely a scam, which voters probably sense even
if they don't know exactly what form it's taking.
Ripping up the trade agreements we already have would, again, be a mess, and I would say that
Sanders is engaged in a bit of a scam himself in even hinting that he could do such a thing. Trump
might actually do it, but only as part of a reign of destruction on many fronts.
But it is fair to say that the case for more trade agreements - including TPP, which hasn't
happened yet - is very, very weak. And if a progressive makes it to the White House, she should
devote no political capital whatsoever to such things.
Again, just because automation has been a major factor in job loss doesn't mean "off shoring"
(using the term broadly and perhaps somewhat inaccurately) is not a factor.
The "free" trade deals suck. They are correctly diagnosed as part of the problem.
What would you propose to fix the problems caused by automation?
Automation frees labor to do more productive and less onerous tasks. We should expand our solar
production and our mass transit. We need to start re-engineering our urban areas. This will not
bring back the number of jobs it would take to make cities like Flint thrive once again.
Flint and Detroit have severe economic problems because they were mismanaged by road building
and suburbanization in the 1950s and 1960s. Money that should have been spent on maintaining and
improving urban infrastructure was instead plowed into suburban development that is not dense
enough to sustain the infrastructure required to support it. People moved to the suburbs, abandoned
the built infrastructure of the cities and kissed them goodbye.
Big roads polluted the cities with lead, noise, diesel particles and ozone and smog. Stroads
created pedestrian kill zones making urban areas, unwalkable, unpleasant- an urban blights to
drive through rather than destinations to drive to.
Government subsidized the white flight to the suburbs that has left both the suburbs and the
urban cores with too low revenue to infrastructure ratio. The inner suburbs have aged into net
losers, their infrastructure must be subsidized. Big Roads were built on the Big Idea that people
would drive to the city to work and play and then drive home. That Big idea has a big problem.
Urban areas are only sustainable when they have a high resident density. The future of cities
like Flint and Detroit will be tearing out the roads and replacing them with streets and houses
and renewing the housing stock that has been abandoned. It needs to be done by infill, revitalizing
inner neighborhoods and working outward. Cities like Portland have managed to protect much of
their core, but even they are challenged by demands for suburban sprawl.
Slash and burn development, creating new suburbs and abandoning the old is not a sustainable
model. Not only should we put people to work replacing the Flint lead pipes, but much of the city
should be rebuilt from the inside out. Flint is the leading edge of this problem that requires
fundamental changes in our built environment to fix. I recommend studying Flint as an object lesson
of what bad development policy could do to all of our cities.
An Interview with Frank Popper about Shrinking Cities, Buffalo Commons, and the Future of Flint
How does America's approach shrinking cities compare to the rest of the world?
I think the American way is to do nothing until it's too late, then throw everything at it
and improvise and hope everything works. And somehow, insofar as the country's still here, it
has worked. But the European or the Japanese way would involve much more thought, much more foresight,
much more central planning, and much less improvising. They would implement a more, shall we say,
sustained effort. The American way is different. Europeans have wondered for years and years why
cities like Detroit or Cleveland are left to rot on the vine. There's a lot of this French hauteur
when they ask "How'd you let this happen?"
Do shrinking cities have any advantages over agricultural regions as they face declining populations?
The urban areas have this huge advantage over all these larger American regions that are going
through this. They have actual governments with real jurisdiction. Corrupt as Detroit or Philadelphia
or Camden may be, they have actual governments that are supposed to be in charge of them. Who's
in charge of western Kansas? Who's in charge of the Great Plains? Who is in charge of the lower
Mississippi Delta or central Appalachia? All they've got are these distant federal agencies whose
past performance is not exactly encouraging.
Why wasn't there a greater outcry as the agricultural economy and the industrial economy collapsed?
One reason for the rest of the country not to care is that there's no shortage of the consumer
goods that these places once produced. All this decline of agriculture doesn't mean we're running
out of food. We've got food coming out of our ears. Likewise, Flint has suffered through all this,
but it's not like it's hard to buy a car in this country. It's not as if Flint can behave like
a child and say "I'm going to hold my nose and stop you from getting cars until you do the right
thing." Flint died and you can get zero A.P.R. financing. Western Kansas is on its last legs and,
gee, cereal is cheaper than ever.
In some sense that's the genius of capitalism - it's heartless. But if you look at the local
results and the cultural results and the environmental results you shake your head. But I don't
see America getting away from what I would call a little sarcastically the "wisdom" of the market.
I don't think it's going to change.
So is there any large-scale economic fallout from these monumental changes?
Probably not, and it hurts to say so. And the only way I can feel good about saying that is
to immediately point to the non-economic losses, the cultural losses. The losses of ways of life.
The notion of the factory worker working for his or her children. The notion of the farmer working
to build up the country and supply the rest of the world with food. We're losing distinctive ways
of life. When we lose that we lose something important, but it's not like The Wall Street Journal
cares. And I feel uncomfortable saying that. From a purely economic point of view, it's just the
price of getting more efficient. It's a classic example of Schumpeter's theory of creative destruction,
which is no fun if you're on the destruction end.
Does the decline of cities like Flint mirror the death of the middle class in the United States?
I think it's more the decline of the lower-middle class in the United States. Even when those
jobs in the auto factories paid very high wages they were still for socially lower-middle-class
people. I think there was always the notion in immigrant families and working-class families who
worked in those situations that the current generation would work hard so that the children could
go off and not have to do those kind of jobs. And when those jobs paid well that was a perfectly
reasonable ambition. It's the cutting off of that ambition that really hurts now. The same thing
has been true on farms and ranches in rural parts of the united states.
It is a much different thing to be small minded about trade than it is to be large minded about
everything else. The short story that it is all about automation and not trade will always get
a bad reception because it is small minded. When you add in the large minded story about everything
else then it becomes something entirely different from the short story. We all agree with you
about everything else. You are wrong about globalization though. Both financialization and globalization
suck and even if we paper over them with tax and transfer then they will still suck. One must
forget what it is to be a created equal human to miss that. Have you never felt the job of accomplishment?
Does not pride and self-confidence matter in your life?
While automation is part of the story, offshoring is just as important. Even when there is not
net loss in the numbers of jobs in aggregate, there is significant loss in better paying jobs
in manufacturing. It is important to look at the distributional effects within countries, as well
as between them
It would probably be cheaper and easier to just fix them. We don't need to withdraw from trade.
We just need to fix the terms of trade that cause large trade deficits and cross border capital
flows and also fix the FOREX system rigging.
What would it take to ignore trade agreements? They shouldn't be any more difficult to ignore
than the Geneva Conventions, which the US routinely flaunts.
In order to import we must export and in order to export we must import. The two are tied together.
Suppressing imports means we export less.
What free trade does is lower the price level relative to wages. It doesn't uniformly lower
the price level but rather lowers the cost of goods that are capable of being traded internationally.
It lowers the price on those goods that are disproportionately purchased by those with low incomes.
Free trade causes a progressive decline in the price level while protectionism causes a regressive
increase in the price level.
Funny rebuttal! Bhagwati probably has a model that says the opposite! But then he grew up in India
and should one day get a Nobel Prize for his contributions to international economics.
Our media needs to copy France 24, ... and have real debates about real issues. What we get is
along the lines of ignoring the problem then attacking any effort to correct. for example, the
media stayed away from the healthcare crisis, too complicated, but damn they are good at criticizing.
A seriously shameful article. Krugman has been a booster of trade & globalization for 30 years:
marginally more nuanced than the establishment, but still a booster.
Now, the establishment has what it wanted and the effects have been disastrous for those not
in the top 20 percent of the income distribution.
At this stage, comes insult to injury. Establishment economists (like Mr. Krugman) can reinvent
themselves with "brilliant new studies" showing the costs and damage of globalization. They pay
no professional costs for the grievous injuries inflicted; there is no mention of the fact that
critical outsider economists have been predicting and writing about these injuries and were right;
and they blithely say we must stay the course because we are locked-in and have few options.
Krugman is not Greg Mankiw. Most people who actually get international economics (Mankiw does
not) are not of the free trade benefits all types. Paul Samuelson certainly does not buy into
Mankiw's spin. Funny thing - Mankiw recently cited an excellent piece from Samuelson only to dishonestly
suggest Samuelson did not believe in what he wrote.
Why are you mischaracterizing what Krugman has written? That's my point. Oh wait - you misrepresent
what people write so you can "win" a "debate". Never mind. Please proceed with the serial dishonesty.
"The truth is that if Sanders were to make it to the White House, he would find it very hard to
do anything much about globalization - not because it's technically or economically impossible,
but because the moment he looked into actually tearing up existing trade agreements the diplomatic,
foreign-policy costs would be overwhelmingly obvious. In this, as in many other things, Sanders
currently benefits from the luxury of irresponsibility: he's never been anywhere close to the
levers of power, so he could take principled-sounding but arguably feckless stances in a way that
Clinton couldn't and can't."
As Dean Baker says, we need to confront Walmart and Goldman Sachs at home, who like these policies,
more than the Chinese.
The Chinese want access to our consumer market. They'd also like if we did't invade countries
like Iraq.
"so he could take principled-sounding but arguably feckless stances in a way that Clinton couldn't"
And what is that? Tear up trade deals? It is Krugman who is engaging in straw man arguments.
Krugman does indeed misrepresent Sanders' positions on trade. Sander is not against trade, he
merely insists on *Fair Trade*, which incorporates human rights and environmental protections.
His opposition is to the kinds of deals, like NAFTA and TPP, which effectively gut those (a central
element in Kruman's own critique of the latter).
Krugman has definitely backed off his (much) earlier boosterism and publicly said so. This is
an excellent piece by him, though it does rather downplay his earlier stances a bit. This is one
of the things I especially like about him.
I can get the idea that some people win, some people lose from liberalized trade. But what really
bugs me about the neoliberal trade agenda is that it has been part of a larger set of economically
conservative, laissez faire policies that have exacerbated the damages from trade rather than
offsetting them.
At the same time they were exposing US workers to greater competition from abroad and destroying
and offshoring working class jobs via both trade and liberalized capital flows, the neoliberals
were also doing things like "reinventing government" - that is, shrinking structural government
spending and public investment - and ending welfare. They have done nothing serious about steering
capital and job development efforts toward the communities devastated by the liberalization.
The neoliberal position has seem to come down to "We can't make bourgeois progress without
breaking a few working class eggs."
Agreed! "Krugman has been a booster of trade & globalization for 30 years: marginally more nuanced
than the establishment, but still a booster.'
Now he claims that he saw the light all along! "much of the elite defense of globalization
is basically dishonest: false claims of inevitability, scare tactics (protectionism causes depressions!),
vastly exaggerated claims for the benefits of trade liberalization and the costs of protection,
hand-waving away the large distributional effects that are what standard models actually predict.
I hope, by the way, that I haven't done any of that..."
You would be hard pressed to find any Krugman clips that cited any of those problems in the
past. Far from being an impartial economist, he was always an avid booster of free trade, overlooking
those very downsides that he suddenly decides to confess.
As far as I know, Sanders has not proposed ripping up the existing trade deals. His information
page on trade emphasizes (i) his opposition to these deals when they were first negotiated and
enacted, and (ii) the principles he will apply to the consideration of future trade deals. Much
of his argumentation concerning past deals is put forward to motivate his present opposition to
TPP.
Note also that Sanders connects his discussion of the harms of past trade policy to the Rebuild
America Act. That is, his approach is forward facing. We can't undo most of the past damage by
recreating the old working class economy we wrecked, but we can be aggressive about using government-directed
national investment programs to create new, high-paying jobs in the US.
You could have said the same about the 1920s
We can't undo most of the past damage by recreating the old agrarian class economy we wrecked,
but we can be aggressive about using government-directed national investment programs to create
new, high-paying jobs in the US.
The march of progress:
Mechanization of agriculture with displacement of large numbers of Ag workers.
The rise of factory work and large numbers employed in manufacturing.
Automation of Manufacturing with large displacement of workers engaged in manufacturing.
What do we want our workers to do? This question must be answered at the highest level of society
and requires much government facilitation. The absence of government facilitation is THE problem.
Memo to Paul Krugman - lead with the economics and stay with the economics. His need to get into
the dirty business of politics dilutes what he ends up sensibly writes later on.
""The truth is that if Sanders were to make it to the White House, he would find it very hard
to do anything much about globalization - not because it's technically or economically impossible,
but because the moment he looked into actually tearing up existing trade agreements the diplomatic,
foreign-policy costs would be overwhelmingly obvious. In this, as in many other things, Sanders
currently benefits from the luxury of irresponsibility: he's never been anywhere close to the
levers of power, so he could take principled-sounding but arguably feckless stances in a way that
Clinton couldn't and can't."
Yeah, it's pretty dishonest for Krugman to pretend that Sanders' position is "ripping up the trade
agreements we already have" and then say Sanders is "engaged in a bit of a scam" because he can't
do that. Sanders actual position (trying to stop new trade deals like the TPP) is something the
president has a lot of influence over (they can veto the deal). Hard to tell what Krugman is doing
here other than deliberately spreading misinformation.
Also worth noting that he decides to compare Sanders' opposition to trade deals with Trump,
and ignore the fact that Clinton has come out against the TPP as well .
Busy with real life, but yes, I know what happened in the primaries yesterday. Triumph for
Trump, and big upset for Sanders - although it's still very hard to see how he can catch Clinton.
Anyway, a few thoughts, not about the horserace but about some deeper currents.
The Sanders win defied all the polls, and nobody really knows why. But a widespread guess is
that his attacks on trade agreements resonated with a broader audience than his attacks on Wall
Street; and this message was especially powerful in Michigan, the former auto superpower. And
while I hate attempts to claim symmetry between the parties - Trump is trying to become America's
Mussolini, Sanders at worst America's Michael Foot * - Trump has been tilling some of the same
ground. So here's the question: is the backlash against globalization finally getting real political
traction?
You do want to be careful about announcing a political moment, given how many such proclamations
turn out to be ludicrous. Remember the libertarian moment? The reformocon moment? Still, a protectionist
backlash, like an immigration backlash, is one of those things where the puzzle has been how long
it was in coming. And maybe the time is now.
The truth is that if Sanders were to make it to the White House, he would find it very hard
to do anything much about globalization - not because it's technically or economically impossible,
but because the moment he looked into actually tearing up existing trade agreements the diplomatic,
foreign-policy costs would be overwhelmingly obvious. In this, as in many other things, Sanders
currently benefits from the luxury of irresponsibility: he's never been anywhere close to the
levers of power, so he could take principled-sounding but arguably feckless stances in a way that
Clinton couldn't and can't.
But it's also true that much of the elite defense of globalization is basically dishonest:
false claims of inevitability, scare tactics (protectionism causes depressions! ** ), vastly exaggerated
claims for the benefits of trade liberalization and the costs of protection, hand-waving away
the large distributional effects that are what standard models actually predict. I hope, by the
way, that I haven't done any of that; I think I've always been clear that the gains from globalization
aren't all that (here's a back-of-the-envelope on the gains from hyperglobalization *** - only
part of which can be attributed to policy - that is less than 5 percent of world GDP over a generation);
and I think I've never assumed away the income distribution effects.
Furthermore, as Mark Kleiman sagely observes, **** the conventional case for trade liberalization
relies on the assertion that the government could redistribute income to ensure that everyone
wins - but we now have an ideology utterly opposed to such redistribution in full control of one
party, and with blocking power against anything but a minor move in that direction by the other.
So the elite case for ever-freer trade is largely a scam, which voters probably sense even
if they don't know exactly what form it's taking.
Ripping up the trade agreements we already have would, again, be a mess, and I would say that
Sanders is engaged in a bit of a scam himself in even hinting that he could do such a thing. Trump
might actually do it, but only as part of a reign of destruction on many fronts.
But it is fair to say that the case for more trade agreements - including Trans-Pacific Partnership,
which hasn't happened yet - is very, very weak. And if a progressive makes it to the White House,
she should devote no political capital whatsoever to such things.
Michael Mackintosh Foot (1913 – 2010) was a British Labour Party politician and man of letters
who was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1945 to 1955 and from 1960 until 1992. He was Deputy
Leader of the Labour Party from 1976 to 1980, and later the Leader of the Labour Party and Leader
of the Opposition from 1980 to 1983.
Associated with the left of the Labour Party for most of his career, Foot was an ardent supporter
of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and British withdrawal from the European Economic Community.
He was appointed to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Employment under Harold Wilson in 1974,
and he later served as Leader of the House of Commons under James Callaghan. A passionate orator,
he led Labour through the 1983 general election, when the party obtained its lowest share of the
vote at a general election since 1918 and the fewest parliamentary seats it had had at any time
since before 1945.
There was so much wrong with Mitt Romney's Trump-is-a-disaster-whom-I-will-support-in-the-general
* speech that it may seem odd to call him out for bad international macroeconomics. But this is
a pet peeve of mine, in an area where I really, truly know what I'm talking about. So here goes.
In warning about Trumponomics, Romney declared:
"If Donald Trump's plans were ever implemented, the country would sink into prolonged recession.
A few examples. His proposed 35 percent tariff-like penalties would instigate a trade war and
that would raise prices for consumers, kill our export jobs and lead entrepreneurs and businesses
of all stripes to flee America."
After all, doesn't everyone know that protectionism causes recessions? Actually, no. There
are reasons to be against protectionism, but that's not one of them.
Think about the arithmetic (which has a well-known liberal bias). Total final spending on domestically
produced goods and services is
Total domestic spending + Exports – Imports = GDP
Now suppose we have a trade war. This will cut exports, which other things equal depresses
the economy. But it will also cut imports, which other things equal is expansionary. For the world
as a whole, the cuts in exports and imports will by definition be equal, so as far as world demand
is concerned, trade wars are a wash.
OK, I'm sure some people will start shouting "Krugman says protectionism does no harm." But
no: protectionism in general should reduce efficiency, and hence the economy's potential output.
But that's not at all the same as saying that it causes recessions.
But didn't the Smoot-Hawley tariff cause the Great Depression? No. There's no evidence at all
that it did. Yes, trade fell a lot between 1929 and 1933, but that was almost entirely a consequence
of the Depression, not a cause. (Trade actually fell faster ** during the early stages of the
2008 Great Recession than it did after 1929.) And while trade barriers were higher in the 1930s
than before, this was partly a response to the Depression, partly a consequence of deflation,
which made specific tariffs (i.e. tariffs that are stated in dollars per unit, not as a percentage
of value) loom larger.
Again, not the thing most people will remember about Romney's speech. But, you know, protectionism
was the only reason he gave for believing that Trump would cause a recession, which I think is
kind of telling: the GOP's supposedly well-informed, responsible adult, trying to save the party,
can't get basic economics right at the one place where economics is central to his argument.
The Gains From Hyperglobalization (Wonkish)
By Paul Krugman
Still taking kind of an emotional vacation from current political madness. Following up on
my skeptical post on worries about slowing trade growth, * I wondered what a state-of-the-art
model would say.
The natural model to use, at least for me, is Eaton-Kortum, ** which is a very ingenious approach
to thinking about multilateral trade flows. The basic model is Ricardian - wine and cloth and
labor productivity and all that - except that there are many goods and many countries, transportation
costs, and countries are assumed to gain productivity in any particular industry through a random
process. They make some funny assumptions about distributions - hey, that's kind of the price
of entry for this kind of work - and in return get a tractable model that yields gravity-type
equations for international trade flows. This is a good thing, because gravity models *** of trade
- purely empirical exercises, with no real theory behind them - are known to work pretty well.
Their model also yields a simple expression for the welfare gains from trade:
Real income = A*(1-import share)^(-1/theta)
where A is national productivity and theta is a parameter of their assumed random process (don't
ask); they suggest that theta=4 provides the best match to available data.
Now, what I wanted to do was apply this to the rapid growth of trade that has taken place since
around 1990, what Subramanian **** calls "hyperglobalization". According to Subramanian's estimates,
overall trade in goods and services has risen from about 19 percent of world GDP in the early
1990s to 33 percent now, bringing us to a level of integration that really is historically unprecedented.
There are some conceptual difficulties with using this rise directly in the Eaton-Kortum framework,
because much of it has taken the form of trade in intermediate goods, and the framework isn't
designed to handle that. Still, let me ignore that, and plug Subramanian's numbers into the equation
above; I get a 4.9 percent rise in real incomes due to increased globalization.
That's by no means small change, but it's only a fairly small fraction of global growth. The
Maddison database ***** gives us a 45 percent rise in global GDP per capita over the same period,
so this calculation suggests that rising trade was responsible for around 10 percent of overall
global growth. My guess is that most people who imagine themselves well-informed would give a
bigger number.
By the way, for those critical of globalization, let me hasten to concede that by its nature
the Eaton-Kortum model doesn't let us talk about income distribution, and it also makes no room
for the possible role of globalization in causing secular stagnation. ******
Still, I thought this was an interesting calculation to make - which may show more about my
warped sense of what's interesting than it does about anything else.
General Equilibrium Analysis of the Eaton-Kortum Model of International Trade
By Fernando Alvarez and Robert E. Lucas
We study a variation of the Eaton-Kortum model, a competitive, constant-returns-to-scale multicountry
Ricardian model of trade. We establish existence and uniqueness of an equilibrium with balanced
trade where each country imposes an import tariff. We analyze the determinants of the cross-country
distribution of trade volumes, such as size, tariffs and distance, and compare a calibrated version
of the model with data for the largest 60 economies. We use the calibrated model to estimate the
gains of a world-wide trade elimination of tariffs, using the theory to explain the magnitude
of the gains as well as the differential effect arising from cross-country differences in pre-liberalization
of tariffs levels and country size.
The gravity model of international trade in international economics, similar to other gravity
models in social science, predicts bilateral trade flows based on the economic sizes (often using
GDP measurements) and distance between two units. The model was first used by Jan Tinbergen in
1962.
The Hyperglobalization of Trade and Its Future
By Arvind Subramanian and Martin Kessler
Abstract
The open, rules-based trading system has delivered immense benefits-for the world, for individual
countries, and for average citizens in these countries. It can continue to do so, helping today's
low-income countries make the transition to middle-income status. Three challenges must be met
to preserve this system. Rich countries must sustain the social consensus in favor of open markets
and globalization at a time of considerable economic uncertainty and weakness; China and other
middle-income countries must remain open; and mega-regionalism must be prevented from leading
to discrimination and trade conflicts. Collective action should help strengthen the institutional
underpinnings of globalization. The world should move beyond the Doha Round dead to more meaningful
multilateral negotiations to address emerging challenges, including possible threats from new
mega-regional agreements. The rising powers, especially China, will have a key role to play in
resuscitating multilateralism.
"Furthermore, as Mark Kleiman sagely observes, the conventional case for trade liberalization
relies on the assertion that the government could redistribute income to ensure that everyone
wins"
That was never the conventional case for trade. Plus it's kind of odd that you have to add
"plus have the government redistribute" to the case your making.
Tom Pally above is correct. Krugman has been on the wrong side of this issue. He's gotten better,
but the timing is he's gotten better as the Democratic Party has moved to the left and pushed
back against corporate trade deals. Even Hillary came out late against Obama's TPP.
Sanders has nothing about ripping up trade deals. He has said he won't do any more.
As cawley predicted, once Sanders won Michigan, Krugman started hitting him again at his blog.
With cheap shots I might add. He's ruining his brand.
Tell Morning Edition: It's Not "Free Trade" Folks
by Dean Baker
Published: 10 March 2016
Hey, can an experienced doctor from Germany show up and start practicing in New York next week?
Since the answer is no, we can say that we don't have free trade. It's not an immigration issue,
if the doctor wants to work in a restaurant kitchen, she would probably get away with it. We have
protectionist measures that limit the number of foreign doctors in order to keep their pay high.
These protectionist measures have actually been strengthened in the last two decades.
We also have strengthened patent and copyright protections, making drugs and other affected
items far more expensive. These protections are also forms of protectionism.
This is why Morning Edition seriously misled its listeners in an interview with ice cream barons
Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield over their support of Senator Bernie Sanders. The interviewer repeatedly
referred to "free trade" agreements and Sanders' opposition to them. While these deals are all
called "free trade" deals to make them sound more palatable ("selective protectionism to redistribute
income upward" doesn't sound very appealing), that doesn't mean they are actually about free trade.
Morning Edition should not have used the term employed by promoters to push their trade agenda.
This has been Dean Baker's excellent theme for a very long time. And if you actually paid attention
to what Krugman said about TPP - he agreed with Dean's excellent points. But do continue to set
up straw man arguments so you can dishonestly attack Krugman.
No. That is not a sign of a faulty memory, quite the contrary.
Krugman writes column after column praising trade pacts and criticizing (rightly, I might add)
the yahoos who object for the wrong reasons.
But he omits a few salient facts like
- the gains are small,
- the government MUST intervene with redistribution for this to work socially,
- there are no (or minimal) provisions for that requirement in the pacts.
I would say his omissions speak volumes and are worth remembering.
Krugman initially wrote a confused column about the TPP, treating it as a simple free trade deal
which he said would have little impact because tariffs were already so low. But he did eventually
look into the matter further and wound up agreeing with Baker's take.
"That was never the conventional case for trade". Actually it was. Of course Greg Mankiw never
got the memo so his free trade benefits all BS confuses a lot of people. Mankiw sucks at international
trade.
David Glasner attacks Krugman from the right, but he doesn't whitewash the past as you do.
He remembers Gore versus Perot:
"Indeed, Romney didn't even mention the Smoot-Hawley tariff, but Krugman evidently forgot the
classic exchange between Al Gore and the previous incarnation of protectionist populist outrage
in an anti-establishment billionaire candidate for President:
GORE I've heard Mr. Perot say in the past that, as the carpenters says, measure twice and cut
once. We've measured twice on this. We have had a test of our theory and we've had a test of his
theory. Over the last five years, Mexico's tariffs have begun to come down because they've made
a unilateral decision to bring them down some, and as a result there has been a surge of exports
from the United States into Mexico, creating an additional 400,000 jobs, and we can create hundreds
of thousands of more if we continue this trend. We know this works. If it doesn't work, you know,
we give six months notice and we're out of it. But we've also had a test of his theory.
PEROT When?
GORE In 1930, when the proposal by Mr. Smoot and Mr. Hawley was to raise tariffs across the
board to protect our workers. And I brought some pictures, too.
[Larry] KING You're saying Ross is a protectionist?
GORE This is, this is a picture of Mr. Smoot and Mr. Hawley. They look like pretty good fellows.
They sounded reasonable at the time; a lot of people believed them. The Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley
Protection Bill. He wants to raise tariffs on Mexico. They raised tariffs, and it was one of the
principal causes, many economists say the principal cause, of the Great Depression in this country
and around the world. Now, I framed this so you can put it on your wall if you want to.
You obviously have not read Krugman. Here is from his 1997 Slate piece:
But putting Greenspan (or his successor) into the picture restores much of the classical vision
of the macroeconomy. Instead of an invisible hand pushing the economy toward full employment in
some unspecified long run, we have the visible hand of the Fed pushing us toward its estimate
of the noninflationary unemployment rate over the course of two or three years. To accomplish
this, the board must raise or lower interest rates to bring savings and investment at that target
unemployment rate in line with each other.
And so all the paradoxes of thrift, widow's cruses, and so on become irrelevant. In particular,
an increase in the savings rate will translate into higher investment after all, because the Fed
will make sure that it does.
To me, at least, the idea that changes in demand will normally be offset by Fed policy--so
that they will, on average, have no effect on employment--seems both simple and entirely reasonable.
Yet it is clear that very few people outside the world of academic economics think about things
that way. For example, the debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement was conducted almost
entirely in terms of supposed job creation or destruction. The obvious (to me) point that the
average unemployment rate over the next 10 years will be what the Fed wants it to be, regardless
of the U.S.-Mexico trade balance, never made it into the public consciousness. (In fact, when
I made that argument at one panel discussion in 1993, a fellow panelist--a NAFTA advocate, as
it happens--exploded in rage: "It's remarks like that that make people hate economists!")
Yes. But please do not interrupt PeterK with reality. He has important work do with his bash all
things Krugman agenda. BTW - it is a riot that he cites Ross Perot on NAFTA. Perot has a self
centered agenda there which Gore exposed. Never trust a corrupt business person whether it is
Perot or Trump.
Yes the model PeterK is using is unclear. He doesn't seem to have a grasp on the economics of
the issues. He seems to think that Sanders is a font of economic wisdom who is not to be questioned.
I would hate to see the left try to make a flawed candidate into the larger than life icon that
the GOP has made out of Reagan.
"Yes the model PeterK is using is unclear. He doesn't seem to have a grasp on the economics of
the issues."
Dean Baker and Jared Bernstein. Like you I want full employment and rising wages. And like
Krugman I am very much an internationalist. I want us to deal fairly with the rest of the world.
We need to cooperate especially in the face of global warming.
1. My first, best solution would be fiscal action. Like everyone else. I prefer Sanders's unicorn
plan of $1 trillion over five years rather than Hillary's plan which is one quarter of the size.
Her plan puts more pressure on the Fed and monetary policy.
a. My preference would be to pay for it with Pigouvian taxes on the rich, corporations, and
the financial sector.
b. if not a, then deficit spending like Trudeau in Canada
C. if the deficit hawks block that, then monetary-financing would be the way around them.
2. close the trade deficit. Dean Baker and Bernstein have written about this a lot. Write currency
agreements into trade deals. If we close the trade deficit and are at full employment, then we
can import more from the rest of the world.
3. If powerful interests block 1. and 2. then lean on monetary policy. Reduce the price of
credit to boost demand. It works as a last resort.
"I would hate to see the left try to make a flawed candidate into the larger than life icon
that the GOP has made out of Reagan.'
I haven't seen any evidence of this. It would be funny if the left made an old Jewish codger
from Brooklyn into an icon. Feel the Bern!!!
Sanders regularly points out it's not about him as President fixing everything, it's about
creating a movement. It's about getting people involved. He can't do it by himself. Obama would
say this too. Elizabeth Warren become popular by saying the same things Sanders is saying.
However to say that the conventional case for trade liberalization relies on the Compensation
Principle isn't quite accurate. The conventional case has traditionally relied on the assertion
that "we" are better off with trade since we could *theoretically* distribute the gains. However,
free trade boosters never seem to get around to worrying about distributing the gains *in practice*.
In practice, free trade is typically justified simply by the net aggregate gain, regardless of
how these gains are distributed or who is hurt in the process.
To my mind, before considering some trade liberalization deal we should FIRST agree to and
implement the redistribution mechanisms and only then reduce barriers. Implementing trade deals
in a backward, half-assed way as has typically been the case often makes "us" worse off than autarky.
"Krugman has at times advocated free markets in contexts where they are often viewed as controversial.
He has ... likened the opposition against free trade and globalization to the opposition against
evolution via natural selection (1996),[167]
(In fact, when I made that argument at one panel discussion in 1993, a fellow panelist--a NAFTA
advocate, as it happens--exploded in rage: "It's remarks like that that make people hate economists!")
[Thanks to electoral politics, we're all fellow panelists now.]
"To me, at least, the idea that changes in demand will normally be offset by Fed policy--so that
they will, on average, have no effect on employment--seems both simple and entirely reasonable.
Yet it is clear that very few people outside the world of academic economics think about things
that way."
As we've seen the Fed is overly fearful of inflation, so the Fed doesn't offset the trade deficit
as quickly as it should. Instead we suffer hysteresis and reduction of potential output.
"The truth is that if Sanders were to make it to the White House, he would find it very hard to
do anything much about globalization - not because it's technically or economically impossible,
but because the moment he looked into actually tearing up existing trade agreements the diplomatic,
foreign-policy costs would be overwhelmingly obvious."
Here Krugman is more honest. We're basically buying off the Chinese, etc. The cost for stopping
this would be less cooperation from the Chinese, etc.
This is new. He never used to say this kind of thing. Instead he'd go after "protectionists"
as luddites.
"This is new. He never used to say this kind of thing. Instead he'd go after "protectionists"
as luddites."
You have Krugman confused with Greg Mankiw. Most real international economics (Mankiw is not
one) recognize the distributional consequences of free trade v. protectionism. Then again - putting
forth the Mankiw uninformed spin is a prerequisite for being on Team Republican. Of course Republicans
will go protectionist whenever it is politically expedient as in that temporary set of steel tariffs.
Helped Bush-Cheney in 2004 and right after that - no tariffs. Funny how that worked.
Where is the "redistribution from government" in the TPP. There isn't any.
Even the NAFTA side agreements on labor and the environment are toothless. The point of these
corporate trade deals is to profit from the lower labor and environmental standards of poorer
countries.
The fact that you resort to calling me a professional Krugman hater means you're not interested
in an actual debate about actual ideas. You've lost the debate and I'm not participating.
One is not allowed to criticize Krugman lest one be labeled a professional Krugman hater?
Your resort to name calling just weakens the case you're making.
You of late have wasted so much space misrepresenting what Krugman has said. Maybe you don't hate
him - maybe you just want to get his attention. For a date maybe. Lord - the troll in you is truly
out of control.
Sandwichman may think Krugman changed his views but if one actually read what he has written over
the years (as opposed to your cherry picking quotes), you might have noticed otherwise. But of
course you want Krugman to look bad. It is what you do.
Sizeable numbers of Americans have seen wages decline in real terms for nearly 20 years. Many/most
parents in many communities do not see a better future before them, or for their children.
Notable quotes:
"... Democracy demands that ballot access rules be selected by referendum, not by the very legacy parties that maintain legislative control by effectively denying ballot access to parties that will pose a challenge to their continued rule. ..."
"... I think the U.S. Party system, in the political science sense, shifted to a new state during George W Bush's administration as, in Kevin Phillip's terms the Republican Party was taken over by Theocrats and Bad Money. ..."
"... My understanding is trumps support disproportionately comes from the small business owning classes, Ie a demographic similar to the petite bourgeoisie who have often been heavily involved in reactionary movements. This gets oversold as "working class" when class is defined by education level rather than income. ..."
"... Racism serves as an organizing principle. Politically, in an oppressive and stultifying hierarchy like the plantation South, racism not incidentally buys the loyalty of subalterns with ersatz status. ..."
"... For a time, the balkanization of American political communities by race, religion and ethnicity was an effective means to the dominance of an tiny elite with ties to an hegemonic community, but it backfired. Dismantling that balkanization has left the country with a very low level of social affiliation and thus a low capacity to organize resistance to elite depredations. ..."
"... Watching Clinton scoop up bankster money, welcome Republicans neocons to the ranks of her supporters does not fill me with hope. ..."
Legislators affiliated with the duopoly parties should not write the rules governing the ballot
access of third parties. This exclusionary rule making amounts to preserving a self-dealing duopoly.
Elections are the interest of the people who vote and those elected should not be able to subvert
the democratic process by acting as a cartel.
Democracy demands that ballot access rules be selected by referendum, not by the very legacy
parties that maintain legislative control by effectively denying ballot access to parties that
will pose a challenge to their continued rule.
Of course any meaningful change would require a voluntary diminishment of power of the duopoly
that now has dictatorial control over ballot access, and who will prevent any Constitutional Amendment
that would enhance the democratic nature of the process.
bruce wilder 08.02.16 at 8:02 pm
I think the U.S. Party system, in the political science sense, shifted to a new state during
George W Bush's administration as, in Kevin Phillip's terms the Republican Party was taken over
by Theocrats and Bad Money.
Ronan(rf) 08.04.16 at 10:35 pm
"I generally don't give a shit about polls so I have no "data" to evidence this claim,
but my guess is the majority of Trump's support comes from this broad middle"
My understanding is trumps support disproportionately comes from the small business owning
classes, Ie a demographic similar to the petite bourgeoisie who have often been heavily involved
in reactionary movements. This gets oversold as "working class" when class is defined by education
level rather than income.
This would make some sense as they are generally in economically unstable jobs, they tend to
be hostile to both big govt (regulations, freeloaders) and big business (unfair competition),
and while they (rhetorically at least) tend to value personal autonomy and self sufficiency ,
they generally sell into smaller, local markets, and so are particularly affected by local demographic
and cultural change , and decline. That's my speculation anyway.
bruce wilder 08.06.16 at 4:28 pm
I am somewhat suspicious of leaving dominating elites out of these stories of racism as an
organizing principle for political economy or (cultural) community.
Racism served the purposes of a slaveholding elite that organized political communities to
serve their own interests. (Or, vis a vis the Indians a land-grab or genocide.)
Racism serves as an organizing principle. Politically, in an oppressive and stultifying
hierarchy like the plantation South, racism not incidentally buys the loyalty of subalterns with
ersatz status. The ugly prejudices and resentful arrogance of working class whites is thus
a component of how racism works to organize a political community to serve a hegemonic master
class. The business end of racism, though, is the autarkic poverty imposed on the working communities:
slaves, sharecroppers, poor blacks, poor whites - bad schools, bad roads, politically disabled
communities, predatory institutions and authoritarian governments.
For a time, the balkanization of American political communities by race, religion and ethnicity
was an effective means to the dominance of an tiny elite with ties to an hegemonic community,
but it backfired. Dismantling that balkanization has left the country with a very low level of
social affiliation and thus a low capacity to organize resistance to elite depredations.
bruce wilder 08.06.16 at 4:31 pm
Watching Clinton scoop up bankster money, welcome Republicans neocons to the ranks of her
supporters does not fill me with hope.
Trump and the other illiberal populists have been benefiting from three overlapping backlashes.
The first is cultural. Movements for civil liberties have been remarkably successful over the
last 40 years. Women, ethnic and religious minorities, and the LGBTQ community have secured important
gains at a legal and cultural level. It is remarkable, for instance, how quickly same-sex marriage
has become legal in more than 20 countries when no country recognized it before 2001.
Resistance has always existed to these movements to expand the realm of civil liberties. But this
backlash increasingly has a political face. Thus the rise of parties that challenge multiculturalism
and immigration in Europe, the movements throughout Africa and Asia that support the majority over
the minorities, and the Trump/Tea Party takeover of the Republican Party with their appeals to primarily
white men.
The second backlash is economic. The globalization of the economy has created a class of enormously
wealthy individuals (in the financial, technology, and communications sectors). But globalization
has left behind huge numbers of low-wage workers and those who have watched their jobs relocate to
other countries.
Illiberal populists have directed all that anger on the part of people left behind by the world
economy at a series of targets: bankers who make billions, corporations that are constantly looking
for even lower-wage workers, immigrants who "take away our jobs," and sometimes ethnic minorities
who function as convenient scapegoats. The targets, in other words, include both the very powerful
and the very weak.
The third backlash, and perhaps the most consequential, is political. It's not just that people
living in democracies are disgusted with their leaders and the parties they represent. Rather, as
political scientists Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk
write in the Journal of Democracy , "they have also become more cynical about the value
of democracy as a political system, less hopeful that anything they do might influence public policy,
and more willing to express support for authoritarian alternatives."
Foa and Mounk are using 20 years of data collected from surveys of citizens in Western Europe
and North America – the democracies with the greatest longevity. And they have found that support
for illiberal alternatives is greater among the younger generation than the older one. In other countries
outside Europe and North America, the disillusionment with democratic institutions often takes the
form of a preference for a powerful leader who can break the rules if necessary to preserve order
and stability – like Putin in Russia or Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Egypt or Prayuth Chan-ocha in Thailand.
These three backlashes – cultural, economic, political – are also anti-internationalist because
international institutions have become associated with the promotion of civil liberties and human
rights, the greater globalization of the economy, and the constraint of the sovereignty of nations
(for instance, through the European Union or the UN's "responsibility to protect" doctrine).
... ... ....
The current political order is coming apart. If we don't come up with a fair, Green, and internationalist
alternative, the illiberal populists will keep winning. John Feffer is the director of Foreign
Policy In Focus.
"... if neo-liberalism is partly defined by the free flow of goods, labor and capital - and that has been the Republican agenda since at least Reagan - how is Trump a continuation of the same tradition?" ..."
"... Trump is a conservative (or right populist, or whatever), and draws on that tradition. He's not a neoliberal. ..."
"... Trump is too incoherent to really represent the populist view. He's consistent w/the trade and immigration views but (assuming you can actually figure him out) wrong on banks, taxes, etc. ..."
"... But the next populists we see might be more full bore. When that happens, you'll see much more overlap w/Sanders economic plans for the middle class. ..."
"... There's always tension along the lead running between the politician and his constituents. The thing that seems most salient to me at the present moment is the sense of betrayal pervading our politics. At least since the GFC of 2008, it has been hard to deny that the two Parties worked together to set up an economic betrayal. And, the long-running saga of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan also speak to elite failure, as well as betrayal. ..."
"... Trump is a novelty act. He represents a chance for people who feel resentful without knowing much of anything about anything to cast a middle-finger vote. They wouldn't be willing to do that, if times were really bad, instead of just disappointing and distressing. ..."
"... There's also the fact Reagan tapped a fair number of Nixon people, as did W years later. Reagan went after Nixon in the sense of running against him, and taking the party in a much more hard-right direction, sure. But he was repudiated largely because he got caught doing dirty tricks with his pants down. ..."
"... From what I can tell - the 1972 election gave the centrists in the democratic party power to discredit and marginalize the anti-war left, and with it, the left in general. ..."
"... Ready even now to whine that she's a victim and that the whole community is at fault and that people are picking on her because she's a woman, rather than because she has a habit of making accusations like this every time she comments. ..."
"... That is a perfect example of predatory "solidarity". Val is looking for dupes to support her ..."
"Once again, if neo-liberalism is partly defined by the free flow of goods, labor and capital
- and that has been the Republican agenda since at least Reagan - how is Trump a continuation
of the same tradition?"
You have to be willing to see neoliberalism as something different
from conservatism to have the answer make any sense. John Quiggin has written a good deal here
about a model of U.S. politics as being divided into left, neoliberal, and conservative. Trump
is a conservative (or right populist, or whatever), and draws on that tradition. He's not a neoliberal.
... ... ...
T 08.12.16 at 5:52 pm
RP @683
That's a bit of my point. I think Corey has defined the Republican tradition solely
in response to the Southern Strategy that sees a line from Nixon (or Goldwater) to Trump. But
that gets the economics wrong and the foreign policy too - the repub foreign policy view has not
been consistent across administrations and Trump's economic pans (to the extent he has a plan)
are antithetical to the Nixon – W tradition. I have viewed post-80 Dem administrations as neoliberals
w/transfers and Repub as neoliberals w/o transfers.
Trump is too incoherent to really represent the populist view. He's consistent w/the trade
and immigration views but (assuming you can actually figure him out) wrong on banks, taxes, etc.
But the next populists we see might be more full bore. When that happens, you'll see much
more overlap w/Sanders economic plans for the middle class. Populists have nothing against
gov't programs like SS and Medicare and were always for things like the TVA and infrastructure
spending. Policies aimed at the poor and minorities not so much.
T @ 685: Trump is too incoherent to really represent the populist view.
There's always tension along the lead running between the politician and his constituents.
The thing that seems most salient to me at the present moment is the sense of betrayal pervading
our politics. At least since the GFC of 2008, it has been hard to deny that the two Parties worked
together to set up an economic betrayal. And, the long-running saga of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
also speak to elite failure, as well as betrayal.
These are the two most unpopular candidates in living memory. That is different.
I am not a believer in "the fire next time". Trump is a novelty act. He represents a chance
for people who feel resentful without knowing much of anything about anything to cast a middle-finger
vote. They wouldn't be willing to do that, if times were really bad, instead of just disappointing
and distressing.
Nor will Sanders be back. His was a last New Deal coda. There may be second acts in American
life, but there aren't 7th acts.
If there's a populist politics in our future, it will have to have a much sharper edge. It
can talk about growth, but it has to mean smashing the rich and taking their stuff. There's very
rapidly going to come a point where there's no other option, other than just accepting cramdown
by the authoritarian surveillance state built by the neoliberals. that's a much taller order than
Sanders or Trump have been offering.<
Corey, you write: "It's not just that the Dems went after Nixon, it's also that Nixon had so few
allies. People on the right were furious with him because they felt after this huge ratification
that the country had moved to the right, Nixon was still governing as if the New Deal were the
consensus. So when the time came, he had very few defenders, except for loyalists like Leonard
Garment and G. Gordon Liddy. And Al Haig, God bless him."
You've studied this more than I have,
but this is at least somewhat at odds with my memory. I recall some prominent attackers of Nixon
from the Republican party that were moderates, at least one of whom was essentially kicked out
of the party for being too liberal in later years. There's also the fact Reagan tapped a fair
number of Nixon people, as did W years later. Reagan went after Nixon in the sense of running
against him, and taking the party in a much more hard-right direction, sure. But he was repudiated
largely because he got caught doing dirty tricks with his pants down.
To think that something similar would happen to Clinton (watergate like scandal) that would
actually have a large portion of the left in support of impeachment, she would have to be as dirty
as Nixon was, *and* the evidence to really put the screws to her would have to be out, as it was
against Nixon during watergate.
OTOH, my actual *hope* would be that a similar left-liberal sea change comparable to 1980 from
the right would be plausible. I don't think a 1976-like interlude is plausible though, that would
require the existence of a moderate republican with enough support within their own party to win
the nomination. I suppose its possible that such a beast could come to exist if Trump loses a
landslide, but most of the plausible candidates have already left or been kicked out of the party.
From what I can tell - the 1972 election gave the centrists in the democratic party power
to discredit and marginalize the anti-war left, and with it, the left in general. A comparable
election from the other side would give republican centrists/moderates the ability to discredit
and marginalize the right wing base. But unlike Democrats in 1972, there aren't any moderates
left in the Republican party by my lights. I'm much more concerned that this will simply re-empower
the hard-core conservatives with plausbly-deniable dog-whistle racism who are now the "moderates",
and enable them to whitewash their history.
Unfortunately, unlike you, I'm not convinced that a landslide is possible without an appeal
to Reagan/Bush republicans. I don't think we're going to see a meaningful turn toward a real left
until Democrats can win a majority of statehouses and clean up the ridiculous gerrymandering.
Val: "Similarly with your comments on "identity politics" where you could almost be seen
by MRAs and white supremacists as an ally, from the tone of your rhetoric."
That is 100% perfect Val. Insinuates that BW is a sort-of-ally of white supremacists - an infuriating
insinuation. Does this insinuation based on a misreading of what he wrote. Completely resistant
to any sort of suggestion that what she dishes out so expansively to others had better be something
she should be willing to accept herself, or that she shouldn't do it. Ready even now to whine
that she's a victim and that the whole community is at fault and that people are picking on her
because she's a woman, rather than because she has a habit of making accusations like this every
time she comments.
That is a perfect example of predatory "solidarity". Val is looking for dupes to support
her - for people to jump in saying "Why are you being hostile to women?" in response to people's
response to her comment.
"... More than a dozen Republican rivals, described as the strongest GOP field since 1980, were sent packing. This was the year Americans rose up to pull down the establishment in a peaceful storming of the American Bastille. ..."
"... If 2016 taught us anything, it is that if the establishment's hegemony is imperiled, it will come together in ferocious solidarity - for the preservation of their perks, privileges and power. All the elements of that establishment - corporate, cultural, political, media - are today issuing an ultimatum to Middle America: Trump is unacceptable. Instructions are going out to Republican leaders that either they dump Trump, or they will cease to be seen as morally fit partners in power. ..."
"... Our CIA, NGOs and National Endowment for Democracy all beaver away for "regime change" in faraway lands whose rulers displease us. How do we effect "regime change" here at home? ..."
"... Donald Trump's success, despite the near-universal hostility of the media, even much of the conservative media, was due in large part to the public's response to the issues he raised. ..."
"I'm afraid the election is going to be rigged," Donald Trump told voters
in Ohio and Sean Hannity on Fox News. And that hit a nerve.
"Dangerous," "toxic," came the recoil from the media.
Trump is threatening to "delegitimize" the election results of 2016.
Well, if that is what Trump is trying to do, he has no small point. For consider
what 2016 promised and what it appears about to deliver.
This longest of election cycles has rightly been called the Year of the Outsider.
It was a year that saw a mighty surge of economic populism and patriotism, a
year when a 74-year-old Socialist senator set primaries ablaze with mammoth
crowds that dwarfed those of Hillary Clinton.
It was the year that a non-politician, Donald Trump, swept Republican primaries
in an historic turnout, with his nearest rival an ostracized maverick in his
own Republican caucus, Senator Ted Cruz.
More than a dozen Republican rivals, described as the strongest GOP field
since 1980, were sent packing. This was the year Americans rose up to pull down
the establishment in a peaceful storming of the American Bastille.
But if it ends with a Clintonite restoration and a ratification of the same
old Beltway policies, would that not suggest there is something fraudulent about
American democracy, something rotten in the state?
If 2016 taught us anything, it is that if the establishment's hegemony
is imperiled, it will come together in ferocious solidarity - for the preservation
of their perks, privileges and power. All the elements of that establishment
- corporate, cultural, political, media - are today issuing an ultimatum to
Middle America: Trump is unacceptable. Instructions are going out to Republican
leaders that either they dump Trump, or they will cease to be seen as morally
fit partners in power.
It testifies to the character of Republican elites that some are seeking
ways to carry out these instructions, though this would mean invalidating and
aborting the democratic process that produced Trump.
But what is a repudiated establishment doing issuing orders to anyone?
Why is it not Middle America issuing the demands, rather than the other way
around?
Specifically, the Republican electorate should tell its discredited and rejected
ruling class: If we cannot get rid of you at the ballot box, then tell us how,
peacefully and democratically, we can be rid of you?
You want Trump out? How do we get you out? The Czechs had their Prague Spring.
The Tunisians and Egyptians their Arab Spring. When do we have our American
Spring? The Brits had their "Brexit," and declared independence of an arrogant
superstate in Brussels. How do we liberate ourselves from a Beltway superstate
that is more powerful and resistant to democratic change?
Our CIA, NGOs and National Endowment for Democracy all beaver away for
"regime change" in faraway lands whose rulers displease us. How do we effect
"regime change" here at home?
Donald Trump's success, despite the near-universal hostility of the media,
even much of the conservative media, was due in large part to the public's response
to the issues he raised.
He called for sending illegal immigrants back home, for securing America's
borders, for no amnesty. He called for an America First foreign policy to
keep us out of wars that have done little but bleed and bankrupt us.
He called for an economic policy where the Americanism of the people
replaces the globalism of the transnational elites and their K Street lobbyists
and congressional water carriers.
He denounced NAFTA, and the trade deals and trade deficits with China,
and called for rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
By campaign's end, he had won the argument on trade, as Hillary Clinton was
agreeing on TPP and confessing to second thoughts on NAFTA.
But if TPP is revived at the insistence of the oligarchs of Wall Street,
the Business Roundtable, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce - backed by conscript
editorial writers for newspapers that rely on ad dollars - what do elections
really mean anymore?
And if, as the polls show we might, we get Clinton - and TPP, and amnesty,
and endless migrations of Third World peoples who consume more tax dollars than
they generate, and who will soon swamp the Republicans' coalition - what was
2016 all about?
Would this really be what a majority of Americans voted for in this most
exciting of presidential races?
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution
inevitable," said John F. Kennedy.
The 1960s and early 1970s were a time of social revolution in America, and
President Nixon, by ending the draft and ending the Vietnam war, presided over
what one columnist called the "cooling of America."
But if Hillary Clinton takes power, and continues America on her present
course, which a majority of Americans rejected in the primaries, there is going
to be a bad moon rising.
And the new protesters in the streets will not be overprivileged children
from Ivy League campuses.
"... the capitalist economy is more and more an asset driven one. This article does not even begin to address the issue of asset valuations, the explicit CB support for asset inflation and the effect on inequality, and especially generational plunder. ..."
"... the problem of living standards is obviously a Malthusian one. despite all the progress of social media tricks, we cannot fool nature. the rate of ecological degradation is alarming, and now irreversible. "the market" is now moving rapidly to real assets. This will eventually lead to war as all war is eventually for resources. ..."
No matter what central banks do, their actions will not be able to create the same level of
economic growth that we have become used to over the past seven decades.
Economic growth does not come from the central banks; if government sought to provide the basics
for all its citizens, including health care, education, a home, and proper food and all the infrastructure
needed to give people the basics, then you could have something akin to "growth" while at the
same time making life more pleasant for the less fortunate. There seems to be no definition of
economic growth that includes everyone.
This seems a very elaborate way of stating a simple problem, that can be summarised in three
points.
The living standards of most people have fallen over the last thirty years or so because of
the impact of neoliberal economic policies. Conventional politicians are promising only more
of the same. Therefore people are increasingly voting for non-conventional politicians.
Neoliberalism has only exacerbated falling living standards. Living standards would be falling
even without it, albeit more gradually.
Neoliberalism itself may even be nothing more than a standard type response of species that
have expanded beyond the capacity of their environment to support them. What we see as an evil
ideology is only the expression of a mechanism that apportions declining resources to the elites,
like shutting shutting down the periphery so the core can survive as in hypothermia.
I really don't have problem with this. Let the financial sector run the world into the ground
and get it over with.
In defference to a great many knowledgable commentors here that work in the FIRE sector, I
don't want to create a damning screed on the cost of servicing money, but at some point even the
most considered opinions have to acknowledge that that finance is flooded with *talent* which
creates a number of problems; one being a waste of intellect and education in a field that doesn't
offer much of a return when viewed in an egalitarian sense, secondly; as the field grows due to,
the technical advances, the rise in globilization, and the security a financial occuptaion offers
in an advanced first world country nowadays, it requires substantially more income to be devoted
to it's function.
This income has to be derived somewhere, and the required sacrifices on every facet of a global
economy to bolster positions and maintain asset prices has precipitated this decline in the well
being of peoples not plugged-in to the consumer capitalist regime and dogma.
Something has to give here, and I honestly couldn't care about your 401k or home resale value,
you did this to yourself as much as those day-traders who got clobbered in the dot-com crash.
the capitalist economy is more and more an asset driven one. This article does not even
begin to address the issue of asset valuations, the explicit CB support for asset inflation and
the effect on inequality, and especially generational plunder.
the problem of living standards is obviously a Malthusian one. despite all the progress
of social media tricks, we cannot fool nature. the rate of ecological degradation is alarming,
and now irreversible. "the market" is now moving rapidly to real assets. This will eventually
lead to war as all war is eventually for resources.
"... " It is clear a significant number of former Baathist officers have formed the professional core of Daesh [IS] in Syria and Iraq and have given that organization the military capability it has shown in conducting its operations. " ..."
"... A March 2007 JIC report warned Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which it terms AQ-I, had " no shortage of suicide bombers. AQ-I is seeking high-profile attacks. We judge AQ-I will try to expand its sectarian campaign wherever it can: suicide bombings in Kirkuk have risen sharply since October when AQ-I declared the establishment of the notional 'Islamic State of Iraq' (including Kirkuk). " ..."
"... " They claimed that the label 'jihadist' is becoming increasingly difficult to define: in many cases distinctions between nationalists and jihadists are blurred. They increasingly share common cause being drawn together in the face of Shia sectarian violence. " ..."
Intelligence reports examined and now released by the Chilcot inquiry appear to confirm Islamic State
(IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) was created by the Iraq war, a view now apparently backed by Britain's Tory
Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond. The reports from the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), which
were previously classified, tell the story of the security services' increasing concern that the
war and occupation was fuelling ever more extremism in Iraq.
The evidence also appears to debunk repeated claims by former PM Tony Blair that IS began in the
Syrian civil war and not Iraq, positioning the brutal group's rise clearly within Iraq's borders.
The Chilcot findings were backed up Thursday by serving Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond. He
told The Foreign Affairs Committee " many of the problems we see in Iraq today stem from that
disastrous decision to dismantle the Iraqi army and embark on a program of de-Baathification
."
" That was the big mistake of post-conflict planning. If we had gone a different way afterwards
we might have been able to see a different outcome, " he said.
Hammond conceded that many members of Saddam's armed forces today filled top roles in IS.
" It is clear a significant number of former Baathist officers have formed the professional
core of Daesh [IS] in Syria and Iraq and have given that organization the military capability it
has shown in conducting its operations. "
The documents show that by 2006 – three years into the occupation – UK intelligence chiefs were
increasingly concerned about the rise of Sunni jihadist resistance to the Western-backed regime of
Shia President Nouri Al-Maliki.
A March 2007 JIC report warned Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which it terms AQ-I, had " no shortage of
suicide bombers. AQ-I is seeking high-profile attacks. We judge AQ-I will try to expand its sectarian
campaign wherever it can: suicide bombings in Kirkuk have risen sharply since October when AQ-I declared
the establishment of the notional 'Islamic State of Iraq' (including Kirkuk). "
Many leading Al-Qaeda figures had been pro-regime Baathists and members of the former Iraqi Army
disbanded by the occupation. They are broadly accepted to have later formed the basis for IS.
The report describes AQ-I as being " in the vanguard. "
" Its strategic main effort is the prosecution of a sectarian campaign designed to drag Iraq
into civil war " at the head of a number of other Sunni militia groups.
" We judge its campaign has been the most effective of any insurgent group, having significant
impact in the past year, and poses the greatest immediate threat to stability in Iraq. The tempo
of mass-casualty attacks on predominantly Shia targets has been relentless, " the spies argue.
Chillingly, an earlier report from 2006 appears to echo some of the realizations made late in
the Vietnam War that there were also strong elements of nationalism driving the insurgency.
" They claimed that the label 'jihadist' is becoming increasingly difficult to define: in
many cases distinctions between nationalists and jihadists are blurred. They increasingly share common
cause being drawn together in the face of Shia sectarian violence. "
The reports appear to suggest that the conditions also somewhat echo the Afghanistan war, which
by that time was already underway, in that the anti-coalition forces displayed a mix of ideological
and economic drivers to resist the occupation.
" Their motivation is mixed: some are Islamist extremists inspired by the AQ agenda, others
are simply hired hands attracted by the money, " the spies warn.
The religious sectarianism involved, however, was distinctly Iraqi and reflected the power battle
between the deposed Sunni forces and the US-installed Shia regime which replaced it.
They also appeared to believe that AQ-I was composed of local and not, as was claimed at the time,
foreign fighters.
" We judge Al-Qaida in Iraq is the largest single insurgent network and although its leadership
retains a strong foreign element, a large majority of its fighters are Iraqi.
" Some are drawn in by the opportunity to take on Shia militias: the jihadists' media effort
stresses their role as defenders of the Sunni ," the report concludes.
Prophetically, even before IS began to germinate in Iraq, one now-declassified Foreign Office
memo from January 2003 warned "all the evidence from the region suggests that coalition forces
will not be seen as liberators for long, if at all. Our motives are regarded with huge suspicion.
"
AHHA -> Blue Car 7 Jul
No there was a documentary on the rise of IS months ago on Dutch television coming to the same
conclusion. Kicking all Baath party members (all Sunni people) out of the army, leaving only Shiite
in created IS. Baath militairy specialists did it out of revenge. One former high Baath militairy
officer even went up to the room of the American leadership on Irak to tell him that if they would
kick Baath people out he would have no other option than to start fighting America. Because what
would all those people have to live of. And they did not just kick them out of the army but out
of all government posts. But the Americans and making one group less equal to another by treating
them different, does that ring any bells. ?
AHHA -> Blue Car 8 Jul
It was not Fox, I loath them. It was a well built Dutch documentary not praising the Americans
for a change but being real True, together with Bush and the rest of their accomplices, of the
most horrific mass killings based on lies (more than a million innocent people have perished because
of their deceitful actions)! We should all demand Justice for the sake of humanity, and also because
it is the only way to deter feature self-righteous leaders like them from leading our world to
more blood sheds and catastrophic destructions! No one should be above the law!
Blue Scissors -> Red Snow 7 Jul
No, Bush and Cheney are the biggest terrorist. Blair just followed behind them, like a sheep.
Linx 7 Jul
Its clear that the U.S. government was the instigator of the war in Iraq based on 911and WMD.
Blair in his ambition to reached the top lied to his parliament because there is noway they did
not have the intelligence there not WMDs. In a stunning but little-known speech from 2007, Gen.
Wesley Clark claims America underwent a "policy coup" at the time of the 9/11 attacks. In this
video, he reveals that, right after 9/11, he was privy to information contained in a classified
memo: US plans to attack and remove governments in seven countries over five years: Iraq, Syria,
Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran. He was told: "We learned that we can use our military
without being challenged . We've got about five years to clean up the Soviet client regimes before
another superpower comes along and challenges us." "This was a policy coup these people took control
of policy in the United States. The interview is still available in the internet.
Orange Tag 7 Jul
What I want to be informed about is the ICC court date set for Bush, Blair, Cheney, Rumsfeld and
the generals ordering the killings of innocent people in Iraq. It's time for the west to wake
up and provide all and every help that Syrian legitimate government needs, and for west to stop
the support of Saudis, Qatari and others alike regimes whom are the providers and are state sponsors
of terrorism as Isis and others a like called " "moderates terrorist". Look you fly the Emirates
you pay for the costs of their terrorism in Middle East.
keghamminas 7 Jul Edited
Very true about the blind destructive policy of the US-Nato that should have attacked Saudi Arabia
instead of Iraq .The same faults are committed now against Syria and it's legal government ; the
total destruction of this country will lead to more anarchy and new terrorist movements as what's
happenning in Iraq. All the puppets ,like the UK are guilty by their criminal participation.
Malcolm stark 7 Jul
Yet another problem caused by Washington and Co and yet their are still people even here who say
Russia, Russia, Russia. And will make excuses for the problems caused without blaming their own
government.
CyanDog 7 Jul
Sexton: What a surprise. An investigation designed to whitewash the criminal activities of our
beloved Western leaders turned out to be eminently successful. A playful slap on the wrist for
Mr Blair, but basically the Western criminals made to look like good guys although a few unintentional
mistakes were made. From now on the West can continue business as usual. I wonder which countries
the West has currently set its future sights on? I would suggest that Iran, Russia and China should
keep their powder dry. The Westerners are playing for keeps, and they do not care who gets hurt
on either side.
"... ISIS is al-Qaeda re-branded and is supported by Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and the Western military alliance. Obama didn't technically 'create' them. Nor did he do anything to stop them. When ISIS first emerged, the US State Department said they were caught completely "flat -footed". ISIS emerged like a mirage in the Iraq desert, fully equipped, fully armed and driving a convoy of matching Toyota trucks! ..."
"... I would like to say that Obama and Hillary Clinton were too weak or complacent to stop the Neoconservatives/Zionists/Establishment from creating ISIS. It was their way of toppling the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and helping Israel to tighten the grip over stolen land. ..."
"... I would like to say watch the "Yuri Bezmenov" interviews, and realize there is no difference between the democrats and establishment GOP, they are the same thing. ..."
"... I was able to see through GW Bush, other establishment RINOs, and was honest enough to see the fraud. ..."
We have been saying that for years that Isis was created and funded by the US ( Obama) he should
have been impeached years ago and to this day he needs to impeached and locked up for life for
all the lives he has killed and for all the crooked deals he has done behind our backs! He is
not even a citizen of the US! Please God help us all!
ISIS is al-Qaeda re-branded and is supported by Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf
States and the Western military alliance. Obama didn't technically 'create' them. Nor did he do
anything to stop them. When ISIS first emerged, the US State Department said they were caught
completely "flat -footed". ISIS emerged like a mirage in the Iraq desert, fully equipped, fully
armed and driving a convoy of matching Toyota trucks!
We all know why Hillary and Obama get away with literally murder and treason. The reason is that
it is leverage over them by their puppet masters to ensure they stay on course with the New World
Order agenda. When it is feared that they are getting a bit off script leaks occur of their heinous
crimes and they get back on script. Both of these pathetic scum bags know what awaits them if
they turn away from their puppet master's wishes. At the least prison for life and the worse is
death in so many possible ways that it would be a replay of Kennedy with different patsies. This
is why Hillary has a Cheshire cat grin and Obama plays more golf than any other president. They
know they have a get out of jail free pass.
I would like to say that Obama and Hillary Clinton were too weak or complacent to stop the
Neoconservatives/Zionists/Establishment from creating ISIS. It was their way of toppling the regime
of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and helping Israel to tighten the grip over stolen land.
I would like to say watch the "Yuri Bezmenov" interviews, and realize there is no difference
between the democrats and establishment GOP, they are the same thing. The cancer of the democrat
party bled into the GOP, hence the establishment, and organ of the democrat party. I was able
to see through GW Bush, other establishment RINOs, and was honest enough to see the fraud.
I used my intellect, my brains, to see what was going on, and left the republican party many
years ago. YOU are still defending the democrat party, Obama, and Hillary. Pathetic.
But those politicians lucky enough to win discover -- if they did not know already -- that their
capacity to affect even their own domestic environment is constrained by forces beyond their control.
Notable quotes:
"... But those politicians lucky enough to win discover -- if they did not know already -- that their capacity to affect even their own domestic environment is constrained by forces beyond their control. ..."
"... In the case of Britain, the once-powerful centralized governments of that country are now multiply constrained. As the power of Britain in international affairs has declined, so has the British government's power within its own domain. Membership of the European Union constrains British governments' ability to determine everything from the quantities of fish British fishermen can legally catch to the amount in fees that British universities can charge students from other EU countries. ..."
"... Not least, the EU's insistence on the free movement of labor caused the Conservative-dominated coalition that came to power in 2010 to renege on the Tories' spectacularly ill-judged pledge to reduce to "tens of thousands a year" the number of migrants coming to Britain. The number admitted in 2014 alone was nearer 300,000. ..."
"... On top of all that, British governments -- even more than those of some other predominantly capitalist economies -- are open to being buffeted by market forces, whose winds can acquire gale force. In a world of substantially free trade, imports and exports of goods and services are largely beyond any government's control, and the Bank of England's influence over the external value of sterling is negligible. During the present election campaign, HSBC, one of the world's largest banks, indicated that it was contemplating shifting its headquarters from the City of London to Hong Kong. For good or ill, Britain's government was, and is, effectively helpless to intervene. ..."
"... That's why we need a federal Europe. Local governments for local issues and elected by the local people and a European government for European issues elected by all Europeans. ..."
Once upon a time, national elections were -- or seemed to be -- overwhelmingly domestic affairs,
affecting only the peoples of the countries taking part in them. If that was ever true, it is so
no longer. Angela Merkel negotiates with Greece's government with Germany's voters looming in the
background. David Cameron currently fights an election campaign in the UK holding fast to the belief
that a false move on his part regarding Britain's relationship with the EU could cost his Conservative
Party seats, votes and possibly the entire election.
Britain provides a good illustration of a general proposition. It used to be claimed, plausibly,
that "all politics is local." In 2015, electoral politics may still be mostly local, but the post-electoral
business of government is anything but local. There is a misfit between the two. Voters are mainly
swayed by domestic issues. Vote-seeking politicians campaign accordingly. But those politicians
lucky enough to win discover -- if they did not know already -- that their capacity to affect even
their own domestic environment is constrained by forces beyond their control.
Anyone viewing the UK election campaign from afar could be forgiven for thinking that British
voters and politicians alike imagined they were living on some kind of self-sufficient sea-girt island.
The opinion polls indicate that a large majority of voters are preoccupied -- politically as well
as in other ways -- with their own financial situation, tax rates, welfare spending and the future
of the National Health Service. Immigration is an issue for many voters, but mostly in domestic terms
(and often as a surrogate for generalized discontent with Britain's political class). The fact that
migrants from Eastern Europe and elsewhere make a positive net contribution to both the UK's economy
and its social services scarcely features in the campaign.
... ... ...
After polling day, all that will change -- probably to millions of voters' dismay. One American
presidential candidate famously said that politicians campaign in poetry, but govern in prose. Politicians
in democracies, not just in Britain, campaign as though they can move mountains, then find that most
mountains are hard or impossible to move.
In the case of Britain, the once-powerful centralized governments of that country are now
multiply constrained. As the power of Britain in international affairs has declined, so has the British
government's power within its own domain. Membership of the European Union constrains British governments'
ability to determine everything from the quantities of fish British fishermen can legally catch to
the amount in fees that British universities can charge students from other EU countries.
Not least, the EU's insistence on the free movement of labor caused the Conservative-dominated
coalition that came to power in 2010 to renege on the Tories' spectacularly ill-judged pledge to
reduce to "tens of thousands a year" the number of migrants coming to Britain. The number admitted
in 2014 alone was nearer 300,000.
The UK's courts are also far more active than they were. The British parliament in 1998 incorporated
the European Convention on Human Rights into British domestic law, and British judges have determinedly
enforced those rights. During the 1970s, they had already been handed responsibility for enforcing
the full range of EU law within the UK.
Also, Britain's judges have, on their own initiative, exercised increasingly frequently their
long-standing power of "judicial review," invalidating ministerial decisions that violated due process
or seemed to them to be wholly unreasonable. Devolution of substantial powers to semi-independent
governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has also meant that the jurisdiction of many
so-called UK government ministers is effectively confined to the purely English component part.
On top of all that, British governments -- even more than those of some other predominantly
capitalist economies -- are open to being buffeted by market forces, whose winds can acquire gale
force. In a world of substantially free trade, imports and exports of goods and services are largely
beyond any government's control, and the Bank of England's influence over the external value of sterling
is negligible. During the present election campaign, HSBC, one of the world's largest banks, indicated
that it was contemplating shifting its headquarters from the City of London to Hong Kong. For good
or ill, Britain's government was, and is, effectively helpless to intervene.
The heirs of Gladstone, Disraeli, Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, Britain's political leaders
are understandably still tempted to talk big. But their effective real-world influence is small.
No wonder a lot of voters in Britain feel they are being conned.
ItsJustTim
That's globalization. And it won't go away, even if you vote nationalist. The issues are increasingly
international, while the voters still have a mostly local perspective. That's why we need
a federal Europe. Local governments for local issues and elected by the local people and a European
government for European issues elected by all Europeans.
"... it seems fair to say: Globalism isn't quite the Wave of the Future that most observers thought it was, even just a year ago. And so before we attempt to divide the true intentions of Clinton and Trump, we might first step back and consider how we got to this point. ..."
"... An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations . ..."
"... Clinton will say anything then she'll sell you out. I hope we never get a chance to see how she will sell us out on TPP ..."
"... What we would be headed for under Hillary Clinton is fascism--Mussolini's shorthand definition of fascism was the marriage of industry and commerce with the power of the State. That is what the plutocrats who run the big banks (to whom she owes her soul) aim to do. President, Thomas Jefferson knew the dangers of large European-style central banks. ..."
On the surface, it appears that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, for all their mutual antipathy,
are united on one big issue: opposition to new trade deals. Here's a recent headline in
The Guardian: "Trump and Clinton's free trade retreat: a pivotal moment for the world's
economic future."
And the subhead continues in that vein:
Never before have both main presidential candidates broken so completely with Washington orthodoxy
on globalization, even as the White House refuses to give up. The problem, however, goes much
deeper than trade deals.
In the above quote, we can note the deliberate use of the loaded word, "problem." As in, it's
a problem that free trade is unpopular-a problem, perhaps, that the MSM can fix. Yet in the
meantime, the newspaper sighed, the two biggest trade deals on the horizon, the well-known
Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), and the lesser-known
Trans Atlantic Trade Investment
Partnership (TTIP), aimed at further linking the U.S. and European Union (EU), are both in jeopardy.
So now we must ask broader questions: What does this mean for trade treaties overall? And what
are the implications for globalism?
More specifically, we can ask: Are we sure that the two main White House hopefuls, Clinton and
Trump, are truly sincere in their opposition to those deals? After all, as has been
widely reported, President Obama still has plans to push TPP through to enactment in the "lame
duck" session of Congress after the November elections. Of course, Obama wouldn't seek to do that
if the president-elect opposed it-or would he?
Yet on August 30, Politico reminded its Beltway readership, "How
Trump or Clinton could kill Pacific trade deal." In other words, even if Obama were to move TPP
forward in his last two months in office, the 45th president could still block its implementation
in 2017 and beyond. If, that is, she or he really wanted to.
Indeed, as we think about Clinton and Trump, we realize that there's "opposition" that's for show
and there's opposition that's for real.
Still, given what's been said on the presidential campaign trail this year, it seems fair
to say: Globalism isn't quite the Wave of the Future that most observers thought it was, even just
a year ago. And so before we attempt to divide the true intentions of Clinton and Trump, we might
first step back and consider how we got to this point.
2. The Free Trade Orthodoxy
It's poignant that the headline, "Trump and Clinton's free trade retreat", lamenting the decay
of free trade, appeared in The Guardian. Until recently, the newspaper was known as The
Manchester Guardian, as in Manchester, England. And Manchester is not only a big city, population
2.5 million, it is also a city with a fabled past: You see, Manchester was the cradle of the Industrial
Revolution, which transformed England and the world. It was that city that helped create the free
trade orthodoxy that is now crumbling.
Yes, in the 18th and 19th centuries, Manchester was the leading manufacturing city in the world,
especially for textiles. It was known as "Cottonopolis."
Indeed, back then, Manchester was so much more efficient and effective at mass production that
it led the world in exports. That is, it could produce its goods at such low cost that it could send
them across vast oceans and still undercut local producers on price and quality.
Over time, this economic reality congealed into a school of thought: As Manchester grew rich from
exports, its business leaders easily found economists, journalists, and propagandists who would help
advance their cause in the press and among the intelligentsia.
The resulting school of thought became known, in the 19th century, as "Manchester
Liberalism." And so, to this day, long after Manchester has lost its economic preeminence to
rivals elsewhere in the world, the phrase "Manchester Liberalism" is a well-known in the history
of economics, bespeaking ardent support for free markets and free trade.
More recently, the hub for free-trade enthusiasm has been the United States. In particular, the
University of Chicago, home to the Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, became free trade's
academic citadel; hence the "Chicago
School" has displaced Manchesterism.
And just as it made sense for Manchester Liberalism to exalt free trade and exports when Manchester
and England were on top, so, too, did the Chicago School exalt free trade when the U.S. was unquestionably
the top dog.
So back in the 40s and 50s, when the rest of the world was either bombed flat or still under the
yoke of colonialism, it made perfect sense that the U.S., as the only intact industrial power, would
celebrate industrial exports: We were Number One, and it was perfectly rational to make the most
of that first-place status. And if scribblers and scholars could help make the case for this new
status quo, well, bring 'em aboard. Thus the Chicago School gained ascendancy in the late 20th century.
And of course, the Chicagoans drew inspiration from a period even earlier than Manchesterism,
3. On the Origins of the Orthodoxy: Adam Smith and David Ricardo
One passage in that volume considers how individuals might optimize their own production and consumption:
It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family never to attempt to make at home what it
will cost him more to make than to buy.
Smith is right, of course; everyone should always be calculating, however informally, whether
or not it's cheaper to make it at home or buy it from someone else.
We can quickly see: If each family must make its own clothes and grow its own food, it's likely
to be worse off than if it can buy its necessities from a large-scale producer. Why? Because, to
be blunt about it, most of us don't really know how to make clothes and grow food, and it's expensive
and difficult-if not downright impossible-to learn how. So we can conclude that self-sufficiency,
however rustic and charming, is almost always a recipe for poverty.
Smith had a better idea: specialization. That is, people would specialize in one line of
work, gain skills, earn more money, and then use that money in the marketplace, buying what they
needed from other kinds of specialists.
Moreover, the even better news, in Smith's mind, was that this kind of specialization came naturally
to people-that is, if they were free to scheme out their own advancement. As Smith argued, the ideal
system would allow "every man to pursue his own interest his own way, upon the liberal plan of equality,
liberty and justice."
That is, men (and women) would do that which they did best, and then they would all come together
in the free marketplace-each person being inspired to do better, thanks to, as Smith so memorably
put it, the "invisible hand." Thus Smith articulated a key insight that undergirds the whole of modern
economics-and, of course, modern-day prosperity.
A few decades later, in the early 19th century, Smith's pioneering work was expanded upon by another
remarkable British economist, David Ricardo.
Ricardo's big idea built on Smithian specialization; Ricardo called it "comparative advantage."
That is, just as each individual should do what he or she does best, so should each country.
In Ricardo's well-known illustration, he explained that the warm and sunny climate of Portugal
made that country ideal for growing the grapes needed for wine, while the factories of England made
that country ideal for spinning the fibers needed for apparel and other finished fabrics.
Thus, in Ricardo's view, we could see the makings of a beautiful economic friendship: The Portuguese
would utilize their comparative advantage (climate) and export their surplus wine to England, while
the English would utilize their comparative advantage (manufacturing) and export apparel to Portugal.
Thus each would benefit from the exchange of efficiently-produced products, as each export paid for
the other.
Furthermore, in Ricardo's telling, if tariffs and other barriers were eliminated, then both countries,
Portugal and England, would enjoy the maximum free-trading win-win.
Actually, in point of fact-and Ricardo knew this-the relationship was much more of a win for England,
because manufacture is more lucrative than agriculture. That is, a factory in Manchester could crank
out garments a lot faster than a vineyard in Portugal could ferment wine.
And as we all know, the richer, stronger countries are industrial, not agricultural. Food is essential-and
alcohol is pleasurable-but the real money is made in making things. After all, crops can be grown
easily enough in many places, and so prices stay low. By contrast, manufacturing requires a lot of
know-how and a huge upfront investment. Yet with enough powerful manufacturing, a nation is always
guaranteed to be able to afford to import food. And also, it can make military weapons, and so, if
necessary, take foreign food and croplands by force.
We can also observe that Ricardo, smart fellow that he was, nevertheless was describing the economy
at a certain point in time-the era of horse-drawn carriages and sailing ships. Ricardo realized that
transportation was, in fact, a key business variable. He wrote that it was possible for a company
to seek economic advantage by moving a factory from one part of England to another. And yet in his
view, writing from the perspective of the year 1817, it was impossible to imagine
moving a factory from England to another country:
It would not follow that capital and population would necessarily move from England to Holland,
or Spain, or Russia.
Why this presumed immobility of capital and people? Because, from Ricardo's early 19th-century
perspective, transportation was inevitably slow and creaky; he didn't foresee steamships and airplanes.
In his day, relying on the technology of the time, it wasn't realistic to think that factories, and
their workers, could relocate from one country to another.
Moreover, in Ricardo's era, many countries were actively hostile to industrialization, because
change would upset the aristocratic rhythms of the old order. That is, industrialization could turn
docile or fatalistic peasants, spread out thinly across the countryside, into angry and self-aware
proletarians, concentrated in the big cities-and that was a formula for unrest, even revolution.
Indeed, it was not until the 20th century that every country-including China, a great civilization,
long asleep under decadent imperial misrule-figured out that it had no choice other than to industrialize.
So we can see that the ideas of Smith and Ricardo, enduringly powerful as they have been, were
nonetheless products of their time-that is, a time when England mostly had the advantages of industrialism
to itself. In particular, Ricardo's celebration of comparative advantage can be seen as an artifact
of his own era, when England enjoyed a massive first-mover advantage in the industrial-export game.
Smith died in 1790, and Ricardo died in 1823; a lot has changed since then. And yet the two economists
were so lucid in their writings that their work is studied and admired to this day.
Unfortunately, we can also observe that their ideas have been frozen in a kind of intellectual
amber; even in the 21st century, free trade and old-fashioned comparative advantage are unquestioningly
regarded as the keys to the wealth of nations-at least in the U.S.-even if they are so no longer.
4. Nationalist Alternatives to Free Trade Orthodoxy
As we have seen, Smith and Ricardo were pushing an idea, free trade, that was advantageous to
Britain.
So perhaps not surprisingly, rival countries-notably the United States and Germany-soon developed
different ideas. Leaders in Washington, D.C., and Berlin didn't want their respective nations to
be mere dependent receptacles for English goods; they wanted real independence. And so they wanted
factories of their own.
In the late 18th century, Alexander Hamilton, the visionary American patriot, could see that both
economic wealth and military power flowed from domestic industry. As the nation's first Treasury
Secretary, he persuaded President George Washington and the Congress to support a system of protective
tariffs and "internal improvements" (what today we would call infrastructure) to foster US manufacturing
and exporting.
And in the 19th century, Germany, under the much heavier-handed leadership of Otto von Bismarck,
had the same idea: Make a concerted effort to make the nation stronger.
In both countries, this industrial policymaking succeeded. So whereas at the beginning of the
19th century, England had led the world in steel production, by the beginning of the 20th century
century, the U.S. and Germany had moved well ahead. Yes, the "invisible hand" of individual self-interest
is always a powerful economic force, but sometimes, the "visible hand" of national purpose, animated
by patriotism, is even more powerful.
Thus by 1914, at the onset of World War One, we could see the results of the Smith/Ricardo model,
on the one hand, and the Hamilton/Bismarck model, on the other. All three countries-Britain, the
US, and Germany, were rich-but only the latter two had genuine industrial mojo. Indeed, during World
War One, English weakness became glaringly apparent in the 1915
shell crisis-as
in, artillery shells. It was only the massive importing of made-in-USA ammunition that saved Britain
from looming defeat.
Yet as always, times change, as do economic circumstances, as do prevailing ideas.
As we have seen, at the end of World War II, the U.S. was the only industrial power left standing.
And so it made sense for America to shift from a policy of Hamiltonian protection to a policy of
Smith-Ricardian export-minded free trade. Indeed, beginning in around 1945, both major political
parties, Democrats and Republicans, solidly embraced the new line: The U.S. would be the factory
for the world.
Yet if times, circumstances, and ideas change, they can always change again.
5. The Contemporary Crack-Up
As we have seen, in the 19th century, not every country wanted to be on the passive receiving
end of England's exports. And this was true, too, in the 20th century; Japan, notably, had its own
ideas.
If Japan had followed the Ricardian doctrine of comparative advantage, it would have focused on
exporting rice and tuna. Instead, by dint of hard work, ingenuity, and more than a little national
strategizing, Japan grew itself into a great and prosperous industrial power. Its exports, we might
note, were such high-value-adds as automobiles and electronics, not mere crops and fish.
Moreover, according to the same theory of comparative advantage, South Korea should have been
exporting parasols and kimchi, and China should have settled for exporting fortune cookies and pandas.
Yet as the South Korean economist
Ha-Joon Chang has chronicled,
these Asian nations resolved, in their no-nonsense neo-Confucian way, to launch state-guided private
industries-and the theory of comparative advantage be damned.
Yes, their efforts violated Western economic orthodoxy, but as the philosopher Kant once observed,
the actual proves the possible. Indeed, today, as we all know, the Asian tigers are among the richest
and fastest-growing economies in the world.
China is not only the world's largest economy in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP), but
also the world's largest manufacturing nation-producing 52 percent of color televisions, 75 percent
of mobile phones and 87 percent of the world's personal computers. The Chinese automobile industry
is the world's largest, twice the size of America's. China leads the world in foreign exchange
reserves. The United States is the main trading partner for seventy-six countries. China is the
main trading partner for 124.
In particular, we might pause over one item in that impressive litany: China makes 87 percent
of the world's personal computers.
Indeed, if it's true, as ZDNet reports, that
the Chinese have built "backdoors" into almost all the electronic equipment that they sell-that
is to say, the equipment that we buy-then we can assume that we face a serious military challenge,
as well as a serious economic challenge.
Yes, it's a safe bet that the People's Liberation Army has a good handle on our defense establishment,
especially now that the Pentagon has fully equipped itself with
Chinese-made iPhones and iPads.
Of course, we can safely predict that Defense Department bureaucrats will always say that there's
nothing to worry about, that they have the potential hacking/sabotage matter under control (although
just to be sure, the Pentagon might say, give us more money).
Yet we might note that this is the same defense establishment that couldn't keep track of lone
internal rogues such as Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden. Therefore, should we really believe that
this same DOD knows how to stop the determined efforts of a nation of 1.3 billion people, seeking
to hack machines-machines that they made in the first place?
Yes, the single strongest argument against the blind application of free- trade dogma is the doctrine
of self defense. That is, all the wealth in the world doesn't matter if you're conquered. Even Adam
Smith understood that; as he wrote, "Defense
. . . is of much more importance than opulence."
Yet today we can readily see: If we are grossly dependent on China for vital wares, then we can't
be truly independent of China. In fact, we should be downright fearful.
Still, despite these deep strategic threats, directly the result of careless importing, the Smith-Ricardo
orthodoxy remains powerful, even hegemonistic-at least in the English-speaking world.
Why is this so? Yes, economists are typically seen as cold and nerdy, even bloodless, and yet,
in fact, they are actual human beings. And as such, they are susceptible to the giddy-happy feeling
that comes from the hope of building a new utopia, the dream of ushering in an era of world harmony,
based on untrammeled international trade. Indeed, this woozy idealism among economists goes way back;
it was the British free trader Richard Cobden who declared in 1857,
Free trade is God's diplomacy. There is no other certain way of uniting people in the bonds
of peace.
And lo, so many wars later, many economists still believe that.
Indeed, economists today are still monolithically pro-fee trade; a
recent survey of economists found that 83 percent supported eliminating all tariffs and other
barriers; just 10 percent disagreed.
We might further note that others, too, in the financial and intellectual elite are fully on board
the free-trade train, including most corporate officers and their lobbyists, journalists, academics,
and, of course, the mostly for-hire think-tankers.
To be sure, there are always exceptions: As that Guardian article, the one lamenting the
sharp decrease in support for free trade as a "problem," noted, not all of corporate America is on
board, particularly those companies in the manufacturing sector:
Ford openly opposes TPP because it fears the deal does nothing to stop Japan manipulating its
currency at the expense of US rivals.
Indeed, we might note that the same Guardian story included an even more cautionary note,
asserting that support for free trade, overall, is remarkably rickety:
Some suggest a "bicycle theory" of trade deals: that the international bandwagon has to keep
rolling forward or else it all wobbles and falls down.
So what has happened? How could virtually the entire elite be united in enthusiasm for free trade,
and yet, even so, the free trade juggernaut is no steadier than a mere two-wheeled bike? Moreover,
free traders will ask: Why aren't the leaders leading? More to the point, why aren't the followers
following?
To answer those questions, we might start by noting the four-decade phenomenon of
wage stagnation-that's
taken a toll on support for free trade. But of course, it's in the heartland that wages have been
stagnating; by contrast,
incomes for
the bicoastal elites have been soaring.
We might also note that some expert predictions have been way off, thus undermining confidence
in their expertise. Remember, this spring, when all the experts were saying that the United Kingdom
would fall into recession, or worse, if it voted to leave the EU? Well, just the other day came this
New York Post headline: "Brexit
actually boosting the UK economy."
Thus from the Wall Street-ish perspective of the urban chattering classes, things are going well-so
what's the problem?
Yet the folks on Main Street have known a different story. They have seen, with their own eyes,
what has happened to them, and no fusillade of op-eds or think-tank monographs will persuade them
to change their mind.
However, because the two parties have been so united on the issues of trade and globalization-the
"Uniparty," it's sometimes called-the folks in the boonies have had no political alternative. And
as they say, the only power you have in this world is the power of an alternative. And so, lacking
an alternative, the working/middle class has just had to accept its fate.
Indeed, it has been a bitter fate, particularly bitter in the former industrial heartland. In
a 2013 paper, the
Economic Policy Institute (EPI) came to some startling conclusions:
Growing trade with less-developed countries lowered wages in 2011 by 5.5 percent-or by roughly
$1,800-for a full-time, full-year worker earning the average wage for workers without a four-year
college degree.
The paper added, "One-third of this total effect is due to growing trade with just China."
Continuing, EPI found that even as trade with low-wage countries caused a decrease in the incomes
for lower-end workers, it had caused an increase in the incomes of high-end workers-so no
wonder the high-end thinks globalism in great.
To be sure, some in the elite are bothered by what's been happening.
Peggy Noonan, writing earlier this year in The Wall Street Journal-a piece that must have
raised the hackles of her doctrinaire colleagues-put the matter succinctly: There's a wide, and widening,
gap between the "protected" and the "unprotected":
The protected make public policy. The unprotected live in it. The unprotected are starting
to push back, powerfully.
Of course, Noonan was alluding to the Trump candidacy-and also to the candidacy of Sen. Bernie
Sanders. Those two insurgents, in different parties, have been propelled by the pushing from all
the unprotected folks across America.
We might pause to note that free traders have arguments which undoubtedly deserve a fuller airing.
Okay. However, we can still see the limits. For example, the familiar gambit of outsourcing jobs
to China, or Mexico-or 50 other countries-and calling that "free trade" is now socially unacceptable,
and politically unsustainable.
Still, the broader vision of planetary freedom, including the free flow of peoples and their ideas,
is always enormously appealing. The United States, as well as the world, undoubtedly benefits from
competition, from social and economic mobility-and yes, from new blood.
As
Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy, notes, "77
percent of the full-time graduate students in electrical engineering and 71 percent in computer science
at U.S. universities are international students." That's a statistic that should give every American
pause to ask: Why aren't we producing more engineers here at home?
We can say, with admiration, that Silicon Valley is the latest Manchester; as such, it's a powerful
magnet for the best and the brightest from overseas, and from a purely dollars-and-cents point of
view, there's a lot to be said for welcoming them.
So yes, it would be nice if we could retain this international mobility that benefits the U.S.-but
only if the economic benefits can be broadly shared, and patriotic assimilation of immigrants can
be truly achieved, such that all Americans can feel good about welcoming newcomers.
The further enrichment of Silicon Valley won't do much good for the country unless those riches
are somehow widely shared. In fact, amidst the ongoing outsourcing of mass-production jobs,
total employment in such boomtowns as San Francisco and San Jose has barely budged. That is,
new software billionaires are being minted every day, but their workforces tend to be tiny-or located
overseas. If that past pattern is the future pattern, well, something will have to give.
We can say: If America is to be
one nation-something Mitt "47 percent" Romney never worried about, although it cost him in the
end-then we will have to figure out a way to turn the genius of the few into good jobs for the many.
The goal isn't socialism, or anything like that; instead, the goal is the widespread distribution
of private property, facilitated, by conscious national economic development, as
I argued at the tail end of this piece.
If we can't, or won't, find a way to expand private ownership nationwide, then the populist upsurges
of the Trump and Sanders campaigns will be remembered as mere overtures to a starkly divergent future.
6. Clinton and Trump Say They Are Trade Hawks: But Are They Sincere?
So now we come to a mega-question for 2016: How should we judge the sincerity of the two major-party
candidates, Clinton or Trump, when they affirm their opposition to TPP? And how do we assess their
attitude toward globalization, including immigration, overall?
The future is, of course, unknown, but we can make a couple of points.
First, it is true that
many have questioned the sincerity of Hillary's new anti-TPP stance, especially given the presence
of such prominent free-traders as vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine and presidential transition-planning
chief Ken Salazar. Moreover, there's also Hillary's own decades-long association with open-borders
immigration policies, as well as past support for such trade bills as NAFTA, PNTR, and, of course,
TPP. And oh yes, there's the Clinton Foundation, that global laundromat for every overseas fortune;
most of those billionaires are globalists par excellence-would a President Hillary really
cross them?
Second, since there's still no way to see inside another person's mind, the best we can
do is look for external clues-by which we mean, external pressures. And so we might ask a basic question:
Would the 45th president, whoever she or he is, feel compelled by those external pressures to keep
their stated commitment to the voters? Or would they feel that they owe more to their elite friends,
allies, and benefactors?
As we have seen, Clinton has long chosen to surround herself with free traders and globalists.
Moreover, she has raised money from virtually every bicoastal billionaire in America.
So we must wonder: Will a new President Clinton really betray her own class-all those
Davos Men and Davos Women-for the sake of middle-class folks she has never met, except maybe
on a rope line? Would Clinton 45, who has spent her life courting the powerful, really stick her
neck out for unnamed strangers-who never gave a dime to the Clinton Foundation?
Okay, so what to make of Trump? He, too, is a fat-cat-even more of fat-cat, in fact, than Clinton.
And yet for more than a year now, he has based his campaign on opposition to globalism in all its
forms; it's been the basis of his campaign-indeed, the basis of his base. And his campaign policy
advisers are emphatic. According to Politico, as recently as August 30, Trump trade adviser
Peter Navarro reiterated Trump's opposition to TPP, declaring,
Any deal must increase the GDP growth rate, reduce the trade deficit, and strengthen the manufacturing
base.
So, were Trump to win the White House, he would come in with a much more solid anti-globalist
mandate.
Thus we can ask: Would a President Trump really cross his own populist-nationalist base by going
over to the other side-to the globalists who voted, and donated, against him? If he did-if he repudiated
his central platform plank-he would implode his presidency, the way that Bush 41 imploded his presidency
in 1990 when he went back on his "read my lips, no new taxes" pledge.
Surely Trump remembers that moment of political calamity well, and so surely, whatever mistakes
he might make, he won't make that one.
To be sure, the future is unknowable. However, as we have seen, the past, both recent and historical,
is rich with valuable clues.
Clinton will say anything then she'll sell you out. I hope we never get a chance to see
how she will sell us out on TPP
Ellen Bell -> HoosierMilitia
You really do not understand the primitive form of capitalism that the moneyed elites are trying
to impose on us. That system is mercantilism and two of its major tenets are to only give the
workers subsistence level wages (what they are doing to poor people abroad and attempting to do
here) and monopolistic control of everything that is possible to monopolize. The large multi-nationals
have already done that. What we would be headed for under Hillary Clinton is fascism--Mussolini's
shorthand definition of fascism was the marriage of industry and commerce with the power of the
State. That is what the plutocrats who run the big banks (to whom she owes her soul) aim to do.
President, Thomas Jefferson knew the dangers of large European-style central banks. He said:
"...The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the
Principles and form of our Constitution. I am an Enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes
for anything but Coin. If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of
their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will
grow up around them will deprive the People of all their Property until their Children will
wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered..."
The power to create money was given to the private banking system of the Federal Reserve in
1913. Nearly every bit of our enormous debt has been incurred since then. The American people
have become debt-slaves. In the Constitution, only Congress has the right to issue currency. That's
why the plutocrats want to do away with it--among other reasons.
"... Donald Trump is challenging the very fabric of the institutional elites in this country on both sides that have, quite frankly, just straight up screwed this country up and made the world a mess. ..."
Tom Coyne, a lifelong Democrat and the mayor of Brook Park, Ohio, spoke
about his endorsement of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump with Breitbart
News Daily SiriusXM host Matt Boyle.
Coyne said:
The parties are blurred. What's the difference? They say the same things
in different tones. At the end of the day, they accomplish nothing.
Donald Trump is challenging the very fabric of the institutional elites
in this country on both sides that have, quite frankly, just straight up
screwed this country up and made the world a mess.
Regarding the GOP establishment's so-called Never Trumpers, Coyne stated,
"If it's their expertise that people are relying upon as to advice to vote,
people should go the opposite."
In an interview last week, Coyne said that Democrats and Republicans
have failed the city through inaction and bad trade policies, key themes
Trump often trumpets.
"He understands us," Coyne said of Trump. "He is saying what we feel,
and therefore, let him shake the bedevils out of everyone in the canyons
of Washington D.C. The American people are responding to him."
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00
a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
"... Donald Trump isn't a politician -- he's a one-man wrecking ball against our dysfunctional and corrupt establishment. We're about to see the deluxe version of the left's favorite theme: Vote for us or we'll call you stupid. It's the working class against the smirking class. ..."
"... He understands that if we're ever going to get our economy back on its feet the wage-earning middle class will have to prosper along with investors ..."
"... Trump that really "gets" the idea that the economy is suffering because the middle class can't find employment at livable wages ..."
"... Ms. Coulter says it more eloquently: "The Republican establishment has no idea how much ordinary voters hate both parties." Like me, she's especially annoyed with Republicans, because we think of the Republican Party as being our political "family" that has turned against us: ..."
"... The RNC has been forcing Republican candidates to take suicidal positions forever They were happy to get 100 percent of the Business Roundtable vote and 20 percent of the regular vote. ..."
"... American companies used free trade with low-wage countries as an opportunity to close their American factories and relocate the jobs to lower-paying foreign workers. Instead of creating product and exporting it to other countries, our American companies EXPORTED American JOBS to other countries and IMPORTED foreign-made PRODUCTS into America! Our exports have actually DECLINED during the last five years with most of the 20 countries we signed free trade with. Even our exports to Canada, our oldest free trade partner, are less than what they were five years ago. ..."
"... Trade with Japan, China, and South Korea is even more imbalanced, because those countries actively restrict imports of American-made products. We run a 4x trade imbalance with China, which cost us $367 billion last year. We lost $69 billion to Japan and $28 billion to South Korea. Our exports to these countries are actually DECLINING, even while our imports soar! ..."
"... Why do Establishment Republicans join with Democrats in wanting to diminish the future with the WRONG kind of "free trade" that removes jobs and wealth from the USA? As Ms. Coulter reminds us, it is because Republican Establishment, like the Democrat establishment, is PAID by the money and jobs they receive from big corporations to believe it. ..."
"... The donor class doesn't care. The rich are like locusts: once they've picked America dry, they'll move on to the next country. A hedge fund executive quoted in The Atlantic a few years ago said, "If the transformation of the world economy lifts four people in China and India out of poverty and into the middle class, and meanwhile [that] means one American drops out of the middle class, that's not such a bad trade." ..."
"... The corporate 1% who believe that the global labor market should be tapped in order to beat American workers out of their jobs; and that corporations and the 1% who own them should be come tax-exempt organizations that profit by using cheap overseas labor to product product that is sold in the USA, and without paying taxes on the profit. Ms. Coulter calls this group of Republican Estblishmentarians "locusts: once they've picked America dry, they'll move on to the next country." ..."
"... Pretending to care about the interests of minorities. Of course, the Republican Establishment has even less appeal to minorities than to the White Middle Class (WMC) they abandoned. Minorities are no more interested in losing their jobs to foreigners or to suffer economic stagnation while the rich have their increasing wealth (most of which is earned at the expense of the middle class) tax-sheltered, than do the WMC. ..."
"... Trump has given Republicans a new lease on life. The Establishment doesn't like having to take a back seat to him, but perhaps they should understand that having a back seat in a popular production is so much better than standing outside alone in the cold. ..."
Donald Trump isn't a politician -- he's a one-man wrecking ball against our dysfunctional
and corrupt establishment. We're about to see the deluxe version of the left's favorite theme: Vote
for us or we'll call you stupid. It's the working class against the smirking class.
No pandering! The essence of Trump in personality and issues , August 23, 2016
Ms. Coulter explains the journey of myself and so many other voters into Trump's camp. It captures
the essence of Trump as a personality and Trump on the issues. If I had to sum Ms. Coulter's view
of the reason for Trump's success in two words, I'd say "No Pandering!" I've heard many people,
including a Liberal tell me, "Trump says what needs to be said."
I've voted Republican in every election going back to Reagan in 1980, except for 2012 when
I supported President Obama's re-election. I've either voted for, or financially supported many
"Establishment Republicans" like Mitt Romney and John McCain in 2008. I've also supported some
Conservative ones like Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani. In this election I'd been planning to
vote for Jeb Bush, a superb governor when I lived in Florida.
Then Trump announced his candidacy. I had seen hints of that happening as far back as 2012.
In my Amazon reviews in 2012 I said that many voters weren't pleased with Obama or the Republican
Establishment. So the question became: "Who do you vote for if you don't favor the agendas of
either party's legacy candidates?" In November 2013 I commented on the book DOUBLE DOWN: GAME
CHANGE 2012 by Mark Halperin and John Heileman:
=====
Mr. Trump occupies an important place in the political spectrum --- that of being a Republican
Populist.
He understands that if we're ever going to get our economy back on its feet the wage-earning
middle class will have to prosper along with investors, who are recovering our fortunes in
the stock market.
IMO whichever party nominates a candidate like Trump that really "gets" the idea that the
economy is suffering because the middle class can't find employment at livable wages, will
be the party that rises to dominance.
Mr. Trump, despite his flakiness, at least understood that essential fact of American economic
life.
November 7, 2013
=====
Ms. Coulter says it more eloquently: "The Republican establishment has no idea how much
ordinary voters hate both parties." Like me, she's especially annoyed with Republicans, because
we think of the Republican Party as being our political "family" that has turned against us:
===== The RNC has been forcing Republican candidates to take suicidal positions forever They were
happy to get 100 percent of the Business Roundtable vote and 20 percent of the regular vote.
when the GOP wins an election, there is no corresponding "win" for the unemployed blue-collar
voter in North Carolina. He still loses his job to a foreign worker or a closed manufacturing
plant, his kids are still boxed out of college by affirmative action for immigrants, his community
is still plagued with high taxes and high crime brought in with all that cheap foreign labor.
There's no question but that the country is heading toward being Brazil. One doesn't have to
agree with the reason to see that the very rich have gotten much richer, placing them well beyond
the concerns of ordinary people, and the middle class is disappearing. America doesn't make anything
anymore, except Hollywood movies and Facebook. At the same time, we're importing a huge peasant
class, which is impoverishing what remains of the middle class, whose taxes support cheap labor
for the rich.
With Trump, Americans finally have the opportunity to vote for something that's popular.
=====
That explains how Trump won my vote --- and held on to it through a myriad of early blunders
and controversies that almost made me switch my support to other candidates.
I'm no "xenophobe isolationist" stereotype. My first employer was an immigrant from Eastern
Europe. What I learned working for him launched me on my successful career. I've developed and
sold computer systems to subsidiaries of American companies in Europe and Asia. My business partners
have been English and Canadian immigrants. My family are all foreign-born Hispanics. Three of
my college roommates were from Ecuador, Germany, and Syria.
BECAUSE of this international experience I agree with the issues of trade and immigration that
Ms. Coulter talks about that have prompted Trump's rising popularity.
First, there is the false promise that free trade with low-wage countries would "create millions
of high-paying jobs for American workers, who will be busy making high-value products for export."
NAFTA was signed in 1994. GATT with China was signed in 2001. Since then we've signed free trade
with 20 countries. It was said that besides creating jobs for Americans, that free trade would
prosper the global economy. In truth the opposite happened:
American companies used free trade with low-wage countries as an opportunity to close their
American factories and relocate the jobs to lower-paying foreign workers. Instead of creating
product and exporting it to other countries, our American companies EXPORTED American JOBS to
other countries and IMPORTED foreign-made PRODUCTS into America! Our exports have actually DECLINED
during the last five years with most of the 20 countries we signed free trade with. Even our exports
to Canada, our oldest free trade partner, are less than what they were five years ago.
We ran trade SURPLUSES with Mexico until 1994, when NAFTA was signed. The very next year the
surplus turned to deficit, now $60 billion a year. Given that each American worker produces an
average of $64,000 in value per year, that is a loss of 937,000 American jobs to Mexico alone.
The problem is A) that Mexicans are not wealthy enough to be able to afford much in the way of
American-made product and B) there isn't much in the way of American-made product left to buy,
since so much of former American-made product is now made in Mexico or China.
Trade with Japan, China, and South Korea is even more imbalanced, because those countries
actively restrict imports of American-made products. We run a 4x trade imbalance with China, which
cost us $367 billion last year. We lost $69 billion to Japan and $28 billion to South Korea. Our
exports to these countries are actually DECLINING, even while our imports soar!
Thus, free trade, except with a few fair-trading countries like Canada, Australia, and possibly
Britain, has been a losing proposition. Is it coincidence that our economy has weakened with each
trade deal we have signed? Our peak year of labor force participation was 1999. Then we had the
Y2K collapse and the Great Recession, followed by the weakest "recovery" since WWII? As Trump
would say, free trade has been a "disaster."
Why do Establishment Republicans join with Democrats in wanting to diminish the future
with the WRONG kind of "free trade" that removes jobs and wealth from the USA? As Ms. Coulter
reminds us, it is because Republican Establishment, like the Democrat establishment, is PAID by
the money and jobs they receive from big corporations to believe it. Ms. Coulter says:
===== The donor class doesn't care. The rich are like locusts: once they've picked America dry,
they'll move on to the next country. A hedge fund executive quoted in The Atlantic a few years
ago said, "If the transformation of the world economy lifts four people in China and India
out of poverty and into the middle class, and meanwhile [that] means one American drops out
of the middle class, that's not such a bad trade."
=====
Then there is immigration. My wife, son, and extended family legally immigrated to the USA
from Latin America. The first family members were recruited by our government during the labor
shortage of the Korean War. Some fought for the United States in Korea. Some of their children
fought for us in Vietnam, and some grandchildren are fighting in the Middle East. Most have
become successful professionals and business owners. They came here LEGALLY, some waiting in
queue for up to 12 years. They were supported by the family already in America until they were
on their feet.
Illegal immigration has been less happy. Illegals are here because the Democrats want new voters
and the Republicans want cheap labor. Contrary to business propaganda, illegals cost Americans
their jobs. A colleague just old me, "My son returned home from California after five years, because
he couldn't get construction work any longer. All those jobs are now done off the books by illegals."
It's the same in technology. Even while our high-tech companies are laying off 260,000 American
employees in 2016 alone, they are banging the drums to expand the importation of FOREIGN tech
workers from 85,000 to 195,000 to replace the Americans they let go. Although the H1-B program
is billed as bringing in only the most exceptional, high-value foreign engineers, in truth most
visas are issued to replace American workers with young foreigners of mediocre ability who'll
work for much less money than the American family bread-winners they replaced.
Both parties express their "reverse racism" against the White Middle Class. Democrats don't
like them because they tend to vote Republican. The Republican Establishment doesn't like them
because they cost more to employ than overseas workers and illegal aliens. According to them the
WMC is too technologically out of date and overpaid to allow our benighted business leaders to
"compete internationally."
Ms. Coulter says "Americans are homesick" for our country that is being lost to illegal immigration
and the removal of our livelihoods overseas. We are sick of Republican and Democrat Party hidden
agendas, reverse-racism, and economic genocide against the American people. That's why the Establishment
candidates who started out so theoretically strong, like Jeb Bush, collapsed like waterlogged
houses of cards when they met Donald Trump. As Ms. Coulter explains, Trump knows their hidden
agendas, and knows they are working against the best interests of the American Middle Class.
Coulter keeps coming back to Mr. Trump's "Alpha Male" personality that speaks to Americans
as nation without pandering to specific voter identity groups. She contrasts his style to the
self-serving "Republican (Establishment) Brain Trust that is mostly composed of comfortable, well-paid
mediocrities who, by getting a gig in politics, earn salaries higher than a capitalist system
would ever value their talents." She explains what she sees as the idiocy of those Republican
Establishment political consultants who wrecked the campaigns of Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz by micromanaging
with pandering.
She says the Republican Establishment lost because it served itself --- becoming wealthy by
serving the moneyed interests of Wall Street. Trump won because he is speaking to the disfranchised
American Middle Class who loves our country, is proud of our traditions, and believes that Americans
have as much right to feed our families through gainful employment as do overseas workers and
illegal aliens.
"I am YOUR voice," says Trump to the Middle Class that until now has been ignored and even
sneered at by both parties' establishments.
I've given an overview of the book here. The real delight is in the details, told as only Anne
Coulter can tell them. I've quoted a few snippets of her words, that relate most specifically
to my views on Trump and the issues. I wish there were space to quote many more. Alas, you'll
need to read the book to glean them all!
Bruce, I would also add that the Republican Establishment chose not to represent the interests
of the White Middle Class on trade, immigration, and other issues that matter to us. They chose
to represent the narrow interests of:
1. The corporate 1% who believe that the global labor market should be tapped in order
to beat American workers out of their jobs; and that corporations and the 1% who own them should
be come tax-exempt organizations that profit by using cheap overseas labor to product product
that is sold in the USA, and without paying taxes on the profit. Ms. Coulter calls this group
of Republican Estblishmentarians "locusts: once they've picked America dry, they'll move on to
the next country."
2. Pretending to care about the interests of minorities. Of course, the Republican Establishment
has even less appeal to minorities than to the White Middle Class (WMC) they abandoned. Minorities
are no more interested in losing their jobs to foreigners or to suffer economic stagnation while
the rich have their increasing wealth (most of which is earned at the expense of the middle class)
tax-sheltered, than do the WMC.
The Republican Establishment is in a snit because Trump beat them by picking up the WMC votes
that the Establishment abandoned. What would have happened if Trump had not come on the scene?
The probable result is that the Establishment would have nominated a ticket of Jeb Bush and John
Kasich. These candidates had much to recommend them as popular governors of key swing states.
But they would have gone into the election fighting the campaign with Republican Establishment
issues that only matter to the 1%. They would have lost much of the WMC vote that ultimately rallied
around Trump, while gaining no more than the usual 6% of minorities who vote Republican. It would
have resulted in a severe loss for the Republican Party, perhaps making it the minority party
for the rest of the century.
Trump has given Republicans a new lease on life. The Establishment doesn't like having
to take a back seat to him, but perhaps they should understand that having a back seat in a popular
production is so much better than standing outside alone in the cold.
It's funny how White Men are supposed to be angry. But I've never seen any White men:
1. Running amok, looting and burning down their neighborhood, shooting police and other "angry
White men." There were 50 people shot in Chicago last weekend alone. How many of those do you
think were "angry white men?" Hint: they were every color EXCEPT white.
2. Running around complaining that they aren't allowed into the other gender's bathroom, then
when they barge their way in there complain about being sexually assaulted. No, it's only "angry
females" (of any ethnicity) who barge their way into the men's room and then complain that somebody
in there offended them.
Those "angry white men" are as legendary as "Bigfoot." They are alleged to exist everywhere,
but are never seen. Maybe that's because they mostly hang out in the quiet neighborhoods of cookie-cutter
homes in suburbia, go to the lake or bar-be-que on weekends, and take their allotment of Viagra
in hopes of occassionally "getting lucky" with their wives. If they're "angry" then at least they
don't take their angry frustrations out on others, as so many other militant, "in-your-face" activist
groups do!
"... I've tuned out Warren-she has become the "red meat" surrogate for Clinton. Just because Taibbi was excellent on exposing Wall St. doesn't mean he really knows s**t about politics. I find the depiction of Trump as some kind of monster-buffoon to be simply boring and not very helpful. ..."
"... (might be the Trump Chaos bc Hillary will strategically turn our war machine on us can't believe this is as good as it gets, sighed out) ..."
"... Having the establishment, the military-industrial complex and Wall Street against him helps Trump a lot. ..."
"... You can fool part of the people all the time, and all people part of the time, but Brexit won, so will Trump, politician extraordinaire ..."
"... Given his family, a Trump presidency may look more like JFK's, where Bobby had more power than LBJ. Also, given Trump's negotiating expertise, I would certainly not believe any assertion of support he proclaims for the VP. I expect he had little choice in the matter, and that he also plans to send the VP to the hinterlands at the first opportunity. I'm unclear why so many appear to believe the VP has any influence whatsoever; I believe GWB was the only post-WW2 president who let the VP have any power. ..."
"... What is a populist? Somebody that tries to do what the majority want. Current examples: Less wars and military spending. More infrastructure spending. Less support for banks and corps (imagine how many votes trump would gain if he said 'as pres I will jail bankers that break the law' And how that repudiates Obama and both parties.) Gun control (but not possible from within the rep party) ..."
"... What is a fascist? Somebody that supports corporations, military, and military adventures. ..."
"... Actually, it sounds a whole lot like a different candidate from a different party, doesn't it? ..."
"... Neoliberal "Goodthink" flag. What this means when neoliberals say it is not let's build a better global society for all it means Corporations and our military should be able to run roughshod over the world and the people's of other countries. Exploit their citizens for cheap Labor, destroy their environment and move on. These are the exact policies of Hillary Clinton (see TPP, increase foreign wars etc.). Hillary globalism is not about global Brotherhood it's about global economic and military exploitation. Trump is nationalist non – interventionist, which leads to less global military destruction than hillary and less global exploitation. So who is a better for those outside the US, hillary the interventionist OR trump the non-interventionist? ..."
"... Look, the Clintons are criminals, and their affiliate entities, including the DNC, could be considered criminal enterprises or co-conspirators at this point. ..."
"... The very fact that Establishment, Wall St and Koch bros are behind HRC is evidence that the current 'status quo' will be continued! I cannot stand another 4 years of Hilabama. ..."
"... The striving for American empire has so totally confused the political order of the country that up is down and down is up. The idea of government for and by the people is a distant memory. Covering for lies and contradictions of beliefs has blurred any notion of principles informing public action. ..."
"... If there is any principle that matters today, it is the pursuit of money and profit reigns supreme. Trump is populist in the sense he is talking about bringing money and wealth back to the working classes. Not by giving it directly, but by forcing businesses to turn their sights back to the US proper and return to making their profits at home. In the end, it is all nostalgia and probably impossible, but working class people remember those days so it rings true. That is hope and change in action. People also could care less if he cheats on his taxes or is found out lying about how much he is worth. Once again, fudging your net worth is something working people care little about. Having their share of the pie is all that matters and Trump is tapping into that. ..."
"... The only crime Trump has committed so far is his language. Liberals like Clinton, Blair and Obama drip blood. ..."
"... The 2016 election cannot be looked at in isolation. The wars for profit are spreading from Nigeria through Syria to Ukraine. Turkey was just lost to the Islamists and is on the road to being a failed state. The EU is in an existential crisis due to Brexit, the refugee crisis and austerity. Western leadership is utterly incompetent and failing to protect its citizens. Globalization is failing. Its Losers are tipping over the apple cart. Humans are returning to their tribal roots for safety. The drums for war with Russia are beating. Clinton / Kaine are 100% Status Quo Globalists. Trump / Pence are candidates of change to who knows what. Currently I am planning on voting for the Green Party in the hope it becomes viable and praying that the chaos avoids Maryland. ..."
I've tuned out Warren-she has become the "red meat" surrogate for Clinton. Just because
Taibbi was excellent on exposing Wall St. doesn't mean he really knows s**t about politics. I
find the depiction of Trump as some kind of monster-buffoon to be simply boring and not very helpful.
for all the run around Hillary, Trump's chosen circle of allies are Wall Street and Austerity
enablers. actually, Trump chaos could boost the enablers as easily as Hillary's direct mongering.
War is Money low hanging fruit in this cash strapped era and either directly or indirectly neither
candidate will disappoint.
So I Ask Myself which candidate will the majority manage sustainability while assembling to create
different outcomes? (might be the Trump Chaos bc Hillary will strategically turn our war machine
on us can't believe this is as good as it gets, sighed out)
War is only good for the profiteers when it can be undertaken in another territory. Bringing
the chaos home cannot be good for business. Endless calls for confidence and stability in markets
must reflect the fact that disorder effects more business that the few corporations that benefit
directly from spreading chaos. A split in the business community seems to be underway or at least
a possible leverage point to bring about positive change.
Even the splits in the political class reflect this. Those that benefit from spreading chaos are
loosing strength because they have lost control of where that chaos takes place and who is directly
effected from its implementation. Blowback and collateral damage are finally registering.
Trump may be a disaster. Clinton will be a disaster. One of these two will win. I won't vote
for either, but if you put a gun to my head and forced me to choose, I'd take Trump. He's certainly
not a fascist (I think it was either Vice or Vox that had an article where they asked a bunch
of historians of fascism if he was, the answer was a resounding no), he's a populist in the Andrew
Jackson style. If nothing else Trump will (probably) not start WW3 with Russia.
And war with Russia doesn't depend just on Hillary, it depends on us in Western Europe agreeing
with it.
A laughable proposition. The official US policy, as you may recall, is
fuck the EU .
Where was Europe when we toppled the Ukrainian govt? Get back to me when you can actually spend
2% GDP on your military. At the moment you can't even control your illegal immigrants.
The political parties that survive display adaptability, and ideological consistency isn't
a requirement for that. Look at the party of Lincoln. Or look at the party of FDR.
If the Democrats decapitate the Republican party by bringing in the Kagans of this world and
Republican suburbanites in swing states, then the Republicans will go where the votes are; the
Iron Law of Institutions will drive them to do it, and the purge of the party after Trump will
open the positions in the party for people with that goal.
In a way, what we're seeing now is what should have happened to the Republicans in
2008. The Democrats had the Republicans down on the ground with Obama's boot on their neck. The
Republicans had organized and lost a disastrous war, they had lost the legislative and executive
branches, they were completely discredited ideologically, and they were thoroughly discredited
in the political class and in the press.
Instead, Obama, with his strategy of bipartisanship - good faith or not - gave them a hand
up, dusted them off, and let them right back in the game, by treating them as a legitimate opposition
party. So the Republican day of reckoning was postponed. We got various bids for power by factions
- the Tea Party, now the Liberty Caucus - but none of them came anywhere near taking real power,
despite (click-driven money-raising) Democrat hysteria.
And now the day of reckoning has arrived. Trump went through the hollow institutional shell
of the Republican Party like the German panzers through the French in 1939. And here we are!
(Needless to say, anybody - ***cough*** Ted Cruz ***cough*** - yammering about "conservative
principles" is part of the problem, dead weight, part of the dead past.) I don't know if the Republicans
can remake themselves after Trump; what he's doing is necessary for that, but may not be sufficient.
Republicans won Congress and the states because the Democrats handed them to them on a silver
platter. To Obama and his fan club meaningful power is a hot potato, to be discarded as soon as
plausible.
Having the establishment, the military-industrial complex and Wall Street against him helps
Trump a lot.
Pro-Sanders folks, blacks, and hispanics will mostly vote for Trump.
Having Gov. Pence on the ticket, core Republicans and the silent majority will vote for Trump.
Women deep inside know Trump will help their true interests better than the Clinton-Obama rinse
repeat
Young people, sick and tired of the current obviously rigged system, will vote for change.
You can fool part of the people all the time, and all people part of the time, but Brexit
won, so will Trump, politician extraordinaire
Even Michael Moore gets it
Trump has intimated that he is not going to deal with the nuts and bolts of government,
that will be Pence's job.
Given his family, a Trump presidency may look more like JFK's, where Bobby had more power
than LBJ.
Also, given Trump's negotiating expertise, I would certainly not believe any assertion of support
he proclaims for the VP. I expect he had little choice in the matter, and that he also plans to
send the VP to the hinterlands at the first opportunity. I'm unclear why so many appear to believe
the VP has any influence whatsoever; I believe GWB was the only post-WW2 president who let the
VP have any power.
Minorities will benefit at least as much as whites with infrastructure spending, which trump
says he wants to do It would make him popular, which he likes, why not believe him? And if pres
he would be able to get enough rep votes to get it passed. No chance with Hillary, who anyway
would rather spend on wars, which are mostly fought by minorities.
What is a populist? Somebody that tries to do what the majority want. Current examples:
Less wars and military spending. More infrastructure spending. Less support for banks and corps
(imagine how many votes trump would gain if he said 'as pres I will jail bankers that break the
law' And how that repudiates Obama and both parties.) Gun control (but not possible from within
the rep party)
What is a fascist? Somebody that supports corporations, military, and military adventures.
I'm saying you have a much better chance to pressure Clinton
Sorry, but this argues from facts not in evidence and closely resembles the Correct the Record
troll line (now substantiated through the Wikileaks dump) that Clinton "has to be elected" because
she is at least responsive to progressive concerns.
Except she isn't, and the degree to which the DNC clearly has been trying to pander to disillusioned
Republicans and the amount of bile they spew every time they lament how HRC has had to "veer left"
shows quite conclusively to my mind that, in fact, the opposite of what you say is true.
Also, when NAFTA was being debated in the '90s, the Clintons showed themselves to be remarkably
unresponsive both to the concerns of organized labor (who opposed it) as well as the majority
of the members of their own party, who voted against it. NAFTA was passed only with a majority
of Republican votes.
I have no way of knowing whether you're a troll or sincerely believe this, but either way,
it needs to be pointed out that the historical record actually contradicts your premise. If you
do really believe this, try not to be so easily taken in by crafty rhetoric.
BTW, I'll take Trump's record as a husband over HRC's record as a wife. He loves a woman, then
they break up, and he finds another one. This is not unusual in the US. Hillary, OTOH, "stood
by her man" through multiple publicly humiliating infidelities, including having to settle out
of court for more than $800,000, and rape charges. No problem with her if her husband was flying
many times on the "Lolita Express" with a child molester. Could be she had no idea where her "loved
one" was at the time. Do they in fact sleep in the same bed, or even live in the same house? I
don't know.
RE: calling Donald Trump a "sociopath"-this is another one of those words that is thrown around
carelessly, like "nazi" and "fascist". In the Psychology Today article "How to Spot a Sociopath",
they list 16 key behavioral characteristics. I can't see them in Trump-you could make a case for
a few of them, but not all. For example: "failure to follow any life plan", "sex life impersonal,
trivial, and poorly integrated", "poor judgment and failure to learn by experience", "incapacity
for love"-–you can't reasonably attach these characteristics to The Donald, who, indeed, has a
more impressive and loving progeny than any other prez candidate I can think of.
"I have a sense of international identity as well: we are all brothers and sisters."
Neoliberal "Goodthink" flag. What this means when neoliberals say it is not let's build
a better global society for all it means Corporations and our military should be able to run roughshod
over the world and the people's of other countries. Exploit their citizens for cheap Labor, destroy
their environment and move on. These are the exact policies of Hillary Clinton (see TPP, increase
foreign wars etc.). Hillary globalism is not about global Brotherhood it's about global economic
and military exploitation. Trump is nationalist non – interventionist, which leads to less global
military destruction than hillary and less global exploitation. So who is a better for those outside
the US, hillary the interventionist OR trump the non-interventionist?
"And not everyone feels the same way, but for most voters there is either a strong tribal loyalty
(Dem or Repub) or a weaker sense of "us" guiding the voter on that day.
Mad as I am about the Blue Dogs, I strongly identify with the Dems."
So you recognize you are a tribalist, and assume all the baggage and irrationality that tribalism
often fosters, but instead of addressing your tribalism you embrace it. What you seem to be saying
(to me)is that we should leave critical thinking at the door and become dem tribalists like you.
"But the Repubs and Dems see Wall Street issues through different cultural prisms. Republican
are more reflexively pro-business. It matters."
Hillary Clinton's biggest donors are Wallstreet and her dem. Husband destroyed glass-steagall.
Trump wants to reinstate glass-steagall, so who is more business friendly again?
"He is racist, and so he knows how to push ugly buttons."
This identity politics trope is getting so old. Both are racist just in different ways, Trump
says in your face racist things, which ensure the injustice cannot be ignored, where hillary has
and does support racist policies, that use stealth racism to incrementaly increase the misery
of minorities, while allowing the majority to pretend it's not happening.
"First, he will govern with the Republicans. Republican judges, TPP, military spending, environmental
rollbacks, etc. Trump will not overrule Repubs in Congress."
These are literally hillarys policies not trumps.
Trump: anti TPP, stop foreign interventions, close bases use money for infrastructure.
Hillary :Pro TPP, more interventions and military spending
"And no, no great Left populist party will ride to the rescue. The populist tradition (identity)
is mostly rightwing and racist in our society.
People do not change political identity like their clothes. The left tradition in the US, such
as it is, is in the Dem party."
So what you are saying is quit being stupid, populism is bad and you should vote for hillarys
neoliberalism. The democrats were once left so even if they are no longer left, we must continue
to support them if another party or candidate that is to the left isn't a democrat? Your logic
hurts my head.
Look, the Clintons are criminals, and their affiliate entities, including the DNC, could
be considered criminal enterprises or co-conspirators at this point. Those who haven't realized
that, or worse, who shill for them are willfully ignorant, amoral, or unethical. The fact that
that includes a large chunk of the population doesn't change that. I don't vote for criminals.
The very fact that Establishment, Wall St and Koch bros are behind HRC is evidence that
the current 'status quo' will be continued! I cannot stand another 4 years of Hilabama.
I hate Hillary more than Trump. I want to protest at the Establishment, which at this represented
by Hillary.
Populism (support for popular issues) is, well, popular.
Fascism (support for corps and military adventures) is, at least after our ME adventures, unpopular.
Commenters are expressing support for the person expressing popular views, such as infrastructure
spending, and expressing little support for the candidate they believe is most fascist.
Btw, Most on this site are liberals, few are reps, so to support him they have had to buck
some of their long held antipathy regarding reps.
Right, what is changing with Trump is the Republicans are going back to, say, the Eisenhower
era, when Ike started the interstate highway system, a socialist program if there ever was one.
It's a good article; this is a general observation. Sorry!
"Hate" seems to be a continuing Democrat meme, and heck, who can be for hate? So it makes sense
rhetorically, but in policy terms it's about as sensible as being against @ssh0les (since as the
good book says, ye have the @ssh0les always with you). So we're really looking at virtue signaling
as a mode of reinforcing tribalism, and to be taken seriously only for that reason. If you look
at the political class writing about the working class - modulo writers like Chris Arnade - the
hate is plain as day, though it's covered up with the rhetoric of meritocracy, taking care of
losers, etc.
Strategic hate management is a great concept. It's like hate can never be created or destroyed,
and is there as a resource to be mined or extracted. The Clinton campaign is doing a great job
of strategic hate management right now, by linking Putin and Trump, capitalizing on all the good
work done in the press over the last year or so.
For years we have been told that government should be run like a business. In truth that statement
was used as a cudgel to avoid having the government provide any kind of a safety net to its citizenry
because there was little or no profit in it for the people who think that government largess should
only be for them.
Here's the thing, if government had been run like a business, we the people would own huge
portions of Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Chase today. We wouldn't have bailed them out without
an equity stake in them. Most cities would have a share of the gate for every stadium that was
built. And rather than paying nothing to the community Walmart would have been paying a share
of their profits (much as those have dropped over the years).
I do not like Trump's business, but he truly does approach his brand and his relationships
as a business. When he says he doesn't like the trade deals because they are bad business and
bad deals he is correct. IF the well being of the United states and his populace are what you
are interested in regarding trade deals, ours are failures. Now most of us here know that was
not the point of the trade deals. They have been a spectacular success for many of our largest
businesses and richest people, but for America as a whole they have increased our trade deficit
and devastated our job base. When he says he won't go there, this is one I believe him on.
I also believe him on NATO and on the whole Russian thing. Why, because of the same reasons
I believe him on Trade. They are not winners for America as a whole. They are bad deals. Europe
is NOT living up to their contractual agreement regarding NATO. For someone who is a believer
in getting the better of the deal that is downright disgusting. And he sees no benefit in getting
into a war with Russia. The whole reserve currency thing vs. nukes is not going to work for him
as a cost benefit analysis of doing it. He is not going to front this because it is a business
loser.
We truly have the worst choices from the main parties in my lifetime. There are many reasons
Trump is a bad candidate. But on these two, he is far more credible and on the better side of
things than the Democratic nominee. And on the few where she might reasonably considered to have
a better position, unfortunately I do not for a moment believe her to be doing more than giving
lip service based on both her record and her character.
Is it your opinion that to have globalisation we must marginalize russia to the extent that
they realize they can't have utopia and make the practical choice of allowing finance capitalism
to guide them to realistic incrementally achieved debt bondage?
The Democratic Party has been inching further and further to the right. Bernie tried to arrest
this drift, but his internal populist rebellion was successfully thwarted by party elite corruption.
The Democratic position is now so far to the right that the Republicans will marginalize themselves
if they try to keep to the right of the Democrats.
But, despite party loyalty or PC slogans, the Democrat's rightward position is now so obvious
that it can be longer disguised by spin. The Trump campaign has demonstrated, the best electoral
strategy for the Republican Party is to leapfrog leftward and campaign from a less corporate position.
This has given space for the re-evaluation of party positions that Trump is enunciating, and the
result is that the Trump is running to the
left of Hillary. How weird is this?
I meant to use right and left to refer generally to elite vs popular. The issue is too big
to discuss without some simplification, and I'm sorry it has distracted from the main issue. On
the face of it, judging from the primaries, the Republican candidates who represented continued
rightward drift were rejected. (Indications are that the same thing happened in the Democratic
Party, but party control was stronger there, and democratic primary numbers will never be known).
The main point I was trying to make is that the Democratic party has been stretching credulity
to the breaking point in claiming to be democratic in any sense, and finally the contradiction
between their statements and actions has outpaced the capabilities of their propaganda. Their
Orwellian program overextended itself. Popular recognition of the disparity has caused a kind
of political "snap" that's initiated a radical reorganization of what used to be the party of
the right (or corporations, or elites, or finance, or "your description here".)
Besides confusion between which issues are right or left for Republicans or Democrats on the
national level, internationally, the breakdown of popular trust in the elites, and the failure
of their propaganda on that scale, is leading to a related worldwide distrust and rejection of
elite policies. This distrust has been percolating in pockets for some time, but it seems it's
now become so widespread that it's practically become a movement.
I suspect, however, there's a Plan B for this situation to restore the proper order. Will be
interesting to see how this plays out.
The striving for American empire has so totally confused the political order of the country
that up is down and down is up. The idea of government for and by the people is a distant memory.
Covering for lies and contradictions of beliefs has blurred any notion of principles informing
public action.
If there is any principle that matters today, it is the pursuit of money and profit reigns
supreme. Trump is populist in the sense he is talking about bringing money and wealth back to
the working classes. Not by giving it directly, but by forcing businesses to turn their sights
back to the US proper and return to making their profits at home. In the end, it is all nostalgia
and probably impossible, but working class people remember those days so it rings true. That is
hope and change in action. People also could care less if he cheats on his taxes or is found out
lying about how much he is worth. Once again, fudging your net worth is something working people
care little about. Having their share of the pie is all that matters and Trump is tapping into
that.
Clintons arrogance is worse because the transcripts probably clearly show her secretly conspiring
with bankers to screw the working people of this country. Trumps misdeeds effect his relationship
to other elites while Clintons directly effect working people.
Such a sorry state of affairs. When all that matters is the pursuit of money and profit, moving
forward will be difficult and full of moral contradictions. Populism needs a new goal. The political
machinery that gives us two pro-business hacks and an ineffectual third party has fundamentally
failed.
The business of America must be redefined, not somehow brought back to a mythical past greatness.
Talk about insanity.
"Bill Clinton has been a disaster for the Democratic Party. Send him packing."
"There's not much the Democrats can do about Mrs. Clinton. She's got a Senate seat for six
years. But there is no need for the party to look to her for leadership. The Democrats need to
regroup, re-establish their strong links to middle-class and working-class Americans, and move
on."
"You can't lead a nation if you are ashamed of the leadership of your party. The Clintons are
a terminally unethical and vulgar couple, and they've betrayed everyone who has ever believed
in them."
"As neither Clinton has the grace to retire from the scene, the Democrats have no choice but
to turn their backs on them. It won't be easy, but the Democrats need to try. If they succeed
they'll deserve the compliment Bill Clinton offered Gennifer Flowers after she lied under oath:
"Good for you." "
Amazing how the New York Times has "evolved" from Herbert's editorial stance of 15 years ago
to their unified editorial/news support for HRC's candacy,
In my view, it is not as if HRC has done anything to redeem herself in the intervening years.
It takes liberals to create a refugee crisis.
What country are we going to bomb back into the stone age this week?
We are very squeamish about offensive language.
We don't mind dropping bombs and ripping people apart with red hot shrapnel.
We are liberals.
Liberal sensibilities were on display in the film "Apocalypse Now".
No writing four letter words on the side of aircraft.
Napalm, white phosphorous and agent orange – no problem.
Liberals are like the English upper class – outward sophistication hiding the psychopath underneath.
They were renowned for their brutality towards slaves, the colonies and the English working class
(men, women and children) but terribly sophisticated when with their own.
Are you a bad language sort of person – Trump
Or a liberal, psychopath, empire builder – Clinton
The only crime Trump has committed so far is his language. Liberals like Clinton, Blair
and Obama drip blood.
Lambert strether said: my view is that the democrat party cannot be saved, but it can be seized.
Absolutely correct.
That is why Trump must be elected. Only then through the broken remains of both Parties can the
frangible Democrat Party be seized and restored.
The 2016 election cannot be looked at in isolation. The wars for profit are spreading from
Nigeria through Syria to Ukraine. Turkey was just lost to the Islamists and is on the road to
being a failed state. The EU is in an existential crisis due to Brexit, the refugee crisis and
austerity. Western leadership is utterly incompetent and failing to protect its citizens. Globalization
is failing. Its Losers are tipping over the apple cart. Humans are returning to their tribal roots
for safety. The drums for war with Russia are beating. Clinton / Kaine are 100% Status Quo Globalists.
Trump / Pence are candidates of change to who knows what. Currently I am planning on voting for
the Green Party in the hope it becomes viable and praying that the chaos avoids Maryland.
"... Because we interpreted the end of the Cold War as the ultimate vindication of America's economic system, we intensified our push toward the next level of capitalism, called globalization. It was presented as a project that would benefit everyone. Instead it has turned out to be a nightmare for many working people. Thanks to "disruption" and the "global supply chain," many American workers who could once support families with secure, decent-paying jobs must now hope they can be hired as greeters at Walmart. Meanwhile, a handful of super-rich financiers manipulate our political system to cement their hold on the nation's wealth. ..."
"... Rather than shifting to a less assertive and more cooperative foreign policy, we continued to insist that America must reign supreme. When we declared that we would not tolerate the emergence of another "peer power," we expected that other countries would blithely obey. Instead they ignore us. We interpret this as defiance and seek to punish the offenders. That has greatly intensified tensions between the United States and the countries we are told to consider our chief adversaries, Russia and China. ..."
Because we interpreted the end of the Cold War as the ultimate vindication
of America's economic system, we intensified our push toward the next level
of capitalism, called globalization. It was presented as a project that
would benefit everyone. Instead it has turned out to be a nightmare for
many working people. Thanks to "disruption" and the "global supply chain,"
many American workers who could once support families with secure, decent-paying
jobs must now hope they can be hired as greeters at Walmart. Meanwhile,
a handful of super-rich financiers manipulate our political system to cement
their hold on the nation's wealth.
Enrique Ferro's insight:
Moments of change require adaptation, but the United States is not good
at adapting. We are used to being in charge. This blinded us to the reality
that as other countries began rising, our relative power would inevitably
decline. Rather than shifting to a less assertive and more cooperative
foreign policy, we continued to insist that America must reign supreme.
When we declared that we would not tolerate the emergence of another "peer
power," we expected that other countries would blithely obey. Instead they
ignore us. We interpret this as defiance and seek to punish the offenders.
That has greatly intensified tensions between the United States and the
countries we are told to consider our chief adversaries, Russia and China.
This is downright sickening and the people who are voting for Hillary will not even care what will
happen with the USA iif she is elected.
By attacking Trump using "Khan gambit" she risks a violent backlash (And not only via Wikileaks,
which already promised to release information about her before the elections)
People also start to understand that she is like Trump. He destroyed several hundred American lifes
by robbing them, exploiting their vanity (standard practice in the USA those days) via Trump University
scam. She destroyed the whole country -- Libya and is complicit in killing Khaddafi (who, while not
a nice guy, was keeping the country together and providing be highest standard of living in Africa for
his people).
In other words she is a monster and sociopath. He probably is a narcissist too. So there is no much
phychological difference between them. And we need tight proportions to judge this situation if we are
talking about Hillary vs Trump.
As for people voting for Trump -- yes they will. I think if Hillary goes aganst Trump, the female
neoliberal monster will be trumped. She has little chances even taking into account the level of brainwashing
in the USA (which actually is close to those that existed in the USSR).
Notable quotes:
"... The reason Trump and Sanders are doing well in the US while fascists are doing well in Europe is the same reason: neoliberalism has gutted, or is in the process of gutting, societies. Workers and other formerly "safe" white collar workers are seeing their job security, income security, retirement security all go up in smoke. Neoliberals are trying to snip and cut labor protections, healthcare, environmental regulations all for corporate profit. In Europe this is all in addition to a massive refugee crisis itself brought on by neoliberalism (neocon foreign policy is required for neoliberal social policy, they go hand-in-hand). The US and NATO destabilize countries with the intent of stealing their resources and protecting their markets, cause massive refugee flows which strain social structures in Europe (which falls right into the hands of the gutters and cutters of neoliberalism). Of course the people will lean fascist. ..."
"... U.S. Government Tried to Tackle Gun Violence in 1960s ..."
"... Another key feature of fascism is territorial expansionism. As far as I am aware, none of the nationalist parties advocate invading other countries or retaking former colonies. Once again, contemporary neoliberalism is far closer to fascism. But you are correct about both Israel and Turkey – our allies. They are much closer to the genuine article. But you won't hear those complaining about the rise of fascism in Europe complaining too much about them. ..."
"... The only way they have avoided complete revolt has been endless borrowing to fund entitlements, once that one-time fix plays out the consequences will be apparent. The funding mechanism itself (The Fed) has even morphed into a neo-liberal tool designed to enrich Capital while enslaving Labor with the consequences. ..."
"... "Every society chooses how resources are allocated between capital and labor." More specifically, isn't it a struggle between various political/economic/cultural movements within a society which chooses how resources are allocated between capital and labor. ..."
"... My objection to imprecise language here isn't merely pedantic. The leftist dismissal of right wing populists like Trump (or increasingly influential European movements like Ukip, AfD, and the Front national) as "fascist" is a reductionist rhetorical device intended to marginalize them by implying their politics are so far outside of the mainstream that they do not need to be taken seriously. ..."
"... " the gutters and cutters of neoliberalism" ..."
"... The neoliberals are all too aware that the clock is ticking. In this morning's NYT, yet more talk of ramming TPP through in the lame duck. ..."
"... The roads here are deteriorating FAST. In Price County, the road commissioner said last night that their budget allows for resurfacing all the roads on a 200 year basis. ..."
"... This Trump support seems like a form of political vandalism with Trump as the spray paint. People generally feel frustrated with government, utterly powerless and totally left out as the ranks of the precariat continue to grow. Trump appeals to the nihilistic tendencies of some people who, like frustrated teens, have decided to just smashed things up for the hell of it. They think a presidency mix of Caligula with Earl Scheib would be a funny hoot. ..."
"... Someone at American Conservative, when trying to get at why it's pointless to tell people Trump will wreck the place, described him as a "hand grenade" lobbed into the heart of government. You can't scare people with his crass-ness and destructive tendencies, because that's precisely what his voters are counting on when/if he gets into government. ..."
"... In other words, the MSM's fear is the clearest sign to these voters that their ..."
"... Your phrase "Trump is political vandalism" is great. I don't think I've seen a better description. NPR this morning was discussing Trump and his relationship with the press and the issues some GOP leaders have with him. When his followers were discussed, the speakers closely circled your vandalism point. Basically they said that his voters are angry with the power brokers and leaders in DC and regardless of whether they think Trump's statements are heartfelt or just rhetoric, they DO know he will stick it to those power brokers so that's good. Vandalism by a longer phrase. ..."
"... Meritocracy was ALWAYS a delusional fraud. What you invariably get, after a couple of generations, is a clique of elitists who define merit as themselves and reproduce it ad nauseam. Who still believes in such laughable kiddie stories? ..."
"... Campaign Finance Reform: If you can't walk into a voting booth you cannot contribute, or make all elections financed solely by government funds and make private contributions of any kind to any politician illegal. ..."
"... Re-institute Glass-Steagall but even more so. Limit the number of states a bank can operate in. Make the Fed publicly owned, not privately owned by banks. Completely revise corporate law, doing away with the legal person hood of corporations and limit of liability for corporate officers and shareholders. ..."
"... Single payer health care for everyone. Allow private health plans but do away with health insurance as a deductible for business. Remove the AMA's hold on licensing of medical schools which restricts the number of doctors. ..."
"... Do away with the cap on Social Security wages and make all income, wages, capital gains, interest, and dividends subject to taxation. Impose tariffs to compensate for lower labor costs overseas and revise industry. ..."
"... Cut the Defense budget by 50% and use that money for intensive infrastructure development. ..."
"... Raise the national minimum wage to $15 and hour. ..."
"... Severely curtail the revolving door from government to private industry with a 10 year restriction on working for an industry you dealt with in any way as a government official. ..."
"... Free public education including college (4 year degree). ..."
"... Obama and Holder, allowing the banks to be above the law have them demi-gods, many of whom are psychopaths and kleptocrats, and with their newly granted status, they are now re-shaping the world in their own image. Prosecute these demi-gods and restore sanity. Don't and their greed for our things will never end until nothings left. ..."
"... This is why Hillary is so much more dangerous than trump, because she and the demi gods are all on the same page. The TPP is their holy grail so I expect heaven and earth to be moved, especially if it looks like some trade traitors are going to get knocked off in the election, scoundrels like patty murray (dino, WA) will push to get it through then line up at the feed trough to gorge on k street dough. I plan to vote stein if it's not Bernie, but am reserving commitment until I see what kind of betrayals the dems have for me, if it's bad enough I'll go with the trump hand grenade. ..."
"... Totally agree tegnost, no more democratic neoliberals -- ..."
"... "they are now re-shaping the world in their own image" Isn't this intrinsic to bourgeois liberalism? ..."
"... Two things are driving our troubles: over-population and globalization. The plutocrats and kleptocrats have all the leverage over the rest of us laborers when the population of human beings has increased seven-fold in the last 70 years, from a little over a billion to seven billions (and growing) today. They are happy to let us freeze to death behind gas stations in order for them to compete with other oligarchs in excess consumption. ..."
"... Thank you for mentioning the third rail of overpopulation. Too often, this giant category of problems is ignored, because it makes people uncomfortable. The planet is finite, resources on the planet are finite, yet the number of people keeps growing. We need to strive for a higher quality of life, not a higher quantity of people. ..."
"... The issue goes beyond "current neoliberals up for election", it is most of our political establishment that has been corrupted by a system that provides for the best politicians money can buy. ..."
"... America has always been a country where a majority of the population has been poor. With the exception of a fifty five year(1950-2005) year period where access to large quantities of consumer debt by households was deployed to first to provide a wealth illusion to keep socialism at bay, followed by a mortgage debt boom to both keep the system afloat and strip the accumulated capital of the working class, i.e. home equity, the history of the US has been one of poverty for the masses. ..."
"... Further debt was foisted on the working class in the form of military Keynesianism, generating massive fiscal deficits which are to be paid for via austerity in a neo-feudal economy. ..."
The first comment gives a window into the hidden desperation in America that is showing up in statistics
like increasing opioid addiction and suicides, rather than in accounts of how and why so many people
are suffering. I hope readers will add their own observations in comments.
We recently took three months to travel the southern US from coast to coast. As an expat for
the past twenty years, beyond the eye opening experience it left us in a state of shock. From
a homeless man convulsing in the last throes of hypothermia (been there) behind a fuel station
in Houston (the couldn't care less attendant's only preoccupation getting our RV off his premises),
to the general squalor of near-homelessness such as the emergence of "American favelas" a block
away from gated communities or affluent ran areas, to transformation of RV parks into permanent
residencies for the foreclosed who have but their trailer or RV left, to social study one can
engage while queuing at the cash registers of a Walmart before beneficiaries of SNAP.
Stopping to take the time to talk and attempt to understand their predicament and their beliefs
as to the cause of their plight is a dizzying experience in and of itself. For a moment I felt
transposed to the times of the Cold War, when the Iron Curtain dialectics fuzzed the perception
of that other world to the west with a structured set of beliefs designed to blacken that horizon
as well as establish a righteous belief in their own existential paradigm.
What does that have to do with education? Everything if one considers the elitist trend that
is slowly setting the framework of tomorrow's society. For years I have felt there is a silent
"un-avowed conspiracy", why the seeming redundancy, because it is empirically driven as a by-product
of capitalism's surge and like a self-redeeming discount on a store shelf crystalizes a group
identity of think-alike know-little or nothing frustrated citizens easily corralled by a Fox or
Trump piper. We have re-rcreated the conditions or rather the reality of "Poverty In America"
barely half a century after its first diagnostic with one major difference : we are now feeding
the growth of the "underclass" by lifting ever higher and out of reach the upward mobility ladder,
once the banner of opportunity now fallen behind the supposedly sclerotic welfare states of Europe.
So Richard Cohen now fears American voters because of Trump. Well, on Diane Reem today (NPR)
was a discussion on why fascist parties are growing in Europe. Both Cohen and the clowns on NPR
missed the forest for the trees. The reason Trump and Sanders are doing well in the US while
fascists are doing well in Europe is the same reason: neoliberalism has gutted, or is in the process
of gutting, societies. Workers and other formerly "safe" white collar workers are seeing their
job security, income security, retirement security all go up in smoke. Neoliberals are trying
to snip and cut labor protections, healthcare, environmental regulations all for corporate profit.
In Europe this is all in addition to a massive refugee crisis itself brought on by neoliberalism
(neocon foreign policy is required for neoliberal social policy, they go hand-in-hand). The US
and NATO destabilize countries with the intent of stealing their resources and protecting their
markets, cause massive refugee flows which strain social structures in Europe (which falls right
into the hands of the gutters and cutters of neoliberalism). Of course the people will lean fascist.
In the US we don't have the refugees, but the neoliberalism is further along and more damaging.
There's no mystery here or in Europe, just the natural effects of governments failing to represent
real people in favor of useless eater rich.
Make the people into commodities, endanger their washes and job security, impose austerity,
and tale in floods of refugees. Of COURSE Europeans stay leaning fascist.
According to NPR's experts, many or most of those parties are "fascist". The fascist label
is getting tossed around a LOT right now. It is slung at Trump, at UKIP, or any others. Fascist
is what you call the opposition party to the right that you oppose. Now I don't call Trump a fascist.
A buffoon, yes, even a charlatan (I still rather doubt he really originally thought he would become
the GOP nominee. Perhaps I'm wrong but, like me, many seemed to think that he was pushing his
"brand" – a term usage of which I HATE because it IS like we are all commodities or businesses
rather than PEOPLE – and that he would drop by the wayside and profit from his publicity).
Be that as it may, NPR and Co were discussing the rise of fascist/neofascist parties and wondering
why there were doing so well. Easy answer: neoliberalism + refugee hoards = what you see in Europe.
I've also blamed a large part of today's gun violence in the USA on the fruits of neoliberalism.
Why? Same reason that ugly right-wing groups (fascist or not) are gaining ground around the Western
world. Neoliberalism destroys societies. It destroys the connections within societies (the USA
in this case). Because we have guns handy, the result is mass shootings and flashes of murder-suicides.
This didn't happen BEFORE neoliberalism got its hooks into American society. The guns were there,
always have been (when I was a teen I recall seeing gun mags advertising various "assault weapons"
for sale this was BEFORE Reagan and this was BEFORE mass shootings, etc). Machine guns were much
easier to come by BEFORE the 1980s yet we didn't have mass killings with machine guns, handguns,
or shotguns. ALL that stuff is a NEW disease. A disease rooted in neoliberalism. Neoliberalism
steals your job security, your healthcare security, your home, your retirement security, your
ability to provide for your family, your ability to send your kids to college, your ability to
BUY FOOD. Neoliberalism means you don't get to work for a company for 20 years and then see the
company pay you back for that long, good service with a pension. You'll be lucky to hold a job
at any company from month-to-month now and FORGET about benefits! Healthcare? Going by the wayside
too. Workers in the past felt a bond with each other, especially within a company. Neoliberalism
has turned all workers against each other because they have to fight to gain any of the scraps
being tossed out by the rich overlords. You can't work TOGETHER to gain mutual benefit, you need
to fight each other in a zero sum game. For ME to win you have to lose. You are a commodity. A
disposable and irrelevant widget. THAT combines with guns (that have always been available!) and
you get desperate acting out: mass shootings, murder suicides, etc.
There are actual fascist parties in Europe. To name a few in one country I've followed, Ukraine,
there's Right Sector, Svoboda, and others, and that's just one country. I don't think anyone calls
UKIP fascist.
@Praedor – Your comment that Yves posted and this one are excellent. One of the most succinct
statements of neoliberalism and its worst effects that I have seen.
As to the cause of recent mass gun violence, I think you have truly nailed it. If one thinks
at all about the ways in which the middle class and lower have been squeezed and abused, it's
no wonder that a few of them would turn to violence. It's the same despair and frustration that
leads to higher suicide rates, higher rates of opiate addiction and even decreased life expectancy.
"Machine guns were much easier to come by BEFORE the 1980s yet we didn't have mass killings
with machine guns, handguns, or shotguns. ALL that stuff is a NEW disease. A disease rooted in
neoliberalism."
Easy availability of guns was seen as a serious problem long before the advent of neoliberalism.
For one example of articles about this, see U.S. Government Tried to Tackle Gun Violence in
1960s . Other examples include 1920s and 1930s gangster and mob violence that were a consequence
of Prohibition (of alcohol). While gun violence per-capita might be increasing, the population
is far larger today, and the news media select incidents of violence to make them seem like they're
happening everywhere and that everyone needs to be afraid. That, of course, instills a sense of
insecurity and fear into the public mind; thus, a fearful public want a strong leader and are
willing to accept the inconvenience and dangers of a police state for protection.
America has plenty of refugees, from Latin America
Neo-liberal goes back to the Monroe Doctrine. We used to tame our native workers with immigrants,
and we still do, but we also tame them by globalism in trade. So many rationalizations for this,
based on political and economic propaganda. All problems caused by the same cause American predatory
behavior. And our great political choice iron fist with our without velvet glove.
Germany, Belgium, France, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Turkey, Israel, Australia come to mind
(if one is allowed to participate in a European song contest, one is supposed to be part of Europe
:) They all have more or less fascist governments.
Once you realize that the ECB creates something like 60 billion euros a month, and gives nothing
to its citizens nor its nation-states, that means the money goes to corporations, which means
that the ECB, and by extension the whole EU, is a fascist construct (fascism being defined as
a government running on behalf of the corporations).
That's a fallacy. Corporatism is a feature of fascism, not the other way around.
None of the governments you mention, with the possible exception of Israel and Turkey, can
be called fascist in any meaningful sense.
Even the anti-immigration parties in the Western European countries you mention – AfD, Front
National, Vlaams Belang – only share their nationalism with fascist movements. And they are decidedly
anti-corporatist.
The problem here is one of semantics, really. You're using "fascist" interchangeably with "authoritarian",
which is a misnomer for these groups. The EU is absolutely anti-democratic, authoritarian, and
technocratic in a lot of respects, but it's not fascist. Both have corporatist tendencies, but
fascist corporatism was much more radical, much more anti-capitalist (in the sense that the capitalist
class was expected to subordinate itself to the State as the embodiment of the will of the Nation
or People, as were the other classes/corporate units). EU technocratic corporatism has none of
the militarism, the active fiscal policy, the drive for government supported social cohesion,
the ethno-nationalism, or millenarianism of Fascism.
The emergent Right parties like UKIP, FNP, etc. share far more with the Fascists, thought I'd
say they generally aren't yet what Fascists would have recognized as other Fascists in the way
that the NSDAP and Italian Fascists recognized each other -perhaps they're more like fellow travelers.
True, I posted a few minutes ago saying roughly the same thing – but it seems to have gone
to moderation.
Another key feature of fascism is territorial expansionism. As far as I am aware, none
of the nationalist parties advocate invading other countries or retaking former colonies. Once
again, contemporary neoliberalism is far closer to fascism. But you are correct about both Israel
and Turkey – our allies. They are much closer to the genuine article. But you won't hear those
complaining about the rise of fascism in Europe complaining too much about them.
When I was young, there were 4 divisions:
* who owned the means of production (public or private entities)
* who decided what those means were used for.
If it is a 'public entity' (aka government or regime) that decides what is built, we have a totalitarian
state, which can be 'communist' (if the means also belong the public entities like the government
or regional fractions of it) or 'fascist' (if the factories are still in private hands).
If it is the private owner of the production capacity who decides what is built, you get capitalism.
I don't recall any examples of private entities deciding what to do with public means of production
(mafia perhaps).
Sheldon Wolin
introduced
us to inverted totalitarism. While it is no longer the government that decides what must be
done, the private 'owners' just buy the government, the judiciary, the press, or whatever is needed
to achieve their means.
When I cite Germany, it is not so much AfD, but the 2€/hour jobs I am worried about. When I cite
Belgium, it is not the fools of Vlaams Belang, but rather the un-taxing of corporations and the
tear-down of social justice that worries me.
But Jeff, is Wolin accurate in using the term "inverted totalitarianism" to try to capture
the nature of our modern extractive bureaucratic monolith that apparently functions in an environment
where "it is no longer the government that decides what must be done..simply.."private owners
just buy the government, the judiciary, the press, or whatever is needed to achieve their means."
Mirowski argues quite persuasively that the neoliberal ascendency does not represent the retreat
of the State but its remaking to strongly support a particular conception of a market society
that is imposed with the help of the State on our society.
For Mirowski, neoliberalism is definitely not politically libertarian or opposed to strong
state intervention in the economy and society.
Inverted totalitarianism is the mirror image of fascism, which is why so many are confused.
Fascism is just a easier term to use and more understandable by all. There is not a strict adherence
to fascism going on, but it's still totalitarian just the same.
Hi
I live in Europe as well, and what to think of Germany's AfD, Greece's Golden Dawn, the Wilder's
party in the Netherlands etc. Most of them subscribe to the freeloading, sorry free trading economic
policies of neoliberalism.
There's LePen in France and the far-right, fascist leaning party nearly won in Austria. The
far right in Greece as well. There's clearly a move to the far right in Europe. And then there's
the totalitarian mess that is Turkey. How much further this turn to a fascist leaning right goes
and how widespread remains to be seen, but it's clearly underway.
Searched 'current fascist movements europe' and got these active groups from wiki.
National Bolshevik Party-Belarus
Parti Communautaire National-Européen Belgium
Bulgarian National Alliance Bulgaria
Nova Hrvatska Desnica Croatia
Ustaše Croatia
National Socialist Movement of Denmark
La Cagoule France
National Democratic Party of Germany
Fascism and Freedom Movement – Italy
Fiamma Tricolore Italy
Forza Nuova Italy
Fronte Sociale Nazionale Italy
Movimento Fascismo e Libertà Italy
Pērkonkrusts Latvia
Norges Nasjonalsosialistiske Bevegelse Norway
National Radical Camp (ONR) Poland
National Revival of Poland (NOP)
Polish National Community-Polish National Party (PWN-PSN)
Noua Dreaptă Romania
Russian National Socialist Party(formerly Russian National Union)
Barkashov's Guards Russia
National Socialist Society Russia
Nacionalni stroj Serbia
Otačastveni pokret Obraz Serbia
Slovenska Pospolitost Slovakia
España 2000 Spain
Falange Española Spain
Nordic Realm Party Sweden
National Alliance Sweden
Swedish Resistance Movement Sweden
National Youth Sweden
Legion Wasa Sweden
SPAS Ukraine
Blood and Honour UK
British National Front UK
Combat 18 UK
League of St. George UK
National Socialist Movement UK
Nationalist Alliance UK
November 9th Society UK
Racial Volunteer Force UK
"Fascism" has become the prefered term of abuse applied indiscriminately by the right thinking
to any person or movement which they want to tar as inherently objectionable, and which can therefore
be dismissed without the tedium of actually engaging with them at the level of ideas.
Most of the people who like to throw this word around couldn't give you a coherant definition
of what exactly they understand it to signify, beyond "yuck!!"
In fairness even students of political ideology have trouble teasing out a cosistent system
of beliefs, to the point where some doubt fascism is even a coherent ideology. That hardly excuses
the intellectual vacuity of those who use it as a term of abuse, however.
Precisely 3,248 angels can fit on the head of a pin. Parsing the true definition of "fascism"
is a waste of time, broadly, fascism is an alliance of the state, the corporation, and the military,
anyone who doesn't see that today needs to go back to their textbooks.
As far as the definition "neo-liberalism" goes, yes it's a useful label. But let's keep it
simple: every society chooses how resources are allocated between Capital and Labor. The needle
has been pegged over on the Capital side for quite some time, my "start date" is when Reagan busted
the air traffic union. The hideous Republicans managed to sell their base that policies that were
designed to let companies be "competitive" were somehow good for them, not just for the owners
of the means of production.
The only way they have avoided complete revolt has been endless borrowing to fund entitlements,
once that one-time fix plays out the consequences will be apparent. The funding mechanism itself
(The Fed) has even morphed into a neo-liberal tool designed to enrich Capital while enslaving
Labor with the consequences.
"Every society chooses how resources are allocated between capital and labor." More specifically,
isn't it a struggle between various political/economic/cultural movements within a society which
chooses how resources are allocated between capital and labor.
Take, for example, the late 1880s-1890s in the U.S. During that time-frame there were powerful
agrarian populists movements and the beginnings of some labor/socialist movements from below,
while from above the property-production system was modified by a powerful political movement
advocating for more corporate administered markets over the competitive small-firm capitalism
of an earlier age.
It was this movement for corporate administered markets which won the battle and defeated/absorbed
the agrarian populists.
What are the array of such forces in 2016? What type of movement doe Trump represent? Sanders?
Clinton?
fascism is an alliance of the state, the corporation, and the military, anyone who doesn't
see that today needs to go back to their textbooks
Which textbooks specifically?
The article I cited above in Vox canvasses the opinion of five serious students of fascism,
and none of them believe Trump is a fascist. I'd be most interested in knowing what you
have been reading.
As for your definition of "fascism", it's obviously so vague and broad that it really doesn't
explain anything. To the extent it contains any insight it is that public institutions (the state),
private businesses (the corporation) and the armed forces all exert significant influence on public
policy. That and a buck and and a half will get you a cup of coffee. If anything it is merely
a very crude descriptive model of the political process. It doesn't define fascism as a particular
set of beliefs that make it a distinct political ideology that can be differentiated from other
ideologies (again, see the Vox article for a discussion of some of the beliefs that are arguably
characteristic of fascist movements). Indeed by your standard virtually every state that has ever
existed has to a greater or lesser extent been "fascist".
My objection to imprecise language here isn't merely pedantic. The leftist dismissal of
right wing populists like Trump (or increasingly influential European movements like Ukip, AfD,
and the Front national) as "fascist" is a reductionist rhetorical device intended to marginalize
them by implying their politics are so far outside of the mainstream that they do not need to
be taken seriously. Given that these movements are only growing in strength as faith in traditional
political movements and elites evaporate this is likely to produce exactly the opposite result.
Right wing populism isn't going to disappear just because the left keeps trying to wish it away.
Refusing to accept this basic political fact risks condemning the left rather than "the fascists"
to political irrelevance.
I moved to a small city/town in Iowa almost 20 years ago. Then, it still had something of a
Norman Rockwell quality to it, particularly in a sense of egalitarianism, and also some small
factory jobs which still paid something beyond a bare existence.
Since 2000, many of those jobs have left, and the population of the county has declined by
about 10%. Kmart, Penney's, and Sears have left as payday/title loan outfits, pawnshops, smoke
shops, and used car dealers have all proliferated.
Parts of the town now resemble a combination of Appalachia and Detroit. Sanders easily won
the caucuses here and, no, his supporters were hardly the latte sippers of someone's imagination,
but blue collar folks of all ages.
My tale is similar to yours. About 2 years ago, I accepted a transfer from Chicagoland to north
central Wisconsin. JC Penney left a year and a half ago, and Sears is leaving in about 3-4 months.
Kmart is long gone.
I was back at the old homestead over Memorial Day, and it's as if time has stood still. Home
prices still going up; people out for dinner like crazy; new & expensive automobiles everywhere.
But driving out of Chicagoland, and back through rural Wisconsin it is unmistakeable.
2 things that are new: The roads here are deteriorating FAST. In Price County, the road
commissioner said last night that their budget allows for resurfacing all the roads on a 200 year
basis. (Yes, that means there is only enough money to resurface all the county roads if spread
out over 200 years.) 2nd, there are dead deer everywhere on the side of the road. In years past,
they were promptly cleaned up by the highway department. Not any more. Gross, but somebody has
to do the dead animal clean up. (Or not. Don't tell Snotty Walker though.)
Anyway, not everything is gloom and doom. People seem outwardly happy. But if you're paying
attention, signs of stress and deterioration are certainly out there.
This Trump support seems like a form of political vandalism with Trump as the spray paint.
People generally feel frustrated with government, utterly powerless and totally left out as the
ranks of the precariat continue to grow. Trump appeals to the nihilistic tendencies of some people
who, like frustrated teens, have decided to just smashed things up for the hell of it. They think
a presidency mix of Caligula with Earl Scheib would be a funny hoot.
You also have the more gullible fundis who have actually deluded themselves into thinking the
man who is ultimate symbol of hedonism will deliver them from secularism because he says he will.
Authoritarians who seek solutions through strong leaders are usually the easiest to con because
they desperately want to believe in their eminent deliverance by a human deus ex machina. Plus
he is ostentatiously rich in a comfortably tacky way and a TV celebrity beats a Harvard law degree.
And why not the thinking goes the highly vaunted elite college Acela crowd has pretty much made
a pig's breakfast out of things. So much for meritocracy. Professor Harold Hill is going to give
River City a boys band.
Someone at American Conservative, when trying to get at why it's pointless to tell people
Trump will wreck the place, described him as a "hand grenade" lobbed into the heart of government.
You can't scare people with his crass-ness and destructive tendencies, because that's precisely
what his voters are counting on when/if he gets into government.
In other words, the MSM's fear is the clearest sign to these voters that their
political revolution is working. Since TPTB decided peaceful change (i.e. Sanders) was a non-starter,
then they get to reap the whirlwind.
Your phrase "Trump is political vandalism" is great. I don't think I've seen a better description.
NPR this morning was discussing Trump and his relationship with the press and the issues some
GOP leaders have with him. When his followers were discussed, the speakers closely circled your
vandalism point. Basically they said that his voters are angry with the power brokers and leaders
in DC and regardless of whether they think Trump's statements are heartfelt or just rhetoric,
they DO know he will stick it to those power brokers so that's good. Vandalism by a longer phrase.
Meritocracy was ALWAYS a delusional fraud. What you invariably get, after a couple of generations,
is a clique of elitists who define merit as themselves and reproduce it ad nauseam. Who still
believes in such laughable kiddie stories?
Besides, consumers need to learn to play the long game and suck up the "scurrilous attacks"
on their personal consumption habits for the next four years. The end of abortion for four years
is not important - lern2hand and lern2agency, and lern2cutyourrapist if it comes to that. What
is important is that the Democratic Party's bourgeois yuppie constituents are forced to defend
against GOP attacks on their personal and cultural interests with wherewithal that would have
been ordinarily spent to attend to their sister act with their captive constituencies.
If bourgeois Democrats hadn't herded us into a situation where individuals mean nothing outside
of their assigned identity groups and their corporate coalition duopoly, they wouldn't be reaping
the whirlwind today. Why, exactly, should I be sympathetic to exploitative parasites such as the
middle class?
There are all good ideas. However, population growth undermines almost all of them. Population
growth in America is immigrant based. Reverse immigration influxes and you are at least doing
something to reduce population growth.
How to "reverse immigration influxes"?
Stop accepting refugees. It's outrageous that refugees from for example, Somalia,
get small business loans, housing assistance, food stamps and lifetime SSI benefits while some
of our veterans are living on the street.
No more immigration amnesties of any kind.
Deport all illegal alien criminals.
Practice "immigrant family unification" in the country of origin. Even if you have
to pay them to leave. It's less expensive in the end.
Eliminate tax subsidies to American corn growers who then undercut Mexican farmers'
incomes through NAFTA, driving them into poverty and immigration north. Throw Hillary Clinton
out on her ass and practice political and economic justice to Central America.
I too am a lifetime registered Democrat and I will vote for Trump if Clinton gets the crown.
If the Democrats want my vote, my continuing party registration and my until recently sizeable
donations in local, state and national races, they will nominate Bernie. If not, then I'm an Independent
forevermore. They will just become the Demowhig Party.
Campaign Finance Reform: If you can't walk into a voting booth you cannot contribute,
or make all elections financed solely by government funds and make private contributions of
any kind to any politician illegal.
Re-institute Glass-Steagall but even more so. Limit the number of states a bank can
operate in. Make the Fed publicly owned, not privately owned by banks.
Completely revise corporate law, doing away with the legal person hood of corporations
and limit of liability for corporate officers and shareholders.
Single payer health care for everyone. Allow private health plans but do away with
health insurance as a deductible for business. Remove the AMA's hold on licensing of medical
schools which restricts the number of doctors.
Do away with the cap on Social Security wages and make all income, wages, capital gains,
interest, and dividends subject to taxation.
Impose tariffs to compensate for lower labor costs overseas and revise industry.
Cut the Defense budget by 50% and use that money for intensive infrastructure development.
Raise the national minimum wage to $15 and hour.
Severely curtail the revolving door from government to private industry with a 10 year
restriction on working for an industry you dealt with in any way as a government official.
Free public education including college (4 year degree).
Obama and Holder, allowing the banks to be above the law have them demi-gods, many of whom
are psychopaths and kleptocrats, and with their newly granted status, they are now re-shaping
the world in their own image. Prosecute these demi-gods and restore sanity. Don't and their greed
for our things will never end until nothings left.
This is why Hillary is so much more dangerous than trump, because she and the demi gods
are all on the same page. The TPP is their holy grail so I expect heaven and earth to be moved,
especially if it looks like some trade traitors are going to get knocked off in the election,
scoundrels like patty murray (dino, WA) will push to get it through then line up at the feed trough
to gorge on k street dough. I plan to vote stein if it's not Bernie, but am reserving commitment
until I see what kind of betrayals the dems have for me, if it's bad enough I'll go with the trump
hand grenade.
Totally agree tegnost, no more democratic neoliberals -- Patty Murray (up for re-election)
and Cantwell are both trade traitors and got fast track passed.
Two things are driving our troubles: over-population and globalization. The plutocrats
and kleptocrats have all the leverage over the rest of us laborers when the population of human
beings has increased seven-fold in the last 70 years, from a little over a billion to seven billions
(and growing) today. They are happy to let us freeze to death behind gas stations in order for
them to compete with other oligarchs in excess consumption.
This deserves a longer and more thoughtful comment, but I don't have the time this morning.
I have to fight commute traffic, because the population of my home state of California has doubled
from 19M in 1970 to an estimated 43M today (if you count the Latin American refugees and H1B's).
Thank you for mentioning the third rail of overpopulation. Too often, this giant category
of problems is ignored, because it makes people uncomfortable. The planet is finite, resources
on the planet are finite, yet the number of people keeps growing. We need to strive for a higher
quality of life, not a higher quantity of people.
The issue goes beyond "current neoliberals up for election", it is most of our political
establishment that has been corrupted by a system that provides for the best politicians money
can buy.
In the 1980's I worked inside the beltway witnessing the new cadre of apparatchiks that drove
into town on the Reagan coattails full of moral a righteousness that became deviant, parochial,
absolutist and for whom bi-partisan approaches to policy were scorned prodded on by new power
brokers promoting their gospels in early morning downtown power breakfasts. Sadly our politicians
no longer serve but seek a career path in our growing meritocratic plutocracy.
America has always been a country where a majority of the population has been poor. With
the exception of a fifty five year(1950-2005) year period where access to large quantities of
consumer debt by households was deployed to first to provide a wealth illusion to keep socialism
at bay, followed by a mortgage debt boom to both keep the system afloat and strip the accumulated
capital of the working class, i.e. home equity, the history of the US has been one of poverty
for the masses.
Further debt was foisted on the working class in the form of military Keynesianism, generating
massive fiscal deficits which are to be paid for via austerity in a neo-feudal economy.
"... Money, it seems to him, has somehow changed its role. It has "increased" (is that possible, he asks?) while at the same time it has become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. It appears to seek to become an autonomous and dominating sector of economic life, functionally separated from production of real things, almost all of which seem to come from faraway places. "Real" actually begins to change its meaning, another topic more interesting still. This devotion to the world of money-making-money seems to have obsessed the lives of many of the most "important" Americans. Entire TV networks are devoted to it. They talk about esoteric financial instruments that to the ordinary citizen look more like exotically placed bets-on-credit in the casino than genuine ways to grow real-world business, jobs, wages, and family income. The few who are in position to master the game live material lives that were beyond what almost any formerly "wealthy" man or woman in Rip's prior life could even imagine ..."
"... children gone away and lost to either the relentless rootlessness of the trans-national economy or the virtual hell-world of meth and opioids and heroin and unending underemployed hopelessness. ..."
"... "If public life can suffer a metaphysical blow, the death of the labor question was that blow. For millions of working people, it amputated the will to resist." ..."
"... It's a Wonderful Life ..."
"... as educators ..."
"... OK, so I hear some of you saying, corporate America will never let this Civic Media get off the ground. My short answer to this is that corporations do what makes money for them, and in today's despairing political climate there's money to be made in sponsoring something truly positive, patriotic and constructive. ..."
"... I am paying an exorbitant subscription for the UK Financial Times at the moment. Anyway, the good news is that very regular articles are appearing where you can almost feel the panic at the populist uprisings. ..."
"... The kernel of Neoliberal Ideology: "There is no such a thing as society." (Margaret Thatcher). ..."
"... "In this postindustrial world not only is the labor question no longer asked, not only is proletarian revolution passé, but the proletariat itself seems passé. And the invisibles who nonetheless do indeed live there have internalized their nonexistence, grown demoralized, resentful, and hopeless; if they are noticed at all, it is as objects of public disdain. What were once called "blue-collar aristocrats"-skilled workers in the construction trades, for example-have long felt the contempt of the whole white-collar world. ..."
"... Or, we could replace Western liberal culture, with its tradition to consume and expand by force an unbroken chain from the Garden of Eden to Friedrich von Hayek, with the notion of maintenance and "enough". Bourgeois make-work holds no interest to me. ..."
"... My understanding of the data is that living standards increased around the world during the so-called golden age, not just in the U.S. (and Western Europe and Japan and Australia ). It could be that it was still imperialism at work, but the link between imperialism and the creation of the middle class is not straightforward. ..."
"... I thought neoliberalism was just the pogrom to make everyone – rational agents – as subscribed by our genetic / heraldic betters .. putting this orbs humans and resources in the correct "natural" order . ..."
"... Disheveled Marsupial for those thinking neoliberalism is not associated with libertarianism one only has to observe the decades of think tanks and their mouth organs roaming the planet . especially in the late 80s and 90s . bringing the might and wonders of the – market – to the great unwashed globally here libertarian priests rang in the good news to the great unwashed ..."
"... I would argue that neoliberalism is a program to define markets as primarily engaged in information processing and to make everyone into non-agents ( as not important at all to the proper functioning of markets). ..."
"... It also appears that neoliberals want to restrict democracy to the greatest extent possible and to view markets as the only foundation for truth without any need for input from the average individual. ..."
I am almost 70 years old, born and raised in New York City, still living in a near suburb.
Somehow, somewhere along the road to my 70th year I feel as if I have been gradually transported
to an almost entirely different country than the land of my younger years. I live painfully now
in an alien land, a place whose habits and sensibilities I sometimes hardly recognize, while unable
to escape from memories of a place that no longer exists. There are days I feel as I imagine a
Russian pensioner must feel, lost in an unrecognizable alien land of unimagined wealth, power,
privilege, and hyper-glitz in the middle of a country slipping further and further into hopelessness,
alienation, and despair.
I am not particularly nostalgic. Nor am I confusing recollection with sentimental yearnings
for a youth that is no more. But if I were a contemporary Rip Van Winkle, having just awakened
after, say, 30-40 years, I would not recognize my beloved New York City. It would be not just
the disappearance of the old buildings, Penn Station, of course, Madison Square Garden and its
incandescent bulb marquee on 50th and 8th announcing NYU vs. St. John's, and the WTC, although
I always thought of the latter as "new" until it went down. Nor would it be the disappearance
of all the factories, foundries, and manufacturing plants, the iconic Domino Sugar on the East
River, the Wonder Bread factory with its huge neon sign, the Swingline Staples building in Long
Island City that marked passage to and from the East River tunnel on the railroad, and my beloved
Schaeffer Beer plant in Williamsburg, that along with Rheingold, Knickerbocker, and a score of
others, made beer from New York taste a little bit different.
It wouldn't be the ubiquitous new buildings either, the Third Avenue ghostly glass erected
in the 70's and 80's replacing what once was the most concentrated collection of Irish gin mills
anywhere. Or the fortress-like castles built more recently, with elaborate high-ceilinged lobbies
decorated like a kind of gross, filthy-wealthy Versailles, an aesthetically repulsive style that
shrieks "power" in a way the neo-classical edifices of our Roman-loving founders never did. Nor
would it even be the 100-story residential sticks, those narrow ground-to-clouds skyscraper condominiums
proclaiming the triumph of globalized capitalism with prices as high as their penthouses, driven
ever upward by the foreign billionaires and their obsession with burying their wealth in Manhattan
real estate.
It is not just the presence of new buildings and the absence of the old ones that have this
contemporary Van Winkle feeling dyslexic and light-headed. The old neighborhoods have disintegrated
along with the factories, replaced by income segregated swatches of homogenous "real estate" that
have consumed space, air, and sunlight while sucking the distinctiveness out of the City. What
once was the multi-generational home turf for Jewish, Afro-American, Puerto Rican, Italian, Polak
and Bohunk families is now treated as simply another kind of investment, stocks and bonds in steel
and concrete. Mom's Sunday dinners, clothes lines hanging with newly bleached sheets after Monday
morning wash, stickball games played among parked cars, and evenings of sitting on the stoop with
friends and a transistor radio listening to Mel Allen call Mantle's home runs or Alan Freed and
Murray the K on WINS 1010 playing Elvis, Buddy Holly, and The Drifters, all gone like last night's
dreams.
Do you desire to see the new New York? Look no further than gentrifying Harlem for an almost
perfect microcosm of the city's metamorphosis, full of multi-million condos, luxury apartment
renovations, and Maclaren strollers pushed by white yuppie wife stay-at-homes in Marcus Garvey
Park. Or consider the "new" Lower East Side, once the refuge of those with little material means,
artists, musicians, bums, drug addicts, losers and the physically and spiritually broken - my
kind of people. Now its tenements are "retrofitted" and remodeled into $4000 a month apartments
and the new residents are Sunday brunching where we used to score some Mary Jane.
There is the "Brooklyn brand", synonymous with "hip", and old Brooklyn neighborhoods like Red
Hook and South Brooklyn (now absorbed into so desirable Park Slope), and Bushwick, another former
outpost of the poor and the last place I ever imagined would be gentrified, full of artists and
hipsters driving up the price of everything. Even large sections of my own Queens and the Bronx
are affected (infected?). Check out Astoria, for example, neighborhood of my father's family,
with more of the old ways than most but with rents beginning to skyrocket and starting to drive
out the remaining working class to who knows where.
Gone is almost every mom and pop store, candy stores with their egg creams and bubble gum cards
and the Woolworth's and McCrory's with their wooden floors and aisles containing ordinary blue
collar urgencies like thread and yarn, ironing boards and liquid bleach, stainless steel utensils
of every size and shape. Where are the locally owned toy and hobby stores like Jason's in Woodhaven
under the el, with Santa's surprises available for lay-away beginning in October? No more luncheonettes,
cheap eats like Nedicks with hot dogs and paper cones of orange drink, real Kosher delis with
vats of warm pastrami and corned beef cut by hand, and the sacred neighborhood "bar and grill",
that alas has been replaced by what the kids who don't know better call "dive bars", the detestable
simulacra of the real thing, slick rooms of long slick polished mahogany, a half-dozen wide screen
TV's blaring mindless sports contests from all over the world, over-priced micro-brews, and not
a single old rummy in sight?
Old Rip searches for these and many more remembered haunts, what Ray Oldenburg called the "great
good places" of his sleepy past, only to find store windows full of branded, high-priced, got-to-have
luxury-necessities (necessary if he/she is to be certified cool, hip, and successful), ridiculously
overpriced "food emporia", high and higher-end restaurants, and apparel boutiques featuring hardened
smiles and obsequious service reserved for those recognized by celebrity or status.
Rip notices too that the visible demographic has shifted, and walking the streets of Manhattan
and large parts of Brooklyn, he feels like what walking in Boston Back Bay always felt like, a
journey among an undifferentiated mass of privilege, preppy or 'metro-sexed' 20 and 30-somethings
jogging or riding bicycles like lean, buff gods and goddesses on expense accounts supplemented
by investments enriched by yearly holiday bonuses worth more than Rip earned in a lifetime.
Sitting alone on a park bench by the river, Rip reflects that more than all of these individual
things, however, he despairs of a city that seems to have been reimagined as a disneyfied playground
of the privileged, offering endless ways to self-gratify and philistinize in a clean, safe (safest
big city in U.S., he heard someone say), slick, smiley, center-of-the-world urban paradise, protected
by the new centurions (is it just his paranoia or do battle-ready police seem to be everywhere?).
Old ethnic neighborhoods are filled with apartment buildings that seem more like post-college
"dorms", tiny studios and junior twos packed with three or four "singles" roommates pooling their
entry level resources in order to pay for the right to live in "The City". Meanwhile the newer
immigrants find what place they can in Kingsbridge, Corona, Jamaica, and Cambria Heights, far
from the city center, even there paying far too much to the landlord for what they receive.
New York has become an unrecognizable place to Rip, who can't understand why the accent-less
youngsters keep asking him to repeat something in order to hear his quaint "Brooklyn" accent,
something like the King's English still spoken on remote Smith Island in the Chesapeake, he guesses
.
Rip suspects that this "great transformation" (apologies to Polanyi) has coincided, and is somehow
causally related, to the transformation of New York from a real living city into, as the former
Mayor proclaimed, the "World Capital" of financialized commerce and all that goes with it.
"Financialization", he thinks, is not the expression of an old man's disapproval but a way
of naming a transformed economic and social world. Rip is not an economist. He reads voraciously
but, as an erstwhile philosopher trained to think about the meaning of things, he often can't
get his head around the mathematical model-making explanations of the economists that seem to
dominate the more erudite political and social analyses these days. He has learned, however, that
the phenomenon of "capitalism" has changed along with his city and his life.
Money, it seems to him, has somehow changed its role. It has "increased" (is that possible,
he asks?) while at the same time it has become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. It appears
to seek to become an autonomous and dominating sector of economic life, functionally separated
from production of real things, almost all of which seem to come from faraway places. "Real" actually
begins to change its meaning, another topic more interesting still. This devotion to the world
of money-making-money seems to have obsessed the lives of many of the most "important" Americans.
Entire TV networks are devoted to it. They talk about esoteric financial instruments that to the
ordinary citizen look more like exotically placed bets-on-credit in the casino than genuine ways
to grow real-world business, jobs, wages, and family income. The few who are in position to master
the game live material lives that were beyond what almost any formerly "wealthy" man or woman
in Rip's prior life could even imagine
.
Above all else is the astronomical rise in wealth and income inequality. Rip recalls that growing
up in the 1950's, the kids on his block included, along with firemen, cops, and insurance men
dads (these were virtually all one-parent income households), someone had a dad who worked as
a stock broker. Yea, living on the same block was a "Wall Streeter". Amazingly democratic, no?
Imagine, people of today, a finance guy drinking at the same corner bar with the sanitation guy.
Rip recalls that Aristotle had some wise and cautionary words in his Politics concerning the stability
of oligarchic regimes.
Last year I drove across America on blue highways mostly. I stayed in small towns and cities,
Zanesville, St. Charles, Wichita, Pratt, Dalhart, Clayton, El Paso, Abilene, Clarksdale, and many
more. I dined for the most part in local taverns, sitting at the bar so as to talk with the local
bartender and patrons who are almost always friendly and talkative in these spaces. Always and
everywhere I heard similar stories as my story of my home town. Not so much the specifics (there
are no "disneyfied" Lubbocks or Galaxes out there, although Oxford, MS comes close) but in the
sadness of men and women roughly my age as they recounted a place and time – a way of life – taken
out from under them, so that now their years are filled with decayed and dead downtowns, children
gone away and lost to either the relentless rootlessness of the trans-national economy or the
virtual hell-world of meth and opioids and heroin and unending underemployed hopelessness.
I am not a trained economist. My graduate degrees were in philosophy. My old friends call me
an "Eric Hoffer", who back in the day was known as the "longshoreman philosopher". I have been
trying for a long time now to understand the silent revolution that has been pulled off right
under my nose, the replacement of a world that certainly had its flaws (how could I forget the
civil rights struggle and the crime of Viet Nam; I was a part of these things) but was, let us
say, different. Among you or your informed readers, is there anyone who can suggest a book or
books or author(s) who can help me understand how all of this came about, with no public debate,
no argument, no protest, no nothing? I would be very much appreciative.
I'll just highlight this line for emphasis
"there are no "disneyfied" Lubbocks or Galaxes out there, although Oxford, MS comes close) but
in the sadness of men and women roughly my age as they recounted a place and time – a way of life
– taken out from under them, so that now their years are filled with decayed and dead downtowns,
children gone away and lost to either the relentless rootlessness of the trans-national economy
or the virtual hell-world of meth and opioids and heroin and unending underemployed hopelessness."
my best friend pretty much weeps every day.
I don't have a book to recommend. I do think you identify a really underemphasized central
fact of recent times: the joint processes by which real places have been converted into "real
estate" and real, messy lives replaced by safe, manufactured "experiences." This affects wealthy
and poor neighborhoods alike, in different ways but in neither case for the better.
I live in a very desirable neighborhood in one of those places that makes a lot of "Best of"
lists. I met a new neighbor last night who told me how he and his wife had plotted for years to
get out of the Chicago burbs, not only to our city but to this specific neighborhood, which they
had decided is "the one." (This sentiment is not atypical.) Unsurprisingly, property values in
the neighborhood have gone through the roof. Which, as far as I can tell, most everyone here sees
as an unmitigated good thing.
At the same time, several families I got to know because they moved into the neighborhood about
the same time we did 15-20 years ago, are cashing out and moving away, kids off to or out of college,
parents ready (and financed) to get on to the next phase and the next place. Of course, even though
our children are all Lake Woebegoners, there are no next generations staying in the neighborhood,
except of course the ones still living, or back, at "home." (Those families won't be going anywhere
for awhile!)
I can't argue that new money in the hood hasn't improved some things. Our formerly struggling
food co-op just finished a major expansion and upgrade. Good coffee is 5 minutes closer than it
used to be. But to my wife and me, the overwhelming feeling is that we are now outsiders here
in this neighborhood where we know all the houses and the old trees but not what motivates our
new neighbors. So I made up a word for it: unsettling (adj., verb, noun).
"If public life can suffer a metaphysical blow, the death of the labor question was that
blow. For millions of working people, it amputated the will to resist."
Christopher Lash in "Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy" mentions Ray Oldenburg's
"The Great Good Places: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores,
Bars, Hangouts and How they Got You through the Day."
He argued that the decline of democracy is directly related to the disappearance of what he
called third places:,
"As neighborhood hangouts give way to suburban shopping malls, or, on the other hand private
cocktail parties, the essentially political art of conversation is replaced by shoptalk or personal
gossip.
Increasingly, conversation literally has no place in American society. In its absence how–or
better, where–can political habits be acquired and polished?
Lasch finished he essay by noting that Oldenburg's book helps to identify what is missing from
our then newly emerging world (which you have concisely updated):
"urban amenities, conviviality, conversation, politics–almost everything in part that makes
life worth living."
The best explainer of our modern situation that I have read is Wendell Berry. I suggest that
you start with "The Unsettling of America," quoted below.
"Let me outline briefly as I can what seem to me the characteristics of these opposite kinds
of mind. I conceive a strip-miner to be a model exploiter, and as a model nurturer I take the
old-fashioned idea or ideal of a farmer. The exploiter is a specialist, an expert; the nurturer
is not. The standard of the exploiter is efficiency; the standard of the nurturer is care. The
exploiter's goal is money, profit; the nurturer's goal is health - his land's health, his own,
his family's, his community's, his country's. Whereas the exploiter asks of a piece of land only
how much and how quickly it can be made to produce, the nurturer asks a question that is much
more complex and difficult: What is its carrying capacity? (That is: How much can be taken from
it without diminishing it? What can it produce dependably for an indefinite time?) The exploiter
wishes to earn as much as possible by as little work as possible; the nurturer expects, certainly,
to have a decent living from his work, but his characteristic wish is to work as well as possible.
The competence of the exploiter is in organization; that of the nurturer is in order - a human
order, that is, that accommodates itself both to other order and to mystery. The exploiter typically
serves an institution or organization; the nurturer serves land, household, community, place.
The exploiter thinks in terms of numbers, quantities, "hard facts"; the nurturer in terms of character,
condition, quality, kind."
I also think Prof. Patrick Deneen works to explain the roots (and progression) of decline.
I'll quote him at length here describing the modern college student.
"[T]he one overarching lesson that students receive is the true end of education: the only
essential knowledge is that know ourselves to be radically autonomous selves within a comprehensive
global system with a common commitment to mutual indifference. Our commitment to mutual indifference
is what binds us together as a global people. Any remnant of a common culture would interfere
with this prime directive: a common culture would imply that we share something thicker, an inheritance
that we did not create, and a set of commitments that imply limits and particular devotions.
Ancient philosophy and practice praised as an excellent form of government a res publica –
a devotion to public things, things we share together. We have instead created the world's first
Res Idiotica – from the Greek word idiotes, meaning "private individual." Our education system
produces solipsistic, self-contained selves whose only public commitment is an absence of commitment
to a public, a common culture, a shared history. They are perfectly hollowed vessels, receptive
and obedient, without any real obligations or devotions.
They won't fight against anyone, because that's not seemly, but they won't fight for anyone
or anything either. They are living in a perpetual Truman Show, a world constructed yesterday
that is nothing more than a set for their solipsism, without any history or trajectory."
Wow. Did this hit a nerve. You have eloquently described what was the city of hope for several
generations of outsiders, for young gay men and women, and for real artists, not just from other
places in America, but from all over the world. In New York, once upon a time, bumping up against
the more than 50% of the population who were immigrants from other countries, you could learn
a thing or two about the world. You could, for a while, make a living there at a job that was
all about helping other people. You could find other folks, lots of them, who were honest, well-meaning,
curious about the world. Then something changed. As you said, you started to see it in those hideous
80's buildings. But New York always seemed somehow as close or closer to Europe than to the U.S.,
and thus out of the reach of mediocrity and dumbing down. New York would mold you into somebody
tough and smart, if you weren't already – if it didn't, you wouldn't make it there.
Now, it seems, this dream is dreamt. Poseurs are not artists, and the greedy and smug drive
out creativity, kindness, real humor, hope.
It ain't fair. I don't know where in this world an aspiring creative person should go now,
but it probably is not there.
Americans cannot begin to reasonably demand a living wage, benefits and job security when there
is an unending human ant-line of illegals and legal immigrants willing to under bid them.
Only when there is a parity or shortage of workers can wage demands succeed, along with other
factors.
From 1925 to 1965 this country accepted hardly any immigrants, legal or illegal. We had the
bracero program where Mexican males were brought in to pick crops and were then sent home to collect
paychecks in Mexico. American blacks were hired from the deep south to work defense plants in
the north and west.
Is it any coincidence that the 1965 Great Society program, initiated by Ted Kennedy to primarily
benefit the Irish immigrants, then co-opted by LBJ to include practically everyone, started this
process of Middle Class destruction?
1973 was the peak year of American Society as measured by energy use per capita, expansion
of jobs and unionization and other factors, such as an environment not yet destroyed, nicely measured
by the The Real Progress Indicator.
Solution? Stop importing uneducated people. That's real "immigration reform".
Now explain to me why voters shouldn't favor Trump's radical immigration stands?
Maybe, but OTOH, who is it, exactly, who is recruiting, importing, hiring and training undocumented
workers to downgrade pay scales??
Do some homework, please. If businesses didn't actively go to Central and South America to
recruit, pay to bring here, hire and employ undocumented workers, then the things you discuss
would be great.
When ICE comes a-knocking at some meat processing plant or mega-chicken farm, what happens?
The undocumented workers get shipped back to wherever, but the big business owner doesn't even
get a tap on the wrist. The undocumented worker – hired to work in unregulated unsafe unhealthy
conditions – often goes without their last paycheck.
It's the business owners who manage and support this system of undocumented workers because
it's CHEAP, and they don't get busted for it.
Come back when the USA actually enforces the laws that are on the books today and goes after
big and small business owners who knowingly recruit, import, hire, train and employee undocumented
workers you know, like Donald Trump has all across his career.
This is the mechanism by which the gov't has assisted biz in destroying the worker, competition
for thee, but none for me. For instance I can't go work in canada or mexico, they don't allow
it. Policy made it, policy can change it, go bernie. While I favor immigration, in it's current
form it is primarily conducted on these lines of destroying workers (H1b etc and illegals combined)
Lucky for the mexicans they can see the american dream is bs and can go home. I wonder who the
latinos that have gained citizenship will vote for. Unlikely it'll be trump, but they can be pretty
conservative, and the people they work for are pretty conservative so no guarantee there, hillary
is in san diego at the tony balboa park where her supporters will feel comfortable, not a huge
venue I think they must be hoping for a crowd, and if she can't get one in san diego while giving
a "if we don't rule the world someone else will" speech, she can't get one anywhere. Defense contractors
and military advisors and globalist biotech (who needs free money more than biotech? they are
desperate for hillary) are thick in san diego.
I live part-time in San Diego. It is very conservative. The military, who are constantly screwed
by the GOP, always vote Republican. They make up a big cohort of San Diego county.
Hillary may not get a big crowd at the speech, but that, in itself, doesn't mean that much
to me. There is a segment of San Diego that is somewhat more progressive-ish, but it's a pretty
conservative county with parts of eastern SD county having had active John Birch Society members
until recently or maybe even ongoing.
There's a big push in the Latino community to GOTV, and it's mostly not for Trump. It's possible
this cohort, esp the younger Latino/as, will vote for Sanders in the primary, but if Clinton gets
the nomination, they'll likely vote for her (v. Trump).
I was unlucky enough to be stuck for an hour in a commuter train last Friday after Trump's
rally there. Hate to sound rude, but Trump's fans were everything we've seen. Loud, rude, discourteous
and an incessant litany of rightwing talking points (same old, same old). All pretty ignorant.
Saying how Trump will "make us great again." I don't bother asking how. A lot of ugly comments
about Obama and how Obama has been "so racially divisive and polarizing." Well, No. No, Obama
has not been or done that, but the rightwing noise machine has sure ginned up your hatreds, angers
and fears. It was most unpleasant. The only instructive thing about it was confirming my worst
fears about this group. Sorry to say but pretty loutish and very uninformed. Sigh.
part timer in sd as well, family for hillary except for nephew and niece .I keep telling my
mom she should vote bernie for their sake but it never goes over very well
Re Methland, we live in rural US and we got a not-very-well hidden population of homeless children.
I don't mean homeless families with children, I mean homeless children. Sleeping in parks in good
weather, couch-surfing with friends, etc. I think related.
Fascism is a system of political and social order intended to reinforce the unity, energy and
purity of communities in which liberal democracy stand(s) accused of producing division and decline.
. . . George Orwell reminded us, clad in the mainstream patriotic dress of their own place and
time, . . . an authentically popular fascism in the United States would be pious and anti-Black;
in Western Europe, secular and antisemitic, or more probably, these days anti-Islamic; in Russia
and Eastern Europe, religious, antisemitic, and slavophile.
Robert O. Paxton
In The Five Stages of Faschism
" that eternal enemy: the conservative manipulators of privilege who damn as 'dangerous agitators'
any man who menaces their fortunes" (maybe 'power and celebrity' should be added to fortunes)
Sinclair Lewis
It Can't Happen Here page 141
On the Boots To Ribs Front: Anyone hereabouts notice that Captain America has just been revealed
to be a Nazi? Maybe this is what R. Cohen was alluding to but I doubt it.
The four horse men are, political , social, economic and environmental collapse . Any one remember
the original Mad Max movie. A book I recommend is the Crash Of 2016 By Thom Hartmann.
From the comment, I agree with the problems, not the cause. We've increased the size and scope
of the safety net over the last decade. We've increased government spending versus GDP. I'm not
blaming government but its not neoliberal/capitalist policy either.
1. Globalization clearly helps the poor in other countries at the expense of workers in the
U.S. But at the same time it brings down the cost of goods domestically. So jobs are not great
but Walmart/Amazon can sell cheap needs.
2. Inequality started rising the day after Bretton Woods – the rich got richer everyday after
"Nixon Shock"
Hi rfam : To point 1 : Why is there a need to bring down the cost of goods? Is it because of
past outsourcing and trade agreements and FR policies? I think there's a chicken and egg thing
going on, ie.. which came first. Globalization is a way to bring down wages while supplying Americans
with less and less quality goods supplied at the hand of global corporations like Walmart that
need welfare in the form of food stamps and the ACA for their workers for them to stay viable
(?). Viable in this case means ridiculously wealthy CEO's and the conglomerate growing bigger
constantly. Now they have to get rid of COOL's because the WTO says it violates trade agreements
so we can't trace where our food comes from in case of an epidemic. It's all downhill. Wages should
have risen with costs so we could afford high quality American goods, but haven't for a long,
long time.
Globalization helps the rich here way more than the poor there. The elites get more money for
nothing (see QE before you respond, if you do, that's where the money for globalization came from)
the workers get the husk. Also the elite gets to say "you made your choices" and other moralistic
crap. The funny(?) thing is they generally claim to be atheists, which I translate into "I am
God, there doesn't need to be any other" Amazon sells cheap stuff by cheating on taxes, and barely
makes money, mostly just driving people out of business. WalMart has cheap stuff because they
subsidise their workers with food stamps and medicaid. Bringing up bretton woods means you don't
know much about money creation, so google "randy wray/bananas/naked capitalism" and you'll find
a quick primer.
The Walmart loathsome spawn and Jeff Bezos are the biggest welfare drains in our nation – or
among the biggest. They woefully underpay their workers, all while training them on how to apply
for various welfare benefits. Just so that their slaves, uh, workers can manage to eat enough
to enable them to work.
It slays me when US citizens – and it happens across the voting spectrum these days; I hear
just as often from Democratic voters as I do from GOP voters – bitch, vetch, whine & cry about
welfare abuse. And if I start to point out the insane ABUSE of welfare by the Waltons and Jeff
Bezos, I'm immediately greeted with random TRUE stories about someone who knew someone who somehow
made out like a bandit on welfare.
Hey, I'm totally sure and in agreement that there are likely a small percentage of real welfare
cheats who manage to do well enough somehow. But seriously? That's like a drop in the bucket.
Get the eff over it!!!
Those cheats are not worth discussing. It's the big fraud cheats like Bezos & the Waltons and
their ilk, who don't need to underpay their workers, but they DO because the CAN and they get
away with it because those of us the rapidly dwindling middle/working classes are footing the
bill for it.
Citizens who INSIST on focusing on a teeny tiny minority of real welfare cheats, whilst studiously
ignoring the Waltons and the Bezos' of the corporate world, are enabling this behavior. It's one
of my bugabears bc it's so damn frustrating when citizens refuse to see how they are really being
ripped off by the 1%. Get a clue.
That doesn't even touch on all the other tax breaks, tax loopholes, tax incentives and just
general all-around tax cheating and off-shore money hiding that the Waltons and Bezos get/do.
Sheesh.
"I'm immediately greeted with random TRUE stories about someone who knew someone who somehow
made out like a bandit on welfare."
is the key and a v. long term result of the application of Bernays' to political life. Its
local and hits at the gut interpersonal level 'cos the "someones" form a kind of chain of trust
esp. if the the first one on the list is a friend or a credentialed media pundit. Utterly spurious
I know but countering this with a *merely* rational analysis of how Walmart, Amazon abuse the
welfare system to gouge profits from the rest of us just won't ever, for the large majority, get
through this kind emotional wall.
I don't know what any kind of solution might look like but, somehow, we need to find a way
of seriously demonising the corporate parasites that resonates at the same emotional level as
the "welfare cheat" meme that Bill Clinton and the rest of the DLC sanctified back in the '90s.
Something like "Walmart's stealing your taxes" might work but how to get it out there in a
viral way ??
What a comment from seanseamour. And the "hoisting" of it to high visibility at the site is
a testament to the worth of Naked Capitalism.
seanseamour asks "What does that have to do with education?" and answers "Everything if one
considers the elitist trend " This question & answer all but brings tears to my eyes. It is so
utterly on point. My own experience of it, if I may say so, comes from inside the belly of the
beast. As a child and a product of America's elite universities (I have degrees from Harvard and
Yale, and my dad, Richard B. Sewall, was a beloved English prof at Yale for 42 years), I could
spend all morning detailing the shameful roles played by America's torchbearing universities –
Harvard, Yale, Stanford etc – in utterly abandoning their historic responsibility as educators
to maintaining the health of the nation's public school system.*
And as I suspect seanseymour would agree, when a nation loses public education, it loses everything.
But I don't want to spend all morning doing that because I'm convinced that it's not too late
for America to rescue itself from maelstrom in which it finds itself today. (Poe's "Maelstrom"
story, cherished by Marshall McLuhan, is supremely relevant today.)
To turn America around, I don't look to education – that system is too far gone to save itself,
let alone the rest of the country – but rather to the nation's media: to the all-powerful public
communication system that certainly has the interactive technical capabilities to put citizens
and governments in touch with each other on the government decisions that shape the futures of
communities large and small.
For this to happen, however, people like the us – readers of Naked Capitalism – need to stop
moaning and groaning about the damage done by the neoliberals and start building an issue-centered,
citizen-participatory, non-partisan, prime-time Civic Media strong enough to give all Americans
an informed voice in the government decisions that affect their lives. This Civic media would
exist to make citizens and governments responsive and accountable to each other in shaping futures
of all three communities – local, state and national – of which every one of us is a member.
Pie in the sky? Not when you think hard about it. A huge majority of Americans would welcome
this Civic Media. Many yearn for it. This means that a market exists for it: a Market of the Whole
of all members of any community, local, state and national. This audience is large enough to rival
those generated by media coverage of pro sports teams, and believe it or not much of the growth
of this Civic media could be productively modeled on the growth of media coverage of pro sports
teams. This Civic Media would attract the interest of major advertisers, especially those who
see value in non-partisan programming dedicated to getting America moving forward again. Dynamic,
issue-centered, problem-solving public forums, some modeled on voter-driven reality TV contests
like The Voice or Dancing with the Stars, could be underwritten by a "rainbow" spectrum of funders,
commericial, public, personal and even government sources.
So people take hope! Be positive! Love is all we need, etc. The need for for a saving alternative
to the money-driven personality contests into which our politics has descended this election year
is literally staring us all in the face from our TV, cellphone and computer screens. This is no
time to sit back and complain, it's a time to start working to build a new way of connecting ourselves
so we can reverse America's rapid decline.
OK, so I hear some of you saying, corporate America will never let this Civic Media get
off the ground. My short answer to this is that corporations do what makes money for them, and
in today's despairing political climate there's money to be made in sponsoring something truly
positive, patriotic and constructive. And I hear a few others saying that Americans are too
dumbed down, too busy, too polarized or too just plain stupid to make intelligent, constructive
use of a non-partisan, problem-solving Civic Media. But I would not underestimate the intelligence
of Americans when they can give their considered input – by vote, by comment or by active participation
– in public forums that are as exciting and well managed as an NFL game or a Word Series final.
I am paying an exorbitant subscription for the UK Financial Times at the moment. Anyway,
the good news is that very regular articles are appearing where you can almost feel the panic
at the populist uprisings.
Whatever system is put in place the human race will find a way to undermine it. I believe in
capitalism because fair competition means the best and most efficient succeed.
I send my children to private schools and universities because I want my own children at the
top and not the best. Crony capitalism is inevitable, self-interest undermines any larger system
that we try and impose.
Can we design a system that can beat human self-interest? It's going to be tricky.
"If that's the system, how can I take advantage of it?" human nature at work. "If that's the
system, is it working for me or not?" those at the top.
If not, it's time to change the system.
If so, how can I tweak it to get more out of it?
Neo-Liberalism
Academics, who are not known for being street-wise, probably thought they had come up with
the ultimate system using markets and numeric performance measures to create a system free from
human self-interest.
They had already missed that markets don't just work for price discovery, but are frequently
used for capital gains by riding bubbles and hoping there is a "bigger fool" out there than you,
so you can cash out with a handsome profit.
(I am not sure if the Chinese realise markets are supposed to be for price discovery at all).
Hence, numerous bubbles during this time, with housing bubbles being the global favourite for
those looking for capital gains.
If we are being governed by the markets, how do we rig the markets?
A question successfully solved by the bankers.
Inflation figures, that were supposed to ensure the cost of living didn't rise too quickly,
were somehow manipulated to produce low inflation figures with roaring house price inflation raising
the cost of living.
What unemployment measure will best suit the story I am trying to tell?
U3 – everything great
U6 – it's not so good
Labour participation rate – it hasn't been this bad since the 1970s
Anything missing from the theory has been ruthlessly exploited, e.g. market bubbles ridden
for capital gains, money creation by private banks, the difference between "earned" and "unearned"
income and the fact that Capitalism trickles up through the following mechanism:
1) Those with excess capital collect rent and interest.
2) Those with insufficient capital pay rent and interest.
I just went on a rant last week. (Not only because the judge actually LIED in court)
I left the courthouse in downtown Seattle, to cross the street to find the vultures selling
more foreclosures on the steps of the King County Administration Building, while above them, there
were tents pitched on the building's perimeter. And people were walking by just like this scene
was normal.
Because the people at the entrance of the courthouse could view this, I went over there and
began to rant. I asked (loudly) "Do you guys see that over there? Vultures selling homes rendering
more people homeless and then the homeless encampment with tents pitched on the perimeter above
them? In what world is this normal?" One guy replied, "Ironic, isn't it?" After that comment,
the Marshall protecting the judicial crooks in the building came over and tried to calm me down.
He insisted that the scene across the street was "normal" and that none of his friends or neighbors
have been foreclosed on. I soon found out that that lying Marshall was from Pierce County, the
epicenter of Washington foreclosures.
"In this postindustrial world not only is the labor question no longer asked, not only
is proletarian revolution passé, but the proletariat itself seems passé. And the invisibles who
nonetheless do indeed live there have internalized their nonexistence, grown demoralized, resentful,
and hopeless; if they are noticed at all, it is as objects of public disdain. What were once called
"blue-collar aristocrats"-skilled workers in the construction trades, for example-have long felt
the contempt of the whole white-collar world.
For these people, already skeptical about who runs things and to what end, and who are now
undergoing their own eviction from the middle class, skepticism sours into a passive cynicism.
Or it rears up in a kind of vengeful chauvinism directed at alien others at home and abroad, emotional
compensation for the wounds that come with social decline If public life can suffer a metaphysical
blow, the death of the labor question was that blow. For millions of working people, it amputated
the will to resist."
One thing I don't think I have seen addressed on this site (apologies if I have missed it!)
in all the commentary about the destruction of the middle class is the role of US imperialism
in creating that middle class in the first place and what it is that we want to save from destruction
by neo-liberalism. The US is rich because we rob the rest of the world's resources and have been
doing so in a huge way since 1945, same as Britain before us. I don't think it's a coincidence
that the US post-war domination of the world economy and the middle class golden age happened
at the same time. Obviously there was enormous value created by US manufacturers, inventors, government
scientists, etc but imperialism is the basic starting point for all of this. The US sets the world
terms of trade to its own advantage. How do we save the middle class without this level of control?
Within the US elites are robbing everyone else but they are taking what we use our military power
to appropriate from the rest of the world.
Second, if Bernie or whoever saves the middle class, is that so that everyone can have a tract
house and two cars and continue with a massively wasteful and unsustainable lifestyle based on
consumption? Or are we talking about basic security like shelter, real health care, quality education
for all, etc? Most of the stories I see seem to be nostalgic for a time when lots of people could
afford to buy lots of stuff and don't 1) reflect on origin of that stuff (imperialism) and 2)
consider whether that lifestyle should be the goal in the first place.
I went to the electronics recycling facility in Seattle yesterday. The guy at customer service
told me that they receive 20 million pounds per month. PER MONTH. Just from Seattle. I went home
and threw up.
It doesn't have to be that way. You can replace military conquest (overt and covert) with space
exploration and science expansion. Also, instead of pushing consumerism, push contentment. Don't
setup and goose a system of "gotta keep up with the Joneses!"
In the 50s(!!!) there was a plan, proven in tests and studies, that would have had humans on
the mars by 1965, out to Saturn by 72. Project Orion. Later, the British Project Daedalus was
envisioned which WOULD have put space probes at the next star system within 20 years of launch.
It was born of the atomic age and, as originally envisioned, would have been an ecological disaster
BUT it was reworked to avoid this and would have worked. Spacecraft capable of comfortably holding
100 personnel, no need to build with paper-thin aluminum skin or skimp on amenities. A huge ship
built like a large sea vessel (heavy iron/steel) accelerated at 1g (or more or slightly less as
desired) so no prolonged weightlessness and concomitant loss of bone and muscle mass. It was all
in out hands but the Cold War got in the way, as did the many agreements and treaties of the Cold
War to avoid annihilation. It didn't need to be that way. Check it out:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)
All that with 1950s and 60s era technology. It could be done better today and for less than
your wars in the Middle East. Encourage science, math, exploration instead of consumption, getting
mine before you can get yours, etc.
Or, we could replace Western liberal culture, with its tradition to consume and expand
by force an unbroken chain from the Garden of Eden to Friedrich von Hayek, with the notion of
maintenance and "enough". Bourgeois make-work holds no interest to me.
My understanding of the data is that living standards increased around the world during
the so-called golden age, not just in the U.S. (and Western Europe and Japan and Australia ).
It could be that it was still imperialism at work, but the link between imperialism and the creation
of the middle class is not straightforward.
Likewise, US elites are clearly NOT robbing the manufacturing firms that have set up in China
and other low-wage locations, so it is an oversimplification to say they are "robbing everyone
else."
Nostalgia is overrated but I don't sense the current malaise as a desire for more stuff. (I
grew up in the 60s and 70s and I don't remember it as a time where people had, or craved, a lot
of stuff. That period would be now, and I find it infects Sanders' supporters less than most.)
If anything, it is nostalgia for more (free) time and more community, for a time when (many but
not all) people had time to socialize and enjoy civic life.
those things would be nice as would just a tiny bit of hope for the future, our own and the
planet's and not an expectation of things getting more and more difficult and sometimes for entirely
unnecessary reasons like imposed austerity. But being we can't have "nice things" like free time,
community and hope for the future, we just "buy stuff".
I live on the south side, in the formerly affluent south shore neighborhood. A teenager was
killed, shot in the head in a drive by shooting, at 5 pm yesterday right around the corner from
my residence. A white coworker of mine who lives in a rich northwest side neighborhood once commented
to me how black people always say goodbye by saying "be safe". More easily said than done.
I thought neoliberalism was just the pogrom to make everyone – rational agents – as subscribed
by our genetic / heraldic betters .. putting this orbs humans and resources in the correct "natural"
order .
Disheveled Marsupial for those thinking neoliberalism is not associated with libertarianism
one only has to observe the decades of think tanks and their mouth organs roaming the planet .
especially in the late 80s and 90s . bringing the might and wonders of the – market – to the great
unwashed globally here libertarian priests rang in the good news to the great unwashed
I would argue that neoliberalism is a program to define markets as primarily engaged in
information processing and to make everyone into non-agents ( as not important at all to the proper
functioning of markets).
It also appears that neoliberals want to restrict democracy to the greatest extent possible
and to view markets as the only foundation for truth without any need for input from the average
individual.
But as Mirowski argues–carrying their analysis this far begins to undermine their own neoliberal
assumptions about markets always promoting social welfare.
When I mean – agents – I'm not referring to agency, like you say the market gawd/computer does
that. I was referencing the – rational agent – that 'ascribes' the markets the right at defining
facts or truth as neoliberalism defines rational thought/behavior.
Disheveled Marsupial yes democracy is a direct threat to Hayekian et al [MPS and Friends]
paranoia due to claims of irrationality vs rationally
I have trouble understanding the focus on an emergence of fascism in Europe, focus that seems
to dominate this entire thread when, put in perspective such splinter groups bear little weight
on the European political spectrum.
As an expat living in France, in my perception the Front National is a threat to the political
establishments that occupy the center left and right and whose historically broad constituencies
have been brutalized by the financial crisis borne of unbridled anglo-saxon runaway capitalism,
coined neoliberalism. The resulting disaffection has allowed the growth of the FN but it is also
fueled by a transfer of reactionary constituencies that have historically found identity in far
left parties (communist, anti-capitalist, anarchist ), political expressions the institutions
of the Republic allow and enable in the name of plurality, a healthy exultury in a democratic
society.
To consider that the FN in France, UKIP in the UK and others are a threat to democratic values
any more that the far left is non-sensical, and I dare say insignificant compared to the "anchluss"
our conservative right seeks to impose upon the executive, legislative and judicial branches of
government.
The reality in Europe as in America is economic. The post WWII era of reconstruction, investment
and growth is behind us, the French call these years the "Trente Glorieuses" (30 glorious years)
when prosperity was felt through all societal strats, consumerism for all became the panacea for
a just society, where injustice prevailed welfare formulas provided a new panacea.
As the perspective of an unravelling of this golden era began to emerge elites sought and conspired
to consolidate power and wealth, under the aegis of greed is good culture by further corrupting
government to serve the few, ensuring impunity for the ruling class, attempting societal cohesiveness
with brash hubristic dialectics (America, the greatest this or that) and adventurism (Irak, mission
accomplished), conspiring to co-opt and control institutions and the media (to understand the
depth of this deception a must read is Jane Mayer in The Dark Side and in Dark Money).
The difference between America and Europe is that latter bears of brunt of our excess.
The 2008 Wall St / City meltdown eviscerated much of America' middle class and de-facto stalled,
perhaps definitively, the vehicle of upward mobility in an increasingly wealth-ranked class structured
society – the Trump phenomena feeds off the fatalistic resilience and "good book" mythologies
remnant of the "go west" culture.
In Europe where to varying degrees managed capitalism prevails the welfare state(s) provided the
shock absorbers to offset the brunt of the crisis, but those who locked-in on neoliberal fiscal
conservatism have cut off their nose in spite leaving scant resources to spur growth. If social
mobility survives, more vibrantly than the US, unemployment and the cost thereof remains steadfast
and crippling.
The second crisis borne of American hubris is the human tidal wave resulting from the Irak adventure;
it has unleashed mayhem upon the Middle East, Sub Saharan Africa and beyond. The current migrational
wave Europe can not absorb is but the beginning of much deeper problem – as ISIS, Boko Haram and
so many others terrorist groups destabilize the nation-states of a continent whose population
is on the path to explode in the next half century.
The icing on the cake provided by a Trump election will be a world wave of climate change refugees
as the neoliberal establishment seeks to optimize wealth and power through continued climate change
denial.
Fascism is not the issue, nationalism resulting from a self serving bully culture will decimate
the multilateral infrastructure responsible nation-states need to address today's problems.
Broadly, Trump Presidency capping the neoliberal experience will likely signal the end of the
US' dominant role on the world scene (and of course the immense benefits derived for the US).
As he has articulated his intent to discard the art of diplomacy, from soft to institutional,
in favor of an agressive approach in which the President seeks to "rattle" allies (NATO, Japan
and S. Korea for example) as well as his opponents (in other words anyone who does not profess
blind allegiance), expect that such modus operandi will create a deep schism accompanied by a
loss of trust, already felt vis-a-vis our legislature' behavior over the last seven years.
The US's newfound respect among friends and foes generated by President Obama' presidency, has
already been undermined by the GOP primaries, if Trump is elected it will dissipate for good as
other nations and groups thereof focus upon new, no-longer necessarily aligned strategic relationships,
some will form as part as a means of taking distance, or protection from the US, others more opportunist
with the risk of opponents such as Putin filling the void – in Europe for example.
Neoliberalism isn't helping, but it's a population/resource ratio thing. Impacts on social
orders occur well before raw supply factors kick in (and there is more than food supply to basic
rations). The world population has more than doubled in the last 50 years, one doesn't get that
kind of accelerated growth without profound impacts to every aspect of societies. Some of the
most significant impacts are consequent to the acceleration of technological changes (skill expirations,
automations) that are driven in no small part by the needs of a vast + growing population.
I don't suggest population as a pat simplistic answer. And neoliberalism accelerates the declining
performance of institutions (as in the CUNY article and that's been going on for decades already,
neoliberalism just picked up where neoconservatism petered out), but we would be facing issues
like homelessness, service degradation, population displacements, etc regardless of poor policies.
One could argue (I do) that neoliberalism has undertaken to accelerate existing entropies for
profit.
Thanks for soliciting reader comments on socioeconomic desperation. It's encouraging to know
that I'm not the only failure to launch in this country.
I'm a seasonal farm worker with a liberal arts degree in geology and history. I barely held
on for six months as a junior environmental consultant at a dysfunctional firm that tacitly encouraged
unethical and incompetent behavior at all levels. From what I could gather, it was one of the
better-run firms in the industry. Even so, I was watching mid-level and senior staff wander into
extended mid-life crises while our entire service line was terrorized by a badly out-of-shape,
morbidly obese, erratic, vicious PG who had alienated almost the entire office but was untouchable
no matter how many firing offenses she committed. Meanwhile I was watching peers in other industries
(especially marketing and FIRE) sell their souls in real time. I'm still watching them do so a
decade later.
It's hard to exaggerate how atrociously I've been treated by bougie conformists for having
failed/dropped out of the rat race. A family friend who got into trouble with the state of Hawaii
for misclassifying direct employees of his timeshare boiler room as 1099's gave me a panic attack
after getting stoned and berating me for hours about how I'd wake up someday and wonder what the
fuck I'd done with my life. At the time, I had successfully completed a summer job as the de facto
lead on a vineyard maintenance crew and was about to get called back for the harvest, again as
the de facto lead picker.
Much of my social life is basically my humiliation at the hands of amoral sleazeballs who presume
themselves my superiors. No matter how strong an objective case I have for these people being
morally bankrupt, it's impossible to really dismiss their insults. Another big component is concern-trolling
from bourgeois supremacists who will do awfully little for me when I ask them for specific help.
I don't know what they're trying to accomplish, and they probably don't, either. A lot of it is
cognitive dissonance and incoherence.
Some of the worst aggression has come from a Type A social climber friend who sells life insurance.
He's a top producer in a company that's about a third normal, a third Willy Loman, and a third
Glengarry Glen Ross. This dude is clearly troubled, but in ways that neither of us can really
figure out, and a number of those around him are, too. He once admitted, unbidden, to having hazed
me for years.
The bigger problem is that he's surrounded by an entire social infrastructure that enables
and rewards noxious, predatory behavior. When college men feel like treating the struggling like
garbage, they have backup and social proof from their peers. It's disgusting. Many of these people
have no idea of how to relate appropriately to the poor or the unemployed and no interest in learning.
They want to lecture and humiliate us, not listen to us.
Dude recently told me that our alma mater, Dickinson College, is a "grad school preparatory
institution." I was floored that anyone would ever think to talk like that. In point of fact,
we're constantly lectured about how versatile our degrees are, with or without additional education.
I've apparently annoyed a number of Dickinsonians by bitterly complaining that Dickinson's nonacademic
operations are a sleazy racket and that President Emeritus Bill Durden is a shyster who brainwashed
my classmates with crude propaganda. If anything, I'm probably measured in my criticism, because
I don't think I know the full extent of the fraud and sleaze. What I have seen and heard is damning.
I believe that Dickinson is run by people with totalitarian impulses that are restrained only
by a handful of nonconformists who came for the academics and are fed up with the propaganda.
Meanwhile, I've been warm homeless for most of the past four years. It's absurd to get pledge
drive pitches from a well-endowed school on the premise that my degree is golden when I'm regularly
sleeping in my car and financially dependent on my parents. It's absurd to hear stories about
how Dickinson's alumni job placement network is top-notch when I've never gotten a viable lead
from anyone I know from school. It's absurd to explain my circumstances in detail to people who,
afterwards, still can't understand why I'm cynical.
While my classmates preen about their degrees, I'm dealing with stuff that would make them
vomit. A relative whose farm I've been tending has dozens of rats infesting his winery building,
causing such a stench that I'm just about the only person willing to set foot inside it. This
relative is a deadbeat presiding over a feudal slumlord manor, circumstances that he usually justifies
by saying that he's broke and just trying to make ends meet. He has rent-paying tenants living
on the property with nothing but a pit outhouse and a filthy, disused shower room for facilities.
He doesn't care that it's illegal. One of his tenants left behind a twenty-gallon trash can full
to the brim with his own feces. Another was seen throwing newspaper-wrapped turds out of her trailer
into the weeds. They probably found more dignity in this than in using the outhouse.
When I was staying in Rancho Cordova, a rough suburb of Sacramento, I saw my next-door neighbor
nearly come to blows with a man at the light rail station before apologizing profusely to me,
calling me "sir," "man," "boss," and "dog." He told me that he was angry at the other guy for
selling meth to his kid sister. Eureka is even worse: its west side is swarming with tweakers,
its low-end apartment stock is terrible, no one brings the slumlords to heel, and it has a string
of truly filthy residential motels along Broadway that should have been demolished years ago.
A colleague who lives in Sweet Home, Oregon, told me that his hometown is swarming with druggies
who try to extract opiates from local poppies and live for the next arriving shipment of garbage
drugs. The berry farm where we worked had ten- and twelve-year-olds working under the table to
supplement their families' incomes. A Canadian friend told me that he worked for a crackhead in
Lillooet who made his own supply at home using freebase that he bought from a meathead dealer
with ties to the Boston mob. Apparently all the failing mill towns in rural BC have a crack problem
because there's not much to do other than go on welfare and cocaine. An RCMP sergeant in Kamloops
was recently indicted for selling coke on the side.
Uahsenaa's comment about the invisible homeless is spot on. I think I blend in pretty well.
I've often stunned people by mentioning that I'm homeless. Some of them have been assholes about
it, but not all. There are several cars that I recognize as regular overnighters at my usual rest
area. Thank God we don't get hassled much. Oregon is about as safe a place as there is to be homeless.
Some of the rest areas in California, including the ones at Kingsburg and the Sacramento Airport,
end up at or beyond capacity overnight due to the homeless. CalTrans has signs reminding drivers
that it's rude to hog a space that someone else will need. This austerity does not, of course,
apply to stadium construction for the Kings.
Another thing that almost slipped my mind (and is relevant to Trump's popularity): I've encountered
entrenched, systemic discrimination against Americans when I've tried to find and hold menial
jobs, and I've talked to other Americans who have also encountered it. There is an extreme bias
in favor of Mexican peasants and against Americans in the fields and increasingly in off-farm
jobs. The top quintile will be lucky not to reap the whirlwind on account of this prejudice.
"... The number one issue fueling the leave vote was immigration – a lot like Trump's wall against Mexico. The number two issue was lack of accountability of government: Leavers believe that the EU government in Brussels is unaccountable to voters. For Trump supporters, resentment towards a distant and unaccountable Washington government ranks high as well. The Brexit constituency and the Trump constituency are both motivated by the same sense of loss and vulnerability. ..."
"... In both the U.S. and the U.K., a large and growing segment of voters has not prospered in today's complex, technology-driven global economy. Their wages have stagnated and in many cases fallen. Too few good-paying jobs exist for people lacking a college degree, or even people with a college degree, if the degree is not in the right field. These people are angry, frustrated, and afraid -- and with very good reason. Both countries' governments have done little to help them adapt, and little to soothe the sting of globalization. The voter's concerns in both places are mostly the same even though these concerns have coalesced around a policy issue ("leave") in the U.K. whereas here in the U.S. they have coalesced around a candidate (Trump). ..."
"... Similarly, the elite insiders of the Republican Party and their business allies badly underestimated Trump. Establishment candidates like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush failed terribly. Now the Republican political insiders are trying to make sense of a presumptive nominee who trashes free trade, one of the fundamental principles of the party, and openly taunts one of most important emerging voting blocks. ..."
"... Perhaps the biggest reason for the impotence of today's political elites is that elites have trashed the very idea of competent and effective government for 35 years now, and the public has taken the message to heart. Ever since Reagan identified government as the problem, conservative elites have attacked the idea of government itself – rather than respecting the idea of government itself while criticizing the particular policies of a particular government. This is a crucial (and dangerous) distinction. In 1986, Reagan went on to say "the nine most terrifying words in the English language are 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" ..."
In addition, the issues are similar between the two campaigns: The number
one issue fueling the leave vote was immigration – a lot like Trump's wall against
Mexico. The number two issue was lack of accountability of government: Leavers
believe that the EU government in Brussels is unaccountable to voters. For Trump
supporters, resentment towards a distant and unaccountable Washington government
ranks high as well. The Brexit constituency and the Trump constituency are both
motivated by the same sense of loss and vulnerability.
In both the U.S. and the U.K., a large and growing segment of voters
has not prospered in today's complex, technology-driven global economy. Their
wages have stagnated and in many cases fallen. Too few good-paying jobs exist
for people lacking a college degree, or even people with a college degree, if
the degree is not in the right field. These people are angry, frustrated, and
afraid -- and with very good reason. Both countries' governments have done little
to help them adapt, and little to soothe the sting of globalization. The voter's
concerns in both places are mostly the same even though these concerns have
coalesced around a policy issue ("leave") in the U.K. whereas here in the U.S.
they have coalesced around a candidate (Trump).
In both countries, political elites were caught flat-footed. Elites lost
control over the narrative and lost credibility and persuasiveness with angry,
frustrated and fearful voters. The British elites badly underestimated the intensity
of public frustration with immigration and with the EU. Most expected the vote
would end on the side of "remain," up to the very last moment. Now they are
trying to plot their way out of something they never expected would actually
happen, and never prepared for.
Similarly, the elite insiders of the Republican Party and their business
allies badly underestimated Trump. Establishment candidates like former Florida
Gov. Jeb Bush failed terribly. Now the Republican political insiders are trying
to make sense of a presumptive nominee who trashes free trade, one of the fundamental
principles of the party, and openly taunts one of most important emerging voting
blocks.
How did the elites lose control? There are many reasons: With social media
so pervasive, advertising dollars no longer controls what the public sees and
hears. With unrestricted campaign spending, the party can no longer "pinch the
air hose" of a candidate who strays from party orthodoxy.
Perhaps the biggest reason for the impotence of today's political elites
is that elites have trashed the very idea of competent and effective government
for 35 years now, and the public has taken the message to heart. Ever since
Reagan identified government as the problem, conservative elites have attacked
the idea of government itself – rather than respecting the idea
of government itself while criticizing the particular policies of a particular
government. This is a crucial (and dangerous) distinction. In 1986, Reagan went
on to say "the nine most terrifying words in the English language are 'I'm from
the government and I'm here to help.'"
Reagan booster Grover Norquist is known for saying, "I don't want to abolish
government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into
the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." Countless candidates and elected
officials slam "Washington bureaucrats" even though these "bureaucrats" were
none other than themselves. It's not a great way to build respect. Then the
attack escalated, with the aim of destroying parts of government that were actually
mostly working. This was done to advance the narrative that government itself
is the problem, and pave the way for privatization. Take the Transportation
Security Administration for example. TSA has actually done its job. No terrorist
attacks have succeeded on U.S. airplanes since it was established. But by
systematically underfunding it , Congress has made the lines painfully long,
so people hate it. Take the Post Office. Here Congress manufactured a crisis
to force service cuts, making the public believe the institution is incompetent.
But the so-called "problem" is
due almost entirely to a requirement, imposed by Congress, forcing the Postal
Service to prepay retiree's health care to an absurd level, far beyond what
a similar private sector business would have to do. A similar dynamic now threatens
Social Security. Thirty-five years have passed since Reagan first mocked the
potential for competent and effective government. Years of unrelenting attack
have sunk in. Many Americans now distrust government leaders and think it's
pointless to demand or expect wisdom and statesmanship. Today's American voters
(and their British counterparts), well-schooled in skepticism, disdain and dismiss
leaders of all parties and they are ready to burn things down out of sheer frustration.
The moment of blowback has arrived.
PK has nearly lost all of his ability to see things objectively. Ambition got him, I suppose,
or maybe he has always longed to be popular. He was probably teased and ridiculed too much in
his youth. He is something of a whinny sniveler after-all.
Then too, I doubt if PK has ever used a public restroom in the Southwest, or taken his kids
to a public park in one of the thousands of small towns where non-English speaking throngs take
over all of the facilities and parking.Or had his children bullied at school by a gang of dark-skinned
kids whose parents believe that whites took their land, or abused or enslaved their distant ansestors.
It might be germane here too... to point out that some of this anti-white sentiment gets support
and validation from the very rhetoric that Democrats have made integral to their campaigns.
As for not knowing why crime rates have been falling, the incarceration rates rose in step,
so duh, if you lock up those with propensities for crime, well, how could crime rates not fall?
And while I'm on the subject of crime, the statistical analysis that is commonly used focuses
too much on violent crime and convictions. Thus, crimes of a less serious nature, that being the
type of crimes committed by poor folks, is routinely ignored. Then too, those who are here illegally
are often transient and using assumed names, and so they are, presumably, more difficult to catch.
So, statistics are all too often not as telling as claimed.
And, though I'm not a Trump supporter, I fully understand his appeal. As would PK if he were
more travelled and in touch with those who have seen their schools, parks, towns, and everything
else turn tawdry and dysfunctional. But of course the nation that most of us live in is much different
than the one that PK knows.
> And, though I'm not a Trump supporter, I fully understand his appeal
I wonder why everybody is thinking about this problem only in terms of identity politics.
This is a wrong, self-defeating framework to approach the problem. which is pushed by neoliberal
MSM and which we should resist in this forum as this translates the problems that the nation faces
into term of pure war-style propaganda ("us vs. them" mentality). To which many posters here already
succumbed
IMHO the November elections will be more of the referendum on neoliberal globalization (with
two key issues on the ballot -- jobs and immigration) than anything else.
If so, then the key question is whether the anger of population at neoliberal elite that stole
their jobs and well-being reached the boiling point or not. The level of this anger might decide
the result of elections, not all those petty slurs that neoliberal MSM so diligently use as a
smoke screen.
All those valiant efforts in outsourcing and replacing permanent jobs with temporary to increase
profit margin at the end have the propensity to produce some externalities. And not only in the
form "over 50 and unemployed" but also by a much more dangerous "globalization of indifference"
to human beings in general.
JK Galbraith once gave the following definition of neoliberal economics: "trickle down economics
is the idea that if you feed the horse enough oats eventually some will pass through to the road
for the sparrows." This is what neoliberalism is about. Lower 80% even in so-called rich countries
are forced to live in "fear and desperation", forced to work "with precious little dignity".
Human beings are now considered consumer goods in "job market" to be used and then discarded.
As a consequence, a lot of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: "without work, without
possibilities, without any means of escape" (pope Francis).
And that inevitably produces a reaction. Which in extreme forms we saw during French and Bolsheviks
revolutions. And in less extremist forms (not involving lampposts as the placeholders for the
"Masters of the Universe" (aka financial oligarchy) and the most obnoxious part of the "creative
class" aka intelligentsia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligentsia
) in Brexit vote.
Hillary and Trump are just symbols here. The issue matters, not personalities.
An interesting warning about possible return of neocons in Hillary administration. Looks like not
much changed in Washington from 2005 and Obama more and more looks like Bush III. Both Hillary and Trump
are jingoistic toward Iran. Paradoxically Trump is even more jingoistic then Hillary.
Notable quotes:
"... That no one yet claims actually exists, has begun. Once again we seem to be heading down a highway marked "counterproliferation war." What makes this bizarre is that the Middle East today, for all its catastrophic problems, is actually a nuclear-free zone except for one country, Israel, which has a staggeringly outsized, semi-secret nuclear arsenal. ..."
"... And not much has changed since. I recommend as well a piece written even earlier by Ira Chernus on a graphic about the Israeli nuclear arsenal tucked away at the MSNBC website (and still viewable ). ..."
"... Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst and one of the founders of the group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, considers the Iranian and Israeli bombs, and Bush administration policy in relation to both below in a piece that, he writes, emerged from "an informal colloquium which has sprung up in the Washington, DC area involving people with experience at senior policy levels of government, others who examine foreign policy and defense issues primarily out of a faith perspective, and still others with a foot in each camp. We are trying to deal directly with the moral -- as well as the practical -- implications of various policy alternatives. One of our group recently was invited to talk with senior staffers in the House of Representatives about Iran, its nuclear plans, its support for terrorists, and U.S. military options. Toward the end of that conversation, a House staffer was emboldened to ask, 'What would be a moral solution?' This question gave new energy to our colloquium, generating a number of informal papers, including this one. I am grateful to my colloquium colleagues for their insights and suggestions." ..."
"... What about post-attack "Day Two?" Not to worry. Well-briefed pundits are telling us about a wellspring of Western-oriented I find myself thinking: Right; just like all those Iraqis who welcomed invading American and British troops with open arms and cut flowers. ..."
"... In 2001, the new President Bush brought the neocons back and put them in top policymaking positions. Even former Assistant Secretary of State Elliot Abrams, convicted in October 1991 of lying to Congress and then pardoned by George H. W. Bush, was called back and put in charge of Middle East policy in the White House. In January, he was promoted to the influential post (once occupied by Robert Gates) of deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs. From that senior position Abrams will once again be dealing closely with John Negroponte, an old colleague from rogue-elephant Contra War days, who has now been picked to be the first director of national intelligence. ..."
"... Those of us who -- like Colin Powell -- had front-row seats during the 1980s are far too concerned to dismiss the re-emergence of the neocons as a simple case of déjà vu . They are much more dangerous now. Unlike in the eighties, they are the ones crafting the adventurous policies our sons and daughters are being called on to implement. ..."
"... So why would Iran think it has to acquire nuclear weapons? Sen. Richard Lugar, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was asked this on a Sunday talk show a few months ago. Apparently having a senior moment, he failed to give the normal answer. Instead, he replied, "Well, you know, Israel has..." At that point, he caught himself and abruptly stopped. ..."
That no one yet claims actually exists, has begun. Once again we seem to be heading down a highway
marked "counterproliferation war." What makes this bizarre is that the Middle East today, for all
its catastrophic problems, is actually a nuclear-free zone except for one country, Israel, which
has a staggeringly outsized, semi-secret nuclear arsenal.
As Los Angeles Times reporter Douglas Frantz wrote at one point, "Though Israel is a democracy,
debating the nuclear program is taboo A military censor guards Israel's nuclear secrets." And this
"taboo" has largely extended to American reporting on the subject. Imagine, to offer a very partial
analogy, if we all had had to consider the Cold War nuclear issue with the Soviet, but almost never
the American nuclear arsenal, in the news. Of course, that would have been absurd and yet it's the
case in the Middle East today, making most strategic discussions of the region exercises in absurdity.
I wrote about this subject under the title,
Nuclear Israel
, back in October 2003, because of a brief break, thanks to Frantz, in the media blackout on the
subject. I began then, "Nuclear North Korea, nuclear Iraq, nuclear Iran - of these our media has
been full for the last year or more, though they either don't exist or hardly yet exist. North Korea
now probably has a couple of crude nuclear weapons, which it may still be incapable of delivering.
But nuclear Israel, little endangered Israel? It's hard even to get your head around the concept,
though that country has either the fifth or sixth largest nuclear arsenal in the world." And
not much has changed since. I recommend as well a piece written even earlier
by Ira Chernus on a
graphic about the Israeli nuclear arsenal tucked away at the MSNBC website (and
still viewable
).
Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst and one of the founders of the group, Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity, considers the Iranian and Israeli bombs, and Bush administration policy
in relation to both below in a piece that, he writes, emerged from "an informal colloquium which
has sprung up in the Washington, DC area involving people with experience at senior policy levels
of government, others who examine foreign policy and defense issues primarily out of a faith perspective,
and still others with a foot in each camp. We are trying to deal directly with the moral -- as well
as the practical -- implications of various policy alternatives. One of our group recently was invited
to talk with senior staffers in the House of Representatives about Iran, its nuclear plans, its support
for terrorists, and U.S. military options. Toward the end of that conversation, a House staffer was
emboldened to ask, 'What would be a moral solution?' This question gave new energy to our colloquium,
generating a number of informal papers, including this one. I am grateful to my colloquium colleagues
for their insights and suggestions." Now, read on. ~ Tom
Attacking Iran: I Know It Sounds Crazy, But...
By Ray McGovern
"'This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous.'
"(Short pause)
"'And having said that, all options are on the table.'
"Even the White House stenographers felt obliged to note the result: '(Laughter).'"
For a host of good reasons -- the huge and draining commitment of U.S. forces to Iraq and Iran's
ability to stir the Iraqi pot to boiling, for starters -- the notion that the Bush administration
would mount a "preemptive" air attack on Iran seems insane. And still more insane if the objective
includes overthrowing Iran's government again, as in 1953 -- this time under the rubric of "regime
change."
But Bush administration policy toward the Middle East is being run by men -- yes, only men
-- who were routinely referred to in high circles in Washington during the 1980s as "the crazies."
I can attest to that personally, but one need not take my word for it.
According to James Naughtie, author of The Accidental American: Tony Blair and the Presidency
, former Secretary of State Colin Powell added an old soldier's adjective to the "crazies"
sobriquet in referring to the same officials. Powell, who was military aide to Defense Secretary
Casper Weinberger in the early eighties, was overheard calling them "the f---ing crazies" during
a phone call with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw before the war in Iraq. At the time, Powell
was reportedly deeply concerned over their determination to attack -- with or without UN approval.
Small wonder that they got rid of Powell after the election, as soon as they had no more use for
him.
If further proof of insanity were needed, one could simply look at the unnecessary carnage
in Iraq since the invasion in March 2003. That unprovoked attack was, in my view, the most fateful
foreign policy blunder in our nation's history...so far.
It Can Get Worse
"The crazies" are not finished. And we do well not to let their ultimate folly obscure
their current ambition, and the further trouble that ambition is bound to bring in the four years
ahead. In an immediate sense, with U.S. military power unrivaled, they can be seen as "crazy like
a fox," with a value system in which "might makes right." Operating out of that value system,
and now sporting the more respectable misnomer/moniker "neoconservative," they are convinced that
they know exactly what they are doing. They have a clear ideology and a geopolitical strategy,
which leap from papers they put out at the
Project for the New American Century
over recent years.
The very same men who, acting out of that paradigm, brought us the war in Iraq are now focusing
on Iran, which they view as the only remaining obstacle to American domination of the entire oil-rich
Middle East. They calculate that, with a docile, corporate-owned press, a co-opted mainstream
church, and a still-trusting populace, the United States and/or the Israelis can launch a successful
air offensive to disrupt any Iranian nuclear weapons programs -- with the added bonus of possibly
causing the regime in power in Iran to crumble.
But why now? After all, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency has just told Congress
that Iran is not likely to have a nuclear weapon until "early in the next decade?" The answer,
according to some defense experts, is that several of the Iranian facilities are still under construction
and there is only a narrow "window of opportunity" to destroy them without causing huge environmental
problems. That window, they say, will begin to close this year.
Other analysts attribute the sense of urgency to worry in Washington that the Iranians may
have secretly gained access to technology that would facilitate a leap forward into the nuclear
club much sooner than now anticipated. And it is, of course, neoconservative doctrine that it
is best to nip -- the word in current fashion is "preempt" -- any conceivable threats in the bud.
One reason the Israelis are pressing hard for early action may simply be out of a desire to ensure
that George W. Bush will have a few more years as president after an attack on Iran, so that they
will have him to stand with Israel when bedlam breaks out in the Middle East.
What about post-attack "Day Two?" Not to worry. Well-briefed pundits are telling us about
a wellspring of Western-oriented I find myself thinking: Right; just like all those Iraqis who
welcomed invading American and British troops with open arms and cut flowers. For me, this
evokes a painful flashback to the early eighties when "intelligence," pointing to "moderates"
within the Iranian leadership, was conjured up to help justify the imaginative but illegal arms-for-hostages-and-proceeds-to-Nicaraguan-Contras
caper. The fact that the conjurer-in-chief of that spurious "evidence" on Iranian "moderates,"
former chief CIA analyst, later director Robert Gates, was recently offered the newly created
position of director of national intelligence makes the flashback more eerie -- and alarming.
George H. W. Bush Saw Through "The Crazies"
During his term in office, George H. W. Bush, with the practical advice of his national security
adviser Gen. Brent Scowcroft and Secretary of State James Baker, was able to keep "the crazies"
at arms length, preventing them from getting the country into serious trouble. They were kept
well below the level of "principal" -- that is, below the level of secretary of state or defense.
Even so, heady in the afterglow of victory in the Gulf War of 1990, "the crazies" stirred up
considerable controversy when they articulated their radical views. Their vision, for instance,
became the centerpiece of the draft "Defense Planning Guidance" that Paul Wolfowitz, de facto
dean of the neoconservatives, prepared in 1992 for then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. It dismissed
deterrence as an outdated relic of the Cold War and argued that the United States must maintain
military strength beyond conceivable challenge -- and use it in preemptive ways in dealing with
those who might acquire "weapons of mass destruction." Sound familiar?
Aghast at this radical imperial strategy for the post-Cold War world, someone with access to
the draft leaked it to the New York Times , forcing President George H. W. Bush either
to endorse or disavow it. Disavow it he did -- and quickly, on the cooler-head recommendations
of Scowcroft and Baker, who proved themselves a bulwark against the hubris and megalomania of
"the crazies." Unfortunately, their vision did not die. No less unfortunately, there is method
to their madness -- even if it threatens to spell eventual disaster for our country. Empires always
overreach and fall.
The Return of the Neocons
In 2001, the new President Bush brought the neocons back and put them in top policymaking
positions. Even former Assistant Secretary of State Elliot Abrams, convicted in October 1991 of
lying to Congress and then pardoned by George H. W. Bush, was called back and put in charge of
Middle East policy in the White House. In January, he was promoted to the influential post (once
occupied by Robert Gates) of deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs.
From that senior position Abrams will once again be dealing closely with John Negroponte, an old
colleague from rogue-elephant Contra War days, who has now been picked to be the first director
of national intelligence.
Those of us who -- like Colin Powell -- had front-row seats during the 1980s are far too
concerned to dismiss the re-emergence of the neocons as a simple case of déjà vu . They
are much more dangerous now. Unlike in the eighties, they are the ones crafting the adventurous
policies our sons and daughters are being called on to implement.
Why dwell on this? Because it is second in importance only to the portentous reality that the
earth is running out of readily accessible oil – something of which they are all too aware. Not
surprisingly then, disguised beneath the weapons-of-mass-destruction smokescreen they laid down
as they prepared to invade Iraq lay an unspoken but bedrock reason for the war -- oil. In any
case, the neocons seem to believe that, in the wake of the November election, they now have a
carte-blanche "mandate." And with the president's new "capital to spend," they appear determined
to spend it, sooner rather than later.
Next Stop, Iran
When a Special Forces platoon leader just back from Iraq matter-of-factly tells a close friend
of mine, as happened last week, that he and his unit are now training their sights (literally)
on Iran, we need to take that seriously. It provides us with a glimpse of reality as seen at ground
level. For me, it brought to mind an unsolicited email I received from the father of a young soldier
training at Fort Benning in the spring of 2002, soon after I wrote an op-ed discussing the timing
of George W. Bush's decision to make war on Iraq. The father informed me that, during the spring
of 2002, his son kept writing home saying his unit was training to go into Iraq. No, said the
father; you mean Afghanistan... that's where the war is, not Iraq. In his next email, the son
said, "No, Dad, they keep saying Iraq. I asked them and that's what they mean."
Now, apparently, they keep saying Iran ; and that appears to be what they mean.
Anecdotal evidence like this is hardly conclusive. Put it together with administration rhetoric
and a preponderance of other "dots," though, and everything points in the direction of an air
attack on Iran, possibly also involving some ground forces. Indeed, from the
New Yorker reports
of Seymour Hersh to
Washington Post articles , accounts of small-scale American intrusions on the ground as well
as into Iranian airspace are appearing with increasing frequency. In a speech given on February
18, former UN arms inspector and Marine officer Scott Ritter (who was totally on target before
the Iraq War on that country's lack of weapons of mass destruction) claimed that the president
has already "signed off" on plans to bomb Iran in June in order to destroy its alleged nuclear
weapons program and eventually bring about "regime change." This does not necessarily mean an
automatic green light for a large attack in June, but it may signal the president's seriousness
about this option.
So, again, against the background of what we have witnessed over the past four years, and the
troubling fact that the circle of second-term presidential advisers has become even tighter, we
do well to inject a strong note of urgency into any discussion of the "Iranian option."
Why Would Iran Want Nukes?
So why would Iran think it has to acquire nuclear weapons? Sen. Richard Lugar, chair of
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was asked this on a Sunday talk show a few months ago.
Apparently having a senior moment, he failed to give the normal answer. Instead, he replied, "Well,
you know, Israel has..." At that point, he caught himself and abruptly stopped.
Recovering quickly and realizing that he could not just leave the word "Israel" hanging there,
Lugar began again: "Well, Israel is alleged to have a nuclear capability."
Is alleged to
have ? Lugar is chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and yet he doesn't know that
Israel has, by most estimates, a major nuclear arsenal, consisting of several hundred nuclear
weapons? (Mainstream newspapers are allergic to dwelling on this topic, but it is mentioned every
now and then, usually buried in obscurity on an inside page.)
Just imagine how the Iranians and Syrians would react to Lugar's disingenuousness. Small wonder
our highest officials and lawmakers -- and Lugar, remember, is one of the most decent among them
-- are widely seen abroad as hypocritical. Our media, of course, ignore the hypocrisy. This is
standard operating procedure when the word "Israel" is spoken in this or other unflattering contexts.
And the objections of those appealing for a more balanced approach are quashed.
If the truth be told, Iran fears Israel at least as much as Israel fears the internal security
threat posed by the thugs supported by Tehran. Iran's apprehension is partly fear that Israel
(with at least tacit support from the Bush administration) will send its aircraft to bomb Iranian
nuclear facilities, just as American-built Israeli bombers destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor
at Osirak in 1981. As part of the current war of nerves, recent statements by the president and
vice president can be
read as giving a green light to Israel to do just that; while Israeli Air Force commander Major
General Eliezer Shakedi told reporters on February 21 that Israel must be prepared for an air
strike on Iran "in light of its nuclear activity."
US-Israel Nexus
The Iranians also remember how Israel was able to acquire and keep its nuclear technology.
Much of it was stolen from the United States by spies for Israel. As early as the late-1950s,
Washington knew Israel was building the bomb and could have aborted the project. Instead, American
officials decided to turn a blind eye and let the Israelis go ahead. Now Israel's nuclear capability
is truly formidable. Still, it is a fact of strategic life that a formidable nuclear arsenal can
be deterred by a far more modest one, if an adversary has the means to deliver it. (Look at North
Korea's success with, at best, a few nuclear weapons and questionable means of delivery in deterring
the "sole remaining superpower in the world.") And Iran already has missiles with the range to
hit Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Sharon has for some time appeared eager to enlist Washington's support
for an early "pre-emptive" strike on Iran. Indeed,
American
defense officials have told reporters that visiting Israeli officials have been pressing the
issue for the past year and a half. And the Israelis are now claiming publicly that Iran could
have a nuclear weapon within six months -- years earlier than the Defense Intelligence Agency
estimate mentioned above.
In the past, President Bush has chosen to dismiss unwelcome intelligence estimates as "guesses"
-- especially when they threatened to complicate decisions to implement the neoconservative agenda.
It is worth noting that several of the leading neocons – Richard Perle, chair of the Defense Policy
Board (2001-03); Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy; and David Wurmser, Middle
East adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney -- actually wrote policy papers for the Israeli government
during the 1990s. They have consistently had great difficulty distinguishing between the strategic
interests of Israel and those of the US -- at least as they imagine them.
As for President Bush, over the past four years he has amply demonstrated his preference for
the counsel of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who,
as Gen. Scowcroft said publicly , has the president "wrapped around his little finger." (As
Chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board until he was unceremoniously removed
at the turn of the year, Scowcroft was in a position to know.) If Scowcroft is correct in also
saying that the president has been "mesmerized" by Sharon, it seems possible that the Israelis
already have successfully argued for an attack on Iran.
When "Regime Change" Meant Overthrow For Oil
To remember why the United States is no favorite in Tehran, one needs to go back at least to
1953 when the U.S. and Great Britain overthrew Iran's democratically elected Premier Mohammad
Mossadeq as part of a plan to insure access to Iranian oil. They then emplaced the young Shah
in power who, with his notorious secret police, proved second to none in cruelty. The Shah ruled
from 1953 to 1979. Much resentment can build up over a whole generation. His regime fell like
a house of cards, when supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini rose up to do some regime change of their
own.
Iranians also remember Washington's strong support for Saddam Hussein's Iraq after it decided
to make war on Iran in 1980. U.S. support for Iraq (which included crucial intelligence support
for the war and an implicit condoning of Saddam's use of chemical weapons) was perhaps the crucial
factor in staving off an Iranian victory. Imagine then, the threat Iranians see, should the Bush
administration succeed in establishing up to 14 permanent military bases in neighboring Iraq.
Any Iranian can look at a map of the Middle East (including occupied Iraq) and conclude that this
administration might indeed be willing to pay the necessary price in blood and treasure to influence
what happens to the black gold under Iranian as well as Iraqi sands. And with four more years
to play with, a lot can be done along those lines. The obvious question is: How to deter it? Well,
once again, Iran can hardly be blind to the fact that a small nation like North Korea has so far
deterred U.S. action by producing, or at least claiming to have produced, nuclear weapons.
Nuclear Is the Nub
The nuclear issue is indeed paramount, and we would do well to imagine and craft fresh approaches
to the nub of the problem. As a start, I'll bet if you made a survey, only 20% of Americans would
answer "yes" to the question, "Does Israel have nuclear weapons?" That is key, it seems to me,
because at their core Americans are still fair-minded people.
On the other hand, I'll bet that 95% of the Iranian population would answer, "Of course Israel
has nuclear weapons; that's why we Iranians need them" -- which was, of course, the unmentionable
calculation that Senator Lugar almost conceded. "And we also need them," many Iranians would probably
say, "in order to deter 'the crazies' in Washington. It seems to be working for the North Koreans,
who, after all, are the other remaining point on President Bush's 'axis of evil.'"
The ideal approach would, of course, be to destroy all nuclear weapons in the world
and ban them for the future, with a very intrusive global inspection regime to verify compliance.
A total ban is worth holding up as an ideal, and I think we must. But this approach seems unlikely
to bear fruit over the next four years. So what then?
A Nuclear-Free Middle East
How about a nuclear-free Middle East? Could the US make that happen? We could if we had moral
clarity -- the underpinning necessary to bring it about. Each time this proposal is raised, the
Syrians, for example, clap their hands in feigned joyful anticipation, saying, "Of course such
a pact would include Israel, right?" The issue is then dropped from all discussion by U.S. policymakers.
Required: not only moral clarity but also what Thomas Aquinas labeled the precondition for all
virtue, courage. In this context, courage would include a refusal to be intimidated by inevitable
charges of anti-Semitism.
The reality is that, except for Israel, the Middle East is nuclear free. But the discussion
cannot stop there. It is not difficult to understand why the first leaders of Israel, with the
Holocaust experience written indelibly on their hearts and minds, and feeling surrounded by perceived
threats to the fledgling state's existence, wanted the bomb. And so, before the Syrians or Iranians,
for example, get carried away with self-serving applause for the nuclear-free Middle East proposal,
they will have to understand that for any such negotiation to succeed it must have as a concomitant
aim the guarantee of an Israel able to live in peace and protect itself behind secure borders.
That guarantee has got to be part of the deal.
That the obstacles to any such agreement are formidable is no excuse not trying. But the approach
would have to be new and everything would have to be on the table. Persisting in a state of denial
about Israel's nuclear weapons is dangerously shortsighted; it does nothing but aggravate fears
among the Arabs and create further incentive for them to acquire nuclear weapons of their own.
A sensible approach would also have to include a willingness to engage the Iranians directly,
attempt to understand their perspective, and discern what the United States and Israel could do
to alleviate their concerns.
Preaching to Iran and others about not acquiring nuclear weapons is, indeed, like the village
drunk preaching sobriety -- the more so as our government keeps developing new genres of nuclear
weapons and keeps looking the other way as Israel enhances its own nuclear arsenal. Not a pretty
moral picture, that. Indeed, it reminds me of the Scripture passage about taking the plank out
of your own eye before insisting that the speck be removed from another's.
Lessons from the Past...Like Mutual Deterrence
Has everyone forgotten that deterrence worked for some 40 years, while for most of those years
the U.S. and the USSR had not by any means lost their lust for ever-enhanced nuclear weapons?
The point is simply that, while engaging the Iranians bilaterally and searching for more imaginative
nuclear-free proposals, the U.S. might adopt a more patient interim attitude regarding the striving
of other nation states to acquire nuclear weapons -- bearing in mind that the Bush administration's
policies of "preemption" and "regime change" themselves create powerful incentives for exactly
such striving. As was the case with Iraq two years ago, there is no imminent Iranian strategic
threat to Americans -- or, in reality, to anyone. Even if Iran acquired a nuclear capability,
there is no reason to believe that it would risk a suicidal first strike on Israel. That, after
all, is what mutual deterrence is all about; it works both ways.
It is nonetheless clear that the Israelis' sense of insecurity -- however exaggerated it may
seem to those of us thousands of miles away -- is not synthetic but real. The Sharon government
appears to regard its nuclear monopoly in the region as the only effective "deterrence insurance"
it can buy. It is determined to prevent its neighbors from acquiring the kind of capability that
could infringe on the freedom it now enjoys to carry out military and other actions in the area.
Government officials have said that Israel will not let Iran acquire a nuclear weapon; it would
be folly to dismiss this as bravado. The Israelis have laid down a marker and mean to follow through
-- unless the Bush administration assumes the attitude that "preemption" is an acceptable course
for the United States but not for Israel. It seems unlikely that the neoconservatives would take
that line. Rather
"Israel Is Our Ally."
Or so
said
our president before the cameras on February 17, 2005. But I didn't think we had a treaty
of alliance with Israel; I don't remember the Senate approving one. Did I miss something?
Clearly, the longstanding U.S.-Israeli friendship and the ideals we share dictate continuing
support for Israel's defense and security. It is quite another thing, though, to suggest the existence
of formal treaty obligations that our country does not have. To all intents and purposes, our
policymakers -- from the president on down -- seem to speak and behave on the assumption that
we do have such obligations toward Israel. A former colleague CIA analyst, Michael Scheuer, author
of Imperial Hubris , has put it this way: "The Israelis have succeeded in lacing tight
the ropes binding the American Gulliver to Israel and its policies."
An earlier American warned:
"A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for
the favorite nation facilitates the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where
no real common interest exists, infuses into one the enmities of the other, and betrays the
former into participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement
or justification.... It also gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens, who devote
themselves to the favorite nation, facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own
country." ( George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796 )
In my view, our first president's words apply only too aptly to this administration's lash-up
with the Sharon government. As responsible citizens we need to overcome our timidity about addressing
this issue, lest our fellow Americans continue to be denied important information neglected or
distorted in our domesticated media.
Ray McGovern served as a CIA analyst for 27 years -- from the administration of John
F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. During the early 1980s, he was one of the writers/editors
of the President's Daily Brief and briefed it one-on-one to the president's most senior advisers.
He also chaired National Intelligence Estimates. In January 2003, he and four former colleagues
founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
"... If I was in charge of the DNC and wanted to commission a very cleverly written piece to exonerate the DLC and the New Democrats from the 30 odd years of corruption and self-aggrandizement they indulged in and laughed all the way to the Bank then I would definitely give this chap a call. ..."
"... I would ask the Author to start with the Powell memo and then make an investigation as to why the Democrats then and the DLC later decided to merely sit on their hands when all the forces the Powell memo unleashed proceeded to wreak their havoc in every established institution of the Left, principally the Universities which had always been the bastion of the Progressives. That might be a good starting point. ..."
If I was in charge of the DNC and wanted to commission a very cleverly written piece to exonerate
the DLC and the New Democrats from the 30 odd years of corruption and self-aggrandizement they
indulged in and laughed all the way to the Bank then I would definitely give this chap a call.
I mean, where do we start? No attempt at learning the history of neoliberalism, no attempt
at any serious research about how and why it fastened itself into the brains of people like Tony
Coelho and Al From, nothing, zilch.
If someone who did not know the history of the DLC read this piece, they would walk away thinking,
'wow, it was all happenstance, it all just happened, no one deliberately set off this run away
train'. Sometime in the 90s the 'Left' decided to just pursue identity politics. Amazing.
I would ask the Author to start with the Powell memo and then make an investigation as to why
the Democrats then and the DLC later decided to merely sit on their hands when all the forces
the Powell memo unleashed proceeded to wreak their havoc in every established institution of the
Left, principally the Universities which had always been the bastion of the Progressives. That
might be a good starting point.
"... One thing not mentioned yet, is Trump getting slammed by his populist base for his Secretary of State picks, which seem to come down to Romney and Giuliani. Romney is the worst of Wall Street, a complete tool of the neoliberal program, and Giuliani has a Hillary Clinton-like record on bloated speaking fees and pay-to-play deals with his law firm, Giuliani Partners. ..."
"... That's the biggest test case to see whether Trump, like Obama before him, is going to forget about his populist base and take the carrot Wall Street is offering him. ..."
"... If Trump really wanted to shake things up, he could pick Tulsi Gabbard for Secretary of State, that would be a clever move, far better than Giuliani or Romney. ..."
One thing not mentioned yet, is Trump getting slammed by his populist base for his Secretary
of State picks, which seem to come down to Romney and Giuliani. Romney is the worst of Wall Street,
a complete tool of the neoliberal program, and Giuliani has a Hillary Clinton-like record on bloated
speaking fees and pay-to-play deals with his law firm, Giuliani Partners. Either one of those
clowns as Secretary of State would be a complete betrayal of everything Trump said he stood for
on foreign policy. Romney however is drawing howls of protest from Rust Belt Trump supporters,
because he's so pro-NAFTA, pro-TPP:
https://www.thenation.com/article/more-nafta-anyone-romney-positions-free-trade-champion/
That's the biggest test case to see whether Trump, like Obama before him, is going to forget
about his populist base and take the carrot Wall Street is offering him. Another big one
is whether John Bolton, neocon war pig just like Clinton pals Victoria Nuland and Robert Kagan,
ends up with a big foreign policy role. Forget about cooperation with Russia on ISIS in that case.
So, those are some serious issues that Trump might want to distract his base from, but they're
the major issues that will determine what kind of foreign policy, economic and military, Trump
will really pursue.
As far as Jill Stein, what the hell is she doing? The biggest Green Party issue right now should
be helping block the Dakota Accesss Pipeline debacle, a consortium of short-sighted interests
aiming at exporting Bakken crude overseas, including Warren Buffett, billionaire Democratic supporter,
whose in $6 billion to DAPL via Phillips 66, and Kelcy Warren, billionaire Republican supported,
CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, another DAPL partner.
Instead she's playing some dumb political game, totally ignoring the one issue any real
"Green Party" would be focusing on right now.
P.S. If Trump really wanted to shake things up, he could pick Tulsi Gabbard for Secretary
of State, that would be a clever move, far better than Giuliani or Romney.
I have written a number of posts, some using data and some not, on immigrstion. Some of those
posts attracted vitriol in comments, including from some who keep accusing me of hiding my punchline.
Personally I find myself repeating myself, or trying to restate a point yet a different way so it
will sink in. I figured it is probably time to put everything in one place, so here it is:
1. Some cultures prepare their people to function well in the US, some don't.
2. Ability to function well in the US is not the same thing as intelligence. As an example,
consider me. I lived almost a third of my life in South America. I have never been to Central Asia.
All else being equal, I can hit the ground running more easily in Argentina than in Iran. In Argentina
I know how to behave in a seamless way that won't raise eyebrows. In Iran, I would need to put effort
into day to day activities. Additionally, my communication skills wouldn't work as well. It isn't
just a matter of not speaking Farsi, but also being unable to unconsciously read and display the
myriad of social signals Iranian society uses. Therefore, my productivity will be greater in Argentina
than Iran (again, all things being equal). And yet my traits – the degree to which I am or am not
intelligent, creative, diligent, sane, honest, etc. – will be the same whether I am in Buenos Aires
or in Teheran. Most of my work related skills (less those involving communication) will also be the
same in both places. The difference between my productivity in Argentina v Iran will be due entirely
to differences in cultural compatibility.
3. Cultural compatibility runs the other way too. Arriving in the US doesn't automatically
confer respect for Western values. In many countries, anti-Christian or anti-Semitic attitudes are
common. In the West people argue about gay marriage. In some countries, the debate is whether gay
people should be stoned or thrown off tall buildings. Similarly, the treatment of women and children
in some countries would be criminal in the US. Think honor killings, child's marriages, FGM or bacha
bazi. (And yes, we are seeing those things happening here now.). Writing again from the role of someone
who was a guest in other peoples' countries for a third of his life, it should be the responsibility
of the newcomer to adapt to his/her new home, and not of the residents of his/her new home to adapt
to the newcomer.
4. In Western countries, immigrants who don't manage to bridge cultural gaps are more likely
to end up dependent on the taxpayer. Immigrants are disproportionate users of welfare. In general,
it seems (at a minimum) to be bad form to request entry into another society only to become a burden
on its people. It is one thing for refugees with no other option to do it, but most immigrants to
the US are not refugees.
5. Being overwhelmingly reliant on government largesse in a foreign society built by strangers
has got to be dispiriting to most thinking adults. It can only add to a person's feeling of alienation.
That in turn can lead to various dysfunctions – vices, crime, anti-social behavior and even terrorism.
It is no surprise that some of these issues exist disproportionately in some immigrant communities.
6. Countries whose emigrants do well in the US also tend to be countries with Western values
and strong economies. More precisely, countries whose immigrants do well in the West have economies
which thrive from the skills of its people, and not countries whose economies is based mostly on
raw material extraction directed by foreigners or on financial transfers from wealthier nations.
7. Countries whose emigrants function well in the US also function well in other Western countries.
Conversely, countries whose emigrants don't function well in the US also don't function well in other
Western countries.
8. Within any society, there are some who are more able to function in the US and some who
are less able to function in the US. To be blunt, some people have attitudes that allow them
to function well in the West. Typically they are dissidents in non Western countries. Place of origin
shouldn't be enough to, by itself, weed out one potential immigrant or guarantee entry to another
to another.
9. The fact that there is homegrown dysfunction isn't a good argument for importing more dysfunction.
The fact that there is need and poverty in this country that doesn't receive sufficient aid is an
argument against importing more need and poverty from abroad.
10. There are far more people who would like to immigrate to the US than we allow into the
US. Given that, it makes sense to be selective, both for our sake and the sake of those who are
unlikely to function well and would become alienated and unable to fend for themselves in the US.
I note that none of these points are new. I have stated them all before, but not all in one place.
The reasons for the election of Donald Trump as President of the U.S. will be analyzed and argued
about for many years to come. Undoubtedly there are U.S.-specific factors that are relevant, such
as racial divisions in voting patterns. But the election took place after the British vote to withdraw
from the European Union and the rise to power of conservative politicians in continental Europe,
so it is reasonable to ask whether globalization bears any responsibility.
Have foreign workers taken the jobs of U.S. workers? Increased trade does lead to a reallocation
of resources, as a country increases its output in those sectors where it has an advantage while
cutting back production in other sectors. Resources should flow from the latter to the former, but
in reality it can be difficult to switch employment across sectors.
Daron Acemoglu and David Autor of MIT,
David Dorn of the University of Zurich, Gordon Hanson of UC-San Diego and Brendan Price of MIT
have found that import competition from China after 2000 contributed to reductions in U.S. manufacturing
employment and weak U.S. job growth. They estimated manufacturing job losses due to Chinese competition
of 2.0 – 2.4 million.
Other studies
find similar results for workers who do not have high school degrees.
Moreover, multinational firms do shift production across borders in response to lower wages, among
other factors.
Ann E. Harrison of UC-Berkeley and Margaret S. McMillan of Tufts University looked at the hiring
practices of the foreign affiliates of U.S. firms during the period of 1977 to 1999. They found that
lower wages in affiliate countries where the employees were substitutes for U.S. workers led to more
employment in those countries but reductions in employment in the U.S. However, when employment across
geographical locations is complementary for firms that do significantly different work at home and
abroad, domestic and foreign employment rise and fall together.
Imports and foreign production, therefore, have had an impact on manufacturing employment in the
U.S. But several caveats should be raised. First, as
Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee of MIT and others have pointed out, technology has had a
much larger effect on jobs. The U.S. is the second largest global producer of manufactured goods,
but these products are being made in plants that employ fewer workers than they did in the past.
Many of the lost jobs simply do not exist any more. Second, the U.S. exports goods and services as
well as purchases them. Among the manufactured goods that account for significant shares of U.S.
exports are
machines
and engines, electronic equipment and aircraft . Third, there is inward FDI as well as outward,
and the foreign-based firms hire U.S. workers. A 2013
Congressional Research Service
study by James V. Jackson reported that by year-end 2011 foreign firms employed 6.1 million Americans,
and 37% of this employment-2.3 million jobs-was in the manufacturing sector.
More recent data
shows that employment by the U.S. affiliates of multinational companies rose to 6.4 million in
2014. Mr. Trump will find himself in a difficult position if he threatens to shut down trade and
investment with countries that both import from the U.S. and invest here.
The other form of globalization that drew Trump's derision was immigration. Most of his ire focused
on those who had entered the U.S. illegally. However, in a speech in Arizona he said that he would
set up a commission that would
roll back the number of legal migrants to "historic norms."
The
current number of immigrants (42 million) represents around 13% of the U.S. population, and 16%
of the labor force. An increase in the number of foreign-born workers depresses the wages of some
native-born workers, principally high-school dropouts, as well as other migrants who arrived earlier.
But there are other, more significant reasons for the
stagnation in
working-class wages . In addition, a reduction in the number of migrant laborers would raise
the ratio of young and retired people to workers-the dependency ratio-and endanger the financing
of Social Security and Medicare. And by increasing the size of the U.S. economy,
these workers induce expansions in investment expenditures and hiring in areas that are complementary.
The one form of globalization that Trump has not criticized, with the exception of outward FDI,
is financial. This is a curious omission, as the crisis of 2008-09 arose from the financial implosion
that followed the collapse of the housing bubble in the U.S. International financial flows exacerbated
the magnitude of the crisis. But
Trump has pledged
to dismantle the Dodd-Frank legislation, which was enacted to implement financial regulatory
reform and lower the probability of another crisis. While
Trump has criticized China for undervaluing its currency in order to increase its exports to
the U.S., most economists believe that the
Chinese currency is no longer undervalued vis-à-vis the U.S. dollar.
Did globalization produce Trump, or lead to the circumstances that resulted in
46.7% of the electorate voting
for him? A score sheet of the impact of globalization within the U.S. would record pluses and minuses.
Among those who have benefitted are consumers who purchase items made abroad at cheaper prices, workers
who produce export goods, and firms that hire migrants. Those who have been adversely affected include
workers who no longer have manufacturing jobs and domestic workers who compete with migrants for
low-paying jobs. Overall, most studies find evidence of
positive net benefits from trade . Similarly,
studies of the cost and benefits of immigration indicate that overall foreign workers make a
positive contribution to the U.S. economy.
Other trends have exerted equal or greater consequences for our economic welfare. First, as pointed
out above, advances in automation have had an enormous impact on the number and nature of jobs, and
advances in artificial intelligence wii further change the nature of work. The launch of driverless
cars and trucks, for example, will affect the economy in unforeseen ways, and more workers will lose
their livelihoods. Second, income inequality has been on the increase in the U.S. and elsewhere for
several decades. While those in the upper-income classes have benefitted most from increased trade
and finance, inequality reflects many factors besides globalization.
Why, then, is globalization the focus of so much discontent? Trump had the insight that demonizing
foreigners and U.S.-based multinationals would allow him to offer simple solutions-ripping up trade
deals, strong-arming CEOs to relocate facilities-to complex problems. Moreover, it allows him to
draw a line between his supporters and everyone else, with Trump as the one who will protect workers
against the crafty foreigners and corrupt elite who conspire to steal American jobs. Blaming the
foreign "other" is a well-trod route for those who aspire to power in times of economic and social
upheaval.
Globalization, therefore, should not be held responsible for the election of Donald Trump and
those in other countries who offer similar simplistic solutions to challenging trends. But globalization's
advocates did indirectly lead to his rise when they oversold the benefits of globalization and neglected
the downside. Lower prices at Wal-Mart are scarce consolation to those who have lost their jobs.
Moreover, the proponents of globalization failed to strengthen the safety networks and redistributive
mechanisms that allow those who had to compete with foreign goods and workers to share in the broader
benefits.
Dani Rodrik of Harvard's Kennedy School has described how the policy priorities were changed:
"The new model of globalization stood priorities on their head, effectively putting democracy to
work for the global economy, instead of the other way around. The elimination of barriers to trade
and finance became an end in itself, rather than a means toward more fundamental economic and social
goals."
The battle over globalization is not finished, and there will be future opportunities to adapt
it to benefit a wider section of society. The goal should be to place it within in a framework that
allows a more egalitarian distribution of the benefits and payment of the costs. This is not a new
task. After World War II, the Allied planners sought to revive international trade while allowing
national governments to use their policy tools to foster full employment. Political scientist
John
Ruggie of the Kennedy School called the hybrid system based on fixed exchange rates, regulated
capital accounts and government programs "
embedded liberalism
," and it prevailed until it was swept aside by the wave of neoliberal policies in the 1980s
and 1990s.
What would today's version of "embedded liberalism" look like? In the financial sector, the pendulum
has already swung back from unregulated capital flows and towards the use of capital control measures
as part of macroprudential policies designed to address systemic risk in the financial sector. In
addition,
Thomas Piketty of the École des hautes etudes en sciences (EHESS) and associate chair at the Paris
School of Economics , and author of Capital in the Twenty-first Century, has called
for a new focus in discussions over the next stage of globalization: " trade is a good thing, but
fair and sustainable development also demands public services, infrastructure, health and education
systems. In turn, these themselves demand fair taxation systems."
The current political environment is not conducive toward the expansion of public goods. But it
is unlikely that our new President's policies will deliver on their promise to return to a past when
U.S. workers could operate without concern for foreign competition or automation. We will certainly
revisit these issues, and we need to redefine what a successful globalization looks like. And if
we don't? Thomas Piketty warns of the consequences of not enacting the necessary domestic policies
and institutions: "If we fail to deliver these, Trump_vs_deep_state will prevail."
Since 1980, US manufacturing output has approximately doubled while manufacturing employment
fell by about a third.
Yes, globalization impacts the composition of output and it is a contributing factor in the
weaker growth of manufacturing output. but overall it has accounted for a very minor share of
the weakness in manufacturing employment since 1980. Productivity has been the dominant factor
driving manufacturing employment down.
JimH November 29, 2016 11:11 am
"Overall, most studies find evidence of positive net benefits from trade."
Of course they do! And in your world, studies always Trump real world experience.
Studies on trade can ignore the unemployed workers with a high school education or less. How
were they supposed to get an equivalent paying job? EDUCATION they say! A local public university
has a five year freshman graduation rate of 25%. Are those older students to eat dirt while attempting
to accumulate that education!
Studies on trade can ignore that illegal immigration increases competition for the those under
educated employees. Since 1990 there has been a rising demand that education must be improved!
That potential high school drop outs should be discouraged by draconian means if necessary. YET
we allow immigrants to enter this country and STAY with less than the equivalent of an American
high school education! Why are we spending so much on secondary education if it is not necessary!
"In Mexico, 34% of adults aged 25-64 have completed upper secondary education, much lower than
the OECD average of 76% the lowest rate amongst OECD countries."
See: http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/mexico/
Trade studies can ignore the fate of a small town when its major employer shuts down and leaves.
Trade studies can assume that we are one contiguous job market. They can assume that an unemployed
worker in Pennsylvania will learn of a good paying job in Washington state, submit an application,
and move within 2 weeks. Or assume that the Washington state employer will hold a factory job
open for a month! And they can assume that moving expenses are trivial for an unemployed person.
Our trade partners have not attempted anything remotely resembling balanced trade with us.
Here are the trade deficits since 1992.
Year__________US Trade Balance with the world
1992__________-39,212
1993__________-70,311
1994__________-98,493
1995__________-96,384
1996__________-104,065
1997__________-108,273
1998__________-166,140
1999__________-258,617
2000__________-372,517
2001__________-361,511
2002__________-418,955
2003__________-493,890
2004__________-609,883
2005__________-714,245
2006__________-761,716
2007__________-705,375
2008__________-708,726
2009__________-383,774
2010__________-494,658
2011__________-548,625
2012__________-536,773
2013__________-461,876
2014__________-490,176
2015__________-500,361
From:
https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/historical/gands.pdf
AND there is the loss of the income from tariffs which had been going to the federal government!
How has that effected our national debt?
"However, when employment across geographical locations is complementary for firms that do
significantly different work at home and abroad, domestic and foreign employment rise and fall
together."
And exactly how do you think that the US government could guarantee that complementary work
at home and abroad. Corporations are profit seeking, amoral entities, which will seek profit any
way they can. (Legal or illegal)
The logical conclusion of your argument is that we could produce nothing and still have a thriving
economy. How would American consumers earn an income?
Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are RUST BELT states. Were the voters
there merely ignorant or demented? You should never ever run for elected office.
Beverly Mann November 29, 2016 12:30 pm
Meanwhile, Trump today chose non-swampy Elaine Chao, Mitch McConnell's current wife and GWBush's
former Labor Secretary, as Transportation Secretary, to privatize roads, bridges, etc.
JimH November 29, 2016 12:36 pm
The trade balances are in millions of dollars in the table in my last comment.
Global trade had a chance of success beginning in 1992. But that required a mechanism which
was very difficult to game. A mechanism like the one that the Obama administration advocated in
October 2010.
"At the meeting in South Korea's southern city of Gyeongju, U.S. officials sought to set a
cap for each country's deficit or surplus at 4% of its economic output by 2015.
The idea drew support from Britain, Australia, Canada and France, all of which are running trade
deficits, as well as South Korea, which is hosting the G-20 meetings and hoping for a compromise
among the parties.
But the proposal got a cool reception from export powerhouses such as China, which has a current
account surplus of 4.7% of its gross domestic product; Germany, with a surplus of 6.1%; and Russia,
with a surplus of 4.7%, according to IMF statistics."
See:
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/24/business/la-fi-g20-summit-20101024
That cap was probably too high. But at least the Obama administration showed some realization
that global trade was exhibiting serious unpredicted problems. Too bad that Hillary Clinton could
not have internalized that realization enough to campaign on revamping problematic trade treaties.
(And persuaded a few more of the voters in the RUST BELT to vote for her.) Elections have consequences
and voters understand that, but what choice did they have?
In your world, while American corporations act out in ways that would be diagnosed as antisocial
personality disorder in a human being, American human beings are expected to wait patiently for
decades while global trade is slowly adjusted into some practical system. (As one shortcoming
after another is addressed.)
The article states almost exactly what you 'add' in your comment:
"Imports and foreign production, therefore, have had an impact on manufacturing employment
in the U.S. But several caveats should be raised. First, as Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
of MIT and others have pointed out, technology has had a much larger effect on jobs".
So, what gives? Is there an award today for who ever gets the biggest DUH??? If there is anything
worth adding, it would be a mention of the Ball St study that supports the author's claim but
is somehow overlooked. But your comment, well, DUH!!
=================================================
JimH,
Some good stuff there, your assessment of Economics and its penchant for ignoring variables,
and your insight which states that "studies can assume that we are one contiguous job market",
is all very true, and especially when it comes to immigration issues. I've lived most of my life
near the Southern border and when economists claim that undocumented workers are good for our
economy I can only chuckle and shake my head. I suppose I could also list all of the variables
which those economists ignore, and there are many to choose from, but, there is that quote by
Upton Sinclair: "You can't get a man to understand what his salary depends on his not understanding".
In all fairness though, The Dept. of Labor does of course have its JOLTS data, and so not all
such studies are based on broad assumptions, but Economics does have its blind spots, generally
speaking. And of course economists apply far too much effort and energy serving their political
and financial masters.
As for your comment in regards to the the trade deficit, you might want to read up a little
on the Triffin Dilemma. The essence of globalization has a lot to do with the US leadership choosing
to maintain the reserve-currency status and Triffin showed that an increasing amount of dollars
must supply the world's demand for dollars, or, global growth would falter. So, the trade deficit
since 1975 has been intentional, for that reason, and others. Of course the cost of labor in the
US was a factor too, and shipping and standards and so on. But, it is wise also, to remember that
these choices were made at time, during and just after the Viet Nam war, when military recruitment
was a very troubling issue for the leadership. And the option of good paying jobs for the working-class
was very probably seen as in conflict with military recruitment. Accordingly, the working-class
has been left with fewer options. This being accomplished in part with the historical anomaly
of high immigration quotas, (and by the tolerance for illegal immigration), during periods with
high unemployment, a falling participation-rate, inadequate infrastructure, and etc.
Ray LaPan-Love November 29, 2016 2:18 pm
JimH,
After posting my earlier comment it occurred to me that I should have recommended an article
by Tim Taylor that has some good info on the Triffin dilemma.
Also, it might be worth mentioning that you are making the common mistake of assigning blame
to an international undertaking that would be more accurately assigned to national shortcomings.
I'm referring here to what you quoted and said:
""Overall, most studies find evidence of positive net benefits from trade.""
"Of course they do! And in your world, studies always Trump real world experience".
My point being that "positive net benefits from trade" are based on just another half-baked
measurement as you suggest, but the problems which result from trade-related displacements are
not necessarily the fault of trade itself. There are in fact political options, for example, immigration
could have been curtailed about 40 years ago and we would now have about 40 million fewer citizens,
and thus there would almost certainly be more jobs available. Or, the laws pertaining to illegal
immigration could have been enforced, or the 'Employee Free Choice Act could have been passed,
or whatever, and then trade issues may have had much different impact.
Ray LaPan-Love November 29, 2016 3:12 pm
It seems worth mentioning here, that there are other more important goals that make globalization
valuable than just matters of money or employment or who is getting what. Let us not forget the
famous words of Immanuel Kant:
"the spirit of commerce . . . sooner or later takes hold of every nation, and is incompatible
with war."
coberly November 29, 2016 6:33 pm
Ray
the spirit of commerce did not prevent WW1 or WW2.
otherwise, thank you, and Jim H and Joseph Joyce for the first Post and Comments for grownups
we've had around here in some time.
Ray LaPan-Love November 29, 2016 7:03 pm
Hey Coberly, long time no see.
And yes, you are right, 'the spirit of commerce' theory has had some ups and downs. But, one
could easily and accurately argue that the effort which began with the League of Nations, and
loosely connects back to Kant's claim, has gained some ground since WW2. There has not, after-all,
been a major war since.
So, when discussing the pros and cons of globalization, that factor, as I said, is worthy of
mention. And it was a key consideration in the formation of the Bretton Woods institutions, and
in the globalization effort in general. This suggesting then that there are larger concerns than
the unemployment-rate, or the wage levels, of the working-class folks who may, or may not, have
been at the losing end of 'free-trade'.
I've been a 'labor-lefty' since the 1970s, but I am still capable of understanding that things
could have been much worse for the American working-class. Plus, if anyone must give up a job,
who better than those with a fairly well-constructed safety-net. History always has its winners
and losers, and progress rarely, if ever, comes in an even flow.
Meanwhile, those living in extreme poverty, worldwide, have dropped from 40% in 1981, to about
10% in 2015 (World Bank), so, progress is occurring. But of course much of that is now being ignored
by the din which has drowned out so many considerations that really do matter, and a great deal.
coberly November 29, 2016 8:25 pm
Ray
I am inclined to agree with you, but sometimes it's hard to see the forest for the trees. Especially
if one of those trees has fallen on you.
In general I am more interested in stopping predatory business models that really hurt people
than in creating cosmic justice.
as for the relative lack of big wars since WW2, I always thought that was because of mutual
assured destruction. I am sure Vietnam looked like a big enough war to the Vietnamese.
"... I think tribalism is a bad term to describe this phenomenon. In reality what we see should be properly called "far right nationalism". And in several countries this is a specific flavor of far right nationalism which is called neofascism ..."
"... Brexit is just a symptom of growing resistance to neoliberalism, and the loss of power of neoliberal propaganda. Much like "Prague Spring" was in the past. ..."
"... the sustainability of modern far right nationalism depends mainly on continuation of austerity policies and uncontrolled neoliberal globalization with its outsourcing of local manufacturing, services and replacing well paying jobs with McJobs. Which cannot be stopped without betraying of fundamental tenets of neoliberalism as an ideology and economic theory. ..."
"... Thanks to "neoliberalism achievements" far right nationalism already achieved the status of mass movement with own political party(ies) in most EU countries. Trump_vs_deep_state in the USA is pretty modest demonstration of the same trend in comparison with EuroMaydan (Yanukovich government was a typical corrupt neoliberal government). And first attempts might fail (as they failed in Ukraine) ..."
Since the collapse of faith in neoliberalism following the Global Financial Crisis, the
political right has been increasingly dominated by tribalism
The sustainability of tribalism as a political force will depend, in large measure, on
the perceived success or failure of Brexit.
I see it differently. I think tribalism is a bad term to describe this phenomenon. In reality
what we see should be properly called "far right nationalism". And in several countries this is
a specific flavor of far right nationalism which is called neofascism , if we understand
neofascism as
neofascism = fascism
– physical violence as the main tool of controlling opposition
– attempts to replace parliamentary democracy with the authoritarian rule
+ some degree of acceptance of "unearned income" and financial oligarchy
+ weaker demands for social protection of middle class and Drang nach Osten
Brexit is just a symptom of growing resistance to neoliberalism, and the loss of power
of neoliberal propaganda. Much like "Prague Spring" was in the past.
And the sustainability of modern far right nationalism depends mainly on continuation of
austerity policies and uncontrolled neoliberal globalization with its outsourcing of local manufacturing,
services and replacing well paying jobs with McJobs. Which cannot be stopped without betraying
of fundamental tenets of neoliberalism as an ideology and economic theory.
Thanks to "neoliberalism achievements" far right nationalism already achieved the status
of mass movement with own political party(ies) in most EU countries. Trump_vs_deep_state in the USA is pretty
modest demonstration of the same trend in comparison with EuroMaydan (Yanukovich government was
a typical corrupt neoliberal government). And first attempts might fail (as they failed in Ukraine)
In other words neoliberalism is digging its own grave, but not the way Marx assumed.
"... Moreover, the use of labels such as "populist right" are not really helping. Populism is not an ideology. The widespread use of the term by the majority of commentators distracts from the true nature of far-right parties. ..."
"... Are we then really sure that these movements moderated their agenda? In fact, they promote a narrow concept of community, that excludes all the "different" and foreigners. ..."
"... "Our European cultures, our values and our freedom are under attack. They are threatened by the crushing and dictatorial powers of the European Union. They are threatened by mass immigration, by open borders and by a single European currency," ..."
"... The Austrian Freedom Party , on a similar line, "supports the interests of all German native speakers from the territories of the former Habsburg monarchy" and the "right of self-determination" of the German-speaking Italian bordering region of South Tyrol. ..."
"... On the other hand, Marine Le Pen, president of the French National Front, promotes a principle of "national priority" for French citizens in many areas, from welfare to jobs in the public sector. ..."
Around a decade ago, Columbia University historian Robert Paxton rightly pointed out how "a fascism
of the future - an emergency response to some still unimagined crisis - need not resemble classical
fascism perfectly in its outward signs and symbols ... the enemy would not necessarily be Jews.
An authentically popular fascism in America would be pious, anti-black, and, since September 11,
2001, anti-Islamic as well; in Western Europe it would be secular and, these days, more likely anti-Islamic
than anti-Semitic; and in Russia and Eastern Europe it would be religious, anti-Semitic, Slavophile,
and anti- Western.
New fascisms would probably prefer the mainstream patriotic dress of their own place and time."
Does any of this sound familiar across the Atlantic?
Moreover, the use of labels such as "populist right" are not really helping. Populism is not
an ideology. The widespread use of the term by the majority of commentators distracts from the true
nature of far-right parties.
Are we then really sure that these movements moderated their agenda? In fact, they promote
a narrow concept of community, that excludes all the "different" and foreigners.
There is also a sense of decline and threat that was widely exploited by interwar fascism, and
by these extreme-right parties, which - after 1945 - resisted immigration on the grounds of defending
the so-called "European civilization".
The future of Europe?
The future of European societies could, however, follow these specific lines: "Our European
cultures, our values and our freedom are under attack. They are threatened by the crushing and dictatorial
powers of the European Union. They are threatened by mass immigration, by open borders and by a single
European currency," as Marcel de Graaff, co-president of the Europe of Nations and Freedom group
in the European Parliament, declared.
Another fellow party, the Belgian
Vlaams Belang , calls for an opposition to multiculturalism. It "defends the interests of the
Dutch-speaking people wherever this is necessary", and would "dissolve Belgium and establish an independent
Flemish state. This state ... will include Brussels", the current capital of the EU institutions.
The Austrian
Freedom Party , on a similar line, "supports the interests of all German native speakers from
the territories of the former Habsburg monarchy" and the "right of self-determination" of the German-speaking
Italian bordering region of South Tyrol.
On the other hand, Marine Le Pen, president of the French National Front, promotes a principle
of "national priority" for French citizens in many areas, from welfare to jobs in the public sector.
She also wants to renegotiate the European treaties and establish a "
pan-European Union " including Russia.
At the end of these inward-looking changes, there will be no free movement of Europeans across
Europe, and this will be replaced with a reconsolidation of the sovereignty of nation states.
Resentments among regional powers might rise again, while privileges will be based on ethnic origins
- and their alleged purity. In sum, this is how Europe will probably look if one follows the "moderate"
far-right policies. The dream of building the United States of Europe will become an obsolete memory
of the past. And the old continent will be surely less similar to the post-national one which guaranteed
peace and - relative - prosperity after the disaster of World War II.
Andrea Mammone is a historian of modern Europe at Royal Holloway, University of London.
He is the author of "Transnational Neofascism in France and Italy". He is currently writing a book
on the recent nationalist turn in Europe.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect
Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
Exception of course are refugees (which one could say we have some moral responsibility to
rescue since our 15 year war in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Syria (since we are
bombing quite a bit in Syria), and many other places has more than done or bit fan disorder and
violence from which the refugees flee rather than die, ditto the children fleeing Mexico and Central
America where our war on (some people) who use drugs has created both right wing Governments and
drug gangs and associated violence.)
I think it is bad form when left wing sites repeat right-wing memes (falsehoods and half-truths),
particularly when the new right-wing authoritarian kleptocrats who are taking over the Government
are talking about rounding up, placing in concentration camps, and deporting millions of people,
citizens and non-citizens alike..
rickstersherpa, November 30, 2016 11:46 am
Just out curiosity, since Mr. Kimel used the example of Iran, there was a huge Iranian immigration
to the U.S. In sense they both support (since many of the these people were high skill immigrants)
and rebut his point (since they came from a culture he marks as particularly "foreign" to U.S.
culture.
http://xpatnation.com/a-look-at-the-history-of-iranian-immigrants-in-the-u-s/ It has actually
been an amazingly successful immigration, with many now millionaires (a mark of "success" that
I find rather reflects the worse part of America, the presumption by Americans, Rich, Middle,
or poor, that if you are not rich, you are nothing, a loser; but still it appears to be a marker
that Mr. Kimel is using.
Beverly Mann, November 30, 2016 3:47 pm
To add to Rickstersherpa's comments, I'll also point out that among the Muslim immigrants who've
committed acts of terrorism in this country, none to my knowledge was on welfare nor were their
parents on welfare, None.
This post is just the latest in what is now many-months-long series of white supremacist/ white
nationalist posts by Kimel, whose original bailiwick at this blog was standard left-of-center
economics but obviously is something close to the opposite now. He left the blog for two or three
years, and came back earlier this year unrecognizable and with a vengeance. Literally.
I was a blogger here for six-and-a-half years until earlier this month, and was among regulars
who comment in the Comments threads who repeatedly expressed dismay. Kimel's last few posts, lik
this one, are published directly under his name. Before that Dan Crawford and run75441 were posting
them for him and crediting him with the posts.
In my comments int those threads, I've suggested as you did here that this blogger belongs
at Breitbart, or more accurately, you say that this blog is providing the same type of voice as
Breitbart.
But at least Breitbart hasn't been known as left-of-center blog. Allowing these posts on a
blog that has misleads readers into thinking, if only for a moment, that maybe this guy's saying
something that you're missing, or not saying something that you think he's saying. It's really
jarring.
The Rage November 30, 2016 3:49 pm
Sorry, but leftists were the originators of anti-immigration. They blasted classical
liberals and their "open borders" to buy talent on the market rather than "building within"
and using the state to develop talent.
"right wing" Christians are some of the worst people in terms of helping the underground
railroad for immigrants in the US.
The Rage November 30, 2016 3:54 pm
Beverly, Breitbart loves illegal immigration and wants it to stay, indeed quite illegal.
You represent the problem of modern politics. Anyone you don't agree with, you start
making dialectical points rather than going under the hood to find out the point.
Jack November 30, 2016 4:24 pm
Kimel,
Your points leave out any consideration of the cultural variabilities of this host country.
Given that the USofA is a country made up of immigrants from a wide variety of places across
the globe I would think that there is some benefit to varying the sources of immigration
in the present given the past. Some of the cultural distinctions that you suggest as different
from our own are not homogeneous within our own culture. For example, I wouldn't choose
to live in some parts of the US because of the degree of antisemitism that I might find
even though I am what one might call an agnostic Jew. There are many Americans that don't
make that distinction.
Face it Mike, there is probably a place for just about anyone from any place that would
be suitable for their emigration within the US. We don't all have to share the same values
with the new comer. We don't share values amongst ourselves as it is. We've got large numbers
of immigrants and their off spring from the Far East, South East Asia, Africa, South America
and the middle East. We even have many Europeans. Keep in mind that that last category is
made up of people who have spent the past two thousand years trying as hard as possible
to kill one another. So who is to say what immigrant group is best for the US? We've been
moving backwards for the past several decades. Maybe we need some new blood to get thinks
going forward again.
Beverly Mann November 30, 2016 4:27 pm
Apparently you aren't able to distinguish between racist proclamations and fears unrelated
to racism and ethnicity bias masquerading as "cultural" differences, on the one hand, and immigrants
willing to work for lower wages irrespective of their race and ethnicity, on the other hand,
The Rage. Even when the writer is extremely open, clear, and repetitive about his claims.
Rickstersherpa and I are able to make that distinction, and have done so.
Beverly Mann November 30, 2016 4:34 pm
CORRECTED COMMENT: Apparently, The Rage, you aren't able to distinguish between racist proclamations
masquerading as "cultural" differences, on the one hand, and fears unrelated to racism and
ethnicity bias, that immigrants willing to work for lower wages will put downward pressure
on wages in this country, irrespective of the race and ethnicity or the immigrant willing to
work for the low wages. Even when the writer is extremely open, clear, and repetitive about
his claims.
Rickstersherpa and I are able to make that distinction, and have done so.
(Definitely a cut-and-paste issue there with that first comment, which I accidentally clicked
"Post Comment" for before it was ready for posting.)
Jack, November 30, 2016 4:45 pm
I will accept one category of immigrant for exclusion. No identifiable criminals allowed.
We haven't always done so well on that trait. So let's do a better job of excluding those seeking
admission who can be shown to be actively involved with any form of criminal behavior. That
goes for Euros, Russians, Chinese, South Americans, etc. That also includes very wealthy criminals
whose wealth is the result of their positions of authority in their home country.
"The fact that there is homegrown dysfunction isn't a good argument for importing more dysfunction."
What manner of dysfunction beyond criminality did you have in mind?
" it makes sense to be selective, both for our sake and the sake of those who are unlikely
to function well and would become alienated and unable to fend for themselves in the US." Please
define "unlikely to function well" more precisely. Remember that the goal of our immigration
quotas is to allow a reasonable balance of people from varying countries to achieve admission.
"To be blunt, some people have attitudes that allow them to function well in the West. Typically
they are dissidents in non Western countries." That statement is generally problematic. What
measure of attitude do we use here? Is it the rabble rousers that you want to give preference
to? Then why only from non Western countries?
This idea of McCarthy style attack turned in promotion with some sites having large flow of
donations from outrages readers.
Notable quotes:
"... By Max Blumenthal, a senior editor of the Grayzone Project at AlterNet, and the award-winning author of Goliath and Republican Gomorrah. His most recent book is The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza. Follow him on Twitter at @MaxBlumenthal. Originally published at Alternet ..."
"... it was created about three months ago when the Red baiting was already in full swing in the media. ..."
"... it now has a wikipedia page as of 15 Nov. ..."
"... Congratulations! That site is like a who's who of influential critical reporting. I suspect, as with so many of the bubble-dwellers attempts, that this slapdash but probably overpriced effort will drive traffic to those sites while reducing the credibility of its promoters. An instant classic own-goal. I look forward to the inevitable and embarassing revelations about their founders and funding. ..."
"... Under general tenets of defamation law (statutory and in common law), it is not just the original entity or person defaming (including defamation "per se") another that is liable for such torts, but others who carelessly or recklessly repeat the original defamatory statements/claims (in this case, both The Washington Post & New York Times bear similar potential liability as PropOrNot). ..."
"... Requires actual malice since it's the media you're suing – but that can be proven by reckless indifference to the truth which this might actually meet the standard of, especially since the site isn't making this claim based on anything other than the content of the views espoused by the sites. ..."
"... i vaguely thought the actual malice requirement was tied to the target being a public figure; maybe running a blog qualifies. ..."
"... Propornot is directly accusing NC and the rest of a crime (espionage), which constitutes defamation per se, so I think the only issue before the court would be whether it was done with reckless indifference. ..."
"... The MSM did such a fine job reporting the news during the campaign. (16 anti-Sanders stories in 16 hours from the WaPo. A new record.) Are small news/opinion sites cutting into their online advertising revenue. ;) ..."
"... Second, had you bothered to read the actual PropOrNot site, it accuses all of the sites listed as being "propaganda outlets" under the influence of "coordinators abroad" (#11 in its FAQ). ..."
"... And under #7, PropOrNot asserts that "some" of the sites are guilty of violating the Espionage Act and the Foreign Agent Registration Act, as in accusing them of being spies and calling for investigation (by implication of all, since how do you know which is or isn't) by the FBI and DoJ. ..."
"... Their MSM propaganda isn't working and they see it. They already heavily censor comments on their MSM sites. Other MSM sights such as Bloomberg closed down comments altogether. Expect more of that. ..."
"... what weakens people's confidence in their leaders is their not addressing people's issues and lying about their inability to do so. Despite protestations from the likes of much of our 'intelligentsia', mainstream media, and most of our political class, the majority of people are not stupid. There is a reason why terms like 'lame stream media' resonate with a large number of people. ..."
"... For instance when Obama is out there talking about a recovery and people know that there is no such thing in their lives, their communities then HE has lost their confidence – not someone giving an interview on RT. ..."
"... Or to put it another way the problem isn't someone going on RT and saying the emperor isn't wearing clothes, the problem is that the emperor isn't wearing clothes. ..."
"... Steve Keen is great, and I love his work, but it's also obvious that RT invites him on the network because he lambasts the American political establishment and weakens the public's confidence in its leaders. This is clearly a goal of Moscow, and they use people like Steve Keen to do it. I'm sure Steven Keen doesn't think of his role that way, but RT and Russian intelligence certainly do. ..."
"... How do you know any of this? how would you know would Russian intelligence's goals are, or how they think of Steve Keen? this is all just McCarthyism 2016, accusing the left of being dupes or willing agents of Russia. McCarthy had his 200 communists in the state department, this website and the Washington Post have their 200 Russian propaganda websites. Why are you catapulting this bullshit? ..."
"... James do you happen to remember when those intelligence agencies reported Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction.? How about when North Korea hacked Sony? Both of which were inaccurate and dare I say it propaganda intended to mislead the American public. ..."
"... Why does Naval Intelligence have anything to do with this investigation? ..."
"... Why were 17 agencies watching the DNC? ..."
"... The immediate claims that Russia hacked the DNC were never credible to any one with even a bit of knowledge about high level hacking. The 17 agency thing was outright laughable once you asked the simple question of what most of them had to do with this investigation. And USA Today was and is the print equivalent of the Yahoo front page. ..."
"... oh so now you're an intelligence expert, but somehow you still don't have any evidence, because the "17 intelligence agencies" don't have any evidence either. they didn't have evidence of wmd's but i bet you fell for that, too. i think the most dishonest line in your post is this: You should wander out of the alt-left echo chamber once in a while and stop thinking that any criticism of Russia is 'red-baiting' and propaganda ..."
"... If Russia is actively trying to influence American politics, then they have been far more effective than the US and get a much bigger bang for their buck. For one thing, they didn't have to drop a single bomb to effect a regime change. So assuming you are correct, the noise is just a hysterical regime change envy. ..."
"... So are RT and Sputnik propaganda outlets? Sometimes they are, but sometimes they report the truth that our MSM, having given up the last shreds of their journalistic integtity in return for access, won't report. ..."
"... Given the widespread funding of media (including government-owned media) by Western governments, I would say that US and Euro hysteria about Russian propaganda, real and imagined, is yet another off-putting display of noxious American exceptionalism. ..."
"... I grew up listening to broadcasts of RFE and VOA behind the Iron Curtain, and mixed in with honest reporting was a heavy dose of propaganda aimed at weakening Eastern European governments. Now, it is the America For Bulgaria Foundation that funds several media outlets in the country. What they all have in common is rabid Russophobia-driven editorial stances, and one can easily conclude that it is driven by the almighty dollar rather than by honest, deeply held convictions. So, America can do it but whines like a toddler when it is allegedly done to it?! What a crock. ..."
"... The worst thing is that regardless of whatever propaganda wars are going on, this list constitutes a full frontal attack on free speech in the alleged "Land of the Free." Besides NC, there are number of sites distinguished by thorough, quality reporting of the kind that WaPo and NYT no longer engage in. Having grown up behind the Iron Curtain, this is chilling to me. Dissident voices speaking against the endless wars for profit and neoliberalism are in effect being intimidated and smeared by anonymous thugs. This, while the militarized local police and federal agencies, closely coordinated by "fusion centers", have ruthlessly put down a number of citizen protests, have engaged in spying on all of us, and have gone after whistleblowers for exposing the reach and scope of the surveillance state. These are the hallmarks of dictatorships, not of the alleged "world's greatest democracy and beacon of freedom." What the eff happened to America, and why are you equating challenging the oppressive and exploitative status quo with being "unwitting Russian dupes?" Seems to me that the useful idi0t here is you, with all due respect. ..."
"... American intelligence uses exactly the same tactics, and has since at least WW1. Selling the American public on the Iraq war is a classic example. Remember that all news is biased, some much more so than others (we report, you decide.) ..."
"... The advent of the internet and the subsequent broadening of readily available news of all slants has made it much harder for any intelligence agency of any specific country to control the news( but it has made it extremely easy for them to monitor what we are reading). ..."
"... . The normal tell for this is being state sponsored, or having a big sugar daddy providing the funding, and Yves doesn't have any of that. ..."
"... Some of us happen to believe that 'lambast[ing] the American political establishment and weaken[ing] the public's confidence in its leaders' is in the best interests of everyone on the planet, including the American public. If that constitutes propaganda, I'm not about to look that gift horse in the mouth. RT isn't perfect – I personally find their relentless cheerleading for economic growth rather wearying – but it knocks spots off the competition and consistently sends me scurrying to the internet to chase up on new faces and leads. I'm grateful for that. ..."
"... Steve Keen is great, and I love his work, but it's also obvious ..."
"... It is obvious that Russia has been trying to influence American politics. The very existence of RT makes that obvious. What is not obvious is why modestly left-of-center Americans' political concerns should be subject to McCarthyite attacks in our most influential news outlets. We've been subject to internally generated far-right propaganda for decades now and have seen minimal, feeble 'mainstream' efforts to counter it. The far right has done tremendous damage to our nation and is poised to do much more now that its doyens control all branches of the federal government. ..."
"... What I interpret this as is a strike by 'think tank' grifters against those who are most likely to damage their incomes, their prestige and their exceedingly comfortable berths on the Acela corridor. It's a slightly panicky, febrile effort by a bunch of heels who are looking at losing their mid-6-figure incomes . and becoming like so many of the rest of us: over-credentialed, under-paid and unable to afford life in the charming white parts of our coastal metropolises. ..."
"... You've just libeled me. You have no evidence whatsoever to substantiate your claim. Nor do you have any evidence that Russia has been "aggressively" trying to influence US politics. This is one of many hysterical lines offered by Team Dem over the course of this election, up there with depicting all Trump voters as racist yahoos. ..."
"... "Russia is aggressively trying to influence American politics" Apparently with the help of Hillz. Was her decision to use a private email server made with the help of Putin? ..."
"... If you'd like, take a trip in the Wayback Machine to 1959. Then you'll find many criticisms of US society by the Civil Rights movement sharing the same sinister tone as criticisms made by Soviet new outlets. Then you'll also find a gaggle of US pols and their minions claiming on that basis that the Civil Rights movement is communist inspired, funded, and run. Then you'll also find many people who don't bother to distinguish source from story and end up enjoying the official Kool Aid. ..."
"... It reminds me of a story from Northern Ireland in the 1960's when the leader of a civil rights march was asked by a BBC reporter 'is it true that your organisation has been infiltrated by radicals and communists?' His reply was to sigh and say 'I f**king wish it was true'. ..."
"... @hemeantwell – This same claim of communist inspiration and connection was also thrown at the anti-war movement. I remember arguing with a friend of my parents in the summer of 1969, after my freshman year at college where I was active in the anti-war and anti-draft movements. After countering all of the arguments made by this gentleman, he was left with nothing to say but "Well, that's the Commie's line " as a final dismissal. ..."
"... Right up to his death on 4 Apr 1968, Martin Luther King was accused by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI of "knowingly, willingly and regularly cooperating with and taking guidance from communists." Now there's a US national holiday in King's honor. ..."
"... It's all propaganda of one sort or another. I exhort you to read Plato and understand that the Sophists for which Socrates held so much ire are much the same as anon and administration sources for so much of what drives journalism. ..."
"... NC separates the wheat from the chaff. ..."
"... Verdict on PropOrNot: Looks like Prop to me. Getting really sloppy, Oligarchy ..."
"... This has all the earmarks of an effort by the Nuland Neocons that joined Camp Hillary, and now in defeat constitute a portion Hillary's professional dead enders. ..."
"... Camp Hillary, as you call it, has decamped and is on the march. It has powerful allies in the intelligence community, the media and actors on the world stage who deem Trump to be an existential threat to America and world. The story of Russian inspired fake news is paving the way for regime change, an HRC specialty. The recount is the tip of the spear. If they can pull this coup off, sites like this will move from the useful idiot category to the enemy of the state category overnight. ..."
"... Manfred Keeting November 26, 2016 at 4:01 am If you weren't on the Nixon's enemies list, there was something wrong with you ..."
"... First as tragedy, then as farce. People literally killed themselves because of McCarthyism. No one is going to kill themselves over this farce. ..."
"... Aha, I have solved the mystery. It is elementary my dear Watson! The PropOrNot site is itself a Russian propaganda ploy on the part of the KGB! What? errr, ok, the FSB then. ..."
"... But Max himself is an interesting character. I've been scratching my head wondering how a guy one step removed (Sidney Blumenthal) from the Clintons' inner circles is ambitious about exposing the ludicrous claims made by those same people regarding Palestine and Syria. ..."
"... I like the idea some commenter had (too lazy to find it right now) that all these strategems were long-prepared, and in place for a Clinton victory. Now the Clinton faction in the political class is deploying them anyhow. They'd better hurry, because influence peddling at the Clinton Foundation isn't as lucrative as it once was . ..."
"... For long time readers this russian(chinese) propaganda should be obvious. And it is ok, get used to it. Great opportunity to learn "how to read between the lines", and when you understand, solidifying into a basic skill. ..."
"... Be careful NC. MSM are in panic. They see that their propaganda is less and less effective and start targeting those who offer an alternative against their obsolete narratives. Be prepared: when they will realize that these don't work at all, their fake democracy will become an open dictatorship. ..."
"... The US MSM is all propaganda all the time-every bit as bad as Pravda ever was. RT now is the "anti-propaganda." They were even carrying Jesse Ventura and other Americans who are blacklisted by the MSM. ..."
"... This is a "hail mary pass." ..."
"... A hail mary pass that was intercepted by the opposing team and run back for a touchdown. ..."
"... What exactly is the origin of the Russia bashing that's been going on as of late? I feel like I missed some important public dis somewhere that would explain it all. Condoleeza Rice's general dated anti-Soviet attitude I could understand, but that doesn't explain the escalating bigotry pouring out of Obama and Clinton (and their various surrogates). Is it a case of a bomb in search of a war? ..."
"... Looks to me like it came out of the HRC campaign. ..."
"... What exactly is the origin of the Russia bashing that's been going on as of late? I think it can be traced back to this . ..."
"... I don't think there is an easy answer to your question, but I think it goes around to the failed Ukrainian coup (well, partially failed) and the realisation within a certain element of the neocon establishment that Putin had been inadvertently strengthened by their policy failures in the Ukraine and Syria. I think there was a concerted element within the Blob to refocus on 'the Russian threat' to cover up their failures in the Middle East and the refusal of the Chinese to take the bait in the Pacific. ..."
"... This rolled naturally into concerns about cyberwar and it was a short step from there to using Russian cyberespionage to cover up the establishments embarrassment over wikileaks and multiple other failures exposed by outsiders. As always, when a narrative suits (for different reasons) the two halves of the establishment, the mainstream media is always happy to run it unquestioningly. ..."
"... So in short, I think its a mixture of genuine conspiracy, mixed in with political opportunism. ..."
"... Listen to Gore Vidal (in 1994!) and find out why: https://www.c-span.org/video/?61333-1/state-united-states ..."
"... That is very good question and it does not have a simple answer. I have been pondering this for 8 years now. The latest bout of Russia-hatred began as Putin began to re-assert their sovereignty after the disastrous Yeltsin years. This intensified after Georgia, Ukraine and Syria. In adddition the US was preprogrammed to hate Russia for historical reasons. Mostly because of the Soviet era but also when the US inherited the global empire from the Brits we also got some of their dislike of the Russian empire dating back to the 19th century. ..."
"... It all started when Putin arrested the Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, when Putin put a stop to the shock therapy looting of Russia by the Harvard mafia and Jeffrey Sachs. Didn't he know that oligarch's are above the law? They are in the US. Didn't he know that money can buy you immunity from prosecution like it does in Europe and the US? Can't have that, hence the Ukraine, deprive him of his warm water naval base. Then there was the Crimean referendum. Out smarted again! Can't have that! ..."
"... And so the Democratic Party ends, not with a bang, but with a McCarthyite lynch mob. ..."
"... Didn't we used to call "fake news" rumors? And when did newspapers stop printing rumors? ..."
"... Based on the evidence of above mentioned link, this "PropOrNot" can be part of a project of U.S. government to manipulate media to create an anti-Russia climate or more likely another method of attack on what they consider "Left" so status quo in economic policies of U.S. can be maintained. ..."
"... it scares the pants off me ..."
"... I'm with you Tom Stone. There is nothing funny about this. The MSM at this point is the greatest purveyor of fake news on the planet, I am talking about not just CNN and Fox, but the BBC, France24 and so on. ..."
"... Pretty much everything they have said and every video they has shown on east Aleppo is either a lie or a fake. As someone noted the other day (I can't remember who) if the stories about east Aleppo were actually true, then the Russians and Syrians have destroyed approximately 900 hospitals – including the 'last pediatric hospital in east Aleppo' which has been completely demolished on at least three separate occasions in the last few months. The main stream outlets don't even try to be consistent. ..."
"... It's 90 hospitals not 900, but 90 is just as ridiculous given the whole country of Syria only has 88 hospitals/clinics. ..."
"... Weapons of Mass Distraction. Another nail in the coffin of credibility of the NYT and WaPo. Recall after the Stupid War and how there were zero weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq that the NYT and Wapo declined to mention or explore their own culpability in beating the drums of war. This will be more of the same. ..."
"... I suspect that PropOrNot's outburst was developed during the campaign by well heeled and connected Hilary supporters to be unveiled after the election to muzzle increasingly influential web sites including NC. As it stands PropOrNot shot a blank. If Hilary had won the campaign against "fake news" would probably have taken on a more ominous tone. ..."
"... PropOrNot is asserting that the sites on the 'List", both right and left, were responsible for the Clinton loss by spreading false Russian propaganda. This would make more sense, as a political project, if Clinton had won. Asking the Trump DOJ and Trump's/Comey's FBI to investigate the asserted causes of Trump's win is bizarre. ..."
"... Excellent observation, preparation for a post Killery election purge of the alternate media. ..."
"... Lots of panic for the Washington regime. The clownish asshole loser that they carefully groomed proved less repulsive than their chosen Fuehrer Clinton. Now they are distraught to see that their enemy Russia sucks much less than the USA. ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... Jill Stein has embarrassed herself with this effort. I gave money to her until she made her final vp choice – Baraka called Bernie a white supremacist! I did vote for her and now feel it really was a wasted vote. 1% in the national totals. Ok. Being a useful idiot for the Clintons – no way. ..."
"... When the rot is complete and the edifice tumbles? Or when TINA wins, and the voices go silent? My bet is on the later. Collectively, the money got all 4 aces (and a few more hidden up their sleaves and a few more hidden in their boots, etc – no end of aces.) ..."
"... Charles Hugh-Smith's response to the "list": "The Washington Post: Useful-Idiot Shills for a Failed, Frantic Status Quo That Has Lost Control of the Narrative" ..."
Yves here. As indicated in Links, we'll have more to say about this in due course. Note, however,
that as Blumenthal points out, some of the sites that are listed as PropOrNot allies receive US government
funding. As Mark Ames pointed out via e-mail, "The law is still clear that US State Dept money and
probably BBG money cannot be used
to propagandize American audiences." So if these sites really are "allies" in terms of providing
hard dollars or other forms of support (shared staff, research), this site and its allies may be
in violation of US statutes.
By Max Blumenthal, a senior editor of the Grayzone Project at AlterNet, and the award-winning
author of Goliath and Republican Gomorrah. His most recent book is The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance
in Gaza. Follow him on Twitter at @MaxBlumenthal. Originally published at
Alternet
A shady website that claims
"Russia is Manipulating US Opinion Through Online Propaganda" has compiled a blacklist of websites
its anonymous authors accuse of pushing fake news and Russian propaganda. The blacklist includes
over 200 outlets, from the right-wing Drudge Report and Russian government-funded Russia Today, to
Wikileaks and an array of marginal conspiracy and far-right sites. The blacklist also includes some
of the flagship publications of the progressive left, including Truthdig, Counterpunch, Truthout,
Naked Capitalism, and the Black Agenda Report, a leftist African-American opinion hub that is critical
of the liberal black political establishment.
Called PropOrNot, the blacklisting organization was described by the Washington Post's Craig Timberg
as "a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds."
The Washington Post agreed to preserve the anonymity of the group's director on the grounds that
exposure could result in their being targeted by "Russia's legions of skilled hackers." The Post
failed to explain what methods PropOrNot relied on to conclude that "stories planted or promoted
by the Russian disinformation campaign were viewed more than 213 million times." (Timberg also cited
a report co-authored by Aaron Weisburg, founder of the one-man anti-Palestinian "Internet Haganah"
operation, who has been
accused of interfering
in federal investigations, stealing the personal information of anarchists, online harassment, and
fabricating information to smear his targets.)
Despite the Washington Post's charitable description of PropOrNot as a group of independent-minded
researchers dedicated to protecting the integrity of American democracy, the shadowy group bears
many of the qualities of the red enemies it claims to be battling. In addition to its blacklist of
Russian dupes, it lists a collection of outlets funded by the U.S. State Department, NATO and assorted
tech and weapons companies as "allies." PropOrNot's methodology is so shabby it is able to peg widely
read outlets like Naked Capitalism, a leading left-wing financial news blog, as Russian propaganda
operations.
Though the supposed experts behind PropOrNot remain unknown, the site has been granted a veneer
of credibility thanks to the Washington Post, and journalists from the New York Times, including
deputy Washington editor
Jonathan
Weissman to former Obama senior advisor
Dan Pfeiffer
, are hailing Timberg's story as Pulitzer-level journalism. "Russia appears to have successfully
hacked American democracy,"
declared Sahil
Kapur, the senior political reporter for Bloomberg. The dead-enders of Hillary Clinton's campaign
for president have also seized on PropOrNot's claims as proof that the election was rigged, with
Clinton confidant and Center For American Progress president Neera Tanden
declaring
, "Wake up people," as she blasted out the Washington Post article on Russian black ops.
PropOrNot's malicious agenda is clearly spelled out on its website. While denying McCarthyite
intentions, the group is openly
attempting
to compel "formal investigations by the U.S. government, because the kind of folks who make propaganda
for brutal authoritarian oligarchies are often involved in a wide range of bad business." The group
also seeks to brand major progressive politics sites (and a number of prominent right-wing opinion
outlets) as "'gray' fake-media propaganda outlets" influenced or directly operated by Russia's Federal
Security Service (FSB). It can then compel Facebook and Google to
ban them , denying them the ad revenue they rely on to survive.
Though PropOrNot's hidden authors claim, "we do not reach our conclusions lightly," the group's
methodology leaves more than enough room to smear an outlet on political grounds. Among the criteria
PropOrNot identifies as clear signs of Russian propaganda are, "Support for policies like Brexit,
and the breakup of the EU and Eurozone" and, "Opposition to Ukrainian resistance to Russia and Syrian
resistance to Assad."
By these standards, any outlet that raises the alarm about the considerable presence of extreme
right-wing elements among the post-Maidan Ukrainian government or that questions the Western- and
Saudi-funded campaign for regime change in Syria can be designated a Russia dupe or a paid agent
of the FSB. Indeed, while admitting that they have no idea whether any of the outlets they blacklisted
are being paid by Russian intelligence or are even aware they are spreading Russian propaganda, PropOrNot's
authors concluded that any outlets that have met their highly politicized criteria "have effectively
become tools of the Russian intelligence services, and are worthy of further investigation."
Among the most ironic characteristics of PropOrNot is its claim to be defending journalistic integrity,
a rigorous adherence to the facts, and most of all, a sense of political levity. In fact, the group's
own literature reflects a deeply paranoid view of Russia and the outside world. According to PropOrNot's
website , Russia is staging a hostile takeover of America's alternative online media environment
"in order to Make Russia Great Again (as a new 'Eurasian' empire stretching from Dublin to Vladisvostok),
on the other. That means preserving Russian allies like Bashar al-Assad in Syria, breaking up the
'globalist' EU, NATO, and US-aligned trade and defense organizations, and getting countries to join
'Eurasianist' Russian equivalents Or else."
The message is clear: Stamp out the websites blacklisted by PropOrNot,or submit to the malevolent
influence of Putin's "new global empire."
Among the websites listed by PropOrNot as "allies" are a number of groups funded by the U.S. government
or NATO. They include InterpreterMag, an anti-Russian media monitoring blog
funded through
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, an arm of the U.S. government, which is edited by the hardline neoconservative
Michael Weiss. Polygraph Fact Check,
another project of Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty aimed at Russian misinformation, is listed as an "ally." So is Bellingcat, the
crowdsourced military analysis blog run by Elliot Higgins through the Atlantic Council, which receives
funding from the
U.S. State Department, various Gulf monarchies and the weapons industry. (Bellingcat is
directly funded
by Google, according to Higgins.)
Unfortunately for PropOrNot's mysterious authors, an alliance requires the consent of all parties
involved. Alerted to his designation on the website, Bellingcat's Higgins immediately disavowed it:
"Just want to note I hadn't heard of Propornot before the WP piece and never gave permission to them
to call Bellingcat 'allies,'" he
wrote .
As scrutiny of PropOrNot increases, its credibility is rapidly unraveling. But that has not stopped
Beltway media wiseguys and Democratic political operatives from hyping its claims. Fake news and
Russian propaganda have become the great post-election moral panic, a creeping Sharia-style conspiracy
theory for shell-shocked liberals. Hoping to punish the dark foreign forces they blame for rigging
the election, many of these insiders have latched onto a McCarthyite campaign that calls for government
investigations of a wide array of alternative media outlets. In this case, the medicine might be
worse than the disease.
What I meant by my sarcastic remark is that there seems to be absolutely no reason to trust
anything it says, from its content, to the fact that it was created about three months ago
when the Red baiting was already in full swing in the media.
Congratulations! That site is like a who's who of influential critical reporting. I suspect,
as with so many of the bubble-dwellers attempts, that this slapdash but probably overpriced effort
will drive traffic to those sites while reducing the credibility of its promoters. An instant
classic own-goal. I look forward to the inevitable and embarassing revelations about their founders
and funding.
The full list was a mix of really good sites and the unknown personal blogs of some whack-a
-doodles producing "content" of little value. I see the list linked to is smaller.
"Collectively, this propaganda is undermining our public discourse by providing a warped view
of the world, where Russia can do no wrong, and America is a corrupt dystopia that is tearing
itself apart."
Meanwhile publicans even they would deem credible like the L.A. times report there are 63,000
homeless youths in los angeles. Corrupt dystopia? No it can not be.
"It is vital that this effort be exposed for what it is: A coordinated attempt to deceive U.S.
citizens into acting in Russia's interests."
look idiots, the truth as I understand it is neither Russian interest NOR US government interests
are necessarily in my interest
I am an attorney. I am not soliciting or advising any entity or person, but those identified
by PropOrNot, including Naked Capitalism, should consult competent legal counsel, having appropriate
and specific experience regarding defamation law (maybe even in a "pooled," co-ordinated effort
with others' among the over 200 entities named by PropOrNot) to seek a legal opinion as to whether
there exists a viable defamation claim against The Washington Post, and also, via Weisburg, The
New York Times, as both publications repeated potentially defamatory claims made by PropOrNot.
Under general tenets of defamation law (statutory and in common law), it is not just the
original entity or person defaming (including defamation "per se") another that is liable for
such torts, but others who carelessly or recklessly repeat the original defamatory statements/claims
(in this case, both The Washington Post & New York Times bear similar potential liability as PropOrNot).
Understanding the distinction between an attorney, and *my* attorney, and as a matter of general
interest, I am curious: What about individual posters in their capacities as employees, contractors,
or just rabble?
Requires actual malice since it's the media you're suing – but that can be proven by reckless
indifference to the truth which this might actually meet the standard of, especially since the
site isn't making this claim based on anything other than the content of the views espoused by
the sites. /also an attorney but the wrong specialty. I'd be pleased to help if I can though
– all of the sites I read regularly are on the list and whoever's propaganda op the site is the
whole concept of what it represents scares the pants off me.
All private individual gets you is compensatory damages – and everyone's readership and donations
have increased.
"We hold that, so long as they do not impose liability without fault, the States may define
for themselves the appropriate standard of liability for a publisher or broadcaster of defamatory
falsehood injurious to a private individual. But this countervailing state interest extends
no further than compensation for actual injury. For the reasons stated below, we hold that
the States may not permit recovery of presumed or punitive damages, at least when liability
is not based on a showing of knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth."
Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323, 347-349 (1974).
Propornot is directly accusing NC and the rest of a crime (espionage), which constitutes
defamation per se, so I think the only issue before the court would be whether it was done with
reckless indifference.
Seriously, Yves, please feel free to contact me offlist – I would be delighted to pro bono
the heck out of this including at the direction of whoever you hire.
The MSM did such a fine job reporting the news during the campaign. (16 anti-Sanders stories
in 16 hours from the WaPo. A new record.) Are small news/opinion sites cutting into their online
advertising revenue. ;)
I like you and your blog, but I'm almost positive your site has been guilty of accidently publishing
Russian propaganda at some point. You've probably linked to stories that sound legit but can be
traced all the way back to some Russian operation like RT, even though the third party source
you got the story from seemed ok.
The creator of the app never said all the sites on the list knowingly did it.
First the fact that a story appeared on RT does not make it propaganda. We featured videos
from Ed Harrison on the RT program Boom/Bust, which is about the US economy and has featured respected
US and foreign academics, like Steve Keen.
What Steve Keen has to say is not suddenly propaganda by virtue of appearing on RT.
If you read Eddy Bernay's book Propaganda, he defines it as an entity or cause promoting its
case. Thus when a news organization that is government-affiliated, like Voice of America or RT,
presents a news story that is straight up reporting, that does not qualify as propaganda either
(like "Marine Le Pen Gains in French Polls"). In fact, for a government site to be seen as credible
when it does present propaganda, it has to do a fair bit of reasonably unbiased reporting.
Second, had you bothered to read the actual PropOrNot site, it accuses all of the sites
listed as being "propaganda outlets" under the influence of "coordinators abroad" (#11 in its
FAQ).
Several individuals on Twitter called this out as libel with respect to NC. And under #7,
PropOrNot asserts that "some" of the sites are guilty of violating the Espionage Act and the Foreign
Agent Registration Act, as in accusing them of being spies and calling for investigation (by implication
of all, since how do you know which is or isn't) by the FBI and DoJ.
And you defend this witch hunt? Seriously? Do you have any idea of what propaganda consists
of? Hint: it is not reporting accurately and skeptically.
Their MSM propaganda isn't working and they see it. They already heavily censor comments
on their MSM sites. Other MSM sights such as Bloomberg closed down comments altogether. Expect
more of that.
And they will take every measure to close down any other independent sites people have turned
to get some truth which millions of us know we aren't getting from the MSM.
Those of us who have a grasp on what is going on in this country will find #7 is very disturbing.
As it tells us what they have in mind to discredit and close down independent sites.
As you know, propaganda doesn't have to [be] false. It can be more about selectively reporting
certain facts or emphasizing certain facts over others to smear your target and mislead people.
Steve Keen is great, and I love his work, but it's also obvious that RT invites him on the network
because he lambasts the American political establishment and weakens the public's confidence in
its leaders. This is clearly a goal of Moscow, and they use people like Steve Keen to do it. I'm
sure Steven Keen doesn't think of his role that way, but RT and Russian intelligence certainly
do.
And the site clearly states that some sites are knowingly coordinating with Russian agents
(like RT) and some are likely unaware that they are being influenced. They likely think NC falls
into the unaware category.
I think they should be more specific as to what sites they believe fall into the 'knowingly'
and 'unknowingly' categories, but I also don't believe the app is an entirely crazy idea. Russia
is aggressively trying to influence American politics as we saw in the most recent US election
and coming up with a response is a good idea even if this particular one should be improved.
Um, James what weakens people's confidence in their leaders is their not addressing people's
issues and lying about their inability to do so. Despite protestations from the likes of much
of our 'intelligentsia', mainstream media, and most of our political class, the majority of people
are not stupid. There is a reason why terms like 'lame stream media' resonate with a large number
of people.
For instance when Obama is out there talking about a recovery and people know that there
is no such thing in their lives, their communities then HE has lost their confidence – not someone
giving an interview on RT.
Or to put it another way the problem isn't someone going on RT and saying the emperor isn't
wearing clothes, the problem is that the emperor isn't wearing clothes.
Pretending not to notice doesn't mean that no one has noticed. Considering the Washington/NY/California
bubble, most people probably have and have been screaming at their television that he needs to
get dressed.
what did we see in "the most recent election"? what is your evidence that Russia is "aggressively
trying to influence American politics?"
Steve Keen is great, and I love his work, but it's also obvious that RT invites him
on the network because he lambasts the American political establishment and weakens the public's
confidence in its leaders. This is clearly a goal of Moscow, and they use people like Steve
Keen to do it. I'm sure Steven Keen doesn't think of his role that way, but RT and Russian
intelligence certainly do.
How do you know any of this? how would you know would Russian intelligence's goals are,
or how they think of Steve Keen? this is all just McCarthyism 2016, accusing the left of being
dupes or willing agents of Russia. McCarthy had his 200 communists in the state department, this
website and the Washington Post have their 200 Russian propaganda websites. Why are you catapulting
this bullshit?
Well put. I could equally well argue that it's in Russia's interests that American leadership
not be questioned, if it's following policies that are clearly stupid and likely to weaken America's
position in the world. So the PropOrNot site might actually be a double blind backed by Russia,
using fear of Russian influence to manipulate people into uncritical acceptance of their leaders
and prevent questioning of poor decisions, thereby weakening America. (ALERT: If it's not obvious
to readers, this is sarcasm).
If your methodology is gazing into the tea leaves to figure out what Russia's position is,
then smearing anybody that advocates a similar position, then that's such a ridiculously flimsy
veneer of logic that it can be used to reach pretty much any conclusion you like (as my example
above demonstrates). Tell me again who is guilty of propaganda in this scenario?
I suppose all 17 intelligence agencies could be wrong.
And RT has a pattern of inviting dissidents that have extremely negative views of American
leadership. You can say this negative view justified but that doesn't negate the fact that Russia
wants to amplify that discontent as much as possible.
i suppose they still haven't provided any evidence whatsoever. just like you. What 17 agencies?
what evidence are they relying on? Why does Obama say the election was not fixed by Russia, that
there was no ramping up of cyber attacks?
You could be working for David Brock at correct the record. the way you blindly accept the
talking points of the Clinton campaign indicates that. you just keep repeating them, and don't
respond to the criticisms of propornot as a source, or the reporter who uncritically accepted
their little mccarthyite hit list. linking to a usa today article that blindly repeats the same
talking points, again sans evidence, does not support your argument.
I was not claiming Russia fixed the election results. I was referring to the email hacking
directed at the Clinton camp during the election campaign.
And my claim that Russia was likely involved in the email hacking is backed up by 17 intelligence
agencies and reporting from various independent news outlets. If you had bothered to read the
article, which you apparently didn't, you would know that the 17 agencies are the 'Office of the
Director of National Intelligence' plus the 16 agencies listed in the link available in the article
I provided.
If USA Today reporting is not credible to you but Russia Today's reporting is, then I'm afraid
your trust of Kremlin created propaganda outlets over independent news outlets only underscores
my point that Russian information warfare has been very successful at influencing and shaping
parts of American public opinion.
I also don't think US intelligence agencies would make this accusation publicly if they were
not confident. They could have just as easily made this accusation against China but have not
because it doesn't fit China's MO. Russia has engaged in similar types of email hacking operations
in former Eastern European countries it has been seeking to control and influence.
And comparing an app to McCarthyism is absurd. McCarthysim was the state targeting individuals
and organizations. This is private citizens compiling a list by their own accord, which they are
free to do. When a left wing blog makes a list of the top ten most right-wing and GOP influenced
websites, are they also engaging in 'McCarthism'? Is the left engaging in 'McCarthyism' when it
accuses Fox News of being GOP influenced propaganda? C'mon.
Regardless, I am done with this conversation for now. You can think what you want.
James do you happen to remember when those intelligence agencies reported Iraq had Weapons
of Mass Destruction.? How about when North Korea hacked Sony? Both of which were inaccurate and
dare I say it propaganda intended to mislead the American public.
Short of watching the hacking in real time there is no way those agencies would have been able
to trace any competent hacker.So here are some very serious questions for you. Do you think the
Russians hire script kiddies? Why does Naval Intelligence have anything to do with this investigation?
Same with at least half of those agencies?
Why were 17 agencies watching the DNC? Don't they have anything better to do, like
figuring out who hacked the State Department, the IRS and Social Security?
The immediate claims that Russia hacked the DNC were never credible to any one with even
a bit of knowledge about high level hacking. The 17 agency thing was outright laughable once you
asked the simple question of what most of them had to do with this investigation. And USA Today
was and is the print equivalent of the Yahoo front page.
You say you are done, but I sincerely hope so e of what was said here percolates in your thoughts.
Most of us here understand propaganda, misinformation, and yes confirmation bias. You seem to
need to learn to look critically at your usual sources as well as those you have warned about.
Being wrong about something in the past doesn't mean you are always wrong. In fact, the CIA
and FBI have been on the money about countless things in the past, but I'm sure you know this
and are just trying to deflect. And it's not true that NK being involved in the Sony hack has
been debunked. Opinion is mixed among independent security analysts. Look it up.
And I think you should take your own advice as far as confirmation bias and understanding propaganda
are concerned. Nobody who relies on FSB cut outs like RT for information and analysis has room
to talk about their intelligence and critical thinking. NC and other alternative 'anti-establishment'
news sources you consume are full of their own bias. You should wander out of the alt-left echo
chamber once in a while and stop thinking that any criticism of Russia is 'red-baiting' and propaganda.
Mr. Putin isn't a damsel in distress that needs your defending.
oh so now you're an intelligence expert, but somehow you still don't have any evidence,
because the "17 intelligence agencies" don't have any evidence either. they didn't have evidence
of wmd's but i bet you fell for that, too. i think the most dishonest line in your post is this:
You should wander out of the alt-left echo chamber once in a while and stop thinking that any
criticism of Russia is 'red-baiting' and propaganda
while you're searching for evidence to back up the rancid propaganda exposed by glenn greenwald's
article in the intercept, you can look for one single post expressing this conviction. just one.
after all the lies by our intelligence agencies, using the same methods as this smear, to uncritically
accept anonymous quotes betrays either a great naïveté or intellectual dishonesty.
Gee, if only there were some North American country that would try to influence foreign elections,
for example say Russian or Ukrainian ones.
But let me extend James's thought above by advocating for our leaders to obtain public encryption
keys so that we may send our grievances privately without enabling any foreign interference. Won't
that just invigorate our democracy?
If Russia is actively trying to influence American politics, then they have been far more
effective than the US and get a much bigger bang for their buck. For one thing, they didn't have
to drop a single bomb to effect a regime change. So assuming you are correct, the noise is just
a hysterical regime change envy.
So are RT and Sputnik propaganda outlets? Sometimes they are, but sometimes they report
the truth that our MSM, having given up the last shreds of their journalistic integtity in return
for access, won't report.
Given the widespread funding of media (including government-owned media) by Western governments,
I would say that US and Euro hysteria about Russian propaganda, real and imagined, is yet another
off-putting display of noxious American exceptionalism.
I grew up listening to broadcasts of RFE and VOA behind the Iron Curtain, and mixed in
with honest reporting was a heavy dose of propaganda aimed at weakening Eastern European governments.
Now, it is the America For Bulgaria Foundation that funds several media outlets in the country.
What they all have in common is rabid Russophobia-driven editorial stances, and one can easily
conclude that it is driven by the almighty dollar rather than by honest, deeply held convictions.
So, America can do it but whines like a toddler when it is allegedly done to it?! What a crock.
The worst thing is that regardless of whatever propaganda wars are going on, this list
constitutes a full frontal attack on free speech in the alleged "Land of the Free." Besides NC,
there are number of sites distinguished by thorough, quality reporting of the kind that WaPo and
NYT no longer engage in. Having grown up behind the Iron Curtain, this is chilling to me. Dissident
voices speaking against the endless wars for profit and neoliberalism are in effect being intimidated
and smeared by anonymous thugs. This, while the militarized local police and federal agencies,
closely coordinated by "fusion centers", have ruthlessly put down a number of citizen protests,
have engaged in spying on all of us, and have gone after whistleblowers for exposing the reach
and scope of the surveillance state. These are the hallmarks of dictatorships, not of the alleged
"world's greatest democracy and beacon of freedom." What the eff happened to America, and why
are you equating challenging the oppressive and exploitative status quo with being "unwitting
Russian dupes?" Seems to me that the useful idi0t here is you, with all due respect.
American intelligence uses exactly the same tactics, and has since at least WW1. Selling
the American public on the Iraq war is a classic example. Remember that all news is biased, some
much more so than others (we report, you decide.)
The advent of the internet and the subsequent broadening of readily available news of all
slants has made it much harder for any intelligence agency of any specific country to control
the news( but it has made it extremely easy for them to monitor what we are reading).
Naked capitalism uses a wide variety of sources, and obviously has no coordination with any
intelligence agency. The normal tell for this is being state sponsored, or having a big sugar
daddy providing the funding, and Yves doesn't have any of that.
As always, it's up to the reader to use their critical thinking skills and form their own opinions.
Some of us happen to believe that 'lambast[ing] the American political establishment and
weaken[ing] the public's confidence in its leaders' is in the best interests of everyone on the
planet, including the American public. If that constitutes propaganda, I'm not about to look that
gift horse in the mouth. RT isn't perfect – I personally find their relentless cheerleading for
economic growth rather wearying – but it knocks spots off the competition and consistently sends
me scurrying to the internet to chase up on new faces and leads. I'm grateful for that.
" Steve Keen is great, and I love his work, but it's also obvious "
Damning with faint praise. A dainty smear tactic noted as such since the days of .. Shakespeare.
It is obvious that Russia has been trying to influence American politics. The very existence
of RT makes that obvious. What is not obvious is why modestly left-of-center Americans' political
concerns should be subject to McCarthyite attacks in our most influential news outlets. We've
been subject to internally generated far-right propaganda for decades now and have seen minimal,
feeble 'mainstream' efforts to counter it. The far right has done tremendous damage to our nation
and is poised to do much more now that its doyens control all branches of the federal government.
And yet this libelous attack is more focused on left-leaning opinion sites than on the ultra-right.
The latter were thrown into this list almost as window dressing. Conceivably because the far right
is very adept at self-defense. But more because the prestige and financial well-being of the center-"left"
is endangered by the rise of an adversarial, econo-centric left. The insiders from this branch
of our duopoly never have been harmed by their historic "opposition" (Tea Party kooks + corrupt
Beltway Republicans).
What I interpret this as is a strike by 'think tank' grifters against those who are most
likely to damage their incomes, their prestige and their exceedingly comfortable berths on the
Acela corridor. It's a slightly panicky, febrile effort by a bunch of heels who are looking at
losing their mid-6-figure incomes . and becoming like so many of the rest of us: over-credentialed,
under-paid and unable to afford life in the charming white parts of our coastal metropolises.
I was wondering what Brock has been up to since the dissolution of "Correct the Record."
Has it been dissolved or has it morphed into something else? This looks like too seamless a
transition from the Clinton campaign strategy we have all grown to love to the revenge strategy
we have come to expect from such people. I look forward to the discovery portions of the libel
suits to come. Hopefully Yves and Lambert will be taking up a collection for so worthy an enterprise
soon.
You've just libeled me. You have no evidence whatsoever to substantiate your claim. Nor
do you have any evidence that Russia has been "aggressively" trying to influence US politics.
This is one of many hysterical lines offered by Team Dem over the course of this election, up
there with depicting all Trump voters as racist yahoos.
Ed Harrison, who is the producer of the show and replied later in this thread, is the
one who booked Keen and interviewed and other economists and firmly disputes your assertion that
his show has anything to do with promoting an anti-US line. And as a former diplomat, Harrison
would be far more sensitive than most to that sort of issue. I'm repeating his comment below:
Hi Naked Capitalism. I haven't been on this site for some time. But I felt it necessary
to comment due to an ad hominem attack from a commenter "James" regarding the show I produce
at RT called Boom Bust.
From my vantage point as producer at RT, I have been able to see the whole anti-Russia campaign
unfold in all its fury. I have a lot of thoughts on this but I want to restrict my comments
to the specific argument James makes. here:
"it's also obvious that RT invites him on the network because he lambasts the American political
establishment and weakens the public's confidence in its leaders. This is clearly a goal of
Moscow, and they use people like Steve Keen to do it. I'm sure Steven Keen doesn't think of
his role that way, but RT and Russian intelligence certainly do."
Since I produce the show that Steve Keen appears on, I am well-placed to give you a view
on this. James' comment is flat out false. What James writes is something he has fabricated
in his imagination – connecting dots he believes should be connected based on no first hand
evidence whatsoever.
What actually happens on Boom Bust is this:
Since no one I work with at RT has a sophisticated background in economics, finance or financial
reporting, they give us a wide berth in putting together content for our show with nearly no
top down dictates at all. That means we as American journalists have a pretty much free hand
to report economic news intelligently and without bias. We invite libertarian, mainstream,
non-mainstream, leftist, Democratic commentators, Republican commentators – you name it. As
for guests, they are not anti-American in any way shape or form. They are disproportionately
non-mainstream.
We have no pro-Russian agenda. And that is in part because Russia is a bit player on the
economic stage, frankly. Except for sanctions, it has mostly been irrelevant on our show since
inception.
Let me share a strange anecdote on that. We had a guest on our show about three years ago,
early in my tenure. We invited him on because he had smart things to say about the UK economy.
But he had also written some very negative things about Putin and Russia. Rather than whitewash
this we addressed it specifically in the interview and asked him an open-ended question about
Russia, so he could say his piece. I was ASTONISHED when he soft-pedaled his response and made
no forceful case as he had done literally days ago in print. This guy clearly self-censored
– for what reason I don't know. But it is something that has stayed with me ever since.
The most important goal from a managerial perspective has been that our reporting is different
i.e. covers missing and important angles of the same storyline that are missing in the mainstream
media or that it covers storylines that are missing altogether.
Neither Steve Keen nor any other guest on our show appears "because he lambasts the American
political establishment". This is false. He appears on our show because he is a credible economist
who provides a differentiated view on economics and insight that we believe will help our viewers
understand the global economy. If Paul Krugman had something to say of that nature and would
appear on our show, we would welcome him. In fact, I and other producers have reached out to
him many times to no avail, especially after we had Gerald Friedman give his take on the dust-up
surrounding Bernie Sanders' economic plan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yna275KzuDQ
Look, I understand the scepticism about RT and its motives. It IS a state-funded news outlet
with news story angles that sometimes contrast sharply with western media. And it has not been
critical of the Russian government as far as I can tell. But you can't ascribe nefarious motives
to individual economists or reporters based on inaccurate or false third hand accounts. You
are just making things up, creating a false narrative based on circumstantial evidence. This
is just adding to the building peer pressure associated with what almost seems like an orchestrated
campaign to discredit non-mainstream sources of news.
"Russia is aggressively trying to influence American politics" Apparently with the help
of Hillz. Was her decision to use a private email server made with the help of Putin?
James, we get it. We US citizens are not to be permitted to criticize our own government or
corporations as that might "weaken public confidence" in our Dear Leaders.
We cannot be trusted to think for ourselves in discerning what is and is not propaganda, for
after all we would be able to discern the same coming from the US side.
The overt stifling of dissent that was such an outrageous feature of the Clinton campaign "is
clearly a goal" of your side.
Who needs Putin when we have mindless ClintonBots to do all the dirty work here?
This is a secular trend, a great wave. If Steve Keen were going on Tass 24 hours a day, seven
days a week, Live!!! With ***Nude*** WOMBATS!!!!, undermining confidence in neoliberal economists
- let me pause to gasp in horror - it would be the merest bit of froth on that wave. Taking Jame's
view as a proxy for the views of the intelligence community, if they really believe this - and
it's not just a ploy for budget time - then the country truly is doomed.
NOTE * Note the authoritarian followership of "leaders." So my response with institutions is
not precisely on point.
The idea that banks were trusted more than organized labor was troublesome to me till I remembered
the labor leaders like Trumka and the continued betrayals of membership by the likes of the AFL
CIO. At that point I got it really was a toss up.
My revenue is suffering because my rag is bullshit, but all these alternatives are unfair competition
- please Mr Government shut them done, because I, the one and only Great Bezos (or Great Bozo),
is loosing money.
If you'd like, take a trip in the Wayback Machine to 1959. Then you'll find many criticisms
of US society by the Civil Rights movement sharing the same sinister tone as criticisms made by
Soviet new outlets. Then you'll also find a gaggle of US pols and their minions claiming on that
basis that the Civil Rights movement is communist inspired, funded, and run. Then you'll also
find many people who don't bother to distinguish source from story and end up enjoying the official
Kool Aid.
It reminds me of a story from Northern Ireland in the 1960's when the leader of a civil
rights march was asked by a BBC reporter 'is it true that your organisation has been infiltrated
by radicals and communists?' His reply was to sigh and say 'I f**king wish it was true'.
@hemeantwell – This same claim of communist inspiration and connection was also thrown
at the anti-war movement. I remember arguing with a friend of my parents in the summer of 1969,
after my freshman year at college where I was active in the anti-war and anti-draft movements.
After countering all of the arguments made by this gentleman, he was left with nothing to say
but "Well, that's the Commie's line " as a final dismissal.
'US pols and their minions claiming that the Civil Rights movement is communist inspired,
funded, and run.'
Right up to his death on 4 Apr 1968, Martin Luther King was accused by J. Edgar Hoover
and the FBI of "knowingly, willingly and regularly cooperating with and taking guidance from communists."
Now there's a US national holiday in King's honor.
That same year, my dad visited Moscow and Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring. After he
returned, we started receiving crudely mimeographed newsletters from Moscow - actual Soviet
propaganda , delivered right to our mailbox in Texas.
So laden were they with hoary old Marxist rhetoric that we started satirizing it in our underground
student newspaper, mocking the public school administration as "capitalist running dogs" and "colonialist
oppressors." (This did not go over well.)
To his regret, my dad sent one of the Soviet flyers to the FBI, but never got a reply. He suspected
that they put him on a watch list, rather than investigating how the Soviets were distributing
their crude invective through the US mail.
So laden were they with hoary old Marxist rhetoric that we started satirizing it in our underground
student newspaper, mocking the public school administration as "capitalist running dogs" and "colonialist
oppressors." (This did not go over well.)
They link American propaganda all the time. If you take off your blinders, you'll find that
most news is just propaganda, because the basis for most news stories is what person X says. What's
sad is that people like you believe there is some kind of "objective" news source in the "free
world" that is telling it like it is. There isn't and there never has been.
It's all propaganda of one sort or another. I exhort you to read Plato and understand that
the Sophists for which Socrates held so much ire are much the same as anon and administration
sources for so much of what drives journalism.
I have identified a motif that pretty much always gives away a Hillary bot- it was used about
several dozen thousand times as part of 'Correct the Record' during the runup to November 8. And
here we have it again. It goes like this: I was always in favor of – – – – – – – (fill in the
blank with the supposed offenders name) until I found out this 'truth'.
Also, why not just admit you are a Clinton Supporter who finds it convenient that a lot of
the sites could be trashed for being critical of HRC
Let me just make a list of the weasel words (setting aside the famous "I like you, but ____"
trope, which I have never yet seen used in good faith in all my many years of blogging, partly
because of the assumption that whether a random commenter "likes" the blog is important.
almost positive
guilty of accidentally
at some point
probably linked (but with no evidence)
can be traced (but not by James!)
some . operation like
The ginormous pile of steaming innuendo and faux reasonableness aside, James seems to think
that the NC readership has no critical thinking skills at all. Apparently, NC readers are little
children who need expert guidance from James and his ilk - bless their hearts! - to distinguish
crap from not crap.
If there is any take away from this foul
Bernays-inspired campaign season, it is
that fear can and will overrule reason completely.
Half of the voters (whichever lost) were set up
for a cognitive dissonance cork blowing episode.
No one should expect reason to be an effective defense against cognitive attempts to rectify that
dissonance .neither side can be unplugged
from their self-selected news matrix, without
blowing their cork. It will not matter that this list
is comical, because it is a dog whistle to the
audience preloaded with fear (and the other side would've done a variation of the thene if they
had lost).
(pretty funny of them to list your site though..I guess
the Russians must've also been quite upset by all
the American mortage fraud in housing bubble #1
and felt a need to •head explodes•)
I suppose this comment will add me to some list maintained by some very frightened but misguided
people? What's the line "lighten up, Francis"?
This has all the earmarks of an effort by the Nuland Neocons that joined Camp Hillary,
and now in defeat constitute a portion Hillary's professional dead enders.
Camp Hillary, as you call it, has decamped and is on the march. It has powerful allies
in the intelligence community, the media and actors on the world stage who deem Trump to be an
existential threat to America and world. The story of Russian inspired fake news is paving the
way for regime change, an HRC specialty. The recount is the tip of the spear. If they can pull
this coup off, sites like this will move from the useful idiot category to the enemy of the state
category overnight.
The brilliance of this move will eliminate all possibly of civil unrest since America democracy
will be saved from a Russia threat that requires a declaration of war and severe restrictions
on media freedom.
I can guarantee you Trump is looking over his shoulder and sees it coming and is working furiously
to build a case for his own legitimacy. He is doing his best to sound normal.
Obama has relegated himself to the sidelines. He hates conflict, but will back Hillary if she
can pull it off.
"Camp Hillary, as you call it, has decamped and is on the march." True that. Even a lost election
can't stop them. Heard over the holiday- Andrew Cuomo for prez. So the same people who didn't
show up to vote for Hillz can now not show up to vote for her waterboy/bagman.
For sure. The "history doesn't repeat but it rhymes" is suddenly sickeningly applicable here.
I hope they've bitten off more than they can chew in this case. There is that argument that
we are "siloing" in our little corners of the web, however – everybody read the newspapers and
listed to the radio back then. Which means a very, very small subset of the population set the
agenda. Nowadays, the "far-left" and "far-right" are only a click away from each other (and they
always did seem to have more in common with each other than the center which has gone from mushy
to absolutely rotten). A unified pushback on this is not impossible and who knows where it might
lead?
Aha, I have solved the mystery. It is elementary my dear Watson! The PropOrNot site is
itself a Russian propaganda ploy on the part of the KGB! What? errr, ok, the FSB then. By
adding sites such as the Naked Capitalism site to the list, it will be discredited in its entirety
thus letting the nefarious Russian propaganda websites be given a free pass. Mystery solved! And
sorry Max but "Naked Capitalism" a leading left-wing financial news blog"? I'd rather label it
a practical and empirical financial news blog myself.
Seriously, I am wondering if something else is going on here ("tin-foil hat" mode on) with
this piece of trash. No doubt people here have heard all the cries of "fake news" since the election.
This was on top of months of claims of Russian hacking of the election which is still ongoing
(cough cough, Jill Stein). Now Merkel is screaming blue murder of probable Russian hacking of
the German elections next year and just this week the EU Parliament has passed a resolution which
in part states that Russian media exists to "undermine the very notion of objective information
or ethical journalism," and one of its methods is to cast all other information "as biased or
as an instrument of political power."
I am given to understand that the military use the term "preparing the battlefield" and that
is what I think that we are seeing here. There have already been calls for FaceBook and Google
to implement censorship of "fake news" which will amount to censorship of social and news feeds
– the same media Trump used to bf the entire news establishment in this years election. Could
we be seeing the beginnings of calls to censor the internet? All to fight terrorism and black
propaganda of course. The Left would have absolutely no problem with this and if was used to get
rid of sites that contrasted the mainstream media's narrative, more people would be forced to
use the mainstream media for their news which would make them happy. Something to think about.
And sorry Max but "Naked Capitalism" a leading left-wing financial news blog"? I'd rather
label it a practical and empirical financial news blog myself.
While the level of discussion here is generally at a much deeper level than most sites and
commenters don't fit into neat little ideological boxes, I don't think it's a particularly egregious
generalization to call a site with readers that overwhelmingly support things like financial regulation,
single-payer health care and post-office banking "left-wing".
But Max himself is an interesting character. I've been scratching my head wondering how
a guy one step removed (Sidney Blumenthal) from the Clintons' inner circles is ambitious about
exposing the ludicrous claims made by those same people regarding Palestine and Syria.
The list of news sites on the said fact-free, unsourced, anonymous webpage are all, so far
as I can tell, news sites that have disagreed with neocon foreign policy preferences on several
occasions.
I am so tired of the use of "left" and " right" and "progressive" and "libertarian" that when
I see these words I go off into a daze. These words are bandied about in so many different ways
for so many different reasons, that they have almost become meaningless. I would rather that people
or organizations be described in detail who supposedly have these "left" "right" etc. characteristics,
then I would know what was being claimed.
yes, and one good way to that sort of detailed description is to read here regularly for a
while: there's hardly any political self-tagging or confessional drama going on, but any one person's
comments over a few months do add up to a picture of how her/his life experience, unlabelled political
principles, intellectual ( not the same as academic!) background and style of spontaneous
reaction (yes Mr Mencken, 'humor!) all fit together. And this gradually reveals a lot more than
Left-Right status updates or biographical oversharing ever could: not so much about the person
- who has a right to all the unknownness s/he wants - but about the experiences and reasoning
that might connect a statement that delights you and another that leaves you aghast when both
come from the same person and within about a dozen lines. And all this with no fuzzy-fake "consensus"
in sight: mutual respect across abyssal differences is hard-won and correspondingly cared for.
"The internet" still gets blamed for "ruining face-to-face interaction" by people who probably
flatter themselves about the richness of their past social lives. But I can't imagine when I'll
ever have a spare few years and some mysterious money (not to mention some "social skills" and
a valid passport ) with which to visit Maine, Oregon, Arizona, Buenos Aires (etc etc etc) for
extended casual conversations there. In the absence of that option, whatever you all have the
patience to write here counts as THE escape route out of political parochialism and geographical
niche.
I like the idea some commenter had (too lazy to find it right now) that all these strategems
were long-prepared, and in place for a Clinton victory. Now the Clinton faction in the political
class is deploying them anyhow. They'd better hurry, because influence peddling at the Clinton
Foundation
isn't as lucrative as
it once was .
Surely any site that accepts donations could be funded by a foreign power without knowing?
ps A couple of my students make 50p a post for challenging negative posts on travel websites by
making up how great was their experience.
And, um, so what? They can waste money anywhere they want. How much has the US spent over my
lifetime propagandizing the Middle East and how did that work out?
The Neera Tandeen tweet is revealing in that it shows how hypocritical all the pearl-clutching
was over Trump's complete lack of discretion in pushing bogus and fabricated stories. A cursory
glance through the rest of her feed shows a bunch of equally thoroughly scrutinized claims that
the Putin/Comey/Deplorables triumvirate conspired to steal the election from the forces of Good.
For long time readers this russian(chinese) propaganda should be obvious. And it is ok,
get used to it. Great opportunity to learn "how to read between the lines", and when you understand,
solidifying into a basic skill.
"The only way to get smarter is by playing a smarter opponent." and now you have a good ones,
not a cheap wapo columnist but organised, educated, trained information warfare hacks.
we are on the early days, more to come, much worse to come.
Be careful NC. MSM are in panic. They see that their propaganda is less and less effective
and start targeting those who offer an alternative against their obsolete narratives. Be prepared:
when they will realize that these don't work at all, their fake democracy will become an open
dictatorship.
I loved naked capitalism's election coverage, but here is an anecdote of how it angered conventional
liberals.
I read a particle physics blog by Columbia mathematician Peter Woit, who wrote an election
post-mortem (he occasionally writes about politics). Not Even Wrong is one of the most popular
blogs in theoretical physics, I've several excellent physicists post in the comments to previous
entries. I was very surprised to see Woit blame naked capitalism (and others) for the electoral
defeat of Hillary Clinton, he's a very conventional thinker normally so I would have expected
him to not even know about naked capitalism. I'm still surprised he knew about it.
My guess? There is a lot of communication in the country between people who do read some of
these 200 news media organizations, with the vast majority who stick to conventional sources such
as the NYT, the WSJ, and who think that Vox and The Atlantic are intellectual sources. When people
get exposed to alternative media for the first time, even educated people, their most likely response
is some combination of anger, laughter, and asking if the writer also believes that 9/11 is an
inside job.
I hate to get tin foily, but that blog is typical of a few I've seen – expressing real anger
at the amorphous 'left' for not getting on board the Hilary train. There is an element of vengefulness
in some of the writing and combined with the evidence of the article above, it seems there is
an element within the establishment (the losing half) who are in full on McCarthy mode – and of
course the first stage of a purge is to accuse the targets of being traitors and in the pay of
foreign interests. Trump and the people around him are dangerous of course, but I think a defeated
neolib/neocon establishment is equally dangerous. We are in worrying times, and its not just the
far right we have to be worried about.
Woit also includes the NYT in his list of culprits so I don't know what planet he resides.
Also interesting to note his jetting off to Paris as tonic. Oh the humanity!!
It's incredible how many otherwise smart people can't think for themselves.
Once a newspaper touches a story the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonist. -Norman
Mailer
I am unable to understand how a man of honor can take a newspaper in his hand without a
shudder of disgust. -Charles Baudelaire
The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but
newspapers. -Thomas Jeffereson
Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper. -Thomas Jefferson
If you're not careful, the newspaper will have you hating people being oppressed and loving
the people doing the oppressing -Malcolm X
Journalism is organized gossip. -Edward Egglestone
If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read it, you are misinformed.
-Mark Twain (allegedly, but it could be misinformation)
It's hard to know what to believe! You can believe your own eyes, but even your mind connects
the dots without you knowing it.
This is not the Washington Post's finest hour - although they probably haven't had one of those
for years at this point. I'm down to the Redskins coverage in the WaPo, which is still quite good
actually.
I used to be a Washington Post paper boy, so I'l put one last quote from Charles Osgood
It was while making newspaper deliveries, trying to miss the bushes and hit the porch, that
I first learned about accuracy in journalism
-Charles Osgood
I notice that Woit has disabled comments on this particular post (all other posts have comments
enabled). Probably he justifies it by telling himself that he is running a physics related blog
and isn't interested in promoting discussion on non-physics related matters like politics (but
he still wants to promote his own political opinions on his physics blog!). It's typical of the
fingers-in-the-ears reaction that ivory tower liberals to Trump's win.
Calling Susan out by name, misrepresenting her viewpoints, and then turning of comments is
completely indefensible.
I always felt he has needlessly politicized string theory research l by making his case against
it primarily in popular science books and on his blog rather than in peer-reviewed journals and
academic papers. Since when is it a good idea to let public perception influence our scientific
whims? Whether or not his arguments are valid is beside the point, it wasn't the right way to
go about attempting to influence the field.
I am re-posting the following from an insightful comment on the Liberty Blitzkrieg report on
this scam site:
"The anonymous "executive director" of the Propornot website, quoted by the Washington Post,
was mostly a likely a "senior military intelligence" impostor cum serial teen pornographer named
Joel Harding. He is facing a lawsuit over the copyright infringement of Internet-distributed (teen)
pornography (Case No. 1:16-cv-00384-AJT-TCB) in the US District Court for the eastern district
of Virginia, Alexandria division. This is in the public domain.
BTW, Harding's fellow trolls have been known to ascribe the rank of Brig Gen to their pathetic
troll leader in private messages to the unsuspecting.
No wonder Joel Harding wished to remain the anonymous "executive director" whose laughably
scientific work was quoted by Washington Post. But why didn't Washington Post's Craig Timberg
check this up? Basic journalistic checks thrown out of the mixed gender bathroom window? Details
of Harding's trolling activities are available on the very Internet that is trolled by Joel Harding
through his 3,000-odd troll sites.
And to think that I used to be an avid reader of Washington Post's science and Technology reports
now galls me.
There is a growing assumption that the patriotic paranoid activities of Joel Harding and associates
are a cover for their Ukrainian teen pornography distribution business."
The US MSM is all propaganda all the time-every bit as bad as Pravda ever was. RT now is
the "anti-propaganda." They were even carrying Jesse Ventura and other Americans who are blacklisted
by the MSM.
A hail mary pass that was intercepted by the opposing team and run back for a touchdown.
Methinks the WaPo, "PropOrNot", and the rest of the MSM involved with this stunt are going
to have a lesson in The Streisand Effect. Michael Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg (whom I greatly
admire BTW) has said he already has many new followers and donors.
What exactly is the origin of the Russia bashing that's been going on as of late? I feel
like I missed some important public dis somewhere that would explain it all. Condoleeza Rice's
general dated anti-Soviet attitude I could understand, but that doesn't explain the escalating
bigotry pouring out of Obama and Clinton (and their various surrogates). Is it a case of a bomb
in search of a war?
Looks to me like it came out of the HRC campaign. LOL James Carville was talking about
the KGB tampering with the vote tally .not knowing they've been out of business since 1991. The
whole thing makes absolutely no sense, and it won't fly with the American public, many of whom
watch RT, or may be married to or dating Russians. Even Randy Newman likes Putin enough to write
a song about him.
The funny thing is it's been an open secret that the Democratic party has known about electronic
voting fraud (always swinging to the Right) for years but refuses to go near the subject publicly
supposedly because they didn't want people to lose faith in election results and stop voting.
The Obama administration said on Friday that despite Russian attempts to undermine the
presidential election , it has concluded that the results "accurately reflect the will of the
American people."
From the NYT article you mention. It is now axiomatic that the Putin government was actively
attempting to subvert our election. This despite the fact that absolutely no compelling evidence
has ever been given.
After the nineties opening foreign influence was accepted and russia started integrating into
the western world. Some years later the resurged nationalist kicked out western companies, broke
cultural-social contacts.
West is made on free trade-free business-free ideas flow. if russia not trading on common terms,
west gonna take it by force. and russia holds one-fourth of fresh water, one-fifth of world forests,
one sixth of arable but never before used land, and never before properly explored mineral wealth.
All these can help to secure a prosperous 21.century for the west.
Same like before the american conquest, only difference now local indigenous people wield nuclear
weapons and have unlimited chinese support, so no rush let them make mistakes. (and they do, ukraine-syria-azerbaijan
just the latest)
I don't think there is an easy answer to your question, but I think it goes around to the
failed Ukrainian coup (well, partially failed) and the realisation within a certain element of
the neocon establishment that Putin had been inadvertently strengthened by their policy failures
in the Ukraine and Syria. I think there was a concerted element within the Blob to refocus on
'the Russian threat' to cover up their failures in the Middle East and the refusal of the Chinese
to take the bait in the Pacific.
This rolled naturally into concerns about cyberwar and it was a short step from there to
using Russian cyberespionage to cover up the establishments embarrassment over wikileaks and multiple
other failures exposed by outsiders. As always, when a narrative suits (for different reasons)
the two halves of the establishment, the mainstream media is always happy to run it unquestioningly.
So in short, I think its a mixture of genuine conspiracy, mixed in with political opportunism.
Don't forget Snowden and Assange. The intelligence community is, I'm sure, furious about those
two. With Snowden still in Russia, it's basically a weeping sore on the intelligence community's
face. Those people do not like exposure at all.
I remember that, shortly after Snowden's revelations, the war drums really started to beat
for Syria.
In all success* is the seeds of failure. Once upon a time, the "beating of war drums" was a
great distraction from whatever ill's were currently affecting a nation. But the US now has such
an overwhelming military that not only is there absolutely no threat to the US land mass, but
for a given person there are at least two degrees of freedom between them and anybody actually
involved in these wars themselves. We lost a soldier – ONE soldier – on Thanksgiving day and sure
it was all over the news but how many USians actually know even a member of his family, let alone
him? About zero to a first approximation.
So it just isn't working as a distraction. TPTB I don't think really get that yet.
*the word success here is used in a morally neutral sense
Likewise don't forget Chelsea/Bradley Manning! He was the one who put WikiLeaks on the map
and is now paying a horrible price for his courage and love of humanity. His name is constantly
dropped from the list of whistle blower heroes. Why? Because of his gender ambiguity? Whatever
his gender Manning is an American hero worth remembering.
I think that's about right PlutoniumKun but I would add your moniker – the US is gonna spend
a FORTUNE (I TRILLION dollars using Austin Powers voice) updating our nuclear arsenal. Can't really
justify using ISIS, so the Soviet boogyman has to be resurrected .
A friend of mine is convinced that Obama and the Beltway crowd have never gotten over Russia
giving asylum to Edward Snowden. If you look at the timing between Snowden's revelations and the
U.S. ginning up its anti-Russia talk and activities, there is some correlation.
What exactly is the origin of the Russia bashing that's been going on as of late?
That is very good question and it does not have a simple answer. I have been pondering
this for 8 years now. The latest bout of Russia-hatred began as Putin began to re-assert their
sovereignty after the disastrous Yeltsin years. This intensified after Georgia, Ukraine and Syria.
In adddition the US was preprogrammed to hate Russia for historical reasons. Mostly because of
the Soviet era but also when the US inherited the global empire from the Brits we also got some
of their dislike of the Russian empire dating back to the 19th century.
It all started when Putin arrested the Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, when Putin
put a stop to the shock therapy looting of Russia by the Harvard mafia and Jeffrey Sachs. Didn't
he know that oligarch's are above the law? They are in the US. Didn't he know that money can buy
you immunity from prosecution like it does in Europe and the US? Can't have that, hence the Ukraine,
deprive him of his warm water naval base. Then there was the Crimean referendum. Out smarted again!
Can't have that!
Yes. There was a Michael Hudson piece posted here in 2014 that lays it all out. Apparently
those wanting to bring "democratic institutions" to Russia haven't given up yet.
This Propornot outfit has all the makings of a National Endowment for Democracy scam, including
its sudden appearance in the Post, which has been publishing crazy regime-change-esque editorials
on Russia for more than two years now.
It's all my fault. I studied Russian in high school (4 years) and college (1 year), and even
subscribed to Pravda briefly in college (as did all of my classmates) to improve reading skills.
I also spent a month in Russia in 1971. This is how I became a dirty commie. By commenting on
NC a half dozen times in the past, I have forever tainted it. Sorry!
BTW, what is the W3C approved sarcasm tag? /sarc or /s?
I also took 4 years of Russian in HS. When in the Cold War, it is best to understand your opponents
(not enemies), rather than be ignorant. That is how one can play chess and win and yes, it is
as much a matter of intimidation and annoyance, as it is cold calculation. Bobby Fischer vs Boris
Spassky. States have no enemies. Former allies become opponents and vice versa pragmatism rules.
Well Joe McCarthy was a Republican so this is yet another example of Democrats taking on that
mantle of paranoid fear and war-mongering. Flipping Clintons, the best Republican President and
candidate the Dems could come up with.
The MSM can no longer fool the people that there has been an economic recovery, that is why
nobody believes the media anymore and that is why Donald Trump won the election. Watching news
today is like watching a bad puppet show. The masses are finally waking up to the fact that their
government has sold them down the river to big corporations and predatory bankers. Took the sheeple
long enough.
It's an idiotic new red scare, and I can tell you the well credentialed, supposedly smart liberals
in my circles will eat it right up. Their critical thinking is completely out the window at this
point, and they'll accept apparently anything to avoid coming to terms with Clinton having lost
to Trump. It's terrifying.
9. Investigate. Figure things out for yourself. Spend more time with long articles. Subsidize
investigative journalism by subscribing to print media. Realize that some of what is on your
screen is there to harm you. Bookmark PropOrNot and other sites that investigate foreign propaganda
pushes.
It was so jarring I kept reading that last sentence, thinking I'd missed the snark. Fully expected
it to end with "as an example," not to lend it cred.
The article you mention in In These Times is by Timothy Snyder :), who despite being a well-known
historian is no mean propagandist himself, having suggested that the Ukrainians not the Soviets
liberated Auschwitz.
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/03/07/crimea-putin-vs-reality/
Timothy Snyder is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. That he would recommend PoN
is at least a small indication of who stands behind it. Snyder is has given bad odor to the term
"historian" over the past three years. He is to objective history what Bernays was to objective
journalism.
Snyder: "The army group that liberated Auschwitz was called the First Ukrainian Front." The
NYR of Books has suppressed the comment section on its blog, probably to spare Snyder the embarrassment
of having his howlers pointed out by readers.
Ah so, thanks to you both. Two tells made me suspicious: lots of apparently good advice, then
the little drop of poison just nonchalantly dropped in the mix; and Yale historian ;) .
My comment there hasn't made it out of moderation yet. But someone else tore into him for the
same reason I did, recommending PoN:
Because you have no idea who the hell they are, anymore than anyone else does, they've just
released a list of non-MSM news sites that they disagree with. They smear long running and
well trusted sites as "propaganda" outlets without offering any evidence or stating any sort
of methodology. You have litereally abandoned the professional ethic which ought to go along
with being a published.historian and University professor purely because it makes you FEEL
BETTER.
I just asked him, as a Yale historian, to please tell us how the list was compiled, or at least
give some reason for his unqualified recommendation. I went on to say that I read several of the
sites listed, esp. Counterpunch and of course, NC. Even helpfully provided a link to this article,
saying the idea that NC pushes foreign propaganda is ludicrous, and the WaPo article was being
thoroughly debunked here.
Ended with "I call upon the author to explain! (h/t Nick Cave)"
More likely, what "truth" 'they' are trying to manufacture. (When did the new 'owners' take
up the reins at WaPo? There might be a correlation, and a causation involved)
This is why I'm looking forward to any legal cases that may arise out of this - I plan to follow
such *very* closely. Would love to see discovery documents upon the editorial and ownership staff
. the legal equivalent of a public enema, "you shall have no more secrets "
After all, didn't Fox News win a case essentially stating that it was OK to flat out lie and
fabricate from whole cloth? Then why can't Democrat media organs do likewise?
Why didn't I think of that earlier? "Political Infotainment." If my reading serves me right,
I was under the impression that newspapers of a hundred years ago and earlier displayed their
political allegiances openly. A reader could easily work out the underlying story from separating
"story" from "interpretation." Now, news outlets are supposedly impartial and pure of heart. Yet
another cherished myth bites the dust. Perhaps it is better this way.
Based on the evidence of above mentioned link, this "PropOrNot" can be part of a project
of U.S. government to manipulate media to create an anti-Russia climate or more likely another
method of attack on what they consider "Left" so status quo in economic policies of U.S. can be
maintained.
What is going on with the press/MSM lately? It is like one big game of mind control. Is that
what journalism is for – to persuade people to do what the system wants them to do and I hope
I am not stretching here but a la Bernays? I mean when I think about this it is really sort of
terrifying as the MSM has done little else but constantly broadcast to people that life in America
is just fine and everyone is happy when in fact the opposite is true – there is a lot of hardship
out there since the financial crisis, a lot of people never recovered, millions or tens of millions.
So how can people not be drawn to alternative news sites which thankfully are quite abundant now
and want political change? It just seems like the WaPo, NYT are living in this one little sliver
of opulence and prosperity while the rest of us just shake our heads and wonder what has happened
to this country, especially as we see their darling was not voted in as President. So now they
are striking out and attempting to smear the reputations of good sites, And what is this fake
news thing – I am not on social media and have no idea what the fake news is – is it about the
pizza places? And why are the social media sites being censored – I had read on zh that when the
Comey story hit before the election that that news was not trending at all which was very strange
according to those who would know better.
I don't know where all this fear is coming from in the MSM but I imagine they have lost their
grasp of the American mind. I worry every time I tune in that I am being lied to and misled for
a reason. A political reason. I grew up in the 50's and remember real journalism and I want it
back. I want to know what is really going on. Everywhere.
It has worked for a hundred years, since WWI and the Creel Commission, the destruction of a
vibrant American Left. Imagine the panic in the boardroom suites, the millennials no longer think
that socialism is a bad word, and supported an aging leftist for president. OMFG! It's all Russia's
fault providing an alternate plausible narrative. Can't have that. Outsourcing jobs to Asia, burdening
college students with immense debts, incredible corruption personified by the Queen of Wall Street
couldn't have anything to do with it. All power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
It's finally happened, they have over reached and are about to fall off the edge. Relish the panic.
When everything hits the fan, I'll be glad to have you other filthy propagandists in the FEMA
camp alongside me, breaking rocks, eating gruel, and discussing the path to insanity.
I really wish that reporters like those at the Post and the Times had done us all a favor and
walked into the ocean after their abysmal election coverage. Why anyone listens to these outlets
anymore is a question that I ponder at night, staring at the ceiling, wondering what the hell
happened to my country.
On PropOrNot's list is usslibertyveterans.org, which might be an indication its neocon origins.
The site has few articles, no comments and its visit counter shows under 3,800 hits. It looks
like it was created 4 months ago. It is propaganda because?
Their
stats page shows that ProOrNot's strategy might backfire. Yesterday was a record day for hits.
Or maybe usslibertyveterans.org is a fishing lure.
Who could possibly have a problem with a site on the USS Liberty? Certainly narrows down the
list of suspects considerably, assuming it wasn't a deliberate false track. For those not familiar
with the USS Liberty, it was the USN ship attacked, nearly sunk with heavy casualties, by Israel
in 1967. A lot of military still have bitterness towards Israel and the American leadership due
to the lack of justice and cover-up over that incident.
The surrounding of "Russian propaganda" with the letter 'y' reminds me a bit of
this :
(((Echo))) is a symbol used by anti-Semitic members of the alt-right to identify certain
individuals as Jewish by surrounding their names with three parentheses on each side. The symbol
became a subject of online discussions and media scrutiny in June 2016 after Google removed
a browser extension that automatically highlights Jewish surnames in the style.
Note that Israel has a lot to lose if Trump pulls the US out of the Middle East. Here's some
Russian propaganda on the issue:
Tila Tequila's Descent Into Nazism Is A Long Time Coming
The self-proclaimed "alt-reich queen" has a long history of anti-Semitism, and an even longer
one of internet trolling.
Again unless this is a false lead, these guys are looking more and more Israeli or Israeli
sympathizers. Other tweets per Greenwald at same link also suggest a pretty low maturity level.
Possibly kids or college level??
This is a lot worse than "Yellow Cake" and it scares the pants off me. This is the "Official
line", signed off on by the editors of WaPo. Think about that for a minute. And then think about
the campaign to get the EC to enthrone HRC.
Trump dissed the MSM and they are pissed off, so are their masters who wanted Obama to slide
through TPP in the period between Hillary's win and the inauguration. They blew more than $1Billion
on a loser and they may have decided that losing is not acceptable and that it will be HRC on
the throne, whatever it takes. The recklessness displayed by the MSM here is breathtaking at a
moment when the USA is more divided than it has been since the election of 1860.
I'm with you Tom Stone. There is nothing funny about this. The MSM at this point is the
greatest purveyor of fake news on the planet, I am talking about not just CNN and Fox, but the
BBC, France24 and so on.
Pretty much everything they have said and every video they has shown on east Aleppo is
either a lie or a fake. As someone noted the other day (I can't remember who) if the stories about
east Aleppo were actually true, then the Russians and Syrians have destroyed approximately 900
hospitals – including the 'last pediatric hospital in east Aleppo' which has been completely demolished
on at least three separate occasions in the last few months. The main stream outlets don't even
try to be consistent.
The people who run things here and in Europe are apparently desperate – and this latest
move is an indication of how desperate they actually are. It is indeed scary.
I am publicly apologizing to Sarah Palin who I used to think was a dingbat for all of her criticism
of the MSM aka Lame stream media. She was far, far more correct than I ever thought possible.
But look at the silver lining – how many people like me who thought that the large media got
the essential facts correct can now see how much we're being fed pure propaganda .how much of
what you see depends on what your looking for .
Weapons of Mass Distraction. Another nail in the coffin of credibility of the NYT and WaPo.
Recall after the Stupid War and how there were zero weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq
that the NYT and Wapo declined to mention or explore their own culpability in beating the drums
of war. This will be more of the same.
"Some critics of our coverage during that time have focused blame on individual reporters.
Our examination, however, indicates that the problem was more complicated. Editors at several
levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps
too intent on rushing scoops into the paper. Accounts of Iraqi defectors were not always weighed
against their strong desire to have Saddam Hussein ousted. Articles based on dire claims about
Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into
question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all."
So the Times DID admit some culpability, but it wasn't as if the Times volunteered to donate
a portion of their profits(deepen their losses?) to help Iraqi victims or US soldiers and their
families.
And given the Times Syria coverage, where even the sanctimonious Nick Kristof (August 28, 2013)
called on for Obama to bomb Syria for credibility reasons, nothing has changed at the Times.
"Yet there is value in bolstering international norms against egregious behavior like genocide
or the use
of chemical weapons. Since President Obama established a "red line" about chemical weapons use,
his
credibility has been at stake: he can't just whimper and back down."
The Times playbook is to parrot what TPTB wants to do and then if the readers subsequently
revolt in disgust, apologize later.
After I quit my digital subscription to the Times, it seems I'm limited to 10 articles/month.
This might be more than the safely recommended monthly dose of the NYTimes.
The dissimulation, the feigned ignorance (the irony). During the 1930s, the New York Times
actually acted as propaganda agents for Stalin. They collaborated with the Soviet Security Services
to prevent the rescue of millions of Ukrainian peasants (deplorables).
"In 1932 Duranty received a Pulitzer Prize for a series of reports about the Soviet Union,
11 of them published in June 1931. He was criticized then and later for his denial of widespread
famine (1932–33) in the USSR, most particularly the mass starvation in Ukraine. Years later, there
were calls to revoke his Pulitzer; The New York Times, which submitted his work for the prize
in 1932, wrote that his articles constituted "some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper."
Editors were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper.
And there you have it, boys and girls, the one driving force behind journalism as practiced
in the corporate media. If I had been paid for every time I was told to fudge a story lest the
local broadcast stations break it first, I would have been able to pay my mortgage.
This whole Russian propaganda campaign is nothing more then elites attempting to slam shut
the Overton Window that the Trump campaign has pried open a bit this year. This article explains
why they will most likely fail:
I suspect that PropOrNot's outburst was developed during the campaign by well heeled and
connected Hilary supporters to be unveiled after the election to muzzle increasingly influential
web sites including NC. As it stands PropOrNot shot a blank. If Hilary had won the campaign against
"fake news" would probably have taken on a more ominous tone.
Wolf mentioned that the list will function as a dog-whistle for money - that is, advertisers
- telling them about the dangerous places. Maybe not shooting a blank in the short run. In the
long run, of course, advertisers will follow the eyeballs anywhere.
The MSM became so biased during the Presidential election, it drove many Americans toward social
media where you could at least view campaign speaches unfiltered. The same process is now being
applied in the support of manmade climate change alarmism with hopefully the same result
i think you meant the same process is applied in the support of oil company propaganda. the
msm slavishly supported the pro fracking clinton, slavishly acted for years as if there were an
actual scientific debate, instead of fossil fuel shills vs scientists.
I really hope this doesn't get buried in the comments, because it's important to note that
Ames is actually incorrect. He would have been right as recently as 3 years ago but no longer
is.
The provisions of the Smith-Mundt act that prevented materials produced by the BGG from being
used for domestic purposes were repealed by the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 (actually
passed in 2013, when incorporated into the NDAA), which states:
The Secretary and the Broadcasting Board of Governors are authorized to use funds appropriated
or otherwise made available for public diplomacy information programs to provide for the preparation,
dissemination, and use of information intended for foreign audiences abroad about the United
States, its people, and its policies, through press, publications, radio, motion pictures,
the Internet, and other information media, including social media, and through information
centers, instructors, and other direct or indirect means of communication.
It also contains a provision that supposedly prevents the BBG from influencing domestic public
opinion, yet also says the following.
Nothing in this section shall be construed to prohibit the Department of State or the Broadcasting
Board of Governors from engaging in any medium or form of communication, either directly or
indirectly, because a United States domestic audience is or may be thereby exposed to program
material, or based on a presumption of such exposure.
Worth noting: passed under Obama and discounted at the time but venues such as Mother Jones,
who did the heavy lifting of telling progressives they were paranoid.
I am guessing the proviso you quote may have been intended to cover the possibility of people
in places like Florida hearing broadcasts aimed at Cuba or other targets, but it certainly raises
questions.
What I find most despicable in all this is the cowardice of these people making up their accusations
and refusing to say who they are. Beneath contempt.
As a loophole it's not perfect (the intent of the primary provision it qualifies seems rather
clear on its face), but we're talking about people who wrote elaborate memos justifying torture
and extra judicial murder, and who went before Congress (i.e. Holder) to claim that "due process"
does not necessarily mean "judicial process." A loophole like that is more than enough to judge
such activities legal enough. I certainly can't imagine anyone in the current administration prosecuting
it.
In regards to all this 'fake news' and 'Russian propaganda' hysteria, one potential problem
I keep seeing mentioned is that certain sites could be banned from FleeceBook thereby destroying
these sites' page hits and ad revenue.
I don't use the FleeceBook so I guess I don't understand how this works. I can come to this
or any other website any time I want so why would I care that it's been banned by FleeceBook?
I don't remember exactly how I first heard of NC but I'm guessing I followed a link from one of
the other left-leaning sites I read regularly (which coincidentally also are authored by Boris
Badinov according to the WaPo). Is FB sort of like AOL back in the day where AOL users thought
they were surfing the intertubes but in reality were in some sort of AOL-approved pen? And if
that's the case I have to wonder how long it will be before FB becomes just like AOL is today,
ie mainly used by the less internet savvy. I already hear rumors that the youngsters consider
FB something only old people use.
I am genuinely interested if anyone can explain this – would it really hurt websites that much
to be banned by FB? Wouldn't there be a backlash against FB for doing so?
PS: The thing that made me start using NC as my go-to source for news besides the excellent
original financial reporting was the fact that you guys started including regular links to sites
like BAR, Counetrpunch, etc that I was already reading anyway. I feel like I can read here without
missing out on what was going on elsewhere – there's only so much one can read in a day. Keep
up the great work!
I would assume that's how they intend to hurt these sites, but we get virtually no traffic
from Facebook. However, being banned from FB would seriously dent out policy influence.
Unfortunately, Faceborg is the best way for me to stay in touch with certain people. For example,
it has a closed group called FDL-LLN which is limited to former commenters on FireDogLake. (LLN
stands for Late Late Night, which was a subforum for people to post music and discuss musical
artists; the LLN heading was used for the FB group out of, I believe, both nostalgia and the friendships
that many formed as FDL "pups".)
In addition, if you post an NC link on FB, it gets seen by many people who might not otherwise
become aware of the site.
Ah Jess I miss LLN and Suz an Tut and all the rest. But not enough to go Faceborg. Somethings
are lost some remain. I still have a phone which i use every so often.
Bob.
After a few years of FB econ sites, hashing things out with the usual suspects, things began
to increasingly change as the primaries got to the wire. Once solid commenters replete with knowlage
and experience began to mimic the very people and camps they once railed against.
It was on then when I took on these people for such actions that I started to get the FB treatment,
ending in privacy washing.
Disheveled Marsupial . especially when noting Hillary's history and bad side, sad to think
it might have been one of the old gang that put in a complaint to FB.
There is something bizarre about this whole scenario.
PropOrNot is asserting that the sites on the 'List", both right and left, were responsible
for the Clinton loss by spreading false Russian propaganda. This would make more sense, as a political
project, if Clinton had won. Asking the Trump DOJ and Trump's/Comey's FBI to investigate the asserted
causes of Trump's win is bizarre.
It only makes sense, IMHO, if this project was already in the works pre-election anticipating
a Clinton win, where it would have had the benefit of targeting both the right and the left and
continuing the drum beat for war. If that is the case, the losers appear to be too shell-shocked
or committed, financially or ideologically, to think through the implications of letting this
go forward.
I do like the idea of NC, and other left-wing sites, forming a coalition with right-wing sites
to take legal action. Ralph Nader's "Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle
the Corporate State" comes to mind.
Wasn't the reality of Russia intervention in Syria well underway by that time as well? Wasn't
the whole US Syrian ploy dependent on everybody selling the people a clear distinction between
evil Assad, evil ISIS, and good moderates (ahem al-quaeda)?
That narrative was clearly no longer believed even by the journalists writing it. Why? Sites
like this one and others. Why does it matter? Because aim was to get rid of Assad to cut Russia
out of Mideast, having failed to achieve that goal two years earlier in Ukraine. Cui bono?
Good points. Also, IIRC, internet governance is due to be turned over to a non-governmental
organization in the not too distant future. Might this not be a way of achieving the elimination
of net neutrality during a Democratic Administration that would not want to be seen as sticking
the knife in themselves?
In that scenario, it would look a lot like the present Administration is secretly working the
refs in the same way that they tried to push the TPP and its' associated ISDS provisions before
the whistle was blown on them.
This whole bizarre "fake news" meme along with the and the Russians are coming is getting widespread
media traction including Vanity Fair. It's getting repeated in Canadian media too.
Now PropOrNot not is not credited as the source but the more plausible sounding Foreign Policy
Research Institute and lots of references to the Washington Post's "reporting".
I think this is a deliberate campaign to discredit progressive and independent news sources.
God forbid that citizens should read a variety of sources and make up their own minds.
I have wondered for about a year now if someone is handing out anti-Russian story quotas –
or maybe anti-Russian story cash, with a bonus for anything that goes viral. I'm not sure how
else you explain
stuff like this from a Gawker site that was mainly focused on minimum wage law and whether
the Tilted Kilt could legally fire you for being too fat.
This current listicle feels very much the same, except with less professionalism and more credulity.
Either someone is getting paid enough not to care how asinine this looks, or the inmates really
are running the media asylum.
Naked Capitalism is in great company: BAR, Counterpunch, Antiwar, Consortium News. I didn't
need to read these sites to come to my views though, all they did is to confirm what I had come
to believe all on my own: that Hillary is a corrupt warmonger, that the American government has
been captured by the moneyed elites, that the Democrat Party is a rat nest of neoliberal infestation.
And while I was naturally predisposed toward Russia by virtue of where I was born and by Bulgarian
history, my college career was marked by my support for all of the bad policies that brought us
the new Cold War with Russia: NATO expansion, the bombing of Serbia, the economic ruin of Russia,
the unipolar world order. I was young, stupid, and ambitious. Later on I simply settled into profound
indifference toward Russia and a general anti-war attitude brought about by my own service. It
wasn't until the hysterical MSM crapstorm of breathless smears about Sochi that I began to notice
the US policies against Russia. So for me, the most effective pro-Russia propaganda outlets proved
to be US MSM, WaPo and NYT being the most effective of all. Just one of life's little ironies.
So WaPo wants to sling mud and go on a witch hunt? I suggest that they indict themselves first
and foremost, for being a mindless disseminators of US government propaganda.
"a new 'Eurasian' empire stretching from Dublin to Vladisvostok"
Why Dublin? With a flick of the finger, they could have had the flyover terrain between there
and Shannon.
And why Vladivostock? You can go a lot farther East than that and still be in Russia.
For Pete's sake, why have they not included Sapporo and the rest of Japan. Aren't they vulnerable
too?
And the Aleutians; for that matter, why not the rest of Alaska too? After all, we only bought
it from them at a knock-down price. Anyone knows they got
a raw deal. Shouldn't they want that back too?
Shannon Airport would have been appropriate as during the Cold War it was Aeroflots main base
for flying on to Cuba. Its now only a short drive from Trumps Irish golf course.
Conflicted. On the one hand, as a long time reader of a diversity of listed websites (on the
lefty side mostly), this comes across as ham fisted and, frankly, bizarre. Not only the laughable
story itself, but that it has been picked up and reposted by a host of other rather mainstream
and 'liberal' surrogates.
It is *bizarre* because Russia today is nothing of what the boogeyman USSR was in times past:
an alternative political-economic arrangement to then industrial capitalism. Russia Today (wink,
wink) is as capitalist and as democratic as any of the other players on this particular stage
(plenty of the former, not so much of the latter). An economic competitor, sure, but no USSR.
So the anti-Russia/Putin propaganda just consistently reads hollow to anyone who spends any time
just reading run of the mill reporting of goings on in the world (reporting aside from propaganda
stories). In other words, if you are a relatively informed reader of diverse sources and traveler,
the anti-Russia stuff just comes across as contrived from the get go.
But then again, I got a chance to visit with some 1000s of academic colleagues at a national
convention recently. This is where the 'conflicted' point comes from. As Good Liberals, academics
dine daily on a strict NYT, WAPO, NPR diet, with the more 'edgy' types hanging at VOX and HuffPo.
And they BELIEVE everything their beloved media tells them through these sources, without reservation
(and with the requisite snark and smirk). The academy is nearly completely captured and now so
deeply immersed in its echo chamber that any information that might challenge its perception of
the world is immediately dismissed as nefarious propaganda (either paid for by the Koch bros,
or Putin). Of course, since the elite academy is overwhelmingly Ivy educated, their worldview
loops back to their Ivy educated friends at said media outlets. Creating a bubble that is increasingly
impenetrable to reason and critical analysis.
Lots of panic for the Washington regime. The clownish asshole loser that they carefully
groomed proved less repulsive than their chosen Fuehrer Clinton. Now they are distraught to see
that their enemy Russia sucks much less than the USA.
Russians get a much better deal than the US subject population. The Russian head of state has
approval ratings that US politicians scarcely dream of. Russia complies with the Paris Principles,
the gold standard for institutionalized human rights protection under international review. The
USA does not. Russia's incorruptible President keeps kleptocrats in check, while the US banana
republic installs them in high office. Russia complies with the rule of law: they refrain from
use or threat of force and rely on pacific dispute resolution, using proportional and necessary
force in compliance with UN Charter Chapter VII. The US shits on rule of law, interpreting human
rights instruments in bad faith and flouting jus cogens to maintain impunity for the gravest crimes.
In the precise terms of Responsibility to Protect, the US government does not even meet the minimal
test for state sovereignty: compliance with the International Bill of Human Rights, the Rome Statute,
and the UN Charter. Naturally the US is bleeding legitimacy and international standing, and Russia
is going from strength to strength. If Russia invaded, we would strew flowers and sweets.
The collapse of the USSR did Russia a world of good. Now it's time for the USA to collapse
and free America.
it boils down to Soros vs Putin. Anyone who is not with Soros is with Putin, according to Soros.
Soros cannot digest the death threat he was given by Putin, to stay away from Russia or else.
Since Soros was born in old communist europe, he seems to believe he has the right to regime change
there. And he has been very successful – primarily because he is in bed with the CIA and the Russians
are just now waking up again.
So sorry! I am a foreign "propagandist" reader, commenter and contributer from Spain, and I
am just shoked to see this! How sad is this, it pretty much looks like McCarthysm again!!!!
Hi Naked Capitalism. I haven't been on this site for some time. But I felt it necessary to
comment due to an ad hominem attack from a commenter "James" regarding the show I produce at RT
called Boom Bust.
From my vantage point as producer at RT, I have been able to see the whole anti-Russia campaign
unfold in all its fury. I have a lot of thoughts on this but I want to restrict my comments to
the specific argument James makes. here:
"it's also obvious that RT invites him on the network because he lambasts the American political
establishment and weakens the public's confidence in its leaders. This is clearly a goal of Moscow,
and they use people like Steve Keen to do it. I'm sure Steven Keen doesn't think of his role that
way, but RT and Russian intelligence certainly do."
Since I produce the show that Steve Keen appears on, I am well-placed to give you a view on
this. James' comment is flat out false. What James writes is something he has fabricated in his
imagination – connecting dots he believes should be connected based on no first hand evidence
whatsoever.
What actually happens on Boom Bust is this:
Since no one I work with at RT has a sophisticated background in economics, finance or financial
reporting, they give us a wide berth in putting together content for our show with nearly no top
down dictates at all. That means we as American journalists have a pretty much free hand to report
economic news intelligently and without bias. We invite libertarian, mainstream, non-mainstream,
leftist, Democratic commentators, Republican commentators – you name it. As for guests, they are
not anti-American in any way shape or form. They are disproportionately non-mainstream.
We have no pro-Russian agenda. And that is in part because Russia is a bit player on the economic
stage, frankly. Except for sanctions, it has mostly been irrelevant on our show since inception.
Let me share a strange anecdote on that. We had a guest on our show about three years ago,
early in my tenure. We invited him on because he had smart things to say about the UK economy.
But he had also written some very negative things about Putin and Russia. Rather than whitewash
this we addressed it specifically in the interview and asked him an open-ended question about
Russia, so he could say his piece. I was ASTONISHED when he soft-pedaled his response and made
no forceful case as he had done literally days ago in print. This guy clearly self-censored –
for what reason I don't know. But it is something that has stayed with me ever since.
The most important goal from a managerial perspective has been that our reporting is different
i.e. covers missing and important angles of the same storyline that are missing in the mainstream
media or that it covers storylines that are missing altogether.
Neither Steve Keen nor any other guest on our show appears "because he lambasts the American
political establishment". This is false. He appears on our show because he is a credible economist
who provides a differentiated view on economics and insight that we believe will help our viewers
understand the global economy. If Paul Krugman had something to say of that nature and would appear
on our show, we would welcome him. In fact, I and other producers have reached out to him many
times to no avail, especially after we had Gerald Friedman give his take on the dust-up surrounding
Bernie Sanders' economic plan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yna275KzuDQ
Look, I understand the scepticism about RT and its motives. It IS a state-funded news outlet
with news story angles that sometimes contrast sharply with western media. And it has not been
critical of the Russian government as far as I can tell. But you can't ascribe nefarious motives
to individual economists or reporters based on inaccurate or false third hand accounts. You are
just making things up, creating a false narrative based on circumstantial evidence. This is just
adding to the building peer pressure associated with what almost seems like an orchestrated campaign
to discredit non-mainstream sources of news.
You are in good company with that suspicion of a campaign to "sanitize" the public's sources
of information. If one were to consider the Corporate sector as the equivalent of a state, then
almost all news sources are liable to extra strong scrutiny. Going back to Bernays, the "shepherding"
of the news sources used by the majority of the population is crucial to maintaining control of
public perceptions. In that sense, the present struggle for control of the news narrative is understandable.
Keep up the good work.
Isn't that a compliment? I mean it does say "leading" (and I have to agree).
As for "left-wing", well NC does frequently feature articles by Bill Black & others associated
with the University of Mo. Kansas City; and UMKC has long been known for its lefty, socialist/commie
leanings – I know because my 81 y.o. mother told me so (and I had a prof. there teaching "History
of Economic Thought" who came right out & claimed to be a Socialist – horrors!)
Lambert foresaw that there would be a witch hunt after the election. He indicated that it would
come from the Democratic Party and the conserva-Dem establishment. And, ecco!, a witch hunt. So
what could possibly be the source?
I am noticing on my Facebook feeds that the ooshy liberals are in a feeding frenzy: They believe
that they are victims of some breakdown in information. The shocker was that the news being passed
around in DemPartyLandia was that the Democrats were on the verge of retaking both houses of Congress
and the presidency. Meanwhile, Water Cooler showed that the neither house of Congress was truly
in play and the presidential race was a dead heat. After the election, various lists began to
circulate. The one cited by Yves isn't the first. I saw one list that included The Onion, The
Daily Currant, and Duffel Blog. You mean Duffel Blog's story on U.S. soldiers trying en masse
to join the Canadian army isn't true?
Further, much of liberaldom is now deep into trying to flip the Electoral College or amend
the Constitution immediately, as well as the Trump as Fascist meme.
Yes, America, land of self-proclaimed bad-asses, turns out to be the realm of panic. And many
policies and stances are going to have to be suddenly revised: Ooshy liberals, who supported charter
schools for years, are suddenly shocked that DeVos of Amway is a charter-school addict. The disastrous
foreign-policy adventures of the last few years have to be offloaded very soon on Trump, so that
Obama can be thanked for being scandal-free.
And, evidently, the conspiracy is now so big that it can't be blamed solely on Al-Jazeera.
This means we need more outlets besides Google and Facebook; outlets impervious to witch hunts
– maybe offshore enterprises, after all that's the trend. The more the merrier for manufacturing
dissent – in a good sense. What Russia does cannot harm us but it is always good to hear their
take; and China is interesting as well. We get such gobbledegook from MSM we would never understand
a single issue without alternative news. It's a little late for them to be all hysterical about
losing their grip – they've been annoying us and boring us to death for 5 decades; and selling
us down the river. I'm amazed they have a following at all.
The military industrial complex and all the elites are behind all this massive propaganda stuff
and fake news. They want war and nothing is going to stand in their way – not the democrats, not
the republicans, no one. HRC knew this – hence her "paranoia" about Russia. It's crazy. I hope
Trump has the balls to stand up against them. Thanks NC for being here --
With the Washington Post at least, there is a pretty handy avenue of response. Namely that
its CEO Jeff Bezos, who clearly approves of the editorial policy, is also owner of Amazon.com
If you don't approve of Mr. Bezos using his media platform to revive McCarthyism and Yellow Journalism,
keep that in mind when doing your holiday shopping, and when you see that item you were thinking
of buying on amazon, take a moment to see about buying it elsewhere, even if it costs a bit more
to do so. If Mr. Bezos want to use the Washington Post to promote censorship of media control,
make him pay for it in a drop in Amazon's stock price.
"Information globalism is a free flow of information across the world irrespective of race,
source geography. Its up to a competent reader being selective- choosing what sort of information
they want consuming. Its the bases of choice, a basic human right."
The Clinton campaign announced today they'll be joining the recount effort. Greens start a
recount effort, Friday WaPo prints vile rumors, Saturday Clinton campaign announces it is joining
the Wisc recount effort. This is banana republic stuff.
One of the most egregious examples is the group's inclusion of Naked Capitalism, the widely
respected left-wing site run by Wall Street critic Yves Smith. That site was named by Time
Magazine as one of the best 25 Best Financial Blogs in 2011 and by Wired Magazine as a crucial
site to follow for finance, and Smith has been featured as a guest on programs such as PBS'
Bill Moyers Show. Yet this cowardly group of anonymous smear artists, promoted by the Washington
Post, has now placed them on a blacklist of Russian disinformation.
From the propornot website (deliberately not linking it) the YYY thing is really creepy.
The YYYcampaignYYY is an effort to crowdsource identifying Russian propaganda outlets and
sympathizers. To participate, when you see a social-media account, commenter, or outlet echoing
Russian propaganda themes, highlight it with YYYs accordingly!
Reminds me of the (((name of jewish person))) thing that popped up very briefly in the right
wing fever swamp only to be instantly proudly self-added by a ton of jewish liberals.
I have come to the conclusion, based on personal observation, that anyone who includes the
words "our leaders" in their narrative is not to be trusted. Granted, it's a personal thing, as
I have been advocating whenever possible that we should under no circumstances apply that label
to our elected officials but should instead always use their proper designation: "public servants."
Anyone want to wager a thorough check of the MSM for the last fifty years or more would eventually
uncover the first one of their ilk to refer to elected officials as "our leaders"? To then be
followed by all of the others?
Because how better to persuade the voting public that they should just fill in the bubble or
push the button without asking a lot of silly questions about issues than by subtly brainwashing
them with the implication the people they're voting for are better equipped to deal with the important
stuff? Because "our leaders" are clearly better qualified to make the decisions than we are.
Interesting. Google's n-gram viewer shows that "our leaders" is much more prevalent
in books during and after wartime, peaking in 1942-44, with a somewhat steady rise between
just before WW1 and the end of WW2 (upon which each war is superimposed), and an odd reversal
upward around 1996 whose incline isn't much deflected by 9/11, and which levels off around 2005.
It's almost like looking at the Third Way made flesh.
My ex husband told me that back in the 70s when he was applying for a government job, he had
to undergo an extensive FBI check. The fibbies found out he had a subscription to "Soviet Life"
(a magazine about cultural, economic stuff in the USSR). As a result, his neighbors, family, past
co-workers were all interviewed to see if he was a "subversive." The Russophobia has a long history.
I agree with many commenters that Pravda's ProPorNet's listing is heading somewhere scary.
The MSM got the message that they have no credibility anymore, and they're in a panic, as are
the neocons/neolibs. I think after the US backed Ukrainian coup failed to nudge Russia into a
war, this "Russian aggression" meme started in earnest. Now that the election is over and the
"favored one" lost, it is quite telling to me that the panicked establishment isn't going to go
quietly. They were planning on having WWIII, and are furious now.
I'm too young to remember McCarthyism, but this stuff is frightening.
[..]Also included are popular libertarian hubs such as Zero Hedge, Antiwar.com and the Ron
Paul Institute, along with the hugely influential right-wing website the Drudge Report and the
publishing site WikiLeaks.
[..]One of the most egregious examples is the group's inclusion of Naked Capitalism, the widely
respected left-wing site run by Wall Street critic Yves Smith. That site was named by Time Magazine
as one of the best 25 Best Financial Blogs in 2011 and by Wired Magazine as a crucial site to
follow for finance, and Smith has been featured as a guest on programs such as PBS' Bill Moyers
Show. Yet this cowardly group of anonymous smear artists, promoted by the Washington Post, has
now placed them on a blacklist of Russian disinformation.[..]
Key line from Greenwald IMO: "The Post story served the agendas of many factions: those who
want to believe Putin stole the election from Hillary Clinton; those who want to believe that
the internet and social media are a grave menace that needs to be controlled, in contrast to the
objective truth which reliable old media outlets once issued; those who want a resurrection of
the Cold War."
me: The only way the mainstream media can get its power back is by killing or at least crippling
the internet.
A bunch of people in the U.S. got fed up, and now it means that a lot of people who were used
to only having contact with other people like themselves and hanging out at fancy parties are
being told they need to start interacting with the general public or get a different job, and
they're not happy about it.
Just last week I made my first ever reader contribution to NC–now I wish I had waited a few
days so my donation could be interpreted as an "FU" to ProporNot. :)
This Washington Post piece is so insidious as to make my blood run cold. We've seen
in "education reform" how the Gates Foundation and Walton Foundation would place un-sourced propaganda
in articles by friendly reporters in the WaPost and the NYTimes and then reference
the news outlets as proving their propaganda to be "fact."
As some know, I am a professional conspiracy theorist, having served as a local-level
criminal prosecutor for over 32 years. I see a grave threat to the First Amendment when
an anonymous source suspected to have ties to the military-industrial complex calls for the government
to investigate news sources for espionage.
I also find it interesting that The Intercept didn't make the list, despite the presence
of Glenn Greenwald. Given Pierre Omidyar's closeness to the current administration (was FirstLook
created to take Greenwald and Taibbi out of circulation during the 2012 election?), is there some
sort of "tell" here about where this attack on Free Speech is coming from?
Those on this blacklist should pool resources to pursue retraction, repudiation, and an admission
by the Post editorial board that Timberg's outrageously un-sourced "reporting" is libelous
and was published with an at best reckless and at worst intentional disregard for the truth.
Probably true, though also worth noting that (as has been observed frequently here), the Intercept's
regular reporting on Ukraine and Syria was often little better than mainstream outlets.
What is even more alarming, this seems to be coordinated with Jane Harmon's recent advocacy
of a FISA drone court which also targets "enemy" web sites. Is this a prelude to shutting down
dissenting web sites based on their status as foreign agents of our arch enemy "Russia" which
the European Parliament has equated with Daesh. There is a sense of impending revolution world
wide, is this the first step to preempt such? Is martial law the next step? There seemed to be
a lot of projection involved when the neo-libs accused Trump of fascism and not accepting election
results. Who is now not accepting election results and who are the real fascists calling for the
shutting down of news outlets?
Yet another reason why political establishment got what it deserved this election cycle. They
still think that a bit of propaganda denied them a victory and there is nothing wrong with their
policies
WaPo is now too vile to read.
McClatchy is still a fairly good news source. And, oh, look at this: Clinton campaign will join
recount effort in Wisconsin. Not surprising.
Jill Stein has embarrassed herself with this effort. I gave money to her until she made
her final vp choice – Baraka called Bernie a white supremacist! I did vote for her and now feel
it really was a wasted vote. 1% in the national totals. Ok. Being a useful idiot for the Clintons
– no way.
Ah yes, one more chance to steal the election. Syria must fall and be partitioned. Russia must
be driven from the Ukraine, the internet must be cleansed of dissent. Patent and Copyright monopolies
must be imposed on the world. This election took TPTB by surprise, they are surprised no longer.
Trump does not want to be President, he's scared to death. The consensus is that the results will
not change. Don't be so sure. There may yet be a coronation and then the shit will hit the proverbial
fan. Apparently it was not enough for TPTB to control both parties, they also control the minor
parties. Et tu Jill Stein!
Hillary and her handlers had the choice to lose to Bernie or to Trump. They chose Trump.
(OK, maybe not consciously.)
Now, they are are NOT happy with the result but please notice that Bernie is looking better,
has more news coverage, even appearing on The View, for crying out loud! Yes veal pen, "outreach",
whatever. Doesn't matter what they Think They are crafting.
If they keep up the Rooskie angle they will be amazed how good Bernie starts to look.
A little FB censorship. Ditto! Shut down some international protests. (In North Dakota) Bingo!
Drive people into the street! Whoooee!
They, DNC, Bezos et al, will pine for him before this is all over. Because he is the symbol
for what could have happened if they had followed the law and had gone peacefully.
They can't see it yet.
BTW, RT has a 30 minute segment with Chris Hedges at Standing Rock circulating now.
Seems legit to me. Decide for yourself.
Yves stand up and take a bow. You have been noticed by the filth. One of the many reassuring
signs to come from the corridors of power lately. Is it possible change really is coming?
I have just learned of a group in the European Parliament led by a Polish MEP and member of
the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformers in Europe that is likewise attempting to create a
fear of "fake news" from those sites that don't follow the MSM Editors' example of restraint in
publication.
It has this week received a huge injection of public money to extend its work. It seems that
North America and Europe are in lockstep on the need to keep the people ignorant.
If this site is seriously trying to help snowflakes create information-safe-places, then it
needs to protect them from my blog, too.
Fair is fair. I deserve recognition.
I also think Ilargi @ The Automatic Earth is being snubbed through their non-inclusion of that
site.
Everybody should email them and demand that all worthy blogs get included in their precious list.
When the rot is complete and the edifice tumbles? Or when TINA wins, and the voices go silent?
My bet is on the later. Collectively, the money got all 4 aces (and a few more hidden up their
sleaves and a few more hidden in their boots, etc – no end of aces.)
Then the silence reigns and TINA is happy. Despair is walled offed into its own echo chamber
and silence is taken for acquiescence and indifference.
Until it doesn't.
Human history just keeps playing the same music. Mind you, big nature might be adding a new
wrinkle to march-of-death tune. Interesting times, very interesting.
Charles Hugh-Smith's response to the "list": "The Washington Post: Useful-Idiot Shills for
a Failed, Frantic Status Quo That Has Lost Control of the Narrative"
"... Fascism is authoritarian political ideology that promotes nationalism and glorifies the state.
It is a totalitarian in orientation, meaning that those benefiting from the system work to exclude any
challenges to state hegemony. Generally state leaders prefer a single-party state, but nascent fascism
can exist in a two-party state, as in the United States with one party attempting to dominate politically
in order to bring to the fore the essentialist views of its leaders. ..."
"... They want a solidified nation that fights degeneration and decadence as defined by them. They
seek a rebirth of and a return to traditional values. In the modern context it is politically incorrect
to openly espouse an ideal of racial purity, so neo-fascists stress the need for cultural unity based
on ancestry and past values as idealized in their exclusionist ideology. ..."
"... In fascism a strong leader is sought to exemplify and promote this singular collective identity.
This leader and his cohort are committed to maintain national strength and are willing to wage war and
create systems of national security, such as the Patriot Act, to keep the nation unified and powerful.
Opposition to the state and its idealized values is defined as heretical. Militarism is defined as being
essential to maintaining the nation's power and the military industrial complex becomes sacrosanct in
the pursuit of national defense. ..."
"... Neo-fascist rhetoric is being propagated during a time when global capitalism is creating a
gaping chasm between the super rich and the masses of humanity, ecological degradation and widespread
violence. ..."
Fascism is authoritarian political ideology that promotes nationalism and glorifies the state.
It is a totalitarian in orientation, meaning that those benefiting from the system work to exclude
any challenges to state hegemony. Generally state leaders prefer a single-party state, but nascent
fascism can exist in a two-party state, as in the United States with one party attempting to dominate
politically in order to bring to the fore the essentialist views of its leaders.
Today this
force is the Republican Party, now infiltrated by Tea Party radicals. Those views stress past values,
nationalist spirit and strong cultural unity. Neo-fascists tend to exclude ideas and changes that
they see as threatening their cherished value system.
They want a solidified nation that fights degeneration and decadence as defined by them. They
seek a rebirth of and a return to traditional values. In the modern context it is politically incorrect
to openly espouse an ideal of racial purity, so neo-fascists stress the need for cultural unity based
on ancestry and past values as idealized in their exclusionist ideology.
Nonetheless, in the United States this idealized viewpoint has overtones of racism and tends to
focus around Christianity as the source of needed values. For instance, one slogan of the Tea Party
is "Regular Folks United – The Bully Pulpit for Regular Folks." Irregulars need not apply.
In fascism a strong leader is sought to exemplify and promote this singular collective identity.
This leader and his cohort are committed to maintain national strength and are willing to wage war
and create systems of national security, such as the Patriot Act, to keep the nation unified and
powerful. Opposition to the state and its idealized values is defined as heretical. Militarism is
defined as being essential to maintaining the nation's power and the military industrial complex
becomes sacrosanct in the pursuit of national defense.
In present-day America such neo-fascist ideas are combatively percolating in national politics
and are exemplified in the rhetoric of such radical figures as Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Ron Paul,
Rush Limbaugh and Michele Bachmann.
Neo-fascist rhetoric is being propagated during a time when global capitalism is creating
a gaping chasm between the super rich and the masses of humanity, ecological degradation and widespread
violence. Furthermore, global capitalism is advancing at a time when, according to Oxfam, by
2050, the global population is forecast to rise by one-third to more than 9 billion, while demand
for food will rise even higher – by 70 percent – as more prosperous economies demand more calories
and crop production continues to fall relative to population.
The British charity projects that prices of staple foods could more than double in the next 20
years, pushing millions of people deeper into poverty. The effects of a combination of population
growth and the growing numbers of unemployed and impoverished people in the world is creating international
crises, most recently in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Bahrain and Yemen; but the emergency is global and
we face a crisis of humanity. The world is a powder keg and the fuse is burning.
Fascists use this time of great upheavals and uncertainties as their raison d'etre to return
to an imagined world where such problems did not exist. Uneducated people are prone to heed their
simplistic slogans and ideas.
"... Over on CNN, contributor David Gregory (a onetime rising star at NBC) on November 18 slapped Trump's pick for National Security advisor, General Michael Flynn, for his allegedly "short-sighted, ignorant thinking." Two days later, on NBC's Sunday Today , Bloomberg's John Heilemann said Trump's Cabinet was shaping up to be a "really, really old white group of old white men." ..."
"... Trump's election itself was cause for mourning. New York Times columnist Tom Friedman , on HBO's Real Time on November 11, equated it with the bloodiest day in U.S. history since the Battle of Antietam: "This is a moral 9/11. Only 9/11 was done to us from the outside and we did this to ourselves." ..."
During the campaign, the liberal news media did everything they could to prevent Donald Trump's election
- including
91% negative coverage from the broadcast networks - but he won anyway. Now, journalists are trashing
the way Trump is handling his transition, as well as his early Cabinet picks.
But eight years ago, viewers heard a very different tone coming from the media, as journalists
celebrated the election of Barack Obama, cheered the "brain power" of the "team of geniuses" he was
assembling for his Cabinet, and tingled over how "cool" Obama seemed as he assumed the responsibilities
of office.
With Trump, the media are touting the "continuing turmoil" in his transition, as ABC's Tom Llamas
claimed on the November 16 Good Morning America . "No one really knows who's in charge,"
correspondent Hallie Jackson echoed that evening on NBC's Nightly News . The selection of
Steve Bannon on November 13 as a top White House advisor was
greeted by the broadcast networks with phrases such as "white nationalist," "white supremacist,"
"extremist," "racist" and "anti-Semitic."
Over on CNN, contributor
David Gregory (a onetime rising star at NBC) on November 18 slapped Trump's pick for National
Security advisor, General Michael Flynn, for his allegedly "short-sighted, ignorant thinking." Two
days later, on NBC's Sunday Today , Bloomberg's
John Heilemann said Trump's Cabinet was shaping up to be a "really, really old white group of
old white men."
Trump's election itself was cause for mourning. New York Times columnist
Tom Friedman , on HBO's Real Time on November 11, equated it with the bloodiest day
in U.S. history since the Battle of Antietam: "This is a moral 9/11. Only 9/11 was done to us from
the outside and we did this to ourselves."
On MSNBC the day after the election, host
Lawrence O'Donnell bitterly griped: "There is the stench of the Trumpian vulgarity in the air
now. Half the country is reeling under the hard to accept realization that they're going be hearing
that voice every day for four years."
But when liberal icon Barack Obama was preparing to assume power, the media took a very different
approach. Here are a few examples, from the archives of the Media Research Center:
Signing Up for Obama's Revolution
MSNBC's Chris Matthews: "You know what? I want to do everything I can to make this thing work,
this new presidency work, and I think that-"
Host Joe Scarborough: "Is that your job? You just talked about being a journalist."
Matthews: "Yeah, it is my job. My job is to help this country....This country needs a successful
presidency more than anything right now."
- Exchange on MSNBC's Morning Joe , November 6, 2008.
We Just Can't Wait One Minute More
"If I had my druthers right now, we would convene a special session of Congress, amend the Constitution
and move up the inauguration from Jan. 20 to Thanksgiving Day....Just get me a Supreme Court justice
and a Bible, and let's swear in Barack Obama right now - by choice - with the same haste we did -
by necessity - with L.B.J. in the back of Air Force One. "
- New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, November 23, 2008.
Obama's Cabinet: Excellence, Brain Power, a "Team of Geniuses"
Host Keith Olbermann: "Is there going to be an overarching theme in the appointments? We discussed
this last night, competency, bipartisanship, diversity, newness, where are they going?" Newsweek 's Howard Fineman: "Well, it's going to be all of those. But I think, if you had
to pick one, it would be excellence."
- MSNBC's Countdown , November 5, 2008.
Co-host Robin Roberts: "Some would say it's a team of rivals, a la President Lincoln, or is a
better comparison a team of geniuses as FDR did?"
ABC's George Stephanopoulos: "Well, one Obama advisor told me what they like is a combination of
team of rivals and The Best and the Brightest , which is the David Halberstam book about
the incoming Kennedy administration.... We have not seen this kind of combination of star power and
brain power and political muscle this early in a cabinet in our lifetimes."
- ABC's Good Morning America , November 24, 2008.
"It's also a meritocracy. These are superstars, not afraid of strong personalities - Larry Summers
inside the White House - but people with so much brain power, and so much education, and a combination
of talents here."
- NBC's Andrea Mitchell on Obama's cabinet, December 21, 2008 Meet the Press .
"... The term conspiracy theorist was developed by the CIA in the mid-1960s to ridicule those who believed there was a wide government role in the assassination of President Kennedy. It has been used ever since to describe legitimate researchers into Iran-Contra, 9/11, and other deep state crimes. ..."
Mohsen Abdelmoumen : According to you, when we see the numerous demonstrations anti-Trump
in the United States after the election of Donald Trump at the presidency, are we witnessing a colored
revolution?
Wayne Madsen: It is classic Soros-funded color revolution. Soros is financing MoveOn.org, Black
Lives Matter, Demos, and other of his groups to turn out protesters and is even running ads in papers
looking for paid drivers and protest coordinators.
In your very relevant books devoted to George Soros: "Soros: Quantum of Chaos", you reveal the
true face of this figure who is the spearhead of several destabilization operations in the world.
From where does all the power come that this criminal holds and why is he untouchable?
Soros is very wealthy and actually a frontman for an even more powerful and wealthy person, Evelyn
de Rothschild, along with his family. They are all the true puppet masters of the world.
Soros remains a major element in the anti-Trump device. Can Trump resist him?
Trump is actually now being surrounded by people who will serve in his administration who will
be loyal to the Soros-Rothschild puppet masters and certainly not to Trump.
Can we say that the occult world is more powerful than legal institutions?
Secret societies with their crazy rituals have been the bane of human existence since the time
of the Sanhedrin and Pharisees in Palestine and the Dionysian cults of the Nile Valley and the Mediterranean
region.
In your book " ISIS is US - The Shocking Truth Behind the Army of Terror", you detail
the relations between the USA and ISIS/Daesh. What is the triggering element that has put you on
this trail?
Trump's national security adviser retired Lt Gen Michael Flynn revealed that the US was supporting
ISIS and then he was forced to resign. My own sources in the Middle East confirmed this long before
Flynn made his public statement and was fired as Defense Intelligence Agency chief by Obama.
You mention Western Sahara and the involvement of the Clintons in a deal with the Kingdom of Morocco
while this case is under the authority of UN. Aren't the Clintons outlaws such Bonnie and Clyde by
supporting Morocco against the Sahrawi people and the UN's resolutions?
The Clintons received at least $12 million from the Moroccan government in return for buying their
loyalty to Morocco's agenda, which includes permanently annexing Western Sahara as the "Southern
Province." Morocco and Israel share the same policy on annexing illegally-occupied territories.
According to your diverse very interesting analysis, can we assert that the World Government or
the false prophets of the New World Order are the real decision-makers of this world?
I mentioned a few already, Soros/Rothschild. Others are the Bilderbergs, Bohemian Club, and the
Council on Foreign Relations and their counterparts.
You know very well some American intelligence agencies like the NSA. Do these intelligence agencies
serve the US' interests or, rather, the oligarchy's interests?
The CIA has always served the interests of Wall Street. NSA now serves the interests of the global
security network it leads.
You were an officer in the US Navy. Was the whistleblower you are today born after your military
career or before?
Before. I was an FBI-Navy whistleblower in 1982 and helped to uncover a major pedophile ring in
the US Navy that reached into the Reagan-Bush White House and was ultimately exposed in The Washington
Times in 1988-89. My whistleblowing cost me my Navy career, however, and a subsequent series of fairly
bad jobs.
In the recent US election, we saw the mass media bankruptcy despite their manipulations and their
fake polls. Didn't one of the pillars of world oligarchy collapse under our eyes? Don't we witness
a historic moment announcing the end of the New World Order and its purely capitalist product, globalization?
99 percent of major newspapers endorsed Clinton. Many alternative news sources supported Trump.
We are seeing a massive shift away from newspapers and corporate TV and websites to the alternative
media, of which WayneMadsenReport.com has been prominent since its founding in 2005.
Snowden has denounced the Prism program and you have denounced Echelon, both of which serve the
interests of the world's oligarchic caste. What is known is not only the immersed part of the iceberg?
What is still relatively unknown is the close cooperation between NSA and private companies like
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, and major telecommunications companies. It is much greater than
even Snowden's documents describe.
The quantity and especially the quality of your reports reveal to us a world unknown by millions
of human beings. How all these truths have been hidden?
The major media cooperates with the government in covering up news events.
I advise everyone to read the Wayne Madsen Report as well as your books and follow your various
interventions in the alternative media. How do you explain that we, who are resisting to what I call
the fascist oligarchic caste, are called conspiracy theorists? Is this concept the only
weapon of the fascist imperialists to reduce to silence all those who resist them and to reinforce
the ranks of those whose who have been brainwashed?
The term conspiracy theorist was developed by the CIA in the mid-1960s to ridicule those who believed
there was a wide government role in the assassination of President Kennedy. It has been used ever
since to describe legitimate researchers into Iran-Contra, 9/11, and other deep state crimes.
Your book " The Star and The Sword " is one of the few to talk about intimate and opaque
links between the Zionist entity of Israel and Saudi Arabia. You claim that they organize false flag
attacks, including the 9/11. What is the origin and nature of this Israeli-Saudi strategic alliance?
Do you think that the JASTA law will succeed or will it be countered by the Zionist allies of Saudi
Arabia? Do the fact that the USA and the Westerners turn a blind eye on the criminal war led by the
Saudis to Yemen isn't due to the weight of the lobby Zionist?
The Zionist-Wahhabi/Saudi alliance goes back to Ibn Saud who wrote the British and Zionist leaders
that he did not oppose a Jewish homeland in Palestine so long as it did not lay claim to Saudi territory
on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Aqaba. The relationship has always been close, except for the
time of King Faisal, who was conveniently shot in the face and killed by a relative.
Do you undergo pressure or threats in relation to the remarkable work you do? If so, how do you
live it?
I was forced to move my domicile from Washington because the outgoing Obama administration put
pressure on some media organizations I did work for. These included RT (contributor agreement canceled)
and Al Jazeera America (which is now defunct).
The FBI entered my apartment in Washington at least twice and I've had three visits by them at
my new home in Florida. I was informed of 3 personal threats in Washington. I ignore all these pressures and continue to exercise the freedom of the press. Are you optimistic or do you think that the Satanist project of the oligarchy still has a nuisance
capacity that can plunge the world into chaos?
As with cockroaches, which detest light, the shadow figures of covert power cannot stand what
is known as the disinfectant of sunshine. Light has always fought against darkness and will continue
to do so.
Interview realized by Mohsen Abdelmoumen
Wayne Madsen is an American journalist, television news commentator, online editor of Wayne
Madsen Report.com , investigative journalist and author specializing intelligence and international
affairs.Starting in 1997, after his military service as a U.S. Navy lieutenant assigned to Anti-Submarine
Warfare duties and to the National Security Agency as a COMSEC analyst, he applied his military intelligence
training to investigative journalism.He has since written for many daily, weekly, and monthly publications
including The Progressive , The Village Voice , Counterpunch , Philadelphia
Inquirer , Houston Chronicle , Allentown Morning Call , Juneau Empire ,
Cleveland Plain Dealer , Real Clear Politics , Danbury Newstimes , Newsday
and many others.Throughout his journalistic career, he has been a television commentator on many
programs, including 60 Minutes , Russia Today , Press TV , and many others.He
has been a frequent political and national security commentator on Fox News and has also appeared
on ABC , NBC , CBS , PBS , CNN , BBC , Al Jazeera , and MS-NBC .
He has been invited to testify as a witness before the US House of Representatives, the UN Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda, and a terrorism investigation judicial inquiry of the French government. Wayne
Madsen has some thirty-five years experience in security issues. As a U.S. Naval Officer, he managed
one of the first computer security programs for the U.S. Navy. He subsequently worked for the National
Security Agency, the Naval Data Automation Command, Department of State, RCA Corporation, and Computer
Sciences Corporation. Wayne Madsen was a Senior Fellow for the Electronic Privacy Information Center
(EPIC), a privacy public advocacy organization. Mr. Madsen is a member of the National Press Club.
Wayne Madsen is the author of The Handbook of Personal Data Protection (London: Macmillan,
1992), an acclaimed reference book on international data protection law; Genocide and Covert Operations
in Africa 1993-1999 (Edwin Mellen Press, 1999); co-author of America's Nightmare: The Presidency
of George Bush II ( Dandelion, 2003); Forbidden Truth: U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy,
Saudi Arabia and the Failed Search for bin Laden ; author of Jaded Tasks: Big Oil, Black
Ops & Brass Plates ; Overthrow a Fascist Regime on $15 a Day ; The star and the sword
; The Manufacturing of a President: the CIA's Insertion of Barack H. Obama, Jr. into the White
House ; L'Affaire Petraeus ; and National Security Agency Surveillance: Reflections
and Revelations ; Soros: Quantum of Chaos (2015); Unmasking ISIS: The Shocking Truth
(2016).
Of course, the media will get little sympathy from the public, with a favorable rating sitting
at an all-time low in the latest Gallup survey. Only 32 percent of Americans say they have a
great deal or fair amount of trust in the press.
And Trump's allies believe all of their moves to beat back at what they view as a hopelessly
biased liberal media are justified.
They're fuming over what they see as a press corps that has dropped any pretense of objectivity
in covering Trump, and they're sick of what they view as breathless coverage of frivolous
stories...
National security state gone rogue is fascism. Frankly, I don't see evidence of huge abuse
of US liberties. But I do see our foreign policy distorted by a counter-terror obsession
Notable quotes:
"... the government's interpretation of that law ..."
"... "One reports a crime; and one commits a crime." ..."
"... but does not include differences of opinion concerning public policy matters ..."
Two weeks ago, the Guardian began publishing a series of eye-opening revelations about the National
Security Agency and its surveillance
efforts both in the United States
and overseas. These stories raised long-moribund and often-ignored questions about the pervasiveness
of government surveillance and the extent to which privacy rights are being violated by this secret
and seemingly unaccountable security apparatus.
However, over the past two weeks, we've begun to get a clearer understanding of the story and
the implications of what has been published – informed in part by a new-found (if forced upon them)
transparency from the intelligence community. So here's one columnist's effort to sort the wheat
from the chaff and offer a few answers to the big questions that have been raised.
These revelations are a big deal, right?
To fully answer this question, it's important to clarify the revelations that have sparked such
controversy. The Guardian (along with the Washington Post) has broken a number of stories, each of
which tells us very different things about what is happening inside the US government around matters
of surveillance and cyber operations. Some are relatively mundane, others more controversial.
The story that has shaped press coverage and received the most attention was the first one – namely,
the publication of a judicial order from the
Fisa court to Verizon that
indicated the US is "hoovering" up millions of phone records (so-called "metadata") into a giant
NSA database. When it broke, the
story was quickly portrayed as a frightening tale of government overreach and violation of privacy
rights. After all, such metadata – though it contains no actual content – can be used rather easily
as a stepping-stone to more intrusive forms of surveillance.
But what is the true extent of the story here: is this picture of government Big Brotherism correct
or is this massive government surveillance actually quite benign?
First of all, such a collection of data is not, in and of itself, illegal. The
Obama administration
was clearly acting within the constraints of federal law and received judicial approval for this
broad request for data. That doesn't necessarily mean that the law is good or that the
government's interpretation of that law is not too broad, but unlike the Bush "warrantless wiretapping"
stories of several years ago, the US government is here acting within the law.
The real question that should concern us is one raised by the
TV writer David Simon in a widely cited blogpost looking at the issues raised by the Guardian's
reporting, namely:
"Is government accessing the data for the legitimate public safety needs of the society, or
are they accessing it in ways that abuse individual liberties and violate personal privacy – and
in a manner that is unsupervised."
We know, for example, that the NSA is required to abide by laws that prevent the international
targeting of American citizens (you can
read more about that
here). So, while metadata about phone calls made can be used to discover information about the
individuals making the calls, there are "minimization" rules, procedures and laws that guide the
use of such data and prevent possible abuse and misuse of protected data.
Sure, the potential for abuse exists – but so, too, does the potential for the lawful use of metadata
in a way that protects the privacy of individual Americans – and also assists the US government in
pursuit of potential terrorist suspects. Of course, without information on the specific procedures
used by the NSA to minimize the collection of protected data, it is impossible to know that no laws
are being broken or no abuse is occurring.
In that sense, we have to take the government's word for it. And that is especially problematic
when you consider the Fisa court decisions authorizing this snooping are secret and the congressional
intelligence committees tasked with conducting oversight tend to be toothless.
But assumptions of bad faith and violations of privacy by the US government are just that assumptions.
When President Obama says that the NSA is not violating privacy rights because it would be against
the law, we can't simply disregard such statements as self-serving. Moreover, when one considers
the privacy violations that Americans willingly submit to at airports, what personal data they give
to the government in their tax returns, and what is regularly posted voluntarily on Facebook, sent
via email and searched for online, highly-regulated data-mining by the NSA seems relatively tame.
One of the key questions that have emerged over this story is the motivation of the leaker in
question, Edward Snowden. In
his initial public interview, with Glenn Greenwald on 9 June, Snowden explained his actions,
in part, thus:
"I'm willing to sacrifice because I can't in good conscience allow the US government to destroy
privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance
machine they're secretly building."
Now, while one can argue that Snowden's actions do not involve personal sacrifice, whether they
are heroic is a much higher bar to cross. First of all, it's far from clear that the US government
is destroying privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world.
Snowden may sincere about being "valiant for truth", but he wouldn't be the first person to believe
himself such and yet be wrong.
Second, one can make the case that there is a public interest in knowing that the US is collecting
reams of phone records, but where is the public interest – and indeed, to Snowden's own justification,
the violation of privacy – in leaking a presidential directive on cyber operations or leaking that
the US is spying on the Russian president?
The latter is both not a crime it's actually what the NSA was established to do! In his
recent online chat hosted by the Guardian, Snowden suggested that the US should not be spying
on any country with whom it's not formally at war. That is, at best, a dubious assertion, and one
that is at odds with years of spycraft.
On the presidential directive on cyber operations, the damning evidence that Snowden revealed
was that President Obama has asked his advisers to create a list of potential targets for cyber operations
– but such planning efforts are rather routine contingency operations. For example, if the
US military drew up war
plans in case conflict ever occurred between the US and North Korea – and that included offensive
operations – would that be considered untoward or perhaps illegitimate military planning?
This does not mean, however, that Snowden is a traitor. Leaking classified data is a serious offense,
but treason is something else altogether.
The problem for Snowden is that he has now also
leaked classified information about ongoing US intelligence-gathering efforts to foreign governments,
including China and Russia. That may be crossing a line, which means that the jury is still out on
what label we should use to describe Snowden.
Shouldn't Snowden be protected as a whistleblower?
This question of leakers v whistleblowers has frequently been conflated in the public reporting
about the NSA leak (and many others). But this is a crucial error. As Tara Lee, a lawyer at the law
firm DLA Piper, with expertise in defense industry and national security litigation said to me there
is an important distinction between leakers and whistleblowers, "One reports a crime; and one
commits a crime."
Traditionally (and often technically), whistleblowing refers to specific actions that are taken
to bring to attention illegal behavior, fraud, waste, abuse etc. Moreover, the US government provides
federal employees and contractors with the protection to blow the whistle on wrongdoing. In the case
of Snowden, he could have gone to the inspector general at the Department of Justice or relevant
congressional committees.
From all accounts, it appears that he did not go down this path. Of course, since the material
he was releasing was approved by the Fisa court and had the sign-off of the intelligence committee,
he had good reason to believe that he would have not received the most receptive hearing for his
complaints.
Nevertheless, that does not give him carte blanche to leak to the press – and certainly doesn't
give him carte blanche to leak information on activities that he personally finds objectionable but
are clearly legal. Indeed, according to the
Intelligence Community
Whistleblower Protection Act (ICWPA), whistleblowers can make complaints over matter of what
the law calls "urgent concern", which includes "a serious or flagrant problem, abuse, violation of
law or executive order, or deficiency relating to the funding, administration, or operations of an
intelligence activity involving classified information, but does not include differences of opinion
concerning public policy matters [my italics]."
In other words, simply believing that a law or government action is wrong does not give one the
right to leak information; and in the eyes of the law, it is not considered whistleblowing. Even
if one accepts the view that the leaked Verizon order fell within the bounds of being in the "public
interest", it's a harder case to make for the presidential directive on cyber operations or the eavesdropping
on foreign leaders.
The same problem is evident in the incorrect description of
Bradley Manning as
a whistleblower. When you leak hundreds of thousands of documents – not all of which you reviewed
and most of which contain the mundane and not illegal diplomatic behavior of the US government –
you're leaking. Both Manning and now Snowden have taken it upon themselves to decide what
should be in the public domain; quite simply, they don't have the right to do that. If every government
employee decided actions that offended their sense of morality should be leaked, the government would
never be able to keep any secrets at all and, frankly, would be unable to operate effectively.
So, like Manning, Snowden is almost certainly not a whistleblower, but rather a leaker. And that
would mean that he, like Manning, is liable to prosecution for leaking classified material.
Are Democrats hypocrites
over the NSA's activities?
A couple of days ago, my Guardian colleague, Glenn Greenwald made the following assertion:
"The most vehement defenders of NSA surveillance
have been, by far, Democratic (especially Obama-loyal) pundits. One of the most significant
aspects of the Obama legacy has been the transformation of Democrats from pretend-opponents of
the Bush "war on terror" and national security state into their biggest proponents."
This is regular line of argument from Glenn, but it's one that, for a variety of reasons, I believe
is not fair. (I don't say this because I'm an Obama partisan – though I may be called one for writing
this.)
First, the lion's share of criticism of these recent revelations has come, overwhelmingly, from
Democrats and, indeed, from many of the same people, including Greenwald, who were up in arms when
the so-called warrantless wiretapping program was revealed in 2006. The reality is that outside a
minority of activists, it's not clear that many Americans – Democrats orRepublicans –
get all that excited about these types of stories. (Not that this is necessarily a good thing.)
Second, opposition to the Bush program was two-fold: first, it was illegal and was conducted with
no judicial or congressional oversight; second, Bush's surveillance policies did not occur in a vacuum
– they were part of a pattern of law-breaking, disastrous policy decisions and Manichean rhetoric
over the "war on terror". So, if you opposed the manner in which Bush waged war on the "axis of evil",
it's not surprising that you would oppose its specific elements. In the same way, if you now support
how President Obama conducts counter-terrorism efforts, it's not surprising that you'd be more inclined
to view specific anti-terror policies as more benign.
Critics will, of course, argue – and rightly so – that we are a country of laws first. In which
case it shouldn't matter who is the president, but rather what the laws are that govern his or her
conduct. Back in the world of political reality, though, that's not how most Americans think of their
government. Their perceptions are defined in large measure by how the current president conducts
himself, so there is nothing at all surprising about Republicans having greater confidence in a Republican
president and Democrats having greater confidence in a Democratic one, when asked about specific
government programs.
Beyond that, simply having greater confidence in President Obama than President Bush to wield
the awesome powers granted the commander-in-chief to conduct foreign policy is not partisanship.
It's common sense.
George Bush was, undoubtedly,
one of the two or three worst foreign policy presidents in American history (and arguably, our worst
president, period). He and Dick Cheney habitually broke the law, including but not limited to the
abuse of NSA surveillance. President Obama is far from perfect: he made the terrible decision to
surge in Afghanistan, and
he's fought two wars of dubious legality in Libya and Pakistan, but he's very far from the sheer
awfulness of the Bush/Cheney years.
Unless you believe the US should have no NSA, and conduct no intelligence-gathering in the fight
against terrorism, you have to choose a president to manage that agency. And there is nothing hypocritical
or partisan about believing that one president is better than another to handle those responsibilities.
Has NSA surveillance prevented terrorist attacks, as claimed?
In congressional testimony this week, officials from the Department of Justice and the
NSA argued that surveillance efforts stopped "potential terrorist events over 50 times since
9/11". Having spent far too many years listening to public officials describe terrifying terror plots
that fell apart under greater scrutiny, this assertion sets off for me a set of red flags (even though
it may be true).
I have no doubt that NSA surveillance has contributed to national security investigations, but
whether it's as extensive or as vital as the claims of government officials is more doubtful. To
be honest, I'm not sure it matters. Part of the reason the US government conducts NSA surveillance
in the first place is not necessarily to stop every potential attack (though that would be nice),
but to deter potential terrorists from acting in the first place.
Critics of the program like to argue that "of course, terrorists know their phones are being tapped
and emails are being read", but that's kind of the point. If they know this, it forces them to choose
more inefficient means of communicating, and perhaps to put aside potential attacks for fear of being
uncovered.
We also know that not every terrorist has the skills of a Jason Bourne. In fact, many appear to
be not terribly bright, which means that even if they know about the NSA's enormous dragnet, it doesn't
mean they won't occasionally screw up and get caught.
Yet, this gets to a larger issue that is raised by the NSA revelations.
When is enough counter-terrorism enough?
Over the past 12 years, the US has developed what can best be described as a dysfunctional relationship
with terrorism. We've become obsessed with it and with a zero-tolerance approach to stopping it.
While the former is obviously an important goal, it has led the US to take steps that not only undermine
our values (such as torture), but also make us weaker (the invasion of
Iraq, the surge in Afghanistan,
etc).
To be sure, this is not true of every anti-terror program of the past dozen years. For example,
the US does a better job of sharing intelligence among government agencies, and of screening those
who are entering the country. And military efforts in the early days of the "war on terror" clearly
did enormous damage to al-Qaida's capabilities.
In general, though, when one considers the relatively low risk of terrorist attacks – and the
formidable defenses of the United States – the US response to terrorism has been one of hysterical
over-reaction. Indeed, the balance we so often hear about when it comes to protecting privacy while
also ensuring security is only one part of the equation. The other is how do we balance the need
to stop terrorists (who certainly aspire to attack the United States) and the need to prevent anti-terrorism
from driving our foreign policy to a disproportionate degree. While the NSA revelations might not
be proof that we've gone too far in one direction, there's not doubt that, for much of the past 12
years, terrorism has distorted and marred our foreign policy.
Last month, President Obama gave a seminal speech at the National Defense University, in which
he essentially declared the "war on terror" over. With troops coming home from Afghanistan, and drone
strikes on the decline, that certainly seems to be the case. But as the national freakout over the
Boston Marathon bombing – and the extraordinary over-reaction of a city-wide lockdown for one wounded
terrorist on the loose – remind us, we still have a ways to go.
Moreover, since no politician wants to find him- or herself in a situation after a terrorist attack
when the criticism "why didn't you do more?" can be aired, that political imperative of zero tolerance
will drive our counterterrorism policies. At some point, that needs to end.
In fact, nine years ago, our current secretary of state, John Kerry, made this exact point; it's
worth reviewing his words:
"We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives,
but they're a nuisance I know we're never going to end prostitution. We're never going to end
illegal gambling. But we're going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn't on
the rise. It isn't threatening people's lives every day, and fundamentally, it's something that
you continue to fight, but it's not threatening the fabric of your life.''
What the NSA revelations should spark is not just a debate on surveillance, but on the way we
think about terrorism and the steps that we should be willing to take both to stop it and ensure
that it does not control us. We're not there yet.
Re: How many Billions / Trillions are spent on these services?
The wonderful thing about living in a "Keynesian" perpetually increasing debt paradise is you
NEVER have to say you can't afford anything. (Well, unless you want to say it, but if you do it's
just political bullshit).
So, to answer your question... A "Keynesian" never asks how much, just how much do you want.
"When one considers the privacy violations that Americans willingly submit to at airports,
what personal data they give to the government in their tax returns, and what is regularly posted
voluntarily on Facebook, sent via email and searched for online, highly-regulated data-mining
by the NSA seems relatively tame."
Dear Sir: Please post your email addresses, bank accounts, and passwords. We'd like to look
at everything.
"When one considers the privacy violations that Americans willingly submit to at airports,
what personal data they give to the government in their tax returns, and what is regularly
posted voluntarily on Facebook, sent via email and searched for online [...]"
Wow! I don't really care about my personal email. I do care about all political activists,
journalists, lawyers etc. That a journalist would support Stasi style surveillance state is astonishing.
I wish I had the time to go through this article and demolish it sentence by sentence as it
so richly deserves, but at the moment I don't. Instead, might I suggest to the author that he
go to the guardian archive, read every single story about this in chronological order and then
read every damn link posted in the comment threads on the three most recent stories.
Most especially the links in the comment threads. If after that, he cannot see why we "civil
libertarian freaks" are not just outraged, but frightened, he frankly lacks both historical knowledge
and any ability to analyze the facts that are staring him in the face. I can't believe I am going
to have to say this again but here goes: YOU do not get to give away my contitutional rights,
Mr. Cohen.
I don't give a shit how much you trust Obama compared to dubya. The Bill of Rights states in
clear, unambiguous language what the Federal government may NOT do do its citizens no matter WHO
is president.
Michael Cohen Frankly, I don't see evidence of huge abuse of US liberties.
Well of course you wont see them.
But the abuses are very probably already happening on a one to one basis in the same shadows in
which the intelligence was first gathered.
President-elect Donald Trump recently had an 'off the record' meeting with members of the American
press, aka mainstream media. Such events are not unusual for presidents and future presidents, but
according to a variety anonymous sources, Donald Trump has not extended an olive branch to media
figures who displayed their open bias against him throughout the campaign. >
According to The Hill, Trump said that being in front of the mainstream media was like, "Being
in front of a fucking firing squad". Other sources claim he repeatedly said that he was in a
"room full of liars". If he indeed said either of those things, it is difficult to disagree
with such an assessment. He also claimed that he "hated" CNN, feelings which seem self-evidently
mutual.
According to the generally anti-Trump Politico, the President-elect blasted NBC for using unflattering
photographs of him throughout their coverage.
Whether or not these reports are fully accurate is beside the point. Frankly, why would one trust
off the record comments from people who publicly slandered Trump on the record and did so without
a hint of shame.
What is more significant is what Trump said about his use of social media during his lengthy interview
on CBS's 60 Minutes. Here, Trump said that social media is an effective way to bypass big-media
and speak directly to the public. He also stated that it is a quick, cheap and effective way to clarify
misstatements made by the mainstream media.
This is unequivocally true and it is heartening. To think that a small smartphone has the ability
to reach as many and at times even more people than the mainstream media with their millions of dollars
worth of cameras, microphones, lights, sets, drivers, vehicles, offices and staff, is a sign that
the world is no longer beholden to the arrogant gatekeepers of news, perhaps better referred to as
"fake news".
Donald Trump was indeed given a very unfair time by the media and he has no reason to forget nor
forgive. He also has no reason to placate them, and frankly due to the power of new-media, online
media and his own highly effective use of social media, he doesn't need them.
They are relics of the past and he is a symbol of the future.
Steven Barry
The alt-media is the samizdat (google it) of the internet age. The genie is out of the
bottle and there is no putting it back.
Simon
Excellent. Yet even 'IF' the reports of this meeting are exaggerated, there is a fact that
is undeniable; The new President is holding Court in his own palace, on top of his own castle,
in New York.
All the supplicants are coming to him. Even the Japanese Prime minister. He sits there in the
economic capital of the USA rather than being in Washington - where presumably something like
the HQ of the Republican Party would be the more normal venue for a president-elect.
Far away in the DC Swamp (which voted 94% Hillary) the politicians, the hacks, the lobbyists
the 'professionals' are in panic - there's no way to meet him, no way to do lunch at 30mins
notice. All they have is the tragic ghost of BHO wandering around the White House, but the
glitz the zeitgeist the locus is now at Trump Tower. Every day we see its lobby and the golden
lift in the news.
Many believe nothing will change, but so far there are plenty signs that it has.
tom > Simon
Let's hope the Trump Tower doesn't get 9/11'd.
le-DeplorableFroggy > tom
As long as the Mossad terrorists are kept OUT of the US from now on, and every zionist
stooge is either locked up or thrown OUT of this country, NO more israHell/Mossad false flags
in the US.
● How Ehud Barak Pulled Off 9-11 - (bollyn dot com/how-ehud-barak-pulled-off-9-11-2)
● MADE IN ISRAEL - 9-11 and the Jewish Plot Against America PDF - (shop.americanfreepress dot
net/store/c/25-Israel.html)
● 9-11 EVIL - Israel's Central Role in the September 11, 2001, Terrorist Attacks - (shop.americanfreepress
dot net/store/c/25-Israel.html)
● Get the Hell Out of Our Country! Parts 1 to 5 - (veteranstoday dot
com/2015/02/05/get-the-hell-out-of-our-country/)
● Israel a cornered rat - "In 10 years there will be no more Israel" - Henry 'Balloonie'
Kizzinger - (darkmoon dot me/2014/israel-a-cornered-rat/)
● Netanyahu tells ministers not to talk to Trump's people - (theuglytruth.wordpress dot
com/2016/11/21/netanyahu-tells-ministers-not-to-talk-to-trumps-people/#more-162166)
7.62x54r • 3 days ago
US media ( and other NATO media ) are propagandists. The US Big 6 should have their
licenses yanked for putting forth a flawed and wholly dishonest product. Screw them.
FRIEDMAN: What do you see as America's role in the world? Do you believe that the role
TRUMP: That's such a big question.
FRIEDMAN: The role that we played for 50 years as kind of the global balancer, paying more for
things because they were in our ultimate interest, one hears from you, I sense, is really shrinking
that role.
TRUMP: I don't think we should be a nation builder. I think we've tried that. I happen to think
that going into Iraq was perhaps I mean you could say maybe we could have settled the civil war,
O.K.? I think going into Iraq was one of the great mistakes in the history of our country. I think
getting out of it - I think we got out of it wrong, then lots of bad things happened, including the
formation of ISIS. We could have gotten out of it differently.
FRIEDMAN: NATO, Russia?
TRUMP: I think going in was a terrible, terrible mistake. Syria, we have to solve that problem
because we are going to just keep fighting, fighting forever. I have a different view on Syria than
everybody else. Well, not everybody else, but then a lot of people. I had to listen to [Senator]
Lindsey Graham, who, give me a break. I had to listen to Lindsey Graham talk about, you know, attacking
Syria and attacking, you know, and it's like you're now attacking Russia, you're attacking Iran,
you're attacking. And what are we getting? We're getting - and what are we getting? And I have some
very definitive, I have some very strong ideas on Syria. I think what's happened is a horrible, horrible
thing. To look at the deaths, and I'm not just talking deaths on our side, which are horrible, but
the deaths - I mean you look at these cities, Arthur, where they're totally, they're rubble, massive
areas, and they say two people were injured. No, thousands of people have died. O.K. And I think
it's a shame. And ideally we can get - do something with Syria. I spoke to Putin, as you know, he
called me, essentially
UNKNOWN: How do you see that relationship?
TRUMP: Essentially everybody called me, all of the major leaders, and most of them I've spoken
to.
FRIEDMAN: Will you have a reset with Russia?
TRUMP: I wouldn't use that term after what happened, you know, previously. I think - I would love
to be able to get along with Russia and I think they'd like to be able to get along with us. It's
in our mutual interest. And I don't go in with any preconceived notion, but I will tell you, I would
say - when they used to say, during the campaign, Donald Trump loves Putin, Putin loves Donald Trump,
I said, huh, wouldn't it be nice, I'd say this in front of thousands of people, wouldn't it be nice
to actually report what they said, wouldn't it be nice if we actually got along with Russia, wouldn't
it be nice if we went after ISIS together, which is, by the way, aside from being dangerous, it's
very expensive, and ISIS shouldn't have been even allowed to form, and the people will stand up and
give me a massive hand. You know they thought it was bad that I was getting along with Putin or that
I believe strongly if we can get along with Russia that's a positive thing. It is a great thing that
we can get along with not only Russia but that we get along with other countries.
JOSEPH KAHN, managing editor: On Syria, would you mind, you said you have a very strong idea about
what to do with the Syria conflict, can you describe that for us?
TRUMP: I can only say this: We have to end that craziness that's going on in Syria. One of the
things that was told to me - can I say this off the record, or is everything on the record?
"... That being the case I'm sorry I voted for Stein and question her honesty and the Green Party itself. Since the allegations of hacked voting machines sound shaky at best, one starts to wonder whether the allegations that Stein was in fact a vaxxer are true. But more to the point one wonders whether she has HRC on the speed dial. ..."
So Jill Stein, who said on the campaign trail that Clinton is more dangerous than Trump, is
filing for a recount with the specific aim of overturning the result and making Clinton president–at
least according to your link.
That being the case I'm sorry I voted for Stein and question her honesty and the Green Party
itself. Since the allegations of hacked voting machines sound shaky at best, one starts to wonder
whether the allegations that Stein was in fact a vaxxer are true. But more to the point one wonders
whether she has HRC on the speed dial.
Former Congressman and Libertarian icon Ron Paul has warned that 'shadow government' neocons could
orchestrate a 'false flag' incident in order to drag new president Donald Trump into a fresh war.
"I don't how anybody can say they know what is going to happen," Paul told
The Daily Caller, referring to Trump's foreign policy.
"All we need is a false flag and an accident and everybody will be for teaching them a lesson,"
Paul said, warning that such an event could trigger new foreign entanglement.
"The neocons always talked about it before 9/11 they kept saying, 'we aren't going to get our
program in until we have a Pearl Harbor event,'" the former congressman stated, stopping short of
saying he believes those attacks were staged.
"I think other countries could use false flags." Paul also added.
Paul also warned that a shadow government will continue to operate when Trump is president, just
as it did during Obama's time in office.
"Obama probably was much more attune to a different foreign policy of less aggression but why
then does he do it?" Paul said.
"I think there's the shadow government, the military-industrial complex, the CIA, and all the
things that can be done because they just melt away and they do exactly what the establishment says."
the former Congressman added.
Paul warned that those within the shadow government are seeking to influence Trump now.
"He's very friendly with a lot of them right now, he's talking to them," Paul said, adding that
"We don't have a final answer, we have to wait to see who get's appointed."
"He doesn't talk about blowback and coming out of these countries. He has a better policy with
Russia but I think he still is talking with the neoconservatives." Paul also stated.
"The deep state is very very powerful and they have a lot of control," Paul said, adding "That
is one of my big issues about how shadow government is so powerful in all administrations."
Earlier this month, Paul
issued the same warnings, saying that neocons and shadow government figures are going to attempt
to infiltrate and influence Trump's presidency and prevent him from achieving successful change.
Former Congressman and Libertarian icon Ron Paul has warned that 'shadow government' neocons could
orchestrate a 'false flag' incident in order to drag new president Donald Trump into a fresh war.
"I don't how anybody can say they know what is going to happen," Paul told
The Daily Caller, referring to Trump's foreign policy.
"All we need is a false flag and an accident and everybody will be for teaching them a lesson,"
Paul said, warning that such an event could trigger new foreign entanglement.
"The neocons always talked about it before 9/11 they kept saying, 'we aren't going to get our
program in until we have a Pearl Harbor event,'" the former congressman stated, stopping short of
saying he believes those attacks were staged.
"I think other countries could use false flags." Paul also added.
Paul also warned that a shadow government will continue to operate when Trump is president, just
as it did during Obama's time in office.
"Obama probably was much more attune to a different foreign policy of less aggression but why
then does he do it?" Paul said.
"I think there's the shadow government, the military-industrial complex, the CIA, and all the
things that can be done because they just melt away and they do exactly what the establishment says."
the former Congressman added.
Paul warned that those within the shadow government are seeking to influence Trump now.
"He's very friendly with a lot of them right now, he's talking to them," Paul said, adding that
"We don't have a final answer, we have to wait to see who get's appointed."
"He doesn't talk about blowback and coming out of these countries. He has a better policy with
Russia but I think he still is talking with the neoconservatives." Paul also stated.
"The deep state is very very powerful and they have a lot of control," Paul said, adding "That
is one of my big issues about how shadow government is so powerful in all administrations."
Earlier this month, Paul
issued the same warnings, saying that neocons and shadow government figures are going to attempt
to infiltrate and influence Trump's presidency and prevent him from achieving successful change.
Donald Trump's unorthodox US presidential transition continued on Monday when he held talks with
one of the most prominent supporters of leftwing Democrat Bernie Sanders.
The president-elect's first meeting of the day at Trump Tower in New York was with Tulsi Gabbard,
a Democratic maverick who endorsed the socialist Sanders during his unsuccessful primary battle with
Hillary Clinton.
... ... ...
At first glance Gabbard, who is from Hawaii and is the first Hindu member of the US Congress,
seems an unlikely counsellor. She resigned from the Democratic National Committee to back Vermont
senator Sanders and formally nominated him for president at the party convention in July, crediting
him with starting a "movement of love and compassion", although by then Clinton's victory was certain.
But the Iraq war veteran has also expressed views that might appeal to Trump, criticising Obama,
condemning interventionist wars in Iraq and Libya and taking a hard line on immigration. In 2014,
she called for a rollback of the visa waiver programme for Britain and other European countries with
what she called "Islamic extremist" populations.
In October last year she tweeted: "Al-Qaeda attacked us on 9/11 and must be defeated. Obama won't
bomb them in Syria. Putin did. #neverforget911." She was then among 47 Democrats who joined Republicans
to pass a bill mandating a stronger screening process for refugees from Iraq and Syria coming to
the US.
"... Judging by the people who Trump has appointed, it is looking like an ugly situation for the US. If he actually hires people like John Bolton, we will know that a betrayal was certain. While I think that it is probable that he is the lesser evil, he was supposed to avoid neoconservatives and Wall Street types (that Clinton associates herself with). ..."
"... I think it would be a mistake to attribute too much "genius" to Trump and Kushner. It sounds like Kushner exhibited competence, and that's great. But Trump won in great measure because Democratic Party governance eviscerated those communities. ..."
"... This is akin to how Obama got WAY too much credit for being a brilliant orator. People wanted change in '08 and voted for it. That change agent betrayed them, so they voted for change again this time. Or, more accurately, a lot of Obama voters stayed home, the Republican base held together, and Trump's team found necessary little pockets of ignored voters to energize. But that strategy would never have worked if not for Obama's and Clinton's malfeasance and incompetence. Honestly, Hillary got closer to a win that she had a right to. That ought to be the real story. ..."
Does anyone else get the overwhelming impression that the US is heading for an impending collapse
or serious decline at least, unless it puts a fight it against the status quo?
Judging by the people who Trump has appointed, it is looking like an ugly situation for
the US. If he actually hires people like John Bolton, we will know that a betrayal was certain.
While I think that it is probable that he is the lesser evil, he was supposed to avoid neoconservatives
and Wall Street types (that Clinton associates herself with).
I find it amazing how tone deaf the Clinton campaign and Democratic Establishment are. Trump
and apparently his son in law, no matter what else, are political campaigning geniuses given their
accomplishments. For months people were criticizing their lack of experience in politics like
a fatal mistake..
I think that no real change is going to happen until someone authentically left wing takes
power or if the US collapses.
I think it would be a mistake to attribute too much "genius" to Trump and Kushner. It sounds
like Kushner exhibited competence, and that's great. But Trump won in great measure because Democratic
Party governance eviscerated those communities.
This is akin to how Obama got WAY too much credit for being a brilliant orator. People
wanted change in '08 and voted for it. That change agent betrayed them, so they voted for change
again this time. Or, more accurately, a lot of Obama voters stayed home, the Republican base held
together, and Trump's team found necessary little pockets of ignored voters to energize. But that
strategy would never have worked if not for Obama's and Clinton's malfeasance and incompetence.
Honestly, Hillary got closer to a win that she had a right to. That ought to be the real story.
It is not clear to me what exactly a collapse entails. The US doesn't have obvious lines to
fracture across, like say the USSR did. (I suppose an argument could be made for "cultural regions"
like the South, Cascadia etc separating out, but it seems far less likely to happen, even in the
case of continuing extreme economic duress and breakdown of democracy/civil rights).
The US is and has been in a serious decline, and will probably continue.
A crisis of legitimacy . People are fed up with politics. Do not blame globalisation for
that. Sep 27th 2001 | From the print edition. Timekeeper. Add this article to ...
Legitimacy: Legitimation Crises and Its Causes - Political Science Notes www.politicalsciencenotes.com/
legitimacy / legitimacy -legitimation- crises -and-its.../797
Causes of Legitimation Crisis : There are several causes or aspects of legitimation crisis
. Habermas and several other neo-Marxists, after studying all the aspects of capitalist
societies, have concluded that a number of factors are responsible for the legitimation crisis
The Global Crisis of Legitimacy . Geopolitical Weekly. May 4, 2010 | 08:56 GMT. Print. Text
Size. By George Friedman. Financial panics are an integral part of ...
by GE Reyes - 2010 -
Cited by 1 -
Related articles Theoretical basis of crisis of legitimacy and implications for less
developed countries: Guatemala as a case of study. TENDENCIAS. Revista de la Facultad de ...
by A Mattelaer - 2014 -
Related articles Mar 21, 2014 - generalised crisis in legitimacy , our democracies
face a crisis of legitimation: political choices are in dire need of an explanatory narrative
that.
The Legitimacy Crisis | RealClearPolitics www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/05/08/the_
legitimacy _ crisis _126530.html
May 8, 2015 - American government - at all levels - is losing the legitimacy it needs to
function. Or, perhaps, some segments of the government have ...
The third dimension of the crisis that I identify is the crisis of legitimacy of US hegemony.
This, I think, is as serious as the other two crises, since, as an admirer of ...
The Crisis of Legitimacy in Africa. Abiola Irele ▫ Summer 1992. A bleak picture emerges
from today's Africa. One glaring aspect is the material deprivation ...
The Imperial Presidency of the United States has evolved over the last century to the point that
the executive holds certain powers that can be considered dictatorial. Arguably, the most consequential
decision in politics is to wage war. The Constitution specifically reserves this right for Congress.
The President, as Commander-in-Chief, directs the wars that Congress declares. However, starting
with Truman's intervention in the Korean War in 1950 and continuing with invasions of Vietnam, Grenada,
Iraq and Afghanistan and the bombings of dozens more countries, the President's ability to unilaterally
initiate war with a sovereign nation has been normalized. Congress has not declared war since 1941
despite the fact the U.S. military has intervened in nearly every corner of the world in the years
since.
In recent years, George W. Bush assumed the power to kidnap, torture, and assassinate any
individual, anywhere in the world, at any time, without even a pretense of due process. Upon replacing
Bush, Barack Obama legitimized Bush's kidnapping and torture (by refusing to prosecute the perpetrators
or provide recourse to the victims) while enthusiastically embracing the power to assassinate at
will. Noam Chomsky has said this represents Obama trashing the 800-year-old Magna Carta, which King
John of England would have approved of.
Can there be anything more dictatorial than the power of a single individual to kill and make
war at will? While American presidents thankfully do not have the power to unilaterally impose taxes,
pass legislation, or incarcerate without charges inside U.S. borders, the illegitimate authority
they do possess to carry out unrestrained violence across the world is unquestionably a dictatorial
feature.
There has not been a single American president since World War II that has not exceeded his constitutional
authority by committing crimes that would meet the standard by which officials were convicted and
executed at the Nuremberg trials.
Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 to imprison Japanese Americans in concentration camps was a flagrant
violation of the Fifth Amendment right not to be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without
due process of law.
Truman's firebombing of Tokyo, nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and invasion of Korea
violated provisions of multiple treaties that are considered the "supreme law of the land" per Article
VI of the U.S. Constitution.
Eisenhower's use of the CIA to overthrow democratically elected presidents in Iran and Guatemala,
as well as the initiation of a terrorist campaign against Cuba, violated the UN Charter, another
international treaty that the Constitution regards as the supreme law of the land.
Kennedy was guilty of approving the creation of a mercenary army to invade Cuba, as well as covert
warfare in Vietnam. Johnson massively escalated U.S. military involvement in Vietnam with the introduction
of ground troops, which he fraudulently justified through misrepresentation of the Gulf of Tonkin
incident.
Succeeding Johnson, Nixon waged a nearly genocidal air campaign against not only Vietnam but Cambodia
and Laos, killing hundreds of thousands of people, destroying ecosystems across Indochina, and leaving
an unfathomable amount of unexploded ordnance, which continues to kill and maim hundreds of people
each year.
Ford covertly supported the South African invasion of Angola and overtly supported the Indonesian
invasion of East Timor. Carter continued supporting the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, as well
as providing financial and military support to military dictatorships in Guatemala and El Salvador.
Reagan oversaw the creation and operation of a terrorist army in Nicaragua, sponsored military dictatorships
throughout Central America, and directly invaded Grenada.
Bush the Elder invaded Panama and Iraq. Clinton oversaw sanctions in Iraq that killed as many
as 1 million people, carried out an air war that indiscriminately pulverized civilian targets from
15,000 feet in Serbia, and bombed a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan that produced medications for half
the country. Bush the Lesser invaded and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq. Obama continued both of those
wars, as well as dramatically expanding the drone assassination program in as many as seven countries.
So I beg to differ with Blow and anyone else who claims the presidency deserves respect. Any institution
or position that permits such illegal and immoral actions unchecked should be eradicated and replaced
with some alternative that does not.
Liberal Clinton defender Matt Yglesias argues that from a historical perspective, Trump is uniquely
dangerous. "(P)ast presidents," Yglesias writes, "have simply been restrained by restraint. By a
belief that there are certain things one simply cannot try or do."
It is hard to take such vacuous proclamations with a straight face. As we have seen, every single
American president since at least WWII has engaged in serious violations of international and domestic
law to cause death, destruction and misery across the world, from murdering individuals without due
process to unleashing two nuclear bombs on civilian populations in a defeated country that was seeking
to surrender.
When Trump assumes the presidency, he will inherit a frightening surveillance/military/incarceration
apparatus that includes a targeted killing program; a vast NSA domestic and international spying
network; a death squad (the Joint Special Operations Command); and an extralegal system for indefinite
kidnapping and imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay.
Partisans see a problem only when the presidency is in the "wrong" hands. If Obama is at the helm,
liberals are fine with unconstitutional mass surveillance or killing an American citizen without
charge or trial every now and then. Conservatives trusted Bush to warrantlessly surveill Americans,
but were outraged at the Snowden revelations.
Principled opponents recognize that no one should be trusted with illegitimate authority. The
hand-wringing and hyperventilation by liberals about the dangers of a Trump presidency ring hollow
and hypocritical.
American presidents long ago became the equivalent of elected monarchs, beyond the democratic
control of the those they purportedly serve. The occupant of the office is able to substitute his
own judgments and whims for a universally applicable set of laws and limits on the exercise of power.
It is what Dolores Vek describes as "actually existing fascism." Both parties have contributed to
it, the media has normalized it, and the public has accepted its creation and continued existence
without rebelling against it. It's time to stop treating the presidency itself with respect and start
actively delegitimizing it.
This unadmitted ignorance was previously displayed for those with eyes to see it in the Libya debacle,
perhaps not coincidentally Clinton's pet war. Cast by the Obama White House as a surgical display
of "smart power" that would defend human rights and foster democracy in the Muslim world, the 2011
Libyan intervention did precisely the opposite. There is
credible evidence that the U.S.-led NATO campaign prolonged and exacerbated the humanitarian
crisis, and far from creating a flourishing democracy, the ouster of strongman Muammar Qaddafi led
to a power vacuum into which ISIS and other rival unsavories surged.
The 2011 intervention and the follow-up escalation in which we are presently entangled were both
fundamentally informed by "the underlying belief that military force will produce stability and that
the U.S. can reasonably predict the result of such a campaign," as Christopher Preble has argued
in a must-read Libya analysis
at Politico . Both have proven resoundingly wrong.
Before Libya, Washington espoused the same false certainty in advance of intervention and nation-building
Iraq and Afghanistan. The rhetoric around the former was particularly telling: we would find nuclear
weapons and "be greeted as liberators,"
said Vice President
Dick Cheney. The whole thing would take five months or less,
said Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld. It would be a
"cakewalk." As months dragged into years of nation-building stagnation, the ignored truth became
increasingly evident: the United States cannot reshape entire countries without obscene risk and
investment, and even when those costly commitments are made, success cannot be predicted with certainty.
Nearly 14 years later, with Iraq demonstrably more violent and less stable than it was before
U.S. intervention, wisdom demands we reject Washington's recycled snake oil.
Recent polls (let alone the anti-elite backlash Trump's
win represents ) suggest Americans are ready to do precisely that. But a lack of public enthusiasm
has never stopped Washington from hawking its fraudulent wares-this time in the form of yet-again
unfounded certainty that escalating American intervention in Syria is a sure-fire solution to that
beleaguered nation's woes.
We must not let ourselves be fooled. Rather, we "should understand that we don't need to overthrow
distant governments and roll the dice on what comes after in order to keep America safe," as Preble,
reflecting on Libya,
contends . "On the contrary, our track record over the last quarter-century shows that such interventions
often have the opposite effect."
And as for the political establishment, let Trump's triumph be a constant reminder of the necessity
of expecting the unexpected and proceeding with due (indeed, much overdue) prudence and restraint
abroad. If Washington so grossly misunderstood the direction of its own heartland-without the muddling,
as in foreign policy, of massive geographic and cultural differences-how naïve it is to believe that
our government can successfully play armed puppet-master over an entire region of the world?
Bonnie Kristian is a fellow at Defense Priorities. She is a weekend editor at The Week
and a columnist at Rare , and her writing has also appeared at Time , Politico
, Relevant , The Hill , and other outlets.
"... Did the United States not know that intervening in "the lands of Islam" would act as a catalyst for Jihad? Was it
by chance that the United States intervened only in secular states, turning them into manholes of religious extremism? Is
it a coincidence that these interventions were and are often supported by regimes that sponsor political Islam? Conspiracy
theory, you say? No, these are historical facts. ..."
"... The South has understood where the North has not: the selective nature of humanitarian interventions reflects their
punitive nature; sanctions go to non-client regimes; interventions seem to be a new excuse for the hegemonic ambitions of
the United States and its allies; they are a new rationale for NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union; they are a way
to suppress Russia and deprive it of its zones of influence. (3) ..."
"... What a far-sighted motion was that of the coalition of the countries of the Third World (G77) at the Havana Summit
in 2000! It declared its rejection of any intervention, including humanitarian, which did not respect the sovereignty of
the states concerned. (4) This was nothing other than a rejection of the Clinton Doctrine, announced in 1999, in the wake
of the war of Kosovo, which made "humanitarian intervention" the new bedrock, or perhaps the new facade, of the foreign policy
of the United States. It was the same policy followed and developed by Hillary Clinton during her tenure as secretary of
state. (5) ..."
"... At the moment of this writing, any speculation as to the policy choices of Trump's foreign policy is premature.
..."
"... Like Donald Trump, George W. Bush was a conservative Republican non-interventionist. He advocated "America First,"
called for a more subdued foreign policy and adopted Colin Powell's realism "to attend without stress" (7) with regard to
the Near and Middle East. But his policy shifted to become the most aggressive and most brutal in the history of the United
States. Many international observers argue that this shift came as a response to the September 11 attacks, but they fail
to note that the aggressive germs already existed within Bush's cabinet and advisers: the neo-conservatives occupied key
functions in his administration. ..."
"... Up until now, Trump's links with the neo-cons remain unclear. The best-known neo-cons, Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol,
and Robert Kagan, appear to have lost their bet by supporting Hillary Clinton's candidacy. But others, less prominent or
influential, seem to have won it by supporting Trump: Dick Cheney, Norman Podhoretz, and James Woolsey, his adviser and one
of the architects of the wars in the Middle East. ..."
"... it is more realistic to suppose that as long as the United States has interests in the countries of the South and
the Near and Middle East, so long it will not hesitate to intervene. ..."
"... In this context, Trump's defeat and Clinton's accession are not sufficient reasons to declare the decline of interventionism
-- the end of an era and the beginning of another. ..."
"... (Translated from the French by Luciana Bohne) ..."
If the discourse of humanitarianism seduced the North, it has not been so in the South, even less in the Near and Middle
East, which no longer believe in it. The patent humanitarian disasters in Kosovo, Iraq, Libya, and Syria have disillusioned
them.
It is in this sense that Trump's victory is felt as a release, a hope for change, and a rupture from the policy of Clinton,
Bush, and Obama. This policy, in the name of edifying nations ("nation building"), has destroyed some of the oldest nations
and civilizations on earth; in the name of delivering well-being, it has delivered misery; in the name of liberal values,
it has galvanized religious zeal; in the name of democracy and human rights, it has installed autocracies and Sharia law.
Who is to blame?
Did the United States not know that intervening in "the lands of Islam" would act as a catalyst for Jihad? Was it
by chance that the United States intervened only in secular states, turning them into manholes of religious extremism?
Is it a coincidence that these interventions were and are often supported by regimes that sponsor political Islam? Conspiracy
theory, you say? No, these are historical facts.
Can the United States not learn from history, or does it just doom itself to repeat it? Does it not pose itself the
question of how al-Qaeda and Daesh originated? How did they organize themselves? Who trained them? What is their mobilizing
discourse? (1) Why is the US their target? None of this seems to matter to the US: all it cares about is
projecting its own idealism. (2)
The death of thousands of people in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya or Syria, has it contributed to the well being of these
peoples? Or does the United States perhaps respond to this question in the manner of Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton's
Secretary of State, who regretted the death of five-hundred-thousand Iraqi children, deprived of medications by the American
embargo, to conclude with the infamous sentence, "[But] it was worth it "?
Was it worth it that people came to perceive humanitarian intervention as the new crusades? Was it worth it that they
now perceive democracy as a pagan, pre-Islamic model, abjured by their belief? Was it worth it that they now perceive modernity
as deviating believers from the "true" path? Was it worth that they now perceive human rights as human standards as contrary
to the divine will? Was it worth it that people now perceive secularism as atheism whose defenders are punishable by beheading?
Have universal values become a problem rather than a solution? What then to think of making war in their name? Has humanitarian
intervention become punishment rather than help?
The South has understood where the North has not: the selective nature of humanitarian interventions reflects their
punitive nature; sanctions go to non-client regimes; interventions seem to be a new excuse for the hegemonic ambitions
of the United States and its allies; they are a new rationale for NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union; they are
a way to suppress Russia and deprive it of its zones of influence. (3)
What a far-sighted motion was that of the coalition of the countries of the Third World (G77) at the Havana Summit
in 2000! It declared its rejection of any intervention, including humanitarian, which did not respect the sovereignty of
the states concerned. (4) This was nothing other than a rejection of the Clinton Doctrine, announced in 1999, in the wake
of the war of Kosovo, which made "humanitarian intervention" the new bedrock, or perhaps the new facade, of the foreign
policy of the United States. It was the same policy followed and developed by Hillary Clinton during her tenure as secretary
of state. (5)
The end of interventionism?
But are Clinton's defeat and Trump's accession to power sufficient reasons to declare the decline of interventionism?
Donald Trump is a nationalist, whose rise has been the result of a coalition of anti-interventionists within the Republican
Party. They professe a foreign policy that Trump has summarized in these words: "We will use military force only in cases
of vital necessity to the national security of the United States. We will put an end to attempts of imposing democracy
and overthrowing regimes abroad, as well as involving ourselves in situations in which we have no right to intervene."
(6)
But drawing conclusions about the foreign policy of the United States from unofficial statements seems simplistic.
At the moment of this writing, any speculation as to the policy choices of Trump's foreign policy is premature.
One can't predict his policy with regard to the Near and Middle East, since he has not yet even formed his cabinet.
Moreover, presidents in office can change their tune in the course of their tenure. The case of George W. Bush provides
an excellent example.
Like Donald Trump, George W. Bush was a conservative Republican non-interventionist. He advocated "America First,"
called for a more subdued foreign policy and adopted Colin Powell's realism "to attend without stress" (7) with regard
to the Near and Middle East. But his policy shifted to become the most aggressive and most brutal in the history of the
United States. Many international observers argue that this shift came as a response to the September 11 attacks, but they
fail to note that the aggressive germs already existed within Bush's cabinet and advisers: the neo-conservatives occupied
key functions in his administration. (8)
Up until now, Trump's links with the neo-cons remain unclear. The best-known neo-cons, Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol,
and Robert Kagan, appear to have lost their bet by supporting Hillary Clinton's candidacy. But others, less prominent or
influential, seem to have won it by supporting Trump: Dick Cheney, Norman Podhoretz, and James Woolsey, his adviser and
one of the architects of the wars in the Middle East.
These indices show that nothing seems to have been gained by the South, still less by the Near and Middle East. There
appears to be no guarantee that the situation will improve.
The non-interventionism promised by Trump may not necessarily equate to a policy of isolationism. A non-interventionist
policy does not automatically mean that the United States will stop protecting their interests abroad, strategic or otherwise.
Rather, it could mean that the United States will not intervene abroad except to defend their own interests,
unilaterally -- and perhaps even more aggressively. Such a potential is implied in Trump's promise to increase
the budget for the army and the military-industrial complex. Thus, it is more realistic to suppose that as long as
the United States has interests in the countries of the South and the Near and Middle East, so long it will not hesitate
to intervene.
In this context, Trump's defeat and Clinton's accession are not sufficient reasons to declare the decline of interventionism
-- the end of an era and the beginning of another. The political reality is too complex to be reduced to statements
by a presidential candidate campaigning for election, by an elected president, or even by a president in the course of
performing his office.
No one knows what the future will bring.
Marwen Bouassida is a researcher in international law at North African-European relations, University of Carthage,
Tunisia. He regularly contributes to the online magazine Kapitalis.
The Imperial Presidency of the United States has evolved over the last century to the point that
the executive holds certain powers that can be considered dictatorial. Arguably, the most consequential
decision in politics is to wage war. The Constitution specifically reserves this right for Congress.
Notable quotes:
"... The anger against outsourcing jobs is very real and very dangerous for current corrupt neocon/neolib elite in Washington with their dream of global dominance and global neoliberal empire spanning all countries on all continents much like Trotsky dreamed about global Communist empire. ..."
"... The key information about his real intention would be the candidate for the Secretary of State. But even here uncertainty will remain. For example, it is not completely clear to me that if Bolton would be appointed he will be able to pursue the policies of his neocon past. After all Trump has distinct authoritarian inclinations and Bolton is not stupid enough not to understand that. ..."
"... Hopefully his foreign policy will be less jingoistic that Obama foreign policy. "Our goal is peace and prosperity, not war," said Trump, "unlike other candidates, war and aggression will not be my first instinct." ..."
"... "lovin' Putin" is a propaganda trick which enforces a certain judgment on the US-Russia relations ..."
"... Putin was and remain an obstacle on building global neoliberal empire governed by the USA. So hate toward him by Washington establishment is quite natural. Nothing personal, just business. In other words, demonization of Putin and hysterical anti-Russian campaign (including Hillary attempt to convert Democratic Party into a War party) is just a sign of disapproval of Washington his lack of desire to convert Russian into yet another vassal state. ..."
"... The key question here is not whether Trump will be able to pursue isolationist agenda and improve the US relationship with Russia. The key question is whether he will allowed to do that and resist strong attempts to co-opt him into standard set of neocon policies, which Washington pursued for several decades. ..."
"... Any idea that he will peruse isolationist agenda is undermined by the amount of Iran hawks in his close circle. ..."
"... My impression is that his administration will try to bait Russia in order to prevent any strengthening of China-Russia alliance which was the main blowback of Obama policies toward Russia. ..."
"... This was nothing other than a rejection of the Clinton Doctrine, announced in 1999, in the wake of the war of Kosovo, which made "humanitarian intervention" the new bedrock, or perhaps the new facade, of the foreign policy of the United States. It was the same policy followed and developed by Hillary Clinton during her tenure as secretary of state. (5) ..."
"... The US Empire has been nice to the Russians before. It was called detente and caused almost (not quite) as much hysteria in war-mongering (proto-neoconservative) circles as Trump's 'neo-detente' is causing now. However, the proviso is (and always was) that the warmongering could be ramped up again any time the Americans chose, and of course it was again under Reagan. ..."
"... From the point of view of American imperialism, Trump's plan to (temporarily) be nice to Russia makes a lot of strategic sense: as you point out, under Obama American imperial forces were becoming increasingly overstretched. In any case, for historical reasons, Russia (white, capitalist, Christian) doesn't make as good an enemy as the mysterious dark forces of 'Radical Islam'. ..."
"... So I am guessing under Trump we will see temporary rapprochement with Russia in the East, and more concentration on command and control of the Middle East. I am also guessing Obama's 'Pivot to China' will be allowed to quietly continue. It's also likely the US' policy of quietly picking off 'weak links' in the 'pink tide' in South American (cf Brazil, Honduras) will continue. ..."
"... For the moment I take great comfort in the hostility Trump displayed to Eliot Cohen and his ilk – https://twitter.com/EliotACohen/status/798512852931788800 ..."
"... "After exchange w Trump transition team, changed my recommendation: stay away. They're angry, arrogant, screaming "you LOST!" Will be ugly." ..."
Trump first and foremost is the symptom, not cause of crisis of neoliberalism in the USA. Ideology
is dead, like Bolshevism was dead soon after the end of WWII in the USSR.
Trump has two major path of his governance. He might try relying on nationalist insurgence
his election provoked and squeeze the "deep state" and neocon cabal in Washington, or he will
be co-opted by Republican brass. He probably understand that his positioning during election campaign
as a fighter against globalization and neoliberalism excesses in the USA is the key link that
provides political support for his administration. And throwing a couple on neocons or banksters
against the wall would be a populist gesture well received by American public.
The anger against outsourcing jobs is very real and very dangerous for current corrupt
neocon/neolib elite in Washington with their dream of global dominance and global neoliberal empire
spanning all countries on all continents much like Trotsky dreamed about global Communist empire.
My feeling is that a lot of people are really ready to fight for Trump and that creates for
problem for the "deep state", if Trump "indoctrination" by Washington establishment fails.
Past revolts in some US cities are just the tip of the iceberg. Obama lost not only his legacy
with Trump election. He lost his bid to keep all members of top 1% and first of all financial
oligarchy that drives the events on 2008 unaccountable.
So "accountability drive" which will be interpreted by neoliberals as "witch hunt" might well
be in the cards. I encourage everybody in this blog to listen to the following Trump election
advertisement.
Also I would not assume that he is a newcomer to political games. Real estate business is very
a political activity. So a more plausible hypothesis is that he is a gifted politician both by
nature and due to on the job training received in his occupation.
His idea of creating a circle of advisors who compete with each other and thus allow him to
be the final arbiter of major decisions is not new. He is not hostile to conflicts within his
inner circle.
The key information about his real intention would be the candidate for the Secretary of
State. But even here uncertainty will remain. For example, it is not completely clear to me that
if Bolton would be appointed he will be able to pursue the policies of his neocon past. After
all Trump has distinct authoritarian inclinations and Bolton is not stupid enough not to understand
that.
Hopefully his foreign policy will be less jingoistic that Obama foreign policy. "Our goal
is peace and prosperity, not war," said Trump, "unlike other candidates, war and aggression will
not be my first instinct."
There have been two constants in his campaign: "stomp the weaker" and "lovin' Putin".
That's it.
"lovin' Putin" is a propaganda trick which enforces a certain judgment on the US-Russia
relations . You should better stay above this level in this blog.
Putin was and remain an obstacle on building global neoliberal empire governed by the USA.
So hate toward him by Washington establishment is quite natural. Nothing personal, just business.
In other words, demonization of Putin and hysterical anti-Russian campaign (including Hillary
attempt to convert Democratic Party into a War party) is just a sign of disapproval of Washington
his lack of desire to convert Russian into yet another vassal state.
The key question here is not whether Trump will be able to pursue isolationist agenda and
improve the US relationship with Russia. The key question is whether he will allowed to do that
and resist strong attempts to co-opt him into standard set of neocon policies, which Washington
pursued for several decades.
His "Contract with America" does not cover foreign policy issues except rejection of TPP, NAFTA
and like.
Any idea that he will peruse isolationist agenda is undermined by the amount of Iran hawks
in his close circle.
My impression is that his administration will try to bait Russia in order to prevent any
strengthening of China-Russia alliance which was the main blowback of Obama policies toward Russia.
Also under Trump the USA might be more selective as running six concurrent conflicts (Afghanistan,
Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Ukraine). Which during Obama administration proved to be pretty expensive.
Libya is now a failed state. In Ukraine the standard of living dropped to the level of $2 per
day for the majority of population and the country became yet another debt slave, always balancing
on the wedge of bankruptcy. And costs for the USA are continuing to mount in at least three of
the six countries mentioned ( profits extracted in Ukraine and Iraq partially offset that). It
is unclear whether Trump administration will continue this Obama policy of multiple unilateral
engagements but I think is that during Trump administration the resistance to the USA unilateral
interventionism will be stronger as neoliberalism itself became much less attractive ideology.
Which is more difficult to "export". Similar to the fact that "communism" was more difficult to
export after 60th by the USSR. In a way, after 2008 it is a "damaged good" notwithstanding its
recent victories in Brazil and Argentina. See for example discussion at:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/22/does-clintons-defeat-mean-the-decline-of-us-interventionism/
The South has understood where the North has not: the selective nature of humanitarian interventions
reflects their punitive nature; sanctions go to non-client regimes; interventions seem to be
a new excuse for the hegemonic ambitions of the United States and its allies; they are a new
rationale for NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union; they are a way to suppress Russia
and deprive it of its zones of influence. (3)
What a far-sighted motion was that of the coalition of the countries of the Third World
(G77) at the Havana Summit in 2000! It declared its rejection of any intervention, including
humanitarian, which did not respect the sovereignty of the states concerned. (4) This was
nothing other than a rejection of the Clinton Doctrine, announced in 1999, in the wake of the
war of Kosovo, which made "humanitarian intervention" the new bedrock, or perhaps the new facade,
of the foreign policy of the United States. It was the same policy followed and developed by
Hillary Clinton during her tenure as secretary of state. (5)
But, of course, we can only guess how Trump administration will behave.
'The key question here is not whether Trump will be able to pursue isolationist agenda and
improve the US relationship with Russia. The key question is whether he will allowed to do
that and resist strong attempts to co-opt him into standard set of neocon policies, which Washington
pursued for several decades.'
The US Empire has been nice to the Russians before. It was called detente and caused almost
(not quite) as much hysteria in war-mongering (proto-neoconservative) circles as Trump's 'neo-detente'
is causing now. However, the proviso is (and always was) that the warmongering could be ramped
up again any time the Americans chose, and of course it was again under Reagan.
From the point of view of American imperialism, Trump's plan to (temporarily) be nice to
Russia makes a lot of strategic sense: as you point out, under Obama American imperial forces
were becoming increasingly overstretched. In any case, for historical reasons, Russia (white,
capitalist, Christian) doesn't make as good an enemy as the mysterious dark forces of 'Radical
Islam'.
So I am guessing under Trump we will see temporary rapprochement with Russia in the East,
and more concentration on command and control of the Middle East. I am also guessing Obama's 'Pivot
to China' will be allowed to quietly continue. It's also likely the US' policy of quietly picking
off 'weak links' in the 'pink tide' in South American (cf Brazil, Honduras) will continue.
'Trump: foreign policy continuity rather than change' may well be a typical graduate thesis
in 30 years' time.
I'm curious how Trump will deal with Erdogan. Erdogan seems to have all the tact and subtlety
of an angry Bison and with Trump's thin skin, there is bound to be a conflict at some stage. And
Erdogan is not Christian.
"... Flynn: "I don't know if they turned a blind eye. I think it was a decision, a willful decision." ..."
"... Hasan (Interviewer): "A willful decision to support an insurgency that had Salafists, Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood?" ..."
"... Flynn: "A willful decision to do what they're doing, You have to really ask the President what is it that he actually is doing with the policy that is in place, because it is very, very confusing." ..."
Hasan (Interviewer) (From 11.15 onwards into the interview): "In 2012, your agency was
saying, quote: "The Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda in Iraq [(which ISIS arose
out of)], are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria." In 2012, the US was helping coordinate
arms transfers to those same groups. Why did you not stop that if you're worried about the rise
of Islamic extremism?"
Flynn: "Well I hate to say it's not my job, but my job was to ensure that the accuracy
of our intelligence that was being presented was as good as it could be, and I will tell you,
it goes before 2012. When we were in Iraq, and we still had decisions to be made before there
was a decision to pull out of Iraq in 2011, it was very clear what we were going to face."
Hasan (Interviewer): You are basically saying that even in government at the time, you
knew those groups were around, you saw this analysis, and you were arguing against it, but who
wasn't listening?"
Flynn: "I think the administration."
Hasan (Interviewer): "So the administration turned a blind eye to your analysis?"
Flynn: "I don't know if they turned a blind eye. I think it was a decision, a willful
decision."
Hasan (Interviewer): "A willful decision to support an insurgency that had Salafists, Al-Qaeda
and the Muslim Brotherhood?"
Flynn: "A willful decision to do what they're doing, You have to really ask the President
what is it that he actually is doing with the policy that is in place, because it is very, very
confusing."
Former US Intelligence Chief Admits Obama Took "Willful Decision" to Support ISIS Rise
Michael Flynn, expected to advise Donald Trump on counterproductive killing operations misleading
labeled "national security," is generally depicted as a lawless
torturer and assassin. But, whether for partisan reasons or otherwise, he's a lawless torturer
and assassin who has blurted out some truths he shouldn't be allowed to forget.
"Lt. Gen. Flynn, who since leaving the DIA has become an outspoken critic of the Obama administration,
charges that the White House relies heavily on drone strikes for reasons of expediency, rather
than effectiveness. 'We've tended to say, drop another bomb via a drone and put out a headline
that "we killed Abu Bag of Doughnuts" and it makes us all feel good for 24 hours,' Flynn said.
'And you know what? It doesn't matter. It just made them a martyr, it just created a new reason
to fight us even harder.'"
"When you drop a bomb from a drone you are going to cause more damage than you are going to
cause good. The more weapons we give, the more bombs we drop, that just fuels the conflict."
Will Flynn then advise Trump to cease dropping bombs from drones? Or will he go ahead and advise
drone murders, knowing full well that this is counterproductive from the point of view of anyone
other than war profiteers?
From the same report:
"Asked . . . if drone strikes tend to create more terrorists than they kill, Flynn . . . replied:
'I don't disagree with that,' adding: 'I think as an overarching strategy, it is a failed strategy.'"
So Trump's almost inevitable string of drone murders will be conducted under the guidance of a
man who knows they produce terrorism rather than reducing it, that they endanger the United States
rather than protecting it. In that assessment, he agrees with the vast majority of Americans who
believe that the wars of the past
15 years have made the United States less safe, which is the view of numerous other
experts as well.
Flynn, too, expanded his comments from drones to the wars as a whole:
"What we have is this continued investment in conflict. The more weapons we give, the more
bombs we drop, that just fuels the conflict. Some of that has to be done but I am looking for
the other solutions."
Flynn also, like Trump, accurately cites the criminal 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq as critical to
the creation of ISIS:
"Commenting on the rise of ISIL in Iraq, Flynn acknowledged the role played by the US invasion
and occupation of Iraq. 'We definitely put fuel on a fire,' he told Hasan. 'Absolutely there
is no doubt, history will not be kind to the decisions that were made certainly in 2003. Going
into Iraq, definitely it was a strategic mistake."
So there will be no advice to make similar strategic mistakes that are highly profitable to the
weapons industry?
Flynn, despite perhaps being a leading advocate of lawless imprisonment and torture, also admits
to the counterproductive nature of those crimes:
"The former lieutenant general denied any involvement in the litany of abuses carried out by
JSOC interrogators at Camp Nama in Iraq, as revealed by the
New York Times and
Human Rights Watch, but admitted the US prison system in Iraq in the post-war period 'absolutely'
helped radicalise Iraqis who later joined Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and its successor organisation,
ISIL."
Recently the International Criminal Court teased the world with the news that it might possible
consider indicting US and other war criminals for their actions in Afghanistan. One might expect
all-out resistance to such a proposal from Trump and his gang of hyper-nationalist war mongers, except
that . . .
"Flynn also called for greater accountability for US soldiers involved in abuses against Iraqi
detainees: 'You know I hope that as more and more information comes out that people are held accountable
History is not going to look kind on those actions and we will be held, we should be held, accountable
for many, many years to come.'"
Let's not let Flynn forget any of these words. On Syria he has blurted out some similar facts
to those Trump has also articulated:
"Publicly commenting for the first time on a previously-classified August 2012
Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) memo,
which had predicted 'the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality
in Eastern Syria ( ) this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want' and confirmed
that 'the Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and [Al Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving
the insurgency in Syria,' the former DIA chief told Head to Head that 'the [Obama] Administration'
didn't 'listen' to these warnings issued by his agency's analysts. 'I don't know if they turned
a blind eye,' he said. 'I think it was a decision, I think it was a willful decision.'"
Let that sink in. Flynn is taking credit for having predicted that backing fighters in Syria could
lead to something like ISIS. And he's suggesting that Obama received this information and chose to
ignore it.
Now, here's a question: What impact will "bombing the hell" out of people have? What good will
"killing their families" do? Spreading nukes around? "Stealing their oil"? Making lists of and banning
Muslims? Is it Flynn's turn to willfully ignore key facts and common sense in order to "advise" against
his better judgment a new president who prefers to be advised to do what he was going to do anyway?
Or can Flynn be convinced to apply lessons learned at huge human cost to similar situations going
forward even with a president of a different party, race, and IQ?
Strong, credible allegations of high-level criminal activity can bring down a government. When the
government lacks an effective, fact-based defense, other techniques must be employed. The success
of these techniques depends heavily upon a cooperative, controlled press and a mere token opposition
party.
1. Dummy up . If it's not reported, if it's not news, it didn't happen.
2. Wax indignant . This is also known as the "how dare you" gambit.
3. Characterize the charges as "rumors" or, better yet, "wild rumors." If, in spite of the news
blackout, the public is still able to learn about the suspicious facts, it can only be through "rumors."
4. Knock down straw men . Deal only with the weakest aspect of the weakest charges. Even better,
create your own straw men. Make up wild rumors and give them lead play when you appear to debunk
all the charges, real and fanciful alike.
5. Call the skeptics names like "conspiracy theorist," "nut," "ranter," "kook," "crackpot" and,
of course, "rumor monger." You must then carefully avoid fair and open debate with any of the people
you have thus maligned.
6. Impugn motives . Attempt to marginalize the critics by suggesting strongly that they are not
really interested in the truth but are simply pursuing a partisan political agenda or are out to
make money.
7. Invoke authority . Here the controlled press and the sham opposition can be very useful.
8. Dismiss the charges as "old news."
9. Come half-clean . This is also known as "confession and avoidance" or "taking the limited hang-out
route." This way, you create the impression of candor and honesty while you admit only to relatively
harmless, less-than-criminal "mistakes." This stratagem often requires the embrace of a fall-back
position quite different from the one originally taken.
10. Characterize the crimes as impossibly complex and the truth as ultimately unknowable.
11. Reason backward , using the deductive method with a vengeance. With thoroughly rigorous deduction,
troublesome evidence is irrelevant. For example: We have a completely free press. If they know of
evidence that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) had prior knowledge of the Oklahoma
City bombing they would have reported it. They haven't reported it, so there was no prior knowledge
by the BATF. Another variation on this theme involves the likelihood of a conspiracy leaker and a
press that would report it.
12. Require the skeptics to solve the crime completely.
13. Change the subject . This technique includes creating and/or reporting a distraction.
"... But he has simultaneously opposed the agreement with Iran on its nuclear programme and criticised Barack Obama for pulling the last US troops out of Iraq in 2011 (though in fact this was under an agreement signed by George W Bush). ..."
"... The US army and air force is today heavily engaged in Iraq and Syria and that is not going to end with Obama's departure. In contradiction to Trump's non-interventionism, leading members of his foreign policy team such as John Bolton, the belligerent former US ambassador to the UN, has been advocating a war with Iran since 2003. Bolton proposes carving out a Sunni state in northern Iraq and eastern Syria, a plan in which every sentence betrays ignorance and misjudgements about the forces in play on the ground. As a recipe for deepening the conflict in the region, it could scarcely be bettered. ..."
"... There have always been crackpots in Washington, sometimes in high office, but the number of dangerous people who have attached themselves to the incoming administration may be higher today than at any time in American history. ..."
"... Optimists have been saying this week that Trump is less ideological than he sounds and, in any case, the US ship of state is more like an ocean liner than a speedboat making it difficult to turn round. They add privately that not all the crooks and crazies will get the jobs they want. ..."
In theory, Trump is a non-interventionist; opposed to US military involvement in the Middle East
and North Africa, he wants to bring the war in
Syria to an end. But he has simultaneously opposed the agreement with Iran on its nuclear programme
and criticised Barack Obama for pulling the last US troops out of Iraq in 2011 (though in fact this
was under an agreement signed by George W Bush).
But Bush and
Obama were both non-interventionists when first elected – until the course of events, and the
enthusiasm of the Washington foreign policy establishment for foreign military ventures, changed
all that.
The US army and air force is today heavily engaged in Iraq and Syria and that is not going to
end with Obama's departure. In contradiction to Trump's non-interventionism, leading members of his
foreign policy team such as John Bolton, the belligerent former US ambassador to the UN, has been
advocating a war with Iran since 2003. Bolton proposes carving out a Sunni state in northern Iraq
and eastern Syria, a plan in which every sentence betrays ignorance and misjudgements about the forces
in play on the ground. As a recipe for deepening the conflict in the region, it could scarcely be
bettered.
There have always been crackpots in Washington, sometimes in high office, but the number of dangerous
people who have attached themselves to the incoming administration may be higher today than at any
time in American history.
Optimists have been saying this week that Trump is less ideological than he sounds and, in any
case, the US ship of state is more like an ocean liner than a speedboat making it difficult to turn
round. They add privately that not all the crooks and crazies will get the jobs they want.
Unfortunately, much the same could have been said of George W Bush when he came into office before
9/11. It is precisely such arrogant but ill-informed opportunists who can most easily be provoked
by terrorism into a self-destructive overreaction. Isis is having a good week.
"... "How many people sleep better knowing that the Baltics are part of NATO? They don't make us safer, in fact, quite the opposite . We need to think really hard about these commitments," said William Ruger, vice president of research and policy at the Charles Koch Institute. ..."
"... A prominent member of the outsiders is Rand Paul, skeptic of Bush's foreign policy, who has criticized Bolton in the last few days. Paul on Tuesday blasted Bolton in an op-ed in Rare as "a longtime member of the failed Washington elite that Trump vowed to oppose." ..."
"... However, neo-cons are bad at losing, so they have redoubled efforts to land one of their own next to Trump. Lindsey Graham, a prominent foreign policy hawk in the Senate, issued an endorsement of Bolton on Thursday, saying: "He understands who our friends and enemies are. We see the world in very similar ways." ..."
"... He also slammed Paul's criticism of Bolton: "You could put the number of Republicans who will follow Rand Paul's advice on national security in a very small car. Rand is my friend but he's a libertarian and an outlier in the party on these issues." ..."
"... Meanwhile, the biggest warmonger, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, who has not said who he'd like to see in Trump's cabinet, laid down a marker on Tuesday by warning the future Trump administration against trying to seek an improved relationship with adversary Russia. "When America has been at its greatest, it is when we have stood on the side those fighting tyranny. That is where we must stand again," he warned. ..."
"... MENA is the most important, perhaps the only leverage that the US has to hold the global reserve currency. As long as the US retain the world's money, the US can finance its debt while collecting rent worldwide. Also, the US can export its inflation. ..."
"... No US President can, or will willingly let these three to fail, because the collapse will be horrifying. ..."
"... the U.S. Empire has globalised its reach as an instrument of the deep state and its oligarchy of owner/operators. Ostensibly to bring democracy to the oppressed, its real purpose was to enrich the rent-seekers on the MIC value chain and to protect and serve the private globalist interests who were the clients of the deep state. National funds flow has always been net outbound, and not the other way around, as in any successful precendent for empire. This continues to be true to this day because of the influence the wealthy rent-seekers on this value chain have over the federal government. Simple as that. ..."
"... Raytheon, Lockheed and Boeing are corporate sponsors of the Rockefeller/CFR. James Woolsey, Stephen Hadley, John Bolton, Eliot Cohen and John McCain are CFR members. Also Bill Clinton, Janet Yellen, John Paulson, Lloyd Blankfein and George Soros. See member lists at cfr dot org. Cohen, Bolton, Woolsey, and McCain were also members of PNAC. ..."
"... Yes. Out of NATO, stop the endless pointless wars in the M.E., embrace George Washington and avoiding "foreign entaglements." ..."
"... Agree...but, easier said than done. A large component of our economy is wholly dependent on government funded MIC and arms sales. Dependency on government spending as large part of our economy has seeped into nearly every aspect of our market place. ..."
"... There is a problem with the long term approach...is that the every attempt will be made to stop such a transition in its tracks. Even if it means world war. ..."
"... With modern travel and communications neither policy would work any longer but I'll take nationalism. Bottom line on hawks, the budget is busted out! Cant afford guns and butter anymore. ..."
"... The empire building has made all but a few a lot poorer and the majority on earth more miserable. I am not naive, I know violence is sometimes necessary, but eternal offence as a strategy ensures enemies will find ways to focus on that top dog and beat you. Beside what I think or believe about foreign policy, it doesn't matter we are broke in affording empire. Period. ..."
"... You guys crazy or sumpthin? You want full employment at good wages? All out War is your best bet. No messy "fixing" anything, just flip the switch and off you go. Draft all those troublemakers, turn them into cannon fodder, crank up the printing presses and happy days are here again. ..."
"... What is with you people? It is almost like Saudi Arabia doesn't exist and doesn't buy our politicians. It is almost as if Hillary Clinton never existed, nor her Saudi asset girlfriend (yes, married to an Israeli asset). Look, if you're going to blame the Jews every time, also blame the Wahhabis. And then you might want to also say fuck you to the British who are responsible for both nations. ..."
"... Look, if you're going to blame the Jews every time, also blame the Wahhabis ..."
"... Wahabism/Salafism has been used since Reagan as a weapon for covert war. Saudi Petrodollars recycle back to the U.S. MIC as they pass through the CIA Hillary Clinton approved very large increases in weapons to the Saudi's especially as they funded the Clinton machine. Clintons are CFR agents, and that has a heavy jewish illuminst influence. ..."
"... In what fucking dimension do people this fucking incompetent still have jobs, let alone credibility? Preposterous that they even still have jobs. The US has blown 5-6 trillion on losing one war after the other, has caused massive disorder and chaos in the Mideast to absolutely no one's benefit except Israel, or so Israel believes, and destabilized the entire region to the point that a WWIII could erupt at any moment. ..."
"... Disaster and incompetence at this level can only be rewarded with sackings and terminations across the board. But no, not in the US. The public is more preooccupied with fictional racists and Donald's bawdy pussy talk. ..."
"... Trump has been provided an easy litmus test, who has ever advocated deposing Assad must be rejected, not because Assad is such a great guy, but because those who would replace him are radical islamists all. Russia could be cultivated as a friend and do more for world peace than the Arab world which has a fatal jihad disease. ..."
"... The presidency is more of a ceremonial position now. If the deep state doesn't like the president, it can simply fire him, as it did with Kennedy (and arguably Nixon). It can also make his life a living hell or force a foreign policy showdown as it did with Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs. ..."
"... Controlled demolitions take weeks of planning and preparation. So the implication is that someone planned the WTC7 collapse weeks in advance. WTC7 held a number of offices, including offices of the SEC. Many files were destroyed. ..."
In late October, when it was still conventional wisdom that Hillary was "guaranteed" to win the presidency, the WaPo explained that
among the neo-con, foreign policy "elites" of the Pentagon, a feeling of calm content had spread: after all, it was just a matter
of time before the "pacifist" Obama was out, replaced by the more hawkish Hillary.
As the
WaPo reported , "there is one corner of Washington where Donald Trump's scorched-earth presidential campaign is treated as a
mere distraction and where bipartisanship reigns. In the rarefied world of the Washington foreign policy establishment, President
Obama's departure from the White House - and the possible return of a more conventional and hawkish Hillary Clinton - is being met
with quiet relief ."
The Republicans and Democrats who make up the foreign policy elite are laying the groundwork for a more assertive American
foreign policy via a flurry of reports shaped by officials who are likely to play senior roles in a potential Clinton White House.
Oops.
Not only did the "foreign policy" elite get the Trump "scorched-earth distraction" dead wrong, it now has to scramble to find
what leverage - if any - it has in defining Trump's foreign policy. Worse, America's warmongers are now waging war (if only metaphorically:
we all know they can't wait for the real thing) against libertarians for direct access to Trump's front door, a contingency they
had never planned for.
As The Hill reported
earlier , "a battle is brewing between the GOP foreign policy establishment and outsiders over who will sit on President-elect
Donald Trump's national security team. The fight pits hawks and neoconservatives who served in the former Bush administrations against
those on the GOP foreign policy edges."
Taking a page out of Ron Paul's book, the libertarians, isolationists and realists see an opportunity to pull back America's commitments
around the world, spend less money on foreign aid and "nation-building," curtail expensive military campaigns and troop deployments,
and intervene militarily only to protect American interests. In short: these are people who believe that human life, and the avoidance
of war, is more valuable than another record quarter for Raytheon, Lockheed or Boeing.
On the other hand, the so-called establishment camp, many of whom disavowed Trump during the campaign, is made up of the same
people who effectively ran Hillary Clinton's tenure while she was Secretary of State, fully intent on creating zones of conflict,
political instability and outright war in every imaginable place, from North Africa to Ukraine. This group is pushing for Stephen
Hadley, who served as national security adviser under George W. Bush. Another Bush ally, John Bolton whose name has been floated
as a possible secretary of State, also falls into this camp.
According to The Hill, other neo-con, establishment candidates floated include Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob
Corker (R-Tenn.), outgoing Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), rising star Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), and senior fellow at conservative think-tank
American Enterprise Institute and former Sen. Jim Talent (R-Mo.).
"These figures all generally believe that the United States needs to take an active role in the world from the Middle East to
East Asia to deter enemies and reassure allies."
In short, should this group prevail, it would be the equivalent of 4 more years of HIllary Clinton running the State Department.
The outsider group sees things differently.
They want to revamp American foreign policy in a different direction from the last two administrations. Luckily, this particular
camp is also more in line with Trump's views questioning the value of NATO, a position that horrified many in the establishment camp.
"How many people sleep better knowing that the Baltics are part of NATO? They don't make us safer, in fact, quite the opposite
. We need to think really hard about these commitments," said William Ruger, vice president of research and policy at the Charles
Koch Institute.
A prominent member of the outsiders is Rand Paul, skeptic of Bush's foreign policy, who has criticized Bolton in the last
few days. Paul on Tuesday blasted Bolton in an op-ed in Rare as "a longtime member of the failed Washington elite that Trump vowed
to oppose."
... ... ...
However, neo-cons are bad at losing, so they have redoubled efforts to land one of their own next to Trump. Lindsey Graham,
a prominent foreign policy hawk in the Senate, issued an endorsement of Bolton on Thursday, saying: "He understands who our friends
and enemies are. We see the world in very similar ways."
He also slammed Paul's criticism of Bolton: "You could put the number of Republicans who will follow Rand Paul's advice on
national security in a very small car. Rand is my friend but he's a libertarian and an outlier in the party on these issues."
Funny, that's exactly what the experts said about Trump's chances of winning not even two weeks ago.
Meanwhile, the biggest warmonger, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, who has not said who he'd like to
see in Trump's cabinet, laid down a marker on Tuesday by warning the future Trump administration against trying to seek an improved
relationship with adversary Russia. "When America has been at its greatest, it is when we have stood on the side those fighting tyranny.
That is where we must stand again," he warned.
Luckily, McCain - whose relationship with Trump has been at rock bottom ever since Trump's first appearance in the presidential
campaign - has zero impact on the thinking of Trump.
Furthermore, speaking of Russia, Retired Amy Col. Andrew Bacevich said there needs to be a rethink of American foreign policy.
He said the U.S. must consider whether Saudi Arabia and Pakistan qualify as U.S. allies, and the growing divergence between the U.S.
and Israel. "The establishment doesn't want to touch questions like these with a ten foot pole," he said at a conference on Tuesday
hosted by The American Conservative, the Charles Koch Institute, and the George Washington University Department of Political Science.
Furthermore, resetting the "deplorable" relations with Russia is a necessary if not sufficient condition to halt the incipient
nuclear arms build up that has resulted of the recent dramatic return of the Cold War. As such, a Trump presidency while potentially
a failure, may be best remember for avoiding the launch of World War III. If , that is, he manages to prevent the influence of neo-cons
in his cabinet.
And then there are the wildcards: those Trump advisers who are difficult to peg into which camp they fall into. One example is
retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, who was selected by Trump as his national security
adviser. Flynn is a "curious case," said Daniel Larison, senior editor at The American Conservative. The retired Army general has
said he wants to work with Russia, but also expressed contrary views in his book "Field of Fight."
According to Larison, Flynn writes of an "enemy alliance" against the U.S. that includes Russia, North Korea, China, Iran, Syria,
Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, al-Qaida, Hezbollah, and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. From that standpoint, he is about
as "establishment" as they come.
It's also not crystal clear which camp Giuliani falls into. The former mayor is known as a fierce critic of Islamic extremism
but has scant foreign policy experience.
Most say what is likely is change.
"Change is coming to American grand strategy whether we like it or not,' said Christopher Layne, Robert M. Gates Chair in National
Security at Texas A&M University.
"I think we are overdue for American retrenchment. Americans are beginning to suffer from hegemony fatigue," he said.
And, let's not forget, the tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children who are droned to death every year by anonymous
remote-control operators in the US just so the US can pursue its global hegemonic interest. They most certainly have, and unless
something indeed changes, will continue to suffer, leading to even more resentment against the US, and even more attacks against
US citizens around the globe, and on US soil. Some call them terrorism, others call them retaliation.
Help me here with this word (or whatever it means) REALISTS :
Article: Ron Paul's book, the libertarians, isolationists and REALISTS see an opportunity . to intervene militarily only to
protect American interests.
So dear Libertarians, as I am about to show you two examples, but the list is long, that you have a problem, because of (US)
reality:
1) You are told by the left and right massmedia that the US is something like that: King of natural gas. We'll be the world
exporter. That we have enough natural gas for 100 years, or some nonsense like that. But here is the REALITY :
US "still" had to import almost 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in 2015.
2) Again, you might hear from the left and right massmedia that: US is shale this. US is shale that, even that shale is not
oil, but some form of kerogen. In any event, here' the reality: US crude oil imports, by Millions of Barrels a Day: 2014: 7,344
2015: 7,363 As of July 2016: 8,092 (MBD)
Key Point (in my opinion): Libertarians, you can't have both of best worlds -two incomparable believes. You have to chose,
otherwise you'll be a hypocrite while being a neocon as well.
MENA is the most important, perhaps the only leverage that the US has to hold the global reserve currency. As long as the
US retain the world's money, the US can finance its debt while collecting rent worldwide. Also, the US can export its inflation.
No US President can, or will willingly let these three to fail, because the collapse will be horrifying.
This construction of the U.S. empire is a myth. Unlike the British, Spanish, French, Portuguese, or any other empire throughout
history you care to name, the construction of the U.S. Empire has been a drastic net drain on U.S. finances.
Unlike any preceding
empire, which invaded other lands in search of wealth and captured client states to monetize added value, the U.S. Empire
has globalised its reach as an instrument of the deep state and its oligarchy of owner/operators. Ostensibly to bring democracy
to the oppressed, its real purpose was to enrich the rent-seekers on the MIC value chain and to protect and serve the private
globalist interests who were the clients of the deep state. National funds flow has always been net outbound, and not the other
way around, as in any successful precendent for empire. This continues to be true to this day because of the influence the wealthy
rent-seekers on this value chain have over the federal government. Simple as that.
In the process, the USA has been hollowed out from the inside, and risks imminent collapse. The greatest hope we can hold out
for a Trump presidency is a recognition of the truth of this. Bannon gets close sometimes, but I still have my doubts that there
is true recognition of just how dire these current circumstances are. In this, people like Ron Paul are right on target - to save
the Republic, the Empire and its enabling institutions (like the Fed) must go.
Raytheon, Lockheed and Boeing are corporate sponsors of the Rockefeller/CFR. James Woolsey, Stephen Hadley, John Bolton, Eliot
Cohen and John McCain are CFR members. Also Bill Clinton, Janet Yellen, John Paulson, Lloyd Blankfein and George Soros. See member
lists at cfr dot org. Cohen, Bolton, Woolsey, and McCain were also members of PNAC.
Michael Flynn's book "Field of Fight" is co-authored by neocon Michael Ledeen, defender of Israel and
promoter of "universal fascism" . Ledeen
is a member of the "Foundation for Defense of Democracies" where Trump advisor James Woolsey is chairman. Woolsey, Clinton's ex-CIA
director, is also a member of the "Flynn Intel Group".
Agree...but, easier said than done. A large component of our economy is wholly dependent on government funded MIC and arms
sales. Dependency on government spending as large part of our economy has seeped into nearly every aspect of our market place.
The gov expansion into and control of the economy has so distorted the markets, and created so much dependency that we are
now in a situation where without it, our economy collapses. It would take decades to fix this problem without collapsing the economy
while you are doing it...
However, we would still feel the pain as we transition the economy. There is a problem with the long term approach...is
that the every attempt will be made to stop such a transition in its tracks. Even if it means world war.
With modern travel and communications neither policy would work any longer but I'll take nationalism. Bottom line on hawks,
the budget is busted out! Cant afford guns and butter anymore.
The empire building has made all but a few a lot poorer and the majority on earth more miserable. I am not naive, I know
violence is sometimes necessary, but eternal offence as a strategy ensures enemies will find ways to focus on that top dog and
beat you. Beside what I think or believe about foreign policy, it doesn't matter we are broke in affording empire. Period.
You guys crazy or sumpthin? You want full employment at good wages? All out War is your best bet. No messy "fixing" anything,
just flip the switch and off you go. Draft all those troublemakers, turn them into cannon fodder, crank up the printing presses
and happy days are here again.
Only those doped up hippies worry about nukes. Don't listen to them.
I hear you do not like yo read, but you must read this ZH post that neatly summarizes the NeoCon influence in Wash. which has
run it's course with little tangible returns and many negative debt outcomes including loss of millions of lives . Time to change
or face world condemnation worse than Germany received after WWII. America has always been regarded as a savior Nation until the
Neocons took over Wash. for narrow corporate, DOD and foreign interests.
You have now heard all the arguments and must decide---compromise will only lead to more strife and possible economic collapse.
This is the most important decision of your Presidency ---all other decisions and promises depend on this one.
Fuck those stinking neo-con bastards. We are not going to be fighting Israel's wars again. This is the United States, not Israel,
no matter how much jew money controls congress and no matter how much jew money controls the media. I hope Trump understands this
very clearly.
What is with you people? It is almost like Saudi Arabia doesn't exist and doesn't buy our politicians. It is almost as if
Hillary Clinton never existed, nor her Saudi asset girlfriend (yes, married to an Israeli asset). Look, if you're going to blame
the Jews every time, also blame the Wahhabis. And then you might want to also say fuck you to the British who are responsible
for both nations.
The reason "Islamophobia" is even a thing is because Saudis paid Jewish SJWs to make it a thing, all while they pay WASPs like
Bolton to go apeshit on non-Wahhabi Muslims.
Yes, before you even start, I'm aware of the claims that the Saudis are some sort of "crypto-Jews". Whatever. They need to
be named regardless.
I don't recall the US fighting any wars that would directly benefit Saudi Arabia. Sure, the Saudis have a lot of money, but they
are just a bunch of camel-fuckers who got rich because they are sitting on oil. They are still a bunch of dumb camel-fuckers.
They don't have any nukes. I imagine the Saudis do nothing without the approval of the CIA Israel is a whole different story.
Look, if you're going to blame the Jews every time, also blame the Wahhabis
Let's deconstruct this statement shall we:
1971 Nixon goes off gold standard. Why? Deficit spending on Vietnam War was causing European Central Banks to hold dollars
they didn't want. They bought gold with it rather than mainstreet American goods. This then started depleting American Gold...especially
to France.
1973 Nixon sends his special JEW Kissinger to Saudi. Why? To make the petrodollar a world standard.
The Saudi Kissinger deal: Saudi gets protection by American War Machine, they get to Cartelize with OPEC, they get transhipment
protection by U.S. Navy, Saudi Illegitimate Coup is OK'd and sanctioned by the West, they get front line American Gear. Today
that gear includes the latest Jets and AWAC's.
What does America get, especially the Western Illuminist Bankers? All Saudi Petrodollars are to cycle into Western Capital
Market, including Western Banks. Saudi's are to buy TBILLs with their petrodollars. All oil is to be priced in dollars, to then
create demand for said dollars. Saudi's do not get to own a powerful financial center. (Can you name me a powerful Saudi bank?)
Our Jewish friends are not stupid and have been running the money game since forever.
The Coup for Saudi was actually a British MI6 project. If you trace MI6 back in time, it was an arm of Bank of England. BOE
was brought into existence by Jewish Capital out of Amsterrrdaaaamn.
Wahabism/Salafism has been used since Reagan as a weapon for covert war. Saudi Petrodollars recycle back to the U.S. MIC
as they pass through the CIA Hillary Clinton approved very large increases in weapons to the Saudi's especially as they funded
the Clinton machine. Clintons are CFR agents, and that has a heavy jewish illuminst influence.
So- absolutely, the Salafists are on the side of our Illuminist friends.
The Shites, especially those of Iran/Persia - have had their "funds" absconded with and/or locked up.
So, which side of Islam has our Jewish Illuminist Cabal masters selected?
if you can post some reliable source material to support your post I'd like the see it. it generally tracks with my understanding
but i could use some solid source material.
if you can post some reliable source material to support your post I'd like the see i
Google 1973 Saudi Kissinger deal:
For BOE the sources are more obscure. I personally have tracked them through time using population statistics and the like.
I need to write a book, so I can quote myself.
BOE, Cromwell, the Orange Kings - the usurpation of England, are all related by way of Stock Market Capital in Amersterdamn.
You can trace our Jewish friends arrival in Amersterdamn with their loss of East West Mechanism (silver gold exchange rates on
the caravan routes). They lost it to the portuguese when Vasco de Gama discovered the Sourthern route.
The person who best cataloged these maneuvers was an american Alexander Del Mar - a great monetary historian. Look for his
books.
This stuff will take you years of effort, and I applaud anyone who takes it on.
For the circulation of dollars during Vietnam War, See Hudson's books... especially Super Imperialism
Dr. Bonzo •Nov 19, 2016 11:04 PM
The Republicans and Democrats who make up the foreign policy elite are laying the groundwork for a more assertive American
foreign policy via a flurry of reports shaped by officials who are likely to play senior roles in a potential Clinton White
House.
In what fucking dimension do people this fucking incompetent still have jobs, let alone credibility? Preposterous that
they even still have jobs. The US has blown 5-6 trillion on losing one war after the other, has caused massive disorder and chaos
in the Mideast to absolutely no one's benefit except Israel, or so Israel believes, and destabilized the entire region to the
point that a WWIII could erupt at any moment.
Disaster and incompetence at this level can only be rewarded with sackings and terminations across the board. But no, not
in the US. The public is more preooccupied with fictional racists and Donald's bawdy pussy talk.
A nation of fucking morons. I swear.
Victor999 -> Dr. Bonzo •Nov 20, 2016 4:09 AM
You answered your own question....Israel is the first priority of American foreign policy - always.
Chaos is precisely what Israel ordered in order to weaken central governments of the ME and destroy their military capability.
WWIII? Doesn't matter in the least for Israel who will quietly stand aside and let the goyim fight it out, and then pick up the
remains. We're all fucking morons for allowing the Jews to take over our money supply, our government, our intelligence services,
our media - and hide themselves under the protective cloak of liberalism, political correctness and 'anti-Semitism' to shut down
all rational debate and guard them against 'discriminatory' practices.
Neochrome •Nov 19, 2016 11:06 PM
First of all, McStain should STFU, we'll send a nurse to change his depends, no need to get all cranky.
Giuliani's foreign expertise comes down apparently to be so "brave" to kick down Serbs when they are down and to proclaim to
their face that they have deserved to be bombarded.
Bolton is exactly opposite of everything that Trump campaigned on.
Again, Mitt doesn't look half-bad considering the alternatives...
Kagemusho •Nov 19, 2016 11:13 PM
The Elite always signal their intent through the Traditional Media...like this:
Empire or Not? A Quiet Debate Over U.S. Role
by Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, 21 August 2001
https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/linkscopy/empireOrNot.html
You will find the bastards were planning for war and just needed their Pearl Harbor 2 in order to launch it. The same PNAC,
Office of Special Plans NeoCon nutcases that want to get close to Trump were talking so glibly and blithely about 'empire'. I
knew even then that this was the Elite signaling intent, and we all know what happened a few weeks later. This article should
provide the benefit of hindsight when considering Cabinet postings. These NeoCon Israel-Firster assholes belong in prison for
war crimes!
Salzburg1756 •Nov 19, 2016 11:16 PM
neocon = Israel-Firster
If Trump disempowers them, he will be a great/good president.
the.ghost.of.22wmr -> Salzburg1756 •Nov 20, 2016 12:18 AM
Trump has been provided an easy litmus test, who has ever advocated deposing Assad must be rejected, not because Assad
is such a great guy, but because those who would replace him are radical islamists all. Russia could be cultivated as a friend
and do more for world peace than the Arab world which has a fatal jihad disease.
The Kurds have served our shared interests well , but like all Muslims have no real interest in becoming westernized and will
turn on us once they have achieved their goals.
UnschooledAustr... -> dunce •Nov 20, 2016 1:50 AM
You are wrong about the Kurds. Besides the Alevites the only sane people in this mess called the islamic world.
shovelhead -> dunce •Nov 20, 2016 9:35 AM
The Kurds are an ethnic identity, not a religious one. While most are of an Islamic rootstock, the are Kurds of various religious
beliefs. The Kurds are fighting for an autonomous region where all religions can co-exist without one being dominant and forcing
others to conform.
The Kurds problem is they are not physically separated by geography like Sicily, who falls under the Italian State but are
still distinctly Sicilian in language and culture while the outside world sees them as Italian.
The Kurds problem is that someone in Europe drew a line on a map without consulting them whether they wanted their traditional
homeland to be divided between three different countries.
Dabooda •Nov 20, 2016 12:37 AM
BERNIE SANDERS would be a genius choice for Secretary of State. A kick in the teeth to the Clintonistas and the neocons, an
olive branch to liberals of good will, and a hilarious end to the American civil war that the MSM and Soros are trying to drum
up. Bernie's foreign policy was the only thing I
liked about him.
sinbad2 -> Dabooda •Nov 20, 2016 1:02 AM
What a fantastic idea, political genius.
UnschooledAustr... -> Dabooda •Nov 20, 2016 1:30 AM
I - non-US citizen living in the US - frequently argued that I would have loved seeing Bernie run as VP for Trump.
Not a lot of people who got it. You did.
BTW: Fuck Soros.
Big Ben •Nov 20, 2016 12:51 AM
The presidency is more of a ceremonial position now. If the deep state doesn't like the president, it can simply fire him,
as it did with Kennedy (and arguably Nixon). It can also make his life a living hell or force a foreign policy showdown as it
did with Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs.
Incidentally, I've been looking at some websites that claim that the 911 attacks could not have happened the way the government
claimed. There were actually THREE buildings that collapsed: the North and South Towers and WTC7 which was never hit by an airplane.
The government claims it collapsed due to fires, but a whole bunch of architects and structural engineers say that isn't possible.
And if you look at the video of the collapse, it looks like a perfect controlled demolition. There have been a number of large
fires in steel framed skyscrapers and none of them has caused a collapse. And even if a fire somehow managed to produce a collapse,
it would create a messy uneven collapse where the parts with the hottest fires collapse first.
Controlled demolitions take weeks of planning and preparation. So the implication is that someone planned the WTC7 collapse
weeks in advance. WTC7 held a number of offices, including offices of the SEC. Many files were destroyed.
Also Steven Jones, a retired BYU physics professor and other scientists have found particles of thermite in the dust from the
North and South tower collapses. Thermite is an incendiary used to cut steel. This suggests that the collapse of the the North
and South Towers was also caused by something other than an airplane collision.
I have seen claims that GW Bush's younger brother was a high executive in the company that handled WTC security.
So were the 9/11 attacks a preplanned event designed to create support for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq?
The heads of the Pentagon and the nation's intelligence community have recommended to President Obama that the director of
the National Security Agency, Adm. Michael S. Rogers, be removed.
The recommendation, delivered to the White House last month, was made by Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter and Director
of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., according to several U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
...
The news comes as Rogers is being considered by President-Elect Donald Trump to be his nominee for DNI, replacing Clapper as
the official who oversees all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies. In a move apparently unprecedented for a military officer, Rogers,
without notifying superiors, traveled to New York to meet with Trump on Thursday at Trump Tower.
Adm. Michael S. Rogers recently claimed in
reference to the hack of the Democratic National Council emails that Wikileaks spreading them is "a conscious effort by a nation-state
to attempt to achieve a specific effect." He obviously meant Russia.
Compare that with his boss James Clapper who very recently
said
(again) that the "intelligence agencies don't have good insight on when or how Wikileaks obtained the hacked emails."
Emails of the DNC and of Clinton's consigliere John Podesta were hacked and leaked. Additionally emails from Clinton's private
email server were released. All these influenced the election in favor of Trump.
Wikileaks boss Assange
says he does not know where the emails come from but he does not think they came from Russia.
Clapper and Carter wanted Rogers fired because he was generally disliked at the NSA, because two big breaches in the most secret
Tailored Access Organization occurred on
his watch even after the Snowden case and because he blocked, with the help of Senator McCain, plans to split the NSA into a spying
and a cyber war unit.
Now let me spin this a bit.
Rogers obviously knew he was on the to-be-fired list and he had good relations with the Republicans.
Now follows some plausible speculation:
Some Rogers trusted dudes at the NSA (or in the Navy cyber arm which Rogers earlier led) hack into the DNC, Podesta emails
and the Clinton private email server. An easy job with the tools the NSA provides for its spies. Whoever hacked the emails then
pushes what they got to Wikileaks (and DCleaks , another "leak" outlet). Wikileaks
publishes what it gets because that is what it usually does. Assange also has various reasons to hate Clinton. She was always
very hostile to Wikileaks. She allegedly even
mused of killing Assange by a drone strike.
Rogers then accuses Russia of the breach even while the rest of the spying community finds no evidence for such a claim. That
is natural to do for a military man who grew up during the cold war and may wish that war (and its budgets) back. It is also a
red herring that will never be proven wrong or right unless the original culprit is somehow found.
Next we know - Trump offers Rogers the Clapper job. He would replace the boss that wanted him fired.
Rogers support for the new cold war will also gain him favor with the various weapon industries which will eventually beef
up his pension.
Some of the above is speculation. But it would make sense and explain the quite one-sided wave of leaks we saw during this
election cycle.
Even if it isn't true it would at least be a good script for a Hollywood movie on the nastiness of the inside fighting in Washington
DC.
Let me know how plausible you find the tale.
Posted by b on November 19, 2016 at 02:14 PM |
Permalink
Not sure about the speculation. There's justification for military spending beyond the cold war. Actually, the cold war
could be sacrificed in order to re-prioritize military spending.
In any case, Trump's proposed picks are interesting. I especially like the idea of Dana Rohrabacher as Secretary of State
if it comes to pass.
One thing for sure .... there's been so much 'fail' with the Obama years that there's an abundance of low-hanging fruit
for Trump to feather his cap with success early on, which will give him a template for future successes. That depends largely
on who his picks for key posts are, but there has seldom been so much opportunity for a new President as the one that greets
Trump.
It's there to be had. Let's hope that Trump doesn't blow it.
Sounds about right and this just means a new criminal class has taken over the beltway. That doesn't do anything for us citizens,
just more of the same.
Everything is on schedule and please there's nothing to see here.
I wonder if Rogers' statement appearing to implicate Russian government hackers in leaking DNC information to Wikileaks at
that link to Twitter was made after the Democratic National Convention itself accused Russia of hacking into its database.
In this instance, knowing when Rogers made his statement and when the DNC made its accusation makes all the difference.
If someone at the NSA had been leaking information to Wikileaks and Rogers knew of this, then the DNC blaming Russia for
the leaked information would have been a godsend. All Rogers had to do then would be to keep stumm and if questioned, just
say a "nation state" was responsible. People can interpret that however they want.
Any of the scenarios you mention could be right. The one thing that is certain - Russia was not the culprit. Not because Russians
would not be inclined to hack - I think it is plausible that everyone hacks everyone (as someone said) - but Russians would
not likely go to Wikileaks to publicize their prize. They'd keep it to themselves... in that way, they are probably like LBJ,
who knew that Nixon had sabotaged the end-of-war negotiations in Paris in 1968, but said nothing for fear of shocking the "system"
and the people's trust in it... (didn't work out too well in the end, though). Putin was right when he said (referring to the
2016 US election) that it all should somehow be ... more dignified.
Makes me wonder who populates the Anonymous group of loosely affiliated hackers and if they were used. The tale has probability;
it would be even more interesting if the motive could be framed within the hacker's fulfilling its oath of obligation to the
Constitution. Le Carre might be capable of weaving such a tale plausibly. But what about the Russia angle? IMO, Russia had
the biggest motive to insure HRC wouldn't become POTUS despite all its denials and impartiality statements. Quien Sabe? Maybe
it was Chavez's ghost who did all the hacking; it surely had an outstanding motive.
I'll add some color on Rogers in another post, but I just want to preface any remarks with one overriding aspect of the leaks.
From the details of most of these leaks, speculation on tech blogs (and as far as anyone knows for certain):
There are many parties that had great incentive to acquire and leak the emails, but I have to insist with the utmost conviction
(without a string of expletives) that a junior high school kid could have performed the same feat using hacking tools
easily found on the internet . There was absolutely nothing technically sophisticated or NSA-like in someone's ability
to get into the DNC server or grab Podesta's emails. It was a matter of opportunity and poor security. If anyone has a link
to any other reasoning, I would love to see it. The DNC and Hillary leaks (among other hacks) were due to damn amateurish security
practices. The reason you don't outsource or try to get by on the cheap for systems/network security is to reduce the risk
of this happening to an acceptable cost/benefit level.
So the presumption of Wikileaks source being (or needing to be) a state actor with incredibly sophisticated hacking tools
is utter nonsense. Yes, it could have been the Russian FSB or any one of the five-eyes intelligence agencies or the U.S. Defense
Intelligence Agency. But it could have just as plausibly been Bart Simpson
pwning the DNC from Springfield Elementary School and sending
everything to Wikileaks, "Cool, I just REKT the Clintons!"
WikiLeaks doesn't care if the leak comes from the head of a western intel agency or a bored teenager in New Jersey. It cares
that the material is authentic and carefully vets the content, not the source. At least until they kidnapped Assange and took
over WikiLeaks servers a couple of weeks ago, but that's for a different tin-foil hat thread.
Carol Davidek-Waller | Nov 19, 2016 3:18:02 PM |
7
Is Trump that much of a deep thinker? Rebellious teenager who chooses anyone that the last administration didn't like seems
more plausible to me. It doesn't matter who they are or what their record is. I don't think Trump plans to surrender any of
his undeserved power to anyone. He'll be running the whole show. They'll do what he wants or be shown the door.
rufus (aka "rufie") the MoA Hillbot uses a new persona - "Ron Showalter" - to attack Trump post-election. rufie/Ron conducts
a false flag attack on MoA (making comments that are pages long) so that his new persona can claim that his anti-Trump
views are being attacked by someone using his former persona.
I generally dislike "theories" that go too much into speculation, -- however this one sounds actually quite plausible!
As for "Russia did it", this was obvious bullshit right from the start, not least because of what GoraDiva #4 says: I think it is plausible that everyone hacks everyone (as someone said) - but Russians would not likely go to Wikileaks to
publicize their prize. They'd keep it to themselves
Allegations against Russia worked on confusing different levels: hacking -- leaking -- "rigging".
This picture encapsulates IMO the full absurdity this election campaign had come down to:
MSM constantly bashing Trump for "lies", "post-factual", "populist rage", "hate speech", -- while themselves engaging in the
same on an even larger level, in a completely irresponsible way that goes way beyond "bias", "preference" or even "propaganda".
I understand (and like) the vote for Trump mainly as a call to "stop this insanity!"
~~~
Some more on the issue:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/10/really-really-upset-foreign-office-security-services/ I left Julian [Assange] after midnight. He is fit, well, sharp and in good spirits. WikiLeaks never reveals or comments
upon its sources, but as I published before a fortnight ago, I can tell you with 100% certainty that it is not any Russian
state actor or proxy that gave the Democratic National Committee and Podesta material to WikiLeaks.
The following week, two cybersecurity firms, Fidelis Cybersecurity and Mandiant, independently corroborated Crowdstrike's
assessment that Russian hackers infiltrated DNC networks, having found that the two groups that hacked into the DNC used malware
and methods identical to those used in other attacks attributed to the same Russian hacking groups.
But some of the most compelling evidence linking the DNC breach to Russia was found at the beginning of July by Thomas
Rid, a professor at King's College in London, who discovered an identical command-and-control address hardcoded into the DNC
malware that was also found on malware used to hack the German Parliament in 2015. According to German security officials,
the malware originated from Russian military intelligence. An identical SSL certificate was also found in both breaches.
Sooooo .... these "traces" all show known Russian methods (whether true or not). If they are known they can be faked and
used by someone else.
Now who is the no. 1 organisation, worldwide, in having and being capable to use such information?
@b, your speculation gets better and better the more one thinks about it.
I'm out of my depth on cyber forensics, but would the NSA, and thus Clapper, know who hacked and leaked these documents? Or
would the NSA be in the dark, as they suggest?
Just watched Oliver Stone's "Snowden". Awesome. Can't believe after seeing it that Clapper has survived all these years. Just
another Hoover.
thanks b.. i like the idea of it being an inside job.. makes a lot of sense too.
i like @3 jens question about the timing as a possible aid to understanding this better.
@4 gordiva comment - everyone hacks everyone comment..ditto. it's another form of warfare and a given in these times..
i agree with @6 paveway, and while it sounds trite, folks who don't look after their own health can blame all the doctors..
the responsibility for the e mail negligence rests with hillary and her coterie of bozos..
@7 carol. i agree.
@8 jr.. did you happen to notice a few posts missing from the thread from yesterday and who it was that's been removed?
hint : poster who made the comment "more popcorn" is no longer around. they have a new handle today..
@20 manne.. you can say whatever you want and be speculative too, but i don't share your view on assange knowing who leaked
it..
Except that you have to consider the targeting. I've suspected an insider all along, given the pre-packaged spin points coordinated
with the release vectors. Not that the Russies, Pakistanis, or Chinese wouldn't know more about the US than the US knows about
itself, but the overall nuance really hits the anti-elitist spurned sidekick chord. This clashes a bit with b's interagency
pissing match scenario, but, then again, you step on the wrong tail... Someone didn't get their piece of pie, or equally valid,
someone really really disapproves of the pie's magnitude and relative position on the table.
Curious how Weenergate led to the perfectly timed 650K emails on that remarkably overlooked personal device.
@20 Manne
Yes I think on this case Assange does know, if I remember correctly, he spoke to RT and said something to the effect of 'it's
not Russia, we don't reveal our sources but if the DNC found out who it was they would have "egg on their faces"' ...and easy
access, copy, paste, send job, my hunch it was the DNC staffer who was suicided.
Its what Assange himself says, do your homework, as someone else said here, Wikileaks wont reveal the source, that doesnt
mean they dont know who leaked it.
Is Trump that much of a deep thinker? Rebellious teenager who chooses anyone that the last administration didn't like seems
more plausible to me. It doesn't matter who they are or what their record is. I don't think Trump plans to surrender any of
his undeserved power to anyone. He'll be running the whole show. They'll do what he wants or be shown the door.
Posted by: Carol Davidek-Waller | Nov 19, 2016 3:18:02 PM | 7
I agree.
Trump's got charm and a good memory and doesn't need to be a deep thinker in order to network efficiently and listen carefully.
Nor does he need to be a mathematician to figure out that 1 + 1 = 2.
Has anyone else got the feeling that much of the panic inside Washington is due to the possibility that the crimes of the Obama
administration might be exposed?
One of the most uncanny moments I've experienced watching the Syria crisis unfold is seeing the "Assad gasses his people"
operation launched, fail miserably, then - mostly - interest is lost. I know: the lie, once asserted, has done most of its
work already, debunked or not. I also understand that the western press is so in the tank for the establishment, so "captured"
that it shouldn't surprise anyone that no follow up is offered. My point is, rather, that if you think back over just the Ukrainian
and Syrian debacle the amount of dirt that could be exposed by a truly anti-establishment figure in the White House is mind
boggling.
Just off the top of my head:
- the sabotage of the deal to save the Ukrainian constitutional order brokered by Putin, Merkel and Hollande c/o of the
excuisitely timed and staged sniper shootings (otherwise known as the "most obvious coup in history")
- the farce that is the MH17 inquiry (and the implication: another false flag operation with a cut-out that killed, what was
it, 279 innocents?)
- the Kherson pogrom and the Odessa massacre
- the targeting of both Libya and Syria with outright lies and with all the propaganda perfectly reflecting the adage that,
in dis- info operations, the key is to accuse your enemies of all the crimes you are committing or planning to
- highlights of the above might include: Robert Ford's emails scheming to create "paranoia" in Damascus while completely justifying
same; the "rat-lines" and Ghoutta gas operation; the farcically transparent White Helmets Psy-op *
And on and on...
If you or the institution that pays you had a closet full to bursting with skeletons like this and you were facing an incoming
administration that seems to relish and flaunt it's outsider status wouldn't you be freaking out?
To ice the cake the latest Freudian slip is the crusade against "fake news." Seriously, if I were in their shoes that's
the last phrase I would want people ruminating over. I think it was R. D. Laing who said "we always speak the truth." One way
or another.
* This comes with the delicious irony that the operation's own success offers proof of the adage that sometimes you can succeed
too well. The fact that the Omran photo was plastered across every paper in the west is good evidence of how completely "fake"
our news has become. My favourite is this farcical interview between Amanpour and Lavrov:
https://youtu.be/Tx8kiQyEkHc
@27 Oddlots
Most of those are pretty easy picking under a firm rule of law - plenty of underling rats willing to squeal with even gentle
pressure, I'm sure.
His legacy is horrific.
Obama taught constitutional law for 12 years... It would be sweet, sweet poetry to see him nailed... his 'white papers',
formed in secret courts that no one can see, no oversight in the light of day... phony legal documents that allowed him to
incinerate fellow humans via drone without charge, without trial...
95% or more of the individuals Trump is considering for his administration, including those already picked have a deep-seated
obsession with Iran. This is very troubling. It's going to lead to war and not a regular war where 300,000 people die. This
is a catastrophic error in judgment I don't give a sh...t who makes such an error, Trump or the representative from Kalamazoo!
This is so bad that it disqualifies whatever else appears positive at this time.
And one more deeply disturbing thing; Pompeo, chosen to head the CIA has threatened Ed Snowden with the death penalty, if
Snowden is caught, and now as CIA Director he can send operatives to chase him down wherever he is and render him somewhere,
torture him to find out who he shared intelligence with and kill him on the spot and pretend it was a foreign agent who did
the job. He already stated before he was assigned this powerful post that Snowden should be brought back from Russia and get
the death penalty for treason.
Pompeo also sided with the Obama Administration on using U. S. military force in Syria against Assad and wrote this in the
Washington Post: "Russia continues to side with rogue states and terrorist organizations, following Vladimir Putin's pattern
of gratuitous and unpunished affronts to U.S. interests,".
That's not all, Pompeo wants to enhance the surveillance state, and he too wants to tear up the Iran deal.
Many of you here are extremely naïve regarding Trump.
James @21 I noticed the different handle but b hasn't commented on the attack. I assumed that this meant that b didn't know
for sure who did the attack.
As I wrote, rufus/Ron made himself the prime suspect when he described the attack as an attempt to shut down his anti-Trump
message. Some of us thought that it might be a lame attempt to discredit rufus but only "Ron" thought that the attack was related
to him.
If one doesn't believe - as I do - that Ron = rufus then you might be less convinced that rufus did the deed.
Yes, it is important to remember that Assange, though he did not state that he knew who provided the DNC emails, implied
that he did, and further implied--but did not state--that it was Seth Rich. Assange's statement came shortly after Rich's death
by shooting. Assange stated he specifically knew people had people had risked their lives uploading material, implying that
they had in fact lost them.
b's speculation has the ring of truth. I've often wondered if Trump was encouraged to run by a deep-state faction that found
the neocons to be abhorrent and dangerous.
Aside: I find those who talk about "factions" in foreign policy making to be un-credible. Among these were those that spoke
of 'Obama's legacy'. A bullshit concept for a puppet.The neocons control FP. And they could only be unseated if a neocon
-unfriendly President was elected.
Trump is turning animosity away from Russia and toward Iran. But I doubt that it will result in a shooting war with Iran. The
'deep-state' (arms industry and security agencies) just wants a foreign enemy as a means of ensuring that US govt continues
to fund security agencies and buy arms.
And really, Obama's "peace deal" with Iran was bogus anyway. It was really just a placeholder until Assad could be toppled.
Only a small amount of funds were released to Iran, and US-Iranian relations have been just as bad as they were before the
"peace deal". So all the hand-wringing about Trump vs. Iran is silly.
What is important is that with Iran as the nominal enemy du jour plus Trump's campaign pledge to have the "strongest" military
(note: every candidate was for a strong military) , the neocons have no case to make that Trump is weak on defense.
And so it is interesting that those that want to undermine Trump have resorted to the claim that he is close to Jews/Zionists/Israel
or even Jewish himself. Funny that Trump wasn't attacked like that before the election, huh?
The profound changes and profound butt-hurt lead to the following poignant questions:
>> Have we just witnessed a counter-coup?
>> Isn't it sad that, in 2016(!), the only check on elites are other elite factions? An enormous cultural failure that
has produced a brittle social fabric.
>> If control of NSA snooping power is so crucial, why would ANY ruling block ever allow the another to gain power?
Indeed, the answer to this question informs one's view on whether the anti-Trump protests are just Democratic Party ass-covering/distraction
or a real attempt at a 'color revolution'.
b said also.."Rogers support for the new cold war will also gain him favor with the various weapon industries which will
eventually beef up his pension."
That's the long game for most of the "Hawks" in DC. Perpetual war is most profitable.
What is important is that with Iran as the nominal enemy du jour plus Trump's campaign pledge to have the "strongest"
military (note: every candidate was for a strong military), the neocons have no case to make that Trump is weak on defense.
Oh please! Trump is stacking his cabinet with Iran-obsessed Islam haters! Nominal enemy , my ass! And was every candidate
for spending a Trillion more on defense??? Did you even read Trump's plan to build up the military?
You do Netanyahu proud with your deflection. What? Nothing regarding Pompeo's blistering comments on Russia or Ed Snowden?
Why are you trying to diminish the threat to Iran with the hawks, Islam-haters, and Iran-obsessed team that Trump cobbled
together so far?
Trump's Israel adviser David Friedman is known to be more extreme than even Netanyahu.
No doubt Netanyahu has unleashed an army of IDF hasbara to crush criticism of Trump and his Iran-obsessed cabinet because
he must be elated with his choices and wants to make them palatable to the American sheeple.
Netanyahu is the first leader Trump spoke with on the phone. Trump praised Netanyahu from day one. PNAC and Clean Break
were war manifestos for rearranging the Middle East with the ultimate goal of toppling Iran.
Trump and his cabinet are all about tearing up the deal and assuming a much more hostile position with Iran. Tearing up
the deal is a precursor to a casus belli. What more proof is there that Trump is doing the bidding of Zionist Neocons??? Oh,
but you don't want more, do you?
As chipnik noted in a comment, Iran is one of the only countries that is yet to be under the control of private finance
(see my latest Open Thread comments, please)
I personally see all this as obfuscation covering for throwing Americans under the bus by the global plutocrats. The elite
can see, just like us, that the US empire's usefulness is beyond its "sold by" date and are acting accordingly. America and
its Reserve Currency status are about to crash and the elites are working to preserve their supra-national private finance
base of power/control while they let America devolve to who knows what level.
Too much heat and not enough light here...or if you prefer, the noise to signal ratio is highly skewed to noise.
Crimes involving moral turpitude have an inherent quality of baseness, vileness, or depravity with respect to a person's
duty to another or to society in general.
Given the above Trump would not be allowed to immigrate to the US.....just saying...
the shadowbrokers say they have NSA malware/tools and to prove it after their auction was met with crickets riding tumbleweeds
they released some teaser info on NSA servers used for proxy attacks and recon. of course a few just happened to be "owned"
boxes in russia (and china and some other places for that matter). add their russian IP addresses to some (mostly useless)
sigantures associated with supposedly russian-designed malware and you've got some good circumstantial evidence.
also: an email address associated with one or more attacks is from a russian site/domain but whoever registered was directed
to the .com domain instead of the .ru one. this probably means someone got sloppy and didn't remember to check their DNS for
fail.
in general these hacks look less like russians and more like someone who wants to look like russians. the overpaid consultants
used by the DNC/clinton folks can put "bear" in the names and claim that a few bits of cyrillic are a "slam dunk" but all the
"evidence" is easily faked. not that anyone in the "deep state" would ever fake anything.
Trump is turning animosity away from Russia and toward Iran.
I worry about it as well. Trump said he'll tear up nuclear agreement, and the people he is choosing also have rabid anti-Iranian
agenda.
Nice start for Trump:
Thursday US House voted to stop civilian aircraft sales to Iran by both Boeing and Airbus.
Few days before - US extending economic sanctions against Iran through 2026.
Of course Trump can block it, but will he? Even if he does, he might blackmail Iran for something in return, etc. Iran is
by no means off the hook for neocons and Israel, and I wouldnt be surprised if Trump follows the suit.
Trump will (or might) have better relations with Russia, but this cordiality doesnt extend to Iran. Or as Jackrabbit says,
US neocons will simply switch the targeted state and Iran may soon become "worse threat to humanity than ISIS", again.
I doubt separating the animosity towards Russia and Iran is even possible. Truth be told his comments towards Russia during
the election seemed more like he was woefully unaware of the reality of the Russo-American situation in the Mideast than about
being ready to negotiate major US power positions and accept Russia as anything more than enemy. Sounded very off the cuff
to me. Maybe he thought he'd 'get along great with Putin' at the time but after realizing later that means making nice with
Iran and giving up a large measure of US influence in the MENA he has reconsidered and taken the party line. It'd certainly
be understandable for a noncareer politician. I'd imagine he'd be more interested now in currying favour with the MIC and the
typical Republican party hawks than with Russia/Putin given his statements on military spending. Back when I saw him bow down
at the altar of AIPAC earlier in the season I had trouble reconciling that with how he hoped to improve relationships with
Russia at the same time given their radical differences wrt their allies. He's made a lot of those type of statements too,
it was hard to read where he stood on most any issue during election season.
I imagine as he's brought into the fold and really shown the reality of how US imperialist power projection he'll change
his mind considerably. I think we, as readers and amateur analysts of this type of material, take for granted how hard some
of this knowledge is to come by without looking for it directly. When we hear someone is going to make nice with Russia we
want to think "well he says that as he must surely recognize the insanity and destructive forces at work." Maybe it's more
of a case where the person speaking actually thinks we're in Syria to fight ISIS - that they have very little grasp of how
things really work over there.
In my eyes the names he's been considering are reason for much worry for those hoping Trump would be the one to usher in
a multipolar world and end the cold war. I never had much hope in that regard (but I'm still praying for the best).
Putin has been supporting right-wing movements across the West in order to weaken NATO
Care to back this statement with arguments, examples ar a link to an excellent article?
Looking at most of "New Europe", it's the other way around ... fascist states allied with Nazi Germany against communism,
participating in massacres of Jewish fellow citizens and functioning as a spearhead for US intelligence against communism after
the defeat of Nazi Germany – see Gladio. Now used by the CIA in the
coup d'état in Ukraine in Februari 2014.
Ahhh ... searched for it myself, a paper written earlier in 2016 ... how convenient!
Policy set by the Atlantic Council years ago:
make Russia a pariah state . Written
about it many times. BS and more western propaganda. The West has aligned itself with jihadists across the globe, Chechnya
included. Same as in Afghanistan, these terrorists were called "freedom fighters". See John McCain in northern Syria with same
cutthroats.
Absolutely outrageous! See her twitter account with followers/participants
Anne Applebaum and former and now discredited Poland's FM
Radoslaw Sikorski .
"Emails of the DNC and of Clinton's consigliere John Podesta were hacked and leaked. Additionally emails from Clinton's private
email server were released. All these influenced the election in favor of Trump."
Not necessarily so. An informal poll of people in blue collar flyover country about their voting intentions prior to the
election expressed 4 common concerns
i) The risk of war.
ii) The Obamacare disaster especially recent triple digit percent increase in fees.
iii) Bringing back jobs.
iv) Punishing the Democrat Party for being indistinguishable from the Republicans.
We shouldn't take Trump's bluster at face value. For example, Trump said that he'd eliminate Obamacare. Now he has backed
off that saying that some elements of Obamacare are worthwhile.
That the Israeli head of state is one of the first foreign leaders that any President-elect speaks to is no surprise. That
you harp on what is essentially nonsense is telling.
In my view Trump is not anti-Jewish. He is anti-neocon/anti-Zionist. As Bannon said, America has been getting f*cked.
To ice the cake the latest Freudian slip is the crusade against "fake news."
i see it more as another mindfucking meme than a Freudian slip. another paean to Discordia, the goddess of chaos. we've
lived with 'fake news,' heretofore advertised by reliable sources , since forever. baptizing this bastardized melange
only sinks us deeper into dissonant muck.
One would hope if that is true - Trump recognises this and fires him as well rather than promoting him.
However, if he were instrumental in getting Trump elected it is understandable if Trump decided to promote him.
It's well-known and clear Trump rewards those who have done him favours.
Let us hope it is not true.
The first thing Trump must do when elected is declassify all material related to MH17. This can be done in late January/
February as one of his first orders of business.
It's important to do this quickly - at least before the Dutch Elections in March 2017.
#MH17truth
If Trump does this he will do a number of things.
1 - Likely reveal that it was the Ukrainians who were involved in shooting down MH17. I say likely because it's possible
this goes deeper than just Ukraine - if that's the case - more the better.
2. He will destroy the liar Porky Poroshenko and his corrupt regime with him. He will destroy Ukraine's corrupt Government's
relationship with Europe.
3. He will destroy the sell-out traitor to his own people Mark Rutte of Netherlands. This will ensure an election win for
a key Trump ally - Geert Wilders.
If Rutte is discredited for using the deaths of 200 Dutch citizens for his own political gain - he is finished and might
end up in jail.
4. He will destroy Merkel utterly. Her chances of re-election (which she just announced she will stand!) will be utterly
destroyed.
5. He will restory Russia-USA relations in an instant.
Trump must also do this ASAP because this is the kind of thing that could get him killed if he doesn't do it ASAP when he's
inaugurated.
Of course - until then - he should keep his mouth shut about it - but the rest of us should be shouting it all around the
Internet.
And very well documented, too. Sort of like the theory that 9/11 was carried out by the Boy Scouts of America. After all,
the boost in jingoism and faux-patriotism gave the BSA a boost in revenue and membership, so that pretty well proves it, eh?
And if you dig deep enough I'm sure you'll find that on 9/10 the BSA shorted their stocks in United.
Totally agree Oddlots and that is why Trump must be on the front foot immediately.
Exposing MH17 and destroying Poroshenko, Rutte & Merkel - and Biden & Obama by the way and a bunch of others is absolutely
key.
Blow MH17 skyhigh and watch Russia-USA relations be restored in a nanosecond.
It will be especially sweet to watch the Dutch traitor to his own people Rutte destroyed in the midst of an election campaign
such that he might end up in jail charged with treason and replaced by Geert Wilders - the Dutch Donald Trump if ever there
was one - within a matter of weeks.
However, a word of caution, it is precisely because of these possibilities that there has to be a high chance Trump will
be assassinated.
Pence would not walk that line. Not at all.
There is no doubt Trump's life is in danger. I hope he has enough good people around him who will point the finger in the
right direction if and when it happens.
I think it's a bit of a stretch. First of all, there are other, deeper areas of investigative matters concerning previous governments
of the US, impeachable offenses and international crimes - remember when Nancy Pelosi took impeachment off the table? Not to
mention, what did happen in Benghazi and why? It wouldn't matter who did that hacking of those emails- it's a bit like the
exposure of the White House tapes in Nixon's presidency. We didn't worry about who revealed that - we went to the issues themselves.
I think that is what Trump is doing as he brings people to his home for conversations. It is the opposite of Obama's 'moving
forward, not looking back'. Trump is going to look back. It's not about reinstating the cold war; it's about gathering information.
I think Saudi Arabia are the ones who should be scared. Trump has implied before he knows who is responsible for September
11.
My guess is he wants to expose Saudi Arabia and the Bush Family.
Ever wondered why the Bushes hate and appear frightened of Trump? Because they understand he will expose their complicity
in September 11 and potentially have them locked up.
Or perhaps he'll let Dubya off claiming he didn't know in return for a favour and lock up Dick Cheney instead. Quite possible.
The Saudis will get thrown down the river and lose any assets they hold in US Dollars - a significant amount I believe!
Sucks to be a Saudi Royal right about now - they better liquidate their US assets ASAP if they have any brains.
Retired UK ambassador Craig Murray said on his Web site, after meeting with Assange and then traveling to Washington where
he met with former NSA officials, that he was 100 percent sure that Wikileaks's source was not the Russians and also suggested
that the leaks came from inside the U.S. government.
@24 jr.. i found the rs guy to be quite repugnant..rufus never came across quite the same way to me, but as always - i could
be wrong! i see pac is gone today and been replaced with another name, lol.. and the beat goes on.. b has deleted posts and
must be getting tired of them too.
@31 manne.. thanks.. does that rule out an insider with the nsa/cia as well?
@34 fecklessleft.. i agree with your last paragraph..
@36 yonatan.. i agree with that alternative take myself..
@40 jules.. would be nice to see happen, but most likely an exercise in wishful thinking.. sort of the same with your @44
too.. the saudis need to be taken down quite a few notches.. the usa/israel being in bed with the headchopper cult has all
the wrong optics for suggesting anything positive coming from usa/israel..
b says 'Next we [can speculate] - Trump offers Rogers the Clapper job. He would replace the boss that wanted him fired.' There,
fixed it.
There appears to be a growing canyon in the intelligence world with some wanting to rid the Office of the National Intelligence
agency altogether, while others are lobbying for it to remain.
Remember when Obama referred to the rise of the Islamic State as the 'JV team'? That nonchalant attitude by Obama towards
the growing threat of the head choppers in Iraq and Syria was squarely placed on senior management within the intelligence
community -
"Two senior analysts at CENTCOM signed a written complaint sent to the Defense Department inspector general in July alleging
that the reports, some of which were briefed to President Obama, portrayed the terror groups as weaker than the analysts
believe they are. The reports were changed by CENTCOM higher-ups to adhere to the administration's public line that the
U.S. is winning the battle against ISIS and al Nusra, al Qaeda's branch in Syria, the analysts claim."
Who knows, Rogers may very well have been one in senior management who encouraged these 50 analysts to come forward. Maybe
the IG investigation is wrapping up and at least internally, the senior management who made intel reports to Obama full of
'happy talk' have been identified and are now leaving on their own.
We shouldn't take Trump's bluster at face value. For example, Trump said that he'd eliminate Obamacare. Now he has backed
off that saying that some elements of Obamacare are worthwhile.
For crying out loud! I don't give a rat's ass about Obamacare when he outlined a plan to boost the military by a trillion
dollars and stacks his cabinet with crazy Iran-obsessed hawks who want to start a world war over effing Iran! And you're deflecting
this with freakin' Obamacare -- It's speaks volumes about your credibility!
Trump is anti-Zionist??? Ha! His adviser to Israel David Friedman is an extreme right-wing Zionist! Or do you just prefer
to completely ignore fact and reality???
And Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo can't stand Putin and their comments and record are there - FACT!
And Trump didn't only tell Hillary he was going to build up the military; he outlined it later in his plan with facts and
figures and it's going to cost about a Trillion dollars, so quit comparing it to a gradual phasing out of Obamacare!
Okay, you know what? I see right through your little game. Unless you have something cogent with factual backup; I don't
wanna read your responses based on pure fantasy and deflection. I look at the cold, hard facts and reality. I look at who Trump
is surrounding himself with rabid Islam-haters obsessed with going after Iran and extremist Zionist loons and hawks like Pompeo
and Pence making disturbing comments on Russia and Snowden and Trump's plan. So quit pretending you're not trying to obscure
fact with fiction meant to deceive!
"...and not a regular war where 300,000 people die..."
- Regular? So, you're calling an aggression on Syria just a 'Regular' war, on par with the course? The very least the Americans
have to do, including those given the 'Nobel Peace Prize' (a bloody joke if there ever was one)? And those regular wars are
needed to, what, regularly feed and the US MIC Beast? So... Obama and Hillary were just getting on with the inevitable?
Your other observations regarding Pompeo are more meaningful, but I think you underestimate the power of groupthink under
the Clinton-Bush-Obama continuous administration complex. Anyway, if Pompeo doesn't wish to get "reassigned", he might be better
off unmounting the neocon horse mindset and getting on better with the Tea Party dogma, where the enemies of thy enemies are
more likely to be seen as friends then frenemies.
#34 Feckless Left
In a sense you are right, he is not a career politician and he might be underestimating the depth of the abyss. Yet, he
has far more street cred than you seem to be giving him credit for. An honest, naive idealist, he is certainly not...
Circe, I have addressed your panic about Iran in another thread and you failed to reply so again:
"Even if true that the future administration would shift its focus against Iran, what can they accomplish militarily against
it? Nought. SAA & ISA would send militias to support Iran, nothing would prevent Russia from using Hamedan airbase just as
it uses Hmeimim and deploy S-400 et al systems to bolster Iran's already existing ones. Plus on what grounds politically could
they intervene? Nobody is buying Bibi's "Bomb" bs seriously anymore. Forget it, with Syria prevailing Iran is safe.."
Oddlots #21. insightful. you ignored the entire list on the financial side, but they are linked through the profound mutual
support between Israel and Wall Street.
I have been really surprised at the lack of discussion of BHO's impromptu post-election tour of Germany and Greece. It seems
to me Egypt flipped and it was met with silence, because WashDC must be secured before the neocons can respond. But the two
countries that are game-set-match are Germany and Greece. The Greek navy with German support is a great power in the Mediterranean.
How convenient to keep them at each other's throats for a decade. I think BHO was trying desperately to keep them onside. But
he would either have to promise them something that he can no longer deliver after Jan 20th...or he has to clue them in to
a different timeline than the one we think is playing out. Anyone have a idea why the Prez had to go and talk to Merkel and
Tsipras *without intermediaries?*
Having now founded a central bank in every nation of the world, the Khazars have defeated the Pope and the Caliphate. Only
Iran and North Korea don't have a Khazar central bank. And only Iran has the last stash of crown jewels and gold bullion that
the Khazars don't already control.
They want Iran as part of Greater Israel, and they hate Russia for driving them out after the fall of the Soviet Union.
The Khazars control the American Union under a Red/Blue Star. Just talking ethnics, not race, religion or creed, since Hebrew
is a religion of pure commercial convenience for the Khazars.
US and IL are therefore aligned against IR and RU. Now we can get rid of all the race, religion or creed crap, and talk
New Math set theory: {US,IL} ≠ {IR,RU}
Who are {US,IL} sanctions against? {IR,RU}. In this new Trump' Administration: {TA} ⊆ {US,IL}, and {TA} ⊄ {IR,RU}. From
a chess perspective, Putin just got Kieningered, because the Khazars would have everyone believe that {TA} ❤ {RU}, when in
reality, {TA} ∩ {RU} = {Ø}.
I'm fully expecting a radical change in rhetoric coming from Mr. Trump and his new team, but little else. The REAL movers and
shakers who run the U$A have everything moving their direction right now, so why change? I expect "the Donald" to do as he's
told, like every other POTUS in modern history. They'll let him screw the workers, but, not the REAL owners of the U$A( 1%).
You don't know? Before he died, my father told me a trick. Once the bloom was off their marriage, his wife would deliberately
provoke his heavy-handed management of the family, by doing whatever he didn't want. So he learned to always 'go crazy' over
things, knowing that's exactly what she would do to spite him, ...and in that way, using 'reverse psychology', the Khazars
would have you believe that they hate Trump, and Trump loves Russia. They're just putting the Maidan gears into motion.
If Trump is considering Mitt Romney for SoS then you can bet his policy towards Russia will be hostile because the only reason
Trump would put someone between himself and Putin, who repeatedly called Russia, America's No. 1 enemy, is because he wants
a bad cop on Russia in the State Department, in spite of his supposed good cop remarks regarding Putin. In other words, he
wants someone who can put it straight to Putin so he himself can pretend to be the good cop. If Trump were being honest regarding
a softening in policy with Russia do you really believe he would ever consider someone like Romney for SoS??? Again, Mitt Romney
has made the most scathing comments of anyone against Putin, and then calling Russia the number one geopolitical enemy of
the U.S. . Many on the Democratic and even Republican side felt he went overboard and many have since called his comment
prophetic and today Romney feels vindicated.
Many analysts on the Democratic side and Republican side are calling Romney prophetic since he made that statement on Russia
before Russia messed with U.S. plans for Syria.
So, my point is this; it's possible, it's very possible that, Mike Pompeo, Trump's choice for CIA Director, who also has
a hostile position towards Russia asked Trump to consider Romney because he know doubt also believes that Romney proved good
foresight with that comment regarding Russia and urged Trump to give Romney a meeting.
My 2nd point is this: quit trying to make Trump into what he's not when he's spelling it all out for you in black and white!
It doesn't look good. This picture that's starting to develop is looking worse by the day. Look at who he's surrounding
himself with; look at his actions and forget about his words. This man has sold ice to the eskimos in his business dealings.
Look at the facts. Trump is not who you think he is and just because he made some comments favorable in Putin's regard doesn't
mean he's not going to turn around and stick it to Putin a year or maybe a few years down the line. Kissinger told Fareed Zakaria
today on GPS: One should not insist in nailing Trump to positions he took during the campaign.
I already wrote that I believe Trump is using this fake softer strategy to get Russia to look sideways on a coming Resolution
to invade Iran and then he's going to deal with Putin and Russia.
If Trump picks someone like Romney for State; he'll have 3 individuals in the most important cabinet positions dealing with
foreign policy and foreign enemies who will be hostile to Russia: VP, CIA Director and SoS. Therefore he would be sending his
bad cop to deal with Russia and sending a message to Putin like: Don't put your money on whatever I said during the campaign,
my positions are changing for the empire's benefit and strategic interests. And even if he doesn't choose Mitt, because on
Breitbart where his base convenes they're up in arms about this meeting, I would still be wary of his direction because of
the picks he's made already; the majority of his cabinet so far want war with Iran and his VP and CIA Director can't stand
Putin and then looking at who's advising him, rabid Neocon Zionists like James Woolsey and David Friedman.
Look at what Trump does, who he's meeting with, who he's choosing to surround himself with and quit hanging on what he said,
because talk is cheap, especially coming from someone who's now in the inner circle of American power.
@55
Please don't give me one measly Cohen tweet as fact! The entire Zionist Organization of America came to Bannon's defense
and he will be attending their gala! It's been made public everywhere; so quit obscuring the truth.
@54
Yes, Russia could come to Iran's defense considering Iran allowed for Russia's use of that air base for Syria and rescued
one of the two Russian pilots shot down by Turkey, and is fighting al-Nusra shoulder to shoulder with Russia, but the empire
has something up its sleeve to stop Russia from coming to the defense of Iran, should the U.S. and Israel decide to circumvent
the Security Council. Something stinks; Trump is top loading his cabinet with crazy, Iran-obsessed hawks and his VP and CIA
Direct also have no love for Putin. They're planning something against Iran and I know they're going to do something to tie
Putin's hands. Something's up and it's going to lead to war beyond Syria. Look the Russians are already depleting resources
in Syria; already that puts Russia in a weakened position. I don't know what they're planning but it's not good. The picture
unfolding with Trump's cabinet is very disturbing.
There's another aspect and maybe it's significant and maybe not that could influence a change in Trump's position on Russia
that would have also made him take the extreme step of meeting with Romney while considering the SoS position. Trump is getting
the highest level of security briefings now that he's President-elect. You wanna bet that Russia and Putin are mentioned in
over 50% of those briefings and ISIS, Iran and others get the other 50% collectively???
Hasbara hysteria to undermine Trump. Unrelenting bullshit and innuendo.
What was Bannon talking about when he said that America is getting f*cked? Globalism vs. Nationalism. Who equates nationalism
with nazism? Zionists. Who is butt-hurt over Trump Presidency? Zionists and neocons.
Yep, describes your weak deception to a T! ...like I'm going to hang on Bannon's word as gospel when he's going to be wining
and dining with Zionists at the ZOA gala.
Oh, and one more thing: Zionists, FYI, relate very well with nationalists and supremacists since they got their own nationalist,
supremacist operation in ISRAEL! So I'm only too sure they'll be commiserating and exchanging ideas on how best to secure their
nationalist, supremacist vision for the empire. There's a whole lot of common ground for them to cover during the gala, and
YOU CAN'T AND DIDN'T DENY THAT BANNON IS ATTENDING THE ZIONIST GALA! Did you???
So again, quit dogging me, quit presuming I'm some undercover hasbara, that maybe you are, and spare me the bullshit.
As if we didn't need anymore proof of where Trump is taking the U.S.: Trump tweeted a comment highly praising General James
Mattis after their meeting considering him for Secretary of Defense. This is a major, major red flag signalling a very troubling
direction in Trump's foreign policy.
Mattis served for two years as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. Although, he served under Obama, he was against the Iran
deal and considers Iran more dangerous that ISIS!
Mattis is nicknamed "mad-dog mattis" for a reason: he is an extreme hawk and he is MIC incorporated.
But here's the kicker, Mattis like Pompeo, Pence and Romney has also made blistering comments against Russia, stating that
Putin wants to break up NATO, sent "dogs and thugs" into Georgia and has been very critical of Putin's actions in Ukraine and
Syria.
At the beginning of the primaries, Neocons wanted Mattis as a candidate for the Presidency on the Republican side. I like
how the following article describes just how much Neocon war hawks salivated over the thought of Mattis in the White House:
Well folks, Mattis, the darling of Neocons, will be in the White House next to Trump advising him on war strategy! And worst
of all this mad-dog Neocon war hawk is going to run the Pentagon, oversee a trillion-dollar military expansion and command
the next world war!
So are you convinced yet that Trump is perpetuating the Neocon PNAC/Clean Break plan or are you still totally blind???
@34 fl, 'In my eyes the names he's been considering are reason for much worry for those hoping Trump would be the one to usher
in a multipolar world and end the cold war. I never had much hope in that regard (but I'm still praying for the best).'
Trump is in it for Trump. He's a solipsist. We and our 'real world' doesn't exist for Trump. He lives in Trump Tower. The
only things he cares about are his personal interests. He'll put in people to 'run the government' who will insulate him and
his interests from the consequences of their actions and that'll keep him happy and them in their jobs, no matter the consequences
for our 'imaginary' real world. We're back to the mad Caesars. Our government has been steadily walking away from us since
Bush XLI. It's on the run now, we're up to Nero. We 'barbarians' need to take care of our real world in its absence, prepare
ourselves to pick up the pieces when it's become so unrecognizable that it's finally disappeared.
"... Thank you for this very good link. The swamp cant be drained with an election, the society has been infested and corrupt beyond redemption. There can't be a revolution either, because no charismatic figure could lead it, and the majority of the people prefer to bury their head in the sand. ..."
"... It'd be nice to think that the coming devolution won't be an exact repeat, e.g. a neo-Dark Age for hundreds of years, but who can say? Maybe science and philosophy won't be entirely lost this time around. But of course all speculation is rendered nul and void IF we have WW3 ..."
"... If Trump appoints any vetted neocons to high positions in his administration, he runs the risk of synchronized resignations if he decides to move closer to Russia. ..."
"... Fake Libertarians need to understand that Radical islam is a problem not because of America's wars in the Middle East or NATO. Radical islam is inherently violent. India has been a victim of this virus since the 8th century! India never invaded any country. ..."
Thank you for this very good link. The swamp cant be drained with an election, the society has
been infested and corrupt beyond redemption. There can't be a revolution either, because no charismatic
figure could lead it, and the majority of the people prefer to bury their head in the sand.
What will eventually happen is an economic implosion and chaos. The "elite" won't be able to
finance a repressive force since their "electronic money" will not be trusted, and everything
will fall apart.
And years after, small communities will gradually re-emerge since there will
be a need to protect the people with a local police force. But the notion of a super-state or
even more of a NWO will not survive, after an initial depopulation we'll have something similar
than what you had at the begining of the middle age, a life organized around small independant
comunities of 3,000 or 5,000 people.
Very close to my thinking ... and a precedent is the demize of the Roman Empire, when Europe devolved
into numerous small feudal regions, such as in England for over a thousand years, i.e after numerous
internal wars, such as the Wars of the Roses and the reign of Henry VIII, it wasn't until the
1600s and the so-called "Enlightenment" that England was unified ... and it wasn't until the 1700s
that Scotland was conquered and "Great Britain" existed, also having incorporated Wales and Ireland,
with at least Eire having gained independence during the 1920s, Wales never being really integrated,
nor Scotland now moving away from the centre of the whole shebang ... London always.
It'd be nice to think that the coming devolution won't be an exact repeat, e.g. a neo-Dark
Age for hundreds of years, but who can say? Maybe science and philosophy won't be entirely lost
this time around. But of course all speculation is rendered nul and void IF we have WW3 despite,
or because(?) of Trump and similar phenonema in the West.
If Trump appoints any vetted neocons to high positions in his administration, he runs the risk
of synchronized resignations if he decides to move closer to Russia.
And when that is picked up by the arch deceivers at the WaPo, NYT, WSJ etc, it will be embarrassing
for Mr Trump and for the foreign policy he campaigned on.
Mr. Trump, please move closer to Russia - Putin has longed for sane dialogue with the US for the
last 8 or more years and has gotten the cold shoulder.
Fake Libertarians need to understand that Radical islam is a problem not because of America's
wars in the Middle East or NATO. Radical islam is inherently violent. India has been a victim
of this virus since the 8th century! India never invaded any country.
Islam fundamentally is incompatible with a modern society.
"... To do so would be madness. President-Elect Donald Trump appears to recognize that Syria is not America's responsibility. Unfortunately, Vice President-Elect Mike Pence, as well as some of those mentioned for top administration positions, take a more militaristic perspective. Trump should announce that his administration will not get involved in Syria's civil war in any way. ..."
"... President Barack Obama spent five years resisting pressure for direct military intervention. But he appointed war supporters John Kerry, Samantha Power, Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton to manage his foreign policy. Kerry acknowledged to a group of Syrian refugees in Beirut that he and other officials had advocated use of force but "lost the argument." ..."
"... However, rather than clearly set a policy of non-involvement, President Obama attempted intervention-lite. The administration failed in both its major objectives: oust Bashar al-Assad as president and empower "moderate" opponents. ..."
"... Republican warrior wannabes claim that Washington could have provided just the right form of aid to just the right groups at just the right time and thereby created a liberal, democratic, united Syria allied with America. ..."
"... In Syria the Obama administration has pursued incompatible objectives and combatants. Washington remains committed to ousting the Assad regime, which remains the most important barrier to a triumph by the Islamic State. NATO ally Turkey spent the civil war's early years accommodating so-called Daesh, and now is battling Kurdish fighters, who have been America's staunchest allies against ISIS. ..."
"... America's Gulf allies led by Saudi Arabia largely abandoned the campaign against the Islamic State in favor of a brutal attack on Yemen, dragging the U.S. into a dangerous proxy war with Iran. ..."
"... Washington must set priorities. Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl argued that Russia "has proved that a limited use of force could change the political outcome, without large costs." However, that's because Moscow has one objective: keep Assad in power. Washington has a half dozen or more conflicting goals, none of are important enough to warrant the use of force. ..."
"... Nor could the conflict be settled without using extraordinary force. Merely fudging the balance of military power won't end the killing. If jihadist groups took control after Assad's collapse and his allies' withdrawal, Washington would face pressure to "do something" to protect Alawites, Christians and perhaps even "moderate" insurgents and their supporters. The U.S. has neither the responsibility nor the resources to police the globe. ..."
"... Finally, the administration has unfinished business involving anti-American radicals, the Islamic State and al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra/al-Sham. But Assad's ouster would empower both groups. They remain primarily insurgents which can be dealt with on the ground by the surrounding nations which they most threaten. ..."
"... Donald Trump had only just been declared president-elect when those controlled U.S. foreign policy began urging him to conform to their disastrous designs in the Middle East. However, Trump appears to have learned from the past. He told the Wall Street Journal: "I've had an opposite view of many people regarding Syria." ..."
"... I agree, Trump should stay out of the Middle East and start building the infrastructure for this third world country called the United States. As for John Kerry, Samantha Power, Susan Rice, and Hillary Clinton, they are so over and yesterday's news in the fast pace of social media. ..."
"... But their war mongering attitudes will carry a heavy burden when it comes to political history; this foursome was responsible for many civilian deaths are they responsible for the use of drones and every other killing machine that make the USA, as Eisenhower said the Military Industrial Complex. ..."
"... now it is time for the USA to cut all IRS tax benefits for the religion business and use that for new airports and railroads. If someone wants to worship a God in an untaxed temple, make them pay an admission tax like when you go to the movies. ..."
The U.S. presidential election mercifully has ended. But global conflict continues. And American
politicians are still attempting to drag America into another tragic, bloody Middle Eastern conflict.
To do so would be madness. President-Elect Donald Trump appears to recognize that Syria is
not America's responsibility. Unfortunately, Vice President-Elect Mike Pence, as well as some of
those mentioned for top administration positions, take a more militaristic perspective. Trump should
announce that his administration will not get involved in Syria's civil war in any way.
President Barack Obama spent five years resisting pressure for direct military intervention.
But he appointed war supporters John Kerry, Samantha Power, Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton to manage
his foreign policy. Kerry acknowledged to a group of Syrian refugees in Beirut that he and other
officials had advocated use of force but "lost the argument."
However, rather than clearly set a policy of non-involvement, President Obama attempted intervention-lite.
The administration failed in both its major objectives: oust Bashar al-Assad as president and empower
"moderate" opponents. However, administration officials still have not given up. Even as the
American people were voting on Obama's successor his appointees were pushing "kinetic actions against
the regime," reported anonymous sources. The president remains at odds with his own appointees.
Republican warrior wannabes claim that Washington could have provided just the right form
of aid to just the right groups at just the right time and thereby created a liberal, democratic,
united Syria allied with America. Even today Thanassis Cambanis of the Century Foundation argues
the U.S. should "use its resources to manage conflicts like Syria's." That sounds good, but when
was the last time Washington "managed" anything well in the Middle East?
Even with a quick military victory Washington got Iraq disastrously wrong, empowering Iran while
triggering the very sectarian conflict which spawned the Islamic State. U.S. intervention in Libya
left chaos and conflict in its wake. American policymakers demonstrate no facility for global social
engineering.
In Syria the Obama administration has pursued incompatible objectives and combatants. Washington
remains committed to ousting the Assad regime, which remains the most important barrier to a triumph
by the Islamic State. NATO ally Turkey spent the civil war's early years accommodating so-called
Daesh, and now is battling Kurdish fighters, who have been America's staunchest allies against ISIS.
The U.S. has trained and armed so-called moderate insurgents, who have had only limited combat
success, often surrendering, along with their U.S.-supplied equipment, to radical forces. One half
billion dollar training program generated barely three score insurgents, most of whom were promptly
killed or captured.
Former Obama official Derek Chollet said the administration hoped its aid to insurgents would
give Washington "leverage" in dealing with its Sunni "allies." Yet the latter have manipulated America
to serve their interests, pressing Washington to oust the Assad regime while supporting radical insurgent
groups opposed by the U.S. After providing symbolic aid in the early days, America's Gulf allies
led by Saudi Arabia largely abandoned the campaign against the Islamic State in favor of a brutal
attack on Yemen, dragging the U.S. into a dangerous proxy war with Iran.
Extremist forces have threatened U.S. military personnel embedded with Syrian fighters. Arab and
Kurdish insurgents trained and armed by Washington recently battled each other. Shia militias fighting
with the Baghdad government against ISIS in Iraq are opposing U.S.-backed Sunni insurgents in Syria.
Baghdad and Ankara neared war over Turkey's intervention in northern Iraq. Any attacks on Assad's
forces threaten Russian military personnel and hardware.
... ... ...
Washington must set priorities. Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl argued that Russia
"has proved that a limited use of force could change the political outcome, without large costs."
However, that's because Moscow has one objective: keep Assad in power. Washington has a half dozen
or more conflicting goals, none of are important enough to warrant the use of force.
Syria's civil war does not implicate any of Washington's traditional Middle Eastern interests,
most importantly Israel and oil. America's chief concern should be the Islamic State, not Assad regime.
Candidate Trump correctly opined: "our far greater problem is not Assad, it's ISIS."
Advocates of regime change claim that only through Assad's ouster can Daesh be defeated. However,
the existing government remains the biggest military barrier to the radicals. Moreover, the group
grew out of Iraq's sectarian war and would continue to promote its "caliphate" in a post-Assad Syria.
Alas, history is full of examples-Soviet Union, Nicaragua and Iran, among others-in which brutal
radicals defeat decent liberals after they together depose a hated dictator. Unless the U.S. is willing
to occupy the country, impose a new government, and remain until the state is rebuilt, the worst
Syrians are likely to control a post-Assad future. And the results could be ugly even if Washington
stuck around, as in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Retired Gen. John Allen and author Charles R. Lister argued that "the credibility of the United
States as the leader and defender of the free world must be salvaged." But the Syrian tragedy has
little to do with "the free world": brutal civil wars have occurred since the dawn of mankind. And
Washington's chief duty is to defend America, not referee other nations' conflicts.
Yet ivory tower warriors continue to urge greater U.S. military involvement. Some propose targeting
Russia with additional sanctions, which would not likely dissuade Moscow from acting on behalf of
what it perceives as its important interests. However, further penalties would discourage cooperation
even where the two nations' interests coincided.
Another option is more training and better weapons for so-called moderates. Yet even President
Obama admitted that there were few past cases when support for insurgents "actually worked out well."
In a recent interview President-Elect Trump contended that "we have no idea who these people are"
and as a candidate complained that "they end up being worse" than the regime.
The reality is nuanced-Syria's insurgents span the spectrum-but the administration's experience
has been a cruel disappointment. An anonymous American official admitted to the Washington Post:
U.S.-backed forces are "not doing any better on the battlefield, they're up against a more formidable
adversary, and they're increasingly dominated by extremists." There's no reason to expect better
under the new administration.
Indeed, noted the BBC, "many of the more moderate rebel groups that the U.S. backs have formed
a strategic alliance with Jabhat Fatah al-Sham [formerly al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra] and now fight
alongside it." Weapons previously provided to the moderates often ended up in the hands of more radical
forces. Greater aid might prolong the fighting but would be unlikely to give the "good guys" victory.
Providing anti-aircraft missiles would threaten Russian as well as Syrian aircraft, risking a significant
escalation if Moscow responded with greater force. And any leakage to radical jihadists could result
in attacks on Western airliners.
Establishing a "no-fly" and/or "safe" zone has become a panacea for many U.S. policymakers, including
former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It is an obvious way to appear to do something. However,
protecting civilians in this way would simultaneously immunize combatants-attracting insurgents who
would use such areas as a sanctuary, encouraging further regime and Russian attacks.
Moreover, Washington would have to do more than simply declare such a zone to exist. Enforcing
it would be an act of war requiring continuous military action. U.S. officials have estimated that
the effort would take hundreds of aircraft, thousands of personnel and hundreds of millions of dollars
or more a month. Washington would have to destroy the Syrian anti-air defense system, no simple task.
Indeed, in one of her conversations revealed by Wikileaks, Hillary Clinton acknowledged that imposing
a no fly zone would "kill a lot of Syrians" and "a lot of civilians."
A true "no-fly" zone also would require preventing Russian air operations as well. Trump complained
to the Wall Street Journal that by attacking Assad "we end up fighting Russia, fighting Syria." Moscow
officials have warned against strikes that would threaten Russian military personnel; Moscow already
has introduced its advanced S-300 and S-400 anti-aircraft missile systems. Nevertheless, several
GOP presidential candidates advocated downing Russian aircraft, if necessary. Yet it would be mad
to commit an unprovoked act of war against a nuclear-armed power over a third nation's conflict in
which the U.S. has no substantial interest. Moscow would not likely yield peacefully.
Why let this declining power "push around the United States, which has the world's biggest economy"
and "greatest military," asked Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen? Because Moscow has far more
at stake and as a result is willing to accept greater costs and take greater risks than is America.
Worse, Moscow would feel pressure to maintain its credibility and preserve its international status
against an overbearing United States.
The result could be the very conflict America and the Soviet Union avoided during the entire Cold
War. One anonymous U.S. official told the Washington Post: "You can't pretend you can go to war against
Assad and not go to war against Russia." During the campaign Trump warned: "you're going to end up
in World War Three over Syria if we listen to Hillary Clinton," since fighting Syria would mean "fighting
Syria, Russia and Iran."
Direct military intervention also would be possible, but would raise the stakes dramatically.
Special operations forces, drones, airstrikes, and even an Iraq-style invasion all are possible.
But none would enjoy sustained public or allied support or end the ongoing murder and mayhem. Victory,
whatever that meant, would simply trigger a new round of fighting for dominance in a post-Assad Syria,
as occurred in Iraq. And conflict with Moscow could not easily be avoided.
How would any of this serve U.S. interests? The American people have no meaningful stake in the
outcome. The Assad regime's fate is largely irrelevant to Washington. For nearly a half century under
both Bashar al-Assad and his father, Hafez, who ruled previously, Damascus was hostile to the U.S.
But Syria lost more than it won and never posed a threat to America or impeded Washington's dominance
in the Middle East. Once the country dissolved into civil war the Assad regime's ability to harm
others essentially disappeared. Even if the government survives, its influence will be much diminished
for years.
Washington worries about instability, but the U.S. has created greater chaos through its foolish
war-making in the Mideast. Obviously, ending the Syrian civil war would be best for everyone, but
a jihadist victory, likely if Assad is defeated, would threaten American interests more than continuing
instability. Sen. John McCain, among others, claims that Assad's survival guarantees continuation
of the war, but Washington cannot halt the conflict and is best served by staying out of the bloody
imbroglio.
"Moderate" insurgents would be angered by Washington's withdrawal, but they are unlikely ever
to gain power. America might lose its "leverage" over such nominal allies as Riyadh and Ankara, but
there is little evidence that Washington has gained anything from its supposed influence. Indeed,
Saudi Arabia has essentially abandoned the fight against the Islamic State and Turkey is more often
attacking Kurds than Daesh.
Even if Assad fell, Washington would have no control over what followed. Without ongoing American
support, the so-called "moderates" would do no better against the radical forces than they have done
against the Syrian army. The hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died after the Bush administration
blew up the country demonstrate that good intentions are an insufficient basis for U.S. policy.
Clinton criticized "the ambitions and the aggressiveness of Russia" in Syria. But Moscow's objectives
there do not threaten America. Russia's alliance with Syria goes back decades. Washington should
do what is in America's interest, not what is against Russia's interest.
Of course, Syria is a humanitarian horror. But the civil war is not as bad as other conflicts
largely ignored by the U.S., such as the mass slaughter in the Democratic Republic of the Congo during
the late 1990s and early 2000s. Moreover, Syria is not genocide, a la Rwanda or Cambodia, but a civil
war, in which a most of the dead are combatants, and from all sides. The bombing of civilian areas
is horrific, but hardly a new military tactic, and one which Washington has only recently come to
reject.
Nor could the conflict be settled without using extraordinary force. Merely fudging the balance
of military power won't end the killing. If jihadist groups took control after Assad's collapse and
his allies' withdrawal, Washington would face pressure to "do something" to protect Alawites, Christians
and perhaps even "moderate" insurgents and their supporters. The U.S. has neither the responsibility
nor the resources to police the globe.
Finally, the administration has unfinished business involving anti-American radicals, the
Islamic State and al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra/al-Sham. But Assad's ouster would empower both groups.
They remain primarily insurgents which can be dealt with on the ground by the surrounding nations
which they most threaten.
Donald Trump had only just been declared president-elect when those controlled U.S. foreign
policy began urging him to conform to their disastrous designs in the Middle East. However, Trump
appears to have learned from the past. He told the Wall Street Journal: "I've had an opposite view
of many people regarding Syria."
The incoming administration should announce that the U.S. is staying out. Syria is a tragedy beyond
America's control. Only the battling local factions and regional parties can reach a stable settlement.
Washington should seek to make the best of a bad situation and encourage negotiations to end the
killing and limit the activities of Islamic radicals.
Michael Grace 2 days ago
I agree, Trump should stay out of the Middle East and start building the infrastructure
for this third world country called the United States. As for John Kerry, Samantha Power, Susan
Rice, and Hillary Clinton, they are so over and yesterday's news in the fast pace of social media.
But their war mongering attitudes will carry a heavy burden when it comes to political
history; this foursome was responsible for many civilian deaths are they responsible for the use
of drones and every other killing machine that make the USA, as Eisenhower said the Military Industrial
Complex.
Syria was a beautiful country, safe to visit, and it is the victim of greed and religion. The
latter probably being the worst thing man has ever created. The Christian, Judaic, and Muslim
malarky about a judgemental "God in the sky." has brought 2000 years of wrath, now it is time
for the USA to cut all IRS tax benefits for the religion business and use that for new airports
and railroads. If someone wants to worship a God in an untaxed temple, make them pay an admission
tax like when you go to the movies.
waky wake 2 days ago
@ Doug Bandow [:-{) I agree with your suggestion to the President-Elect Donald Trump and will
put additional emphasizes on it !!!STAY OUT OF SYRIA AT ALL COST!!! I think Pence was probably
the best choice Trump could have made for his VP, but maybe he needs to put him and one or two
of his other "have to have" team members in a box and keep them there.
I voted for "The Donald"
to do three things he said he was going to do. 1} Regain control of our southern borders {BUILD
THE WALL}, to include repatriating recent illegal intruders. 2} Renegotiate, resend, or cancel
NAFTA, TPP and TTIP. 3} To totally transform our Foreign Policy objectives and focus, including
but not limited to removing our military forces from the ME and non-NATO eastern European theaters
and requiring our NATO and Asian-pacific partners to more consistently cover their portion of
the tab, for providing their protection.
After that, I'm willing to cut him some slack. That being
said, adding the infrastructure rebuild efforts he mentioned being initiated, would guarantee
my vote for a second Trump term.
Darren Bruin 2 days ago
BRAVO, the author has it 1,000% correct. It is asinine for the USA to get involved in Syria
while wasting taxpayer's dollars as well as risking war with Russia. All for absolutely nothing
to do with America's interests. While I did not vote for him I have high hope that Trump will
keep to his promise and keep the USA out of Syria.
Trung Jen 2 days ago
Agree. Cant destroy something then leave what chaos that was created in our wake. If in the
name of humanitarian goals, there are countless other missions to intervene. Politics/power shouldn't
be hiding behind any veil
Parham Noori-Esfandiari a day ago
The problem is that U.S think-tanks that advise concessive U.S administration for long turn
planning for U.S dominance do not have good intentions for the world. If some country claims leadership
for the world it has to look what is good for the world but not what is good for bunch of criminal
special interest. How many Islamic countries have been destroyed? Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria,
and Yemen and .. How could the rulers in U.S and Western countries be Angels toward their own
people when they are demons toward other nations? It seems like Trump wants to build up his nation
and avoiding damage to the others. We have to wait how successful he will be against special interest
groups to achieve his goals.
wootendw 2 hours ago
Bashar Assad is a secular Alawite married to a British born/raised Sunni. Both the husband
and wife are highly intelligent. Bashar is an ophthalmologist; his wife, Asmi, has a degree in
computer science and French literature and has worked as an investment banker. Bashar Assad is
not his father (who sent troops to fight against Saddam during Iraq I). He accepted the Syrian
Presidency because his older brother, groomed to replace Hafez, was killed. Compared to other
ME leaders like Qatar's and Saudi Arabia's (whom the USG arms) the Assads are a decent couple.
Yet, for 10 years, our deceitful, murderous foreign policy establishment has been vilifying them
and trained terrorists to overthrow them. Yes, ISIS is a creation of the USG through its proxies,
Turkey and the Gulf States. Please, Mr Trump, leave Syria alone and let its people choose their
own leader even if it's Assad. This is the Russian position and the morally correct one.
"... The fundamental problem seems to be that the left / liberals are playing the game of the right for them and not being intelligent enough to realise it. ..."
"... Mass immigration is the case in point. The main beneficiaries from the movement of labour are the corporations and the capitalists. The losers are the incumbent population and the local workers. ..."
"... Mass low-skilled immigration (legal/illegal) is bad for working class people who are citizens of the US/UK. The "liberal" left are the ones who'd in the past naturally come to their defense. ..."
"... Multinational businesses love this mentality, because it allows them to indirectly harm billions of people, and get away with it. They push free trade (a very liberal concept) which cuts their taxes and makes them stronger than most national governments, so they wield vast, unaccountable power, and get away with massive levels of pollution. ..."
"... Mass immigration is the case in point. The main beneficiaries from the movement of labour are the corporations and the capitalists. The losers are the incumbent population and the local workers. ..."
The fundamental problem seems to be that the left / liberals are playing the game of the right
for them and not being intelligent enough to realise it.
Mass immigration is the case in point. The main beneficiaries from the movement of labour are
the corporations and the capitalists. The losers are the incumbent population and the local workers.
The liberal left are confusing the cries of alarm from those losing out with racism and bigotry,
which have been ingrained in their psyche due to identity politics.
Well put. Mass low-skilled immigration (legal/illegal) is bad for working class people
who are citizens of the US/UK. The "liberal" left are the ones who'd in the past naturally come
to their defense.
Instead, they've labelled them racists and islamphobes etc. because they are
not driven by (classical) liberalism but rather divisive identity politics focused on minority
groups (e.g. transgender issues, which is not going to win many votes.)
I think the liberals' horror at Jeremy Corbyn demonstrates this, as did the way liberals torpedoed
Bernie Sanders in favour of Hillary Clinton.
To be liberal is to let people do whatever they want, so long as they don't directly
harm other people.
Multinational businesses love this mentality, because it allows them to indirectly harm billions
of people, and get away with it. They push free trade (a very liberal concept) which cuts their
taxes and makes them stronger than most national governments, so they wield vast, unaccountable
power, and get away with massive levels of pollution.
Mass immigration is the case in point. The main beneficiaries from the movement of labour are
the corporations and the capitalists. The losers are the incumbent population and the local workers.
you might be putting the cart before the horse a little bit there. the problem isn't freedom of
movement (let's try not to use emotive terms like mass migration) is employers seeking cheap labour.
better wages would attract more local labour, instead employers actively seek cheap labour from abroad.
and that's a result of economic liberalism, which is very different to classical liberalism. classical
liberals built houses for their workers to live in, rather than not paying them enough to live in
their own house.
Trump position is somewhat misrepresented. In his speeches he also points out to dominance of financial
oligarchy and predatory behaviour of corporation outsourcing jobs to countries with cheaper labour.
Notable quotes:
"... A cult of "action for action's sake ..."
"... Now, let's look at Trump. His campaign revolves around one theme: That the United States is weak,
that it loses, and that it needs leadership to become "great again." "We don't have victories anymore,"
he said in his
announcement
speech . "When was the last time anybody saw us beating, let's say, China in a trade deal? They
kill us. When do we beat Mexico at the border? They're laughing at us, at our stupidity."
..."
One of the most-read takes on fascism comes from Italian philosopher and novelist Umberto Eco
in an essay for the New York Review of Bookstitled "
Ur-Fascism ."
Eco emphasizes the extent to which fascism is ad hoc and opportunistic. It's "philosophically out
of joint," he writes, with features that "cannot be organized into a system" since "many of them
contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanacticism."
With that said, it is true that there are fascist movements, and it's also true that when you strip
their cultural clothing-the German paganism in Nazism, for example-there are common properties. Not
every fascist movement shows all of them, but-Eco writes-"it is enough that one of them be present
to allow fascism to coagulate around it." Eco identifies 14, but for this column, I want to focus
on seven. They are: A cult of "action for action's sake ," where "thinking is a form of
emasculation"; an intolerance of "analytical criticism," where disagreement is condemned; a profound
"fear of difference," where leaders appeal against "intruders"; appeals to individual and social
frustration and specifically a "frustrated middle class" suffering from "feelings of political humiliation
and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups"; a nationalist identity set against internal
and external enemies (an "obsession with a plot"); a feeling of humiliation by the "ostentatious
wealth and force of their enemies"; a "popular elitism" where "every citizen belongs to the best
people of the world" and underscored by contempt for the weak; and a celebration of aggressive (and
often violent) masculinity.
... ... ...
Now, let's look at Trump. His campaign revolves around one theme: That the United States is weak,
that it loses, and that it needs leadership to become "great again." "We don't have victories anymore,"
he said in his
announcement
speech . "When was the last time anybody saw us beating, let's say, China in a trade deal? They
kill us. When do we beat Mexico at the border? They're laughing at us, at our stupidity."
He continued:
"The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else's problems," and "Our enemies are getting
stronger and stronger by the way, and we as a country are getting weaker." This includes unauthorized
immigrants, and now refugees, whom he attacks as a menace to ordinary Americans. The former, according
to Trump, take jobs and threaten American safety-"They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime.
They're rapists."-while the latter are a "Trojan horse." But Trump promises action. He will cut new
deals and make foreign competitors subordinate. He will deport immigrants and build a wall on the
border, financed by Mexico. He will bring "
spectacular " economic growth. And Trump isn't an ideologue; he's an opportunist who borrows
freely from both parties.
... ... ...
Alone and disconnected, this rhetoric isn't necessarily fascist... In the Europe of the 1920s and
'30s, fascist parties organized armed gangs to intimidate political opponents. Despite assaults at
Trump events, that still seems unlikely....
"... He's proud that the first job offer-to former Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn for national security adviser-went to a "registered Democrat," and that the country is going to see "a lot of interesting choices." Mr. Trump "knows how to mix and match, get the best out of people, and I think it says something about what a historic figure he could be." ..."
"... I never went on TV one time during the campaign. Not once. You know why? Because politics is war. General Sherman would never have gone on TV to tell everyone his plans. ..."
"... Breitbart is the most pro-Israel site in the United States ..."
Stephen K. Bannon in a rare interview talks with Kimberley A. Strassel of the Wall Street Journal
about the winning campaign of Donald J. Trump and his part in helping the president-elect accomplish
his vision for America. Bannon also refutes charges of being antisemitic or a white nationalist saying
the allegations, "just aren't serious. It's a joke."
... ... ... Why does he think that leftists are so fixated on him? "They were ready to coronate
Hillary Clinton. That didn't happen, and I'm one of the reasons why. So, by the way, I wear these
attacks as an emblem of pride." Mr. Bannon believes Mr. Trump to be uniquely suited to make the
case, as "one of the best political orators in American history, rated with William Jennings Bryan."
He's proud that the first job offer-to former Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn for national security
adviser-went to a "registered Democrat," and that the country is going to see "a lot of interesting
choices." Mr. Trump "knows how to mix and match, get the best out of people, and I think it says
something about what a historic figure he could be."
I never went on TV one time during the campaign. Not once. You know why? Because politics is
war. General Sherman would never have gone on TV to tell everyone his plans.
"Breitbart is the most pro-Israel site in the United States"
It is the end of neoliberalism and the start of the era of authoritarian nationalism, and we all
need to come together to stamp out the authoritarian part.
Notable quotes:
"... Neoliberalism has been disastrous for the Rust Belt, and I think we need to envision a new future for what was once the country's industrial heartland, now little more than its wasteland ..."
"... The question of what the many millions of often-unionized factory workers, SMEs which supplied them, family farmers (now fully industrialized and owned by corporations), and all those in secondary production and services who once supported them are to actually do in future to earn a decent living is what I believe should really be the subject of debate. ..."
"... two factors (or three, I guess) have contributed to this state of despair: offshoring and outsourcing, and technology. ..."
"... Medicaid, the CHIP program, the SNAP program and others (including NGOs and private charitable giving) may alleviate some of the suffering, but there is currently no substitute for jobs that would enable men and women to live lives of dignity – a decent place to live, good educations for their children, and a reasonable, secure pension in old age. Near-, at-, and below-minimum wage jobs devoid of any benefits don't allow any of these – at most, they make possible a subsistence life, one which requires continued reliance on public assistance throughout one's lifetime. ..."
"... In the U.S. (a neoliberal pioneer), poverty is closely linked with inequality and thus, a high GINI coefficient (near that of Turkey); where there is both poverty and a very unequal distribution of resources, this inevitably affects women (and children) and racial (and ethnic) minorities disproportionately. The economic system, racism, sexism, and xenophobia are not separate, stand-alone issues; they are profoundly intertwined. ..."
"... But really, if you think about it, slavery was defined as ownership, ownership of human capital (which was convertible into cash), and women in many societies throughout history were acquired as part of a financial transaction (either through purchase or through sale), and control of their capital (land, property [farmland, herds], valuables and later, money) often entrusted to a spouse or male guardian. All of these practices were economically-driven, even if the driver wasn't 21st-century capitalism. ..."
"... Let it be said at once: Trump's victory is primarily due to the explosion in economic and geographic inequality in the United States over several decades and the inability of successive governments to deal with this. ..."
"... Both the Clinton and the Obama administrations frequently went along with the market liberalization launched under Reagan and both Bush presidencies. At times they even outdid them: the financial and commercial deregulation carried out under Clinton is an example. What sealed the deal, though, was the suspicion that the Democrats were too close to Wall Street – and the inability of the Democratic media elite to learn the lessons from the Sanders vote. ..."
"... Regional inequality and globalization are the principal drivers in Japanese politics, too, along with a number of social drivers. ..."
"... The tsunami/nuclear meltdown combined with the Japanese government's uneven response is an apt metaphor for the impact of neo-liberalism/globalization on Japan; and on the US. I then explained that the income inequality in the US was far more severe than that of Japan and that many Americans did not support the export of jobs to China/Mexico. ..."
"... I contend that in some hypothetical universe the DNC and corrupt Clinton machine could have been torn out, root and branch, within months. As I noted, however, the decision to run HRC effectively unopposed was made several years, at least, before the stark evidence of the consequences of such a decision appeared in sharp relief with Brexit. ..."
"... Just as the decline of Virginia coal is due to global forces and corporate stupidity, so the decline of the rust belt is due to long (30 year plus) global forces and corporate decisions that predate the emergence of identity politics. ..."
"... It's interesting that the clear headed thinkers of the Marxist left, who pride themselves on not being distracted by identity, don't want to talk about these factors when discussing the plight of their cherished white working class. ..."
"... The construction 'white working class' is a useful governing tool that splits poor people and possible coalitions against the violence of capital. Now, discussion focuses on how some of the least powerful, most vulnerable people in the United States are the perpetrators of a great injustice against racialised and minoritised groups. Such commentary colludes in the pathologisation of the working class, of poor people. Victims are inculpated as the vectors of noxious, atavistic vices while the perpetrators get off with impunity, showing off their multihued, cosmopolitan C-suites and even proposing that their free trade agreements are a form of anti-racist solidarity. Most crucially, such analysis ignores the continuities between a Trumpian dystopia and our satisfactory present. ..."
"... Race-thinking forecloses the possibility of the coalitions that you imagine, and reproduces ideas of difference in ways that always, always privilege 'whiteness'. ..."
"... Historical examples of ethnic groups becoming 'white', how it was legal and political decision-making that defined the present racial taxonomy, suggest that groups can also lose or have their 'whiteness' threatened. CB has written here about how, in the UK at least, Eastern and Southern Europeans are racialised, and so refused 'whiteness'. JQ has written about southern white minoritisation. Many commentators have pointed that the 'white working class' vote this year looked a lot like a minority vote. ..."
"... Given the subordination of groups presently defined as 'white working class', I wonder if we could think beyond ethnic and epidermal definition to consider that the impossibility of the American Dream refuses these groups whiteness; i.e the hoped for privileges of racial superiority, much in the same way that African Americans, Latin Americans and other racialised minorities are denied whiteness. Can a poor West Virginian living in a toxified drugged out impoverished landscape really be defined as a carrier of 'white privilege'? ..."
"... I was first pointed at this by the juxtapositions of racialised working class and immigrants in Imogen Tyler's Revolting Subjects – Social Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain but this below is a useful short article that takes a historical perspective. ..."
"... In a 1990 essay, the late Yale political scientist Juan Linz observed that "aside from the United States, only Chile has managed a century and a half of relatively undisturbed constitutional continuity under presidential government - but Chilean democracy broke down in the 1970s." ..."
"... Linz offered several reasons why presidential systems are so prone to crisis. One particularly important one is the nature of the checks and balances system. Since both the president and the Congress are directly elected by the people, they can both claim to speak for the people. When they have a serious disagreement, according to Linz, "there is no democratic principle on the basis of which it can be resolved." The constitution offers no help in these cases, he wrote: "the mechanisms the constitution might provide are likely to prove too complicated and aridly legalistic to be of much force in the eyes of the electorate." ..."
"... In a parliamentary system, deadlocks get resolved. A prime minister who lacks the backing of a parliamentary majority is replaced by a new one who has it. If no such majority can be found, a new election is held and the new parliament picks a leader. It can get a little messy for a period of weeks, but there's simply no possibility of a years-long spell in which the legislative and executive branches glare at each other unproductively.' ..."
"... In any case, as I pointed out before, given that the US is increasingly an urbanised country, and the Electoral College was created to protect rural (slave) states, the grotesque electoral result we have just seen is likely to recur, which means more and more Presidents with dubious democratic legitimacy. Thanks to Bush (and Obama) these Presidents will have, at the same time, more and more power. ..."
"... To return to my original question and answer it myself: I'm forced to conclude that the Democrats did not specifically address the revitalization – rebirth of the Rust Belt in their 2016 platform. Its failure to do so carried a heavy cost that (nearly) all of us will be forced to pay. ..."
"... This sub seems to have largely fallen into the psychologically comfortable trap of declaring that everyone who voted against their preferred candidate is racist. It's a view pushed by the neoliberals, who want to maintain he stranglehold of identity politics over the DNC, and it makes upper-class 'intellectuals' feel better about themselves and their betrayal of the filthy, subhuman white underclass (or so they see it). ..."
"... You can scream 'those jobs are never coming back!' all you want, but people are never going to accept it. So either you come up with a genuine solution (instead of simply complaining that your opponents solutions won't work; you're partisan and biased, most voters won't believe you), you may as well resign yourself to fascism. Because whining that you don't know what to do won't stop people from lining up behind someone who says that they do have one, whether it'll work or not. Nobody trusts the elite enough to believe them when they say that jobs are never coming back. Nobody trusts the elite at all. ..."
"... You sound just like the Wiemar elite. No will to solve the problem, but filled with terror at the inevitable result of failing to solve the problem. ..."
"... One brutal fact tells us everything we need to know about the Democratic party in 2016: the American Nazi party is running on a platform of free health care to working class people. This means that the American Nazi Party is now running to the left of the Democratic party. ..."
"... Back in the 1930s, when the economy collapsed, fascists appeared and took power. Racists also came out of the woodwork, ditto misogynists. Fast forward 80 years, and the same thing has happened all over again. The global economy melted down in 2008 and fascists appeared promising to fix the problems that the pols in power wouldn't because they were too closely tied to the existing (failed) system. Along with the fascists, racists gained power because they were able to scapegoat minorities as the alleged cause of everyone's misery. ..."
"... None of this is surprising. We have seen it before. Whenever you get a depression in a modern industrial economy, you get scapegoating, racism, and fascists. We know what to do. The problem is that the current Democratic party isn't doing it. ..."
"... . It is the end of neoliberalism and the start of the era of authoritarian nationalism, and we all need to come together to stamp out the authoritarian part. ..."
"... This hammered people on the bottom, disproportionately African Americans and especially single AA mothers in America. It crushed the blue collar workers. It is wiping out the savings and careers of college-educated white collar workers now, at least, the ones who didn't go to the Ivy League, which is 90% of them. ..."
"... Calling Hillary an "imperfect candidate" is like calling what happened to the Titanic a "boating accident." Trump was an imperfect candidate. Why did he win? ..."
"... "The neoliberal era in the United States ended with a neofascist bang. The political triumph of Donald Trump shattered the establishments in the Democratic and Republican parties – both wedded to the rule of Big Money and to the reign of meretricious politicians." ..."
"... "It is not an exaggeration to say that the Democratic Party is in shambles as a political force. Not only did it just lose the White House to a wildly unpopular farce of a candidate despite a virtually unified establishment behind it, and not only is it the minority party in both the Senate and the House, but it is getting crushed at historical record rates on the state and local levels as well. Surveying this wreckage last week, party stalwart Matthew Yglesias of Vox minced no words: `the Obama years have created a Democratic Party that's essentially a smoking pile of rubble.' ..."
"... "One would assume that the operatives and loyalists of such a weak, defeated and wrecked political party would be eager to engage in some introspection and self-critique, and to produce a frank accounting of what they did wrong so as to alter their plight. In the case of 2016 Democrats, one would be quite mistaken." ..."
"... Foreign Affairs ..."
"... "At the end of World War II, the United States and its allies decided that sustained mass unemployment was an existential threat to capitalism and had to be avoided at all costs. In response, governments everywhere targeted full employment as the master policy variable-trying to get to, and sustain, an unemployment rate of roughly four percent. The problem with doing so, over time, is that targeting any variable long enough undermines the value of the variable itself-a phenomenon known as Goodhart's law. (..) ..."
"... " what we see [today] is a reversal of power between creditors and debtors as the anti-inflationary regime of the past 30 years undermines itself-what we might call "Goodhart's revenge." In this world, yields compress and creditors fret about their earnings, demanding repayment of debt at all costs. Macro-economically, this makes the situation worse: the debtors can't pay-but politically, and this is crucial-it empowers debtors since they can't pay, won't pay, and still have the right to vote. ..."
"... "The traditional parties of the center-left and center-right, the builders of this anti-inflationary order, get clobbered in such a world, since they are correctly identified by these debtors as the political backers of those demanding repayment in an already unequal system, and all from those with the least assets. This produces anti-creditor, pro-debtor coalitions-in-waiting that are ripe for the picking by insurgents of the left and the right, which is exactly what has happened. ..."
"... "The global revolt against elites is not just driven by revulsion and loss and racism. It's also driven by the global economy itself. This is a global phenomenon that marks one thing above all. The era of neoliberalism is over. The era of neonationalism has just begun." ..."
"... They want what their families have had which is secure, paid, benefits rich, blue collar work. ..."
"... trump's campaign empathized with that feeling just by focusing on the factory jobs as jobs and not as anachronisms that are slowly fading away for whatever reason. Clinton might have been "correct", but these voters didn't want to hear "the truth". And as much as you can complain about how stupid they are for wanting to be lied to, that is the unfortunate reality you, and the Democratic party, have to accept. ..."
"... trump was offering a "bailout" writ large. Clinton had no (good) counteroffer. It was like the tables were turned. Romney was the one talking about "change" and "restructuring" while Obama was defending keeping what was already there. ..."
"... "Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course - the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/opinion/19romney.html ..."
"... Clinton toward the end offered tariffs. But the trump campaign hit back with what turned out to be a pretty strong counter attack – ""How's she going to get tough on China?" said Trump economic advisor Peter Navarro on CNN's Quest Means Business. He notes that some of Clinton's economic advisors have supported TPP or even worked on it. "" ..."
The question is no longer her neoliberalism, but yours. Keep it or throw it away?
I wish this issue was being seriously discussed. Neoliberalism has been disastrous for
the Rust Belt, and I think we need to envision a new future for what was once the country's industrial
heartland, now little more than its wasteland (cf. "flyover zone" – a pejorative term which
inhabitants of the zone are not too stupid to understand perfectly, btw).
The question of what the many millions of often-unionized factory workers, SMEs which supplied
them, family farmers (now fully industrialized and owned by corporations), and all those in secondary
production and services who once supported them are to actually do in future to earn a decent
living is what I believe should really be the subject of debate.
As noted upthread, two factors (or three, I guess) have contributed to this state of despair:
offshoring and outsourcing, and technology. The jobs that have been lost will not return,
and indeed will be lost in ever greater numbers – just consider what will happen to the trucking
sector when self-driving trucks hit the roads sometime in the next 10-20 years (3.5 million truckers;
8.7 in allied jobs).
Medicaid, the CHIP program, the SNAP program and others (including NGOs and private charitable
giving) may alleviate some of the suffering, but there is currently no substitute for jobs that
would enable men and women to live lives of dignity – a decent place to live, good educations
for their children, and a reasonable, secure pension in old age. Near-, at-, and below-minimum
wage jobs devoid of any benefits don't allow any of these – at most, they make possible a subsistence
life, one which requires continued reliance on public assistance throughout one's lifetime.
In the U.S. (a neoliberal pioneer), poverty is closely linked with inequality and thus,
a high GINI coefficient (near that of Turkey); where there is both poverty and a very unequal
distribution of resources, this inevitably affects women (and children) and racial (and ethnic)
minorities disproportionately. The economic system, racism, sexism, and xenophobia are not separate,
stand-alone issues; they are profoundly intertwined.
I appreciate and espouse the goals of identity politics in all their multiplicity, and also
understand that the institutions of slavery and sexism predated modern capitalist economies.
But really, if you think about it, slavery was defined as ownership, ownership of human capital
(which was convertible into cash), and women in many societies throughout history were acquired
as part of a financial transaction (either through purchase or through sale), and control of their
capital (land, property [farmland, herds], valuables and later, money) often entrusted to a spouse
or male guardian. All of these practices were economically-driven, even if the driver wasn't 21st-century
capitalism.
Also: Faustusnotes@100
For example Indiana took the ACA Medicaid expansion but did so with additional conditions that
make it worse than in neighboring states run by democratic governors.
And what states would those be? IL, IA, MI, OH, WI, KY, and TN have Republican governors. Were
you thinking pre-2014? pre-2012?
To conclude and return to my original point: what's to become of the Rust Belt in future? Did
the Democratic platform include a New New Deal for PA, OH, MI, WI, and IA (to name only the five
Rust Belt states Trump flipped)?
" Let it be said at once: Trump's victory is primarily due to the explosion in economic
and geographic inequality in the United States over several decades and the inability of successive
governments to deal with this.
Both the Clinton and the Obama administrations frequently went along with the market liberalization
launched under Reagan and both Bush presidencies. At times they even outdid them: the financial
and commercial deregulation carried out under Clinton is an example. What sealed the deal, though,
was the suspicion that the Democrats were too close to Wall Street – and the inability of the
Democratic media elite to learn the lessons from the Sanders vote. "
What should have been one comment came out as 4, so apologies on that front.
I spent the last week explaining the US election to my students in Japan in pretty much the
terms outlined by Lilla and PIketty, so I was delighted to discover these two articles.
Regional inequality and globalization are the principal drivers in Japanese politics, too,
along with a number of social drivers. It was therefore very easy to call for a show of hands
to identify students studying here in Tokyo who are trying to decide whether or not to return
to areas such as Tohoku to build their lives; or remain in Kanto/Tokyo – the NY/Washington/LA
of Japan put crudely.
I asked students from regions close to Tohoku how they might feel if the Japanese prime minister
decided not to visit the region following Fukushima after the disaster, or preceding an election.
The tsunami/nuclear meltdown combined with the Japanese government's uneven response is an
apt metaphor for the impact of neo-liberalism/globalization on Japan; and on the US. I then explained
that the income inequality in the US was far more severe than that of Japan and that many Americans
did not support the export of jobs to China/Mexico.
I then asked the students, particularly those from outlying regions whether they believe Japan
needed a leader who would 'bring back Japanese jobs' from Viet Nam and China, etc. Many/most agreed
wholeheartedly. I then asked whether they believed Tokyo people treated those outside Kanto as
'inferiors.' Many do.
Piketty may be right regarding Trump's long-term effects on income inequality. He is wrong,
I suggest, to argue that Democrats failed to respond to Sanders' support. I contend that in
some hypothetical universe the DNC and corrupt Clinton machine could have been torn out, root
and branch, within months. As I noted, however, the decision to run HRC effectively unopposed
was made several years, at least, before the stark evidence of the consequences of such a decision
appeared in sharp relief with Brexit.
Also worth noting is that the rust belts problems are as old as Reagan – even the term dates
from the 80s, the issue is so uncool that there is a dire straits song about it. Some portion
of the decline of manufacturing there is due to manufacturers shifting to the south, where the
anti Union states have an advantage. Also there has been new investment – there were no Japanese
car companies in the us in the 1980s, so they are new job creators, yet insufficient to make up
the losses. Just as the decline of Virginia coal is due to global forces and corporate stupidity,
so the decline of the rust belt is due to long (30 year plus) global forces and corporate decisions
that predate the emergence of identity politics.
It's interesting that the clear headed thinkers of the Marxist left, who pride themselves
on not being distracted by identity, don't want to talk about these factors when discussing the
plight of their cherished white working class. Suddenly it's not the forces of capital and
the objective facts of history, but a bunch of whiny black trannies demanding safe spaces and
protesting police violence, that drove those towns to ruin.
And what solutions do they think the dems should have proposed? It can't be welfare, since
we got the ACA (watered down by representatives of the rust belt states). Is it, seriously, tariffs?
Short of going to an election promising w revolution, what should the dems have done? Give us
a clear answer so we can see what the alternative to identity politics is.
basil 11.19.16 at 5:11 am
Did this go through?
Thinking with WLGR @15, Yan @81, engels variously above,
The construction 'white working class' is a useful governing tool that splits poor people
and possible coalitions against the violence of capital. Now, discussion focuses on how some of
the least powerful, most vulnerable people in the United States are the perpetrators of a great
injustice against racialised and minoritised groups. Such commentary colludes in the pathologisation
of the working class, of poor people. Victims are inculpated as the vectors of noxious, atavistic
vices while the perpetrators get off with impunity, showing off their multihued, cosmopolitan
C-suites and even proposing that their free trade agreements are a form of anti-racist solidarity.
Most crucially, such analysis ignores the continuities between a Trumpian dystopia and our satisfactory
present.
I get that the tropes around race are easy, and super-available. Privilege confessing is very
in vogue as a prophylactic against charges of racism. But does it threaten the structures that
produce this abjection – either as embittered, immiserated 'white working class' or as threatened
minority group? It is always *those* 'white' people, the South, the Working Class, and never the
accusers some of whom are themselves happy to vote for a party that drowns out anti-war protesters
with chants of USA! USA!
Race-thinking forecloses the possibility of the coalitions that you imagine, and reproduces
ideas of difference in ways that always, always privilege 'whiteness'.
--
Historical examples of ethnic groups becoming 'white', how it was legal and political decision-making
that defined the present racial taxonomy, suggest that groups can also lose or have their 'whiteness'
threatened. CB has written here about how, in the UK at least, Eastern and Southern Europeans
are racialised, and so refused 'whiteness'. JQ has written about southern white minoritisation.
Many commentators have pointed that the 'white working class' vote this year looked a lot like
a minority vote.
Given the subordination of groups presently defined as 'white working class', I wonder
if we could think beyond ethnic and epidermal definition to consider that the impossibility of
the American Dream refuses these groups whiteness; i.e the hoped for privileges of racial superiority,
much in the same way that African Americans, Latin Americans and other racialised minorities are
denied whiteness. Can a poor West Virginian living in a toxified drugged out impoverished landscape
really be defined as a carrier of 'white privilege'?
I was first pointed at this by the juxtapositions of racialised working class and immigrants
in Imogen Tyler's Revolting Subjects – Social Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain but
this below is a useful short article that takes a historical perspective.
The 'racialisation' of class in Britain has been a consequence of the weakening of 'class'
as a political idea since the 1970s – it is a new construction, not an historic one.
.
This is not to deny the existence of working-class racism, or to suggest that racism is
somehow acceptable if rooted in perceived socio-economic grievances. But it is to suggest that
the concept of a 'white working class' needs problematizing, as does the claim that the British
working-class was strongly committed to a post-war vision of 'White Britain' analogous to the
politics which sustained the idea of a 'White Australia' until the 1960s.
Yes, old, settled neighbourhoods could be profoundly distrustful of outsiders – all outsiders,
including the researchers seeking to study them – but, when it came to race, they were internally
divided. We certainly hear working-class racist voices – often echoing stock racist complaints
about over-crowding, welfare dependency or exploitative landlords and small businessmen, but
we don't hear the deep pathological racial fears laid bare in the letters sent to Enoch Powell
after his so-called 'Rivers of Blood' speech in 1968 (Whipple, 2009).
But more importantly, we also hear strong anti-racist voices loudly and clearly. At Wallsend
on Tyneside, where the researchers were gathering their data just as Powell shot to notoriety,
we find workers expressing casual racism, but we also find eloquent expressions of an internationalist,
solidaristic perspective in which, crucially, black and white are seen as sharing the same
working-class interests.
Racism is denounced as a deliberate capitalist strategy to divide workers against themselves,
weakening their ability to challenge those with power over their lives (shipbuilding had long
been a very fractious industry and its workers had plenty of experience of the dangers of internal
sectarian battles).
To be able to mobilize across across racialised divisions, to have race wither away entirely
would, for me, be the beginning of a politics that allowed humanity to deal with the inescapable
violence of climate change and corporate power.
*To add to the bibliography – David R. Roediger, Elizabeth D. Esch – The Production of Difference
– Race and the Management of Labour, and Denise Ferreira da Silva – Toward a Global Idea of Race.
And I have just been pointed at Ian Haney-López, White By Law – The Legal Construction of Race.
FWIW 'merica's constitutional democracy is going to collapse.
Some day - not tomorrow, not next year, but probably sometime before runaway climate change
forces us to seek a new life in outer-space colonies - there is going to be a collapse of the
legal and political order and its replacement by something else. If we're lucky, it won't be violent.
If we're very lucky, it will lead us to tackle the underlying problems and result in a better,
more robust, political system. If we're less lucky, well, then, something worse will happen .
In a 1990 essay, the late Yale political scientist Juan Linz observed that "aside from
the United States, only Chile has managed a century and a half of relatively undisturbed constitutional
continuity under presidential government - but Chilean democracy broke down in the 1970s."
Linz offered several reasons why presidential systems are so prone to crisis. One particularly
important one is the nature of the checks and balances system. Since both the president and the
Congress are directly elected by the people, they can both claim to speak for the people. When
they have a serious disagreement, according to Linz, "there is no democratic principle on the
basis of which it can be resolved." The constitution offers no help in these cases, he wrote:
"the mechanisms the constitution might provide are likely to prove too complicated and aridly
legalistic to be of much force in the eyes of the electorate."
In a parliamentary system, deadlocks get resolved. A prime minister who lacks the backing
of a parliamentary majority is replaced by a new one who has it. If no such majority can be found,
a new election is held and the new parliament picks a leader. It can get a little messy for a
period of weeks, but there's simply no possibility of a years-long spell in which the legislative
and executive branches glare at each other unproductively.'
Given that the basic point is polarisation (i.e. that both the President and Congress have
equally strong arguments to be the the 'voice of the people') and that under the US appalling
constitutional set up, there is no way to decide between them, one can easily imagine the so to
speak 'hyperpolarisation' of a Trump Presidency as being the straw (or anvil) that breaks the
camel's back.
In any case, as I pointed out before, given that the US is increasingly an urbanised country,
and the Electoral College was created to protect rural (slave) states, the grotesque electoral
result we have just seen is likely to recur, which means more and more Presidents with dubious
democratic legitimacy. Thanks to Bush (and Obama) these Presidents will have, at the same time,
more and more power.
nastywoman @ 150
Just study the program of the 'Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschland' or the Program of 'Die
Grünen' in Germany (take it through google translate) and you get all the answers you are looking
for.
No need to run it through google translate, it's available in English on their site. [Or one
could refer to the Green Party of the U.S. site/platform, which is very similar in scope and overall
philosophy. (www.gp.org).]
I looked at several of their topic areas (Agricultural, Global, Health, Rural) and yes, these
are general theses I would support. But they're hardly policy/project proposals for specific regions
or communities – the Greens espouse "think global, act local", so programs and projects must be
tailored to individual communities and regions.
To return to my original question and answer it myself: I'm forced to conclude that the
Democrats did not specifically address the revitalization – rebirth of the Rust Belt in their
2016 platform. Its failure to do so carried a heavy cost that (nearly) all of us will be forced
to pay.
This sub seems to have largely fallen into the psychologically comfortable trap of declaring
that everyone who voted against their preferred candidate is racist. It's a view pushed by the
neoliberals, who want to maintain he stranglehold of identity politics over the DNC, and it makes
upper-class 'intellectuals' feel better about themselves and their betrayal of the filthy, subhuman
white underclass (or so they see it).
I expect at this point that Trump will be reelected comfortably. If not only the party itself,
but also most of its activists, refuse to actually change, it's more or less inevitable.
You can scream 'those jobs are never coming back!' all you want, but people are never going
to accept it. So either you come up with a genuine solution (instead of simply complaining that
your opponents solutions won't work; you're partisan and biased, most voters won't believe you),
you may as well resign yourself to fascism. Because whining that you don't know what to do won't
stop people from lining up behind someone who says that they do have one, whether it'll work or
not. Nobody trusts the elite enough to believe them when they say that jobs are never coming back.
Nobody trusts the elite at all.
You sound just like the Wiemar elite. No will to solve the problem, but filled with terror
at the inevitable result of failing to solve the problem.
One brutal fact tells us everything we need to know about the Democratic party in 2016:
the American Nazi party is running on a platform of free health care to working class people.
This means that the American Nazi Party is now running to the left of the Democratic party.
Folks, we have seen this before. Let's not descend in backbiting and recriminations, okay?
We've got some commenters charging that other commenters are "mansplaining," meanwhile we've got
other commenters claiming that it's economics and not racism/misogyny. It's all of the above.
Back in the 1930s, when the economy collapsed, fascists appeared and took power. Racists
also came out of the woodwork, ditto misogynists. Fast forward 80 years, and the same thing has
happened all over again. The global economy melted down in 2008 and fascists appeared promising
to fix the problems that the pols in power wouldn't because they were too closely tied to the
existing (failed) system. Along with the fascists, racists gained power because they were able
to scapegoat minorities as the alleged cause of everyone's misery.
None of this is surprising. We have seen it before. Whenever you get a depression in a
modern industrial economy, you get scapegoating, racism, and fascists. We know what to do. The
problem is that the current Democratic party isn't doing it.
Instead, what we're seeing is a whirlwind of finger-pointing from the Democratic leadership
that lost this election and probably let the entire New Deal get rolled back and wiped out. Putin
is to blame! Julian Assange is to blame! The biased media are to blame! Voter suppression is to
blame! Bernie Sanders is to blame! Jill Stein is to blame! Everyone and anyone except the current
out-of-touch influence-peddling elites who currently have run the Democratic party into the ground.
We need the feminists and the black lives matter groups and we also need the green party people
and the Bernie Sanders activists. But everyone has to understand that this is not an isolated
event. Trump did not just happen by accident. First there was Greece, then there was Brexit, then
there was Trump, next it'll be Renzi losing the referendum in Italy and a constitutional crisis
there, and after that, Marine Le Pen in France is going to win the first round of elections. (Probably
not the presidency, since all the other French parties will band together to stop her, but the
National Front is currently polling at 40% of all registered French voters.) And Marine LePen
is the real deal, a genuine full-on out-and-out fascist. Not a closet fascist like Steve Bannon,
LePen is the full monty with everything but a Hugo Boss suit and the death's heads on the cap.
Does anyone notice a pattern here?
This is an international movement. It is sweeping the world . It is the end of neoliberalism
and the start of the era of authoritarian nationalism, and we all need to come together to stamp
out the authoritarian part.
Feminists, BLM, black bloc anarchiest anti-globalists, Sandernistas, and, yes, the former Hillary
supporters. Because it not just a coincidence that all these things are happening in all these
countries at the same time. The bottom 90% of the population in the developed world has been ripped
off by a managerial and financial and political class for the last 30 years and they have all
noticed that while the world GDP was skyrocketing and international trade agreements were getting
signed with zero input from the average citizen, a few people were getting very very rich but
nobody else was getting anything.
This hammered people on the bottom, disproportionately African Americans and especially
single AA mothers in America. It crushed the blue collar workers. It is wiping out the savings
and careers of college-educated white collar workers now, at least, the ones who didn't go to
the Ivy League, which is 90% of them.
And the Democratic party is so helpless and so hopeless that it is letting the American Nazi
Party run to the left of them on health care, fer cripes sake! We are now in a situation
where the American Nazi Party is advocating single-payer nationalized health care, while the former
Democratic presidential nominee who just got defeated assured everyone that single-payer "will
never, ever happen."
C'mon! Is anyone surprised that Hillary lost? Let's cut the crap with the "Hillary
was a flawed candidate" arguments. The plain fact of the matter is that Hillary was running mainly
on getting rid of the problems she and her husband created 25 years ago. Hillary promised criminal
justice reform and Black Lives Matter-friendly policing policies - and guess who started the mass
incarceration trend and gave speeches calling black kids "superpredators" 20 years ago? Hillary
promised to fix the problems with the wretched mandate law forcing everyone to buy unaffordable
for-profit private insurance with no cost controls - and guess who originally ran for president
in 2008 on a policy of health care mandates with no cost controls? Yes, Hillary (ironically, Obama's
big surge in popularity as a candidate came when he ran against Hillary from the left, ridiculing
helath care mandates). Hillary promises to reform an out-of-control deregulated financial system
run amok - and guess who signed all those laws revoking Glass-Steagal and setting up the Securities
Trading Modernization Act? Yes, Bill Clinton, and Hillary was right there with him cheering the
whole process on.
So pardon me and lots of other folks for being less than impressed by Hillary's trustworthiness
and honesty. Run for president by promising to undo the damage you did to the country 25 years
ago is (let say) a suboptimal campaign strategy, and a distinctly suboptimal choice of presidential
candidate for a party in the same sense that the Hiroshima air defense was suboptimal in 1945.
Calling Hillary an "imperfect candidate" is like calling what happened to the Titanic a
"boating accident." Trump was an imperfect candidate. Why did he win?
Because we're back in the 1930s again, the economy has crashed hard and still hasn't recovered
(maybe because we still haven't convened a Pecora Commission and jailed a bunch of the thieves,
and we also haven't set up any alphabet government job programs like the CCC) so fascists and
racists and all kinds of other bottom-feeders are crawling out of the political woodwork to promise
to fix the problems that the Democratic party establishment won't.
Rule of thumb: any social or political or economic writer virulently hated by the current Democratic
party establishment is someone we should listen to closely right now.
Cornel West is at the top of the current Democratic establishment's hate list, and he has got
a great article in The Guardian that I think is spot-on:
"The neoliberal era in the United States ended with a neofascist bang. The political triumph
of Donald Trump shattered the establishments in the Democratic and Republican parties – both wedded
to the rule of Big Money and to the reign of meretricious politicians."
Glenn Greenwald is another writer who has been showered with more hate by the Democratic establishment
recently than even Trump or Steve Bannon, so you know Greenwald is saying something important.
He has a great piece in The Intercept on the head-in-the-ground attitude of Democratic
elites toward their recent loss:
"It is not an exaggeration to say that the Democratic Party is in shambles as a political
force. Not only did it just lose the White House to a wildly unpopular farce of a candidate despite
a virtually unified establishment behind it, and not only is it the minority party in both the
Senate and the House, but it is getting crushed at historical record rates on the state and local
levels as well. Surveying this wreckage last week, party stalwart Matthew Yglesias of Vox minced
no words: `the Obama years have created a Democratic Party that's essentially a smoking pile of
rubble.'
"One would assume that the operatives and loyalists of such a weak, defeated and wrecked
political party would be eager to engage in some introspection and self-critique, and to produce
a frank accounting of what they did wrong so as to alter their plight. In the case of 2016 Democrats,
one would be quite mistaken."
Last but far from least, Scottish economist Mark Blyth has what looks to me like the single
best analysis of the entire global Trump_vs_deep_state tidal wave in Foreign Affairs magazine:
"At the end of World War II, the United States and its allies decided that sustained mass
unemployment was an existential threat to capitalism and had to be avoided at all costs. In response,
governments everywhere targeted full employment as the master policy variable-trying to get to,
and sustain, an unemployment rate of roughly four percent. The problem with doing so, over time,
is that targeting any variable long enough undermines the value of the variable itself-a phenomenon
known as Goodhart's law. (..)
" what we see [today] is a reversal of power between creditors and debtors as the anti-inflationary
regime of the past 30 years undermines itself-what we might call "Goodhart's revenge." In this
world, yields compress and creditors fret about their earnings, demanding repayment of debt at
all costs. Macro-economically, this makes the situation worse: the debtors can't pay-but politically,
and this is crucial-it empowers debtors since they can't pay, won't pay, and still have the right
to vote.
"The traditional parties of the center-left and center-right, the builders of this anti-inflationary
order, get clobbered in such a world, since they are correctly identified by these debtors as
the political backers of those demanding repayment in an already unequal system, and all from
those with the least assets. This produces anti-creditor, pro-debtor coalitions-in-waiting that
are ripe for the picking by insurgents of the left and the right, which is exactly what has happened.
"In short, to understand the election of Donald Trump we need to listen to the trumpets blowing
everywhere in the highly indebted developed countries and the people who vote for them.
"The global revolt against elites is not just driven by revulsion and loss and racism.
It's also driven by the global economy itself. This is a global phenomenon that marks one thing
above all. The era of neoliberalism is over. The era of neonationalism has just begun."
You don't live here, do you? I'm really asking a genuine question because the way you are framing
the question ("SPECIFICS!!!!!!) suggests you don't. (Just to show my background, born and raised
in Australia (In the electoral division of Kooyong, home of Menzies) but I've lived in the US
since 2000 in the midwest (MO, OH) and currently in the south (GA))
If this election has taught us anything it's no one cared about "specifics". It was a mood,
a feeling which brought trump over the top (and I'm not talking about the "average" trump voter
because that is meaningless. The average trunp voter was a republican voter in the south who the
Dems will never get so examining their motivations is immaterial to future strategy. I'm talking
about the voters in the Upper Midwest from places which voted for Obama twice then switched to
trump this year to give him his margin of victory).
trump voters have been pretty clear they don't actually care about the way trump does (or even
doesn't) do what he said he would do during the campaign. It was important to them he showed he
was "with" people like them. They way he did that was partially racialized (law and order, islamophobia)
but also a particular emphasis on blue collar work that focused on the work. Unfortunately these
voters, however much you tell them they should suck it up and accept their generations of familial
experience as relatively highly paid industrial workers (even if it is something only their fathers
and grandfathers experienced because the factories were closing when the voters came of age in
the 80s and 90s) is never coming back and they should be happy to retrain as something else, don't
want it. They want what their families have had which is secure, paid, benefits rich, blue
collar work.
trump's campaign empathized with that feeling just by focusing on the factory jobs as jobs
and not as anachronisms that are slowly fading away for whatever reason. Clinton might have been
"correct", but these voters didn't want to hear "the truth". And as much as you can complain about
how stupid they are for wanting to be lied to, that is the unfortunate reality you, and the Democratic
party, have to accept.
The idea they don't want "government help" is ridiculous. They love the government. They just
want the government to do things for them and not for other people (which unfortunately includes
blah people but also "the coasts", "sillicon valley", etc.). Obama won in 2008 and 2012 in part
due to the auto bailout.
trump was offering a "bailout" writ large. Clinton had no (good) counteroffer. It was like
the tables were turned. Romney was the one talking about "change" and "restructuring" while Obama
was defending keeping what was already there.
"Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the
automakers will stay the course - the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable
labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses.
Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/opinion/19romney.html
So yes. Clinton needed vague promises. She needed something more than retraining and "jobs
of the future" and "restructuring". She needed to show she was committed to their way of life,
however those voters saw it, and would do something, anything, to keep it alive. trump did that
even though his plan won't work. And maybe he'll be punished for it. In 4 years. But in the interim
the gop will destroy so many things we need and rely on as well as entrench their power for generations
through the Supreme Court.
But really, it was hard for Clinton to be trusted to act like she cared about these peoples'
way of life because she (through her husband fairly or unfairly) was associated with some of the
larger actions and choices which helped usher in the decline.
Clinton toward the end offered tariffs. But the trump campaign hit back with what turned
out to be a pretty strong counter attack – ""How's she going to get tough on China?" said Trump
economic advisor Peter Navarro on CNN's Quest Means Business. He notes that some of Clinton's
economic advisors have supported TPP or even worked on it. ""
Both Republican Party and Democratic party degenerated into the racket. Neoliberal racket. It really goes back to
what Eric Hoffer
said: "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into
a
racket ." It's a racket.
Notable quotes:
"... That's because I assumed that everybody realized that America standing up to the Soviet Union was, in some sense, a nationalist resistance. Americans just didn't want to be conquered by Russians. ..."
"... In contrast to all that, Donald Trump said: ..."
"... I view the word conservative as a derivative of the word conserve. We want to converse our money. We want to conserve our wealth We want to conserve our country. We want to save our country. ..."
"... it turned out that American Conservatism was just a transitional phase. And now it's over. ..."
"... terrified of the neoconservatives who didn't like the emphasis on immigration because of their own ethnic agenda, and he was very inclined to listen to the Congressional Republicans, who didn't want to talk about immigration because they are terrified too-because they are cowards, basically-and also because they have big corporate donors . And, I think that is part of the explanation. ..."
"... I think that goes to what happened to the American Conservative Movement. It wasn't tortured; it was bought . It was simply bought . I think the dominance of the Donorist class and the Donorist Party is one of the things that has emerged analytically within the past 10 years. ..."
"... So I think that is the reason for the end of the American Conservative Movement. It really goes back to what Eric Hoffer said: "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket ." It's a racket. ..."
"... But the good news is, as John Derbyshire said a few minutes ago, that ultimately Conservatism -- or Rightism -- is a personality type. It underlies politics and it will crop up again-just as, to our astonishment, Donald Trump has cropped up. ..."
The core of conservatism, it seems to me, is this recognition and acceptance of the elemental emotions.
Conservatism understands that it is futile to debate the feelings of the
mother for her child-or such human instincts as the bonds of
tribe
,
nation , even
race . Of course, all are painfully vulnerable to deconstruction by rationalistic intellectuals-but
not, ultimately, to destruction. These commitments are Jungian rather than Freudian, not irrational
but a-rational-beyond the reach of reason.
This is one of the problems, by the way, with the American Conservative Movement. I was completely
astonished when it fell apart at the end of the Cold War -- I never thought it would. That's
because I assumed that everybody realized that America standing up to the Soviet Union was, in some
sense, a nationalist resistance. Americans just didn't want to be
conquered by Russians.
But, it turned out that there were people who had joined the anti-Communist coalition who
harbored messianic fantasies about
"global democracy" and and America as the first
"universal nation" (i.e. polity. Nation-states must have a specific ethnic core.) They also had
uses for the American military which hadn't occurred to me. But they didn't care about America-about
America as a nation-state, the political expression of a particular people, the Historic American
Nation. In fact, in some cases, it made them feel uneasy.
I thought about this this spring when Trump was debating in New Hampshire. ABC's John Muir asked
three candidates: "What does it mean to be Conservative?"
I'm going to quote from John Kasich:
blah, blah, blah, blah. Balanced budgets-tax cuts-jobs-"but once we have economic growth I believe
we have to reach out to people who live in the shadows." By this he meant, not illegal aliens, although
he did
favor Amnesty , but "the mentally ill, the drug addicted, the working poor [and] our friends
in the minority community."
That's because the Republican Party has lots of friends in the minority community.
Marco Rubio said:
it's about three things. The first is conservatism is about limited government, especially
at the federal level It's about free enterprise And it's about a strong national defense. It's
about believing, unlike Barack Obama, that the world is a safer and a better place when America
is the strongest military and the strongest nation on this planet. That's conservatism.
Kasich and Rubio's answers, of course, are not remotely "conservative" but utilitarian, economistic,
classical liberal. Note that Rubio even felt obliged to justify "strong national defense" in universalistic,
Wilsonian terms: it will make the world "a safer and a better place."
In contrast to all that, Donald Trump said:
I view the word conservative as a derivative of the word conserve. We want to converse
our money. We want to conserve our wealth We want to conserve our country. We want to save our
country.
Now, this caused a considerable amount of harrumphing among Conservative Inc. intellectuals and
various Republican politicians. Somebody called
John Hart , who writes a
thing called Opportunity Lives -has anybody heard of it? It's a very well-funded
Libertarianism Inc. website in Washington. Nobody has heard of it? Good. Hart said:
Trump's answer may have been how conservatives described themselves once: in 1957. But today's
modern conservative movement isn't a hoarding or protectionist philosophy. Conservatism isn't
about conserving; it's about growth.
"Growth"? Well, I don't think so. And not just because I remember
1957 . As I said,I think it turned out that American Conservatism was just a transitional
phase. And now it's over.
Why did it end? After
Buckley purged John O'Sullivan and all of us
immigration patriots from
National
Review in 1997, we spent a lot of time thinking about why he had done this. And there were
a lot of complicated psychological explanations: Bill was getting old, he was
jealous of his successor, the new Editor, John O'Sullivan, he was terrified of the
neoconservatives who didn't like the emphasis on immigration because of their
own ethnic
agenda, and he was very inclined to listen to the Congressional Republicans, who didn't want
to talk about immigration because they are terrified too-because they are cowards, basically-and
also because they have
big corporate donors . And, I think that is part of the explanation.
But
there was a similar discussion in the 1950s and 1960s, which I'm old enough to remember, about why
the Old Bolsheviks all
testified against themselves in the treason trials during
Stalin's Great
Purge . They all admitted to the most fantastic things-that they had been spies for the Americans
and the British and the capitalist imperialists all along, that they'd plotted to assassinate Comrade
Stalin. And there were all kinds of discussions as to why this was, and in fact a wonderful novel,
Darkness At Noon [
PDF
] by
Arthur Koestler , one of the
most remarkable novels in the last century, describing the exquisite psychological process by
which an old Bolshevik in prison came to the conclusion that he was going to have to say all these
things in the long-term interest of the Revolution.
Do you agree about Darkness At Noon , Paul? [ Paul Gottfried indicates assent
]
In other words, there is no complex
psychological explanation : they were just tortured. I think that goes to what happened to the
American Conservative Movement. It wasn't tortured; it was
bought . It was simply
bought . I think the dominance of the
Donorist class and the
Donorist Party is one of the things that has
emerged analytically within the past 10 years.
When I was first writing about American politics and got involved in American politics–and
I started by working for John Ashbrook (not
Ashcroft , Ash brook
) against
Nixon in 1972 –nobody thought about donors. We have only gradually become conscious of them.
And their absolute dominant role, and their ability to prohibit policy discussions, has really only
become clear in the last five to ten years.
I think, in retrospect, with
Buckley
, who
subsidized his lifestyle out of the National Review to a scandalous extent, that there
was some financial transaction. I think that now.
It's an open secret that
Rich Lowry did not want to come out and with
this anti-Trump issue that they published earlier this year, but he was
compelled to do it. That's not the type of thing that Lowry would normally do. He wouldn't take
that kind of risk, he's a courtier, he would never take the risk of not being invited to ride in
Trump's limousine in the case that Trump won. But, apparently, someone forced him to do it. And I
think that someone was a
donor and I think I know who it was.
So I think that is the reason for the end of the American Conservative Movement. It really
goes back to what
Eric Hoffer
said: "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates
into a
racket ." It's a racket.
But the good news is, as
John Derbyshire said a few
minutes ago, that ultimately Conservatism -- or Rightism -- is a personality type. It underlies politics
and it will crop up again-just as, to our astonishment, Donald Trump has cropped up.
"... " Like [Andrew] Jackson's populism, we're going to build an entirely new political movement ," he says. "It's everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I'm the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it's the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all jacked up. We're just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks . It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution - conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement." ..."
"... Nobody in the Democratic party listened to his speeches, so they had no idea he was delivering such a compelling and powerful economic message. He shows up 3.5 hours late in Michigan at 1 in the morning and has 35,000 people waiting in the cold. When they got [Clinton] off the donor circuit she went to Temple University and they drew 300 or 400 kids." ..."
"... Bannon on Murdoch: "Rupert is a globalist and never understood Trump" ..."
"... " The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f-ed over . If we deliver-" by "we" he means the Trump White House "-we'll get 60 percent of the white vote, and 40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote and we'll govern for 50 years. That's what the Democrats missed, they were talking to these people with companies with a $9 billion market cap employing nine people. It's not reality. They lost sight of what the world is about ." ..."
"... ... I'd say, IMO, Steve Bannon is more than an excellent choice for President Trump's team ... Bannon's education, business, work and military experience speaks highly of his abilities ... I wish the MSM would stop labelling him a white nationalist and concentrate on his successful accomplishments and what he could contribute to Trump's cabinet. ..."
Bannon next discusses the "battle line" inside America's great divide.
He absolutely - mockingly - rejects the idea that this is a racial line. "I'm not a white nationalist,
I'm a nationalist. I'm an economic nationalist, " he tells me. " The globalists gutted the American
working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to
not get f-ed over . If we deliver-" by "we" he means the Trump White House "-we'll get 60 percent
of the white vote, and 40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote and we'll govern for 50 years.
That's what the Democrats missed, they were talking to these people with companies with a $9 billion
market cap employing nine people. It's not reality. They lost sight of what the world is about
."
Bannon's vision: an "entirely new political movement", one which drives the conservatives crazy.
As to how monetary policy will coexist with fiscal stimulus, Bannon has a simple explanation: he
plans to "rebuild everything" courtesy of negative interest rates and cheap debt throughout the world.
Those rates may not be negative for too long.
" Like [Andrew] Jackson's populism, we're going to build an entirely new political movement
," he says. "It's everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I'm the
guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the
world, it's the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all
jacked up. We're just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks . It will be
as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution - conservatives, plus populists,
in an economic nationalist movement."
How Bannon describes Trump: " an ideal vessel"
It is less than obvious how Bannon, now the official strategic brains of the Trump operation,
syncs with his boss, famously not too strategic. When Bannon took over the campaign from Paul
Manafort, there were many in the Trump circle who had resigned themselves to the inevitability
of the candidate listening to no one . But here too was a Bannon insight: When the campaign seemed
most in free fall or disarray, it was perhaps most on target. While Clinton was largely absent
from the campaign trail and concentrating on courting her donors, Trump - even after the leak
of the grab-them-by-the-pussy audio - was speaking to ever-growing crowds of thirty-five or forty
thousand. "He gets it, he gets it intuitively," says Bannon, perhaps still surprised he has found
such an ideal vessel. "You have probably the greatest orator since William Jennings Bryan, coupled
with an economic populist message and two political parties that are so owned by the donors that
they don't speak to their audience. But he speaks in a non-political vernacular, he communicates
with these people in a very visceral way. Nobody in the Democratic party listened to his speeches,
so they had no idea he was delivering such a compelling and powerful economic message. He shows
up 3.5 hours late in Michigan at 1 in the morning and has 35,000 people waiting in the cold. When
they got [Clinton] off the donor circuit she went to Temple University and they drew 300 or 400
kids."
Bannon on Murdoch: "Rupert is a globalist and never understood Trump"
At that moment, as we talk, there's a knock on the door of Bannon's office, a temporary, impersonal,
middle-level executive space with a hodgepodge of chairs for constant impromptu meetings. Sen.
Ted Cruz, once the Republican firebrand, now quite a small and unassuming figure, has been waiting
patiently for a chat and Bannon excuses himself for a short while. It is clear when we return
to our conversation that it is not just the liberal establishment that Bannon feels he has triumphed
over, but the conservative one too - not least of all Fox News and its owners, the Murdochs. "They
got it more wrong than anybody," he says. " Rupert is a globalist and never understood Trump.
To him, Trump is a radical. Now they'll go centrist and build the network around Megyn Kelly."
Bannon recounts, with no small irony, that when Breitbart attacked Kelly after her challenges
to Trump in the initial Republican debate, Fox News chief Roger Ailes - whom Bannon describes
as an important mentor, and who Kelly's accusations of sexual harassment would help topple in
July - called to defend her. Bannon says he warned Ailes that Kelly would be out to get him too
.
Finally, Bannon on how he sees himself in the administration:
Bannon now becomes part of a two-headed White House political structure, with Reince Priebus
- in and out of Bannon's office as we talk - as chief of staff, in charge of making the trains
run on time, reporting to the president, and Bannon as chief strategist, in charge of vision,
goals, narrative and plan of attack, reporting to the president too. Add to this the ambitions
and whims of the president himself, and the novel circumstance of one who has never held elective
office, the agenda of his highly influential family and the end runs of a party significant parts
of which were opposed to him, and you have quite a complex court that Bannon will have to finesse
to realize his reign of the working man and a trillion dollars in new spending.
"I am," he says, with relish, "Thomas Cromwell in the court of the Tudors."
" The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia.
The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f-ed over . If we deliver-" by "we" he
means the Trump White House "-we'll get 60 percent of the white vote, and 40 percent of the
black and Hispanic vote and we'll govern for 50 years. That's what the Democrats missed, they
were talking to these people with companies with a $9 billion market cap employing nine people.
It's not reality. They lost sight of what the world is about ."
... I'd say, IMO, Steve Bannon is more than an excellent choice for President Trump's team
... Bannon's education, business, work and military experience speaks highly of his abilities
... I wish the MSM would stop labelling him a white nationalist and concentrate on his successful
accomplishments and what he could contribute to Trump's cabinet.
........ from wiki ...
Stephen Kevin Bannon was born on November 27, 1953, in Norfolk, Virginia into a working-class,
Irish Catholic, pro-Kennedy, pro-union family of Democrats. He graduated from Virginia Tech in
1976 and holds a master's degree in National Security Studies from Georgetown University. In 1983,
Bannon received an M.B.A. degree with honors from Harvard Business School.
Bannon was an officer in the United States Navy, serving on the destroyer USS Paul F. Foster
as a Surface Warfare Officer in the Pacific Fleet and stateside as a special assistant to the
Chief of Naval Operations at the Pentagon.
After his military service, Bannon worked at Goldman Sachs as an investment banker in the Mergers
& Acquisitions Department. In 1990, Bannon and several colleagues from Goldman Sachs launched
Bannon & Co., a boutique investment bank specializing in media. Through Bannon & Co., Bannon negotiated
the sale of Castle Rock Entertainment to Ted Turner. As payment, Bannon & Co. accepted a financial
stake in five television shows, including Seinfeld. Société Générale purchased Bannon & Co. in
1998.
In 1993, while still managing Bannon & Co., Bannon was made acting director of Earth-science
research project Biosphere 2 in Oracle, Arizona. Under Bannon, the project shifted emphasis from
researching space exploration and colonization towards pollution and global warming. He left the
project in 1995.
After the sale of Bannon & Co., Bannon became an executive producer in the film and media industry
in Hollywood, California. He was executive producer for Julie Taymor's 1999 film Titus. Bannon
became a partner with entertainment industry executive Jeff Kwatinetz at The Firm, Inc., a film
and television management company. In 2004, Bannon made a documentary about Ronald Reagan titled
In the Face of Evil. Through the making and screening of this film, Bannon was introduced to Peter
Schweizer and publisher Andrew Breitbart. He was involved in the financing and production of a
number of films, including Fire from the Heartland: The Awakening of the Conservative Woman, The
Undefeated (on Sarah Palin), and Occupy Unmasked. Bannon also hosts a radio show (Breitbart News
Daily) on a Sirius XM satellite radio channel.
Bannon is also executive chairman and co-founder of the Government Accountability Institute,
where he helped orchestrate the publication of the book Clinton Cash. In 2015, Bannon was ranked
No. 19 on Mediaite's list of the "25 Most Influential in Political News Media 2015".
Bannon convinced Goldman Sachs to invest in a company known as Internet Gaming Entertainment.
Following a lawsuit, the company rebranded as Affinity Media and Bannon took over as CEO. From
2007 through 2011, Bannon was chairman and CEO of Affinity Media.
Bannon became a member of the board of Breitbart News. In March 2012, after founder Andrew
Breitbart's death, Bannon became executive chairman of Breitbart News LLC, the parent company
of Breitbart News. Under his leadership, Breitbart took a more alt-right and nationalistic approach
towards its agenda. Bannon declared the website "the platform for the alt-right" in 2016. Bannon
identifies as a conservative. Speaking about his role at Breitbart, Bannon said: "We think of
ourselves as virulently anti-establishment, particularly 'anti-' the permanent political class."
The New York Times described Breitbart News under Bannon's leadership as a "curiosity of the
fringe right wing", with "ideologically driven journalists", that is a source of controversy "over
material that has been called misogynist, xenophobic and racist." The newspaper also noted how
Breitbart was now a "potent voice" for Donald Trump's presidential campaign.
Bannon: " The globalists gutted the American working class ..the Democrats were talking
to these people with companies with a $9 billion market cap employing nine people. It's not reality.
They lost sight of what the world is about ."
Well said. Couldn't agree more.
Bannon: " Like [Andrew] Jackson's populism, we're going to build an entirely new political
movement I'm the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan.
Dear Mr. Bannon, it has to be way more than $1trillion in 10 years. Obama's $831 billion American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) didn't make up the difference for all the job lost
in 2007/08. Manufacturing alone lost about 9 million jobs since 1979, when it peaked.
Trump needs to go Ronald Reagan 180% deficit spending. If Trump runs 100% like Obama, Trump
will fail as well.
Stillgrizzly
3d ago
85
86
The fundamental problem seems to be that the left /
liberals are playing the game of the right for them and
not being intelligent enough to realise it.
Mass immigration is the case in point. The main
beneficiaries from the movement of labour are the
corporations and the capitalists. The losers are the
incumbent population and the local workers.
The liberal left are confusing the cries of alarm from
those losing out with racism and bigotry, which have been
ingrained in their psyche due to identity politics.
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RJB73
Stillgrizzly
3d ago
48
49
Well put. Mass low-skilled immigration (legal/illegal)
is bad for working class people who are citizens of the
US/UK. The "liberal" left are the ones who'd in the
past naturally come to their defense. Instead, they've
labelled them racists and islamphobes etc. because they
are not driven by (classical) liberalism but rather
divisive identity politics focused on minority groups
(e.g. transgender issues, which is not going to win
many votes.)
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greenwichite
Stillgrizzly
3d ago
22
23
Liberals and the Left are not the same thing, though.
I think the liberals' horror at Jeremy Corbyn
demonstrates this, as did the way liberals torpedoed
Bernie Sanders in favour of Hillary Clinton.
To be liberal is to let people do whatever they
want, so long as they don't
directly
harm other
people.
Multinational businesses love this mentality,
because it allows them to indirectly harm billions of
people, and get away with it. They push free trade (a
very liberal concept) which cuts their taxes and makes
them stronger than most national governments, so they
wield vast, unaccountable power, and get away with
massive levels of pollution.
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Stillgrizzly
greenwichite
3d ago
9
10
The liberals "horror" at Corbyn is because he is
bringing out reactionary "hard" left elements amongst
other things, which are destroying what was a kind of
consensus.
This is fracturing the opposition and driving people
towards the right or "protest" parties. Corbyn is the
best recruiting tool UKIP never had.
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icansee
Stillgrizzly
3d ago
6
7
If you think that this was a universal backlash to the
effects of immigration on jobs , then you are missing
the point .
My advise is for you to check the archives of mother
jones and other blogs to find out how this faux rage
developed .
Trump's primary voters have an average income of
$70,000. They are not affected by mass migration .
This is a rage against Marriage equality ,Seperation of
the church and state ,continuation of the war against
affirmative action ,environmental protection ,union etc
.
The faux rage was engineered by l
1 Remnants of Koch brothers tea party
2 Fox news
3 Alt right
4 Evangelicals
5 Gun manufacturers
They created an hurricane and carried other
unwilling groups like blue collar democrats with them .
However , they wouldn't have stand any chance if
progressives had turned up .
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Jaisans
Stillgrizzly
3d ago
0
1
Mass immigration is the case in point. The main
beneficiaries from the movement of labour are the
corporations and the capitalists. The losers are the
incumbent population and the local workers.
you might
be putting the cart before the horse a little bit
there. the problem isn't freedom of movement (let's try
not to use emotive terms like mass migration) is
employers seeking cheap labour. better wages would
attract more local labour, instead employers actively
seek cheap labour from abroad. and that's a result of
economic liberalism, which is very different to
classical liberalism. classical liberals built houses
for their workers to live in, rather than not paying
them enough to live in their own house.
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Stillgrizzly
icansee
3d ago
2
3
Trump is allied with the Republican party, people seem
to have overlooked that. Therefore, shock horror, a lot
of Republican voters voted for him.
Also in the US, the level of non voting is huge,
suggesting a level of ignorance / disillusionment with
either of the choices.
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Stillgrizzly
Jaisans
3d ago
3
4
You're arguing for protectionism, just like Trump,
effectively state subsidy of the incumbent population
via tarriffs / subsidies / buy British / American
campaigns / increased welfare etc, the net effect is
the same.
isn't controlled
immigration also protectionism? employers exploiting
foreign workers at the expense of local labour is just
plain wrong, it's not market forces. and it's not the
fault of freedom of movement. and it causes
trouble...even keir hardie saw that
better welfare would be a good idea. a better one
would universal credit.
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Its_me
Stillgrizzly
2d ago
3
4
Yep, they hate Corbyn because he's rocking their cosy
boat where they could wear Red while having Blue
policies. The people who hate Corbyn are the same ones
who were vociferous against UKIP, for the same reasons
- they threatened to disrupt their LibLabCon club and
the opportunities they think they deserve.
Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make
the Rich Richer
By Dean Baker
Introduction: Trading in Myths
In winter 2016, near the peak of Bernie Sanders' bid for the Democratic presidential
nomination, a new line became popular among the nation's policy elite: Bernie Sanders is
the enemy of the world's poor. Their argument was that Sanders, by pushing trade policies
to help U.S. workers, specifically manufacturing workers, risked undermining the well-being
of the world's poor because exporting manufactured goods to the United States and other
wealthy countries is their path out of poverty. The role model was China, which by
exporting has largely eliminated extreme poverty and drastically reduced poverty among its
population. Sanders and his supporters would block the rest of the developing world from
following the same course.
This line, in its Sanders-bashing permutation, appeared early on in Vox, the
millennial-oriented media upstart, and was quickly picked up elsewhere (Beauchamp 2016).
After all, it was pretty irresistible. The ally of the downtrodden and enemy of the rich
was pushing policies that would condemn much of the world to poverty.
The story made a nice contribution to preserving the status quo, but it was less
valuable if you respect honesty in public debate.
The problem in the logic of this argument should be apparent to anyone who has taken an
introductory economics course. It assumes that the basic problem of manufacturing workers
in the developing world is the need for someone who will buy their stuff. If people in the
United States don't buy it, then the workers will be out on the street and growth in the
developing world will grind to a halt. In this story, the problem is that we don't have
enough people in the world to buy stuff. In other words, there is a shortage of demand. But
is it really true that no one else in the world would buy the stuff produced by
manufacturing workers in the developing world if they couldn't sell it to consumers in the
United States? Suppose people in the developing world bought the stuff they produced
raising their living standards by raising their own consumption.
That is how the economics is supposed to work. In the standard theory, general shortages
of demand are not a problem. Economists have traditionally assumed that economies tended
toward full employment. The basic economic constraint was a lack of supply. The problem was
that we couldn't produce enough goods and services, not that we were producing too much and
couldn't find anyone to buy them. In fact, this is why all the standard models used to
analyze trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership assume trade doesn't affect
total employment. Economies adjust so that shortages of demand are not a problem.
In this standard story (and the Sanders critics are people who care about textbook
economics), capital flows from slow-growing rich countries, where it is relatively
plentiful and so gets a low rate of return, to fast-growing poor countries, where it is
scarce and gets a high rate of return.
[Figure 1-1] Theoretical and actual capital flows.
So the United States, Japan, and the European Union should be running large trade
surpluses, which is what an outflow of capital means. Rich countries like ours should be
lending money to developing countries, providing them with the means to build up their
capital stock and infrastructure while they use their own resources to meet their people's
basic needs.
This wasn't just theory. That story accurately described much of the developing world,
especially Asia, through the 1990s. Countries like Indonesia and Malaysia were experiencing
rapid annual growth of 7.8 percent and 9.6 percent, respectively, even as they ran large
trade deficits, just over 2 percent of GDP each year in Indonesia and almost 5 percent in
Malaysia.
These trade deficits probably were excessive, and a crisis of confidence hit East Asia
and much of the developing world in the summer of 1997. The inflow of capital from rich
countries slowed or reversed, making it impossible for the developing countries to sustain
the fixed exchange rates most had at the time. One after another, they were forced to
abandon their fixed exchange rates and turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for
help.
Rather than promulgating policies that would allow developing countries to continue the
textbook development path of growth driven by importing capital and running trade deficits,
the IMF made debt repayment a top priority. The bailout, under the direction of the Clinton
administration Treasury Department, required developing countries to switch to large trade
surpluses (Radelet and Sachs 2000, O'Neil 1999).
The countries of East Asia would be far richer today had they been allowed to continue
on the growth path of the early and mid-1990s, when they had large trade deficits. Four of
the five would be more than twice as rich, and the fifth, Vietnam, would be almost 50
percent richer. South Korea and Malaysia would have higher per capita incomes today than
the United States.
[Figure 1-2] Per capita income of East Asian countries, actual vs. continuing on 1990s
growth path.
In the wake of the East Asia bailout, countries throughout the developing world decided
they had to build up reserves of foreign exchange, primarily dollars, in order to avoid
ever facing the same harsh bailout terms as the countries of East Asia. Building up
reserves meant running large trade surpluses, and it is no coincidence that the U.S. trade
deficit has exploded, rising from just over 1 percent of GDP in 1996 to almost 6 percent in
2005. The rise has coincided with the loss of more than 3 million manufacturing jobs,
roughly 20 percent of employment in the sector.
There was no reason the textbook growth pattern of the 1990s could not have continued.
It wasn't the laws of economics that forced developing countries to take a different path,
it was the failed bailout and the international financial system. It would seem that the
enemy of the world's poor is not Bernie Sanders but rather the engineers of our current
globalization policies.
There is a further point in this story that is generally missed: it is not only the
volume of trade flows that is determined by policy, but also the content. A major push in
recent trade deals has been to require stronger and longer patent and copyright protection.
Paying the fees imposed by these terms, especially for prescription drugs, is a huge burden
on the developing world. Bill Clinton would have much less need to fly around the world for
the Clinton Foundation had he not inserted the TRIPS (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual
Property Rights) provisions in the World Trade Organization (WTO) that require developing
countries to adopt U.S.-style patent protections. Generic drugs are almost always cheap -
patent protection makes drugs expensive. The cancer and hepatitis drugs that sell for tens
or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year would sell for a few hundred dollars in a free
market. Cheap drugs would be more widely available had the developed world not forced TRIPS
on the developing world.
Of course, we have to pay for the research to develop new drugs or any innovation. We
also have to compensate creative workers who produce music, movies, and books. But there
are efficient alternatives to patents and copyrights, and the efforts by the elites in the
United States and other wealthy countries to impose these relics on the developing world is
just a mechanism for redistributing income from the world's poor to Pfizer, Microsoft, and
Disney. Stronger and longer patent and copyright protection is not a necessary feature of a
21st century economy.
In textbook trade theory, if a country has a larger trade surplus on payments for
royalties and patent licensing fees, it will have a larger trade deficit in manufactured
goods and other areas. The reason is that, in theory, the trade balance is fixed by
national savings and investment, not by the ability of a country to export in a particular
area. If the trade deficit is effectively fixed by these macroeconomic factors, then more
exports in one area mean fewer exports in other areas. Put another way, income gains for
Pfizer and Disney translate into lost jobs for workers in the steel and auto industries....
It includes this interesting piece on international trade:
"I'll start with my favorite, the complaint that the trade policy advocating by Warren
and Sanders would hurt the poor in the developing world, or to use their words:
"And their ostensible protection of American workers leaves no room to consider the welfare
of poor people elsewhere in the world."
I like this one because it turns standard economic theory on its head to advance the
interests of the rich and powerful. In the economic textbooks, rich countries like the
United States are supposed to be exporting capital to the developing world. This provides
them the means to build up their capital stock and infrastructure, while maintaining the
living standards of their populations. This is the standard economic story where the
problem is scarcity.
But to justify trade policies that have harmed tens of millions of U.S. workers, either
by costing them jobs or depressing their wages, the Post discards standard economics and
tells us the problem facing people in the developing world is that there is too much stuff.
If we didn't buy the goods produced in the developing world then there would just be a
massive glut of unsold products.
In the standard theory the people in the developing world buy their own stuff, with rich
countries like the U.S. providing the financing. It actually did work this way in the
1990s, up until the East Asian financial crisis in 1997. In that period, countries like
Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia were growing very rapidly while running large trade
deficits. This pattern of growth was ended by the terms of the bailout imposed on these
countries by the U.S. Treasury Department through the International Monetary Fund.
The harsh terms of the bailout forced these and other developing countries to reverse
the standard textbook path and start running large trade surpluses. This post-bailout
period was associated with slower growth for these countries. In other words, the poor of
the developing world suffered from the pattern of trade the Post advocates. If they had
continued on the pre-bailout path they would be much richer today. In fact, South Korea and
Malaysia would be richer than the United States if they had maintained their pre-bailout
growth rate over the last two decades. (This is the topic of the introduction to my new
book, Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make
the Rich Richer, it's free.)"
Not sure that I fully agree with him, but I do agree that trade imbalances and
mercantilism is a large part of the problem.
The Washington Post editorial page decided to lecture readers * on the meaning of
progressivism. Okay, that is nowhere near as bad as a Trump presidency, but really, did we
need this?
The editorial gives us a potpourri of neo-liberal (yes, the term is appropriate here)
platitudes, all of which we have heard many times before and are best half true. For
framing, the villains are Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren who it tells us "are
embracing principles that are not genuinely progressive."
I'll start with my favorite, the complaint that the trade policy advocating by Warren
and Sanders would hurt the poor in the developing world, or to use their words:
"And their ostensible protection of American workers leaves no room to consider the
welfare of poor people elsewhere in the world."
I like this one because it turns standard economic theory on its head to advance the
interests of the rich and powerful. In the economic textbooks, rich countries like the
United States are supposed to be exporting capital to the developing world. This provides
them the means to build up their capital stock and infrastructure, while maintaining the
living standards of their populations. This is the standard economic story where the
problem is scarcity.
But to justify trade policies that have harmed tens of millions of U.S. workers, either
by costing them jobs or depressing their wages, the Post discards standard economics and
tells us the problem facing people in the developing world is that there is too much stuff.
If we didn't buy the goods produced in the developing world then there would just be a
massive glut of unsold products.
In the standard theory the people in the developing world buy their own stuff, with rich
countries like the U.S. providing the financing. It actually did work this way in the
1990s, up until the East Asian financial crisis in 1997. In that period, countries like
Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia were growing very rapidly while running large trade
deficits. This pattern of growth was ended by the terms of the bailout imposed on these
countries by the U.S. Treasury Department through the International Monetary Fund.
The harsh terms of the bailout forced these and other developing countries to reverse
the standard textbook path and start running large trade surpluses. This post-bailout
period was associated with slower growth for these countries. In other words, the poor of
the developing world suffered from the pattern of trade the Post advocates. If they had
continued on the pre-bailout path they would be much richer today. In fact, South Korea and
Malaysia would be richer than the United States if they had maintained their pre-bailout
growth rate over the last two decades. (This is the topic of the introduction to my new
book, "Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to
Make the Rich Richer," ** it's free.)
It is also important to note that the Post is only bothered by forms of protection that
might help working class people. The United States prohibits foreign doctors from
practicing in the United States unless they complete a U.S. residency program. (The total
number of slots are tightly restricted with only a small fraction open to foreign trained
doctors.) This is a classic protectionist measure. No serious person can believe that the
only way for a person to be a competent doctor is to complete a U.S. residency program. It
costs the United States around $100 billion a year ($700 per family) in higher medical
expenses. Yet, we never hear a word about this or other barriers that protect the most
highly paid professionals from the same sort of international competition faced by
steelworkers and textile workers.
Moving on, we get yet another Post tirade on Social Security.
"You can expand benefits for everyone, as Ms. Warren favors. Prosperous retirees who
live mostly off their well-padded 401(k)s will appreciate what to them will feel like a
small bonus, if they notice it. But spreading wealth that way will make it harder to find
the resources for the vulnerable elderly who truly depend on Social Security.
"But demographics - the aging of the population - cannot be wished away. In the 1960s,
about five taxpayers were helping to support each Social Security recipient, and the
economy was growing about 6 percent annually. Today there are fewer than three workers for
each pensioner, and the growth rate even following the 2008 recession has averaged about 2
percent . On current trends, 10 years from now the federal government will be spending
almost all its money on Medicare, Social Security and other entitlements and on interest
payments on the debt, leaving less and less for schools, housing and job training. There is
nothing progressive about that."
There are all sorts of misleading or wrong claims here. First, the economy did not grow
"about 6 percent annually" in the 1960s. There were three years in which growth did exceed
6.0 percent, and it was a very prosperous decade, but growth only averaged 4.6 percent from
1960 to 1970.
I suppose we should be happy that the Post is at least getting closer to the mark. A
2007 editorial *** praising The North American Free Trade Agreement told readers that
Mexico's GDP "has more than quadrupled since 1987." The International Monetary Fund data
**** put the gain at 83 percent. So by comparison, they are doing pretty good with the 6
percent growth number for the sixties.
But getting to the demographics, we did go from more than five workers for every retiree
to less than three today, and this number is projected to fall further to around 2.0
workers per retiree in the next fifteen years. This raises the obvious question, so what?
The economy did not collapse even as we saw the fall from 5 workers per retiree to less
than 3, so something really really bad happens when it falls further? We did raise taxes to
cover the additional cost and we will probably have to raise taxes in the future.
We get that the Post doesn't like tax increases (no one does), but this hardly seems
like the end of the world. The Social Security Trustees project ***** that real wages will
rise on average by more than 34 percent over the next two decades. Suppose we took back
5–10 percent of these projected wage gains through tax increases (still leaving workers
with wages that are more than 30 percent higher than they are today), what is the big
problem?
Of course most workers have not seen their wages rise in step with the economy's growth
over the last four decades. This is a huge issue which is the sort of thing that
progressives should be and are focusing on. But the Post would rather distract us with the
possibility that at some point in the future we may be paying a somewhat higher Social
Security tax.
The Post's route for savings is also classic misdirection. It tells how about
high-living seniors who get so much money from their 401(k)s they don't even notice their
Social Security checks. Only a bit more than 4.0 percent of the over 65 population has
non-Social Security income of more than $80,000 a year. If the point is to have substantial
savings from means-testing it would be necessary to hit people with incomes around $40,000
a year or even lower. That is not what most people consider wealthy.
We could have substantial savings on Medicare by pushing down the pay of doctors and
reducing the prices of drugs and medical equipment. The latter could be done by
substituting public financing for research and development for government granted patent
monopolies (also discussed in Rigged). These items would almost invariably be cheap in a
free market. But the Post seems uninterested in ways to save money that could affect the
incomes of the rich.
One can quibble with whether the current benefits for middle income people are right or
should be somewhat higher or lower, but it is ridiculous to argue that raising them $50 a
month, as proposed by Senator Warren, will break the bank.
Then we have the issue of free college. The Post raises the issue, pushed by Senator
Sanders in his presidential campaign, and then tells readers:
"Our answer - we would argue, the progressive answer - is that there are people in
society with far greater needs than that upper-middle-class family in Fairfax County that
would be relieved of its tuition burden at the College of William & Mary if Mr. Sanders got
his wish."
There are two points to be made here. First there is extensive research ****** showing
that many children from low- and moderate-income families hugely over-estimate the cost of
college, failing to realize that they would be eligible for financial aid that would make
it free or nearly free. This means that the current structure is preventing many relatively
disadvantaged children from attending college. Arguably better education on the
opportunities to get aid would solve this problem, but the problem has existed for a long
time and better education has not done much to change the picture thus far.
The second point is that the process of determining eligibility for aid is itself
costly. Many children have divorced parents, with a non-custodial parent often not anxious
to pay for their children's college. Perhaps it is appropriate that they should pay, but
forcing payment is not an easy task and it doesn't make sense to make the children in such
situations suffer.
In many ways, the free college solution is likely to be the easiest, with the tax coming
out of the income of higher earners, the vast majority of whom will be the beneficiaries of
this policy. There are ways to save on paying for college. My favorite is limiting the pay
of anyone at a public school to the salary of the president of the United States ($400,000
a year). We can also deny the privilege of tax exempt status to private universities or
other non-profits that don't accept a similar salary cap. These folks can pay their top
executives whatever they want, but they shouldn't ask the taxpayers to subsidize their
exorbitant pay packages.
There is one final issue in the column worth noting. At one point it makes a pitch for
the virtues of economic growth then tells readers:
"It's not in conflict with the goal of redistribution."
At least some of us progressive types are not particularly focused on "redistribution."
The focus of my book and much of my other writing is on the way that the market has been
structured to redistribute income upward, compared with the structures in place in the
quarter century after World War II. Is understandable that people who are basically very
satisfied with this upward redistribution of market income would not want this rigging of
the market even to be discussed, but serious progressives do.
Although I like much of what
Dean Baker, I don't like his term "loser liberalism", nor do I think his de-emphasis on
redistribution useful. Au contraire, I think talking about redistribution is absolutely
essential if we are to move to sustainable world. We can no longer be certain that per
person GDP growth will be sufficient to be able to ignore distribution or to rely on
"predistribution".
The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive
By Dean Baker
Upward Redistribution of Income: It Didn't Just Happen
Money does not fall up. Yet the United States has experienced a massive upward
redistribution of income over the last three decades, leaving the bulk of the workforce
with little to show from the economic growth since 1980. This upward redistribution was not
the result of the natural workings of the market. Rather, it was the result of deliberate
policy, most of which had the support of the leadership of both the Republican and
Democratic parties.
Unfortunately, the public and even experienced progressive political figures are not
well informed about the key policies responsible for this upward redistribution, even
though they are not exactly secrets. The policies are so well established as conventional
economic policy that we tend to think of them as incontrovertibly virtuous things, but each
has a dark side. An anti-inflation policy by the Federal Reserve Board, which relies on
high interest rates, slows growth and throws people out of work. Major trade deals hurt
manufacturing workers by putting them in direct competition with low-paid workers in the
developing world. A high dollar makes U.S. goods uncompetitive in world markets.
Almost any economist would acknowledge these facts, but few economists have explored
their implications and explained them to the general public. As a result, most of us have
little understanding of the economic policies that have the largest impact on our jobs, our
homes, and our lives. Instead, public debate and the most hotly contested legislation in
Congress tend to be about issues that will have relatively little impact.
This lack of focus on crucial economic issues is a serious problem from the standpoint
of advancing a progressive agenda....
What is the Democratic Party's former constituency of labor and progressive reformers to do?
Are they to stand by and let the party be captured in Hillary's wake by Robert Rubin's Goldman
Sachs-Citigroup gang that backed her and Obama?
The 2016 election sounded the death knell for the identity politics. Its aim was to persuade
voters not to think of their identity in economic terms, but to think of themselves as women or
as racial and ethnic groups first and foremost, not as having common economic interests. This
strategy to distract voters from economic policies has obviously failed...
This election showed that voters have a sense of when they're being lied to. After eight years of
Obama's demagogy, pretending to support the people but delivering his constituency to his
financial backers on Wall Street. 'Identity politics' has given way to the stronger force of
economic distress. Mobilizing identity politics behind a Wall Street program will no longer
work."
By Michael Hudson
Tuesday, November 15, 2016
..................
The danger of not taking this opportunity to clean out the party now
The Democratic Party can save itself only by focusing on economic issues – in a way that reverses
its neoliberal stance under Obama, and indeed going back to Bill Clinton's pro-Wall Street administration.
The Democrats need to do what Britain's Labour Party did by cleaning out Tony Blair's Thatcherites.
As Paul Craig Roberts wrote over the weekend: "Change cannot occur if the displaced ruling class
is left intact after a revolution against them. We have proof of this throughout South America. Every
revolution by the indigenous people has left unmolested the Spanish ruling class, and every revolution
has been overthrown by collusion between the ruling class and Washington." Otherwise the Democrats
will be left as an empty shell.
Now is the time for Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and the few other progressives who have not
been kept out of office by the DNC to make their move by appointing their own nominees to the DNC.
If they fail, the Democratic Party is dead.
An indication of how hard the present Democratic Party leadership will fight against this change
of allegiance is reflected in their long fight against Bernie Sanders and other progressives going
back to Dennis Kucinich. The past five days of MoveOn demonstrations sponsored by Hillary's backer
George Soros may be an attempt to preempt the expected push by Bernie's supporters, by backing Howard
Dean for head of the DNC while organizing groups to be called on for what may be an American "Maidan
Spring."
Perhaps some leading Democrats preferred to lose with their Wall Street candidate Hillary than
win with a reformer who would have edged them out of their right-wing positions. But the main problem
was hubris. Hillary's coterie thought they could make their own reality. They believed that hundreds
of millions of dollars of TV and other advertising could sway voters. But eight years of Obama's
rescue of Wall Street instead of the economy was enough for most voters to see how deceptive his
promises had been. And they distrusted Hillary's feigned embrace of Bernie's opposition to the TPP.
The Rust Belt swing states that shifted away from backing Obama for the last two terms are not
racist states. They voted for Obama twice, after all. But seeing his support Wall Street, they had
lost faith in her credibility – and were won by Bernie in his primaries against Hillary.
Donald Trump is thus Obama's legacy. Last week's vote was a backlash. Hillary thought that getting
Barack and Michelle Obama to campaign as her surrogates would help, but it turned out to be the kiss
of death. Obama egged her on by urging voters to "save his legacy" by supporting her as his Third
Term. But voters did not want his legacy of giveaways to the banks, the pharmaceutical and health-insurance
monopolies.
Most of all, it was Hillary's asking voters to ignore her economic loyalty to Wall Street simply
to elect a woman, and her McCarthy-like accusations that Trump was "Putin's candidate" (duly echoed
by Paul Krugman). On Wednesday, Obama's former Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul tweeted that
"Putin intervened in our elections and succeeded." It was as if the Republicans and even the FBI
were a kind of fifth column for the KGB. Her receptiveness to cutting back Social Security and steering
wage withholding into the stock market did not help – especially her hedge fund campaign contributors.
Compulsory health-insurance fees continue to rise for healthy young people. This was the profit center
Obamacare offered the health-insurance monopoly.
The anti-Trump rallies mobilized by George Soros and MoveOn look like a preemptive attempt to
capture the potential socialist left for the old Clinton divide-and-conquer strategy. The group was
defeated five years ago when it tried to enlist Occupy Wall Street as part of the Democratic Party.
It's attempt to make a comeback right now should be heard as an urgent call to Bernie's supporters
and other "real" Democrats that they need to create an alternative pretty quickly so as not to let
"socialism" be captured by Soros and his apparatchiks carried over from the Clinton campaign.
"Reconstructed" might be a better term. But barging full steam ahead with the Wall Street-friendly
Chuck Schumer, as though nothing has happened, seems particularly obtuse on the part of the Democrats
to me.
There is now a growing movement among the Berniecrats to join the Democratic Socialists of America
and build it up into a much larger and more influential organization capable of exerting real political
pressure on the political process.
"without shutting out the wealthy, business interests, or US Corporations"
I should have been less opaque and simply added that America is a Capitalist based nation and
shutting out its Capitalists, who risk their capital for profit, is exactly like biting the hand
that feeds.
Obviously there are evil wealthy people such as that rich women who was caught asking Mitt Romney
about 'eliminating, reducing or cutting off benefits to the 47% who refuse to work and earn a living'
so her taxes would be cut. Obviously there are evil businesses that are predators and take and do
not give back. Obviously there are evil MNC corporations, Apple is in my sites, that refuse to pay
their fair share of taxes to run this nation.
But, as obviously there are super kind and nice wealthy people, businesses, and corporations that
go out of their way to give back to their communities and the vote for Democrats.
The wealthy, American businesses, and MNC corporations will always be lead, in most places on
earth, by those who want lower taxes and less regulation, that's built into the nature of having
more and the desire to control it rather than give it to a government. IT IS NOT EVIL.
Accept that concept and you know why I believe the Democrat Party must be a welcoming home for
the Capitalist Risk Takers, without any acrimony or embarrassment, but with open arms and respect
for what they've accomplished with their lives.
Why Liberals Should Support a Trump Republican Nomination
By Jonathan Chait
February 5, 2016
8:54 a.m.
The initial stupefaction and dismay with which liberals greeted Donald Trump's candidacy have
slowly given way to feelings of Schadenfreude- reveling in the suffering of others, in this case
the apoplectic members of the Republican Establishment. Are such feelings morally wrong? Or can liberals
enjoy the spectacle unleavened by guilt? As Republican voters start actually voting, is it okay to
be sad - alarmed, even - by the prospect that the Trump hostile takeover of the GOP may fail?
There are three reasons, in descending order of obviousness, for a liberal to earnestly and patriotically
support a Trump Republican nomination. The first, of course, is that he would almost certainly lose.
Trump's ability to stay atop the polls for months, even as critics predicted his demise, has given
him an aura of voodoo magic that frightens some Democrats. But whatever wizardry Trump has used to
defy the laws of political gravity has worked only within his party. Among the electorate as a whole,
he is massively - indeed, historically - unpopular, with unfavorable ratings now hovering around
60 percent and a public persona almost perfectly designed to repel the Obama coalition: racial minorities,
single women, and college-educated whites. It would take a landscape-altering event like a recession
for him to win; even that might not be enough.
Second, a Trump nomination might upend his party. The GOP is a machine that harnesses ethno-nationalistic
fear - of communists, criminals, matrimonial gays, terrorists, snooty cultural elites - to win elections
and then, once in office, caters to its wealthy donor base. (This is why even a social firebrand
like Ted Cruz would privately assure the billionaire investor Paul Singer that he wasn't particularly
concerned about gay-marriage laws.) As its voting base has lost college-educated voters and gained
blue-collar whites, the fissure between the means by which Republicans attain power and the ends
they pursue once they have it has widened.
What has most horrified conservative activists about Trump's rise is how little he or his supporters
seem to care about their anti-government ideology. When presented with the candidate's previous support
for higher taxes on the rich or single-payer insurance, heresies of the highest order, Trump fans
merely shrug. During this campaign, Trump has mostly conformed to party doctrine, but without much
conviction. Trump does not mouth the rote conservative formulation that government is failing because
it can't work and that the solution is to cut it down to size. Instead, he says it is failing because
it is run by idiots and that the solution is for it to instead be run by Trump. About half of Republicans
favor higher taxes on the rich, a position that has zero representation among their party's leaders.
And those Republicans are the most likely to support Trump.
Trump's candidacy represents, among other things, a revolt by the Republican proletariat against
its master class. That is why National Review devoted a cover editorial and 22 columns to denouncing
Trump as a heretic to the conservative movement. A Trump nomination might not actually cleave the
GOP in two, but it could wreak havoc. If, like me, you think the Republican Party in its current
incarnation needs to be burned to the ground and rebuilt anew, Trump is the only one holding a match.
The third reason to prefer a Trump nomination: If he does win, a Trump presidency would probably
wind up doing less harm to the country than a Marco Rubio or a Cruz presidency. It might even, possibly,
do some good.
The Trump campaign may feel like an off-the-grid surrealistic nightmare, The Man in the High Castle
meets Idiocracy. But something like it has happened before. Specifically, it happened in California,
a place where things often happen before they happen to the rest of us, in 2003, when Arnold Schwarzenegger
won the governorship. At the time, the prospect of Schwarzenegger governing America's largest state
struck many of us as just as ghastly as the idea of a Trump presidency seems now. Like Trump, Schwarzenegger
came directly to politics from the celebrity world without bothering to inform himself about public
policy. He campaigned as a vacuous Man of Action in opposition to the Politicians, breezing by all
the specifics as the petty obsessions of his inferiors.
I think the takeaway is that Republican politicians lie and lie and lie and lie even about recent
history. The exasperating thing to me is the complete inability of a Democratic politician to effectively
counter these lies with facts. I wasn't that impressed with Sanders ability to argue effectively
to be honest.
My mind goes back to the abortion question in the last debate. Trump's accusation that Clinton
wanted to rip babies out of mother's wombs at 9 months has no basis in medical science or actual
practice. However, despite being someone who should be an "expert" on women's issues could not articulate
accurately how medically preposterous this notion was or even the facts behind late term abortions
and why women need them at all. Surely a politician of Clinton's "skill" would at least have an anecdote
ready about a woman who had a late-term abortion.
" The exasperating thing to me is the complete inability of a Democratic politician to effectively
counter these lies with facts. "
Yes but the election isn't just about that. Hillary was the establishment candidate and the establishment
isn't delivering. Trump was the outsider - he took over the Republican party - and it didn't matter
that he lies or is obnoxious to a certain type of voter.
Obama is the establishment candidate. However, Obama has charisma and I think we need more politicians
like this. I'm past caring whether or not they are great at policy (apparently Hillary was and she
still couldn't argue effectively against Trump!) I want someone who can effectively argue the case
for progressive policies. We know progressive policies are the right ones we just need someone who
can fight for those policies. They need an encyclopedic knowledge of the shit Republicans have done,
why it is wrong and how progressive policies have worked for the betterment of the 99 percent.
The unheard winning and bold economic agenda
Findings from Roosevelt Institute's Election night survey
....................
Economic change election and the working class vote
Throughout this election cycle, polling conducted on behalf of the Roosevelt Institute and others
revealed the potential of a "rewrite the rules" narrative, message and bold policy agenda to win
broad and deep public support. It fit the times where voters wanted change and were tired of corporate
interests dominating politics at the expense of the middle class.
It was also appealing to swing groups including white college graduates and white working class
women. True, Trump always enjoyed big margins among the white working class men who identified with
him, and they turned out for him early and in growing numbers. But there were points where Clinton
was outperforming Obama with white working class women.
The data does not support that idea that the white working class was inevitably lost, as polls
showed fairly resilient support with white working class women, until the Clinton campaign stopped
talking about economic change and asked people to vote for unity, temperament and experience and
to continue on President Obama's progress. As we shall see, both the Democratic base and white working
class voters are struggling economically and would demand change in their own ways.
Three Myths About Clinton's Defeat in Election 2016 Debunked
Posted on November 14, 2016
By Lambert Strether
This post is not an explainer about why and how Clinton lost (and Trump won). I think we're going
to be sorting that out for awhile. Rather, it's a simple debunking of common talking points by Clinton
loyalists and Democrat Establishment operatives; the sort of talking point you might hear on Twitter,
entirely shorn of caveats and context. For each of the three talking points, I'll present an especially
egregious version of the myth, followed by a rebuttal.
Clinton's responses to the charges about NAFTA were incredibly weak. This is strange considering
she must have known that topic was going to be raised - why was she so unprepared?
llary Clinton was an extraordinarily terrible candidate for the Democrats to run in 2016.
Donald Trump's approval rating is 38 percent. President Obama's just bumped up to 57 percent.
No amount of furious dissembling from humiliated Clinton partisans will convince me that Obama -
and very probably Bernie Sanders* - wouldn't have beaten Trump handily.
So what gives?
Let me start by noting that the overall polls were off, but not by that much. They predicted a
Clinton victory by about about 3 points. And in the popular vote, that prediction was reasonably
close. Clinton is ahead by a bit less than 1 percent nationally, with many votes still to count.
What tipped the election was about 100,000 votes spread across just three states: Wisconsin, Michigan,
and Pennsylvania. Here's where the polls did seriously botch things. Trump won these states by 1,
0.3, and 1.2 points respectively (assuming the close result in Michigan holds). The poll averages
showed Clinton winning these states by roughly 6 points, 3 to 7 points, and 2 to 5 points respectively,
depending on who you ask.
Some people did correctly point to this outcome being a possibility. Remarkably, most of them
relied heavily on gut-check analysis. Zach Carter and Ryan Grim wrote way back in February that Trump
could win by peeling off Rust Belt states, based on little more than intuitions about trade and general
voting patterns. Michael Moore hypothesized something similar. Nathan J. Robinson wrote around the
same time that Clinton would lose because she is a wooden, uninspiring campaigner who was almost
uniquely vulnerable to Trump-style attacks on character and integrity.
Van Jones was perhaps most prescient of all. In June, he argued that Trump would not gaffe himself
out of the election, because outrageous statements help him get attention on social media; that tut-tutting
about his lack of realistic policy would not work, because voters neither know nor care about that;
and that he could potentially win over Rust Belt whites attracted to Trump's anti-trade messaging,
because "we're not paying attention to a big chunk of America that is hurting - that would accept
any change, the bigger the better."
With the benefit of hindsight, I think we can add a couple more factors to the pile. First is
the self-deception of the Clinton campaign and its media sycophants. She did not visit Wisconsin
at all between April and the election, and largely abandoned Obama's working-class message from 2012
in favor of portraying Trump as a dangerous, woman-hating maniac.
They were enabled in this by pro-Clinton publications, which churned out endless slavish portrayals
of Clinton as some kind of wizard of politics and policy, whose grasp of fine detail would surely
deliver the electoral goods. In fact, it turned out that her vaunted algorithm-driven turnout machine
was contacting tons of Trump voters. Paul Romer points to the problem of "mathiness" in economics,
where complicated and intimidating theoretical symbolism is built up without establishing clear linkages
to the real world. Lots of computers, theories, and datasets might be the most sophisticated way
to attack voter turnout, or it might be a way to simply appear sophisticated while dismissing people
whose ideas don't come packaged with a science-y veneer. (Something similar seems to have happened
to the wonky election-simulator people.)
Then there is the Clintons' omnipresent aura of scandal and corruption, which is about 50 percent
unfair double standard and 50 percent totally their fault. The political media has been obsessed
with the Clintons for 20 years to a frankly psychotic degree, particularly given how much worse the
stories about Trump were. On the other hand, the Clintons enable that coverage with a paranoid and
secretive attitude, and an obvious hatred of the press. The Clinton Foundation coverage was unfair
compared to the much worse Trump Foundation, but then again, there was some genuinely skeezy stuff
in there. There's a good chance that FBI Director James Comey's vague letter about emails to congressional
Republicans, which led to an extremely ill-timed media firestorm, tipped the election to Trump. But
then again, she might have avoided the whole story by following the dang rules in the first place.
I always assumed that if Clinton were nominated for president, the race would be dominated by
some weird quasi-scandal that dragged on for month after month. It's not fair, but it is simply the
reality of the Clintons. At some point, one simply has to take that into account.
That brings me to a final point: Clinton's general political affect. She is not a great campaigner
(by her own admission), a rather robotic speaker, and most of all, a dynasty politician who very
obviously got the nomination because the party elite cleared the decks for her. Given how the party
has evolved, her political history was filled with devastating indictments of her judgment and priorities.
Even after getting a reasonably good party platform (after just barely beating back about the most
unlikely primary challenger imaginable), she was a non-credible vehicle for it. Without Obama's mesmerizing
charisma and political energy, her image was defined by things like taking millions of dollars for
secret speeches to Wall Street banks and refusing to release the transcripts. She simply was not
a good fit for the party, and a terrible avatar of the party in a country furious at self-dealing
elite institutions of all kinds.
Hillary Clinton was a heavily compromised candidate and bad campaigner who grossly misjudged the
political terrain, and thus bled just enough of the Obama coalition to let Trump sneak past. If we
ever get to vote again, let's hope the party learns from this epic disaster.
And that, now, is the key question: Where do the Democrats go from here?
This 1000 word article traces the impact of Keynesian theories on the 20th century.
The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) has created awareness of the great gap between academic models
and reality. IMF Chief Economist Olivier Blanchard said that modern DSGE macroeconomic models currently
used for policy decisions are based on assumptions which are profoundly at odds with what we know
about consumers and firms. More than seven different schools of macroeconomic thought contend with
each other, without coming to agreement on any fundamental issue. This bears a striking resemblance
to the post-Depression era when Keynes set out to resolve the "deep divergences of opinion between
fellow economists which have for the time being almost destroyed the practical influence of economic
theory."
Likewise, today, the inability of mainstream economists to predict, understand, explain, or find
remedies for the Global Financial Crisis, has deeply damaged the reputation of economists and economic
theories. Recently, World Bank Chief Economist Paul Romer stated that for more than three decades,
macroeconomics has gone backwards. Since modern macroeconomics bears a strong resemblance to pre-Keynesian
theories, Keynesian theories have fresh relevance, as described below.
In the aftermath of the Great Depression, economic misery was a major factor which led to the
Russian Revolution and the rise of Hitler in Germany. Conventional economic theory held that market
forces would automatically and quickly correct the temporary disequilibrium of high unemployment
and low production in Europe and USA. Keynes argued that high unemployment could persist, and government
interventions in the form of active monetary and fiscal policy were required to correct the economic
problems. Many have suggested that Keynes rescued Capitalism by providing governments with rationale
to intervene on behalf of the workers, thereby preventing socialist or communist revolutions. There
is no doubt that strong and powerful labor movements in Europe and USA derived strength from the
economic misery of the masses, and also took inspiration from the pro-labor and anti-capitalist theories
of Marx. While it is hard to be sure whether Keynes saved capitalism, we can be very sure that Keynes
and Keynesian theories were extremely influential in shaping the economic landscapes of the 20th
Century.
Keynes actually met Roosevelt (FDR) to try to persuade him of the necessity of an aggressive fiscal
policy and of running budget deficits, in order to lift the US economy out of recession. He was only
partially successful. FDR, like nearly all political leaders as well as economists of the time, was
convinced of the necessity of balancing budgets: this is the same 'austerity' being touted today
as the cure for economic problems. Leading economists like Lionel Robinson and Friedrich Hayek argued
in favor of austerity, and said that Keynesian remedies were dangerously wrong. They held the view
that the Great Depression had been caused by excessively easy monetary policies in the pre-Depression
period, and Keynesian interventions in the form of further easy monetary and fiscal policies would
only prolong the agony.
FDR was not quite convinced by Keynes, but was politically savvy enough to announce that he would
not balance the budget on the backs of the American people. Accordingly, he did go against his personal
convictions, as well as his campaign promises of balancing the budget, which he believed to be a
sound and necessary economic policy. Keynes felt that the economic policies of FDR were timid and
hesitant, and prolonged the recession un-necessarily. In light of contemporary experience of the
tremendously aggressive expansionary monetary policy in the post-GFC era, we can see that bolder
steps by FDR would not have caused the harms that he was afraid of. In fact, after the economy recovered
somewhat, FDR went back to conventional wisdom and started reducing budget deficits in 1936. This
created a mini-recession which has been labelled the "Roosevelt Recession of 1937". Duly chastened,
FDR embraced Keynesian policies with greater conviction, and increased deficit spending right up
to the second World War. It was the effectiveness of Keynesian policies that led even arch-enemy
Friedman to state that "We are all Keynesians now," though he later recanted. Indeed, he master-minded
the Monetarist counter-revolution in the 1970's which eventually led to a rejection of Keynesian
insights, and a return to the pre-Keynesian ideas of austerity as a cure for recessions. Forgetting
the hard-learned lessons of Keynes led to a recurrence of problems very similar to those faced by
Keynes in the form of GFC 2007.
Following the GFC, there has been a resurgence of interest in Keynes and Keynesian Theories. In
the "Return of Depression Economics", Krugman argued for the continuing relevance of Keynes, and
stated that we could end the Great Recession immediately by implementing Keynesian policies. China
implemented Keynesian policies, and used a fiscal stimulus of $586 billion spread over two years,
to successfully combat the global recession created by the GFC. Unlike countries forced to implement
austerity, which further wrecked their economies, the Chinese economy was able to perform well in
the aftermath of the GFC. The Shanghai index had been falling sharply since the September 2008 bankruptcy
of Lehman Brothers, but the decline was halted when news of the planned stimulus leaked in late October.
The day after the stimulus was officially announced, the Shanghai index immediately rose by 7.3%,
followed by sustained growth. Speaking at the 2010 Summer Davos, Premier Wen Jiabao also credited
the Keynesian fiscal stimulus for good performance of the Chinese economy over the two years following
the GFC.
Meanwhile, even IMF acknowledged the failure of austerity, the anti-thesis of the Keynesian policy.
Massive damage was caused to Greece, Ireland, Portugal and other economies which were forced to tighten
budgets in response to the recession. In the see-saw battle between Keynesians and Monetarists, after
three decades of darkness, the Keynesian star seems to be rising. Strange as it may seem, many fundamental
insights of Keynes were never actually absorbed by conventional economists. Keynes himself said that
he had the greatest difficulty in escaping the habits of thought created by an economics education.
Mainstream economists never made this escape. As a result, Keynesian theories remain an undiscovered
treasure offering deep insights into current economic conditions.
The Glaring Contradiction at the Heart of Donald Trump's
Economic Policy
http://nyti.ms/2eJFsw4
via @UpshotNYT
NYT - Neil Irwin - November 17
Campaign promises are easy. Governing is hard.
It is a truism that Donald J. Trump and his team will soon learn. And a fascinating example has
emerged since the election, courtesy of global currency markets. It is a study in the kind of complex
trade-offs that Mr. Trump rarely grappled with during his campaign but will face many times a day
in the Oval Office.
A centerpiece of Mr. Trump's campaign was the United States' trade deficits. He pledged to eliminate
them and create a resurgence in American manufacturing.
He has also pledged tax cuts, infrastructure spending and deregulation. That set of policies has
led markets to expect speedier economic growth and thus higher interest rates in coming years. That,
in turn, is driving the value of the dollar higher on currency markets. Since Election Day, the dollar
is up 2.6 percent against an index of six other major currencies. The value of the Mexican peso has
fallen 10 percent against the dollar, a remarkable swing for the United States' third-largest trading
partner.
You don't need to be an economist to see what that means: A pricier dollar makes it harder for
American manufacturers to compete overseas; it gives an advantage to companies that locate operations
elsewhere; and it will, all else being equal, tend to make the trade deficit higher rather than lower.
This is not to suggest that the shift in the currency so far is a major disaster for American
manufacturers and other exporters (though those that ship their goods to Mexico will feel the brunt
of it). There was a bigger rise in the dollar in 2014 and 2015 that damaged export sectors even more.
Photo
A board displaying the exchange rate for the Mexican peso and the dollar in a bank in Mexico City
this week. Credit Henry Romero/Reuters
But let's imagine that Mr. Trump follows through on the policy mix he's hinted at so far: a combination
of loose fiscal policy (think more spending on defense and infrastructure, and tax cuts) and tighter
monetary policy (the Federal Reserve raising interest rates faster than
had seemed likely before the election). At that point, the dollar could move more decisively higher,
creating a tension that the president and his advisers would have to resolve one way or the other.
As a rule of thumb, said Joseph Gagnon, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International
Economics, a 10 percent rise in the dollar would be expected to increase the current account deficit
(a broader concept than trade deficit, but closely related) by 1 to 1.5 percent of G.D.P. in the
ensuing two to three years.
In that scenario, Mr. Trump's pledge to eliminate the $500 billion United States trade deficit
would have just become $180 billion to $270 billion harder.
This is the kind of dilemma presidents face all the time. The Oval Office debate might go something
like this: The Commerce Secretary complains, "Mr. President, this strong dollar is just killing our
manufacturers; they can't compete with this kind of appreciation." The Treasury Secretary, who is
in charge of the currency, responds, "It's a necessary evil, Mr. President; our economy is booming
so much that global investors just can't get enough of United States assets."
When there are these kinds of disputes, the president has to decide. And when a president tries
to find a solution that answers both concerns, there are always complex ripples. For example, "let's
appoint Fed officials who will cut interest rates" might temporarily let you have both a booming
domestic economy and a competitive export sector, but would mean an increase in inflation - which
will make both the bond market and many retired Americans living on fixed incomes unhappy.
The tension between currency policy and trade policy is just one example. Mr. Trump's promises
to repeal Obamacare while keeping some of its most popular features would be hard to carry out in
practice. Virtually every issue in tax policy, diplomacy and regulatory policy features similar complex
trade-offs.
None of this is to say that these tensions are unsolvable, or that Mr. Trump won't overcome his
lack of a policy background to arrive at good solutions. But he will almost certainly find out soon
that "Make America Great Again" is a slogan, not an answer.
So the post-mortem begins. Much electronic ink has already been spilled and predictable fault
lines have emerged. Debate rages in particular on the question of whether Trump's victory was driven
by economic factors. Like Duncan Weldon, I think Torsten Bell gets it about right – economics is
an essential part of the story even if the complete picture is more complex.
Neoliberalism is a word I usually try to avoid. It's often used by people on the left as an easy
catch-all to avoid engaging with difficult issues. Broadly speaking, however, it provides a short-hand
for the policy status quo over the last thirty years or so: free movement of goods, labour and capital,
fiscal conservatism, rules-based monetary policy, deregulated finance and a preference for supply-side
measures in the labour market.
Some will argue this consensus has nothing to with the rise of far-right populism. I disagree. Both
economics and economic policy have brought us here.
But to what extent has academic economics provided the basis for neoliberal policy? The question
had been in my mind even before the Trump and Brexit votes. A few months back, Duncan Weldon posed
the question, 'whatever happened to deficit bias?' In my view, the responses at the time missed the
mark. More recently, Ann Pettifor and Simon Wren Lewis have been discussing the relationship between
ideology, economics and fiscal austerity.
I have great respect for Simon – especially his efforts to combat the false media narratives around
austerity. But I don't think he gets it right on economics and ideology. His argument is that in
a standard model – a sticky-price DSGE system – fiscal policy should be used when nominal rates are
at the zero lower bound. Post-2008 austerity policies are therefore at odds with the academic consensus.
This is correct in simple terms, but I think misses the bigger picture of what academic economics
has been saying for the last 30 years. To explain, I need to recap some history.
Fiscal policy as a macroeconomic management tool is associated with the ideas of Keynes. Against
the academic consensus of his day, he argued that the economy could get stuck in periods of demand
deficiency characterised by persistent involuntary unemployment. The monetarist counter-attack was
led by Milton Friedman – who denied this possibility. In the long run, he argued, the economy has
a 'natural' rate of unemployment to which it will gravitate automatically (the mechanism still remains
to be explained). Any attempt to use activist fiscal or monetary policy to reduce unemployment below
this natural rate will only lead to higher inflation. This led to the bitter disputes of the 1960s
and 70s between Keynesians and Monetarists. The Monetarists emerged as victors – at least in the
eyes of the orthodoxy – with the inflationary crises of the 1970s. This marks the beginning of the
end for fiscal policy in the history of macroeconomics.
In Friedman's world, short-term macro policy could be justified in a deflationary situation as
a way to help the economy back to its 'natural' state. But, for Friedman, macro policy means monetary
policy. In line with the doctrine that the consumer always knows best, government spending was proscribed
as distortionary and inefficient. For Friedman, the correct policy response to deflation is a temporary
increase in the rate of growth of the money supply.
It's hard to view Milton Friedman's campaign against Keynes as disconnected from ideological influence.
Friedman's role in the Mont Pelerin society is well documented. This group of economic liberals,
led by Friedrich von Hayek, formed after World War II with the purpose of opposing the move towards
collectivism of which Keynes was a leading figure. For a time at least, the group adopted the term
'neoliberal' to describe their political philosophy. This was an international group of economists
whose express purpose was to influence politics and politicians – and they were successful.
Hayek's thesis – which acquires a certain irony in light of Trump's ascent – was that collectivism
inevitably leads to authoritarianism and fascism. Friedman's Chicago economics department formed
one point in a triangular alliance with Lionel Robbins' LSE in London, and Hayek's fellow Austrians
in Vienna. While in the 1930s, Friedman had expressed support for the New Deal, by the 1950s he had
swung sharply in the direction of economic liberalism. As Brad Delong puts it:
by the early 1950s, his respect for even the possibility of government action was gone. His grudging
approval of the New Deal was gone, too: Those elements that weren't positively destructive were ineffective,
diverting attention from what Friedman now believed would have cured the Great Depression, a substantial
expansion of the money supply. The New Deal, Friedman concluded, had been 'the wrong cure for the
wrong disease.'
While Friedman never produced a complete formal model to describe his macroeconomic vision, his
successor at Chicago, Robert Lucas did – the New Classical model. (He also successfully destroyed
the Keynesian structural econometric modelling tradition with his 'Lucas critique'.) Lucas' New Classical
colleagues followed in his footsteps, constructing an even more extreme version of the model: the
so-called Real Business Cycle model. This simply assumes a world in which all markets work perfectly
all of the time, and the single infinitely lived representative agent, on average, correctly predicts
the future.
This is the origin of the 'policy ineffectiveness hypothesis' – in such a world, government becomes
completely impotent. Any attempt at deficit spending will be exactly matched by a corresponding reduction
in private spending – the so-called Ricardian Equivalence hypothesis. Fiscal policy has no effect
on output and employment. Even monetary policy becomes totally ineffective: if the central bank chooses
to loosen monetary policy, the representative agent instantly and correctly predicts higher inflation
and adjusts her behaviour accordingly.
This vision, emerging from a leading centre of conservative thought, is still regarded by the
academic economics community as a major scientific step forward. Simon describes it as `a progressive
research programme'.
What does all this have to with the current status quo? The answer is that this model – with one
single modification – is the 'standard model' which Simon and others point to when they argue that
economics has no ideological bias. The modification is that prices in the goods market are slow to
adjust to changes in demand. As a result, Milton Friedman's result that policy is effective in the
short run is restored. The only substantial difference to Friedman's model is that the policy tool
is the rate of interest, not the money supply. In a deflationary situation, the central bank should
cut the nominal interest rate to raise demand and assist the automatic but sluggish transition back
to the `natural' rate of unemployment.
So what of Duncan's question: what happened to deficit bias? – this refers to the assertion in
economics textbooks that there will always be a tendency for governments to allow deficits to increase.
The answer is that it was written out of the textbooks decades ago – because it is simply taken as
given that fiscal policy is not the correct tool.
To check this, I went to our university library and looked through a selection of macroeconomics
textbooks. Mankiw's 'Macroeconomics' is probably the mostly widely used. I examined the 2007 edition
– published just before the financial crisis. The chapter on 'Stabilisation Policy' dispenses with
fiscal policy in half a page – a case study of Romer's critique of Keynes is presented under the
heading 'Is the Stabilization of the Economy a Figment of the Data?' The rest of the chapter focuses
on monetary policy: time inconsistency, interest rate rules and central bank independence. The only
appearance of the liquidity trap and the zero lower bound is in another half-page box, but fiscal
policy doesn't get a mention.
The post-crisis twelfth edition of Robert Gordon's textbook does include a chapter on fiscal policy
– entitled `The Government Budget, the Government Debt and the Limitations of Fiscal Policy'. While
Gordon acknowledges that fiscal policy is an option during strongly deflationary periods when interest
rates are at the zero lower bound, most of the chapter is concerned with the crowding out of private
investment, the dangers of government debt and the conditions under which governments become insolvent.
Of the textbooks I examined, only Blanchard's contained anything resembling a balanced discussion
of fiscal policy.
So, in Duncan's words, governments are 'flying a two engined plane but choosing to use only one
motor' not just because of media bias, an ill-informed public and misguided politicians – Simon's
explanation – but because they are doing what the macro textbooks tell them to do.
The reason is that the standard New Keynesian model is not a Keynesian model at all – it is a
monetarist model. Aside from the mathematical sophistication, it is all but indistinguishable from
Milton Friedman's ideologically-driven description of the macroeconomy. In particular, Milton Friedman's
prohibition of fiscal policy is retained with – in more recent years – a caveat about the zero-lower
bound (Simon makes essentially the same point about fiscal policy here).
It's therefore odd that when Simon discusses the relationship between ideology and economics he
chooses to draw a dividing line between those who use a sticky-price New Keynesian DSGE model and
those who use a flexible-price New Classical version. The beliefs of the latter group are, Simon
suggests, ideological, while those of the former group are based on ideology-free science. This strikes
me as arbitrary. Simon's justification is that, despite the evidence, the RBC model denies the possibility
of involuntary unemployment. But the sticky-price version – which denies any role for inequality,
finance, money, banking, liquidity, default, long-run unemployment, the use of fiscal policy away
from the ZLB, supply-side hysteresis effects and plenty else besides – is acceptable. He even goes
so far as to say 'I have no problem seeing the RBC model as a flex-price NK model' – even the RBC
model is non-ideological so long as the hierarchical framing is right.
Even Simon's key distinction – the New Keynesian model allows for involuntary unemployment – is open
to question. Keynes' definition of involuntary unemployment is that there exist people willing and
able to work at the going wage who are unable to find employment. On this definition the New Keynesian
model falls short – in the face of a short-run demand shortage caused by sticky prices the representative
agent simply selects a new optimal labour supply. Workers are never off their labour supply curve.
In the Smets Wouters model – a very widely used New Keynesian DSGE model – the labour market is described
as follows: 'household j chooses hours worked Lt(j)'. It is hard to reconcile involuntary unemployment
with households choosing how much labour they supply.
What of the position taken by the profession in the wake of 2008? Reinhart and Rogoff's contribution
is by now infamous. Ann also draws attention to the 2010 letter signed by 20 top-ranking economists
– including Rogoff – demanding austerity in the UK. Simon argues that Ann overlooks the fact that
'58 equally notable economists signed a response arguing the 20 were wrong'.
It is difficult to agree that the signatories to the response letter, organised by Lord Skidelsky,
are 'equally notable'. Many are heterodox economists – critics of standard macroeconomics. Those
mainstream economists on the list hold positions at lower-ranking institutions than the 20. I know
many of the 58 personally – I know none of the 20. Simon notes:
Of course those that signed the first letter, and in particular Ken Rogoff, turned out to be a more
prominent voice in the subsequent debate, but that is because he supported what policymakers were
doing. He was mostly useful rather than influential.
For Simon, causality is unidirectional: policy-makers cherry-pick academic economics to fit their
purpose but economists have no influence on policy. This seems implausible. It is undoubtedly true
that pro-austerity economists provided useful cover for small-state ideologues like George Osborne.
But the parallels between policy and academia are too strong for the causality to be unidirectional.
Osborne's small state ideology is a descendent of Thatcherism – the point when neoliberalism first
replaced Keynesianism. Is it purely coincidence that the 1980s was also the high-point for extreme
free market Chicago economics such as Real Business Cycle models?
The parallel between policy and academia continues with the emergence of the sticky-price New Keynesian
version as the 'standard' model in the 90s alongside the shift to the third way of Blair and Clinton.
Blairism represents a modified, less extreme, version of Thatcherism. The all-out assault on workers
and the social safety net was replaced with 'workfare' and 'flexicurity'.
A similar story can be told for international trade, as laid out in this excellent piece by Martin
Sandbu. In the 1990s, just as the 'heyday of global trade integration was getting underway', economists
were busy making the case that globalisation had no negative implications for employment or inequality
in rich nations. To do this, they came up with the 'skill-biased technological change' (SBTC) hypothesis.
This states that as technology advances and the potential for automation grows, the demand for high-skilled
labour increases. This introduces the hitch that higher educational standards are required before
the gains from automation can be felt by those outside the top income percentiles. This leads to
a `race between education and technology' – a race which technology was winning, leading to weaker
demand for middle and low-skill workers and rising 'skill premiums' for high skilled workers as a
result.
Writing in the Financial Times shortly before the financial crisis, Jagdish Bagwati argued that those
who looked to globalisation as an explanation for increasing inequality were misguided:
The culprit is not globalization but labour-saving technical change that puts pressure on the wages
of the unskilled. Technical change prompts continual economies in the use of unskilled labour. Much
empirical argumentation and evidence exists on this. (FT, January 4, 2007, p. 11)
As Krugman put it:
The hypothesis that technological change, by raising the demand for skill, has led to growing inequality
is so widespread that at conferences economists often use the abbreviation SBTC – skill-biased technical
change – without explanation, assuming that their listeners know what they are talking about (p.
132)
Over the course of his 2007 book, Krugman sets out on a voyage of discovery – 'That, more or less,
is the story I believed when I began working on this book' (p. 6). He arrives at the astonishing
conclusion – '[i]t sounds like economic heresy' (p. 7) – that politics can influence inequality:
[I]nstitutions, norms and the political environment matter a lot more for the distribution of income
– and impersonal market forces matter less – than Economics 101 might lead you to believe (p. 8)
The idea that rising pay at the top of the scale mainly reflect social and political change,
strikes some people as too much at odds with Economics 101.
If a left-leaning Nobel prize-winning economist has trouble escaping from the confines of Economics
101, what hope for the less sophisticated mind?
As deindustrialisation rolled through the advanced economies, wiping out jobs and communities, economists
continued to deny any role for globalisation. As Martin Sandbu argues,
The blithe unconcern displayed by the economics profession and the political elites about whether
trade was causing deindustrialisation, social exclusion and rising inequality has begun to seem Pollyannish
at best, malicious at worst. Kevin O'Rourke, the Irish economist, and before him Lawrence Summers,
former US Treasury Secretary, have called this "the Davos lie."
For mainstream macroeconomists, inequality was not a subject of any real interest. While the explanation
for inequality lay in the microeconomics – the technical forms of production functions – and would
be solved by increasing educational attainment, in macroeconomic terms, the use of a representative
agent and an aggregate production function simply assumed the problem away. As Stiglitz puts it:
[I]f the distribution of income (say between labor and capital) matters, for example, for aggregate
demand and therefore for employment and output, then using an aggregate Cobb-Douglas production function
which, with competition, implies that the share of labor is fixed, is not going to be helpful. (p.596)
Robert Lucas summed up his position as follows: 'Of the tendencies that are harmful to sound economics,
the most seductive, and in my opinion the most poisonous, is to focus on questions of distribution.'
It is hard to view this statement as more strongly informed by science than ideology.
But while economists were busy assuming away inequality in their models, incomes continued to diverge
in most advanced economies. It was only with the publication of Piketty's book that the economics
profession belatedly began to turn its back on Lucas.
The extent to which economic insecurity in the US and the UK is driven by globalisation versus
policy is still under discussion – my answer would be that it is a combination of both – but the
skill-biased technical change hypothesis looks to be a dead end – and a costly one at that.
Similar stories can be told about the role of household debt, finance, monetary theory and labour
bargaining power and monopoly – why so much academic focus on 'structural reform' in the labour market
but none on anti-trust policy? Heterodox economists were warning about the connections between finance,
globalisation, current account imbalances, inequality, household debt and economic insecurity in
the decades before the crisis. These warnings were dismissed as unscientific – in favour of a model
which excluded all of these things by design.
Are economic factors – and economic policy – partly to blame for the Brexit and Trump votes? And
are academic economists, at least in part, to blame for these polices? The answer to both questions
is yes. To argue otherwise is to deny Keynes' dictum that 'the ideas of economists and political
philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly
understood.'
This quote, 'mounted and framed, takes pride of place in the entrance hall of the Institute for Economic
Affairs' – the think-tank founded, with Hayek's encouragement, by Anthony Fisher, as a way to promote
and promulgate the ideas of the Mont Pelerin Society. The Institute was a success. Fisher was, in
the words of Milton Friedman, 'the single most important person in the development of Thatcherism'.
The rest, it seems, is history.
Obomber's new conference with Ms. Merkel. The peace prize winner who ordered 25000 bombing sorties
in 2015 against places US is not warring against.
Per Obomber Assad caused all that suffering in Syria, despite US arming al Qaeda since 2010 to
replace him with the kind of guys who rammed a bayonet through Qaddafi's rectum, and sending assassinated
Qaddafi's weaponry through Benghazi at the time Clinton got her envoy killed there.
The greater threat to American democracy is the bizarre world of the US fighting for the Sunnis
in the middle east. Also known as Obomber's Stalinist definitions of atrocities versus fictions about
fascists.
Why would one of Qadaffi's own
citizens do such a nasty deed on the
sadly misunderstood guy who brought down
Pan Am flight #103 over Lockerbie Scotland
killing 259 passenger & crew, previously
killing three people & injuring around
230 in La Belle discothèque in Berlin,
& why do you keep bringing this up?)
"President-Elect Donald Trump Gets to Work Betraying His Backers"
'Millions of voters who thought they'd elected a populist hero will soon find out that men who
live in golden penthouses are rarely heroes'
by Joy-Ann Reid...11.17.16...1:00 AM ET
"I should probably get out of the predictions business, having so misjudged the country before
the recent election. But I will hazard two more. The first: Donald Trump will turn on his supporters.
The second: The Democrats will turn on theirs, too.
Trump got a head start this week, floating the names of Iraq war supporters and promoters of a
grand, global war with Islam like John Bolton and Rudy Giuliani for the job of secretary of state.
Trump voters who claimed that Hillary Clinton would bring on World War III might be surprised by
some of the views of Clinton and John Kerry's likely successor (and Giuliani is a vigorous neocon,
too.)
Trump is now part of a global ring of ethno-nationalist leaders of far-right parties in thrall
to Vladimir Putin's Russia. National security experts are shuddering at the demeanor of the people
surrounding the next president who are busy mounting what Republican leakers are calling a "Stalinesque
purge" of the insufficiently loyal. With the transition team in chaos, and experienced hands reluctant
to join such an administration, who knows what kind of bizarre cabinet he'll wind up assembling.
Meanwhile, to the extent that he is doing something other than trying to figure out what a president
does Trump-or rather the people around him who know how to take advantage of an opportunity-are preparing
to stack his team with Wall Street and big-business friendly insiders and establishment cronies poised
to raid the treasury on behalf of the one percent.
Working-class voters who thought they'd elected a populist hero will soon find out that men who
live in golden penthouses are rarely populists, and even more rarely heroic. Trump, who in his own
history as a developer preferred mob concrete and Chinese steel to the variety produced in the Rust
Belt, cannot bring back the steel and manufacturing jobs lost in Lorain, Ohio or western Pennsylvania.
No president can force shuttered mills to reopen, or companies who've left in search of cheaper labor
to relocate to the United States (or those who have come back to choose expensive humans over cheaper
robots.) Even if he manages to slap massive tariffs on Chinese-made goods, the only outcome will
be much higher prices at Wal-Mart.
Meanwhile, anyone still wondering why Paul Ryan quietly slipped on his MAGA cap during the election
will soon understand. On the off chance Trump pulled off an improbable win, Ryan knew he would be
on track to enact his life's dream: turning Medicare into a voucher program and forcing future of
the most popular government program since Social Security into private insurance HMOs. According
to Josh Marshall, who cites Ryan's own website, the "phasing out" of Medicare begins in March.
Trump's tax plan will sock it to single mothers, by ending the ability to file as head of household
and thus raising taxes on unmarried filers. The tax hikes will be higher the more children you have.
Anyone who doesn't itemize deductions will likely get a onetime check for a few hundred dollars,
the way George W. Bush did his "middle class tax cut." Count that as bill money.
Trump's trade and immigration policies will deliver an economic shock to states like Texas where
trade produces a substantial share of the jobs, and which depend on high oil prices. Trump's North
Dakota pipeline (in which he is personally financially invested) will flood more oil onto an already
glutted world market, further forcing down prices and putting both the Lone Star state in an unpleasant
economic position.
But not to worry, Republicans have a fix, to ensure there is no voter backlash against them.
They are already preparing to reverse their opposition to earmarks, with three red state Senators
(from Florida, Alabama and of course, Texas) pushing to revive the kind of spending that helps members
go back to their districts with something to show for their time in Washington, and which long greased
the skids of congress. You see, most in the GOP never really objected to government spending. They
just objected to government spending that might make their constituents look more favorably on Barack
Obama's tenure.
Also watch as the objections to raising the debt ceiling and to infrastructure spending-so vehement
during the Obama years-vanish into thin air. This will be a big spending administration, with the
full backing of congress. The small number of conservatives preparing to fight back are likely to
cave, eventually, in the interests of party unity and maintaining total Republican control.
All the while, Trump fans can maintain their euphoria over taking America back from the multiculturalists,
the politically correct, leftie Hollywood and Beyoncé, by purchasing clothing and jewelry from Ivanka
Trump's retail line, which she'll dutifully model during television appearances, after which her
staff will inform the media on where faithful followers can "shop the look." The Trump children,
armed with security clearances and still in charge of the family business and the ephemeral "foundation"
will be in a position to stuff the family coffers for four years, African dictator style, with the
possible aid of information marked "secret" and thus unavailable to their competitors. And if you
expect the fearsome House Republicans who hounded Hillary Clinton over her emails to lift a finger
to investigate what already look to be spiraling conflicts of interest, you don't understand the
Republican Party.
But it isn't just Trump who is poised to betray those who voted for him. Some Democrats and their
allies are already rushing to get their Trump tattoos, knowing that the coming spending boom helps
them too. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia excoriated Harry Reid, the out-going minority leader,
who alone came out forthrightly to defend the black and brown women, men, children, businesses and
even churches being brutalized by gleeful Trump supporters from the GOP's white supremacist wing,
in cities around the country. Reid, whose Nevada Democratic Party operation was actually successful
in the 2016 elections, including getting a Latina elected to his seat, has bravely called out the
white nationalists and anti-Semites of the alt-right and stood against the normalization of people
like soon-to-be Trump senior counselor Stephen Bannon. But Reid is a lonely voice standing athwart
anti-history yelling, "stop," while his party and the mainstream media fall into a swoon of presidential
succession pageantry.
Even Bernie Sanders couldn't rush fast enough to get on the Trump side of the line, declaring
himself a member of the white working class (his and his wife's three homes and high six-figure income
aside) and cautioning Democrats-who belong to a party of which he is still not a member-to start
focusing on these voters too. Sanders ran a campaign that echoed Trump's in many ways; appealing
to a majority white, populist audience that hated Hillary Clinton more than it disdained Republicans.
A majority of Black Americans were unimpressed, which is why he didn't become the nominee, and they
should be unsurprised that he is dropping them faster than he and his supporters wrote off "the South"
as insignificant during the primary campaign.
Bernie is not alone. Think pieces are already being written admonishing Dems to throw black and
brown, LGBT, Muslim and Hispanic voters and progressive women under the bus in favor of the never-ending
chase for the Pabst Blue Ribbon vote. Democrats continue to practice "identity politics" at their
peril, they say; demanding that issues around rape culture, Black Lives Matter and merciful immigration
policy be scotched in favor of bucking up men, dialing back blunt talk on race, policing and DREAMers,
and emphasizing things like border security. In other words, Democrats must learn to talk more like
Republicans and marginalized groups must learn to be quiet. The party has been here before, and ironically,
that kind of thinking is what produced Bill Clinton, whose surname, and wife, the very people hawking
this prescription loathe.
The message to African-Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, LGBT people (well, mostly Trans folks, since
Trump has declared his movement can live with "the gays") and women, who stand in the crosshairs
of the coming "retail authoritarian" presidency, is that you're on your own. Your party will not
come to your aid. They'll be too busy trying to ride the Trump train, or to least avoid being tied
to the tracks and run over by it in the next election.
There are small green shoots of hope. The coming battle for DNC chair, which could come down to
two black candidates: Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison and South Carolina Democratic Party chair
Jamie Harrison, is a proxy for whether the party will push a message of Sandersian working class
populism or press forward on the ongoing fight for racial justice, voting rights and the rights of
the poor. Perhaps one of these men can help the party find a way to do both.
And despite her immediate statement of conciliation to Trump, one can only hope Elizabeth Warren
will hold strong on issues concerning Wall Street, once Republicans begin the process of dismantling
restrictions on bankers' worst practices, restoring the robber baron era in lower Manhattan and on
the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, where the "tea party movement" was born amid furious presumptions
that Obama would dare to help struggling homeowners instead of their mortgage note holders. We'll
just have to wait and see.
In the end, the lessons of American history, from Reconstruction to the Fusion movement of the
late 19th century; that an openness to the aspirations of racial, ethnic and religious minorities
will always produce a fierce backlash among the country's majority population and cost the party
dearly, have proven thrice true in the modern era-in the bloody political aftermath of Lyndon Johnson,
Bill Clinton and now Barack Obama. All three marched the country forward on race, culture and economics,
only to cede federal and state governmental power for years to the Republican right, which quickly
proceeded, each time, to reward the rich and the powerful on the backs of their working class supporters
who just wanted to feel like winners again.
In a sense, who can blame the Democrats for running away? But run they will. Count on it."
McDonald's gets fancy, says table
service coming to US locations
NEW YORK - McDonald's says it plans to offer table service across its U.S. stores to make the
ordering process less stressful, but did not say when the overhaul will be complete.
The world's biggest burger chain says about 500 of its more than 14,000 domestic stores have been
testing table service and ordering kiosks for people who do not want to wait for the cashier. People
in those stores order at the counter or kiosks, then sit and wait for an employee to bring them their
food.
Early next year, McDonald's says it will expand the offering in Boston, Chicago, San Francisco,
Seattle and Washington, D.C. ...
McDonald's gets fancy, says table
service coming to US locations
NEW YORK - McDonald's says it plans to offer table service across its U.S. stores to make the
ordering process less stressful, but did not say when the overhaul will be complete.
The world's biggest burger chain says about 500 of its more than 14,000 domestic stores have been
testing table service and ordering kiosks for people who do not want to wait for the cashier. People
in those stores order at the counter or kiosks, then sit and wait for an employee to bring them their
food.
Early next year, McDonald's says it will expand the offering in Boston, Chicago, San Francisco,
Seattle and Washington, D.C. ...
'Democrats on the Hill began soul searching this week-but the process appears to be longer for
some than others'
by Matt Laslo...11.17.16...1:00 AM ET
"The Democratic Party is at a crossroads, but everyone on Capitol Hill seems to have a different
roadmap.
Democrats, still in shock over Hillary Clinton's surprise loss to president-elect Donald Trump,
are faced with a stark new reality: they are not only the minority party in all corners of Capitol
Hill and across the nation-but there are cracks in places where their foundation was thought to be
very strong.
The party is debating how it got here and whether it's time to tack left, in the Bernie Sanders'
vein of populism, or to go back to the middle, which is how they won in the nineties and regained
control of the House in 2006.
The change didn't come overnight. The party has been devastated in the past three election cycles,
losing more than 900 state legislative seats and 11 governorships since President Barack Obama took
office.
But it was Clinton's string of losses in the Rust Belt-Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio-that
caused the soul searching in the party.
"So you can't conclude anything else but that our message is wrong. Our values aren't wrong, but
our message is wrong," Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.) told The Daily Beast. "The one thing we must commit
to is that whatever our message is going forward must be different than what we had in the past because
that one has failed."...
"Rep. Tom Price Reveals Republicans Eyeing Medicare Overhaul In 2017"
By Lauren Fox...November 17, 2016...12:13 PM EDT
"Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), the chairman of the budget committee, told reporters on Thursday that
Republicans are eyeing major changes to Medicare in 2017.
Price, who is being floated as a possible Health and Human Services Secretary in the next administration,
said that he expects Republican in the House to move on Medicare reforms "six to eight months" into
the Trump administration.
Privatization of Medicare has been a central feature of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan's budget
proposal for years, and the House GOP has voted in favor of it multiple times. Ryan himself said
last week that Medicare would be on the table in the new Congress, signaling it could be taken up
early in the new year. Price's comments suggest privatization won't be part of the first round of
legislative initiatives rolled out by the Trump administration and GOP-controlled Congress.
Price also noted that Republicans are eyeing using a tactic known as budget reconciliation to
make the change. That process allows Republicans to pass bills with a simple majority in the U.S.
Senate.
When asked by TPM about timing for changes to Medicare, Price said "I think that is probably in
the second phase of reconciliation, which would have to be in the FY 18 budget resolution in the
first 6-8 months."
Republicans plan to tackle the Affordable Care Act in the first budget reconciliation process,
which could take place as early as January. Tackling Medicare reform and Obamacare repeal at the
same time could prove too high a risk for Republicans who have yet to reveal a clear plan to replace
Obamacare with.
During his weekly press conference House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) remained vague about the timing
for such reforms, saying only that those discussions are still underway."
Privatizing Medicare will be a disaster it can only end in the service being worse. I'm sure they
have plans to go after Social Security too. Getting rid of Obamacare won't hurt the white middle
class too bad but even there too most people will know someone with a preexisting condition who can't
get medical insurance. Good luck with all that Republicans!!
The 3 month Treasury interest rate is at 0.43%, the 2 year Treasury rate is 1.03%, the 5 year
rate is 1.72%, while the 10 year is 2.29%.
The Vanguard Aa rated short-term investment grade bond fund, with a maturity of 3.2 years and
a duration of 2.6 years, has a yield of 1.63%. The Vanguard Aa rated intermediate-term investment
grade bond fund, with a maturity of 6.4 years and a duration of 5.5 years, is yielding 2.37%. The
Vanguard Aa rated long-term investment grade bond fund, with a maturity of 23.0 years and a duration
of 13.6 years, is yielding 3.75%. *
The Vanguard Ba rated high yield corporate bond fund, with a maturity of 5.6 years and a duration
of 4.4 years, is yielding 5.40%.
The Vanguard unrated convertible corporate bond fund, with an indefinite maturity and a duration
of 4.1 years, is yielding 2.04%.
The Vanguard A rated high yield tax exempt bond fund, with a maturity of 6.8 years and a duration
of 6.4 years, is yielding 2.66%.
The Vanguard Aa rated intermediate-term tax exempt bond fund, with a maturity of 5.4 years and
a duration of 4.8 years, is yielding 1.59%.
The Vanguard Government National Mortgage Association bond fund, with a maturity of 5.7 years
and a duration of 3.4 years, is yielding 2.05%.
The Vanguard inflation protected Treasury bond fund, with a maturity of 8.8 years and a duration
of 8.3 years, is yielding - 0.21%.
* Vanguard yields are after cost. Federal Funds rates are no more than 0.50%.
"Consumer prices show big increase on rising gasoline costs and rents"
Reuters...November 17, 2016...5:27 PM
'Consumer prices show big increase'
"Consumer prices recorded their biggest increase in six months in October on rising gasoline costs
and rents, suggesting a pickup in inflation that potentially clears the way for the Federal Reserve
to raise interest rates in December.
Prospects for a rate hike next month also got a boost from other data on Thursday showing first-time
applications for unemployment benefits tumbling to a 43-year low last week and housing starts surging
to a nine-year high in October.
The reports painted an upbeat picture of the economy early in the fourth quarter and came as Fed
Chair Janet L. Yellen told lawmakers that the U.S. central bank could lift borrowing costs "relatively
soon."
The Labor Department said its consumer price index increased 0.4 percent last month after rising
0.3 percent in September. In the 12 months through October, the CPI advanced 1.6 percent, the biggest
year-on-year increase since October 2014. The CPI increased 1.5 percent in the year to September.
Underlying inflation continued to slow last month as health-care costs moderated after recent
hefty gains. But with rents pushing higher, that trend is unlikely to be sustained.
The so-called core CPI, which strips out food and energy costs, climbed 0.1 percent last month
after a similar gain in September. That slowed the year-on-year increase in the core CPI to 2.1 percent
from a 2.2 percent rise in September.
The Fed has a 2 percent inflation target and tracks an inflation measure that is now at 1.7 percent.
In another report, the Labor Department said initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped
19,000 to a seasonally adjusted 235,000 for the week ended Nov. 12, the lowest level since November
1973.
Claims have now been below 300,000, a threshold associated with a healthy labor market, for 89
straight weeks. That is the longest run since 1970, when the labor market was much smaller.
With the labor market firming and rents rising, housing is getting a lift. In a third report,
the Commerce Department said housing starts jumped 25.5 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual pace
of 1.32 million units last month, the highest level since August 2007."
"Federal Reserve Chair Throws Cold Water On Trump's Economic Plan"
by Chris Arnold...November 17, 2016...5:25 PM ET
"President-elect Donald Trump has pledged a $1 trillion infrastructure spending program to help
jump-start an economy that he said during the campaign was in terrible shape.
Speaking on Capitol Hill Thursday, Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen warned lawmakers that
as they consider such spending, they should keep an eye on the national debt. Yellen also said that
while the economy needed a big boost with fiscal stimulus after the financial crisis, that's not
the case now.
"The economy is operating relatively close to full employment at this point," she said, "so in
contrast to where the economy was after the financial crisis when a large demand boost was needed
to lower unemployment, we're no longer in that state."
Yellen cautioned lawmakers that if they spend a lot on infrastructure and run up the debt, and
then down the road the economy gets into trouble, "there is not a lot of fiscal space should a shock
to the economy occur, an adverse shock, that should require fiscal stimulus."
In other words, lawmakers should consider keeping their powder dry so they have more options whenever
the next economic downturn comes along.
Trump was harshly critical of Yellen during his campaign. But testifying before the Joint Economic
Committee, Yellen said she is not going to quit just because Trump won the election. Rep. Carolyn
Maloney, D-N.Y., asked Yellen, "Can you envision any circumstances where you would not serve out
your term as chair of the Federal Reserve?" "No, I cannot," answered Yellen, "It is fully my intention
to serve out that term." Yellen's appointment goes through January 2018.
Another target of Trump's during the campaign came up at the hearing: the Dodd-Frank Wall Street
Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Rep. Pat Tiberi, R-Ohio, cited Trump's criticism that the Dodd-Frank
banking rules were stifling lending and stunting the economy. But Yellen gave her support to Dodd-Frank,
saying:
"We lived through a devastating financial crisis, and a high priority for all Americans should
be that we want to see put in place safeguards through supervision and regulation that result in
a safer and sounder financial system, and I think we have been doing that and our financial system
as a consequence is safer and sounder and many of the appropriate reforms are embodied in Dodd-Frank."
Yellen added, "We wouldn't want to go back to the mortgage lending standards that led to the financial
crisis."
She also said she thought banks were actually willing to lend to small businesses, but that sales
haven't been growing sufficiently fast to justify borrowing, suggesting the demand for loans was
the real problem.
As far as the ever-present question about when the Fed will raise interest rates, Yellen signaled
that she didn't see any reason to alter the Fed's prior guidance now that Trump has been elected
as the next president."
"Facebook fake-news writer: 'I think Donald Trump is in the White House because of me'"
by Caitlin Dewey...The Washington Post
"What do the Amish lobby, gay wedding vans and the ban of the national anthem have in common?
For starters, they're all make-believe - and invented by the same man.
Paul Horner, the 38-year-old impresario of a Facebook fake-news empire, has made his living off
viral news hoaxes for several years. He has twice convinced the Internet that he's British graffiti
artist Banksy; he also published the very viral, very fake news of a Yelp vs. "South Park" lawsuit
last year.
But in recent months, Horner has found the fake-news ecosystem growing more crowded, more political
and vastly more influential: In March, Donald Trump's son Eric and his then-campaign manager, Corey
Lewandowski, even tweeted links to one of Horner's faux-articles. His stories have also appeared
as news on Google.
In light of concerns that stories like Horner's may have affected the presidential election, and
in the wake of announcements that both Google and Facebook would take action against deceptive outlets,
The Washington Post called Horner to discuss his perspective on fake news.
Q: You've been writing fake news for a while now - you're kind of like the OG Facebook news hoaxer.
Well, I'd call it hoaxing or fake news. You'd call it parody or satire. How is that scene different
now than it was three or five years ago? Why did something like your story about Obama invalidating
the election results (almost 250,000 Facebook shares, as of this writing) go so viral?
A: Honestly, people are definitely dumber. They just keep passing stuff around. Nobody fact-checks
anything anymore - I mean, that's how Trump got elected. He just said whatever he wanted, and people
believed everything, and when the things he said turned out not to be true, people didn't care because
they'd already accepted it. It's real scary. I've never seen anything like it.
Q: You mentioned Trump, and you've probably heard the argument, or the concern, that fake news
somehow helped him get elected. What do you make of that?
A: My sites were picked up by Trump supporters all the time. I think Trump is in the White House
because of me. His followers don't fact-check anything - they'll post everything, believe anything.
His campaign manager posted my story about a protester getting paid $3,500 as fact. Like, I made
that up. I posted a fake ad on Craigslist.
Q: Why? I mean - why would you even write that?
A: Just 'cause his supporters were under the belief that people were getting paid to protest at
their rallies, and that's just insane. I've gone to Trump protests - trust me, no one needs to get
paid to protest Trump. I just wanted to make fun of that insane belief, but it took off. They actually
believed it.
I thought they'd fact-check it, and it'd make them look worse. I mean that's how this always works:
Someone posts something I write, then they find out it's false, then they look like idiots. But Trump
supporters - they just keep running with it! They never fact-check anything! Now he's in the White
House. Looking back, instead of hurting the campaign, I think I helped it. And that feels (bad).
Q: You think you personally helped elect Trump?
A: I don't know. I don't know if I did or not. I don't know. I don't know.
Q: I guess I'm curious, if you believed you might be having an unfair impact on the election -
especially if that impact went against your own political beliefs - why didn't you stop? Why keep
writing?
A: I didn't think it was possible for him to get elected president. I thought I was messing with
the campaign, maybe I wasn't messing them up as much as I wanted - but I never thought he'd actually
get elected. I didn't even think about it. In hindsight, everyone should've seen this coming - everyone
assumed Hillary (Clinton) would just get in. But she didn't, and Trump is president.
Q: Speaking of Clinton - did you target fake news at her supporters? Or Gary Johnson's, for that
matter? (Horner's Facebook picture shows him at a rally for Johnson.)
A: No. I hate Trump.
Q: Is that it? You posted on Facebook a couple weeks ago that you had a lot of ideas for satirizing
Clinton and other figures, but that "no joke in doing this for six years, the people who clicked
ads the most, like it's the cure for cancer, is right-wing Republicans." That makes it sound like
you've found targeting conservatives is more profitable.
A: Yeah, it is. They don't fact-check.
Q: But a Trump presidency is good for you from a business perspective, right?
A: It's great for anybody who does anything with satire - there's nothing you can't write about
now that people won't believe. I can write the craziest thing about Trump, and people will believe
it. I wrote a lot of crazy anti-Muslim stuff - like about Trump wanting to put badges on Muslims,
or not allowing them in the airport, or making them stand in their own line - and people went along
with it!
Q: Facebook and Google recently announced that they'd no longer let fake-news sites use their
advertising platforms. I know you basically make your living from those services. How worried are
you about this?
A: This whole Google AdSense thing is pretty scary. And all this Facebook stuff. I make most of
my money from AdSense - like, you wouldn't believe how much money I make from it. Right now I make
like $10,000 a month from AdSense.
I know ways of getting hooked up under different names and sites. So probably if they cracked
down, I would try different things. I have at least 10 sites right now. If they crack down on a couple,
I'll just use others. They could shut down advertising on all my sites, and I think I'd be OK. Plus,
Facebook and AdSense make a lot of money from (advertising on fake news sites) for them to just get
rid of it. They'd lose a lot of money.
But if it did really go away, that would suck. I don't know what I would do.
Q: Thinking about this less selfishly, though - it might be good if Facebook and Google took action,
right? Because the effects you're describing are pretty scary.
A: Yeah, I mean - a lot of the sites people are talking about, they're just total BS sites. There's
no creativity or purpose behind them. I'm glad they're getting rid of them. I don't like getting
lumped in with Huzlers. I like getting lumped in with the Onion. The stuff I do - I spend more time
on it. There's purpose and meaning behind it. I don't just write fake news just to write it.
So, yeah, I see a lot of the sites they're listing, and I'm like - good. There are so many horrible
sites out there. I'm glad they're getting rid of those sites.
President Barack Obama's former press secretary Robert Gibbs faulted Hillary Clinton's
presidential campaign for failing to have a dynamic economic message that applied to working
class voters, and ridiculed the suggestion that voters voted for Donald Trump because they were
racists.
"The truth is, the party didn't have an economic message," Gibbs said. "The party didn't fight
in places that it should have."
Gibbs, who now works for McDonalds as the Global Chief Communications officer, explained that
his biggest surprise was that Clinton failed so badly in Michigan, pointing out that Obama won
the state by 16 points in 2008 and 10 points in 2012.
"We have a lot of people that are going through economic strife and turmoil and the truth is we
were going to elect a president who was going to represent all of those people so you got to go
to those places," Gibbs said.
He made his remarks as part of an ongoing post-election therapy session held by former Obama
speechwriter Jon Favreau and former senior adviser Dan Pfieffer on their Keepin' it 1600 podcast.
Gibbs cited Bay County, Michigan - a county that was 95 percent white with a median household
income of $45,000 and only four out of five people didn't have a college degree. He reminded the
audience that Obama won the country by 3,000 votes in 2008, but that Clinton lost the county by
7,000 votes.
"There's all this kind of, I think, commentary devoid of real reality that somehow there's
this big racist vote that came out for Donald Trump," Gibbs said. "You talk about a 95 percent
white county that voted twice for Barack Hussein Obama. They didn't become racist in the last
four years."
President Barack Obama said Wednesday that America's election of Donald Trump and the U.K.'s
vote to leave the European Union reflect a political uprising in the West over economic
inequities spawned by leaders' mishandling of globalization.
"... Already, motor-vehicle manufacturers ship an automotive transmission back and forth across the US-Mexican border several times in the course of production. At some point, unpacking that production process still further will reach the point of diminishing returns. ..."
"... The story for cross-border flows of financial capital is even more dramatic. Gross capital flows – the sum of inflows and outflows – are not just growing more slowly; they are down significantly in absolute terms from 2009 levels. ..."
"... ... cross-border bank lending and borrowing that have fallen. Foreign direct investment – financial flows to build foreign factories and acquire foreign companies – remains at pre-crisis levels. ..."
"... This difference reflects regulation. Having concluded, rightly, that cross-border bank lending is especially risky, regulators clamped down on banks' international operations. ..."
Does Donald Trump's election as United States president mean that globalization is dead, or are
reports of the process' demise greatly exaggerated? If globalization is only partly incapacitated,
not terminally ill, should we worry? How much will slower trade growth, now in the offing, matter
for the global economy?
World trade growth would be slowing down, even without Trump in office. Its growth was already
flat in the first quarter of 2016, and it fell
by nearly 1% in the second quarter. This continues a prior trend: since 2010, global trade has
grown at an annual rate of barely 2%. Together with the fact that worldwide production of goods and
services has been rising by more than 3%, this means that the trade-to-GDP ratio has been falling,
in contrast to its steady upward march in earlier years.
... the resurgent protectionism manifest in popular opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership
(TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP),
Causality in economics may be elusive, but in this case it is clear. So far, slower trade growth
has been the result of slower GDP growth, not the other way around.
This is particularly evident in the case of investment spending, which has
fallen sharply since
the global financial crisis. Investment spending is trade-intensive, because countries rely disproportionately
on a relatively small handful of producers, like Germany, for technologically sophisticated capital
goods.
In addition, slower trade growth reflects China's economic deceleration. Until 2011 China was
growing at double-digit rates, and Chinese exports and imports were growing even faster. China's
growth has now slowed by a third, leading to slower growth of Chinese trade.
China's growth miracle, benefiting a fifth of the earth's population, is the most important economic
event of the last quarter-century. But it can happen only once. And now that the phase of catch-up
growth is over for China, this engine of global trade will slow.
The other engine of world trade has been global supply chains. Trade in parts and components has
benefited from falling transport costs, reflecting containerization and related advances in logistics.
But efficiency in shipping is unlikely to continue to improve faster than efficiency in the production
of what is being shipped. Already, motor-vehicle manufacturers ship an automotive transmission
back and forth across the US-Mexican border several times in the course of production. At some point,
unpacking that production process still further will reach the point of diminishing returns.
The story for cross-border flows of financial capital is even more dramatic. Gross capital
flows – the sum of inflows and outflows – are not just growing more slowly; they are down significantly
in absolute terms from 2009 levels.
... cross-border bank lending and borrowing that have fallen. Foreign direct investment –
financial flows to build foreign factories and acquire foreign companies – remains at pre-crisis
levels.
This difference reflects regulation. Having concluded, rightly, that cross-border bank lending
is especially risky, regulators clamped down on banks' international operations.
In response, many banks curtailed their cross-border business. But, rather than alarming anyone,
this should be seen as reassuring, because the riskiest forms of international finance have been
curtailed without disrupting more stable and productive forms of foreign investment.
We now face the prospect of the US government revoking the Dodd-Frank Act and rolling back the
financial reforms of recent years. Less stringent financial regulation may make for the recovery
of international capital flows. But we should be careful what we wish for.
Hasan (Interviewer) (From 11.15 onwards into the interview): "In 2012, your agency was
saying, quote: "The Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda in Iraq [(which ISIS arose
out of)], are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria." In 2012, the US was helping
coordinate arms transfers to those same groups. Why did you not stop that if you're worried
about the rise of Islamic extremism?"
Flynn: "Well I hate to say it's not my job,
but my job was to ensure that the accuracy of our intelligence that was being presented was
as good as it could be, and I will tell you, it goes before 2012. When we were in Iraq, and
we still had decisions to be made before there was a decision to pull out of Iraq in 2011,
it was very clear what we were going to face."
Hasan (Interviewer): You are basically saying that even in government at the time,
you knew those groups were around, you saw this analysis, and you were arguing against it,
but who wasn't listening?"
Flynn: "I think the administration."
Hasan (Interviewer): "So the administration turned a blind eye to your analysis?"
Flynn: "I don't know if they turned a blind eye. I think it was a decision, a willful
decision."
Hasan (Interviewer): "A willful decision to support an insurgency that had Salafists,
Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood?"
Flynn: "A willful decision to do what they're doing You have to really ask the President
what is it that he actually is doing with the policy that is in place, because it is very,
very confusing."
Former US Intelligence Chief Admits Obama Took "Willful Decision" to Support ISIS Rise
Ellison is a dud, Bernie tweets support for Schumer "there's nobody I know better prepared
and more capable of leading our caucus than Chuck Schumer"!
Well there's a good chunder maker in that statement eh? Hope dashed!
There are no doubt many who are better informed, more progressive and principled, more remote
from Wall Street and oligarchic capture than Chuck Schumer and Ellison. So there you have it –
this is reform in the Democrats after a crushing defeat.
Vale democrats, and now the journey becomes arduous with these voices to smother hope. A new
party is urgently needed (I know how difficult that is) and these voices of the old machine need
to be ignored for the sake of sanity.
"... The New Deal did not seek to overthrow the plutocracy, but it did seek to side-step and disable
their dominance. ..."
"... It seems to me that while neoliberalism on the right was much the same old same old, the neoliberal
turn on the left was marked by a measured abandonment of this struggle over the distribution of income
between the classes. In the U.S., the Democrats gradually abandoned their populist commitments. In Europe,
the labour and socialist parties gradually abandoned class struggle. ..."
"... When Obama came in, in 2008 amid the unfolding GFC, one of the most remarkable features of
his economic team was the extent to which it conceded control of policy entirely to the leading money
center banks. Geithner and Bernanke continued in power with Geithner moving from the New York Federal
Reserve (where he served as I recall under a Chair from Goldman Sachs) to Treasury in the Obama Administration,
but Geithner's Treasury was staffed from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Citibank. The crisis served
to concentrate banking assets in the hands of the top five banks, but it seemed also to transfer political
power entirely into their hands as well. Simon Johnson called it a coup. ..."
"... Here's the thing: the globalization and financialization of the economy from roughly 1980 drove
both increasingly extreme distribution of income and de-industrialization. ..."
"... It was characteristic of neoliberalism that the policy, policy intention and policy consequences
were hidden behind a rhetoric of markets and technological inevitability. Matt Stoller has identified
this as the statecraft of neoliberalism: the elimination of political agency and responsibility for
economic performance and outcomes. Globalization and financialization were just "forces" that just happened,
in a meteorological economics. ..."
"... This was not your grandfather's Democratic Party and it was a Democratic Party that could aid
the working class and the Rust Belt only within fairly severe and sometimes sharply conflicting constraints.
..."
"... No one in the Democratic Party had much institutional incentive to connect the dots, and draw
attention to the acute conflicts over the distribution of income and wealth involved in financialization
of the economy (including financialization as a driver of health care costs). And, that makes the political
problem that much harder, because there are no resources for rhetorical and informational clarity or
coherence. ..."
"... If Obama could not get a very big stimulus indeed thru a Democratic Congress long out of power,
Obama wasn't really trying. And, well-chosen spending on pork barrel projects is popular and gets Congressional
critters re-elected. So, again, if the stimulus is small and the Democratic Congress doesn't get re-elected,
Obama isn't really trying. ..."
"... Again, it comes down to: by 2008, the Democratic Party is not a fit vehicle for populism, because
it has become a neoliberal vehicle for giant banks. Turns out that makes a policy difference. ..."
At the center of Great Depression politics was a political struggle over the distribution of
income, a struggle that was only decisively resolved during the War, by the Great Compression.
It was at center of farm policy where policymakers struggled to find ways to support farm incomes.
It was at the center of industrial relations politics, where rapidly expanding unions were seeking
higher industrial wages. It was at the center of banking policy, where predatory financial practices
were under attack. It was at the center of efforts to regulate electric utility rates and establish
public power projects. And, everywhere, the clear subtext was a struggle between rich and poor,
the economic royalists as FDR once called them and everyone else.
FDR, an unmistakeable patrician in manner and pedigree, was leading a not-quite-revolutionary
politics, which was nevertheless hostile to and suspicious of business elites, as a source of
economic pathology. The New Deal did not seek to overthrow the plutocracy, but it did seek
to side-step and disable their dominance.
It seems to me that while neoliberalism on the right was much the same old same old, the
neoliberal turn on the left was marked by a measured abandonment of this struggle over the distribution
of income between the classes. In the U.S., the Democrats gradually abandoned their populist commitments.
In Europe, the labour and socialist parties gradually abandoned class struggle.
In retrospect, though the New Deal did use direct employment as a means of relief to good effect
economically and politically, it never undertook anything like a Keynesian stimulus on a Keynesian
scale - at least until the War.
Where the New Deal witnessed the institution of an elaborate system of financial repression,
accomplished in large part by imposing on the financial sector an explicitly mandated structure,
with types of firms and effective limits on firm size and scope, a series of regulatory reforms
and financial crises beginning with Carter and Reagan served to wipe this structure away.
When Obama came in, in 2008 amid the unfolding GFC, one of the most remarkable features
of his economic team was the extent to which it conceded control of policy entirely to the leading
money center banks. Geithner and Bernanke continued in power with Geithner moving from the New
York Federal Reserve (where he served as I recall under a Chair from Goldman Sachs) to Treasury
in the Obama Administration, but Geithner's Treasury was staffed from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan
Chase and Citibank. The crisis served to concentrate banking assets in the hands of the top five
banks, but it seemed also to transfer political power entirely into their hands as well. Simon
Johnson called it a coup.
I don't know what considerations guided Obama in choosing the size of the stimulus or its composition
(as spending and tax cuts). Larry Summers was identified at the time as a voice of caution, not
"gambling", but not much is known about his detailed reasoning in severely trimming Christina
Romer's entirely conventional calculations. (One consideration might well have been worldwide
resource shortages, which had made themselves felt in 2007-8 as an inflationary spike in commodity
prices.) I do not see a case for connecting stimulus size policy to the health care reform. At
the time the stimulus was proposed, the Administration had also been considering whether various
big banks and other financial institutions should be nationalized, forced to insolvency or otherwise
restructured as part of a regulatory reform.
Here's the thing: the globalization and financialization of the economy from roughly 1980
drove both increasingly extreme distribution of income and de-industrialization. Accelerating
the financialization of the economy from 1999 on made New York and Washington rich, but the same
economic policies and process were devastating the Rust Belt as de-industrialization. They were
two aspects of the same complex of economic trends and policies. The rise of China as a manufacturing
center was, in critical respects, a financial operation within the context of globalized trade
that made investment in new manufacturing plant in China, as part of globalized supply chains
and global brand management, (arguably artificially) low-risk and high-profit, while reinvestment
in manufacturing in the American mid-west became unattractive, except as a game of extracting
tax subsidies or ripping off workers.
It was characteristic of neoliberalism that the policy, policy intention and policy consequences
were hidden behind a rhetoric of markets and technological inevitability. Matt Stoller has identified
this as the statecraft of neoliberalism: the elimination of political agency and responsibility
for economic performance and outcomes. Globalization and financialization were just "forces" that
just happened, in a meteorological economics.
It is conceding too many good intentions to the Obama Administration to tie an inadequate stimulus
to a Rube Goldberg health care reform as the origin story for the final debacle of Democratic
neoliberal politics. There was a delicate balancing act going on, but they were not balancing
the recovery of the economy in general so much as they were balancing the recovery from insolvency
of a highly inefficient and arguably predatory financial sector, which was also not incidentally
financing the institutional core of the Democratic Party and staffing many key positions in the
Administration and in the regulatory apparatus.
This was not your grandfather's Democratic Party and it was a Democratic Party that could
aid the working class and the Rust Belt only within fairly severe and sometimes sharply conflicting
constraints.
No one in the Democratic Party had much institutional incentive to connect the dots, and
draw attention to the acute conflicts over the distribution of income and wealth involved in financialization
of the economy (including financialization as a driver of health care costs). And, that makes
the political problem that much harder, because there are no resources for rhetorical and informational
clarity or coherence.
The short version of my thinking on the Obama stimulus is this: Keynesian stimulus spending is
a free lunch; it doesn't really matter what you spend money on up to a very generous point, so
it seems ready-made for legislative log-rolling. If Obama could not get a very big stimulus
indeed thru a Democratic Congress long out of power, Obama wasn't really trying. And, well-chosen
spending on pork barrel projects is popular and gets Congressional critters re-elected. So, again,
if the stimulus is small and the Democratic Congress doesn't get re-elected, Obama isn't really
trying.
Again, it comes down to: by 2008, the Democratic Party is not a fit vehicle for populism,
because it has become a neoliberal vehicle for giant banks. Turns out that makes a policy difference.
Great comment. Simply great. Hat tip to the author !
Notable quotes:
"… The New Deal did not seek to overthrow the plutocracy, but it did seek to side-step and
disable their dominance. …"
"… It seems to me that while neoliberalism on the right was much the same old same old, the
neoliberal turn on the left was marked by a measured abandonment of this struggle over the distribution
of income between the classes. In the U.S., the Democrats gradually abandoned their populist
commitments. In Europe, the labour and socialist parties gradually abandoned class struggle. …"
"… When Obama came in, in 2008 amid the unfolding GFC, one of the most remarkable features
of his economic team was the extent to which it conceded control of policy entirely to the leading
money center banks. Geithner and Bernanke continued in power with Geithner moving from the
New York Federal Reserve (where he served as I recall under a Chair from Goldman Sachs) to Treasury
in the Obama Administration, but Geithner's Treasury was staffed from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan
Chase and Citibank. The crisis served to concentrate banking assets in the hands of the top
five banks, but it seemed also to transfer political power entirely into their hands as well.
Simon Johnson called it a coup. … "
"… Here's the thing: the globalization and financialization of the economy from roughly 1980
drove both increasingly extreme distribution of income and de-industrialization. …"
"… It was characteristic of neoliberalism that the policy, policy intention and policy consequences
were hidden behind a rhetoric of markets and technological inevitability. Matt Stoller has identified
this as the statecraft of neoliberalism: the elimination of political agency and responsibility
for economic performance and outcomes. Globalization and financialization were just "forces"
that just happened, in a meteorological economics. …"
"… This was not your grandfather's Democratic Party and it was a Democratic Party that could
aid the working class and the Rust Belt only within fairly severe and sometimes sharply conflicting
constraints. …"
"… No one in the Democratic Party had much institutional incentive to connect the dots, and
draw attention to the acute conflicts over the distribution of income and wealth involved in financialization
of the economy (including financialization as a driver of health care costs). And, that makes
the political problem that much harder, because there are no resources for rhetorical and informational
clarity or coherence. …"
"… If Obama could not get a very big stimulus indeed thru a Democratic Congress long out of
power, Obama wasn't really trying. And, well-chosen spending on pork barrel projects is popular
and gets Congressional critters re-elected. So, again, if the stimulus is small and the Democratic
Congress doesn't get re-elected, Obama isn't really trying. …"
"… Again, it comes down to: by 2008, the Democratic Party is not a fit vehicle for populism,
because it has become a neoliberal vehicle for giant banks. Turns out that makes a policy difference.
…"
Ethnically divided population is easier to control. This is what identity politics is about...
Notable quotes:
"... In the year 1915 America was over 85% white, and a half-century later in 1965, that same 85% ratio still nearly applied. But partly due to the passage of the Immigration Reform Act of that year, America's demographics changed very rapidly over the following five decades. By 2015 there had been a 700% increase in the total number of Hispanics and Asians and the black population was nearly 100% larger, while the number of (non-Hispanic) whites had grown less than 25%, with much of even that small increase due to the huge influx of Middle Easterners, North Africans, and other non-European Caucasians officially classified by our U.S. Census as "white." As a consequence of these sharply divergent demographic trends, American whites have fallen to little more than 60% of the total, and are now projected to become a minority within just another generation or two, already reduced to representing barely half of all children under the age of 10. ..."
"... The answer is that for various pragmatic and ideological reasons, the ruling elites of both our major parties have largely either ignored or publicly welcomed the demographic changes transforming the nation they jointly control. Continuous heavy immigration has long been seen as an unabashed positive both by open borders libertarians of the economically-focused Right and also by open borders multiculturalists of the socially-focused Left, and these ideological positions permeate the community of policy experts, staffers, donors, and media pundits who constitute our political ecosphere. ..."
"... Earlier this year, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, an elderly individual with unabashed socialistic views, was interviewed by Vox ..."
"... These notions scandalized his neoliberal interlocutor, and the following day another Vox ..."
I think this one short paragraph provides a better clue to the unexpected political rise of Donald
Trump than would a hundred footnoted academic articles.
In the year 1915 America was over 85%
white, and a half-century later in 1965, that same 85% ratio still nearly applied. But partly due
to the passage of the Immigration Reform Act of that year, America's demographics
changed very rapidly over the following five decades. By 2015 there had been a 700% increase
in the total number of Hispanics and Asians and the black population was nearly 100% larger, while
the number of (non-Hispanic) whites had grown less than 25%, with much of even that small increase
due to the huge influx of Middle Easterners, North Africans, and other non-European Caucasians officially
classified by our U.S. Census as "white." As a consequence of these sharply divergent demographic
trends, American whites have fallen to little more than 60% of the total, and are now projected to
become a minority within just another generation or two, already reduced to representing
barely half of all children under the age of 10.
Demographic changes so enormous and rapid on a continental scale are probably unprecedented in
all human history, and our political establishment was remarkably blind for having failed to anticipate
the possible popular reaction. Over the last twelve months, Donald Trump, a socially liberal New
Yorker, has utilized the immigration issue to seize the GOP presidential nomination against the vehement
opposition of nearly the entire Republican establishment, conservative and moderate alike, and at
times his campaign has enjoyed a lead in the national polls, placing him within possible reach of
the White House. Instead of wondering how a candidate came to take advantage of that particular issue,
perhaps we should instead ask ourselves why it hadn't happened sooner.
The answer is that for various pragmatic and ideological reasons, the ruling elites of both our
major parties have largely either ignored or publicly welcomed the demographic changes transforming
the nation they jointly control. Continuous heavy immigration has long been seen as an unabashed
positive both by open borders libertarians of the economically-focused Right and also by open borders
multiculturalists of the socially-focused Left, and these ideological positions permeate the community
of policy experts, staffers, donors, and media pundits who constitute our political ecosphere.
Earlier this year, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, an elderly individual with
unabashed socialistic views,
was interviewed by Vox's Ezra Klein, and explained that "of course" heavy foreign immigration-let
alone "open borders"-represented the economic dream of extreme free market libertarians such as the
Koch brothers, since that policy would obviously drive down the wages of workers and greatly advantage
Capital at the expense of Labor.
These notions scandalized his neoliberal interlocutor, and the following
day another Vox colleague
joined in the attack, harshly denouncing the candidate's views as "ugly" and "wrongheaded," while
instead pointing to the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal as the proper font of
progressive economic doctrine. Faced with such sharp attacks by young and influential Democratic
pundits less than half his age, Sanders soon retreated from his simple statement of fact, and henceforth
avoided raising the immigration issue during the remainder of his campaign.
The United States should threaten Russia with military force in order to contain the Kremlin's growing
power on the international stage, a top candidate to become Donald Trump's Secretary of State has
said.
Rudy Giuliani, the former New York Mayor
who is believed to be the front runner to head Mr Trump's
State Department, made the comments at a Washington event sponsored by the
Wall Street Journal
.
In
quotes | The Trump - Putin relationship
Putin on Trump:
"He is a very flamboyant man, very talented, no doubt about
that He is an absolute leader of the presidential race, as we see it today. He says that
he wants to move to another level of relations, to a deeper level of relations with Russia.
How can we not welcome that? Of course we welcome it." -
December 2015
Trump on Putin:
"It is always a great honour to be so nicely complimented by a
man so highly respected within his own country and beyond." -
December 2015
"I think I would just get along very well with Putin. I just
think so. People say what do you mean? I just think we would." -
July 2015
"I have no relationship with [Putin] other than he called me a
genius. He said Donald Trump is a genius and he is going to be the leader of the party and
he's going to be the leader of the world or something. He said some good stuff about me I
think I'd have a good relationship with Putin, who knows." -
February 2016
"I have nothing to do with Putin, I have never spoken to him, I
don't know anything about him, other than he will respect me." -
July 2016
"I would treat Vladimir Putin firmly, but there's nothing I can
think of that I'd rather do than have Russia friendly as opposed to how they are right now
so that we can go and knock out Isis together with other people. Wouldn't it be nice if we
actually got along?" -
July 2016
"The man has very strong control over a country. It's a very
different system and I don't happen to like the system, but certainly, in that system, he's
been a leader." -
September 2016
"Well I think when [Putin] called me brilliant, I'll take the
compliment, okay?" -
September 2016
"... News that Trump might work 4 days a week as President, or at least work the same work week as Congress does, would suggest he plans on running a lean government. ..."
"... A counter-argument that could be put forward is that the Presidency doesn't (and shouldn't) define the office-holder's life and the Clintons themselves are an example of what can happen if the Presidency consumes their lives ..."
"... If it's Trump's intention to reform the political culture in Washington and make it more accountable to the public, and bring the Presidency closer to the public, then defining the maximum limits of the position on his time and sticking to them, perhaps through delegating roles and functions to his cabinet secretaries, is one path to reform. ..."
My impression is that Donald Trump is planning or at least thinking of running the government
as a business, choosing people as cabinet secretaries on the basis of past experience and on what
they would bring to the position, as opposed to choosing cabinet secretaries because they have
been loyal yes-people (as Hillary Clinton would have done)
News that Trump might work 4 days a week as President, or at least work the same work week
as Congress does, would suggest he plans on running a lean government. At present the prevailing
attitude among Washington insiders and the corporate media is that Trump is not really that interested
in being President and isn't committed to the job 24/7.
A counter-argument that could be put forward is that the Presidency doesn't (and shouldn't)
define the office-holder's life and the Clintons themselves are an example of what can happen
if the Presidency consumes their lives: it can damage the individuals and in Hillary Clinton's
case, cut her off so much from ordinary people that it disqualifies her from becoming President
herself.
If it's Trump's intention to reform the political culture in Washington and make it more accountable
to the public, and bring the Presidency closer to the public, then defining the maximum limits
of the position on his time and sticking to them, perhaps through delegating roles and functions
to his cabinet secretaries, is one path to reform.
"... a normal person might look at the slight thaw in Cold War 2.0 as an early positive indicator of the end of the Obama Era. ..."
"... Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) begs to differ. In a blistering statement he released today responding to the Trump/Putin telephone call, Sen. McCain condemned any efforts by President-elect Trump to find common ground with Putin. ..."
"... Interesting that Republican McCain has taken to using the Hillary Clinton campaign line (the one that lost her the election) that somehow the Russians were manipulating the US electoral process. The claim was never backed up by facts and Hillary's claim that some 17 US intelligence agencies agreed with her was shown to be a dangerous and foolish lie. ..."
"... What McCain doesn't say is that unlike US troops in Syria, the Russians are invited by the Syrian government and operate according to international law. Oh yes, and they are also fighting al-Qaeda and ISIS, which has sought to overthrow Assad for the past five years. ..."
"... Maybe McCain is just really sensitive after meeting with al-Qaeda and ISIS in Syria? ..."
"... As rumors swirl from Washington about neocons sniffing out top jobs in the incoming administration, it would serve president-elect Trump well to reflect on he true nature of the neocon beast... ..."
Sit down. This is going to shock you. (Not). We
reported yesterday on the telephone call between US president-elect Trump and Russian president
Putin, where the current and future presidents discussed the need to set aside differences and look
to more constructive future relations.
With serious observers of this past year's increasing tensions between US and Russia openly
worrying about a nuclear war breaking out, with some 300,000 NATO troops placed on Russia's border,
with sanctions hurting average businesspersons on both sides, a normal person might look at the
slight thaw in Cold War 2.0 as an early positive indicator of the end of the Obama Era.
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) begs to differ. In a blistering
statement he released today responding to the Trump/Putin telephone call, Sen. McCain condemned
any efforts by President-elect Trump to find common ground with Putin.
Any claim by Putin that he wants to improve relations with the US must be vigorously opposed,
writes McCain. He explains:
We should place as much faith in such statements as any other made by a former KGB agent who has
plunged his country into tyranny, murdered his political opponents, invaded his neighbors, threatened
America's allies, and attempted to undermine America's elections.
Interesting that Republican McCain has taken to using the Hillary Clinton campaign line (the
one that lost her the election) that somehow the Russians were manipulating the US electoral process.
The claim was never backed up by facts and Hillary's claim that some 17 US intelligence agencies
agreed with her was
shown to be a dangerous and foolish lie.
Why is Putin not to be trusted, according to McCain?
Vladimir Putin has rejoined Bashar Assad in his barbaric war against the Syrian people with the
resumption of large-scale Russian air and missile strikes in Idlib and Homs. Another brutal assault
on the city of Aleppo could soon follow.
What McCain doesn't say is that unlike US troops in Syria, the Russians are invited by the Syrian
government and operate according to international law. Oh yes, and they are also fighting al-Qaeda
and ISIS, which has sought to overthrow Assad for the past five years.
As rumors swirl from Washington about neocons sniffing out top jobs in the incoming administration,
it would serve president-elect Trump well to reflect on he true nature of the neocon beast...
"... "Welcome to the world of strategic analysis," Ivan Selin used to tell his team during the Sixties, "where we program weapons that don't work to meet threats that don't exist." Selin, who would spend the following decades as a powerful behind-the-scenes player in the Washington mandarinate, was then the director of the Strategic Forces Division in the Pentagon's Office of Systems Analysis. "I was a twenty-eight-year-old wiseass when I started saying that," he told me, reminiscing about those days. "I thought the issues we were dealing with were so serious, they could use a little levity." ..."
"Welcome to the world of strategic analysis," Ivan Selin used to tell his team during the
Sixties, "where we program weapons that don't work to meet threats that don't exist." Selin, who
would spend the following decades as a powerful behind-the-scenes player in the Washington mandarinate,
was then the director of the Strategic Forces Division in the Pentagon's Office of Systems Analysis.
"I was a twenty-eight-year-old wiseass when I started saying that," he told me, reminiscing about
those days. "I thought the issues we were dealing with were so serious, they could use a little
levity."
####
While I do have some quibbles with the piece (RuAF pilots are getting much more than 90 hours
a year flight time & equipment is overrated and unaffordable in any decent numbers), it is pretty
solid.
"... I know what it is like to have to juggle creditors to make it through a week. I know what it is like to have to swallow my pride and constantly dun people to pay me so that I can pay others. ..."
"... I know what it is like to dread going to the mailbox, because there will always be new bills to pay but seldom a check with which to pay them. I know what it is like to have to tell my daughter that I didn't know if I would be able to pay for her wedding; it all depended on whether something good happened. And I know what it is like to have to borrow money from my adult daughters because my wife and I ran out of heating oil ..."
"... Two-thirds of Americans would have difficulty coming up with the money to cover a $1,000 emergency, according to an exclusive poll released Thursday, a signal that despite years after the Great Recession, Americans' finances remain precarious as ever. ..."
"... These difficulties span all incomes, according to the poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Three-quarters of people in households making less than $50,000 a year and two-thirds of those making between $50,000 and $100,000 would have difficulty coming up with $1,000 to cover an unexpected bill. ..."
"... Even for the country's wealthiest 20 percent - households making more than $100,000 a year - 38 percent say they would have at least some difficulty coming up with $1,000 ..."
"... Chronicle for Higher Education: ..."
"... Meanwhile, 91% of all the profits generated by the U.S. economy from 2009 through 2012 went to the top 1%. As just one example, the annual bonuses (not salaries, just the bonuses) of all Wall Street financial traders last year amounted to 28 billion dollars while the total income of all minimum wage workers in America came to 14 billion dollars. ..."
"... "Between 2009 and 2012, according to updated data from Emmanuel Saez, overall income per family grew 6.9 percent. The gains weren't shared evenly, however. The top 1 percent saw their real income grow by 34.7 percent while the bottom 99 percent only saw a 0.8 percent gain, meaning that the 1 percent captured 91 percent of all real income. ..."
"... Adjusting for inflation and excluding anything made from capital gains investments like stocks, however, shows that even that small gains for all but the richest disappears. According to Justin Wolfers, adjusted average income for the 1 percent without capital gains rose from $871,100 to $968,000 in that time period. For everyone else, average income actually fell from $44,000 to $43,900. Calculated this way, the 1 percent has captured all of the income gains." ..."
"... There actually is a logic at work in the Rust Belt voters for voted for Trump. I don't think it's good logic, but it makes sense in its own warped way. The calculation the Trump voters seem to be making in the Rust Belt is that it's better to have a job and no health insurance and no medicare and no social security, than no job but the ACA (with $7,000 deductibles you can't afford to pay for anyway) plus medicare (since most of these voters are healthy, they figure they'll never get sick) plus social security (most of these voters are not 65 or older, and probably think they'll never age - or perhaps don't believe that social security will be solvent when they do need it). ..."
"... It's the same twisted logic that goes on with protectionism. Rust Belt workers figure that it's better to have a job and not be able to afford a Chinese-made laptop than not to have a job but plenty of cheap foreign-made widgets you could buy if you had any money (which you don't). That logic doesn't parse if you run through the economics (because protectionism will destroy the very jobs they think they're saving), but it can be sold as a tweet in a political campaign. ..."
"... The claim "Trump's coalition is composed of overt racists and people who are indifferent to overt racism" is incomplete. Trump's coalition actually consists of 3 parts and it's highly unstable: [1] racists, [2] plutocrats, [3] working class people slammed hard by globalization for whom Democrats have done little or nothing. ..."
"... The good news is that Trump's coalition is unstable. The plutocrats and Rust Belters are natural enemies. ..."
"... Listen to Steve Bannon, a classic stormfront type - he says he wants to blow up both the Democratic and the Republican party. He calls himself a "Leninist" in a recent interview and vows to wreck all elite U.S. institutions (universities, giant multinationals), not just the Democratic party. ..."
"... Again, it comes down to: by 2008, the Democratic Party is not a fit vehicle for populism, because it has become a neoliberal vehicle for giant banks. Turns out that makes a policy difference. ..."
Eric places the blame for this loss squarely on economics, which, it seems to me, gets the analysis
exactly right. And the statistics back up his analysis, I believe.
It's disturbing and saddening to watch other left-wing websites ignore those statistics and
charge off the cliff into the abyss, screaming that this election was all about racism/misogyny/homophobia/[fill
in the blank with identity politics demonology of your choice]. First, the "it's all racism" analysis
conveniently lets the current Democratic leadership off the hook. They didn't do anything wrong,
it was those "deplorables" (half the country!) who are to blame. Second, the identity politics
blame-shifting completely overlooks and short-circuits any real action to fix the economy by Democratic
policymakers or Democratic politicians or the Democratic party leadership. That's particularly
convenient for the Democratic leadership because these top-four-percenter professionals "promise
anything and change nothing" while jetting between Davos and Martha's Vineyard, ignoring the peons
who don't make $100,000 or more a year because the peons all live in flyover country.
"Trump supporters were on average affluent, but they are always Republican and aren't numerous
enough to deliver the presidency (538 has changed their view in the wake of the election result).
Some point out that looking at support by income doesn't show much distinctive support for Trump
among the "poor", but that's beside the point too, as it submerges a regional phenomenon in a
national average, just as exit polls do. (..)
"When commentators like Michael Moore and Thomas Frank pointed out that there was possibility
for Trump in the Rust Belt they were mostly ignored or, even more improbably, accused of being
apologists for racism and misogyny. But that is what Trump did, and he won. Moreover, he won with
an amateurish campaign against a well-funded and politically sophisticated opponent simply because
he planted his flag where others wouldn't.
"Because of the obsession with exit polls, post-election analysis has not come to grips with
the regional nature of the Trump phenomenon. Exit polls divide the general electorate based on
individual attributes: race, gender, income, education, and so on, making regional distinctions
invisible. Moreover, America doesn't decide the presidential election that way. It decides it
based on the electoral college, which potentially makes the characteristics of individual states
decisive. We should be looking at maps, not exit polls for the explanation. Low black turnout
in California or high Latino turnout in Texas do not matter in the slightest in determining the
election, but exit polls don't help us see that. Exit polls deliver a bunch of non-explanatory
facts, in this election more than other recent ones." http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2016/11/11/23174/
"Donald Trump performed best on Tuesday in places where the economy is in worse shape, and
especially in places where jobs are most at risk in the future.
"Trump, who in his campaign pledged to be a voice for `forgotten Americans,' beat Hillary Clinton
in counties with slower job growth and lower wages. And he far outperformed her in counties where
more jobs are threatened by automation or offshoring, a sign that he found support not just among
workers who are struggling now but among those concerned for their economic future."
Meanwhile, the neoliberal Democrats made claims about the economy that at best wildly oversold
the non-recovery from the 2009 global financial meltdown, and at worst flat-out misrepresented
the state of the U.S. economy. For example, president Obama in his June 1 2016 speech in Elkhart
Indiana, said:
"Now, one of the reasons we're told this has been an unusual election year is because people
are anxious and uncertain about the economy. And our politics are a natural place to channel
that frustration. So I wanted to come to the heartland, to the Midwest, back to close to my
hometown to talk about that anxiety, that economic anxiety, and what I think it means. (..)
America's economy is not just better than it was eight years ago - it is the strongest, most
durable economy in the world. (..) Unemployment in Elkhart has fallen to around 4 percent.
(Applause.) At the peak of the crisis, nearly one in 10 homeowners in the state of Indiana
were either behind on their mortgages or in foreclosure; today, it's one in 30. Back then,
only 75 percent of your kids graduated from high school; tomorrow, 90 percent of them will.
(Applause.) The auto industry just had its best year ever. (..) So that's progress.(..) We
decided to invest in job training so that folks who lost their jobs could retool. We decided
to invest in things like high-tech manufacturing and clean energy and infrastructure, so that
entrepreneurs wouldn't just bring back the jobs that we had lost, but create new and better
jobs By almost every economic measure, America is better off than when I came here at the
beginning of my presidency. That's the truth. That's true. (Applause.) It's true. (Applause.)
Over the past six years, our businesses have created more than 14 million new jobs - that's
the longest stretch of consecutive private sector job growth in our history. We've seen the
first sustained manufacturing growth since the 1990s."
None of this is true. Not is a substantive sense, not in the sense of being accurate, not in
the sense of reflecting the facts on the ground for real working people who don't fly their private
jets to Davos.
The claim that "America's economy is the strongest and most durable economy in the world" is
just plain false. China has a much higher growth rate, at 6.9% nearly triple the U.S.'s - and
America's GDP growth is trending to historic long-term lows, and still falling. Take a look at
this chart of the Federal Reserve board's projections of U.S. GDP growth since 2009 compared with
the real GDP growth rate:
"[In the survey] [t]he Fed asked respondents how they would pay for a $400 emergency. The answer:
47 percent of respondents said that either they would cover the expense by borrowing or selling
something, or they would not be able to come up with the $400 at all. Four hundred dollars! Who
knew?
"Well, I knew. I knew because I am in that 47 percent.
" I know what it is like to have to juggle creditors to make it through a week. I know
what it is like to have to swallow my pride and constantly dun people to pay me so that I can
pay others. I know what it is like to have liens slapped on me and to have my bank account
levied by creditors. I know what it is like to be down to my last $5-literally-while I wait for
a paycheck to arrive, and I know what it is like to subsist for days on a diet of eggs.
I know what it is like to dread going to the mailbox, because there will always be new
bills to pay but seldom a check with which to pay them. I know what it is like to have to tell
my daughter that I didn't know if I would be able to pay for her wedding; it all depended on whether
something good happened. And I know what it is like to have to borrow money from my adult daughters
because my wife and I ran out of heating oil ."
" Two-thirds of Americans would have difficulty coming up with the money to cover a $1,000
emergency, according to an exclusive poll released Thursday, a signal that despite years after
the Great Recession, Americans' finances remain precarious as ever.
" These difficulties span all incomes, according to the poll conducted by The Associated
Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Three-quarters of people in households making less
than $50,000 a year and two-thirds of those making between $50,000 and $100,000 would have difficulty
coming up with $1,000 to cover an unexpected bill.
" Even for the country's wealthiest 20 percent - households making more than $100,000 a
year - 38 percent say they would have at least some difficulty coming up with $1,000 .
"`The more we learn about the balance sheets of Americans, it becomes quite alarming,' said
Caroline Ratcliffe, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute focusing on poverty and emergency savings
issues."
The rest of Obama's statistics are deceptive to the point of being dissimulations - unemployment
has dropped to 4 percent because so many people have stopped looking for work and moved into their
parents' basements that the Bureau of Labor Statistics no longer counts them as unemployed. Meanwhile,
the fraction of working-age adults who are not in the workforce has skyrocketed to an all-time
high. Few homeowners are now being foreclosed in 2016 compared to 2009 because the people in 2009
who were in financial trouble all lost their homes. Only rich people and well-off professionals
were able to keep their homes through the 2009 financial collapse. Since 2009, businesses did
indeed create 14 million new jobs - mostly low-wage junk jobs, part-time minimum-wage jobs that
don't pay a living wage.
"The deep recession wiped out primarily high-wage and middle-wage jobs. Yet the strongest employment
growth during the sluggish recovery has been in low-wage work, at places like strip malls and
fast-food restaurants.
"In essence, the poor economy has replaced good jobs with bad ones."
And the jobs market isn't much better for highly-educated workers:
New research released Monday says nearly half of the nation's recent college graduates work
jobs that don't require a degree.
The report, from the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, concludes that while
college-educated Americans are less likely to collect unemployment, many of the jobs they do have
aren't worth the price of their diplomas.
The data calls into question a national education platform that says higher education is better
in an economy that favors college graduates.
Don't believe it? Then try this article, from the Chronicle for Higher Education:
Approximately 60 percent of the increase in the number of college graduates from 1992 to
2008 worked in jobs that the BLS considers relatively low skilled-occupations where many participants
have only high school diplomas and often even less. Only a minority of the increment in our
nation's stock of college graduates is filling jobs historically considered as requiring a
bachelor's degree or more.
As for manufacturing, U.S. manufacturing lost 35,000 jobs in 2016, and manufacturing employment
remains 2.2% below what it was when Obama took office.
Meanwhile, 91% of all the profits generated by the U.S. economy from 2009 through 2012
went to the top 1%. As just one example, the annual bonuses (not salaries, just the bonuses) of
all Wall Street financial traders last year amounted to 28 billion dollars while the total income
of all minimum wage workers in America came to 14 billion dollars.
"Between 2009 and 2012, according to updated data from Emmanuel Saez, overall income per
family grew 6.9 percent. The gains weren't shared evenly, however. The top 1 percent saw their
real income grow by 34.7 percent while the bottom 99 percent only saw a 0.8 percent gain, meaning
that the 1 percent captured 91 percent of all real income.
Adjusting for inflation and excluding anything made from capital gains investments like
stocks, however, shows that even that small gains for all but the richest disappears. According
to Justin Wolfers, adjusted average income for the 1 percent without capital gains rose from $871,100
to $968,000 in that time period. For everyone else, average income actually fell from $44,000
to $43,900. Calculated this way, the 1 percent has captured all of the income gains."
Does any of this sound like "the strongest, most durable economy in the world"? Does any of
this square with the claims by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama that "By almost every economic
measure, America is better off "? The U.S. economy is only better off in 2016 by disingenuous
comparison with the stygian depths of the 2009 economic collapse.
Hillary Clinton tied herself to Barack Obama's economic legacy, and the brutal reality for
working class people remains that the economy today has barely improved for most workers to what
it was in 2009, and is in many ways worse. Since 2009, automation + outsourcing/offshoring has
destroyed whole classes of jobs, from taxi drivers (wiped out by Uber and Lyft) to warehoues stock
clerks (getting wiped out by robots) to paralegals and associates at law firms (replaced by databases
and legal search algorithms) to high-end programmers (wiped out by an ever-increasing flood of
H1B via workers from India and China).
Yet vox.com continues to run article after article proclaiming "the 2016 election was all about
racism." And we have a non-stop stream of this stuff from people like Anne Laurie over at balloon-juice.com:
"While the more-Leftist-than-thou "progressives" - including their latest high-profile figurehead
- are high-fiving each other in happy anticipation of potential public-outrage gigs over the next
four years, at least some people are beginning to push back on the BUT WHITE WORKING CLASS HAS
ALL THE SADS!!! meme so beloved of Very Serious Pundits."
That's the ticket, Democrats double down on the identity politics, keep telling the pulverized
middle class how great the economy is. Because that worked so well for you this election.
= = = mclaren@9:52 am: The rest of Obama's statistics are deceptive to the point of being
dissimulations -[ ] Only rich people and well-off professionals were able to keep their homes
through the 2009 financial collapse. = = =
Some food for thought in your post, but you don't help your argument with statements such as
this one. Rich people and well-off professionals make up at most 10% of the population. US homeownership
rate in 2005 was 68.8%, in 2015 is 63.7. That's a big drop and unquestionably represents a lot
of people losing their houses involuntarily. Still, even assuming no "well-off professionals"
lost their houses in the recession that still leaves the vast majority of the houses owned by
the middle class. Which is consistent with foreclosure and sales stats in middle class areas from
2008-2014. Remember that even with 20% unemployment 80% of the population still has a job.
Similarly, I agree that the recession and job situation was qualitatively worse than the quantitative
stats depicted. Once you start adding in hidden factors not captured by the official stats, though,
where do you stop? How do you know the underground economy isn't doing far better than it was
in the boom years of the oughts, thus reducing actual unemployment? Etc.
Finally, you need to address the fundamental question: assuming all you say is true (arguendo),
how does destroying the Affordable Care Act, Social Security, and Medicare help those in the economically
depressed areas? I got hit bad by the recession myself. Know what helped from 2010 forward? Knowing
that I could change jobs, keep my college-age children on my spouse's heath plan, not get hit
with pre-existing condition fraud, and that if worse came to worse in a couple years I would have
the plan exchange to fall back on. Kansas has tried the Ryan/Walker approach, seen it fail, doubled
down, and seen that fail 4x as badly. Now we're going to make it up on unit sales by trying the
Ryan plan nationally? How do you expect that to "work out for you"?
WLGR 11.16.16 at 4:11 pm
mclaren @ 7: "high-end programmers (wiped out by an ever-increasing flood of H1B via workers
from India and China)"
I'm on board with the general thrust of what you're saying, but this is way, way over
the line separating socialism from barbarism. The fact that
it's not even true is beside the point, as is the (quite frankly) fascist metaphor of "flood"
to describe human fucking beings traveling in search of economic security, at least as long as
you show some self-awareness and contrition about your language. Some awareness about the insidious
administrative structure of the H1-B program would also be nice - the way it works is, an individual's
visa status more or less completely depends on remaining in the good graces of their employer,
meaning that by design these employees have no conceivable leverage in any negotiation
over pay or working conditions, and a program of unconditional residency without USCIS as a de
facto strikebreaker would have much less downward pressure on wages - but anti-immigration rhetoric
remaining oblivious to actual immigration law is par for the course.
No, the real point of departure here from what deserves to be called "socialism" is in the
very act of blithely combining effects of automation (i.e. traditional capitalist competition
for productive efficiency at the expense of workers' economic security) and effects of offshoring/outsourcing/immigration
(i.e. racialized fragmentation of the global working class by accident of birth into those who
"deserve" greater economic security and those who don't) into one and the same depiction of developed-world
economic crisis. In so many words, you're walking right down neoliberal capitalism's ideological
garden path: the idea that it's not possible to be anticapitalist without being an economic nationalist,
and that every conceivable alternative to some form of Hillary Clinton is ultimately reducible
to some form of Donald Trump. On the contrary, those of us on the socialism side of "socialism
or barbarism" don't object to capitalism because it's exploiting American workers , we
object because it's exploiting workers , and insisting on this crucial point against all
chauvinist pressure ("workers of all lands , unite!") is what fundamentally separates our
anticapitalism from the pseudo-anticapitalism of fascists.
Maclaren: I'm with you. I well remember Obama and his "pivot to deficit reduction" and "green
shoots" while I was screaming at the TV 'No!! Not Now!"
And then he tried for a "grand bargain" with the Reps over chained CPI adjustment for SS, and
he became my active enemy. I was a Democrat. Where did my party go?
Just chiming in here: The implicit deal between the elites and the hoi polloi was that the economy
would be run with minimal competence. Throughout the west, those elites have broken faith with
the masses on that issue, and are being punished for it.
I'm less inclined to attach responsibility to Obama, Clinton or the Democratic Party than some.
If Democrats had their way, the economy would have been managed considerably more competently.
Always remember that the rejection of the elites wasn't just a rejection of Democrats. The
Republican elite also took it in the neck.
I'll also dissent from the view that race wasn't decisive in this election. Under different
circumstances, we might have had Bernie's revolution rather than Trump's, but Trump's coalition
is composed of overt racists and people who are indifferent to overt racism.
I find the discussions over identity politics so intensely frustrating. A lot of people
on the left have gone all-in on self-righteous anger
Identity politics (and to some extent probably the rhetorical style that goes with it) isn't
a 'left' thing, it's a liberal thing. It's a bête noire for many on the left-see eg. Nancy Fraser's
work.
The Anglo/online genus what you get when you subtract class, socialism and real-world organisation
from politics and add in a lot of bored students and professionals with internet connections in
the context of a political culture (America's) that already valorises individual aggression to
a unique degree.
As polticalfoorball @15 says. The Democrats just didn't have the political muscle to deliver on
those things. There really is a dynamic thats been playing out: Democrats don't get enough governing
capacity because they did poorly in the election, which means their projects to improve the economy
are neutered or allowed through only in a very weakened form. Then the next election cycle the
neuterers use that failure as a weapon to take even more governing capacity away. Its not a failure
of will, its a failure to get on top of the political feedback loop.
@15 politicalfootball 11.16.16 at 5:27 pm
"Throughout the west, those elites have broken faith with the masses on that issue, and are being
punished for it."
Could you specify some "elite" that has been punished?
'the economic theories and programs ascribed to John M. Keynes and his followers; specifically
: the advocacy of monetary and fiscal programs by government to increase employment and spending'
– and if it is done wisely – like in most European countries before 2000 it is one of the least
'braindead' things.
But with the introduction of the Euro – some governmental programs – lead (especially in Spain)
to horrendous self-destructive housing and building bubbles – which lead to the conclusion that
such programs – which allow 'gambling with houses' are pretty much 'braindead'.
Or shorter: The quality of Keynesianism depends on NOT doing it 'braindead'.
Cranky Observer in #11 makes some excellent points. Crucially, he asks: "Finally, you need to
address the fundamental question: assuming all you say is true (arguendo), how does destroying
the Affordable Care Act, Social Security, and Medicare help those in the economically depressed
areas?"
There actually is a logic at work in the Rust Belt voters for voted for Trump. I don't
think it's good logic, but it makes sense in its own warped way. The calculation the Trump voters
seem to be making in the Rust Belt is that it's better to have a job and no health insurance and
no medicare and no social security, than no job but the ACA (with $7,000 deductibles you can't
afford to pay for anyway) plus medicare (since most of these voters are healthy, they figure they'll
never get sick) plus social security (most of these voters are not 65 or older, and probably think
they'll never age - or perhaps don't believe that social security will be solvent when they do
need it).
It's the same twisted logic that goes on with protectionism. Rust Belt workers figure that
it's better to have a job and not be able to afford a Chinese-made laptop than not to have a job
but plenty of cheap foreign-made widgets you could buy if you had any money (which you don't).
That logic doesn't parse if you run through the economics (because protectionism will destroy
the very jobs they think they're saving), but it can be sold as a tweet in a political campaign.
As for 63.7% home ownership stats in 2016, vast numbers of those "owned" homes were snapped
up by giant banks and other financial entities like hedge funds which then rented those homes
out. So the home ownership stats in 2016 are extremely deceptive. Much of the home-buying since
the 2009 crash has been investment purchases. Foreclosure home purchases for rent is now a huge
thriving business, and it's fueling a second housing bubble. Particularly because in many ways
it repeats the financially frothy aspects of the early 2000s housing bubble - banks and investment
firms are issuing junks bonds based on rosy estimates of ever-escalating rents and housing prices,
they use those junk financial instruments (and others like CDOs) to buy houses which then get
rented out at inflated prices, the rental income gets used to fund more tranches of investment
which fuels more buy-to-rent home buying. Rents have already skyrocketed far beyond incomes on
the East and West Coast, so this can't continue. But home prices and rents keep rising. There
is no city in the United States today where a worker making minimum wage can afford to rent a
one-bedroom apartment and have money left over to eat and pay for a car, health insurance, etc.
If home ownership were really so robust, this couldn't possibly be the case. The fact that rents
keep skyrocketing even as undocumented hispanics return to Mexico in record numbers while post-9/11
ICE restrictions have hammered legal immigration numbers way, way down suggests that home ownership
is not nearly as robust as the deceptive numbers indicate.
Political football in #15 remarks: "I'll also dissent from the view that race wasn't decisive
in this election. Under different circumstances, we might have had Bernie's revolution rather
than Trump's, but Trump's coalition is composed of overt racists and people who are indifferent
to overt racism."
Race was important, but not the root cause of the Trump victory. How do we know this? Tump
himself is telling us. Look at Trump's first announced actions - deport 3 million undocumented
immigrants who have committed crimes, ram through vast tax cuts for the rich, and end the inheritance
tax.
If Trump's motivation (and his base's motivation) was pure racism, Trump's first announced
action would be something like passing laws that made it illegal to marry undocumented workers.
His first act would be to roll back the legalization of black/white marriage and re-instate segregation.
Trump isn't promising any of that.
Instead Trump's (bad) policies are based around enriching billionaires and shutting down immigration.
Bear in mind that 43% of all new jobs created since 2009 went to immigrants and you start to realize
that Trump's base is reacting to economic pressure by scapegoating immigrants, not racism by itself.
If it were pure racism we'd have Trump and Ryan proposing a bunch of new Nuremberg laws. Make
it illegal to have sex with muslims, federally fund segregated black schools and pass laws to
force black kids to get bussed to them, create apartheid-style zones where only blacks can live,
that sort of thing. Trump's first announced actions involve enriching the fantastically wealthy
and enacting dumb self-destructive protectionism via punitive immigration control. That's protectionism
+ class war of the rich against everyone else, not racism. The protectionist immigration-control
+ deportation part of Trump's program is sweet sweet music to the working class people in the
Rust Belt. They think the 43% of jobs taken by immigrants will come back. They don't realize that
those are mostly jobs no one wants to do anyway, and that most of those jobs are already in the
process of getting automated out of existence.
The claim "Trump's coalition is composed of overt racists and people who are indifferent
to overt racism" is incomplete. Trump's coalition actually consists of 3 parts and it's highly
unstable: [1] racists, [2] plutocrats, [3] working class people slammed hard by globalization
for whom Democrats have done little or nothing.
Here's an argument that may resonate: the first two groups in Trump's coalition are unreachable.
Liberal Democrats can't sweet-talk racists out of being racist and we certainly have nothing to
offer the plutocrats. So the only part of Trump's coalition that is really reachable by liberal
Democrats is the third group. Shouldn't we be concentrating on that third group, then?
The good news is that Trump's coalition is unstable. The plutocrats and Rust Belters are
natural enemies. Since the plutocrats are perceived as running giant corporations that import
large numbers of non-white immigrants to lower wages, the racists are not big fans of that group
either.
Listen to Steve Bannon, a classic stormfront type - he says he wants to blow up both the
Democratic and the Republican party. He calls himself a "Leninist" in a recent interview and vows
to wreck all elite U.S. institutions (universities, giant multinationals), not just the Democratic
party.
Why? Because the stormfront types consider elite U.S. institutions like CitiBank as equally
culpable with Democrats in supposedly destroying white people in the U.S. According to Bannon's
twisted skinhead logic, Democrats are allegedly race traitors for cultural reasons, but big U.S.
corporations and elite institutions are supposedly equally guilty of economic race treason by
importing vast numbers of non-white immigrants via H1B visas, by offshoring jobs from mostly caucasian-populated
red states to non-white countries like India, Africa, China, and by using elite U.S. universities
to trawl the world for the best (often non-white) students, etc. Bannon's "great day of the rope"
includes the plutocrats as well as people of color.
These natural fractures in the Trump coalition are real, and Democrats can exploit them to
weaken and destroy Republicans. But we have to get away from condemning all Republicans as racists
because if we go down that route, we won't realize how fractured and unstable the Trump coalition
really is.
The short version of my thinking on the Obama stimulus is this: Keynesian stimulus spending is
a free lunch; it doesn't really matter what you spend money on up to a very generous point, so
it seems ready-made for legislative log-rolling. If Obama could not get a very big stimulus indeed
thru a Democratic Congress long out of power, Obama wasn't really trying. And, well-chosen spending
on pork barrel projects is popular and gets Congressional critters re-elected. So, again, if the
stimulus is small and the Democratic Congress doesn't get re-elected, Obama isn't really trying.
Again, it comes down to: by 2008, the Democratic Party is not a fit vehicle for populism,
because it has become a neoliberal vehicle for giant banks. Turns out that makes a policy difference.
Ps. Should prob add that identity politics isn't the same thing as feminism, anti-racism, LGBT
politics, etc. They're all needed now more than ever.
What we don't need more of imo is a particular liberal/middle-class form of those things with
particular assumptions (meritocratic and individualist), epistemology (strongly subjectivist)
and rhetorical style (which often aims humiliating opponents from a position of relative knowledge/status
rather than verbal engagement).
I don't know why I'm even having to say this, as it's so obvious. The "leftists" (for want of
a better word) and feminists who I know are also against neoliberalism. They are against the selloff
of public assets to enterprises for private profit. They want to see a solution to the rapidly
shrinking job market as technology replaces jobs (no, it's not enough for the Heroic Workers to
Seize the Means of Production – the means of production are different now and the solution is
going to have to be more complex than just "bring back manufacturing" or "introduce tariffs".)
They want to roll back the tax cuts for the rich which have whittled down our revenue base this
century. They want corporations and the top 10% to pay their fair share, and concomitantly they
want pensioners, the unemployed and people caring for children to have a proper living wage.
They support a universal "single payer" health care system, which we social democratic squishy
types managed to actually introduce in the 1970s, but now we have to fight against right wing
governments trying to roll it back They support a better system of public education. They support
a science-based approach to climate change where it is taken seriously for the threat it is and
given priority in Government policy. They support spending less on the Military and getting out
of international disputes which we (Western nations) only seem to exacerbate.
This is not an exhaustive list.
Yet just because the same people say that the dominant Western countries (and my own) still
suffer from institutionalised racism and sexism, which is not some kind of cake icing but actually
ruin lives and kill people, we are "all about identity politics" and cannot possibly have enough
brain cells to think about the issues I described in para 1.
The slow recovery was only one factor. Wages have been stagnant since Reagan. And honestly,
if a white Republican president had stabilized the economy, killed Osama Bin Laden and got rid
of pre-existing condition issue with healthcare, the GOP would be BRAGGING all over it. Let's
remember that we have ONE party that has been devoted to racist appeals, lying and putting party
over country for decades.
Obama entered office as the economy crashed over a cliff. Instead of reforming the banks and
punishing the bankers who engaged in fraudulent activities, he waded into healthcare reform. Banks
are bigger today than they were in 2008. And tell me again, which bankers were punished for the
fraud? Not a one All that Repo 105 maneuvering, stuffing the retirement funds with toxic assets
– etc. and so on – all of that was perfectly legal? And if legal, all of that was totally bonusable?
Yes! In America, such failure is gifted with huge bonuses, thanks to the American taxpayer.
Meanwhile, homeowners saw huge drops the value of their homes. Some are still underwater with
the mortgage. It's a shame that politicians and reporters in DC don't get out much.
Concurrently, right before the election, ACA premiums skyrocketed. If you are self-insured,
ACA is NOT affordable. It doesn't matter that prior to ACA, premiums increased astronomically.
Obama promised AFFORDABLE healthcare. In my state, we have essentially a monopoly on health insurance,
and the costs are absurd. But that's in part because the state Republicans refused to expand Medicaid.
Don't underestimate HRC's serious issues. HRC had one speech for the bankers and another for
everyone else. Why didn't she release the GS transcripts? When did the Democrats become the party
of Wall Street?
She also made the same idiotic mistake that Romney did – disparage a large swathe of American
voters (basket of deplorables is this year's 47%.)
And then we had a nation of voters intent on the outsider. Bernie Sanders had an improbable
run at it – the Wikileaks emails showed that the DNC did what they could to get rid of him as
a threat.
Well America has done and gone elected themselves an outsider. Lucky us.
"... 'A big part of Bill's anger toward Hillary was that he was sidelined during the entire campaign by her advisers,' said the source. 'He can't be effective if he sees himself as just another hired hand. He wasn't listened to and that infuriated him. After all, he knows something about campaigns, and he told me in early October that Hillary and her advisers were blowing it. ..."
"... 'Hillary wouldn't listen. She told Bill that his ideas were old and that he was out of touch. In the end, there was nothing he could do about it because Hillary and her people weren't listening to anything he said.' ..."
'Bill always campaigned as a guy who felt your pain, but Hillary came across as someone who was
pissed off at her enemy [Trump], not someone who was reaching out and trying to make life better
for the white working class.'
'Bill also said that many African Americans were deeply disappointed with the results of eight
years of Obama,' the source continued.
'Despite more and more government assistance, black weren't economically any better off, and black-on-black
crime was destroying their communities. He said Hillary should have gone into the South Side of Chicago
and condemned the out-of-control violence.'
'A big part of Bill's anger toward Hillary was that he was sidelined during the entire campaign
by her advisers,' said the source. 'He can't be effective if he sees himself as just another hired
hand. He wasn't listened to and that infuriated him. After all, he knows something about campaigns,
and he told me in early October that Hillary and her advisers were blowing it.
'Hillary wouldn't listen. She told Bill that his ideas were old and that he was out of touch.
In the end, there was nothing he could do about it because Hillary and her people weren't listening
to anything he said.'
"... Of course, the DNC was too busy trying to blow the Sanders campaign to smithereens and Hillary decided that comforting the Democrat Party's donor base was more important than attracting working class voters in the Rust Belt. ..."
I read all of these points and conclude that Bernie Sanders would have defeated Trump in the
general election. Sanders would have held all of the Democratic strongholds, and he would have
beaten Trump in the Midwest.
Of course, the DNC was too busy trying to blow the Sanders campaign to smithereens and
Hillary decided that comforting the Democrat Party's donor base was more important than attracting
working class voters in the Rust Belt.
This is evidence that the elites in the Democrat Party would rather lose with a ' made ' candidate
than win with an outsider.
Talking Point: The Clinton Campaign Was Well-Managed
Here are two examples of the talking point. From the Washington Post (November 10, 2016):
At Brooklyn headquarters on Wednesday, Podesta expressed his gratitude and support for the
team, and for Mook. "We have the No. 1 campaign manager," he said, in a staffwide gathering
in the afternoon. "I've been doing this since 1968, and I've never seen a culture and a spirit
like we created in this campaign." On the conference call with thousands of staff across the
country, Clinton also called in [how kind] and thanked her team for their dedication.
Mook tried to end the campaign on a high note.
"What you've created is going to live on," he told his troops. "Leaders all over this country,
local networks around the nation, future candidates who are going to step forward. Someone
in this room is going to manage a presidential campaign one day."
Talking Point: The Clinton Defeat Had Nothing To Do With Economics
Here's an example of the talking point. From, naturally,
Amanda Marcotte (November 11, 2016):
(The subtext here is usually that if you don't retweet approvingly, you're a racist yourself,
and possibly a racist Trump supporter.) There are four reasons why this talking point is false.
... .... ...
To be fair, Clinton is correct that "there are lots of reasons," in an election this close. However,
to me, blaming Comey is like blaming the last pebble in an avalanche of #FAIL. Sanders asks the
right question.
Talking about the Comey letters
, Sanders said:
"It's not a question of what happens in the last week. The question is that she should have
won this election by 10 percentage points.
"... Alexei Ulyukayev is a well-known economic liberal, with a career dating back to the turbulent market reforms of the 1990s ..."
"... "The arrest was big news on Russia's state-run TV channels." ..."
"... Yesterday RBK economic channel (pro-liberast independent one) could not shut up – they were talking only about this. Ekho Moscvy was hysterical, as if it was not the crook arrested, but Lucavichev rabbi robbed and killed in his synagogue. ..."
"... "News of the minister's arrest sparked a mixture of shock and bewilderment." ..."
"... "Alexei Ulyukayev is a well-known economic liberal, with a career dating back to the turbulent market reforms of the 1990s." ..."
"... So… to become a "liberal victim of the Regime" instead of "Regime's lackey" you must steal lots of money and get caught? A-okey! ..."
"... It's also charming when the article uses the tired cliché "some think" or "some people consider this" as a way of legitimizing their own speculations. ..."
The arrest was big news on Russia's state-run TV channels.
However, sources told the Novaya Gazeta website that Mr Ulyukayev himself did not take any
money, contradicting earlier reports, and there was no video footage of his arrest. [Novaya Gazeta
said that? Well what a surprise! - ME]
The economy ministry described the arrest as "strange and surprising".
Show of state strength or payback? By Sarah Rainsford, BBC News, Moscow
News of the minister's arrest sparked a mixture of shock and bewilderment.
A stream of commentators on state TV have been telling viewers that this means that
no-one is untouchable, or above the law. Even ministers.
So on one level, the FSB operation is a clear show of state strength. A message to senior officials
and far beyond.
But elsewhere there are doubts, and questions about the possible politics behind this.
Alexei Ulyukayev is a well-known economic liberal, with a career dating back to the turbulent
market reforms of the 1990s.
He's against increasing state-control of the economy and opposed the Bashneft privatisation
deal which was led by a close and powerful ally of President Putin.
So some suggest this could be a dramatic form of payback. More effective, than simply sacking
him.
Others see a symbolic blow to the liberal camp in government.
[my stress]
State TV! State TV! State TV!
D'ya hear me? - State TV!!!!!!!
Unlike the British Broadcasting Corporation, of course.
"The arrest was big news on Russia's state-run TV channels."
Yesterday RBK economic channel (pro-liberast independent one) could not shut up – they were
talking only about this. Ekho Moscvy was hysterical, as if it was not the crook arrested, but
Lucavichev rabbi robbed and killed in his synagogue.
"News of the minister's arrest sparked a mixture of shock and bewilderment."
Mainly a good cheer and hope that other liberal ministers will soon follow in his steps.
"Alexei Ulyukayev is a well-known economic liberal, with a career dating back to the turbulent
market reforms of the 1990s."
So… to become a "liberal victim of the Regime" instead of "Regime's lackey" you must steal
lots of money and get caught? A-okey!
It's also charming when the article uses the tired cliché "some think" or "some people consider
this" as a way of legitimizing their own speculations.
"... Liberal democracy has always depended on its relationships with an illiberal Other of one sort or another, and all too often "liberal progressivism" merely means responding to such relationships in one's own society, the capitalist exploitation of a domestic proletariat, by "outsourcing" our illiberal tendencies to consist largely of the imperial domination and subjugation of foreigners. ..."
"... demand that we stop hiding our society's illiberal underbelly and acknowledge/celebrate it for what it is, a demand that may be the single most authentic marker of the transition from liberalism to fascism. ..."
"... They very likely in our current regimes will not show up in the same places. Neoliberalism and neoimperialism show pretty much the contradictions of the older globalist orders (late 19th c), they are just now distributed so as re-intensify the differences, the combined etc, and concentrate the accumulation. ..."
"... And elites are fighting over the spoils. ..."
"... But there are also people who either liked Trump's economic rhetoric and just disregarded the racism/sexism stuff the same way Clinton voters like me disregarded her warmongering (Republicans:domestic minorities::Democrats:foreigners), and other people who didn't have their resentments channeled at all and just stayed home. ..."
The economic case for immigration may be attractive-and, for the moment at least, persuasive-but
it is essentially a conservative argument, suggesting that human beings ought to be treated
in a certain manner because it generates economic benefit, and not necessarily because it is morally
required. Of course, liberals don't really want to look a gift horse in the mouth: with the political
climate hostile to the humanitarian plight of even the most sympathetic of migrants, liberals
are thrilled to have statistics and pie charts and suchlike to lay before a skittish American
public. It isn't every day that the right thing to do is also the rationally self-interested thing
to do, and we should certainly celebrate those joyous occasions when they arise. However, it's
important not to lose sight of the moral dimension of the argument, and in that context there
are a few questions worth asking.
…
The left has something to learn from the moral clarity of the libertarian case for immigration,
which asserts that human beings simply have a natural right to migrate freely. The moral argument
is far more robust than the economic one, because it is true universally regardless of changing
economic conditions. One doesn't need to prove that immigrants grow the GDP or that they will
never compete for the same jobs as Americans. The better point is that there is no good moral
reason for putting up walls and keeping people out. And just as Americans feel entitled to the
freedom to go anywhere in the world they please (and would be surprised to be turned away at a
border), so everyone else should be granted the same basic entitlement. It's also worth emphasizing
the inherent arbitrariness of global inequality. Given that the earth's resources are unevenly
apportioned, and people's life circumstances depend on the geographic accident of their birth,
shouldn't we understand this to be a moral evil, and strive to correct it where we can? Perhaps
such arguments will fail to persuade. But they are far more sound, and ultimately, far more honest.
Increased immigration should be allowed because it is morally right, not because it is in our
narrow economic self-interest.
Point being, Dipper @ 108 has hit the nail quite squarely on the head.
Liberal democracy has always depended on its relationships with an illiberal Other of one
sort or another, and all too often "liberal progressivism" merely means responding to such relationships
in one's own society, the capitalist exploitation of a domestic proletariat, by "outsourcing" our
illiberal tendencies to consist largely of the imperial domination and subjugation of foreigners.
(Which can even happen inside one's own borders, as long as it remains suitably "illegal"; notice
how much less ideologically problematic it is to document the presence and labor of the most brutally
exploited migrant workers in e.g. China or the Gulf Arab states than in more liberal societies like
the US or EU.)
It's the height of either hypocrisy or obliviousness for those who consider themselves liberal
progressives to then act surprised when the people charged with carrying out this domination and
subjugation on our behalf - our Colonel Jessups, if you will
- demand that we stop hiding our society's illiberal underbelly
and acknowledge/celebrate it for what it is, a demand that may be the single most authentic marker
of the transition from liberalism to fascism. Is that easier to understand?
bob mcmanus 11.15.16 at 4:31 pm
I liked WLGR's at 115 a little better than Dipper, but there are many comments coming
better than anything I can do.
It may be that global manufacturing jobs are declining due to automation, but my recent reading
has convinced me that capital is now able to move low wage low skill manufacturing jobs so fast
that it is hard for analysis to keep up. LTV says that as long as the profits and wealth and accumulation
(and political power) are showing up, somewhere there is superexploited labor. They very likely
in our current regimes will not show up in the same places. Neoliberalism and neoimperialism
show pretty much the contradictions of the older globalist orders (late 19th c), they are just
now distributed so as re-intensify the differences, the combined etc, and concentrate the accumulation.
And elites are fighting over the spoils.
Consumatopia 11.15.16 at 3:54 pm
There's a weird disconnect between the debate among online leftists/liberals and the debate among
Democratic politicians now. Online it's socialists saying "they hate neoliberalism, reach out
to them!", social justice activists saying "they're racists, screw them!" In party institutions,
it's the same except the second group is saying "they're racists, we must avoid antagonizing them!"
Seriously, they're arguing that Bernie would have lost because he's Jewish and his ally Keith
Ellison shouldn't lead the DNC because he's Muslim.
So I just hope the people saying "they're racists!" understand that if the Democratic party
comes to agree with you then the party will move to the right on race–or at least it will pull
back from some of the rhetoric Chris (merian) described at 76.
Anyway, from the OP, "These have indeed failed people, and policies of austerity coupled with
bailouts for the banks have enraged the voters, so that many people, nostalgic for a more equal
and more functional society but confused about who to blame, have channelled their resentments
against immigrants and minorities. "
I think this is almost but not quite correct. There definitely exist some people for whom this
is true. But there are also people who either liked Trump's economic rhetoric and just disregarded
the racism/sexism stuff the same way Clinton voters like me disregarded her warmongering (Republicans:domestic
minorities::Democrats:foreigners), and other people who didn't have their resentments channeled
at all and just stayed home.
More that that, I just don't think anyone has a good understanding of what moves the white
working class to the right. It isn't just racism and sexism, and it ends up playing out
differently in different regions. It's not necessarily true that they're ready for Sanders–look
at Kentucky voting for a governor promising to end Medicaid expansion in 2015. This is a poor
but very white state. Lower middle class whites turned against further downscale whites. Poor
whites didn't show up. It wasn't racism that drove this, but it wasn't hatred of neoliberalism
either–it may be a response to pain neoliberalism caused, but they haven't been prepared to point
the finger there.
@WLGR: I do not believe that the case for free movement depends on economic arguments; I do believe
that when its opponents advance bogus economic arguments they should be rebutted.
"... Each job offered under a federal employment assurance would be at a wage rate above the poverty threshold, and would include benefits like health insurance. A public sector job guarantee would establish a quality of work and the level of compensation offered for all jobs. The program would be great for the country: It could meet a wide range of the nation's physical and human infrastructure needs, ranging from the building and maintenance of roads, bridges and highways, to school upkeep and the provision of quality child care services"" ..."
""A lot of this has to do with the fact that Americans continue to be subjected to bad jobs
or unstable employment - and those who are employed often face stagnant or even declining wages.
The fragility of Americans' economic well-being is epitomized by the National Coalition for the
Homeless' estimate that 44 percent of homeless persons actually have jobs, albeit poorly paid
jobs.
The expansion of "flex work" arrangements, which make work hours uncertain, contribute significantly
to income volatility for workers in low-pay sectors of the economy. Around 50 percent of Americans
could not meet a $400 emergency expense by drawing upon their personal savings if they had to.
An alternative to these conditions is the adoption of a federal job guarantee, a policy that
would insure the option for anyone to work in a public sector program, similar to what the Works
Progress Administration established in the 1930s.
Each job offered under a federal employment assurance would be at a wage rate above the poverty
threshold, and would include benefits like health insurance. A public sector job guarantee would
establish a quality of work and the level of compensation offered for all jobs. The program would
be great for the country: It could meet a wide range of the nation's physical and human infrastructure
needs, ranging from the building and maintenance of roads, bridges and highways, to school upkeep
and the provision of quality child care services""
"... The "my way" or the highway rhetoric from Clinton supporters on the campaign was sickening. When Bush was called a warmonger for Iraq, that was fine. When Clinton was called a warmonger for Iraq and Libya, the Clintonites went on the offensive, often throwing around crap like "if she was a man, she wouldn't be a warmonger!" ..."
"... On racism: "what I can say, from personal experience, is that the racism of my youth was always one step removed. I never saw a family member, friend, or classmate be mean to the actual black people we had in town. We worked with them, played video games with them, waved to them when they passed. What I did hear was several million comments about how if you ever ventured into the city, winding up in the "wrong neighborhood" meant you'd get dragged from your car, raped, and burned alive. Looking back, I think the idea was that the local minorities were fine as long as they acted exactly like us." ..."
"... I'm telling you, the hopelessness eats you alive. And if you dare complain, some liberal elite will pull out their iPad and type up a rant about your racist white privilege. Already, someone has replied to this with a comment saying, "You should try living in a ghetto as a minority!" Exactly. To them, it seems like the plight of poor minorities is only used as a club to bat away white cries for help. Meanwhile, the rate of rural white suicides and overdoses skyrockets. Shit, at least politicians act like they care about the inner cities." ..."
"... And the rural folk are called a "basket of deplorables" and other names. If you want to fight racism, a battle that is Noble and Honorable, you have to understand the nuances between racism and hopelessness. The wizard-wannabe idiots are a tiny fringe. The "deplorables" are a huge part of rural America. If you alienate them, you're helping the idiots mentioned above. ..."
Erm, atheist groups are known to target smaller Christian groups with lawsuits. A baker was sued
for refusing to bake a cake for a Gay Wedding. She was perfectly willing to serve the couple,
just not at the wedding. In California we had a lawsuit over a cross in a park. Atheists threatened
a lawsuit over a seal. Look, I get that there are people with no life out there, but why are they
bringing the rest of us into their insanity, with constant lawsuits. There's actually a concept
known as "Freedom from Religion" – what the heck? Can you imagine someone arguing about "Freedom
from Speech" in America? But it's ok to do it to religious folk! And yes, that includes Muslims,
who had to fight to build a Mosque in New York. They should've just said it was a Scientology
Center
The "my way" or the highway rhetoric from Clinton supporters on the campaign was sickening.
When Bush was called a warmonger for Iraq, that was fine. When Clinton was called a warmonger
for Iraq and Libya, the Clintonites went on the offensive, often throwing around crap like "if
she was a man, she wouldn't be a warmonger!"
The problem with healthcare in the US deserves its own thread, but Obamacare did not fix it;
Obamacare made it worse, especially in the rural communities. The laws in schools are fundamentally
retarded. A kid was suspended for giving a friend Advil. Another kid suspended for bringing in
a paper gun. I could go on and on. A girl was expelled from college for trying to look gangsta
in a L'Oreal mask. How many examples do you need? Look at all of the new "child safety laws" which
force kids to leave in a bubble. And when they enter the Real World, they're fucked, so they pick
up the drugs. In cities it's crack, in farmvilles it's meth.
Hillary didn't win jack shit. She got a plurality of the popular vote. She didn't win it, since
winning implies getting the majority. How many Johnson votes would've gone to Trump if it was
based on popular vote, in a safe state? Of course the biggest issue is the attack on the way of
life, which is all too real. I encourage you to read this, in order to understand where they're
coming from:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/
"Nothing that happens outside the city matters!" they say at their cocktail parties, blissfully
unaware of where their food is grown. Hey, remember when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans? Kind
of weird that a big hurricane hundreds of miles across managed to snipe one specific city and
avoid everything else. To watch the news (or the multiple movies and TV shows about it), you'd
barely hear about how the storm utterly steamrolled rural Mississippi, killing 238 people and
doing an astounding $125 billion in damage. But who cares about those people, right? What's newsworthy
about a bunch of toothless hillbillies crying over a flattened trailer? New Orleans is culturally
important. It matters. To those ignored, suffering people, Donald Trump is a brick chucked through
the window of the elites. "Are you assholes listening now?"
On racism: "what I can say, from personal experience, is that the racism of my youth was always
one step removed. I never saw a family member, friend, or classmate be mean to the actual black
people we had in town. We worked with them, played video games with them, waved to them when they
passed. What I did hear was several million comments about how if you ever ventured into the city,
winding up in the "wrong neighborhood" meant you'd get dragged from your car, raped, and burned
alive. Looking back, I think the idea was that the local minorities were fine as long as they
acted exactly like us."
"They're getting the shit kicked out of them. I know, I was there. Step outside of the city,
and the suicide rate among young people fucking doubles. The recession pounded rural communities,
but all the recovery went to the cities. The rate of new businesses opening in rural areas has
utterly collapsed."
^ That, I'd say, is known as destroying their lives. Also this:
"In a city, you can plausibly aspire to start a band, or become an actor, or get a medical
degree. You can actually have dreams. In a small town, there may be no venues for performing arts
aside from country music bars and churches. There may only be two doctors in town - aspiring to
that job means waiting for one of them to retire or die. You open the classifieds and all of the
job listings will be for fast food or convenience stores. The "downtown" is just the corpses of
mom and pop stores left shattered in Walmart's blast crater, the "suburbs" are trailer parks.
There are parts of these towns that look post-apocalyptic.
I'm telling you, the hopelessness eats you alive. And if you dare complain, some liberal elite
will pull out their iPad and type up a rant about your racist white privilege. Already, someone
has replied to this with a comment saying, "You should try living in a ghetto as a minority!"
Exactly. To them, it seems like the plight of poor minorities is only used as a club to bat away
white cries for help. Meanwhile, the rate of rural white suicides and overdoses skyrockets. Shit,
at least politicians act like they care about the inner cities."
And the rural folk are called a "basket of deplorables" and other names. If you want to fight
racism, a battle that is Noble and Honorable, you have to understand the nuances between racism
and hopelessness. The wizard-wannabe idiots are a tiny fringe. The "deplorables" are a huge part
of rural America. If you alienate them, you're helping the idiots mentioned above.
...In fact, the entire Democratic Party has mainly ceased to campaign on issues-choosing instead
to invest heavily in identity politics. The message to black voters is: vote for us because you are
black, not because of anything we are going to do. Ditto for Hispanics. And women. And the LGBT community.
And others. Hillary does have an agenda. More on that in a future post. But she didn't campaign on
it.
As for the mainstream media, I have never seen an election in which the media was so biased. And
not just biased. The media's entire view of the election was Hillary Clinton's view. Even on Fox
News, the entire focus on election night and in the days that followed was on identity politics.
How many blacks were voting? How many Hispanics? How many women?
As if demography were destiny.
Now, as it turns out, a greater percentage of blacks voted for Trump than voted for Romney. The
same thing is true of Hispanics. In fact, Trump did better among minorities than any Republican since
Ronald Reagan. He even got a majority of white female votes.
Why were all these people doing something they weren't supposed to do? On network television and
even on cable television, no one had an answer.
Putting the media aside for the moment, do you know what Hillary's position is on trade deals
with other countries? Of course, you don't. And neither does anyone else. When she spoke about the
issue at all, she said one thing behind closed doors and another in public. The reason this doesn't
matter on Wall Street (or to the editors of the New York Times ) is that they assume she
has no real convictions and that money and special interest influence will always win out.
What about Hillary's solution to the problem of illegal immigration? Do you know what that is?
How about her position on corporate tax reform? Or school choice? Or Obamacare? Or opportunities
for blacks in inner cities?
I bet you don't know her positions on any of these topics. But I bet you do know Donald Trump's.
Not in detail, of course. But I bet you know the general way in which he differs from Obama administration
policies.
"... Judging by the volume of complaints from Clinton sycophants insisting that people did not get behind Clinton or that it was purely her gender, they won't. Why would anyone get behind Clinton save the 1%? Her policies were pro-war, pro-Wall Street, and at odds with what the American people needed. Also, we should judge based on policy, not gender and Clinton comes way short of Sanders in that regard – in many regards, she is the antithesis of Sanders. ..."
"... "Establishment Democrats have nobody but themselves to blame for this one. The only question is whether or not they are willing to take responsibility" I disagree. In my view, it is not a question at all. They have never taken responsibility for anything, and they never will. ..."
"... What would make Democrats focus on the working class? Nothing. They have lost and brought about destruction of the the Unions, which was the Democratic Base, and have become beholden to the money. The have noting in common with the working class, and no sympathy for their situation, either. ..."
"... What does Bill Clinton, who drive much of the policy in the '90s, and spent his early years running away form the rural poor in Arkansas (Law School, Rhodes Scholarship), have in common with working class people anywhere? ..."
"... Iron law of institutions applies. Position in the D apparatus is more important than political power – because with power come blame. ..."
"... I notice Obama worked hard to lose majorities in the house and Senate so he could point to the Republicans and say "it was their fault" except when he actually wanted something, and made it happen (such as TPP). ..."
"... Agreed with the first but not the second. It's typical liberal identity politics guilt tripping. That won't get you too far on the "white side" of Youngstown Ohio. ..."
"... Also suspect that the working-class, Rust-Belt Trump supporters will soon be thrown under the bus by their Standard Bearer, if the Transition Team appointments are any indicator: e.g. Privateers at SSA. ..."
"... My wife teaches primary grades in an inner city school. She has made it clear to me over the years that the challenges her children are facing are related to poverty, not race. She sees a big correlation between the financial status of a family and its family structure (one or more parents not present or on drugs) and the kids' success in school. Race is a minor factor. ..."
"... The problem with running on a class based platform in America is, well, it's America; and in good ol' America, we are taught that anyone can become a successful squillionare – ya know, hard work, nose-to-the-grindstone, blah, blah, blah. ..."
"... The rags to riches American success fable is so ingrained that ideas like taxing the rich a bit more fall flat because everyone thinks "that could be me someday. Just a few house flips, a clever new app, that ten-bagger (or winning lottery ticket) and I'm there" ("there" being part of the 1%). ..."
"... The idea that anyone can be successful (i.e. rich) is constantly promoted. ..."
"... I think this fantasy is beginning to fade a bit but the "wealth = success" idea is so deeply rooted in the American psyche I don't think it will ever fade completely away. ..."
"... If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy - which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog - you will come to an awful realization. It wasn't Beijing. It wasn't even Washington, as bad as Washington can be. It wasn't immigrants from Mexico, excessive and problematic as our current immigration levels are. It wasn't any of that. ..."
"... Nothing happened to them. There wasn't some awful disaster. There wasn't a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence - and the incomprehensible malice - of poor white America. So the gypsum business in Garbutt ain't what it used to be. There is more to life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the factories down. ..."
"... The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump's speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. ..."
"... White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America ..."
"... Poor or Poorer whites have been demonised since the founding of the original Colonies, and were continuously pushed west to the frontiers by the ruling elites of New England and the South as a way of ridding themselves of "undesirables", who were then left to their own resources, and clung together for mutual assistance. ..."
"... White trash is a central, if disturbing, thread in our national narrative. The very existence of such people – both in their visibility and invisibility – is proof that American society obsesses over the mutable labels we give to the neighbors we wish not to notice. "They are not who we are". But they are who we are and have been a fundamental part of our history, whether we like it or not". ..."
"... "To be sure, Donald Trump did make a strong appeal to racists, homophobes, and misogynists " ..."
"... working class white women ..."
"... Obama is personally likeable ..."
"... History tells us the party establishment will move further right after election losses. And among the activist class there are identity purity battles going on. ..."
"... Watch as this happens yet again: "In most elections, U.S. politicians of both parties pretend to be concerned about their issues, then conveniently ignore them when they reach power and implement policies from the same Washington Consensus that has dominated the past 40 years." That is why we need a strong third party, a reformed election system with public support of campaigns and no private money, and free and fair media coverage. But it ain't gonna happen. ..."
"... Obviously, if the Democrats nominate yet another Clintonite Obamacrat all over again, I may have to vote for Trump all over again . . . to stop the next Clintonite before it kills again. ..."
Ultimately the Establishment Democrats have nobody but themselves to blame for this one. The
only question is whether or not they are willing to take responsibility for what happened.
Judging by the volume of complaints from Clinton sycophants insisting that people did not
get behind Clinton or that it was purely her gender, they won't. Why would anyone get behind Clinton
save the 1%? Her policies were pro-war, pro-Wall Street, and at odds with what the American people
needed. Also, we should judge based on policy, not gender and Clinton comes way short of Sanders
in that regard – in many regards, she is the antithesis of Sanders.
Class trumps race, to make a pun. If the left doesn't take the Democratic Party back and clean
house, I expect that there is a high probability that 2020's election will look at lot like the
2004 elections.
I'd recommend someone like Sanders to run. Amongst the current crop, maybe Tulsi Gabbard or
Nina Turner seem like the best candidates.
"Establishment Democrats have nobody but themselves to blame for this one. The only question
is whether or not they are willing to take responsibility" I disagree. In my view, it is not a
question at all. They have never taken responsibility for anything, and they never will.
What would make Democrats focus on the working class? Nothing. They have lost and brought
about destruction of the the Unions, which was the Democratic Base, and have become beholden to
the money. The have noting in common with the working class, and no sympathy for their situation,
either.
What does Bill Clinton, who drive much of the policy in the '90s, and spent his early years
running away form the rural poor in Arkansas (Law School, Rhodes Scholarship), have in common
with working class people anywhere?
The same question applies to Hillary, to Trump and the remainder of our "representatives" in
Congress.
Without Unions, how are US Representatives from the working class elected?
What we are seeing is a shift in the US for the Republicans to become the populist party. They
already have the churches, and with Trump they can gain the working class – although I do not
underestimate the contempt help by our elected leaders for the Working Class and poor.
The have forgotten, if they ever believed: "There, but for the grace of God, go I".
Iron law of institutions applies. Position in the D apparatus is more important than political
power – because with power come blame.
I notice Obama worked hard to lose majorities in the house and Senate so he could point
to the Republicans and say "it was their fault" except when he actually wanted something, and
made it happen (such as TPP).
We know that class and economic insecurity drove many white people to vote for Trump. That's
understandable. And now we are seeing a rise in hate incidents inspired by his victory. So obviously
there is a race component in his support as well. So, if you, white person, didn't vote for Trump
out of white supremacy, would you consider making a statement that disavows the acts of extremist
whites? Do you vow to stand up and help if you see people being victimized? Do you vow not to
stay silent when you encounter Trump supporters who ARE obviously in thrall to the white supremacist
siren call?
Agreed with the first but not the second. It's typical liberal identity politics guilt
tripping. That won't get you too far on the "white side" of Youngstown Ohio.
And I wouldn't worry about it. When I worked at the at the USX Fairless works in Levittown
PA in 1988, I was befriended by one steelworker who was a clear raving white supremacist racist.
(Actually rather nonchalant about about it). However he was the only one I encountered who was
like this, and eventually I figured out that he befriended a "newbie" like me because he had no
friends among the other workers, including the whites. He was not popular at all.
I've always thought that Class, not Race, was the Third Rail of American Politics, and that
the US was fast-tracking to a more shiny, happy feudalism.
Also suspect that the working-class, Rust-Belt Trump supporters will soon be thrown under
the bus by their Standard Bearer, if the Transition Team appointments are any indicator: e.g.
Privateers at SSA.
My wife teaches primary grades in an inner city school. She has made it clear to me over
the years that the challenges her children are facing are related to poverty, not race. She sees
a big correlation between the financial status of a family and its family structure (one or more
parents not present or on drugs) and the kids' success in school. Race is a minor factor.
She also makes it clear to me that the Somali/Syrian/Iraqi etc. immigrant kids are going to
do very well even though they come in without a word of English because they are working their
butts off and they have the full support of their parents and community. These people left bad
places and came to their future and they are determined to grab it with both hands. 40% of her
class this year is ENL (English as a non-native language). Since it is an inner city school, they
don't have teacher's aides in the class, so it is just one teacher in a class of 26-28 kids, of
which a dozen struggle to understand English. Surprisingly, the class typically falls short of
the "standards" that the state sets for the standardized exams. Yet many of the immigrant kids
end up going to university after high school through sheer effort.
Bullying and extreme misbehavior (teachers are actually getting injured by violent elementary
kids) is largely done by kids born in the US. The immigrant kids tend to be fairly well-behaved.
On a side note, the CSA at our local farmer's market said they couldn't find people to pick
the last of their fall crops (it is in a rural community so a car is needed to get there). So
the food bank was going out this week to pick produce like squash, onions etc. and we were told
we could come out and pick what we wanted. Full employment?
The problem with running on a class based platform in America is, well, it's America; and
in good ol' America, we are taught that anyone can become a successful squillionare – ya know,
hard work, nose-to-the-grindstone, blah, blah, blah.
The rags to riches American success fable is so ingrained that ideas like taxing the rich
a bit more fall flat because everyone thinks "that could be me someday. Just a few house flips,
a clever new app, that ten-bagger (or winning lottery ticket) and I'm there" ("there" being part
of the 1%).
The idea that anyone can be successful (i.e. rich) is constantly promoted.
I think this fantasy is beginning to fade a bit but the "wealth = success" idea is so deeply
rooted in the American psyche I don't think it will ever fade completely away.
I'm recalling (too lazy to find the link) a poll a couple years ago that showed the number
of American's identifying as "working class" increased, and the number as "middle class" decreased.
It is both. And it is a deliberate mechanism of class division to preserve power. Bill Cecil-Fronsman,
Common Whites: Class and Culture in Antebellum North Carolina identifies nine classes
in the class structure of a state that mixed modern capitalist practice (plantations), agrarian
YOYO independence (the non-slaveowning subsistence farms), town economies, and subsistence (farm
labor). Those classes were typed racially and had certain economic, power, and social relations
associated with them. For both credit and wages, few escaped the plantation economy and being
subservient to the planter capitalists locally.
Moreover, ethnic identity was embedded in the law as a class marker. This system was developed
independently or exported through imitation in various ways to the states outside North Carolina
and the slave-owning states. The abolition of slavery meant free labor in multiple senses and
the capitalist use of ethnic minorities and immigrants as scabs integrated them into an ethnic-class
system, where it was broad ethnicity and not just skin-color that defined classes. Other ethnic
groups, except Latinos and Muslim adherents, now have earned their "whiteness".
One suspects that every settler colonial society develops this combined ethnic-class structure
in which the indigenous ("Indians" in colonial law) occupy one group of classes and imported laborers
or slaves or intermixtures ("Indian", "Cape Colored" in South Africa) occupy another group of
classes available for employment in production. Once employed, the relationship is exactly that
of the slaveowner to the slave no matter how nicely the harsh labor management techniques of 17th
century Barbados and Jamaica have been made kinder and gentler. But outside the workplace (and
often still inside) the broader class structure applies even contrary to the laws trying to restrict
the relationship to boss and worker.
Blacks are not singling themselves out to police; police are shooting unarmed black people
without punishment. The race of the cop does not matter, but the institution of impunity makes
it open season on a certain class of victims.
It is complicated because every legal and often managerial attempt has been made to reduce
the class structure of previous economies to the pure capitalism demanded by current politics.
So when in a post Joe McCarthy, post-Cold War propaganda society, someone wants to protest
the domination of capitalism, attacking who they perceive as de facto scabs to their higher incomes
(true or not) is the chosen mode of political attack. Not standing up for the political rights
of the victims of ethnically-marked violence and discrimination allows the future depression of
wages and salaries by their selective use as a threat in firms. And at the individual firm and
interpersonal level even this gets complicated because in spite of the pressure to just be businesslike,
people do still care for each other.
This is a perennial mistake. In the 1930s Southern Textile Strike, some organizing was of both
black and white workers; the unions outside the South rarely stood in solidarity with those efforts
because they were excluding ethnic minorities from their unions; indeed, some locals were organized
by ethnicity. That attitude also carried over to solidarity with white workers in the textile
mills. And those white workers who went out on a limb to organize a union never forgot that failure
in their labor struggle. It is the former textile areas of the South that are most into Trump's
politics and not so much the now minority-majority plantation areas.
It still is race in the inner ring suburbs of ethnically diverse cities like St. Louis that
hold the political lock on a lot of states. Because Ferguson to them seems like an invasion of
the lower class. Class politics, of cultural status, based on ethnicity. Still called by that
19h century scientific racism terminology that now has been debunked - race - Caucasoid, Mongoloid,
Negroid. Indigenous, at least in the Americas, got stuck under Mongoloid.
You go organize the black, Latino, and white working class to form unions and gain power, and
it will happen. It is why Smithfield Foods in North Carolina had to negotiate a contract. Race
can be transcended in action.
Pretending the ethnic discrimination and even segregation does not exist and have its own problems
is political suicide in the emerging demographics. Might not be a majority, but it is an important
segment of the vote. Which is why the GOP suppressed minority voters through a variety of legal
and shady electoral techniques. Why Trump wants to deport up to 12 million potential US citizens
and some millions of already birthright minor citizens. And why we are likely to see the National
Labor Review Board gutted of what little power it retains from 70 years of attack. Interesting
what the now celebrated white working class was not offered in this election, likely because they
would vote it down quicker because, you know, socialism.
Your comment reminded me of an episode in Seattle's history.
Link . The
unions realized they were getting beat in their strikes, by scabs, who were black. The trick was
for the unions to bring the blacks into the union. This was a breakthrough, and it worked in Seattle,
in 1934. There is a cool mural the union commissioned by,
Pablo O'Higgins , to
celebrate the accomplishment.
Speaking of class, and class contempt , one must recall the infamous screed published
by National Review columnist Kevin Williamson early this year, writing about marginalised white
people here is a choice excerpt:
If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my
own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and
alcohol addiction, the family anarchy - which is to say, the whelping of human children with
all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog - you will come to an awful realization. It wasn't
Beijing. It wasn't even Washington, as bad as Washington can be. It wasn't immigrants from
Mexico, excessive and problematic as our current immigration levels are. It wasn't any of that.
Nothing happened to them. There wasn't some awful disaster. There wasn't a war or a famine
or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very
little to explain the dysfunction and negligence - and the incomprehensible malice - of poor
white America. So the gypsum business in Garbutt ain't what it used to be. There is more to
life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the
factories down.
The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die.
Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap
theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory
towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your
goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American
underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used
heroin needles. Donald Trump's speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin.
Now it's not too much of a stretch of the imagination to state that Williamson's animus can
be replicated amongst many of the moneyed elite currently pushing and shoving their way into a
position within the incoming Trump Administration. The Trump campaign has openly and cynically
courted and won the votes of white people similar to those mentioned in Williamson's article,
and who – doubtlessly – will be stiffed by policies vigourously opposed to their welfare that
will be enacted during the Trump years. The truly intriguing aspect of the Trump election is:
what will be the consequences of further degradation of the "lower orders' " quality of life by
such actions? Wholesale retreat from electoral politics? Further embitterment and anger NOT toward
those in Washington responsible for their lot but directed against ethnic and racial minorities
"stealing their jawbs" and "getting welfare while we scrounge for a living"? I sincerely doubt
whether the current or a reconstructed Democratic Party can at all rally this large chunk of white
America by posing as their "champions" the class divide in the US is as profound as the racial
chasm, and neither major party – because of internal contradictions – can offer a credible answer.
[In addition to the growing inequality and concomitant wage stagnation for the middle and working
classes, 9/11 and its aftermath has certainly has contributed to it as well, as, making PEOPLE
LONG FOR the the Golden Age of Managerial Capitalism of the post-WWII era,]
Oh yeah, I noticed a big ol' hankerin' for that from the electorate. What definition could
the author be using for Managerial Capitalism that could make it the opposite of inequality? The
fight for power between administration and shareholders does not lead to equality for workers.
[So this gave force to the idea that the government was nothing but a viper's nest full of
crony capitalist enablers,]
I don't think it's an 'idea' that the govt is crony capitalists and enablers. Ds need to get
away from emotive descriptions. Being under/unemployed, houseless, homeless, unable to pay for
rent, utilities, food . aren't feelings/ideas. When that type of language is used, it comes across
as hand waving. There needs to be a shift of talking to rather than talking about.
If crony capitalism is an idea, it's simply a matter for Ds to identify a group (workers),
create a hierarchy (elite!) and come up with a propaganda campaign (celebrities and musicians
spending time in flyover country-think hanging out in coffee shops in a flannel shirt) to get
votes. Promise to toss them a couple of crumbs with transfer payments (retraining!) or a couple
of regulations (mandatory 3 week severance!) and bring out the obligatory D fall back- it would
be better than the Rs would give them. On the other hand, if it's factual, the cronies need to
be stripped of power and kicked out or the nature of the capitalist structure needs to be changed.
It's laughable to imagine liberals or progressives would be open to changing the power and nature
of the corporate charter (it makes me smile to think of the gasps).
The author admits that politicians lie and continue the march to the right yet uses the ACA,
a march to the right, as a connection to Obama's (bombing, spying, shrinking middle class) likability.
[[But emphasizing class-based policies, rather than gender or race-based solutions, will achieve
more for the broad swathe of voters, who comprehensively rejected the "neo-liberal lite" identity
politics]
Oops. I got a little lost with the neo-liberal lite identity politics. Financialized identity
politics? Privatized identity politics?
I believe women and poc have lost ground (economic and rights) so I would like examples of
successful gender and race-based (liberal identity politics) solutions that would demonstrate
that identity politics targeting is going to work on the working class.
If workers have lost power, to balance that structure, you give workers more power (I predict
that will fail as unions fall under the generic definition of corporatist and the power does not
rest with the members but with the CEOs of the unions – an example is a union that block the members
from voting to endorse a candidate, go against the member preference and endorse the corporatist
candidate), or you remove power from the corporation. Libs/progs can't merely propose something
like vesting more power with shareholders to remove executives as an ameliorating maneuver which
fails to address the power imbalance.
[This is likely only to accelerate the disintegration of the political system and economic
system until the elephant in the room – class – is honestly and comprehensively addressed.]
For a thorough exposition of lower-class white America from the inception of the Republic to
today, a must-read is Nancy Isenberg's White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in
America . Poor or Poorer whites have been demonised since the founding of the original
Colonies, and were continuously pushed west to the frontiers by the ruling elites of New England
and the South as a way of ridding themselves of "undesirables", who were then left to their own
resources, and clung together for mutual assistance.
Thus became the economic and cultural subset of "crackers", "hillbillies", "rednecks", and
later, "Okies", a source of contempt and scorn by more economically and culturally endowed whites.
The anti-bellum white Southern aristocracy cynically used poor whites as cheap tenant farming,
all the while laying down race-based distinctions between them and black slaves – there is always
someone lower on the totem pole, and that distinction remains in place today. Post-Reconstruction,
the South maintained the cult of white superiority, all the while preserving the status of upper-class
whites, and, by race-based public policies, assured lower-class whites that such "superiority"
would be maintained by denying the black populations access to education, commerce, the vote,
etc. And today, "white trash", or "trailer trash", or poorer whites in general are ubiquitous
and as American as apple pie, in the North, the Midwest, and the West, not just the South. Let
me quote Isenberg's final paragraph of her book:
White trash is a central, if disturbing, thread in our national narrative. The very
existence of such people – both in their visibility and invisibility – is proof that American
society obsesses over the mutable labels we give to the neighbors we wish not to notice. "They
are not who we are". But they are who we are and have been a fundamental part of our history,
whether we like it or not".
Presenting a plan for the future, which has a chance to be supported by the electorate, must
start with scrupulous, unwavering honesty and a willingness to acknowledge inconvenient facts.
The missing topic from the 2016 campaigns was declining energy surpluses and their pervasive,
negative impact on the prosperity to which we feel entitled. Because of the energy cost of producing
oil, a barrel today represents a declining fraction of a barrel in terms of net energy. This is
the major factor in sluggish economic performance. Failing to make this case and, at the same
time, offering glib and vacuous promises of growth and economic revival, are just cynical exercises
in pandering.
Our only option is to mange the coming decline in a way that does not descend into chaos and
anarchy. This can only be done with a clear vision of causes and effects and the wisdom and courage
to accept facts. The alternative is yet more delusions and wishful thinking, whose shelf life
is getting shorter.
To be fair to the article, Marshall did in fact say:
"To be sure, Donald Trump did make a strong appeal to racists, homophobes, and misogynists
"
IMO the point Marshall is making that race was not the primary reason #DJT
won. And I concur.
This is borne out by the vote tallies which show that the number of R voters from 2012 to 2016
was pretty much on the level (final counts pending):
2016 R Vote: 60,925,616
2012 R Vote: 60,934,407
(Source:
US Election Atlas )
Stop and think about this for a minute. Every hard core racist had their guy this
time around; and yet, the R's could barely muster the same amount of votes as Mittens
in 2012. This is huge, and supports the case that other things contributed far more than just
race.
Class played in several ways:
Indifference/apathy/fatigue: Lambert posted some data from Carl Beijer on this yesterday in his
Clinton Myths piece yesterday.
Anger: #HRC could not convince many people who voted for Bernie that she was interested in his
outreach to the working class. More importantly, #HRC could not convince working class white
women that she had anything other than her gender and Trump's boorishness as a counterpoint
to offer.
Outsider v Insider: Working class people skeptical of political insiders rejected #HRC.
If black workers were losing ground and white workers were gaining, one could indeed claim
that racism is a problem. However, both black and white workers are losing ground – racism simply
cannot be the major issue here. It's not racism, it's class war.
The fixation on race, the corporate funding of screaming 'black lives matter' agitators, the
crude attempts to tie Donald Trump to the KKK (really? really?) are just divide and conquer, all
over again.
Whatever his other faults, Donald Trump has been vigorous in trying to reach out to working
class blacks, even though he knew he wouldn't get much of their vote and he knew that the media
mostly would not cover it. Last I heard, he was continuing to try and reach out, despite the black
'leadership' class demanding that he is a racist. Because as was so well pointed out here, the
one thing the super-rich fear is a united working class.
Divide and conquer. It's an old trick, but a powerful one.
Suggestion: if (and it's a big if) Trump really does enact policies that help working class
blacks, and the Republicans peel away a significant fraction of the black vote, that would set
the elites' hair on fire. Because it would mean that the black vote would be in play, and the
Neoliberal Democrats couldn't just take their votes for granted. And wouldn't that be a thing.
that was good for 2016. I will look to see if he has stats for other years. i certainly agree
that poor whites are more likely to be shot; executions of homeless people by police are one example.
the kind of system that was imposed on the people of ferguson has often been imposed on poor whites,
too. i do object to the characterization of black lives matter protestors as "screaming agitators";
that's all too reminiscent of the meme of "outside agitators" riling up the local peaceful black
people to stand up for their rights that was characteristically used to smear the civil rights
movement in the 60's.
I might not have much in common at all with certain minorities, but it's highly likely that
we share class status.
That's why the status quo allows identity politics and suppresses class politics.
Having been around for sometime, I often wonder what The Guardian is going on about in the
UK as it is supposed to be our left wing broadsheet.
It isn't a left I even recognised, what was it?
I do read it to try and find out what nonsense it is these people think.
Having been confused for many a year, I think I have just understood this identity based politics
as it is about to disappear.
I now think it was a cunning ploy to split the electorate in a different way, to leave the
UK working class with no political outlet.
Being more traditional left I often commented on our privately educated elite and private schools
but the Guardian readership were firmly in favour of them.
How is this left?
Thank god this is now failing, get back to the old left, the working class and those lower
down the scale.
It was clever while it lasted in enabling neoliberalism and a neglect of the working class,
but clever in a cunning, nasty and underhand way.
Thinking about it, so many of these recent elections have been nearly 50% / 50% splits, has
there been a careful analysis of who neoliberalism disadvantages and what minorities need to be
bought into the fold to make it work in a democracy.
Women are not a minority, but obviously that is a big chunk if you can get them under your
wing. The black vote is another big group when split away and so on.
Brexit nearly 50/50; Austria nearly 50/50; US election nearly 50/50.
So, 85% of Blacks vote Hillary against Sanders (left) and 92% vote Hillary against Trump (right),
but is no race. It's the class issue that sends them to the Clintons. Kindly explain how.
Funny think about likeability, likeable people can be real sh*ts. So I started looking into
hanging out with less likeable people. I found that they can be considerably more appreciative
of friendship and loyalty, maybe because they don't have such easy access to it.
Entertainment media has cautiously explored some aspect so fthis, but in politics, "nice" is
still disproportionately values, and not appreciated as a possible flag.
Watch out buddy. They are onto you. I have seen some comments on democratic party sites claiming
the use of class to explain Hillary's loss is racist. The democratic party is a goner. History
tells us the party establishment will move further right after election losses. And among the
activist class there are identity purity battles going on.
Watch as this happens yet again: "In most elections, U.S. politicians of both parties pretend
to be concerned about their issues, then conveniently ignore them when they reach power and implement
policies from the same Washington Consensus that has dominated the past 40 years." That is why
we need a strong third party, a reformed election system with public support of campaigns and
no private money, and free and fair media coverage. But it ain't gonna happen.
Well it certainly won't happen by itself. People are going to have to make it happen. Here
in Michigan we have a tiny new party called Working Class Party running 3 people here and there.
I voted for two of them. If the Democrats run somebody no worse than Trump next time, I will be
free to vote Working Class Party to see what happens.
Obviously, if the Democrats nominate yet another Clintonite Obamacrat all over again, I
may have to vote for Trump all over again . . . to stop the next Clintonite before it kills again.
While focusing on preserving ObamaCare and other achievements of the Obama administration that are
threatened by a Donald Trump presidency, the DA's agenda includes panels on rethinking polling and
the left's approach to winning the working-class vote. The group will also stress funneling cash
into state legislative policy initiatives and races where Republicans took over last week.
President-elect Donald Trump has said his first 100 days will be dedicated to restoring "honesty,
accountability and change to Washington" through the following seven steps:
A Constitutional Amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress
A hiring freeze on all federal employees to reduce federal workforce through attrition (exempting
military, public safety, and public health)
A requirement that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated
A five year ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave
government service
A lifetime ban on the White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government
A complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections
Cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs and use the money to fix America's
water and environmental infrastructure
Billionaire George Soros immediately had fingers of blame pointing at him for the anti-Trump riots
and protests that swept the nation since Nov. 9, as
his group MoveOn.org has organized most of them .
The billionaire committed
$25 million to boosting the Clinton campaign and other Democratic candidates and causes in 2016.
"... We so easily forget. Once the cry of so-called prosperity is heard in the land, we all become so stampeded by the spirit of the god Mammon, that we cannot serve the dictates of social conscience. . . . We are here to serve notice that the economic order is the invention of man; and that it cannot dominate certain eternal principles of justice and of God... ..."
"... The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." ..."
"... You can fool all of the people, some of the time. You can fool some of the people all of the time- but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. ..."
"There are two theories of prosperity and of well-being: The first theory is that if we make
the rich richer, somehow they will let a part of their prosperity trickle down to the rest
of us. The second theory - and I suppose this goes back to the days of Noah - I won't say Adam
and Eve, because they had a less complicated situation - but, at least, back in the days of
the flood, there was the theory that if we make the average of mankind comfortable and secure,
their prosperity will rise upward, just as yeast rises up, through the ranks...
We so easily forget. Once the cry of so-called prosperity is heard in the land, we all
become so stampeded by the spirit of the god Mammon, that we cannot serve the dictates of social
conscience. . . . We are here to serve notice that the economic order is the invention of man;
and that it cannot dominate certain eternal principles of justice and of God...
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have
much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
You can fool all of the people, some of the time. You can fool some of the people all of the
time- but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
"... The angry and disaffected are victims of the neoliberal policies of the past generation, the policies described in congressional testimony by Fed chair Alan Greenspan ..."
"... As Greenspan explained during his glory days, his successes in economic management were based substantially on "growing worker insecurity." Intimidated working people would not ask for higher wages, benefits, and security but would be satisfied with the stagnating wages and reduced benefits that signal a healthy economy by neoliberal standards. ..."
"... in 2007, at the peak of the neoliberal miracle, real wages for non-supervisory workers were lower than they had been years earlier, or that real wages for male workers are about at 1960s levels while spectacular gains have gone to the pockets of a very few at the top, disproportionately a fraction of 1%. Not the result of market forces, achievement, or merit, but rather of definite policy decisions, matters reviewed carefully by economist Dean Baker in recently published work. ..."
According to current information, Trump broke all records in the support he received from white voters,
working class and lower middle class, particularly in the $50,000 to $90,000 income range, rural
and suburban, primarily those without college education. These groups share the anger throughout
the West at the centrist establishment, revealed as well in the unanticipated Brexit vote and the
collapse of centrist parties in continental Europe. The angry and disaffected are victims of the
neoliberal policies of the past generation, the policies described in congressional testimony by
Fed chair Alan Greenspan – St. Alan as he was called reverentially by the economics profession and
other admirers until the miraculous economy he was supervising crashed in 2007-8, threatening to
bring the whole world economy down with it. As Greenspan explained during his glory days, his successes
in economic management were based substantially on "growing worker insecurity." Intimidated working
people would not ask for higher wages, benefits, and security but would be satisfied with the stagnating
wages and reduced benefits that signal a healthy economy by neoliberal standards.
Working people who have been the subjects of these experiments in economic theory are, oddly,
not particularly happy about the outcome. They are not, for example, overjoyed at the fact that
in
2007, at the peak of the neoliberal miracle, real wages for non-supervisory workers were lower than
they had been years earlier, or that real wages for male workers are about at 1960s levels while
spectacular gains have gone to the pockets of a very few at the top, disproportionately a fraction
of 1%. Not the result of market forces, achievement, or merit, but rather of definite policy decisions,
matters reviewed carefully by economist Dean Baker in recently published work.
The fate of the minimum wage illustrates what has been happening. Through the periods of high
and egalitarian growth in the '50s and '60s, the minimum wage – which sets a floor for other wages
– tracked productivity. That ended with the onset of neoliberal doctrine. Since then the minimum
wage has stagnated (in real value). Had it continued as before, it would probably be close to $20
per hour. Today it is considered a political revolution to raise it to $15.
With all the talk of near-full employment today, labor force participation remains below the earlier
norm. And for a working man, there is a great difference between a steady job in manufacturing with
union wages and benefits, as in earlier years, and a temporary job with little security in some service
profession. Apart from wages, benefits, and security, there is a loss of dignity, of hope for the
future, of a sense that this is a world in which I belong and play a worthwhile role.
The impact is captured well in Arlie Hochschild's sensitive and illuminating portrayal of a Trump
stronghold in Louisiana, where she lived and worked for many years. She uses the image of a line
in which these people are standing, expecting to move forward steadily as they work hard and keep
to all the conventional values. But their position in the line has stalled. Ahead of them, they see
people leaping forward, but that does not cause much distress, because it is "the American way" for
(alleged) merit to be rewarded. What does cause real distress is what is happening behind them.
... ... ...
These are just samples of the real lives of Trump supporters, who are deluded to believe that
Trump will do something to remedy their plight, though the merest look at his fiscal and other proposals
demonstrates the opposite – posing a task for activists who hope to fend off the worst and to advance
desperately needed changes.
Exit polls reveal that the passionate support for Trump was inspired primarily by the belief that
he represented change, while Clinton was perceived as the candidate who would perpetuate their distress.
The "change" that Trump is likely to bring will be harmful or worse, but it is understandable that
the consequences are not clear to isolated people in an atomized society lacking the kinds of associations
(like unions) that can educate and organize. That is a crucial difference between today's despair
and the generally hopeful attitudes of many working people under much greater duress during the great
depression of the 1930s.
"... Democrats still seem amazed that voters are more concerned about economic conditions and resentment against Wall Street (no bankers jailed, few junk mortgages written down). It is a sign of their wrong path that party strategists are holding onto the same identity politics they have used since the 1960s to divide Americans into hyphenated special-interest groups. ..."
"... Obviously, the bottom 95 Percent realize that their incomes and net worth have declined, not recovered. ..."
"... On the bright side, these "trade" agreements to enable corporations to block public laws protecting the environment, consumers and society at large are now presumably dead. ..."
"... Instead of a love fest within the Democratic Party's ranks, the blame game is burning. The Democrats raised a reported $182 million dollars running up to the election. But when democratic candidates from Russ Feingold in Wisconsin and other candidates in Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania asked for help. Hillary monopolized it all for TV ads, leaving these candidates in the lurch. The election seemed to be all about her, about personality and identity politics, not about the economic issues paramount in most voters' minds. ..."
"... Six months ago the polls showed her $1 billion spent on data polling, TV ads and immense staff of sycophants to have been a vast exercise in GIGO. ..."
"... If the party is to be recaptured, now is the moment to move. The 2016 election sounded the death knell for the identity politics. Its aim was to persuade voters not to think of their identity in economic terms, but to think of themselves as women or as racial and ethnic groups first and foremost, not as having common economic interests. This strategy to distract voters from economic policies has obviously failed. ..."
"... It did not work with women. In Florida, only 51 percent of white women are estimated to have voted for Hillary. It didn't even work very well in ethnic Hispanic precincts. They too were more concerned about their own job opportunities. ..."
"... The ethnic card did work with many black voters (although not so strongly; fewer blacks voted for Hillary than had showed up for Obama). Under the Obama administration for the past eight years, blacks have done worse in terms of income and net worth than any other grouping, according to the Federal Reserve Board's statistics. But black voters were distracted from their economic interests by the Democrats' ethnic-identity politics. ..."
"... This election showed that voters have a sense of when they're being lied to. After eight years of Obama's demagogy, pretending to support the people but delivering his constituency to his financial backers on Wall Street. "Identity politics" has given way to the stronger force of economic distress. Mobilizing identity politics behind a Wall Street program will no longer work. ..."
"... The Rust Belt swing states that shifted away from backing Obama for the last two terms are not racist states. They voted for Obama twice, after all. But seeing his support Wall Street, they had lost faith in her credibility – and were won by Bernie in his primaries against Hillary. ..."
"... Most of all, it was Hillary's asking voters to ignore her economic loyalty to Wall Street simply to elect a woman, and her McCarthy-like accusations that Trump was "Putin's candidate" (duly echoed by Paul Krugman). ..."
"... The anti-Trump rallies mobilized by George Soros and MoveOn look like a preemptive attempt to capture the potential socialist left for the old Clinton divide-and-conquer strategy. ..."
In the week leading up to last Tuesday's election the press was busy writing obituaries for the Republican
Party. This continued even after Donald Trump's "surprising" victory – which, like the 2008 bank-fraud
crash, "nobody could have expected." The pretense is that Trump saw what no other politician saw:
that the economy has not recovered since 2008.
Democrats still seem amazed that voters are more concerned about economic conditions and resentment
against Wall Street (no bankers jailed, few junk mortgages written down). It is a sign of their wrong
path that party strategists are holding onto the same identity politics they have used since the
1960s to divide Americans into hyphenated special-interest groups.
Obviously, the bottom 95 Percent realize that their incomes and net worth have declined, not recovered.
National Income and Federal Reserve statistics show that all growth has accrued to just 5 percent
of the population. Hillary is said to have spent $1 billion on polling, TV advertising and high-salaried
staff members, but managed not to foresee the political reaction to this polarization. She and her
coterie ignored economic policy as soon as Bernie was shoved out of the way and his followers all
but told to join a third party. Her campaign speech tried to convince voters that they were better
off than they were eight years ago. They knew better!
So the question now is whether Donald Trump will really a maverick and shake up the Republican
Party. There seems to be a fight going on for Donald's soul – or at least the personnel he appoints
to his cabinet. Thursday and Friday saw corporate lobbyists in the Republican leadership love-bombing
him like the Moonies or Hari Krishna cults welcoming a new potential recruit. Will he simply surrender
now and pass on the real work of government to the Republican apparatchiks?
The stock market thinks so! On Wednesday it soared almost by 300 points, and repeated this gain
on Thursday, setting a DJIA record! Pharmaceuticals are way up, as higher drug prices loom for Medicaid
and Medicare. Stocks of the pipelines and major environmental polluters are soaring, from oil and
gas to coal, mining and forestry, expecting U.S. environmental leadership to be as dead under Trump
as it was under Obama and his push for the TPP and TTIP (with its fines for any government daring
to impose standards that cost these companies money). On the bright side, these "trade" agreements
to enable corporations to block public laws protecting the environment, consumers and society at
large are now presumably dead.
For now, personalities are policy. A problem with this is that anyone who runs for president is
in it partly for applause. That was Carter's weak point, leading him to cave into Democratic apparatchiks
in 1974. It looks like Trump may be a similar susceptibility. He wants to be loved, and the Republican
lobbyists are offering plenty of applause if only he will turn to them and break his campaign promises
in the way that Obama did in 2008. It would undo his hope to be a great president and champion of
the working class that was his image leading up to November 8.
The fight for the Democratic Party's future (dare I say "soul"?)
In her Wednesday morning post mortem speech, Hillary made a bizarre request for young people (especially
young women) to become politically active as Democrats after her own model. What made this so strange
is that the Democratic National Committee has done everything it can to discourage millennials from
running. There are few young candidates – except for corporate and Wall Street Republicans running
as Blue Dog Democrats. The left has not been welcome in the party for a decade – unless it confines
itself only to rhetoric and demagogy, not actual content. For Hillary's DNC coterie the problem with
millennials is that they are not shills for Wall Street. The treatment of Bernie Sanders is exemplary.
The DNC threw down the gauntlet.
Instead of a love fest within the Democratic Party's ranks, the blame game is burning. The Democrats
raised a reported $182 million dollars running up to the election. But when democratic
candidates from Russ Feingold in Wisconsin and other candidates in Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania
asked for help. Hillary monopolized it all for TV ads, leaving these candidates in the lurch. The
election seemed to be all about her, about personality and identity politics, not about the economic
issues paramount in most voters' minds.
Six months ago the polls showed her $1 billion spent on data polling, TV ads and immense staff
of sycophants to have been a vast exercise in GIGO. From May to June the Democratic National Committee
(DNC) saw polls showing Bernie Sanders beating Trump, but Hillary losing. Did the Democratic leadership
really prefer to lose with Hillary than win behind him and his social democratic reformers.
Hillary doesn't learn. Over the weekend she claimed that her analysis showed that FBI director
Comey's reports "rais[ing] doubts that were groundless, baseless," stopped her momentum. This was
on a par with the New York Times analysis that had showed her with an 84 percent probability
of winning last Tuesday. She still hasn't admitted that here analysis was inaccurate.
What is the Democratic Party's former constituency of labor and progressive reformers to do? Are
they to stand by and let the party be captured in Hillary's wake by Robert Rubin's Goldman Sachs-Citigroup
gang that backed her and Obama?
If the party is to be recaptured, now is the moment to move. The 2016 election sounded the death
knell for the identity politics. Its aim was to persuade voters not to think of their identity
in economic terms, but to think of themselves as women or as racial and ethnic groups first and foremost,
not as having common economic interests. This strategy to distract voters from economic policies
has obviously failed.
It did not work with women. In Florida, only 51 percent of white women are estimated to have voted
for Hillary. It didn't even work very well in ethnic Hispanic precincts. They too were more concerned
about their own job opportunities.
The ethnic card did work with many black voters (although not so strongly; fewer blacks voted
for Hillary than had showed up for Obama). Under the Obama administration for the past eight years,
blacks have done worse in terms of income and net worth than any other grouping, according to the
Federal Reserve Board's statistics. But black voters were distracted from their economic interests
by the Democrats' ethnic-identity politics.
This election showed that voters have a sense of when they're being lied to. After eight years
of Obama's demagogy, pretending to support the people but delivering his constituency to his financial
backers on Wall Street. "Identity politics" has given way to the stronger force of economic distress.
Mobilizing identity politics behind a Wall Street program will no longer work.
If we are indeed experiencing a revival of economic class consciousness, who should lead the fight
to clean up the Democratic Party Wall Street leadership? Will it be the Wall Street wing, or can
Bernie and perhaps Elizabeth Warren make their move?
There is only one way to rescue the Democrats from the Clintons and Rubin's gang. That is to save
the Democratic Party from being tarred irreversibly as the party of Wall Street and neocon brinkmanship.
It is necessary to tell the Clintons and the Rubin gang from Wall Street to leave now . And
take Evan Bayh with them.
The danger of not taking this opportunity to clean out the party now
The Democratic Party can save itself only by focusing on economic issues – in a way that reverses
its neoliberal stance under Obama, and indeed going back to Bill Clinton's pro-Wall Street administration.
The Democrats need to do what Britain's Labour Party did by cleaning out Tony Blair's Thatcherites.
As Paul Craig Roberts wrote over the weekend: "Change cannot occur if the displaced ruling class
is left intact after a revolution against them. We have proof of this throughout South America. Every
revolution by the indigenous people has left unmolested the Spanish ruling class, and every revolution
has been overthrown by collusion between the ruling class and Washington."
[1] Otherwise the Democrats will be left as an empty shell.
Now is the time for Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and the few other progressives who have not
been kept out of office by the DNC to make their move and appointing their own nominees to the DNC.
If they fail, the Democratic Party is dead.
An indication of how hard the present Democratic Party leadership will fight against this change
of allegiance is reflected in their long fight against Bernie Sanders and other progressives going
back to Dennis Kucinich. The past five days of MoveOn demonstrations sponsored by Hillary's backer
George Soros may be an attempt to preempt the expected push by Bernie's supporters, by backing Howard
Dean for head of the DNC while organizing groups to be called on for what may be an American "Maidan
Spring."
Perhaps some leading Democrats preferred to lose with their Wall Street candidate Hillary than
win with a reformer who would have edged them out of their right-wing positions. But the main problem
was hubris. Hillary's coterie thought they could make their own reality. They believed that hundreds
of millions of dollars of TV and other advertising could sway voters. But eight years of Obama's
rescue of Wall Street instead of the economy was enough for most voters to see how deceptive his
promises had been. And they distrusted Hillary's pretended embrace of Bernie's opposition to TPP.
The Rust Belt swing states that shifted away from backing Obama for the last two terms are not
racist states. They voted for Obama twice, after all. But seeing his support Wall Street, they had
lost faith in her credibility – and were won by Bernie in his primaries against Hillary.
Donald Trump is thus Obama's legacy. Last week's vote was a backlash. Hillary thought that getting
Barack and Michelle Obama to campaign as her surrogates would help, but it turned out to be the kiss
of death. Obama egged her on by urging voters to "save his legacy" by supporting her as his Third
Term. But voters did not want his legacy of giveaways to the banks, the pharmaceutical and health-insurance
monopolies.
Most of all, it was Hillary's asking voters to ignore her economic loyalty to Wall Street simply
to elect a woman, and her McCarthy-like accusations that Trump was "Putin's candidate" (duly echoed
by Paul Krugman). On Wednesday, Obama's former Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul tweeted that
"Putin intervened in our elections and succeeded." It was as if the Republicans and even the FBI
were a kind of fifth column for the KGB. Her receptiveness to cutting back Social Security and steering
wage withholding into the stock market did not help – especially her hedge fund campaign contributors.
Compulsory health-insurance fees continue to rise for healthy young people rise as the main profit
center that Obamacare has offered the health-insurance monopoly.
The anti-Trump rallies mobilized by George Soros and MoveOn look like a preemptive attempt to
capture the potential socialist left for the old Clinton divide-and-conquer strategy. The group was
defeated five years ago when it tried to capture Occupy Wall Street to make it part of the Democratic
Party. It's attempt to make a comeback right now should be heard as an urgent call to Bernie's supporters
and other "real" Democrats that they need to create an alternative pretty quickly so as not to let
"socialism" be captured by the Soros and his apparatchiks carried over from the Clinton campaign.
Notes.
[1] Paul Craig Roberts, "The Anti-Trump Protesters Are Tools of the Oligarchy," November 11,
2016.
Michael Hudson's new book,
Killing
the Host is published in e-format by CounterPunch Books and in print by
Islet
. He can be reached via his website, [email protected]
Liberal democracy has always depended on its relationships with an illiberal Other of one
sort or another, and all too often "liberal progressivism" merely means responding to such
relationships in one's own society, the capitalist exploitation of a domestic proletariat,
by "outsourcing" our illiberal tendencies to consist largely of the imperial domination
and subjugation of foreigners.
(Which can even happen inside one's own borders, as long as it remains suitably "illegal";
notice how much less ideologically problematic it is to document the presence and labor of
the most brutally exploited migrant workers in e.g. China or the Gulf Arab states than in more
liberal societies like the US or EU.)
It's the height of either hypocrisy or obliviousness for those who consider themselves
liberal progressives to then act surprised when the people charged with carrying out this domination
and subjugation on our behalf - our Colonel Jessups, if you will - demand that we stop hiding
our society's illiberal underbelly and acknowledge/celebrate it for what it is , a demand
that may be the single most authentic marker of the transition from liberalism to fascism.
In Pareto "elite rotation" terms, the election of Trump definitely means rotation of the US
neoliberal elite. "Status quo" faction of the elite was defeated due to backlash over globalization
and disappearance of meaningful well-paid jobs, with mass replacement of them by McJobs and temps/contractors.
Whether openness about domination and subjugation is an "authentic marker of the transition
from [neo]liberalism to fascism" remains to be seen, unless we assume that this transition (to
the National Security State) already happened long ego.
In a way illegal immigrants in the USA already represented stable and growing "new slaves"
class for decades. Their existence and contribution to the US economy was never denied or suppressed.
And even Greenspan acknowledged that Iraq war was about oil. So Trump put nothing new on the table
other then being slightly more blunt.
Neoliberalism and neo-imperialism show pretty much the contradictions of the older globalist
orders (late 19th c), they are just now distributed so as re-intensify the differences, the combined
etc, and concentrate the accumulation.
And elites are fighting over the spoils.
Yes, neoliberalism and neo-imperialism are much better and more precise terms, then fuzzy notions
like "liberal progressivism" . May be we should use Occam razor and discard the term "[neo]liberal
progressivism". The term "soft neoliberals" is IMHO good enough description of the same.
As for contradictions of the "older globalist orders (late 19th c)" the key difference is that
under neoliberalism armies play the role of "can opener" and after then the direct occupation were
by-and-large replaced with financial institutions and with indirect
"debt slavery". In many cases neoliberal subjugation is achieved via color revolution mechanism,
without direct military force involved.
Neo-colonialism creates higher level of concentration of risks due to the greed of financial
elite which was demonstrated in full glory in 2008. As such it looks less stable then old colonialism.
And it generates stronger backlash, which typically has elements of anti-Americanism, as we see in
Philippines now. Merkel days might also be numbered.
Also TBTF banks are now above the law as imposing judgments on them after the crisis can have
disastrous economic externalities. At the same time the corruption of regulators via revolving door
mechanisms blocks implementing meaningful preventive regulatory reforms.
In other words, like with Soviet nomenklatura, with the neoliberal elite we see the impossibility
of basic change, either toward taming the TBTF or toward modification of an aggressive
neocolonial foreign policy
with its rampant militarism.
"... The affluent and rich voted for Clinton by a much broader margin than they had voted for the Democratic candidate in 2012. Among those with incomes between $100,000 and $200,000, Clinton benefited from a 9-point Democratic swing. Voters with family incomes above $250,000 swung toward Clinton by 11 percentage points. The number of Democratic voters amongst the wealthiest voting block increased from 2.16 million in 2012 to 3.46 million in 2016-a jump of 60 percent. ..."
"... Clinton's electoral defeat is bound up with the nature of the Democratic Party, an alliance of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus with privileged sections of the upper-middle class based on the politics of race, gender and sexual orientation ..."
"... Over the course of the last forty years, the Democratic Party has abandoned all pretenses of social reform, a process escalated under Obama. Working with the Republican Party and the trade unions, it is responsible for enacting social policies that have impoverished vast sections of the working class, regardless of race or gender. ..."
The elections saw a massive shift in party support among the poorest and wealthiest voters. The share
of votes for the Republicans amongst the most impoverished section of workers, those with family
incomes under $30,000, increased by 10 percentage points from 2012. In several key Midwestern states,
the swing of the poorest voters toward Trump was even larger: Wisconsin (17-point swing), Iowa (20
points), Indiana (19 points) and Pennsylvania (18 points).
The swing to Republicans among the $30,000 to $50,000 family income range was 6 percentage points.
Those with incomes between $50,000 and $100,000 swung away from the Republicans compared to 2012
by 2 points.
The affluent and rich voted for Clinton by a much broader margin than they had voted for the
Democratic candidate in 2012. Among those with incomes between $100,000 and $200,000, Clinton benefited
from a 9-point Democratic swing. Voters with family incomes above $250,000 swung toward Clinton by
11 percentage points. The number of Democratic voters amongst the wealthiest voting block increased
from 2.16 million in 2012 to 3.46 million in 2016-a jump of 60 percent.
Clinton was unable to make up for the vote decline among women (2.1 million), African Americans
(3.2 million), and youth (1.2 million), who came overwhelmingly from the poor and working class,
with the increase among the rich (1.3 million).
Clinton's electoral defeat is bound up with the nature of the Democratic Party, an alliance
of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus with privileged sections of the upper-middle
class based on the politics of race, gender and sexual orientation.
Over the course of the last forty years, the Democratic Party has abandoned all pretenses
of social reform, a process escalated under Obama. Working with the Republican Party and the trade
unions, it is responsible for enacting social policies that have impoverished vast sections of the
working class, regardless of race or gender.
British diplomat John Glubb wrote a book called "The Fate of Empires and Search For Survival."
Glubb noted that the average age of empires since the time of ancient Assyria (859-612 B.C.)
is 250 years. Only the Mameluke Empire in Egypt and the Levant (1250-1517) made it as far as
267 years. America is 238 years old and is exhibiting signs of decline. All empires begin,
writes Glubb, with the age of pioneers, followed by ages of conquest, commerce, affluence,
intellect and decadence. America appears to have reached the age of decadence, which Glubb
defines as marked by "defensiveness, pessimism, materialism, frivolity, an influx of foreigners,
the welfare state, [and] a weakening of religion."
The most important is probably the fact that the ideology of the current US empire -- neoliberalism
(called here "liberal progressivism") -- became discredited after 2008. What happened after the
collapse of the Marxist ideology with the USSR is well known. It took 46 years (if we assume that
the collapse started in 1945 as the result of victory in WWII, when the Soviet army has a chance
to see the standard of living in Western countries). Why the USA should be different ? Decline
of empires is very slow and can well take a half a century. Let's say it might take 50 years from
9/11 or October 2008.
One telling sign is the end of "American hegemony" in the global political sphere. One telling
sign is the end of "American hegemony" in the global political sphere. As Lupita hypothesized
here Trump might be the last desperate attempt to reverse this process.
Another, the deterioration of the standard of living of the USA population and declining infrastructure,
both typically are connected with the overextension of empire. In Fortune (
http://fortune.com/2015/07/20/united-states-decline-statistics-economic/
) Jill Coplan lists 12 signs of the decline.
Trump election is another sign of turmoil. The key message of his election is "The institutions
we once trusted deceived us" That includes the Democratic Party and all neoliberal MSM. Like was
the case with the USSR, the loss of influence of neoliberal propaganda machine is a definite sign
of the decline of empire.
Degeneration of the neoliberal political elite that is also clearly visible in the current set
of presidential candidates might be another sign. Hillary Clinton dragged to the car on 9/11 commemorative
event vividly reminds the state of health of a couple of members of Soviet Politburo .
"... The second argument is the Bayesian vs frequentist debate on the foundations of probability theory, which has roots that go back centuries. Not that it matters, but I am in the Bayes-Laplace-Jeffreys-Jaynes camp. Evidently the author is a frequentist. But it is a vastly bigger intellectual issue than how some pollsters blew it and can't be settled in a blog post by someone proclaiming The Truth. ..."
"... It's no secret that U.S. election results can't be audited - the integrity of the data is unknowable - and is subject to pre-election manipulation, in the form of widespread voter suppression. Post-election manipulation of vote totals also can't be discounted, because in many election districts it wouldn't be difficult and motive exists. ..."
"... The general nature of humans is to "freak out" about big things and demand stuff like Brexit, then "calm down" and leave things roughly like they are maybe with a few touch-ups around the edges.* (This is the simplified basis of my "Brexit not gonna happen" stance. ..."
"... But this is saying that people at the last moment decided the status quo was so bad they realized they just had to make a very scary leap into something new. That, if true, says quite a lot about the status quo. ..."
"... "The Bradley effect" is the idea people are lying to pollsters. The problem is modeling, and unlike a few years ago, Gallup and others no longer do their daily tracking polls which give a better picture of the electorate. In the absence of a clear view of the electorate, the pollsters make up who will vote based on preconceived notions. ..."
"... I think this is a good point. My understanding of the polling methodology is that they sample the electorate then break their sampled voters into demographic bins, then they weight the bins based on expected participation by demographic to get a final expected vote. ..."
"... Putting blame for voter 'apathy' on Clinton's treatment of the Democratic base that supported Sanders, probably the most activist part of the party, or on Clinton's pivot to 'suburban republicans', or on the FBI, or Clinton's disastrous foreign policy record, or Clinton's unprecedentedly low favorability and trustworthiness numbers is difficult, but all of those problems were foreseen by Sanders supporters as well as by the DNC, but were ignored by the latter. That those problems were likely to depress turnout, which Democrats need to win elections was also fairly obvious, which is why I never believed the polls and believed Trump was indeed likely to win. ..."
"... Polling organizations are really political organizations that get paid to influence public opinion rather than measure it. Their models are garbage. It's a complete joke of an industry. ..."
I have a very different explanation of why the pollsters got it so wrong. My argument is based on
two statements which I hope to convince you of: That the pollsters were not actually using anything
resembling scientific methodology when investigating the polls. Rather they were simply tracking
the trends and calibrating their commentary in line with them. Not only did this not give us a correct
understanding of what was going on but it also gave us no real new information other than what the
polls themselves were telling us. I call this the redundancy argument . That the pollsters
were committing a massive logical fallacy in extracting probability estimates from the polls (and
whatever else they threw into their witches' brew models). In fact they were dealing with a singular
event (the election) and singular events cannot be assigned probability estimates in any non-arbitrary
sense. I call this the logical fallacy argument .
Let us turn to the redundancy argument first. In order to explore the redundancy argument I will
lay out briefly the type of analysis that I did on the polls during the election. I can then contrast
this with the type of analysis done by pollsters. As we will see, the type of analysis that I was
advocating produced new information while the type of approach followed by the pollsters did not.
While I do not claim that my analysis actually predicted the election, in retrospect it certainly
helps explain the result – while, on the other hand, the pollsters failed miserably.
... ... ...
Probability theory requires that in order for a probability to be assigned an event must be repeated
over and over again – ideally as many times as possible. Let's say that I hand you a coin. You have
no idea whether the coin is balanced or not and so you do not know the probability that it will turn
up heads. In order to discover whether the coin is balanced or skewed you have to toss it a bunch
of times. Let's say that you toss it 1000 times and find that 900 times it turns up heads. Well,
now you can be fairly confident that the coin is skewed towards heads. So if I now ask you what the
probability of the coin turning up heads on the next flip you can tell me with some confidence that
it is 9 out of 10 (900/1000) or 90%.
Elections are not like this because they only happen once. Yes, there are multiple elections every
year and there are many years but these are all unique events. Every election is completely unique
and cannot be compared to another – at least, not in the mathematical space of probabilities. If
we wanted to assign a real mathematical probability to the 2016 election we would have to run the
election over and over again – maybe 1000 times – in different parallel universes. We could then
assign a probability that Trump would win based on these other universes. This is silly stuff, of
course, and so it is best left alone.
So where do the pollsters get their probability estimates? Do they have access to an interdimensional
gateway? Of course they do not. Rather what they are doing is taking the polls, plugging them into
models and generating numbers. But these numbers are not probabilities. They cannot be. They are
simply model outputs representing a certain interpretation of the polls. Boil it right down and they
are just the poll numbers themselves recast as a fake probability estimate. Think of it this way:
do the odds on a horse at a horse race tell you the probability that this horse will win? Of course
not! They simply tell you what people think will happen in the upcoming race. No one knows the actual
odds that the horse will win. That is what makes gambling fun. Polls are not quite the same – they
try to give you a snap shot of what people are thinking about how they will vote in the election
at any given point in time – but the two are more similar than not. I personally think that this
tendency for pollsters to give fake probability estimates is enormously misleading and the practice
should be stopped immediately. It is pretty much equivalent to someone standing outside a betting
shop and, having converted all the odds on the board into fake probabilities, telling you that he
can tell you the likelihood of each horse winning the race.
There are other probability tricks that I noticed these pollsters doing too.
... ... ...
The Catechism of the Catholic Church in discussing the first commandment repeats the condemnation
of divination: "All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring
up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to 'unveil' the future. Consulting horoscopes, astrology,
palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums
all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings,
as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. These practices are generally considered mortal sins.
Of course I am not here to convert the reader to the Catholic Church. I am just making the point
that many institutions in the past have seen the folly in trying to predict the future and have warned
people against it. Today all we need say is that it is rather silly. Although we would also not go
far wrong by saying, with the Church, that "recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over
time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings". That is a perfectly good secular
lesson.
I would go further still. The cult of prediction plays into another cult: the cult of supposedly
detached technocratic elitism. I refer here, for example, to the cult of mainstream economics with
their ever mysterious 'models'. This sort of enterprise is part and parcel of the cult of divination
that we have fallen prey to but I will not digress too much on it here as it is the subject of a
book that I will be publishing in mid-December 2016 – an overview of which can be found
here . What knowledge-seeking people should be pursuing are tools of analysis that can help them
better understand the world around us – and maybe even improve it – not goat entrails in which we
can read future events. We live in tumultuous times; now is not the time
The second argument is the Bayesian vs frequentist debate on the foundations of probability
theory, which has roots that go back centuries. Not that it matters, but I am in the Bayes-Laplace-Jeffreys-Jaynes
camp. Evidently the author is a frequentist. But it is a vastly bigger intellectual issue than
how some pollsters blew it and can't be settled in a blog post by someone proclaiming The Truth.
Bayesian analysis is frequently cited as an alternative to frequentist schools, although
only with prior awareness of the ontological challenges. Bwaaaaaaak!
The Philster is back! Dude, you've been gone a while.
If your title says we shouldn't listen to you, that might discourage readers before they read.
That's a Bayesian prior. LOL. Sort of anyway.
The probability of us reading, given the admonition not to read = the probability of the admonition
given the probability of us reading, divided by the probability of us reading. Or something like
that. ;-)
When i do the math I get lost. I'll read it later. Right now i can't
It's no secret that U.S. election results can't be audited - the integrity of the data
is unknowable - and is subject to pre-election manipulation, in the form of widespread voter suppression.
Post-election manipulation of vote totals also can't be discounted, because in many election districts
it wouldn't be difficult and motive exists.
The arguments above are convincing in principle, but when the outcomes against which we measure
polling predictions can't even be verified….
Letting others debate Bayesian models… this stood out:
> This suggested to me that all of those that were going to vote Remain had decided early on
and the voters that decided later and closer to the election date were going to vote Leave
Wow. Just wow. The general nature of humans is to "freak out" about big things and demand
stuff like Brexit, then "calm down" and leave things roughly like they are maybe with a few touch-ups
around the edges.* (This is the simplified basis of my "Brexit not gonna happen" stance.)
But this is saying that people at the last moment decided the status quo was so bad they
realized they just had to make a very scary leap into something new. That, if true, says quite
a lot about the status quo.
*Yes I've been married for quite a long time now. Why do you ask? :)
After some discussions about 'the inverse Bradley effect' some months ago, the press had been
strangely silent about the effect and whether it applied to Trump. Theoretically, Trump, more
than any other candidate I can name, should have enjoyed better support in the election than he
was polling, as people were uncomfortable admitting that he was their preference for fear of condescension
from pollsters. Ross Perot–to whom Trump is often compared– enjoyed a five point advantage 'inverse
Bradley effect' in 1992 over his last and best poll numbers. Bill Clinton experienced a straight
up 'Bradley effect' in both of his Presidential victories (off three points from his polling,
as I recall), though he still did well enough to win.
Nate Silver had an article that pretty much outlined what happened in the election back on
Sept 15th. I'm not sure why he isn't referring to this as a fig leaf today, perhaps because so
much of the rest of his reporting predicted Clinton's victory.
"The Bradley effect" is the idea people are lying to pollsters. The problem is modeling,
and unlike a few years ago, Gallup and others no longer do their daily tracking polls which give
a better picture of the electorate. In the absence of a clear view of the electorate, the pollsters
make up who will vote based on preconceived notions.
The LaT poll was very close this cycle and last cycle for the right reasons. Why didn't people
lie to them? Are they special? They used a cross section of the country as a sample based on the
census. They continued to talk to non voters or people who claimed to be non voters. They recognized
people turning their backs on Team Blue. In 2012, they predicted the decline of the white vote
for Team Blue and the rally of support from minorities because they talked to people.
In the case of the famed "Bradley effect," the pollsters in that race didn't account for high
republican turnout in connection to a statewide referendum expecting the usual city council turnout.
The Republicans simply weren't counted. The "lying" of secret racists excuse was cooked up by
pollsters and Bradley's campaign to avoid accountability for not working hard enough.
I don't know if this fits in, but this what I've been pondering.
For most of my life so far, lack of turnout has been assumed to be the result of 'voter apathy'.
It looks to me as if the democratic party's behavior this year, especially in suppressing the
Sanders campaign, had the ultimate effect of creating negative motivation on the part of many
otherwise democratic voters, who were excoriated with the warning that any vote not-for-HRC was
a vote for Trump.
It would seem that many of those voters accepted that reality, and by refusing to show up at
the polls, did indeed vote for Trump.
From my perspective, this is both a complete repudiation of the Third-Way politics of the Clintons,
and the beginning of a sea change.
What I'm saying is that we no longer have voter apathy to blame, but real evidence of deepening
engagement, which hopefully bodes well for Bernie's new project OR.
This wasn't a mysterious failure to excite voters, it was an obvious and monumental case of
ignoring the wishes of the electorate, and reaping a just reward.
In the end, faced with the prospect of the SOS, voters elected to take a chance on Change,
and this included many who could not bring themselves to vote for someone who obviously did not
respect them, and for whom they held no respect.
I don't know how much of the poor turnout over the past 2 decades was ever "your usual poor
turnout". Third Way servitors to the powerful were never beloved of the people, except perhaps
for the charismatic Bill Clinton. And there were many of us who never understood the love for
him.
Not voting has long been a conscious decision for many Americans, and when it's a conscious
decision, it's essential a vote.
I think this is a good point. My understanding of the polling methodology is that they
sample the electorate then break their sampled voters into demographic bins, then they weight
the bins based on expected participation by demographic to get a final expected vote. The
expected participation by demographic can really only be based on turnout from previous elections,
though presumably pollsters tweak things to account for expected differences, like assuming women
or latinos will be more motivated to vote in this election. If the actual turnout doesn't match
the pollsters expectation, as happened in this election, where many traditional democratic demographics
appeared to be demotivated, then the polls will all be systematically inaccurate.
Putting blame for voter 'apathy' on Clinton's treatment of the Democratic base that supported
Sanders, probably the most activist part of the party, or on Clinton's pivot to 'suburban republicans',
or on the FBI, or Clinton's disastrous foreign policy record, or Clinton's unprecedentedly low
favorability and trustworthiness numbers is difficult, but all of those problems were foreseen
by Sanders supporters as well as by the DNC, but were ignored by the latter. That those problems
were likely to depress turnout, which Democrats need to win elections was also fairly obvious,
which is why I never believed the polls and believed Trump was indeed likely to win.
And of course another major factor is that the polls were seemingly sponsored by media
organizations which have pretty openly declared their opposition to Trump. The obvious suspicion
was, then, that the polls were intended as campaign propaganda rather than objective information,
and were tweaked (via turnout models?) to make Hillary seem inevitable. I also believed this was
likely to lead to complacency among democrats, since Republicans are very reliable voters, and
Trump-inspired indies would not believe anything coming from the MSM anyway.
Most people I dared to explain this too were incredulous, and tended to write it off as more
of my characteristic weird logic… and now they are shocked, the idiots.
Polling organizations are really political organizations that get paid to influence public
opinion rather than measure it. Their models are garbage. It's a complete joke of an industry.
Actually that just under 2 percent win in the national polls is going to be correct. Also many
polls were vert close in PA were close as was FL and NC . Very few were done in Michigan which
AP may never call because it is close enough for a recount. In the national number it looks like
a 1 or 2 win
I thought the media and the both campaigns got it so wrong because they think everyone everywhere
is on Facebook and Twitter. The people that helped elect the Trumpeter aren't on social media
and didn't exist to those in power.
"... Because the following talking points prevent a (vulgar) identity politics -dominated Democrat Party from owning its loss, debunking them is then important beyond winning your Twitter wars. I'm trying to spike the Blame Cannons! ..."
"... Remember, Trump won Wisconsin by a whisker. So for this talking point to be true, we have to believe that black voters stayed home because they were racist, costing Clinton Wisconsin. ..."
"... These former Obama strongholds sealed the election for Trump. Of the nearly 700 counties that twice sent Obama to the White House, a stunning one-third flipped to support Trump . ..."
"... The Obama-Trump counties were critical in delivering electoral victories for Trump. Many of them fall in states that supported Obama in 2012, but Trump in 2016. In all, these flipped states accounted for 83 electoral votes. (Michigan and New Hampshire could add to this total, but their results were not finalized as of 4 p.m. Wednesday.) ..."
"... And so, for this talking point to be true, we have to believe that counties who voted for the black man in 2012 were racist because they didn't vote for the white women in 2016. Bringing me, I suppose, to sexism. ..."
"... These are resilient women, often working two or three jobs, for whom boorish men are an occasional occupational hazard, not an existential threat. They rolled their eyes over Trump's unmitigated coarseness, but still bought into his spiel that he'd be the greatest job producer who ever lived. Oh, and they wondered why his behaviour was any worse than Bill's. ..."
"... pink slips have hit entire neighbourhoods, and towns. The angry white working class men who voted in such strength for Trump do not live in an emotional vacuum. They are loved by white working class women – their wives, daughters, sisters and mothers, who participate in their remaindered pain. I t is everywhere in the interviews. "My dad lost his business", "My husband hasn't been the same since his job at the factory went away" . ..."
"... So, for this talking point to be true, you have to believe that sexism simultaneously increased the male vote for Trump, yet did not increase the female vote for Clinton. Shouldn't they move in opposite directions? ..."
"... First, even assuming that the author's happy but unconscious conflation of credentials with education is correct, it wasn't the "dunces" who lost two wars, butchered the health care system, caused the financial system to collapse through accounting control fraud, or invented the neoliberal ideology that was kept real wages flat for forty years and turned the industrial heartland into a wasteland. That is solely, solely down to - only some , to be fair - college-educated voters. It is totally and 100% not down to the "dunces"; they didn't have the political or financial power to achieve debacles on the grand scale. ..."
"... Second, the "dunces" were an important part of Obama's victories ..."
"... Not only has polling repeatedly underplayed the importance of white voters without college degrees, it's underplayed their importance to the Obama coalition: They were one-third of Obama votes in 2012. They filled the gap between upper-class whites and working-class nonwhites. Trump gained roughly 15 percentage points with them compared to Romney in 2012. ..."
"... "No, you are ignorant! You threw away the vote and put Trump in charge." Please, it will be important to know what derogatory camp you belong in when the blame game swings into full gear. *snark ..."
"... 'Stupid' was the word I got very tired of in my social net. Two variant targets: ..."
"... 1) Blacks for not voting their interests. The responses included 'we know who our enemies are' and 'don't tell me what to think.' ..."
"... Mostly it was vs rural, non-college educated. iirc, it was the Secretary of Agriculture, pleading for funds, who said the rural areas were where military recruits came from. A young fella I know, elite football player on elite non-urban HS team, said most of his teammates had enlisted. So they are the ones getting shot at, having relatives and friends come back missing pieces of body and self. ..."
"... My guy in the Reserves said the consensus was that if HRC got elected, they were going to war with Russia. Not enthused. Infantry IQ is supposedly average-80, but they know who Yossarian says the enemy is, e'en if they hant read the book. ..."
This post is not an explainer about why and how Clinton lost (and Trump won). I think we're going
to be sorting that out for awhile. Rather, it's a simple debunking of common talking points by Clinton
loyalists and Democrat Establishment operatives; the sort of talking point you might hear on Twitter,
entirely shorn of caveats and context. For each of the three talking points, I'll present an especially
egregious version of the myth, followed by a rebuttals.
How Trump won the presidency with razor-thin margins in swing states
Of the more than 120 million votes cast in the 2016 election, 107,000 votes in three states
[Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania] effectively decided the election.
Of course, America's first-past-the-post system and the electoral college amplify small margins
into decisive results. And it was the job of the Clinton campaign to find those 107,000 votes and
win them;
the Clinton operation turned out to be weaker than anyone would have imagined when
it counted . However, because Trump has what might be called an institutional mandate - both
the executive and legislative branches and soon, perhaps, the judicial - the narrowness of his margin
means he doesn't have a popular mandate. Trump has captured the state, but by no means civil society;
therefore, the opposition that seeks to delegitimize him is in a stronger position than it may realize.
Hence the necessity for reflection; seeking truth from facts, as the saying goes. Because
the following talking points prevent a
(vulgar) identity politics -dominated Democrat Party from owning its loss, debunking them is
then important beyond winning your Twitter wars. I'm trying to spike the Blame Cannons!
Trump's win is a reminder of the incredible, unbeatable power of racism
The subtext here is usually that if you don't chime in with vehement agreement, you're a racist
yourself, and possibly a racist Trump supporter. There are two reasons this talking point is false.
First, voter caring levels dropped from 2012 to 2016, especially among black Democrats
.
Carl
Beijer :
From 2012 to 2016, both men and women went from caring about the outcome to not caring.
Among Democratic men and women, as well as Republican women, care levels dropped about 3-4
points; Republican men cared a little less too, but only by one point. Across the board, in
any case, the plurality of voters simply didn't care.
Beijer includes the following chart (based on Edison exit polling cross-referenced with total
population numbers from the US Census):
Beijer interprets:
White voters cared even less in 2016 then in 2012, when they also didn't care; most of that
apathy came from white Republicans compared to white Democrats, who dropped off a little less.
Voters of color, in contrast, continued to care – but their care levels dropped even more,
by 8 points (compared to the 6 point drop-off among white voters). Incredibly, that drop was
driven entirely by a 9 point drop among Democratic voters of color which left Democrats
with only slim majority 51% support; Republicans, meanwhile, actually gained support
among people of color.
Urban areas, where black and Hispanic voters are concentrated along with college-educated
voters, already leaned toward the Democrats, but Clinton did not get the turnout from these
groups that she needed. For instance, black voters did not show up in the same numbers they
did for Barack Obama, the first black president, in 2008 and 2012.
Remember, Trump won Wisconsin by a whisker. So for this talking point to be true, we have to
believe that black voters stayed home because they were racist, costing Clinton Wisconsin.
Second, counties that voted for Obama in 2012 voted for Trump in 2016 .
The Washington Post :
These former Obama strongholds sealed the election for Trump. Of the nearly 700 counties that twice sent Obama to the White House,
a stunning one-third flipped to support Trump
.
The Obama-Trump counties were critical in delivering electoral victories for Trump. Many
of them fall in states that supported Obama in 2012, but Trump in 2016. In all, these flipped
states accounted for 83 electoral votes. (Michigan and New Hampshire could add to this total,
but their results were not finalized as of 4 p.m. Wednesday.)
Here's the chart:
And so, for this talking point to be true, we have to believe that counties who voted for the
black man in 2012 were racist because they didn't vote for the white women in 2016. Bringing me,
I suppose, to sexism.
Talking Point: Clinton was Defeated by Sexism
Here's an article showing the talking point from
Newsweek :
This often vitriolic campaign was a national referendum on women and power.
(The subtext here is usually that if you don't join the consensus cluster, you're a sexist
yourself, and possibly a sexist Trump supporter). And if you only look at the averages this claim
might seem true :
On Election Day, women responded accordingly, as Clinton beat Trump among women 54 percent
to 42 percent. They were voting not so much for her as against him and what he brought to the
surface during his campaign: quotidian misogyny.
There are two reasons this talking point is not true. First, averages conceal, and what
they conceal is class . As you read further into the article, you can see it fall apart:
In fact, Trump beat Clinton among white women 53 percent to 43 percent, with
white women without college degrees going for [Trump]
two to one .
So, taking lack of a college degree as a proxy for being working class, for Newsweek's claim
to be true, you have to believe that working class women don't get a vote in their referendum,
and for the talking point to be true, you have to believe that working class women are sexist.
Which leads me to ask: Who died and left the bourgeois feminists in Clinton's base in charge of
the definition of sexism, or feminism? Class traitor
Tina Brown is worth repeating:
Here's my own beef. Liberal feminists, young and old, need to question the role they played
in Hillary's demise. The two weeks of media hyperventilation over grab-her-by-the-pussygate,
when the airwaves were saturated with aghast liberal women equating Trump's gross comments
with sexual assault, had the opposite effect on multiple women voters in the Heartland.
These are resilient women, often working two or three jobs, for whom boorish men are an
occasional occupational hazard, not an existential threat. They rolled their eyes over Trump's
unmitigated coarseness, but still bought into his spiel that he'd be the greatest job producer
who ever lived. Oh, and they wondered why his behaviour was any worse than Bill's.
Missing this pragmatic response by so many women was another mistake of Robbie Mook's campaign
data nerds. They computed that America's women would all be as outraged as the ones they came
home to at night. But pink slips have hit entire neighbourhoods, and towns. The angry white
working class men who voted in such strength for Trump do not live in an emotional vacuum.
They are loved by white working class women – their wives, daughters, sisters and mothers,
who participate in their remaindered pain. I t is
everywhere in the interviews. "My dad lost his business", "My husband hasn't been the same
since his job at the factory went away" .
Second, Clinton in 2016 did no better than Obama in 2008 with women (although she did
better than Obama in 2012). From
the New York Times analysis of the exit polls, this chart...
So, for this talking point to be true, you have to believe that sexism simultaneously increased
the male vote for Trump, yet did not increase the female vote for Clinton. Shouldn't they move
in opposite directions?
Talking Point: Clinton was Defeated by Stupidity
Here's an example of this talking point from
Foreign Policy , the heart of The Blob. The headline:
Trump Won Because Voters Are Ignorant, Literally
And the lead:
OK, so that just happened. Donald Trump always enjoyed massive support from uneducated,
low-information white people. As Bloomberg Politics reported back in August, Hillary Clinton
was enjoying a giant 25 percentage-point lead among college-educated voters going into the
election. (Whether that trend held up remains to be seen.) In contrast, in the 2012 election,
college-educated voters just barely favored Barack Obama over Mitt Romney. Last night we saw
something historic: the dance of the dunces. Never have educated voters so uniformly rejected
a candidate. But never before have the lesser-educated so uniformly supported a candidate.
The subtext here is usually that if you don't accept nod your head vigorously, you're stupid,
and possibly a stupid Trump supporter. There are two reasons this talking point is not true.
First, even assuming that the author's happy but unconscious conflation of credentials with
education is correct, it wasn't the "dunces" who lost two wars, butchered the health care
system, caused the financial system to collapse through accounting control fraud, or invented
the neoliberal ideology that was kept real wages flat for forty years and turned the industrial
heartland into a wasteland. That is solely, solely down to - only some , to be fair
- college-educated voters. It is totally and 100% not down to the "dunces"; they didn't have the
political or financial power to achieve debacles on the grand scale.
Second, the "dunces" were an important part of Obama's victories. From
The Week :
Not only has polling repeatedly underplayed the importance of white voters without college
degrees, it's underplayed their importance to the Obama coalition: They were one-third of Obama
votes in 2012. They filled the gap between upper-class whites and working-class nonwhites.
Trump gained roughly 15 percentage points with them compared to Romney in 2012.
So, to believe this talking point, you have to believe that voters who were smart when they
voted for Obama suddenly became stupid when it came time to vote for Clinton. You also have to
believe that credentialed policy makers have an unblemished record of success, and that only they
are worth paying attention to.
By just about every metric imaginable, Hillary Clinton led one of the worst presidential campaigns
in modern history. It was a profoundly reactionary campaign, built entirely on rolling back the
horizons of the politically possible, fracturing left solidarity, undermining longstanding left
priorities like universal healthcare, pandering to Wall Street oligarchs, fomenting nationalism
against Denmark and Russia, and rehabilitating some of history's greatest monsters – from Bush
I to Kissinger. It was a grossly unprincipled campaign that belligerently violated FEC Super PAC
coordination rules and conspired with party officials on everything from political attacks to
debate questions. It was an obscenely stupid campaign that all but ignored Wisconsin during the
general election, that pitched Clinton to Latino voters as their abuela, that centered an entire
high-profile speech over the national menace of a few thousand anime nazis on Twitter, and that
repeatedly deployed Lena Dunham as a media surrogate.
Which is rather like running a David Letterman ad in a Pennsylvania steel town. It must have seemed
like a good idea in Brooklyn. After all, they had so many celebrities to choose from.
* * *
All three talking points oversimplify. I'm not saying racism is not powerful; of course it is.
I'm not saying that sexism is not powerful; of course it is. But monocausal explanations in an election
this close - and in a country this vast - are foolish. And narratives that ignore economics and erase
class are worse than foolish; buying into them will cause us to make the same mistakes over and over
and over again.[1] The trick will be to integrate multiple causes, and that's down to the left; identity
politics liberals don't merely not want to do this; they actively oppose it. Ditto their opposite
numbers in America's neoliberal fun house mirror, the conservatives.
NOTES
[1] For some, that's not a bug. It's a feature.
NOTE
You will have noticed that I haven't covered economics (class), or election fraud at all. More
myths are coming.
Lambert Strether has been blogging, managing online communities, and doing system administration
24/7 since 2003, in Drupal and WordPress. Besides political economy and the political scene, he blogs
about rhetoric, software engineering, permaculture, history, literature, local politics, international
travel, food, and fixing stuff around the house. The nom de plume "Lambert Strether" comes from Henry
James's The Ambassadors: "Live all you can. It's a mistake not to." You can follow him on Twitter
at @lambertstrether. http://www.correntewire.com
"No, you are ignorant! You threw away the vote and put Trump in charge." Please, it will be
important to know what derogatory camp you belong in when the blame game swings into full gear.
*snark
'Stupid' was the word I got very tired of in my social net. Two variant targets:
1) Blacks
for not voting their interests. The responses included 'we know who our enemies are' and 'don't
tell me what to think.'
2) Mostly it was vs rural, non-college educated. iirc, it was the Secretary of Agriculture,
pleading for funds, who said the rural areas were where military recruits came from. A young fella
I know, elite football player on elite non-urban HS team, said most of his teammates had enlisted.
So they are the ones getting shot at, having relatives and friends come back missing pieces of
body and self.
My guy in the Reserves said the consensus was that if HRC got elected, they were going
to war with Russia. Not enthused. Infantry IQ is supposedly average-80, but they know who Yossarian
says the enemy is, e'en if they hant read the book.
"... There are some who believe the elites are actually splintered into numerous groups and that domestic US elites have positioned themselves against the banking elites in London's City. ..."
"... US elites are basically in the employ of a handful of families, individuals and institutions in our view. It is confusing because it is hard to tell if Hillary, for instance, is operating on her own accord or at the behest of higher and more powerful authorities. ..."
"... It is probably a combination of both but at root those who control central banks are managing the world's move towards globalism. ..."
"... The vote to propel Trump to the US presidency reflects a profound backlash against open markets and borders, and the simmering anger of millions of blue-collar white and working-class people who blame their economic woes on globalisation and multiculturalism. ..."
"... If indeed Trump's election has damped the progress of TPP, and TTIP, this is a huge event. As we've pointed out, both agreements effectively substituted technocratic corporatism for the current sociopolitical model of "democracy." ..."
"... one of the elite's most powerful, operative memes today is "populism vs. globalism" ..."
"... No matter what, the reality of these two events, the victories of both Trump and Brexit, stand as signal proof that elite stratagems have been defeated, at least temporarily. Though whether these defeats have been self-inflicted as part of a change in tactics remains to be seen. ..."
Was Trump's victory actually created by the very globalist elites that Trump is supposed to have
overcome? There are some who believe the elites are actually splintered into numerous groups and
that domestic US elites have positioned themselves against the banking elites in London's City.
We
see no fundamental evidence of this.
The world's real elites in our view may have substantive histories in the hundreds and
thousands of years. US elites are basically in the employ of a handful of families,
individuals and institutions in our view. It is confusing because it is hard to tell if Hillary,
for instance, is operating on her own accord or at the behest of higher and more powerful
authorities.
It is probably a combination
of both but at root those who control central banks are managing the world's move towards globalism.
History easily shows us who these groups are – and they are not located in America.
This is a cynical perspective to be sure, and certainly doesn't remove the impact of Trump's victory
or his courage in waging his election campaign despite what must surely be death threats to himself
and his family..
But if true, this perspective corresponds to predictions that we've been making for nearly a decade
now, suggesting that sooner or later elites – especially those in London's City – would have to "take
a step back."
More:
The vote to propel Trump to the US presidency reflects a profound backlash against open markets
and borders, and the simmering anger of millions of blue-collar white and working-class people
who blame their economic woes on globalisation and multiculturalism.
"There are a few parallels to Switzerland – that the losers of globalisation find somebody
who is listening to them," said Swiss professor and lawyer Wolf Linder, a former director of the
University of Bern's political science institute.
"Trump is doing his business with the losers of globalisation in the US, like the Swiss People's
Party is doing in Switzerland," he said. "It is a phenomenon which touches all European nations."
... ... ...
If indeed Trump's election has damped the progress of TPP, and TTIP, this is a huge event. As
we've pointed out, both agreements effectively substituted technocratic corporatism for the current
sociopolitical model of "democracy." The elites were trying to move toward a new
model of world control with these two agreements. ...
Additionally, one of the elite's most powerful, operative memes today is "populism vs. globalism"
that seeks to contrast the potentially freedom-oriented events of Trump and Brexit to the discarded
wisdom of globalism. See
here and
here.
No matter what, the reality of these two events, the victories of both Trump and Brexit, stand
as signal proof that elite stratagems have been defeated, at least temporarily. Though whether these
defeats have been self-inflicted as part of a change in tactics remains to be seen.
Conclusion: But the change has come. One way or another the Internet and tens of millions or people
talking, writing and acting has forced new trends. This can be hardly be emphasized enough. Globalism
has been at least temporarily redirected.
Editor's Note: The Daily Bell is giving away a silver coin and a silver "white paper" to subscribers.
If you enjoy DB's articles and want to stay up-to-date for free, please subscribe
here .
The analysis is flawed in that it fails to understand the context for power and influence in the
western alliance. The Crowns in contest are seeking coordinated domination through political proxy,
i.e. the force behind the EU and the UN. The problem is the most influential crown was not in
a mind to destroy the fabric of their civilization and more importantly to continue to bail-out
the "socialist" paradises in the continent and beyond. Britannia has its own socialism to support
much less that of the world.
Trump represents keeping the Colony in line with a growing interest in keeping traditions intact
and in more direct control of Anglo values. Europe has this insane multi-culturalism that is fundamentally
incompatible with a "free" and robust civilization. The whole goal of detente with China was to
convert them to our values via proxy institutions and that is working in the long-run. In the
short-run, the Empire must reunite and solidify its value bulwark against the coming storm from
China and to a lesser extend from the expanded EU states. Russia is playing out on its own.
In his first post-election
interview , Bernie Sanders
has declared to
should-be-disgraced Wolf Blitzer that Trump seeking to indict Hillary Clinton for her crimes
would be "an outrage beyond belief".
When asked if President Obama should pardon Hillary Clinton, Sanders seems almost confused as
to why a pardon would even be needed.
Blitzer notes that Ford pardoned Nixon before he could be charged, to which Bernie seemed again
incredulous as to the comparison was even being made.
He goes on to state:
That a winning candidate would try to imprison the losing candidate – that's what dictatorships
are about, that's what authoritarian countries are about. You do not imprison somebody you ran
against because you have differences of opinion. The vast majority of the American people would
find it unacceptable to even think about those things.
Either Senator Sanders is a drooling idiot, or he is being willfully obtuse.
No one wants to imprison Hillary Clinton because of her opinion. They want to imprison Hillary Clinton because she has committed criminal actions that any other
person lacking millions of dollars and hundreds of upper-echelon contacts would be imprisoned for.
Apparently, according to progressive hero Bernie Sanders, holding the elites to the same level
of justice as the peons is undemocratic, authoritarian, and perhaps even dictatorial!
Enough with the damn emails?
Enough with any hope that the Democrats have retained a minute shred of credibility.
"There are two theories of prosperity and of well-being: The first theory is that if we make the
rich richer, somehow they will let a part of their prosperity trickle down to the rest of us.
The second theory - and I suppose this goes back to the days of Noah - I won't say Adam and Eve,
because they had a less complicated situation - but, at least, back in the days of the flood,
there was the theory that if we make the average of mankind comfortable and secure, their prosperity
will rise upward, just as yeast rises up, through the ranks...
We so easily forget. Once the cry of so-called prosperity is heard in the land, we all become
so stampeded by the spirit of the god Mammon, that we cannot serve the dictates of social conscience.
. . . We are here to serve notice that the economic order is the invention of man; and that it
cannot dominate certain eternal principles of justice and of God...
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it
is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
You can fool all of the people, some of the time. You can fool some of the people all of the time-
but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
"... "Democrats have focused too much with a liberal elite" while ignoring the working class. ..."
"... How does it happen that they win elections and Democrats lose? I think what the conclusion is, is that that is raising incredible sums of money from wealthy people … but has ignored to a very significant degree, working class, middle class, and low income people in this country. ..."
Sunday on CBS's "Face The Nation," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said President-elect Donald Trump
won because "Democrats have focused too much with a liberal elite" while ignoring the working
class.
Sanders said, " How does it happen that they win elections and Democrats lose? I think
what the conclusion is, is that that is raising incredible sums of money from wealthy people …
but has ignored to a very significant degree, working class, middle class, and low income people
in this country. "
Lost control of the Senate
Lost control of the House of Representatives
Lost control of dozens of state legislatures and Governorships.
The Republicans control 36 States of America - One more and they could in theory amend the Constitution.
In Wisconsin (notionally Democrat) the Legislature and Governor are both Republican controlled.
And Clinton didn't even campaign there when it was pretty obvious the State was not trending towards
her.
Most commenters do not realise that it is neoliberalism that caused the current suffering of
working people in the USA and elsewhere...
Notable quotes:
"... Working class wages destroyed. The wages of the low paid lowered. Ordinary people robbed of holiday and sickness pay. Working people priced out of ever owning their own home. Our city centers socially cleansed of the working class. Poor people forced to fight like rats in sacks with even poorer foreigners for jobs, housing, school places and social and health services. ..."
"... Keep going mate. Continue to pump out that snobbish attitude because every time you do you've bagged Mr Trump, Mr Farage and Ms LePen another few votes. ..."
"... I recall a time when any suggestion that immigration may be too high was silenced by cries of racism, eventually that label was misused so often that it lost its potency, one gets the sense that this trend for dubbing those who hold certain opinions as somehow unintelligent will go the same way. People are beginning to see through this most hateful tactic of the Modern Left. ..."
"... Which is why I think Mr D'Ancona and many others are wrong to say that Farage and Trump will face the whirlwind when voters realise that their promises were all unachievable. The promises were much less important than the chance to slap the political world in the face. Given another chance, a lot of voters will do the same again. ..."
"... I think the author completely misses the most salient point from the two events he cites: simply that the *vast* majority of people have become completely disenfranchised with the utter corruption that is mainstream politics today. ..."
"... It doesn't matter who is voted in, the status quo [big business and the super-rich get wealthier whilst the middle is squeezed and the poorest are destroyed] remains. ..."
"... The votes for Brexit and Trump are as much a rejection of "establishment" as anything else. Politicians in both countries heed these warnings at their peril... ..."
"... The majority of the people are sick and tired of PC ism and the zero hour, minimum wage economy that both Britain and America have suffered under "globalisation". And of the misguided "[neo]liberal" agenda of much of the media which simply does not speak to or for society. ..."
"... People in western democracies are rising up through the ballot box to defeat PC [neo]liberalism and globalisation that has done so much to impoverish Europe and America morally and economically. To the benefit of the tax haven corporates. ..."
"... Globalisation disembowelled American manufacturing so the likes of Blair and the Clintons could print money. The illimitable lives they destroyed never entered their calculus. ..."
"... I have stood in the blue lane in Atlanta waiting for my passport to be processed; in the adjoining lane was a young British female student (so she said to the official). The computer revealed she had overstayed her visa by 48 hours the last time she visited. She was marched out by two armed tunics to the next plane home. That's how Europeans get treated if they try to enter America illegally. Why the demented furor over returning illegal Hispanics or anyone else? ..."
Surely the people who voted for Trump and Farage are too stupid to realise the sheer,
criminal folly of their decision...
thoughtcatcher -> IanPitch 12h ago
Working class wages destroyed. The wages of the low paid lowered. Ordinary people
robbed of holiday and sickness pay. Working people priced out of ever owning their own home.
Our city centers socially cleansed of the working class. Poor people forced to fight like rats
in sacks with even poorer foreigners for jobs, housing, school places and social and health
services.
But yeah, they voted against the elite because they are "stupid".
attila9000 -> IanPitch 11h ago
I think at some point a lot of them will realize they have been had, but then they will
probably just blame immigrants, or the EU. Anything that means they don't have to take
responsibility for their own actions. It would appear there is a huge pool of people who can
be conned into acting against their own self interest.
jonnyoyster -> IanPitch 11h ago
Keep going mate. Continue to pump out that snobbish attitude because every time you do
you've bagged Mr Trump, Mr Farage and Ms LePen another few votes. Most people don't
appreciate being talked down to and this arrogant habit of calling those who hold views
contrary to your own 'stupid' is encouraging more and more voters to ditch the established
parties in favour of the new.
I recall a time when any suggestion that immigration may be too high was silenced by
cries of racism, eventually that label was misused so often that it lost its potency, one gets
the sense that this trend for dubbing those who hold certain opinions as somehow unintelligent
will go the same way. People are beginning to see through this most hateful tactic of the
Modern Left.
DilemmataDocta -> IanPitch 11h ago
A lot of the people who put their cross against Brexit or Trump weren't actually voting for
anything. They were just voting against this, that or the other thing about the world that
they disliked. It was voting as a gesture.
Which is why I think Mr D'Ancona and many others are wrong to say that Farage and Trump
will face the whirlwind when voters realise that their promises were all unachievable. The
promises were much less important than the chance to slap the political world in the face.
Given another chance, a lot of voters will do the same again.
Sproggit 12h ago
I think the author completely misses the most salient point from the two events he
cites: simply that the *vast* majority of people have become completely disenfranchised with
the utter corruption that is mainstream politics today.
It doesn't matter who is voted in, the status quo [big business and the super-rich get
wealthier whilst the middle is squeezed and the poorest are destroyed] remains.
The votes for Brexit and Trump are as much a rejection of "establishment" as anything
else. Politicians in both countries heed these warnings at their peril...
NotoBlair 11h ago
OMG, the lib left don't Geddit do they?
The majority of the people are sick and tired of PC ism and the zero hour, minimum wage
economy that both Britain and America have suffered under "globalisation". And of the
misguided "[neo]liberal" agenda of much of the media which simply does not speak to or for
society.
People in western democracies are rising up through the ballot box to defeat PC [neo]liberalism
and globalisation that has done so much to impoverish Europe and America morally and
economically. To the benefit of the tax haven corporates.
The sour grapes bleating of the lib left who refuse to accept the democratic will of the
people is a movement doomed failure.
Frankincensedabit 11h ago
Malign to whom? Wall Street and people who want us all dead?
Globalisation disembowelled American manufacturing so the likes of Blair and the Clintons
could print money. The illimitable lives they destroyed never entered their calculus.
I have stood in the blue lane in Atlanta waiting for my passport to be processed; in the
adjoining lane was a young British female student (so she said to the official). The computer
revealed she had overstayed her visa by 48 hours the last time she visited. She was marched
out by two armed tunics to the next plane home. That's how Europeans get treated if they try
to enter America illegally. Why the demented furor over returning illegal Hispanics or anyone
else?
I likely wouldn't have voted at all. But all my life the occupants of the White House
represented the interests of those nobody could ever identify. The owners of the media and the
numbered accounts who took away the life-chances of U.S. citizens by the million and called
any of them who objected a thick white-trash bigot. Whatever Trump is, he will be different.
"... So-called [neo]liberals and leftists in the US and around the world, are now wailing and gnashing their teeth in reaction to Hillary Clinton's crushing defeat. They are, however, the first to blame for the outcome of the US presidential elections. Their candidate, Hillary Clinton, was the embodiment of a totally corrupt political system. She is a hypocrite par excellence, talking to the bankiers of Wall Street behind closed doors differently than to the American people. Her rhetoric for the rights of women and blacks and other minorities sounded disingenuous. ..."
"... The Clinton Foundation received large donations from Saudi-Arabia and Qatar, countries rewarded in return by huge arms transfers overseen by her as Secretary of State. Her involvement in this corruption was no theme for the media. ..."
"... According to emails published by WikiLeaks, her campaign manager John Podesta was or is on the payroll of the Saudis. ..."
"... the Clinton team stole the primary elections to prevent the candidacy of Bernie Sanders, the media demonized Donald Trump. ..."
"... An American President is not a free and politically independent person. From day one, a President-elect can't anymore go around the corner and grab a hot dog or a hamburger. He is reigned in by a military and security establishment that holds the President fit for public consumption. Trump, as any other president, can be expected to follow their rule and political suggestions. ..."
"... I doubt very much that Trump will keep the promises of his election campaign, such as building a wall along the American-Mexican border, deport all illegal immigrants or ban Muslims from immigrating into the US. I even doubt that he will go after Hillary Clinton and her husband's dubious foundation. There exists a code of honor among thieves. ..."
"... Trump won precisely because of the shrill one-sided media propaganda and because of his rhetoric against the Washington establishment , including his own Republican Party. Now, this Republican establishment dominates both houses of Congress. Trump belongs also, however, to the US establishment but of another sort. Nobody should believe that the Washington establishment will follow Trump's lead. ..."
"... Whether Trump will stop American adventurism in the Middle East remains to be seen. His close ties with Netanyahu do not bode well for the Palestinians ..."
"... And while he has promised to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, I doubt that he will carry out this provocation against international law and the entire Muslim world. ..."
"... Chancellor Angela Merke l sent the President-Elect Trump a warning in the guise of a congratulation. Her political impudence was garbed within obsequious blabber about the allegedly honorable nature of German-American ties ..."
"... Germany's Foreign Minister Steinmeier called Trump a "preacher of hate" ..."
"... During the election campaign, Trump called Merkel's mass-immigration policy "insane" and "what Merkel did to Germany" a "sad shame". ..."
"... The media and the political class should at this point stop pontificating. Their double morals and unprofessional coverage of the US elections should prompt them to more humility. They should rather blame themselves for their biased reporting, which led directly to Clinton's defeat. ..."
So-called [neo]liberals and leftists in the US and around the world, are now wailing and gnashing
their teeth in reaction to Hillary Clinton's crushing defeat. They are, however, the first to blame
for the outcome of the US presidential elections. Their candidate, Hillary Clinton, was the embodiment
of a totally corrupt political system. She is a hypocrite par excellence, talking to the bankiers
of Wall Street behind closed doors differently than to the American people. Her rhetoric for the
rights of women and blacks and other minorities sounded disingenuous.
The Clinton Foundation received large donations from Saudi-Arabia and Qatar, countries rewarded
in return by huge arms transfers overseen by her as Secretary of State. Her involvement in this corruption
was no theme for the media.
According to emails published by WikiLeaks, her campaign manager John
Podesta was or is on the payroll of the Saudis. All of this was not considered worth reporting by
the media. Virtually all national media in the United States supported Clinton's candidacy. Instead
of reporting how the machinery of the Democratic Party and the Clinton team stole the primary elections
to prevent the candidacy of Bernie Sanders, the media demonized Donald Trump.
I do not wish here to defend Donald Trump. He made numerous stupid, racist, sexist, and anti-Islamic
statements that were rightly criticized. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, was treated with kid
gloves while her huge criminal political record was glossed over. Instead of coming to grips with
their abject failures, the liberals and their media continue in slandering Donald Trump. Trump's
first declarations show already that he has conquered new frontiers.
An American President is not a free and politically independent person. From day one, a President-elect
can't anymore go around the corner and grab a hot dog or a hamburger. He is reigned in by a military
and security establishment that holds the President fit for public consumption. Trump, as any other
president, can be expected to follow their rule and political suggestions.
I doubt very much that Trump will keep the promises of his election campaign, such as building
a wall along the American-Mexican border, deport all illegal immigrants or ban Muslims from immigrating
into the US. I even doubt that he will go after Hillary Clinton and her husband's dubious foundation.
There exists a code of honor among thieves.
Trump won precisely because of the shrill one-sided media propaganda and because of his rhetoric
against the Washington establishment , including his own Republican Party. Now, this Republican establishment
dominates both houses of Congress. Trump belongs also, however, to the US establishment but of another
sort. Nobody should believe that the Washington establishment will follow Trump's lead. Even his
positive statements about Vladimir Putin or his suggestion to discard NATO, will probably vanish.
But what I do hope is that he stands to his rejection of TPP and TTIP and his pragmatic view of Vladimir
Putin.
Whether Trump will stop American adventurism in the Middle East remains to be seen. His close
ties with Netanyahu do not bode well for the Palestinians. He sees Zionist colonization of the rest
of Palestine as no hindrance to peace. And while he has promised to move the US Embassy from Tel
Aviv to Jerusalem, I doubt that he will carry out this provocation against international law and
the entire Muslim world.
The German political and media class was not only surprised by the results of the US elections,
but did not even try to hide its revulsion against the choice of the American people. The entire
political class in Germany perceived and presented the Trump campaign in the same one-sided manner
as American media did. Chancellor Angela Merke l sent the President-Elect Trump a warning in the
guise of a congratulation. Her political impudence was garbed within obsequious blabber about the
allegedly honorable nature of German-American ties:
"Germany and America are bound by common values - democracy, freedom, as well as respect for
the rule of law and the dignity of each and every person, regardless of their origin, skin color,
creed, gender, sexual orientation, or political views. It is based on these values that I wish
to offer close cooperation, both with me personally and between our countries' governments."
Other German politicians did not even attempt to hide their disdain for American voters by diplomatic
language. Germany's Foreign Minister Steinmeier called Trump a "preacher of hate", and Deputy Chancellor
Gabriel cartooned Trump as a
"trailblazer of a new authoritarian and chauvinist international movement… [who wants] a rollback
to the bad old times in which women belonged by the stove or in bed, gays in jail and unions at
best at the side table."
During the election campaign, Trump called Merkel's mass-immigration policy "insane" and "what
Merkel did to Germany" a "sad shame".
The media and the political class should at this point stop pontificating. Their double morals
and unprofessional coverage of the US elections should prompt them to more humility. They should
rather blame themselves for their biased reporting, which led directly to Clinton's defeat. Ordinary
Americans are not as stupid as the Establishment wants us to believe. Established parties and media
would be well advised to give the new US President a chance to prove his worth. There will be, without
doubt, many occasions in the future for fact-based criticism.
That is why watching President-elect Trump's choices for his foreign policy team is so important.
If he chooses primarily alumni of the Bush administration, we can be fairly certain that there
will be few, if any, beneficial changes in Washington's security strategy. Indeed, it could conceivably
be even more interventionist than that pursued by the Clinton, Bush or Obama administrations.
The main difference might be that it would be conducted unilaterally rather than multilaterally,
especially if someone like John Bolton gets a key position.
If on the other hand, Trump begins to pick advisers who have little or no previous government
service, it would be an encouraging step. Watch for appointments from realist enclaves like Defense
Priorities, the Independent Institute and others. Also watch for the appointment of individual unorthodox
or "rogue" scholars from such places as Notre Dame University, George Mason University, the Lyndon
B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, and (ironically) the Bush School
at Texas A&M University. Such moves would indicate that Trump was choosing new blood and really intending
to make a meaningful change in the direction of U.S. foreign policy.
"... It's not just corporate lobbyists who are playing early, visible roles in the new power structure. Some of Trump's biggest political donors are shaping the incoming administration, including Rebekah Mercer, a daughter of billionaire Robert Mercer, who is figuring prominently in behind-the-scenes discussions, according to people familiar with the transition. ..."
"... Mercer is among four major donors appointed by Trump Friday to a 16-person executive committee overseeing his transition. The others are campaign finance chairman Steven Mnuchin, New York financier Anthony Scaramucci and Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel. ..."
The chant echoed through Donald Trump's boisterous rallies leading up to Election Day: "Drain the swamp! Drain the swamp! Drain
the swamp!"
"We are fighting for every citizen that believes that government should serve the people, not the donors and not the special interests,"
the billionaire real estate developer promised exuberant supporters at his last campaign rally in Manchester, N.H.
But just days later, there is little evidence that the president-elect is seeking to restrain wealthy interests from having access
and influence in his administration.
It's not just corporate lobbyists who are playing early, visible roles in the new power structure. Some of Trump's biggest political
donors are shaping the incoming administration, including Rebekah Mercer, a daughter of billionaire Robert Mercer, who is figuring
prominently in behind-the-scenes discussions, according to people familiar with the transition.
Mercer is among four major donors appointed by Trump Friday to a 16-person executive committee overseeing his transition. The
others are campaign finance chairman Steven Mnuchin, New York financier Anthony Scaramucci and Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel.
Meanwhile, top campaign fundraisers and a raft of lobbyists tied to some of the country's wealthiest industries have been put
in charge of hiring and planning for specific federal agencies. They include J. Steven Hart, chairman of the law and lobbying shop
Williams & Jensen; Michael McKenna, an energy company lobbyist who is overseeing planning for the Energy Department; and Dallas fundraiser
Ray Washburne, was has been tapped to oversee the Commerce Department.
Billionaires who served as Trump's policy advisers, such as Oklahoma oil executive Harold Hamm, are under consideration for Cabinet
positions.
LOL .
LOL
. So how about a new chant for protesters: DRAIN THE SWAP!?
... ... ...
UPDATE:
Asked about the tensions, and about Kushner's role in the leadership change at the transition team, Trump spokesman Jason Miller
said, "Anybody seeing today's news about the appointment of Vice President-elect Mike Pence to run the Presidential Transition
Team realizes that President-elect Donald J. Trump is serious about changing Washington whether the town likes it or not. This
might ruffle the delicate sensitivities of the well-heeled two-martini lunch set, but President-elect Trump isn't fighting for
them, he's fighting for the hard-working men and women outside the Beltway who don't care for insider bickering."
It's not uncommon for rivalries to emerge inside campaigns and administrations as advisers jockey to place allies in key roles
and advance their policy priorities. But the level of internecine conflict during Trump's drive toward the GOP nomination was
so extreme that it sometimes resulted in conflicting directives for even simple hiring and spending decisions.
Eight years ago, President Obama had a chance to change the warmongering direction that outgoing
President Bush and the U.S. national-security establishment had led America for the previous eight
years. Obama could have said, "Enough is enough. America has done enough killing and dying. I'm going
to lead our country in a different direction - toward peace, prosperity, and harmony with the people
of the world." He could have ordered all U.S. troops in the Middle East and Afghanistan to return
home. He could have ended U.S. involvement in the endless wars that Bush, the Pentagon, and the CIA
spawned in that part of the world. He could have led America in a new direction.
Instead, Obama decided to stay Bush's course, no doubt believing that he, unlike Bush, could win
the endless wars that Bush had started. It was not to be. He chose to keep the national-security
establishment embroiled in Afghanistan and Iraq. Death and destruction are Obama's legacy, just as
they were Bush's.
Obama hoped that Hillary Clinton would protect and continue his (and Bush's) legacy of foreign
death and destruction. Yesterday, a majority of American voters dashed that hope.
Will Trump change directions and bring U.S. troops home? Possibly not, especially given he is
an interventionist, just as Clinton, Bush, and Obama are. But there is always that possibility, especially
since Trump, unlike Clinton, owes no allegiance to the U.S. military-industrial complex, whose survival
and prosperity depends on endless wars and perpetual crises.
If Clinton had been elected, there was never any doubt about continued U.S. interventionism in
Afghanistan and the Middle East. Not only is she a died-in-the-wool interventionist, she would have
been owned by the national-security establishment. She would have done whatever the Pentagon, CIA,
and NSA wanted, which would have automatically meant endless warfare - and permanent destruction
of the liberty and prosperity of the American people.
It's obvious that Americans want a new direction when it comes to foreign policy. That's partly
what Trump's election is all about. Americans are sick and tired of the never-ending wars in Afghanistan,
Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere. That includes military families, especially the many who
supported Trump, Gary Johnson, or Jill Stein. Americans are also tired of the out of control spending
and debt that come with these wars. By electing Trump, it is obvious that Americans are demanding
a change on foreign policy.
Imagine the benefits to American society if Trump were to change directions on foreign policy.
No more anti-American terrorist blowback, which would mean no more war on terrorism. That means the
restoration of a sense of normality to American lives. No more TSA checkpoints at airports. No more
mass surveillance schemes to "keep us safe." No more color coded warnings. No more totalitarian power
to round up Americans, put them into concentration camps or military dungeons, and torture them.
No more power to assassinate people, including Americans. In other words, the restoration of American
civil liberties and privacy.
The Middle East is embroiled in civil wars - wars that have been engendered or magnified by U.S.
interventionism. Continued interventionism in an attempt to fix the problems only pours gasoline
on the fires. The U.S. government has done enough damage to Afghanistan and the Middle East. It has
already killed enough people, including those in wedding parties, hospitals, and neighborhoods. Enough
is enough.
Will Trump be bad on immigration and trade? Undoubtedly, but Clinton would have been bad in
those areas too. Don't forget, after all, that Obama has become America's greatest deporter-in-chief,
deporting more illegal immigrants than any U.S. president in history. Clinton would have followed
in his footsteps, especially in the hope of protecting his legacy. Moreover, while Trump will undoubtedly
begin trade wars, Clinton would have been imposing sanctions on people all over the world whose government
failed to obey the commands of the U.S. government. A distinction without a difference.
Another area for hope under a Trump presidency is with respect to the drug war, one of the most
failed, destructive, and expensive government programs in history. Clinton would have followed in
Bush's and Obama's footsteps by keeping it in existence, if for no other reason than to cater to
the army of DEA agents, federal and state judges, federal and state prosecutors, court clerks, and
police departments whose existence depends on the drug war.
While Trump is a drug warrior himself, he doesn't have the same allegiance to the vast drug-war
bureaucracy that Clinton has. If we get close to pushing this government program off the cliff -
and I am convinced that it is on the precipice - there is a good chance that Trump will not put much
effort into fighting its demise. Clinton would have fought for the drug war with every fiber of her
being.
There is another possible upside to Trump's election: The likelihood that Cold War II will
come to a sudden end. With Clinton, the continuation of the new Cold War against Russia was a certainty.
In fact, Clinton's Cold War might well have gotten hot very quickly, given her intent to establish
a no-fly zone over Syria where she could show how tough she is by ordering U.S. warplanes to shoot
down Russian warplanes. There is no telling where that would have led, but it very well might have
led to all-out nuclear war, something that the U.S. national-security establishment wanted with the
Soviet Union back in the 1960s under President Kennedy.
The danger of war with Russia obviously diminishes under a President Trump, who has said that
he favors friendly relations with Russia, just as Kennedy favored friendly relations with the Soviet
Union and Cuba in the months before he was assassinated.
Indeed, given Trump's negative comments about NATO, there is even the possibility of a dismantling
of that old Cold War dinosaur that gave us the crisis in Ukraine with Russia.
How about it, President-Elect Trump? While you're mulling over your new Berlin Wall on the Southern
(and maybe Northern) border and your coming trade wars with China, how about refusing to follow
the 16 years of Bush-Obama when it comes to U.S. foreign interventionism? Bring the troops home.
Lead America in a different direction, at least insofar as foreign policy is concerned - away from
death, destruction, spending, debt, loss of liberty and privacy, and economic impoverishment and
toward freedom, peace, prosperity, and harmony.
"
TRYING" ???...That's a JOKE, Right? Gingrich, Giuliani, etc, etc, These Neocons
already have a lot of the wild cards and 'Trump Cards'...Closet Globalists, even though they
probably wouldn't admit it.
Reference Carroll Quigley and Craig Hulet if you really want to get the REAL skinny!
The chant echoed through Donald Trump's boisterous rallies leading up to Election Day: "Drain
the swamp! Drain the swamp! Drain the swamp!"
"We are fighting for every citizen that believes that government should serve the people, not
the donors and not the special interests," the billionaire real estate developer promised exuberant
supporters at his last campaign rally in Manchester, N.H.
But just days later, there is little evidence that the president-elect is seeking to restrain
wealthy interests from having access and influence in his administration.
It's not just corporate lobbyists who are playing early, visible roles in the new power structure.
Some of Trump's biggest political donors are shaping the incoming administration, including Rebekah
Mercer, a daughter of billionaire Robert Mercer, who is figuring prominently in behind-the-scenes
discussions, according to people familiar with the transition.
Mercer is among four major donors appointed by Trump Friday to a 16-person executive committee
overseeing his transition. The others are campaign finance chairman Steven Mnuchin, New York financier
Anthony Scaramucci and Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel.
Meanwhile, top campaign fundraisers and a raft of lobbyists tied to some of the country's wealthiest
industries have been put in charge of hiring and planning for specific federal agencies. They
include J. Steven Hart, chairman of the law and lobbying shop Williams & Jensen; Michael McKenna,
an energy company lobbyist who is overseeing planning for the Energy Department; and Dallas fundraiser
Ray Washburne, was has been tapped to oversee the Commerce Department.
Billionaires who served as Trump's policy advisers, such as Oklahoma oil executive Harold Hamm,
are under consideration for Cabinet positions.
LOL .
LOL . So how about a new chant for protesters: DRAIN THE SWAP!?
... ... ...
UPDATE:
Asked about the tensions, and about Kushner's role in the leadership change at the transition
team, Trump spokesman Jason Miller said, "Anybody seeing today's news about the appointment of
Vice President-elect Mike Pence to run the Presidential Transition Team realizes that President-elect
Donald J. Trump is serious about changing Washington whether the town likes it or not. This might
ruffle the delicate sensitivities of the well-heeled two-martini lunch set, but President-elect
Trump isn't fighting for them, he's fighting for the hard-working men and women outside the Beltway
who don't care for insider bickering."
It's not uncommon for rivalries to emerge inside campaigns and administrations as advisers
jockey to place allies in key roles and advance their policy priorities. But the level of internecine
conflict during Trump's drive toward the GOP nomination was so extreme that it sometimes resulted
in conflicting directives for even simple hiring and spending decisions.
That is why watching President-elect Trump's choices for his foreign policy team is so important.
If he chooses primarily alumni of the Bush administration, we can be fairly certain that there
will be few, if any, beneficial changes in Washington's security strategy. Indeed, it could conceivably
be even more interventionist than that pursued by the Clinton, Bush or Obama administrations.
The main difference might be that it would be conducted unilaterally rather than multilaterally,
especially if someone like John Bolton gets a key position.
If on the other hand, Trump begins to pick advisers who have little or no previous government
service, it would be an encouraging step. Watch for appointments from realist enclaves like Defense
Priorities, the Independent Institute and others. Also watch for the appointment of individual unorthodox
or "rogue" scholars from such places as Notre Dame University, George Mason University, the Lyndon
B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, and (ironically) the Bush School
at Texas A&M University. Such moves would indicate that Trump was choosing new blood and really intending
to make a meaningful change in the direction of U.S. foreign policy.
Looks like Secretary of State shortlist is dominated by neocons. A couple of candidates would make
Hillary Clinton proud... the head of CIA is an informal head of shadow government and as such
is also very important. Allen Dulles example should still be remembered by all presidents, if
they do not want to repeat the face of JFK ....
(There are 5 women on the list, including Sarah Palin & NH's Kelly Ayotte, demonstrating that
ilsm has some influence.
For Sec/Defense - seriously. Alternatively for UN Ambassador. Right.)
Thomas Barrack Jr. Founder, chairman and executive chairman of Colony Capital; private equity
and real estate investor
Jeb Hensarling Representative from Texas and chairman of the House Financial Services Committee
Steven Mnuchin Former Goldman Sachs executive and Mr. Trump's campaign finance chairman
Tim Pawlenty Former Minnesota governor
Defense Secretary
Kelly Ayotte Departing senator from New Hampshire and member of the Senate Armed Services
Committee
Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn Former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (he would need
a waiver from Congress because of a seven-year rule for retired officers)
Stephen J. Hadley National security adviser under George W. Bush
Jon Kyl Former senator from Arizona
Jeff Sessions Senator from Alabama who is a prominent immigration opponent
Attorney General
Chris Christie New Jersey governor
Rudolph W. Giuliani Former New York mayor
Jeff Sessions Senator from Alabama
Interior Secretary
Jan Brewer Former Arizona governor
Robert E. Grady Gryphon Investors partner
Harold G. Hamm Chief executive of Continental Resources, an oil and gas company
Forrest Lucas President of Lucas Oil Products, which manufactures automotive lubricants, additives
and greases
Sarah Palin Former Alaska governor
Agriculture Secretary
Sam Brownback Kansas governor
Chuck Conner Chief executive officer of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives
Sid Miller Texas agricultural commissioner
Sonny Perdue Former Georgia governor
Commerce Secretary
Chris Christie New Jersey governor
Dan DiMicco Former chief executive of Nucor Corporation, a steel production company
Lewis M. Eisenberg Private equity chief for Granite Capital International Group
Labor Secretary
Victoria A. Lipnic Equal Employment Opportunity commissioner and work force policy counsel
to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce
Health and Human Services Secretary
Dr. Ben Carson Former neurosurgeon and 2016 presidential candidate
Mike Huckabee Former Arkansas governor and 2016 presidential candidate
Bobby Jindal Former Louisiana governor who served as secretary of the Louisiana Department
of Health and Hospitals
Rick Scott Florida governor and former chief executive of a large hospital chain
Energy Secretary
James L. Connaughton Chief executive of Nautilus Data Technologies and former environmental
adviser to President George W. Bush
Robert E. Grady Gryphon Investors partner
Harold G. Hamm Chief executive of Continental Resources, an oil and gas company
Education Secretary
Dr. Ben Carson Former neurosurgeon and 2016 presidential candidate
Williamson M. Evers Education expert at the Hoover Institution, a think tank
Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Jeff Miller Retired chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee
Homeland Security Secretary
Joe Arpaio Departing sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz.
David A. Clarke Jr. Milwaukee County sheriff
Michael McCaul Representative from Texas and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee
Jeff Sessions Senator from Alabama
White House Chief of Staff
Stephen K. Bannon Editor of Breitbart News and chairman of Mr. Trump's campaign
Reince Priebus Chairman of the Republican National Committee
E.P.A. Administrator
Myron Ebell A director at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and a prominent climate change
skeptic
Robert E. Grady Gryphon Investors partner who was involved in drafting the Clean Air Act Amendments
of 1990
Jeffrey R. Holmstead Lawyer with Bracewell L.L.P. and former deputy E.P.A. administrator in
the George W. Bush administration
U.S. Trade Representative
Dan DiMicco Former chief executive of Nucor Corporation, a steel production company, and
a critic of Chinese trade practices
U.N. Ambassador
Kelly Ayotte Departing senator from New Hampshire and member of the Senate Armed Services
Committee
Richard Grenell Former spokesman for the United States ambassador to the United Nations during
the George W. Bush administration
CIA Director / Director of National Intelligence
Michael T. Flynn Former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency
Peter Hoekstra Former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee
Mike Rogers Former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee
Frances Townsend Former homeland security adviser under George W. Bush
National Security Adviser
Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn Former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency
Trump's Hires Will Set Course of His Presidency
http://nyti.ms/2eNUfRg
NYT - MARK LANDLER =- Nov 12
WASHINGTON - "Busy day planned in New York," President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Twitter
on Friday morning, two days after his astonishing victory. "Will soon be making some very important
decisions on the people who will be running our government!"
If anything, that understates the gravity of the personnel choices Mr. Trump and his transition
team are weighing.
Rarely in the history of the American presidency has the exercise of choosing people to fill
jobs had such a far-reaching impact on the nature and priorities of an incoming administration.
Unlike most new presidents, Mr. Trump comes into office with no elective-office experience, no
coherent political agenda and no bulging binder of policy proposals. And he has left a trail of
inflammatory, often contradictory, statements on issues from immigration and race to terrorism
and geopolitics.
In such a chaotic environment, serving a president who is in many ways a tabula rasa, the appointees
to key White House jobs like chief of staff and cabinet posts like secretary of state, defense
secretary and Treasury secretary could wield outsize influence. Their selection will help determine
whether the Trump administration governs like the firebrand Mr. Trump was on the campaign trail
or the pragmatist he often appears to be behind closed doors. ...
"... Washington insiders attempt to capture Trump and influence his positions, policies and decisions. ..."
"... Trump will likely form a very small team of offshoots of himself, people whom he trusts implicitly, in order to extend his capacity to choose people who will adhere to and execute his agenda. ..."
"... The presidency is an establishment and Washington is another. By being elected, Trump struck a blow at the members of the establishment who will be packing their bags while weeping over their losses (see here and here .) ..."
"... The Obama establishment is dead. The Democratic establishment is dead, at least for 4 years. There was a time, a very brief time under the Articles of Confederation, when Americans recognized the evils of the establishment and avoided instituting one. ..."
What happens next in Washington? Trump fills out his administration.
At the same time, Washington insiders attempt to capture Trump and influence his positions,
policies and decisions. The presidency is an institution, not a man, not a president. The presidency
is a network of enormous power with Trump now at its center.
Washington insiders who live and breathe politics are now in a race for positions of power and
influence. They hanker and vie for appointments. Trump must make appointments. He cannot operate
alone. He must delegate power to make decisions. He cannot monitor all information pertinent to every
issue in which the government has a hand.
The presidency is not 100 percent centralized. Decision-making power is allocated to levels below
the president himself and to levels surrounding him. It also lies outside the presidency in Congress.
Trump has his ideas and desires for actions, but their realization depends on the people he appoints.
He loses control and locks himself in with every appointment that he makes. People around him want
his power and want to influence him. They have a heavy influence on what he hears, whom he sees,
the options presented to him, and the evaluations of competing personnel. Trump will likely form
a very small team of offshoots of himself, people whom he trusts implicitly, in order to extend his
capacity to choose people who will adhere to and execute his agenda.
Power in Washington is not simply the apparatus of administering the presidency that will take
up headlines for the next few months. After the U.S. Treasury robs the tax-paying Americans, new
robbers (the Lobby) appear to rob the Treasury using every device they can get away with. There is
a second contingent, the power-seekers. Those who covet the exercise of power unceasingly work toward
their own narrow aims. As long as Washington remains the place that concentrates unbelievably large
amounts of money and powers, it will remain the swamp that Trump has promised to drain but won't.
He cannot drain it, not without destroying Washington's power and he cannot accomplish that, nor
does he even hint that he wants to accomplish that. His stated aims are the redirection of money
and powers, not their elimination for the sake of a greater justice, a greater right, and a truly
greater people and country.
The presidency is an establishment and Washington is another. By being elected, Trump struck
a blow at the members of the establishment who will be packing their bags while weeping over their
losses (see
here and
here .)
But elections do not strike the roots of the presidency, the establishment or Washington. Neither
will demonstrations against Trump.
The Obama establishment is dead. The Democratic establishment is dead, at least for 4 years.
There was a time, a very brief time under the Articles of Confederation, when Americans recognized
the evils of the establishment and avoided instituting one.
This gave way almost immediately (in 1787) to the constitutional seed that planted the enormous
tree that now cuts out the sun of justice from American lives. A domestic war failed to uproot that
tree. Long live the establishment, the Union, the American state, and may they be possessed of immense
powers over our lives - these became the social and political reality. Trump isn't going to change
it. He's a president administering a presidency. He's at the top of the heap. His credo is still
"Long Live the Establishment!"
"... Understand something, the caricature of Trump and his supporters is all fiction! It was the wallpaper inside the bubble of the elites that kept them from having to face the fact they are being rejected by the people of this country. ..."
"... It is not racist to want to control our borders and stem the influx – for a period – of people from other lands. It is not racist to note that Islam has a violent element willing to kill innocents at any time and any place. Just like one bad cop can give all cops a bad rap, so can a handful of bloody insane Muslims. It is not racist or nativist to deport immigrants who have committed serious felonies. ..."
The Democratic Party establishment has beclowned itself and is finished.
… The party establishment made a grievous mistake rallying around Hillary Clinton. It wasn't
just a lack of recent political seasoning. She was a bad candidate, with no message beyond heckling
the opposite sideline. She was a total misfit for both the politics of 2016 and the energy of
the Democratic Party as currently constituted. She could not escape her baggage, and she must
own that failure herself.
Theoretically smart people in the Democratic Party should have known that. And yet they worked
giddily to clear the field for her. Every power-hungry young Democrat fresh out of law school,
every rising lawmaker, every old friend of the Clintons wanted a piece of the action. This was
their ride up the power chain. The whole edifice was hollow, built atop the same unearned sense
of inevitability that surrounded Clinton in 2008, and it collapsed, just as it collapsed in 2008,
only a little later in the calendar. The voters of the party got taken for a ride by the people
who controlled it, the ones who promised they had everything figured out and sneeringly dismissed
anyone who suggested otherwise. They promised that Hillary Clinton had a lock on the Electoral
College. These people didn't know what they were talking about, and too many of us in the media
thought they did.
This is a grueling but necessarily treatise on how the Political Elite played God and got burned.
The essence here is wake up and fix the Democrat Party.
The mood in the Washington press corps is bleak, and deservedly so.
It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that, with a few exceptions, we were all tacitly
or explicitly #WithHer, which has led to a certain anguish in the face of Donald Trump's victory.
More than that and more importantly,
we also missed the story , after having spent months mocking the people who had a better sense
of what was going on.
This is all symptomatic of modern journalism's great moral and intellectual failing:
its
unbearable smugness . Had Hillary Clinton won, there's be a winking "we did it" feeling in
the press, a sense that we were brave and called Trump a liar and saved the republic.
So much for that. The audience for our glib analysis and contempt for much of the electorate,
it turned out, was rather limited. This was particularly true when it came to voters, the ones
who turned out by the millions to deliver not only a rebuke to the political system but also the
people who cover it.
Trump
knew what he was doing when he invited his crowds to jeer and hiss the reporters covering
him. They hate us, and have for some time.
And can you blame them? Journalists love mocking Trump supporters. We insult their appearances.
We dismiss them as racists and sexists. We emote on Twitter about how this or that comment or
policy makes us feel one way or the other, and yet we reject their feelings as invalid.
Understand something, the caricature of Trump and his supporters is all fiction! It was the wallpaper
inside the bubble of the elites that kept them from having to face the fact they are being rejected
by the people of this country.
It is not racist to want to control our borders and stem the influx – for a period – of people
from other lands. It is not racist to note that Islam has a violent element willing to kill innocents
at any time and any place. Just like one bad cop can give all cops a bad rap, so can a handful of
bloody insane Muslims. It is not racist or nativist to deport immigrants who have committed serious
felonies.
The media over stated the drivers behind these views to propel their candidate to victory. They
were not reporting facts.
The last good perspective was from the Morning Joe show:
"... he Clinton camp, the media and the pollsters missed what we had anticipated as "not Clinton". A basic setting in a part of the "left" electorate that remember who she is and what she has done and would under no circumstances vote for her. Clinton herself pushed the "bernie bros" and "deplorables" into that camp. This was a structural change that was solely based in the personality of the candidate. ..."
"... Even then polls and their interpretation will always only capture a part of the story. Often a sound grasp of human and cultural behavior will allow for better prediction as all polls. As my friend the statistician say: "The best prognostic instrument I have even today is my gut." ..."
"... NeverHillary turned out to be bigger than NeverTrump. Hillary got less than 6 million votes compared to Obama. Trump got nearly as much as Romney. ..."
"... A good indicator was the size of the crowds each candidate drew to their rallies. Clinton tended to show more "bought" TV-ready extras. Bernie blew the walls out at his rallies, as did Trump. You can't look at that and say the polls are even close to accurate. ..."
"... When the Democrats unleashed thugs on Trump supporters while the media studiously looked away, it was not sensible to openly identify with Trump. ..."
"... On Wednesday after the election, I heard an interview with a woman reporter who worked with the 538 polling group. She said that it was impossible for most reporters to really investigate how voters in certain areas of the country were feeling about the election bcz newspapers and other news organizations, including the Big Broadcasters, did not have the ability to pay for enough reporters to actually talk to people. ..."
"... the Los Angeles Times polls were correct (although the paper was pro-Clinton); can't get the link now, but they explained how they weighted their polls on the basis of the enthusiasm displayed for the preferred candidate, and Trump supporters were more "charged" ..."
"... I read many stories about how the polls were fixed for Clinton for months before the election. ..."
"... The pollsters took the % of voters from the Obama election but they also added more Democrats than were representative in the 2012 election, thereby skewing the polls for Clinton. Many believed that the reason they did this was to try to manipulate the voting machines in Clinton's favour and have the polls match the result. ..."
"... i go back to what my sociology of the media instructor said.. polls are for massaging people's brains.. unless one knows who pays for them and what goes into them, they are just another propaganda tool for use.. ..."
"... It has been known for a long time in the polling world that polling numbers are getting more and more unreliable because fewer and fewer people are willing to complete polls. ..."
"... theory would also explain the newspaper polls largely rigged to correspond to the planned vote theft, as well as the idiotic magnitude of overconfidence seen in the Pol-Est/MS Media/Wall Street complex. ..."
"... 1. IBD/TIPP (A collaboration of Investors Business Daily and TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence). TechnoMetrica was consistent throughout – final poll for election day had Trump leading by 2%. Also predicted the last presidential elections back to 2004. ..."
"... This election candidates' crowd draw was a good indicator. It was very difficult to pre-program the Diebold machines. MSM polls were in the bag for Hillary, had her ahead. It backfired. ..."
"... A bit about polling methodology explains the bias we've seen this election cycle. Typically, the polling samples are not big enough to be representative, so the results are corrected (weighted) based on the participant responses. The polls assume certain turnout percentages for different groups (Democrats, Republicans, Independents, rural, urban, ethnicity, gender etc.). A lot of the polls were weighting the polls with turnouts similar to 2012, corrected for the expected demographic changes over the last 4 years. ..."
"... Poll weighing is a tricky business. This is why most polling has a 4% error margin, so it does not produce as accurate picture as is typically presented by the media. The error is not randomly distributed, it is closely related to the poll weighting. The weighting error was favouring Clinton in the polls as it assumed higher Democratic turnout, which ended up not being the case, she underperformed 2012 significantly and lost the election. ..."
"... Are the polls done to discover "what's up", or are they done to project the view that one side is winning? ..."
"... I go with the second view. That's what the 'corrections' are all about. The 'corrections' need to be dropped completely ..."
"... This. There was a Wikiliks Podesta email in whdich Clinton operatives discussed oversampling certain groups to inflate the poll in her favor. ..."
"... Hmm ... what can I say that no-one else has already said except to observe that the polling and the corporate media reporting the polling statistics were in another parallel universe and the people supposedly being polled (and not some over-sampled group in Peoria, Iowa, who could predict exactly what questions would be asked and knew what answers to give) live on planet Earth? ..."
"... I most certainly did not predict Trump would win. But I did question the polls. What I questioned a few weeks ago was the margin of victory for Hillary. ..."
"... This is because most of the polls were weighting more Democratic (based on the 2012 election), which overestimated Clinton's support. ..."
"... So the difference between the poll and the actual result is 1.2% in favour of Trump (1.7% lead to Clinton in poll vs. 0.5% in the election). All are well within the error of the poll, so 1.2% difference between the election and the poll is well within the stated 3% error margin of the poll. ..."
"... You assume public polls are conducted by impartial actors who wish to inform and illuminate..... your assumption is incorrect. ..."
"... The New York Times recent admission that it writes the narrative first, then builds the story to suit says about everything for me regarding polls. ..."
"... According to reports, the first leader Trump spoke to on the phone after his election victory was the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. Sisi congratulated him on the election victory, a spokesman for the Egyptian leader said. ..."
"... It may be unfortunate, but I can see Trump & Erdogan getting along very well. Although, if they bring Putin into that triumvirate that could actually be very beneficial for the Middle East. ..."
Today I discussed the U.S. election with a friend who studied and practices statistics. I asked
about the failure of the polls in this years presidential election. Her explanation: The polls are
looking at future events but are biased by the past. The various companies and institutions adjust
the polls they do by looking at their past prognoses and the real results of the past event. They
then develop correcting factors, measured from the past, and apply it to new polls. If that correcting
factor is wrong, possibly because of structural changes in the electorate, then the new polls will
be corrected with a wrong factor and thus miss the real results.
Polls predicting the last presidential election were probably off by 3 or 5 points towards the
Republican side. The pollsters then corrected the new polls for the Clinton-Trump race in favor of
the Democratic side by giving that side an additional 3-5 points. They thereby corrected the new
polls by the bias that was poll inherent during the last race.
But structural changes, which we seem to have had during this election, messed up the result.
Many people who usually vote for the Democratic ticket did not vote for Clinton. The "not Clinton"
progressives, the "bernie bros" and "deplorables" who voted Obama in the last election stayed home,
voted for a third party candidate or even for Trump. The pollsters did not anticipate such a deep
change. Thus their correction factor was wrong. Thus the Clinton side turned out to be favored in
polls but not in the relevant votes.
Real polling, which requires in depth-in person interviews with the participants, does not really
happen anymore. It is simply to expensive. Polling today is largely done by telephone with participants
selected by some database algorithm. It is skewed by many factors which require many corrections.
All these corrections have some biases that do miss structural changes in the underlying population.
The Clinton camp, the media and the pollsters missed what we had anticipated as "not Clinton".
A basic setting in a part of the "left" electorate that remember who she is and what she has done
and would under no circumstances vote for her. Clinton herself pushed the "bernie bros" and "deplorables"
into that camp. This was a structural change that was solely based in the personality of the candidate.
If Sanders would have been the candidate the now wrong poll correction factor in favor of Democrats
would likely have been a correct one. The deep antipathy against Hillary Clinton in a decisive part
of the electorate was a factor that the pseudo-science of cheap telephone polls could not catch.
More expensive in depth interviews of the base population used by a pollster would probably have
caught this factor and adjusted appropriately.
There were some twenty to thirty different entities doing polls during this election cycle. Five
to ten polling entities, with better budgets and preparations, would probably have led to better
prognoses. Some media companies could probably join their poll budgets, split over multiple companies
today, to have a common one with a better analysis of its base population.One that would have anticipated
"not Hillary".
Unless that happens all polls will have to be read with a lot of doubt. What past bias is captured
in these predictions of the future? What are their structural assumptions and are these still correct?
What structural change might have happened?
Even then polls and their interpretation will always only capture a part of the story. Often
a sound grasp of human and cultural behavior will allow for better prediction as all polls. As my
friend the statistician say: "The best prognostic instrument I have even today is my gut."
An equally interesting question about polls: what about the exit polls? If Greg Palast and others
are right, exit polls indicate that the voting was rigged. What does your statistics friend think
about that?
After the 1948 election, statisticians started to get rid of the quota sampling for electoral
polls. After this election, it's time to reassess Statistics.
A good indicator was the size of the crowds each candidate drew to their rallies. Clinton
tended to show more "bought" TV-ready extras. Bernie blew the walls out at his rallies, as did
Trump. You can't look at that and say the polls are even close to accurate.
I suspect that the future of polling isn't as dire as you're painting it, b. There was huge anti-Trump
bias in the Jew-controlled Christian-West Media from the beginning of the campaign. You drew attention
to negative MSM bias yourself in the post which pointed out how consistently wrong the Punditocracy
had been in predicting the imminent failure of the Trump campaign - thereby rubbing their noses
in their own ineptitude and tomfoolery.
One factor which seemed important to me was occasionally hilighted at regular intervals by
commenters here at MoA... The (apparent) fact that Trump addressed more, and bigger, crowds than
Mrs Clinton. I accepted those claims as fact, and didn't bother to check their veracity. But nevertheless
crowd size and frequency seems to have played a pivotal role in the outcome (as one would expect
in a political campaign).
Exit polls have provided checks on the accuracy of the vote count -- but are liable to the same
problem as the opinion pols, people who don't admit to their real position.
I'm not surprised that the polls fail badly in this presidential election. When the Democrats
unleashed thugs on Trump supporters while the media studiously looked away, it was not sensible
to openly identify with Trump. Even Trump was saying so through out the campaign.The Democrats
together with their media partners truly believed that Donald Trump's alleged character flaws
would be enough to win the election. Despite the fact that it was obvious to anyone without a
blinker on that the momentum was on the side of Trump all along. Obama's phenomenon of 08 was
nothing compared to Trump's phenomenon of this year, but because neither the MSM nor the Pollsters
liked him they transferred their biases to their jobs. In any case I'm sure happy that the result
of the election turned out different from the skewed prognosis.
On Wednesday after the election, I heard an interview with a woman reporter who worked with
the 538 polling group. She said that it was impossible for most reporters to really investigate
how voters in certain areas of the country were feeling about the election bcz newspapers and
other news organizations, including the Big Broadcasters, did not have the ability to pay for
enough reporters to actually talk to people.
Since statistics had worked so well, and were cheaper to deal with, they won the day. And lost
the battle.
Now, most people at this site seemed to base their decisions of whom to vote for based on stands
on issues and known actions of the various candidates. But, even so, we probably paid attention
to the polling results. I know I took into consideration that Hillary would win big in NJ, leaving
me free to vote for Jill Stein. Based on known actions of Trump I could not vote for him, even
tho' I hoped he would kill TPP and have better relations with Russia. I feared and still do fear
his nominations to the Supreme Court. (I am not religious, but if I were I would pray daily, perhaps
hourly, for the continued good health of the Justices Kennedy, GInsburg, and Breyer. I would hope
the other Dem appointed justices would take care to avoid, oh, small airplanes....
Would Hillary have adjusted her campaign if she could have seen the rising disappointment of
the working class Dems (even middle class to higher income Dems)? I don't know. I do know that
her husband ran his first campaign on the famous "It's the economy, stupid" reminder.
Somehow, I don't think it would have registered enough.
And Obama ran on Hope and Change, but was always the Corporatist Dem Wall Street wanted. What
a waste. And now we have four more years of doing essentially nothing aboug climate change. It
was have been a strategy to put off even regulatory actions to lessen CO2 emissions until near
the end of his second term, but, dang, it makes it easier for Trump to negate those efforts.
Again, what a waste. But I didn't vote for Obama for either term bcz I saw that his actions
as IL state senator and as US senator were always looking out for the Big Money, Big Corporations,
and seldom worked for anyone below the middle class, more the top of the middle class.
A long explanatory report which signifies nothing critical. "The polls were wrong??" No. The polls
reported by MSM were wrong.
Big time, including from those from Clinton loving CBC here in Canada, which for an extended
time was reporting Hillary with an 11% lead. That number was far beyond any minor adjustments,
for sure.
There were polls, such as Rasmussen, itself suspected of fiddling, which were reporting ups
and downs of 2%, and ended up tied election day.
So, please schemers, please do not try to cover up the MSM's deliberate attempt to influence
results by using garbage numbers. Figures can lie, and liars can sure figure.
the Los Angeles Times polls were correct (although the paper was pro-Clinton); can't get the
link now, but they explained how they weighted their polls on the basis of the enthusiasm displayed
for the preferred candidate, and Trump supporters were more "charged"
I disagree with your friend, b. I read many stories about how the polls were fixed for Clinton
for months before the election.
The pollsters took the % of voters from the Obama election but they also added more Democrats
than were representative in the 2012 election, thereby skewing the polls for Clinton. Many believed
that the reason they did this was to try to manipulate the voting machines in Clinton's favour
and have the polls match the result. I think that Trump crying foul so early got them worried
that they might be caught. Remember, voting machines in 14 states are run by companies affiliated
with Soros.
i go back to what my sociology of the media instructor said.. polls are for massaging people's
brains.. unless one knows who pays for them and what goes into them, they are just another propaganda
tool for use..
It has been known for a long time in the polling world that polling numbers are getting more
and more unreliable because fewer and fewer people are willing to complete polls.
I have a weird conspiracy hypothesis that I mainly made up on my own;
The last FBI "reopening" and the quick subsequent "close-down" felt all too counter-intuitive
and silly, when examined solely based on their face value.
However, what if there was more to this? What if this was a final threat from FBI to the Soros-Clinton
mafia to "quickly unrig the voting machines" OR we will arrest the lot of you? Which, once the
promises were made by "allow fair play", required FBI to pull back as their part of the deal?
This - admittedly conspiracy - theory would also explain the newspaper polls largely rigged
to correspond to the planned vote theft, as well as the idiotic magnitude of overconfidence seen
in the Pol-Est/MS Media/Wall Street complex.
I find it interesting b that you and your friend didn't seem to talk at all about the polling
questions....at least that you shared with us. It is my experience and education that even with
a "beauty contest" that we just had, that the structure of the polling questions make all the
difference in how people being polled respond.
Polls are funded by parties with agendas and the questions, assumptions and biases are baked
in to the result......IMO, they are all worthless or worse than that because folks see them, like
the media as being something of an authority figure and therefore believable which we know is
total BS.
Polls are just another propaganda tool of those rich enough to use them in their quiver of
control.
Timid Trumpists is the major factor, I would think. A factor already well known in UK. People
who are going to vote for a non-PC solution hesitate to admit it to poll questions.
All of the above is true, but - in addition - polls are used to manipulate campaigns.
People sympathize with someone who is considered a winner and when someone is considered likely
to lose people lose interest.
To get the vote out polls have to be tight. In addition to that polls are used to motivate
donors. In the end there has to be a reason pollsters get paid.
But even if polls would be done for purely scientific reasons, this election was impossible
to poll. The correct question would have been "Do you hate/fear candidate x enough to motivate
you to queue for voting for canditate y, or are you too disgusted to bother at all"
In the end, it was not the wrong polls that sank Clinton but the strategy to leave the anti-elitist
populist stuff to Trump and - unsuccessfully concentrate on winning the elitist Republican anti
Trump vote. That way she lost more of the Democrat Sanders vote than she could gain right wing.
The other factor was her reliance on television ads and media ties (they all backed her), a
reluctance to talk to large audiences and an inability to communicate via social media.
It is possible though she never had a chance against a well established reality show brand.
The good news is that after this election campaigns will be done mainly low cost social media.
The bad news is that these campaigns will be more fact free than ever and that the age of independent
quality newspapers is over.
So, you're saying that the age of independent quality newspapers has just ended, like about
now. Interesting pov...
Somehow, the last few years of the MSM coverage of the NATO-Salafist War on Syria have had
me convinced that the "independent quality newspapers" have become a*rse-wipe material a long
time ago. Instead, we get the Sorosoid ZioTakfirism.
But, yeah, maybe it's all Trump's fault. Hey I also blame Hezbollah for kicking Yisrael's arse
north of Litani in 2006. If they didn't piss of the Yivrim this much, maybe they wouldn't have
punitively collapsed the faith in the Western Society from the inside.
Ultimately, it's all Putin's fault. He started it all by beating the pro-Saudi Chechens into
a pulp back in 1999, and started the NATOQAEDA self-destruction.
1. IBD/TIPP (A collaboration of Investors Business Daily and TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence).
TechnoMetrica was consistent throughout – final poll for election day had Trump leading by 2%.
Also predicted the last presidential elections back to 2004.
Methodology
"Traditional Telephone method" includes cell –live interviews by Region; Age; Gender; Race;
Income; Education; Party; Ideology; Investor; Area Type; Parental Status; White – men, women;
Black/Hispanic; Women-single, married; Household description –Upper/Middle-Middle, Working, Lower;
Religion; Union Household; Intensity of Support.
This election candidates' crowd draw was a good indicator. It was very difficult to pre-program
the Diebold machines. MSM polls were in the bag for Hillary, had her ahead. It backfired.
Is Newsweek embarrassed yet? They forgot some history. Truman-Dewey. Madam President! How appropriate.
Some of b's posts regarding US politics seems naive but I chalk that up to his not being American.
But this technocratic excuse for the polling is just wrong. b, what happened to your skeptical
view of Western media????
virgile @ 9: An excerpt: " It was about the union men who refused to sell out their futures and
vote for a Democrat who is an agent of the One Percent."
And now, I fear, they still have no future.
James @ 15 said.." polls are for massaging people's brains.. unless one knows who pays for
them and what goes into them, they are just another propaganda tool for use..
How true..
Trumps choices for his cabinet don't leave much room for positive change, for the millions
of disaffected voters who put him in office. We'll see!
A bit about polling methodology explains the bias we've seen this election cycle. Typically,
the polling samples are not big enough to be representative, so the results are corrected (weighted)
based on the participant responses. The polls assume certain turnout percentages for different
groups (Democrats, Republicans, Independents, rural, urban, ethnicity, gender etc.). A lot of
the polls were weighting the polls with turnouts similar to 2012, corrected for the expected demographic
changes over the last 4 years.
Poll weighing is a tricky business. This is why most polling has a 4% error margin, so
it does not produce as accurate picture as is typically presented by the media. The error is not
randomly distributed, it is closely related to the poll weighting. The weighting error was favouring
Clinton in the polls as it assumed higher Democratic turnout, which ended up not being the case,
she underperformed 2012 significantly and lost the election.
It is important to stress that the election results ended up within the margin of error
(+-4%). The polls were not wrong, it is the media and the analyst who over-interpreted the data
and gave Clinton the win where she did not have a statistically significant (<4%) lead. This is
why if Nate Silver at 538 was consistently writing that the polls in many of the swing states
were within the error margin, although favouring Clinton, and their election prediction still
gave Trump a ~30% chance of victory. Other analysts were more careless (hello Huffington Post)
and even made fun of 538 for giving Trump any chance of victory.
There is no way to make more accurate polling for the future elections as the accuracy of the
poll is tied in to poll weighing, which is guesswork (although somewhat educated by the historical
data). Short of forcing everyone to vote, election-to-election turnout will change and affect
the accuracy of the polls.
Instead of interpreting every single of those Polls as plausibly biased on one side, why don't
you take the entire population of Western MSM Polls, and see if their median predicted outcome
vs actual final outcome difference is statistically significant?
I'd say you'd find their entire population to be likely biased at least to six-sigma level.
(I have no time to show this myself, just proposing someone's hypothesis, as a research idea
for someone's M Sci thesis for example)
I have lived in the D.C. area for the past 22 years with a land line phone and am listed in the
White Pages. I have never been called by a pollster, although I am often called by political campaigns.
I do not know anyone who has been called by a pollster.
More expensive in depth interviews of the base population used by a pollster would probably
have caught this factor and adjusted appropriately.
No more 'adjustments' allowed. A desire to actually discover the lay of the land and to publish
it is what's required. Good luck on getting that from the political class and/or their captive
msm. Everything they do is a lie, calculated to keep themselves in power.
The polls were obviously blatantly skewed towards urban Blue zones, and did not include working
adults in Red zones, then were 'massaged' by reporting media in clearly a Rodham-paid PAC marketing
campaign to brand the sheeples 'Wear Rodham!'
Only Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight even came close, but he had to rely on those same skewed
polls. After all, since 1990, you can buy a CD set of American voting records by street address,
it's not rocket science to be able to 'algo' that into a 'poll' that skews whichever way the highest
bidder's (Rodham) quants tell you to. https://www.facebook.com/viralthread/videos/598130190359668/
As if on cue, or something. All of a sudden, S.U.R.P.R.I.S.E,… a litany of polls released today
show Donald Trump ahead in key battleground states (Ohio and Florida), and tied –or closer
than the margin of error– in new national polls…. […]
Remember what we stated on October 20th: […]
The real battle is the battle for your mind. The peak U.S. media false polling cycle is
thankfully in the rear-view mirror.
It was because I followed that right-wing blog that I ignored all polls other than the LA Times
tracking poll. (I didn't know about the IBD/TIPP poll until after the election.)
Hmm ... what can I say that no-one else has already said except to observe that the polling
and the corporate media reporting the polling statistics were in another parallel universe and
the people supposedly being polled (and not some over-sampled group in Peoria, Iowa, who could
predict exactly what questions would be asked and knew what answers to give) live on planet Earth?
I most certainly did not predict Trump would win. But I did question the polls. What I questioned
a few weeks ago was the margin of victory for Hillary.
There were two big variables that the pollsters had to guess at. One was the voter turnout
numbers for those precincts that had many working class people with a high school or less education
level. As it turns out those people came out in higher numbers than they have in elections over
the past two decades. The other was voter turnout for many precincts that supported Obama in 2008
and 2012. What happened here was many of those voters who did turn out voted for Trump, instead
of the Democrat. There was a third uncertainty here that no on has yet figured out. That was those
people who would never admit to a stranger that they were going to vote for Trump and simply lied
to the pollster.
In any case those three uncertainties worked in directions that none of the pollsters really
picked up on.
This is because most of the polls were weighting more Democratic (based on the 2012 election),
which overestimated Clinton's support. For example, the Rasmussen poll, which traditionally
weights more Republican, gave Clinton 1.7% lead, 44.8% to 43.1% (3% margin of error), so fairly
close to the election results (47.3% to 47.8%).
So the difference between the poll and the actual result is 1.2% in favour of Trump (1.7%
lead to Clinton in poll vs. 0.5% in the election). All are well within the error of the poll,
so 1.2% difference between the election and the poll is well within the stated 3% error margin
of the poll.
When you mention 6 sigma, you really don't really know what you are talking about. Typical
polling error is 3 - 4% and the election result was within this error for most polls in all of
the states. Standard deviation (sigma) that you mention is a random uncertainty associated with
a measurement and it does not apply here. As I tried to convey, the errors in polling tend to
be systematic, not random, because they are tied to weighting of the polls, not to the sample
of the population as this is mostly corrected by the weighting. So because most of the MSM polls
use similar weighting methodology based on the same historical data, they will all be off, there
will be no random distribution of some for Trump, some for Clinton. Weighing based on different
historical data skews the whole picture one way, it's not a random error. This is why pollster
slap a relatively large 3 - 4% error on their polls, it is meant to cover any systematic bias
of the weighting as well as random errors.
those three uncertainties worked in directions that none of the pollsters really picked
up on.
Have a loook at the
LA Times
tracking poll . It had Trump ahead by 3.2% on election day, which is close to the margin of
error. The graph there is interesting, because dates of various events, such as the debates are
marked. The poll figures moved in response to those events as one would expect.
Before the election, the people who do that poll said that they did best at predicting the
2012 election. Oh, in a
post about the
election's outcome, Alexander Dugin singled out that poll for praise.
I have a better idea--how about we stop the stupid polling altogether since there is only one
poll that really matters? Then the media would have to focus on the issues rather than the horserace.
Oh, the humanity!
Hypothesis A - that it's all explainable by random distribution of their samples.
If you use Hypotethesis A, and then disprove it in it's own game (be it 3, or 6 sigma), then
you have to suggest an alternative.
I don't know what the alternative is. I don't even claim I do. But you can more easily disprove
the veracity that the polls could have mostly been non-biased by showing that hypothesis is unlikely
to be RIGHT. That's where sigmas make absolute sense.
Furthermore, what you are proving here is that the POPULATION of ALL COMBINED polls has a mean
that must be different from the POPULATION of all actual voters, not of disproving the polls one
by one.
I think you've totally ignored my point, you keep looking at individual polls as trees, I am
looking at the poll forest and saying the entire forest is buggered if almost all polls erred
on one side, regardless of their individual margins of error.
The New York Times recent admission that it writes the narrative first, then builds the story
to suit says about everything for me regarding polls. 'Hey, my editor needs someone to come
out and say something, can you say this...?' <-- Now, if that is standard practice in journalism
at 'the paper of record', then skewing polls to suit a common agenda is a given, again in my opinion.
This of course is great news for sites like MofA.
Also impossible to capture The Don's campaign playing the electoral college system like an
old mandolin, as it turns out. 306 Trump bts 232 Hillary it looks like in the wash up. That's
old school work rate doing the job. Fair play. Great to see all the student debt laden brainwashed
libtards out there doing there nut. They don't even know what a bullet they dodged + shite like
the TPP is now dead. Some gratitude.
Hopefully in 2020 there are some more scientific polls like the USC Dornslife/LA Times poll,
each having their own differing methodologies preferably. This should give the punters a better
'feel' for the electorate.
In other news...
Assange is being interviewed tomorrow by Swedush police (for the 2nd time I should add). There
are and were no charges laid. I suspect their will be no charges brought tomorrow.
...so what happened...? Did The Rule of Law just...magically appear...?
The most extraordinary thing I learned about polls is that exit polls are altered as soon as the
official election or primary vote is in-- to match it.
According to reports, the first leader Trump spoke to on the phone after his election victory
was the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. Sisi congratulated him on the election victory,
a spokesman for the Egyptian leader said.
Ireland's government said the taoiseach, Enda Kenny, had a 10-minute call with Trump, and
was invited to visit the White House on St Patrick's Day.
Mexico's president, Enrique Peña Nieto, has said he and Trump agreed in their call to meet
before Trump takes office, while Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was invited to
the White House.
Other leaders to have a chat with Trump so far include the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan, India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe – they
reportedly talked for 20 minutes and agreed to meet soon in New York – and South Korea's president,
Park Geun-hye.
Australia's prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, was reported to have chatted with Trump about
security and trade in their call.
No surprises there.
It may be unfortunate, but I can see Trump & Erdogan getting along very well. Although,
if they bring Putin into that triumvirate that could actually be very beneficial for the Middle
East.
Concur with all your points. And yes, the timing of the Swedes finally deciding to interview
Assange is funny.
I never thought that Hillary would become president, btw., from the moment she declared
for 2016. Which is not to say that I was not concerned that the demonization of Trump might throw
the election. We'll never know, but it is possible that Trump wouldn't have won without Wikileaks.
And the two sets of leaks were very well timed.
To return to polls. It's not just most media polls that were off. The Clinton campaign's internal
polls were off, too. They didn't have much doubt that they would win. (The same thing happened
with Romney of course, but in their case, their internal polls differed from the media polls.)
Apparently, they really did believe they have a firewall, with redundancies no less.
But Democrats had a simpler answer for why Clinton lost. As one Democratic strategist close to
Clinton told The Post, it all came down to "one word: Comey." Too bad for Democrats there are
zero electoral votes in the State of Denial. FBI Director James Comey didn't use a private e-mail
server to conduct official State Department business and put 110 classified e-mails on that unsecured
server. Comey didn't fail to turn over some 14,900 e-mails to the FBI after assuring Americans
that "I turned over everything I was obligated to turn over."
Comey didn't lie to the American people about Benghazi, publicly blaming the attacks on "inflammatory
material posted on the Internet." Comey didn't tell Democratic voters he was against free-trade
deals, but then tell Brazilian bankers that his dream was for "hemispheric . . . open trade and
open borders."
Comey didn't have a foundation that accepted millions of dollars in donations from foreign
governments during his tenure as secretary of state. He didn't give, as I wrote last month, "special
treatment to Clinton Foundation donors after the Haiti quake, asking for them to be identified
as 'FOBs' (friends of Bill Clinton) or 'WJC VIPs' (William Jefferson Clinton VIPs)."
Why did Hillary Clinton lose? Not because of Comey. She lost because exit polls showed that
54 percent of voters believe she is "corrupt."
To the elites in Washington, her corruption was apparently no big deal, at least not compared
with their horror at the prospect of a Trump presidency. But Americans correctly saw her corruption
as corrosive to our democracy.
This election was a popular repudiation of Clinton's corruption and deceit - and she owns that.
But there is one person besides herself whom she can blame: President Obama. Because while Clinton
may have lost to Donald Trump, it was Obama who created him.
"... Hillary lost not merely because she misread the "real" people, she decided to run a very divisive
and nasty negative campaign, which has fueled the violence ever since. According to WikiLeaks emails
from campaign John Podesta, Clinton colluded with the DNC and the media to raise what they thought would
be the extreme right among Republicans to then make her the middle of the road to hide her agenda. ..."
"... Clinton called this her "pied piper" strategy, that intentionally cultivated extreme right-wing
presidential candidates and that would turn the Republicans away from their more moderate candidates.
..."
"... The Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee along with mainstream media all called
for using far-right candidates "as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the right."
Clinton's camp insisted that Trump should be "elevated" to "leaders of the pack" and media outlets should
be told to "take them seriously." ..."
"... The Clinton strategy was all about manipulating the Republicans to nominate the worst candidate
Clinton called for forcing "all Republican candidates to lock themselves into extreme conservative positions
that will hurt them in a general election." ..."
"... It was not Putin trying to rig the elections, it was Hillary. Clinton saw the Republican field
as crowded and she viewed as "positive" for her. "Many of the lesser known can serve as a cudgel to
move the more established candidates further to the right." Clinton then took the strategic position
saying "we don't want to marginalize the more extreme candidates, but make them more 'Pied Piper' candidates
who actually represent the mainstream of the Republican Party." ..."
"... "We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and
tell the press to them seriously." ..."
"... This is by far the WORST campaign in history and it was all orchestrated by Hillary to be intentionally
divisive for the nation all to win the presidency at all costs. She has torched the constitution and
the country. ..."
"... Any Democrat who is not angry at this is clearly just a biased fool. Wake up and smell the
roses. You just got what you deserve. ..."
"... It's one thing to be ruthless & evil. It's another to be ruthless, evil and stupid. Brexit
should have been a huge eye-opener for the elites that they should seek to field two establishment candidates
as usual at any cost rather than risk elevating an outsider. ..."
"... It's incredibly fortunate they were too dumb to realise that the former middle class and independents
cognisant of NWO would create huge momentum for exactly those type of candidates & that this was absolutely
the worst time in history to attempt that strategy. Lack of competition at the top of the food chain
has made her ilk slow and out of touch. Evolution is a bitch. ..."
"... Personally, I find this hilarious. She schemes and connives to push forward the most "unelectable"
republican, and that republican wins mostly because she vastly underestimates the dislike of Americans
for her. ..."
"... Excellent article. Truly, the definition of "hubris" was Hillary during this election. ..."
"... What she underestimated was the ability for most to see thru her true contempt of people. That's
the bottom line of Hillary- she just sees herself as royalty, and we just got tired of seeing it again
and again. ..."
"... from the tone of the leaked emails it is clear they realized she was the worst candidate ever.
..."
"... This mirrors her naive approach to foreign policy of "create a controlled burn (Arab spring)
and get rid of your enemy". Without realizing someone would move in to the void left afterwards. (I
need to drink more - In whiskey, veritas). Or as in this case, the wind changes direction. ..."
"... It is interesting that there is no mention of any strategy to promote her ideas or positive
qualities. In fact the "muddy the waters" statement shows they knew scandals would come up and they'd
have to play defense. ..."
"... Remember how Hitlery called US working white men just a deplorable POS. Furthermore, her allies
could easily falsify the voter counting process but again they were so arrogant and self confident that
they fucked up themselves. ..."
"... People, stop be so naive and stupid. The life is not fair to losers since only winners always
write the history! ..."
"... Finally, if Trump will follow an advice to be good to everybody being a unifier then he will
be destroyed. This is why he must continue the strategy that brought his the victory. One never can
win follow a defensive strategy! ..."
"... unfortunately, the MSM is continuing without a break in cadence their lock-step call for bipartisan!
compromise! and let's be "REASONABLE" . DAMMIT. The time for reasonable is past. ..."
"... If Trump puts in a lot of NEOCON insiders in his cabinet I say we need to hammer it again home
that this is our last chance. If trump doesn't deliver the JOBS and Economic turnaround then the conservatives
are GONE. We won't get another chance. ..."
Meanwhile, Hillary lost not merely because she misread the "real" people, she decided to run
a very divisive and nasty negative campaign, which has fueled the violence ever since. According
to WikiLeaks emails from campaign John Podesta, Clinton colluded with the DNC and the media to raise
what they thought would be the extreme right among Republicans to then make her the middle of the
road to hide her agenda.
... ... ...
Clinton called this her "pied piper" strategy, that intentionally cultivated extreme right-wing
presidential candidates and that would turn the Republicans away from their more moderate candidates.
This enlisted mainstream media who then focused to Trump and raise him above all others assuming
that would help Hillary for who would vote for Trump. This was a deliberate strategy all designed
to propel Hillary to the White House.
The Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee along with mainstream media all called
for using far-right candidates "as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the
right." Clinton's camp insisted that Trump should be "elevated" to "leaders of the pack" and media
outlets should be told to "take them seriously."
If we look back on April 23, 2015, just two
weeks after Hillary Clinton officially declared her presidential campaign, her staff sent out a message
on straregy to manipulate the Republicans into selecting the worse candidate. They included this
attachment a "memo for the DNC discussion."
The memo was addressed to the Democratic National Committee and stated bluntly, "the strategy
and goals a potential Hillary Clinton presidential campaign would have regarding the 2016 Republican
presidential field." Here we find that the real conspiracy was Clinton manipulating the Republicans.
"Clearly most of what is contained in this memo is work the DNC is already doing. This exercise is
intended to put those ideas to paper."
"Our hope is that the goal of a potential HRC campaign and the DNC would be one-in-the-same:
to make whomever the Republicans nominate unpalatable to a majority of the electorate."
The Clinton strategy was all about manipulating the Republicans to nominate the worst candidate
Clinton called for forcing "all Republican candidates to lock themselves into extreme conservative
positions that will hurt them in a general election."
It was not Putin trying to rig the elections,
it was Hillary. Clinton saw the Republican field as crowded and she viewed as "positive" for her.
"Many of the lesser known can serve as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to
the right." Clinton then took the strategic position saying "we don't want to marginalize the more
extreme candidates, but make them more 'Pied Piper' candidates who actually represent the mainstream
of the Republican Party."
Her manipulative strategy was to have the press build up Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz and Ben Carson.
"We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell
the press to them seriously."
This conspiracy has emerged from the Podesta emails. It was Clinton conspiring with mainstream
media to elevate Trump and then tear him down. We have to now look at all the media who endorsed
Hillary as simply corrupt. Simultaneously, Hillary said that Bernie had to be ground down to the
pulp. Further leaked emails showed how the Democratic National Committee sabotaged Sanders' presidential
campaign. It was Hillary manipulating the entire media for her personal gain. She obviously did not
want a fair election because she was too corrupt.
What is very clear putting all the emails together, the rise of Donald Trump was orchestrated
by Hillary herself conspiring with mainstream media, and they they sought to burn him to the ground.
Their strategy backfired and now this is why she has not come out to to speak against the violence
she has manipulated and inspired.
This is by far the WORST campaign in history and it was all orchestrated by Hillary to be
intentionally divisive for the nation all to win the presidency at all costs. She has torched the
constitution and the country. No wonder Hillary could not go to the stage to thank her supporters.
She never counted on them and saw the people as fools. The entire strategy was to take the White
House with a manipulation of the entire election process. Just unbelievable. Any Democrat who
is not angry at this is clearly just a biased fool. Wake up and smell the roses. You just got what
you deserve.
Notveryamused -> Charles Wilson •Nov 12, 2016 9:12 PM
It's one thing to be ruthless & evil. It's another to be ruthless, evil and stupid. Brexit
should have been a huge eye-opener for the elites that they should seek to field two establishment
candidates as usual at any cost rather than risk elevating an outsider.
It's incredibly fortunate they were too dumb to realise that the former middle class and
independents cognisant of NWO would create huge momentum for exactly those type of candidates
& that this was absolutely the worst time in history to attempt that strategy. Lack of competition
at the top of the food chain has made her ilk slow and out of touch. Evolution is a bitch.
Personally, I find this hilarious. She schemes and connives to push forward the most "unelectable"
republican, and that republican wins mostly because she vastly underestimates the dislike of Americans
for her.
Could there be a more fitting slap in the face to someone of such enormous hubris and arrogance?
jcaz -> Automatic Choke •Nov 12, 2016 9:47 PM
Excellent article. Truly, the definition of "hubris" was Hillary during this election.
What she underestimated was the ability for most to see thru her true contempt of people.
That's the bottom line of Hillary- she just sees herself as royalty, and we just got tired of
seeing it again and again.
MalteseFalcon -> espirit •Nov 12, 2016 10:47 PM
Hillary Rodent fashions herself as some kind of leader who is a Christian (Methodist) and loves
America ("Need to unify!!"). So let the Rodent get on TV and tell these bought and paid for rioters
to stop. "Not in my name" should be the Rodent's plea.
<crickets>
She's a fraud.
Joe Davola -> MalteseFalcon •Nov 12, 2016 11:44 PM
It truly was the worst campaign in history (topping Mondale 84). If only they'd put half the
effort into their campaign that they put into dirty tricks. Then again, from the tone of the
leaked emails it is clear they realized she was the worst candidate ever.
They were so busy playing it like a parlor game, they forgot to actually provide real reasons
to vote for her - beyond it was her turn.
This mirrors her naive approach to foreign policy of "create a controlled burn (Arab spring)
and get rid of your enemy". Without realizing someone would move in to the void left afterwards.
(I need to drink more - In whiskey, veritas). Or as in this case, the wind changes direction.
FreedomGuy -> Joe Davola •Nov 13, 2016 12:44 AM
It is interesting that there is no mention of any strategy to promote her ideas or positive
qualities. In fact the "muddy the waters" statement shows they knew scandals would come up and
they'd have to play defense.
It is never about how good they are. It is about how bad you/the other side is.
caconhma -> jcaz •Nov 12, 2016 10:31 PM
War is war. The goal is to win by destroying an opponent. Therefore, any actions and any strategy
leading to a victory are totally justified!
Consequently, one cannot blame Hitlery for her actions. Hitlery has done the right things but
Jewish arrogance that guided and executed her election campaign negated and destroyed all advantages
she had. Remember how Hitlery called US working white men just a deplorable POS. Furthermore,
her allies could easily falsify the voter counting process but again they were so arrogant and
self confident that they fucked up themselves.
People, stop be so naive and stupid. The life is not fair to losers since only winners always
write the history!
Finally, if Trump will follow an advice to be good to everybody being a unifier then he
will be destroyed. This is why he must continue the strategy that brought his the victory. One
never can win follow a defensive strategy!
hardmedicine -> caconhma •Nov 13, 2016 3:46 AM
unfortunately, the MSM is continuing without a break in cadence their lock-step call for
bipartisan! compromise! and let's be "REASONABLE" . DAMMIT. The time for reasonable is past.
If Trump puts in a lot of NEOCON insiders in his cabinet I say we need to
hammer it again home that this is our last chance. If trump doesn't deliver the JOBS and Economic
turnaround then the conservatives are GONE. We won't get another chance.
Grosvenor Pkwy -> Chris Dakota •Nov 13, 2016 6:29 AM
Long-term drug and alcohol abuse slowly destroys the brain. She was definitely smarter 20 years
ago. "first we have to bring them to heel..."
"... Take over the Democratic Party and return it to the people. They have failed us miserably. ..."
"... Fire all pundits, predictors, pollsters and anyone else in the media who had a narrative they wouldn't let go of and refused to listen to or acknowledge what was really going on. Those same bloviators will now tell us we must "heal the divide" and "come together." ..."
"... let those of us who know the score lead the way in stopping the meanness and the madness that's about to begin. ..."
"... Everyone must stop saying they are "stunned" and "shocked". What you mean to say is that you were in a bubble and weren't paying attention to your fellow Americans and their despair. ..."
"... You live in a country where a majority of its citizens have said they believe there's climate change, they believe women should be paid the same as men, they want a debt-free college education, they don't want us invading countries, they want a raise in the minimum wage and they want a single-payer true universal health care system. None of that has changed. ..."
"... Finally, speaking of Saturday Night Live sketches, we can't wait to see how the liberal "comedy" show - which just like the NYT existed in a world of its own throughout the presidential campaign - spins the election results tonight. ..."
Then there was ultraliberal Michael Moore, who in a
facebook post
urged to "Fire all pundits, predictors, pollsters and anyone else in the media who had a narrative
they wouldn't let go of and refused to listen to or acknowledge what was really going on. Those same
bloviators will now tell us we must "heal the divide" and "come together." They will pull more hooey
like that out of their ass in the days to come. Turn them off."
Morning After To-Do List:
1. Take over the Democratic Party and return it to the people. They have failed us miserably.
2. Fire all pundits, predictors, pollsters and anyone else in the media who had a narrative
they wouldn't let go of and refused to listen to or acknowledge what was really going on. Those
same bloviators will now tell us we must "heal the divide" and "come together." They will pull
more hooey like that out of their ass in the days to come. Turn them off.
3. Any Democratic member of Congress who didn't wake up this morning ready to fight, resist
and obstruct in the way Republicans did against President Obama every day for eight full years
must step out of the way and let those of us who know the score lead the way in stopping the meanness
and the madness that's about to begin.
4. Everyone must stop saying they are "stunned" and "shocked". What you mean to say is that
you were in a bubble and weren't paying attention to your fellow Americans and their despair.
YEARS of being neglected by both parties, the anger and the need for revenge against the system
only grew. Along came a TV star they liked whose plan was to destroy both parties and tell them
all "You're fired!" Trump's victory is no surprise. He was never a joke. Treating him as one only
strengthened him. He is both a creature and a creation of the media and the media will never own
that.
5. You must say this sentence to everyone you meet today: "HILLARY CLINTON WON THE POPULAR
VOTE!" The MAJORITY of our fellow Americans preferred Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Period.
Fact. If you woke up this morning thinking you live in an effed-up country, you don't. The majority
of your fellow Americans wanted Hillary, not Trump. The only reason he's president is because
of an arcane, insane 18th-century idea called the Electoral College. Until we change that, we'll
continue to have presidents we didn't elect and didn't want. You live in a country where a majority
of its citizens have said they believe there's climate change, they believe women should be paid
the same as men, they want a debt-free college education, they don't want us invading countries,
they want a raise in the minimum wage and they want a single-payer true universal health care
system. None of that has changed. We live in a country where the majority agree with the "liberal"
position. We just lack the liberal leadership to make that happen (see: #1 above).
* * *
There were countless more such examples of prominent liberals accusing the press of bias and propaganda
long after the fact, even as the press itself refuses to admit any guilt, while itself blaming others,
and so the circle continues to turn, and nothing changes in a world in which nobody knows what happens
next now that the status quo has been crushed by the people.
Finally, speaking of Saturday Night Live sketches, we can't wait to see how the liberal "comedy"
show - which just like the NYT existed in a world of its own throughout the presidential campaign
- spins the election results tonight.
"... The media and Clinton campaign created some sympathy for Donald Trump because the message was not subtle, it was an avalanche, indeed, an unprecedented deluge of negative, caustic, burn-it-to-the-ground anti-Trump messaging, and people don't respond to that ..."
"The media and Clinton campaign created some sympathy for Donald Trump because the message
was not subtle, it was an avalanche, indeed, an unprecedented deluge of negative, caustic,
burn-it-to-the-ground anti-Trump messaging, and people don't respond to that," Conway said.
By John Cassidy conviniently forget that Hillary was/is a neocon warmonger, perfectly
cable of unleashing WWIII. Instead he pushes "Comey did it" bogeyman"...
EMichael and im1dc would rather have their head in the sand. We were told confidently by Clinton
surrogates like Krugman and DeLong that Brexit wouldn't happen again.
Since Tuesday night, there has been a lot of handwringing about how the media, with all its fancy
analytics, failed to foresee Donald Trump's victory. The Times alone has published three articles
on this theme, one of which ran under the headline "How Data Failed Us in Calling an Election." On
social media, Trump supporters have been mercilessly haranguing the press for getting it wrong.
Clearly, this was a real issue. It's safe to say that most journalists, myself included, were
surprised by Tuesday's outcome. That fact should be acknowledged. But journalists weren't the only
ones who were shocked. As late as Tuesday evening, even a senior adviser to Trump was telling the
press that "it will take a miracle for us to win."
It also shouldn't be forgotten that, in terms of the popular vote, Clinton didn't lose on Tuesday.
As of 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday, a tally by CNN showed that Hillary Clinton had received 60,617,062
votes, while Trump got 60,118,567. The margin in her favor-now at 498,495-is likely to grow as the
remaining votes are counted in California. At the end of the day, Clinton may end up ahead by two
per cent of the total votes cast. If the United States had a direct system of voting, Clinton would
have been the one at the White House on Thursday meeting with President Obama. But, of course, Trump
won the Electoral College. If the final count in Michigan remains in his favor, Trump will end up
with three hundred and six Electoral College votes, to Clinton's two hundred and twenty-six.
Still, as journalists and commentators, we all knew the rules of the game: if Trump got to two
hundred and seventy votes in the Electoral College, he'd be President. Why did so few observers predict
he'd do it? Many Trump supporters insist it was East Coast insularity and ideological bias, and many
in the media are now ready to believe that. To be sure, it's easy to get sucked into the media bubble.
But there are also strong professional incentives for journalists to get things right. Why did that
prove so difficult this year?
It wasn't because journalists weren't legging it to Michigan or Wisconsin or West Virginia. In
this magazine alone, a number of writers-including Larissa MacFarquhar, Evan Osnos, George Packer,
and George Saunders-published long, reported pieces about the Trump phenomenon in different parts
of the country. Many other journalists spent a lot of time talking with Trump supporters. I'd point
you to the work of ProPublica's Alec MacGillis and the photojournalist Chris Arnade, but they were
just two among many. So many, in fact, that some Clinton supporters, such as Eric Boehlert, of Media
Matters, regularly complained about it on social media.
To the extent that there was a failure, it was a failure of analysis, rather than of observation
and reporting. And when you talk about how the media analyzed this election, you can't avoid the
polls, the forecasting models, and the organizing frames-particularly demographics-that people used
to interpret the incoming data.
It was clear from early in the race that Trump's electoral strategy was based on appealing
to working-class whites, particularly in the Midwest. The question all along was whether, in the
increasingly diverse America of 2016, there were enough alienated working-class whites to propel
Trump to victory.
Some analysts did suggest that there might be. Immediately after the 2012 election, Sean Trende,
of Real Clear Politics, pointed out that one of the main reasons for Mitt Romney's defeat was that
millions of white voters stayed home. Earlier this year, during the Republican primaries, Trende
returned to the same theme, writing, "The candidate who actually fits the profile of a 'missing white
voter' candidate is Donald Trump."
The Times' Nate Cohn was another who took Trump's strategy seriously. In June, pointing to
a new analysis of Census Bureau data and voter-registration files, Cohn wrote, "a growing body of
evidence suggests that there is still a path, albeit a narrow one, for Mr. Trump to win without gains
among nonwhite voters." As recently as Sunday, Cohn repeated this point, noting that Trump's "strength
among the white working class gives him a real chance at victory, a possibility that many discounted
as recently as the summer."
Among analysts and political demographers, however, the near-consensus of opinion was that Trump
wouldn't be able to turn back history. Back in March, I interviewed Ruy Teixeira, the co-author of
an influential 2004 book, "The Emerging Democratic Majority," which highlighted the growing number
of minority voters across the country, particularly Hispanics. Drawing on his latest data, Teixeira,
who is a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and the Center for American Progress, offered some
estimates of how many more white working-class voters Trump would need to turn out to flip states
like Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. "It's not crazy," he said. "But I think it would be very hard
to pull off."
Trump managed it, though. He enjoyed a thirty-nine-point advantage among whites without college
degrees, according to the network exit poll, compared to the twenty-six-point advantage Romney saw
in 2012. "What totally tanked the Democrats was the massive shift in the white non-college vote against
them, particularly in some of the swing states," Teixeira told me by telephone on Thursday. "And
that by itself is really enough to explain the outcome."
In the lead-up to the election, the possibility of Clinton winning the popular vote while losing
the Electoral College was well understood but, in hindsight, not taken seriously enough. In mid-September,
David Wasserman, an analyst at the Cook Political Report, laid out a scenario in which turnout among
white non-college voters surged and turnout among some parts of the Democratic coalition, particularly
African-Americans, fell. "Clinton would carry the popular vote by 1.5 percentage points," Wasserman
wrote. "However, Trump would win the Electoral College with 280 votes by holding all 24 Romney states
and flipping Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Maine's 2nd Congressional District."
In the days and weeks leading up to the election, FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver also considered
the possibility of Clinton winning the popular vote and losing the election. But he, Wasserman, and
others who looked at the matter believed this was an unlikely outcome. On Tuesday, the FiveThirtyEight
forecasting model estimated that the probability of such a scenario happening was about one in ten.
There was a straightforward reason for all the skepticism about Trump's chances: when you looked
at the state-level polling, it looked like Clinton's "blue wall" was holding. Take Wisconsin, which
turned out to be a state that Trump won. The Huffington Post's polling database lists the results
of more than thirty polls that were taken in the Badger State since June: Trump didn't lead in any
of them. Three of the final four surveys showed Clinton ahead by six points or more, and the Huffpollster
poll average put her lead at 6.3 percentage points. Trump carried the state by one point. In other
key states, the pattern was similar. The final Huffington Post poll averages showed Trump losing
by nearly six points in Michigan, and by four points in Pennsylvania.
In a public statement issued on Wednesday, the American Association for Public Opinion Research
said bluntly, "The polls clearly got it wrong this time." The organization announced that it had
already put together a panel of "survey research and election polling experts" tasked with finding
some answers. Several possible explanations have already been floated.
First, it's possible there was a late swing to Trump among undecided voters, which the state polls,
in particular, failed to pick up. Another possibility is that some Trump voters didn't tell the pollsters
about their preferences-the "shy Trump supporter" hypothesis.
A third theory, which I suspect may be the right one, is that a lot of Trump voters refused
to answer the pollsters' calls in the first place, because they regarded them as part of the same
media-political establishment that Trump was out railing against on the campaign trail. Something
like this appears to have happened in Britain earlier this year, during the run-up to the Brexit
referendum. Turnout wound up being considerably higher than expected among lower-income voters in
the north of England, particularly elderly ones, and that swung the result.
Whatever went wrong with the polls in this country, they inevitably colored perceptions. "The
reason it surprised me was because, like everyone else, I was taken in by those pesky polls," Teixeira
told me. "It didn't look like, by and large, that he was running up as big a margin as he needed
among non-college whites."
The prediction models didn't help things. On Tuesday morning, FiveThirtyEight's "polls-only"
prediction model put the probability of Clinton winning the presidency at 71.4 per cent. And that
figure was perhaps the most conservative one. The Times' Upshot model said Clinton had an eighty-five
per cent chance of winning, the Huffington Post's figure was ninety-eight per cent, and the Princeton
Election Consortium's estimate was ninety-nine per cent.
These numbers had a big influence on how many people, including journalists and political professionals,
looked at the election. Plowing through all the new polls, or even keeping up with all the state
and national poll averages, can be a time-consuming process. It's much easier to click on the latest
update from the model of your choice. When you see it registering the chances of the election going
a certain way at ninety per cent, or ninety-five per cent, it's easy to dismiss the other outcome
as a live possibility-particularly if you haven't been schooled in how to think in probabilistic
terms, which many people haven't.
The problem with models is that they rely so much on the polls. Essentially, they aggregate
poll numbers and use some simulation software to covert them into unidimensional probabilistic forecasts.
The details are complicated, and each model is different, but the bottom line is straightforward:
when the polls are fairly accurate-as they were in 2008 and 2012-the models look good. When the polls
are off, so are the models.
Silver, to his credit, pointed this out numerous times before the election. His model also allowed
for the possibility that errors in the state polls were likely to be correlated-i.e., if the polls
in Wisconsin got it wrong, then most likely the Michigan polls would get it wrong, too. This was
a big reason why FiveThirtyEight's model consistently gave Trump a better chance of winning than
other models did. But the fact remains that FiveThirtyEight, like almost everyone else, got the result
wrong.
I got it wrong, too. Unlike in 2012, I didn't make any explicit predictions this year. But based
on the polls and poll averages-I didn't look at the models much-I largely accepted the conventional
wisdom that Clinton was running ahead of Trump and had an enduring advantage in the Electoral College.
In mid-October, after the "Access Hollywood" tape emerged, I suggested that Trump was done.
Clearly, he wasn't. In retrospect, the F.B.I. Director James Comey's intervention ten days before
the election-telling Congress that his agency was taking another look at e-mails related to Clinton's
private server-may have proved decisive. The news seems to have shifted the national polls against
Clinton by at least a couple of points, and some of the state polls-in Ohio, Florida, North Carolina,
and other places-also moved sharply in Trump's direction. Without any doubt, it energized Republicans
and demoralized Democrats.
One thing we know for sure, however, is that in mid-October, even some of the indicators that
the Trump campaign relied on were sending out alarm signals. "Flash back three weeks, to October
18," Bloomberg News's Joshua Green and Sasha Issenberg reported on Thursday. "The Trump campaign's
internal election simulator, the 'Battleground Optimizer Path to Victory,' showed Trump with a 7.8
percent chance of winning. That's because his own model had him trailing in most of the states that
would decide the election, including the pivotal state of Florida."
Of course, neither the Battleground Optimizer Path to Victory software nor I knew that fate, in
the form of Comey, was about to take a hand.
"... What happened? Why is this clique's triumphant return to power erupting in massive scandal this time around? Probably because we are living in an era during which much that was mysterious is suddenly becoming clear. Probably because Trump's "silent majority" suddenly saw before them someone they had been waiting for for a long time – a man ready to defend their interests. ..."
"... Perhaps also it is because the middle class is choking on its growing exasperation with the "elite caste" occupying its native country. And it finally became clear to the sober-minded American patriots in law enforcement that the return to power of the people responsible for the current global chaos could be a big threat to the US and rest of the world. Because, in the end, everyone has children and no one wants a new world war. ..."
Today Trump represents an entirely new party made up of half of the American electorate, and they
are ready for action. And whatever the eventual political structure of this new model, this is what
is shaping America's present reality. Moreover, this does not seem like such a unique situation.
It rather appears to be the final chapter of some ancient story, in which the convoluted plotlines
finally take shape and find resolution.
The circumstances are increasingly reminiscent of 1860, when Lincoln's election so enraged the
South that those states began agitating for secession. Trump is today symbolic of a very real American
tradition that during
the Civil War (1860-1865) ran headlong into American revolutionary liberalism for the first time.
Right up until World War I traditional American conservatism wore the guise of "isolationism."
Prior to WWII it was known as "non-interventionism." Afterward, that movement attempted to use
Sen. Joseph
McCarthy to battle the left-liberal stranglehold. And in the 1960s it became the primary target
of the "counter-cultural revolution."
Its last bastion was
Richard
Nixon , whose fall was the result of an unprecedented attack from the left-liberal press in 1974.
And this is perhaps the example against which we should compare the present-day Trump and his current
fight.
And by the way, the crimes of Hillary Clinton, who has failed to protect state secrets and has
repeatedly been caught lying under oath, clearly outweigh the notorious Watergate scandal that led
to Nixon's forced resignation under threat of impeachment. But the liberal American media remains
silent, as if nothing has happened.
By all indications it is clear that we are standing before a truly epochal moment. But before
turning to the future that might await us, let's take a quick glance at the history of conflict between
revolutionary liberalism and traditional white conservatism in the US.
***
Immediately after WWII, an attack on two fronts was launched by the party of "expansionism" (we'll
call it that). The Soviet Union and Communism were designated the number one enemy. Enemy number
two (with less hype) was traditional American conservatism. The war against traditional "Americanism"
was waged by several intellectual fringe groups simultaneously.
The country's cultural and intellectual life was under the absolute control of a group known as
the " New York
Intellectuals ." Literary criticism as well as all other aspects of the nation's literary life
was in the hands of this small group of literary curators who had emerged from the milieu of a Trotskyist-communist
magazine known as the
Partisan Review (PR). No one could become a professional writer in the America of the 1950s and
1960s without being carefully screened by this sect.
The foundational tenets of American political philosophy and sociology were composed by militants
from the Frankfurt School
, which had been established during the interwar period in Weimar Germany and which moved to
the US after the National Socialists took power. Here, retraining their sights from communist to
liberal, they set out to design a "theory of totalitarianism" in addition to their concept of an
"authoritarian personality" – both hostile to "democracy."
The "New York Intellectuals" and representatives of the Frankfurt School became friends, and
Hannah Arendt , for example, was an
authoritative representative of both sects. This is where future neocons (Norman Podhoretz, Eliot
A. Cohen, and Irving Kristol) gained their experience. The former leader of the Trotskyist Fourth
International and godfather of the neocons,
Max Shachtman , held a place
of honor in the "family of intellectuals."
The anthropological school of Franz Boas and Freudianism reigned over the worlds of psychology
and sociology at that time. The Boasian approach in psychology argued that genetic, national, and
racial differences between individuals were of no importance (thus the concepts of "national culture"
and "national community" were meaningless).
Psychoanalysis also became fashionable, which primarily aimed to supplant traditional church institutions
and become a type of quasi-religion for the middle class.
The common denominator linking all these movements was anti-fascism. Did something look fishy
in this? But the problem was that the traditional values of the nation, state, and family were all
labeled "fascist." From this standpoint, any white Christian man aware of his cultural and national
identity was potentially a "fascist."
Kevin MacDonald, a professor of psychology at California State University, analyzed in detail
the seizure of America's cultural, political, and mental landscape by these "liberal sects" in his
brilliant book The Culture
of Critique , writing:
"The New York Intellectuals, for example, developed ties with elite universities, particularly
Harvard, Columbia, the University of Chicago, and the University of California-Berkeley, while
psychoanalysis and anthropology became well entrenched throughout academia.
"The moral and intellectual elite established by these movements dominated intellectual
discourse during a critical period after World War II and leading into the countercultural revolution
of the 1960s."
It was precisely this intellectual milieu that spawned the countercultural revolution of the 1960s.
Riding the wave of these sentiments, the new
Immigration and Nationality Act was passed in 1965, encouraging this phenomenon and facilitating
the integration of immigrants into US society. The architects of the law wanted to use the celebrated
melting pot to "dilute" the "potentially fascist" descendants of European immigrants by making use
of new ethno-cultural elements.
The 60s revolution opened the door to the American political establishment to representatives
from both wings of the expansionist "party" – the neo-liberals and the neo-conservatives.
Besieged by the left-liberal press in 1974, Richard Nixon resigned under threat of impeachment.
In the same year the US Congress passed the
Jackson-Vanik
Amendment (drafted by Richard
Perle ), which emerged as a symbol of the country's "new political agenda" – economic war against
the Soviet Union using sanctions and boycotts.
At that same time the "hippie generation" was joining the Democratic Party on the coattails of
Senator George McGovern's campaign . And that was when Bill Clinton's smiling countenance first
emerged on the US political horizon.
And the future neo-conservatives (at that time still disciples of the Democratic hawk Henry "Scoop"
Jackson) began to slowly edge in the direction of the Republicans.
In 1976, Mr. Rumsfeld and his fellow neo-conservatives resurrected the
Committee
on the Present Danger , an inter-party club for political hawks whose goal became the launch
of an all-out propaganda war against the USSR.
Former Trotskyists and followers of Max Shachtman (Kristol, Podhoretz, and Jeane Kirkpatrick)
and advisers to Sen. Henry Jackson (Paul Wolfowitz, Perle, Elliott Abrams, Charles Horner, and Douglas
Feith) joined Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and other "Christian" politicians with the intention
of launching a "campaign to transform the world."
This is where the neocons' "nonpartisan ideology" originated. And eventually today's "inalterable
US government" hatched from this egg.
American politics began to acquire its current shape during the Reagan era. In economics this
was seen in the policy of neoliberalism (politics waged in the interests of big financial capital)
and in foreign policy – in a strategy consisting of "holy war against the forces of evil." The Nixon-Kissinger
tradition of foreign policy (which viewed the Soviet Union and China as a normal countries with which
is essential to find common ground) was entirely abandoned.
The collapse of the USSR was a sign of the onset of the final phase of the "neocon revolution."
At that point their protégé, Francis Fukuyama, announced the "end of history."
***
As the years passed, the influence of the neo-conservatives (in politics) and neoliberals (in
economics) only expanded. Through all manner of committees, foundations, "think tanks," etc., the
students of Milton Friedman and Leo Strauss (from the departments of economics and political science
at the University of Chicago) penetrated ever more deeply into the inner workings of the Washington
power machine. The apotheosis of this expansion was the presidency of George W. Bush, during which
the neocons, having seized the primary instruments of power in the White House, were able to plunge
the country into the folly of a war in the Middle East.
By the end of the Bush presidency this clique was the object of universal hatred throughout the
US. That's why the middle-ground, innocuous figure of Barack Obama, a Democrat, was able to move
into the White House for the next eight years. The neocons stepped down from their central rostrums
of power and returned to their "influential committees." It is likely that this election was intended
to facilitate the triumphant return of the neoconservative-neoliberal paradigm all wrapped up in
"new packaging." For various reasons, the decision was made to assign this role to Hillary Clinton.
But it seems that at the most critical moment the flimsy packaging ripped open
What happened? Why is this clique's triumphant return to power erupting in massive scandal this
time around? Probably because we are living in an era during which much that was mysterious is suddenly
becoming clear. Probably because Trump's "silent majority" suddenly saw before them someone they
had been waiting for for a long time – a man ready to defend their interests.
Perhaps also it is because the middle class is choking on its growing exasperation with the "elite
caste" occupying its native country. And it finally became clear to the sober-minded American patriots
in law enforcement that the return to power of the people responsible for the current global chaos
could be a big threat to the US and rest of the world. Because, in the end, everyone has children
and no one wants a new world war.
How will this new conservative revolt against the elite end? Will Trump manage to "drain the swamp
of Washington, DC" as he has promised, or he will end up as the system's next victim? Very soon we
can finally get an answer to these questions.
Donald Trump's success or failure as the next US president will
largely depend on his ability to keep his independence from the "shadow government" and elite
structures that shaped the policies of previous administrations, former presidential candidate
Ron Paul told RT.
[...]
"
Unfortunately, there has been several neoconservatives that
are getting closer to Trump. And if gets his advice from them then I do not think that is a good
sign,
" Paul told the host of RT's Crosstalk show Peter Lavelle.
The retired Congressman said that people voted for Trump because
he stood against the deep corruption in the establishment, that was further exposed during the
campaign by WikiLeaks, and because of his disapproval of meddling in the wider Middle East.
"
During the campaign, he did talk a little bit about backing
off and being less confrontational to Russia and I like that. He criticized some the wars in the
Middle East at the same time. He believes we should accelerate the war against ISIS and terrorism,
"
Paul noted.
[...]
"
But quite frankly there is an outside source which we refer
to as the 'deep state' or the 'shadow government'. There is a lot of influence by people which
are actually more powerful than our government itself, our president,
" the congressman said.
"
Yes, Trump is his own guy, more so than most of those who
have ever been in before. We hope he can maintain an independence and go in the right direction.
But I fear the fact that there is so much that can be done secretly, out of control of our apparent
government and out of the view of so many citizens,
" he added.
More:
https://www.rt.com/usa/366404-trump-ron-paul-crosstalk/
"... No sooner had Trump been declared the 45th president of the United States, Soros-funded political operations launched their activities to disrupt Trump during Obama's lame-duck period and thereafter. The swiftness of the Purple Revolution is reminiscent of the speed at which protesters hit the streets of Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, in two Orange Revolutions sponsored by Soros, one in 2004 and the other, ten years later, in 2014. ..."
"... The Soros-financed Russian singing group "Pussy Riot" released on YouTube an anti-Trump music video titled "Make America Great Again". The video went "viral" on the Internet. The video, which is profane and filled with violent acts, portrays a dystopian Trump presidency. Following the George Soros/Gene Sharp script to a tee, Pussy Riot member Nadya Tolokonnikova called for anti-Trump Americans to turn their anger into art, particularly music and visual art. The use of political graffiti is a popular Sharp tactic. The street protests and anti-Trump music and art were the first phase of Soros's Purple Revolution in America ..."
" No sooner had Trump been declared the 45th president of the United States, Soros-funded political
operations launched their activities to disrupt Trump during Obama's lame-duck period and thereafter.
The swiftness of the Purple Revolution is reminiscent of the speed at which protesters hit the
streets of Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, in two Orange Revolutions sponsored by Soros, one in 2004
and the other, ten years later, in 2014.
As the Clintons were embracing purple in New York, street demonstrations, some violent, all
coordinated by the Soros-funded Moveon.org and "Black Lives Matter", broke out in New York, Los
Angeles, Chicago, Oakland, Nashville, Cleveland, Washington, Austin, Seattle, Philadelphia, Richmond,
St. Paul, Kansas City, Omaha, San Francisco, and some 200 other cities across the United States.
The Soros-financed Russian singing group "Pussy Riot" released on YouTube an anti-Trump music
video titled "Make America Great Again". The video went "viral" on the Internet. The video, which
is profane and filled with violent acts, portrays a dystopian Trump presidency. Following the
George Soros/Gene Sharp script to a tee, Pussy Riot member Nadya Tolokonnikova called for anti-Trump
Americans to turn their anger into art, particularly music and visual art. The use of political
graffiti is a popular Sharp tactic. The street protests and anti-Trump music and art were the
first phase of Soros's Purple Revolution in America."
He will be staging them as long as he has enough health to try. Of course he is not the only player.
Soros is just one of the agents of western imperialism.
Reply
"... No sooner had Trump been declared the 45th president of the United States, Soros-funded political operations launched their activities to disrupt Trump during Obama's lame-duck period and thereafter. The swiftness of the Purple Revolution is reminiscent of the speed at which protesters hit the streets of Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, in two Orange Revolutions sponsored by Soros, one in 2004 and the other, ten years later, in 2014. ..."
"... One of Trump's political advertisements, released just prior to Election Day, stated that George Soros, Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, and Goldman Sachs chief executive officer Lloyd Blankfein, are all part of "a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities". Soros and his minions immediately and ridiculously attacked the ad as "anti-Semitic". President Trump should be on guard against those who his campaign called out in the ad and their colleagues. Soros's son, Alexander Soros, called on Trump's daughter, Ivanka, and her husband Jared Kushner, to publicly disavow Trump. Soros's tactics not only seek to split apart nations but also families. Trump must be on guard against the current and future machinations of George Soros, including his Purple Revolution. ..."
Defeated Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton is not about to "go quietly into that good night". On the morning
after her surprising and unanticipated defeat at the hands of Republican Party upstart Donald Trump, Mrs. Clinton and her husband,
former President Bill Clinton, entered the ball room of the art-deco New Yorker hotel in midtown Manhattan and were both adorned
in purple attire. The press immediately noticed the color and asked what it represented. Clinton spokespeople claimed it was to represent
the coming together of Democratic "Blue America" and Republican "Red America" into a united purple blend. This statement was a complete
ruse as is known by citizens of countries targeted in the past by the vile political operations of international hedge fund tycoon
George Soros.
The Clintons, who both have received millions of dollars in campaign contributions and Clinton Foundation donations from Soros,
were, in fact, helping to launch Soros's "Purple Revolution" in America. The Purple Revolution will resist all efforts by the Trump
administration to push back against the globalist policies of the Clintons and soon-to-be ex-President Barack Obama. The Purple Revolution
will also seek to make the Trump administration a short one through Soros-style street protests and political disruption.
It is doubtful that President Trump's aides will advise the new president to carry out a diversionary criminal investigation of
Mrs. Clinton's private email servers and other issues related to the activities of the Clinton Foundation, especially when the nation
faces so many other pressing issues, including jobs, immigration, and health care. However, House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz said he will continue hearings in the Republican-controlled Congress on Hillary Clinton, the
Clinton Foundation, and Mrs. Clinton's aide
Huma Abedin
. President Trump should not allow himself to be distracted by these efforts. Chaffetz was not one of Trump's most loyal supporters.
America's globalists and interventionists are already pushing the meme that because so many establishment and entrenched national
security and military "experts" opposed Trump's candidacy, Trump is "required" to call on them to join his administration because
there are not enough such "experts" among Trump's inner circle of advisers.
Discredited neo-conservatives from George W. Bush's White House, such as Iraq war co-conspirator Stephen Hadley, are being mentioned
as someone Trump should have join his National Security Council and other senior positions. George H. W. Bush's Secretary of State
James Baker, a die-hard Bush loyalist, is also being proffered as a member of Trump's White House team.
There is absolutely no reason for Trump to seek the advice from old Republican fossils like Baker, Hadley, former Secretaries
of State Rice and Powell, the lunatic former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, and others. There are plenty of Trump
supporters who have a wealth of experience in foreign and national security matters, including those of African, Haitian, Hispanic,
and Arab descent and who are not neocons, who can fill Trump's senior- and middle-level positions.
Trump must distance himself from sudden well-wishing neocons, adventurists, militarists, and interventionists and not permit them
to infest his administration. If Mrs. Clinton had won the presidency, an article on the incoming administration would have read as
follows:
"Based on the militarism and foreign adventurism of her term as Secretary of State and her husband Bill Clinton's two terms
as president, the world is in store for major American military aggression on multiple fronts around the world. President-elect
Hillary Clinton has made no secret of her desire to confront Russia militarily, diplomatically, and economically in the Middle
East, on Russia's very doorstep in eastern Europe, and even within the borders of the Russian Federation. Mrs. Clinton has dusted
off the long-discredited 'containment' policy ushered into effect by Professor George F. Kennan in the aftermath of World War.
Mrs. Clinton's administration will likely promote the most strident neo-Cold Warriors of the Barack Obama administration, including
Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, a personal favorite of Clinton".
President-elect Trump cannot afford to permit those who are in the same web as Nuland, Hadley, Bolton, and others to join his
administration where they would metastasize like an aggressive form of cancer. These individuals would not carry out Trump's policies
but seek to continue to damage America's relations with Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, and other nations.
Not only must Trump have to deal with Republican neocons trying to worm their way into his administration, but he must deal with
the attempt by Soros to disrupt his presidency and the United States with a Purple Revolution
No sooner had Trump been declared the 45th president of the United States, Soros-funded political operations launched their
activities to disrupt Trump during Obama's lame-duck period and thereafter. The swiftness of the Purple Revolution is reminiscent
of the speed at which protesters hit the streets of Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, in two Orange Revolutions sponsored by Soros, one
in 2004 and the other, ten years later, in 2014.
As the Clintons were embracing purple in New York, street demonstrations, some violent, all coordinated by the Soros-funded Moveon.org
and "Black Lives Matter", broke out in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Oakland, Nashville, Cleveland, Washington, Austin, Seattle,
Philadelphia, Richmond, St. Paul, Kansas City, Omaha, San Francisco, and some 200 other cities across the United States.
The Soros-financed Russian singing group "Pussy Riot" released on YouTube an anti-Trump music video titled "Make America Great
Again". The video went "viral" on the Internet. The video, which is profane and filled with violent acts, portrays a dystopian Trump
presidency. Following the George Soros/Gene Sharp script to a tee, Pussy Riot member Nadya Tolokonnikova called for anti-Trump Americans
to turn their anger into art, particularly music and visual art. The use of political graffiti is a popular Sharp tactic. The street
protests and anti-Trump music and art were the first phase of Soros's Purple Revolution in America.
President-elect Trump is facing a two-pronged attack by his opponents. One, led by entrenched neo-con bureaucrats, including former
Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency director Michael Hayden, former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff,
and Bush family loyalists are seeking to call the shots on who Trump appoints to senior national security, intelligence, foreign
policy, and defense positions in his administration. These neo-Cold Warriors are trying to convince Trump that he must maintain the
Obama aggressiveness and militancy toward Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and other countries. The second front arrayed against
Trump is from Soros-funded political groups and media. This second line of attack is a propaganda war, utilizing hundreds of anti-Trump
newspapers, web sites, and broadcasters, that will seek to undermine public confidence in the Trump administration from its outset.
One of Trump's political advertisements, released just prior to Election Day, stated that George Soros, Federal Reserve chair
Janet Yellen, and Goldman Sachs chief executive officer Lloyd Blankfein, are all part of "a global power structure that is responsible
for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets
of a handful of large corporations and political entities". Soros and his minions immediately and ridiculously attacked the ad as
"anti-Semitic". President Trump should be on guard against those who his campaign called out in the ad and their colleagues. Soros's
son, Alexander Soros, called on Trump's daughter, Ivanka, and her husband Jared Kushner, to publicly disavow Trump. Soros's tactics
not only seek to split apart nations but also families. Trump must be on guard against the current and future machinations of George
Soros, including his Purple Revolution.
WikiLeaks series on deals involving
Hillary Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta. Mr Podesta is a long-term associate of the Clintons
and was President Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff from 1998 until 2001. Mr Podesta also owns the
Podesta Group with his brother Tony, a major lobbying firm and is the Chair of the Center for
American Progress (CAP), a Washington DC-based think tank.
globinfo freexchange
A letter under the title "Stay out of Syria" from
Jon Soltz
, an Iraq War Veteran and founder
of VoteVets.org, to John Podesta in May, 2013, confirms the multiple, serious warnings that the
Clinton/Podesta complex
had received about
the implications of the US involvement on Syrian mess.
Soltz's warnings couldn't be more clear. He points that "
arming
and training the Syrian rebels is a misguided and dangerous idea
" and that he helped to train
the Iraqi Army, and "
their concern is that many of the anti-Assad forces are the same terrorists
they've fought before and who continue to target them
". He also writes that "
there is no
winning scenario when we get involved in other nations' civil wars and proxy wars
".
Most important parts of the short letter:
Earlier this week, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
voted 15-3 in favor of arming and training the Syrian rebels. This is a misguided and dangerous
idea. I helped to train the Iraqi Army during my second tour, and their concern is that
many
of the anti-Assad forces are the same terrorists they've fought before and who continue to target
them
. Plus, as Senator Tom Udall noted,
once we introduce weapons, we have zero control
over them
. The United States "could turn over the weapons we're talking about and next day
they end up in the hands of al-Qaida." Three Senators voted against the bill in committee, but
we need you to send a strong message to the other 97 that you oppose intervention in Syria's civil
war.
Moreover,
there is no winning scenario when we get involved
in other nations' civil wars and proxy wars
. On this point, Senator Chris Murphy said it best:
"We have failed over and over again in our attempts to pull the strings of Middle Eastern politics."
Let's not make the same mistake again.
Full letter:
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/59165
Recall that, another letter from Clinton email
series, released also by WikiLeaks, proves that
Hillary had been seriously warned about the
oncoming Syrian chaos
,
already since 2011.
Apparently, the Clinton/Podesta complex completely ignored those
serious warnings. Hillary and her team are totally responsible for doing nothing to prevent, or
at least restrict, the Middle East chaos.
"... The party elites--the superdelegates--committed to Clinton from the beginning. They decided it was her turn. And despite all the evidence showing they were supporting a weak, vulnerable, and heavily disliked candidate, they stuck with it anyway. This Trump presidency, and the Republican sweep in the House and Senate, is entirely on the shoulders of 300 insider Democrats. ..."
"... Clinton's supporters among the media didn't help much, either. It always struck me as strange that such an unpopular candidate enjoyed such robust and unanimous endorsements from the editorial and opinion pages of the nation's papers, but it was the quality of the media's enthusiasm that really harmed her. With the same arguments repeated over and over, two or three times a day, with nuance and contrary views all deleted, the act of opening the newspaper started to feel like tuning in to a Cold War propaganda station. ..."
"... But she was exactly the wrong candidate for this angry, populist moment. An insider when the country was screaming for an outsider. A technocrat who offered fine-tuning when the country wanted to take a sledgehammer to the machine. ..."
No shit, Sherlock. Sanders would have beaten Trump. We are living in extreme times, and in
extreme times centrism and political 'triangulation' doesn't work.
This result will be repeated next year in France with the National Front. Mark my words. And when
it does, France will vote to leave the EU and the house of cards will come crashing down.
You can thank the Democrats, a party that used to represent working people, for at least part
of that. Their billionaire backers picked Clinton because she'd ensure their wealth would remain
untouched. I wonder what they're feeling now?
Aaron Jackson -> NathAldridge 4d ago
How do you figure? Clinton won the Democratic primary by less than the margin of superdelegates.
She had a MASSIVE lead in funding, institutional support, and (at the least) insider bias--though
it was likely more than that, given that nearly every single election anomaly in that primary
bounced her way.
The DNC intentionally limited the debates and scheduled those they did have for off times to try
to limit the damage Sanders could do to Clinton, and big media refused to cover Bernie Sanders
except in the context of Clinton.
And even with all of that, Sanders pulled within 300 delegates of winning the Democratic Nomination
by working through a grassroots, positive campaign. The momentum was entirely on his side, too!
And national polls showed him performing MUCH better against Trump than Clinton. And, of course,
he had no scandals (real or imagined) to leverage.
The party elites--the superdelegates--committed to Clinton from the beginning. They decided
it was her turn. And despite all the evidence showing they were supporting a weak, vulnerable,
and heavily disliked candidate, they stuck with it anyway. This Trump presidency, and the Republican
sweep in the House and Senate, is entirely on the shoulders of 300 insider Democrats.
NathAldridge 4d ago
The Guardian in a nutshell!
Clinton's supporters among the media didn't help much, either. It always struck me as
strange that such an unpopular candidate enjoyed such robust and unanimous endorsements from
the editorial and opinion pages of the nation's papers, but it was the quality of the media's
enthusiasm that really harmed her. With the same arguments repeated over and over, two or three
times a day, with nuance and contrary views all deleted, the act of opening the newspaper started
to feel like tuning in to a Cold War propaganda station. Here's what it consisted of:
Hillary was virtually without flaws. She was a peerless leader clad in saintly white,
a super-lawyer, a caring benefactor of women and children, a warrior for social justice.
Her scandals weren't real.
The economy was doing well / America was already great.
Working-class people weren't supporting Trump. And if they were, it was only because
they were botched humans. Racism was the only conceivable reason for lining up with the
Republican candidate.
dynamic22 4d ago
"But she was exactly the wrong candidate for this angry, populist moment. An insider when
the country was screaming for an outsider. A technocrat who offered fine-tuning when the country
wanted to take a sledgehammer to the machine."
You said everything really.
Watchman80 -> dynamic22 4d ago
Yup.
Also, see this. Note the date (and the imagined Trump speech)
Maybe it's time to consider whether there's something about shrill self-righteousness,
shouted from a position of high social status, that turns people away.
I couldn't have put it better. I could have put it with more swear words in though.
BigBlue80 4d ago
Maybe there is a bright side to a Trump victory. After all, there was a reason that tens
of millions of good people voted for him yesterday, and maybe he will live up to their high
regard for him.
If you assume that election victory (not even a majority as apparently Clinton will win the
popular vote) legitmises everything, you are right. But if you believe that there are western
values that should not be sacrificed than you are wrong. Eventually, this will be the end of democracy
- it will kill itself by electing a fascist. I happened before and it looks ever more likely.
The you US with ist overbearing nationalism, its leader-orientation and glorification of the military
was always close to fascism, but now it might have taken the final leap into the abyss.
atuocool 4d ago
"[Neo]Liberals" are a type of conservative who never convince me of the sincerity of their
"progressive" values. What was progressive about Hillary? What would she have actually done for
the poor? How would she have moved America away from being a corporate plutocracy? We all know
the answer is nothing. Trump is a nightmare, but he represents a bizarre, retrograde change while
Clinton represented a vacuous status quo.
with nuance and contrary views all deleted, the act of opening the newspaper started to
feel like tuning in to a Cold War propaganda station
Correct, it is censorship and suppression of contrary opinion and enormously biased towards "The
Chosen One"
Once again it proves that the Guardian is against the tide of History.
It is not bad to be contrarian or representing an alternative opinion or "voice" however provided
you still maintain some sense of integrity and journalistic professionalism, providing content,
news and information that is fair, balanced without indulging in gratuitous character assassination,
presenting controversial issues of public importance in a manner that is honest, equitable, and
balanced.
The Guardian during the American election as with Brexit and many other controversial issues
has consistently aligned itself with policies and opinion that many would consider left-wing or
liberal yet is neither as the viewpoints they support betrays the liberty and freedom of the ordinary
citizen.
As I said before the election regardless who win or lose the media has already lost by showing
its hand and exposed itself as not a true independent source of news and information, but pursuing
definite agendas and siding with corporate news media's opinions and politics.
According to the Guardian's own view liberalism will have to be remade in a post-liberal age.
It is their own peculiar set of values they believe that is important and not the very principles
the left originally defended. Pursuing a certain "metropolitan liberal creed".
An metropolitan liberal elite who believe they are more educated, more intelligent and talented,
more enlightened, more able to comprehend what society needs than the slow, slobs, the wasters
and good for nothings with their prejudices, that do not know what is good for them.
Their brand of Liberalism has been the complete antithesis of allowing people to take control
of their lives. It has been a dictatorial imposition of the beliefs of the least liberal nature.
Equating the tendencies of so-called "social justice warriors" and so-called "identity politics"
and equating them somehow with liberalism you're a long way from the truth have little to do with
liberalism and no, that's not "left" either.
The establishment in the mainstream media believe they are economically liberals - though privately
they look more kindly on monopolies than old school liberals would have. Yet these "liberals"
want to happily embrace Brussels' legalistic regime of rules that range from the petty and impractical
to a punitive and autocratic dictatorship.
Classical liberalism is a political ideology and a branch of liberalism which advocates civil
liberties and political freedom with representative democracy under the rule of law and emphasizes
economic freedom.
It is no secret what the problem is, lack of jobs, lack of opportunities, people who feel they
have no future or rights in their own country anymore.
Ask yourself is what you identify with or support contributing towards a more peaceful, harmonious
society where all have a sense of having a place and a future in their own country where they
feel they fit in and contribute towards a more safe, secure and prosperous society?
An metropolitan liberal elite who believe they are more educated, more intelligent and talented,
more enlightened, more able to comprehend what society needs than the slow, slobs, the wasters
and good for nothings with their prejudices, that do not know what is good for them.
This is not a new problem. The social elites (self-appointed) of all political persuasions are
always bemoaning the stupidity of the plebs in not bowing to their superior understanding of all
things. That this unfounded hubris is an amazing exemplar of denial of reality (who just won this
election, for example) doesn't seem able to take root in the bubble of acceptable thought in their
minds. How could they possibly be talking out of their bottom when it comes to damn near everything?
(All evidence aside.)
We need the voice of the 'common people' to be heard, without being filtered by the elites. Fake
democracy is not going to work -- we'll end up with a bigger fiasco, such as Jamie Dimon vs Kim Kardashian
in the next US Presidential contest. Way past time for those in power to wake up to the fact that
they're not in control, and real change that involves the great unwashed in the process is necessary.
Trump is one dumb guy, but he has managed to figure out how to use this frustration to get his misogynist,
racist, backside into the chair in the Oval Office.
- Election of Trump is not just another routine changing of the guards in the US two-party
system (although it is that too). This is a significant deviation in the business-as-usual model
of politics, and there will be substantial repercussions that will explicitly manifest themselves
somewhere down the line.
- The Founding Dudes and the Framers of the US Constitution had set up the system so as to
preclude the possibility of ascendance of someone like Trump.
- The Founding Dudes and the Framers of the US Constitution had set up the system so as to
eventually make possible the ascendance of someone like Trump.
- Sanders was right. That having had had been said, he would have still lost to Drumpf if he
were the D's nominee instead of HRC.
- That is because RealAmerica_a spoke more vocally this time around, overwhelming the voice
of RealAmerica_b.
- Judging by geographical size alone, RealAmerica_a is Real America.
- It is simply unimaginable that the enlightened citizenry will elect someone as destructive
and unqualified as Reagan in 1980. Such a possibility is not conceivable in any logical space,
and even fiction writers are wary to contemplate such an impossibility.
- Election of Reagan is not just another routine changing of the guards in the US two-party
system (although it is that too). This is a significant deviation in the business-as-usual model
of politics, and there will be substantial repercussions that will explicitly manifest themselves
somewhere down the line.
- Trump's victory is a repeat of the interplay of the socioeconomic forces that made Dubya's
presidency possible in 2000. Eight more years of this worldview and we will have another Obama-type
candidacy afterwards to clean up the mess and make the world safe again for the staggering-but-still-dominant
neoliberal order.
- People will be just too exhausted after eight years of Trump's presidency, and they will
be so relieved after the election of the next Obama-type president as to retreat to their homes
and let the new savior continue cuddling the big economic players and attempting to reach a Grand
Bargain with the Republicans to further erode the threadbare social safety net holding up the
people, of course for the good of the people themselves and in the name of Serious Politics.
-The dominant position in our society will continue to be the generalization of Alan Grayson's
observation: Don't fall down, if you do disappear quickly.
- Setting aside the status quo status of Clinton's policy prescriptions (she a competent steward
of the Washington Consensus), Trump's victory also signals the provisional victory of the manly
men of RealAmerica_a (and the women who love them) over women (and minorities, and the LGBT, and
immigrants, and etc).
- The same way that most people don't know or care about the wavelengths associated with colors,
they don't know or care about the underlying forces affecting their lives as long as the politicians
put on a good Reality TV show and pull effectively at their heartstrings.
- In other words, F science, F reality.
- In other words, long live Realty TV, the rule of Kardashians, the Apprentice,
WWE/WWF , etc. Constant exposure
to these things matter.
- Constant exposure to these things don't matter.
- Tomorrow the Sun will come up as before, and the Earth will go around it at a steady pace
as before, and the already enfeebled welfare state will continue to fray as before, and millions
of US citizens will continue their steady fall into precariousness as before (especially Trump
supporters in RealAmerica_a), and millions will continue to lose steady jobs and be pushed into
the the gig economy, and the 1% will continue raking in the loot as before under the benevolent
gaze of their new leader.
- If HRC had won, all above would still occur, but probably at a lower rate (except for the
Sun and Earth thing).
I feel lots of parallels can be drawn with brexit, particularly the points made at the end. amazingly
people dont like being insulted and talked down to by party elites, the gop base has been totally
transformed by trumps campaign.
that said has anyone else noticed that trump supporters only ever say 'hes going to do so much
for us' and trump says we are going to reopen the mines/factories/get a better deal but never
said how. he has promised unicorns and rainbows to people dealt a shit hand by the economic changes
of the last 30 years.
The political class amongst US liberals are neo-liberals
Neoliberalism from Reagan to [Bill] Clinton .
written in 1998 the review of this book ends with
" Michael Meeropol's damning indictment of the economic direction of the Clinton presidency demonstrates
that nowhere is the need for a new movement more pressing than in the United States".
Well Bush & Obama & Hillary, had she been elected, were continuations of that economic direction.
If America has needed a new movement to win since 1999 then I guess they got really desperate
which is why they voted for something as bad as Trump. Yes , the liberals or more specifically
neo-liberals an be held responsible
Frank has been making exactly this point since 1997. Others worth reading on this issue include
Walter Benn Michaels and Adolph L. Reed, Jr.
Unfortunately, in a lot of fora where this message sorely needs to be heard right now, this
article would be summarily dismissed on the basis that Frank used the word "shrill," which is
out of bounds in liberal discourse. Which of course just illustrates Frank's point.
The DNC put President Trump into the White House. The DNC, fixated on the anointed, untouchable
HRC, lost its moral compass and the good work of Bernie and Warren, now amounts to a big fat ZERO.
Laughable, how out of touch - meaningless motherhood cliches cannot pay the bills.
It is a case in point that the MSM have completely lost touch with a population that often relies
on the internet for its news. In the old days, the newspaper that was closest to your political
viewpoint was delivered to your door as your primary source of information, now every news outlet,
blog and forum in the world is delivered directly to your tablet.
The media, like the Government has considerably less influence than a decade or two ago.
Good article and, as one poster put it, encapsulates the Guardian's editorial line in a nutshell.
The FT seems to be to the left of this paper these days, forced to be more hard nosed about
the world. This from its columnist Wolfgang Munchenau some days ago:
"What led the centre-left on to such a self-destructive path? The answer is a combination
of the following: a false belief that elections are won from the centre; the lure of ministerial
limousines; an inferiority complex about not being able to run "responsible fiscal policies";
and a belief that voters of the left have nowhere else to go. .. The main issue is not
whether a Keynesian policy response would be economically correct. The more important point
is that if the centre-left does not offer it, the populists will. Unless the centre-left returns
to its Keynesian roots, I think there is a good chance that the politics of insurrection will
succeed."
You live here in Ohio, you know what I'm talking about. Whether Trump means it or not, is
kind of irrelevant because he's saying the things to people who are hurting, and that's why
every beaten-down, nameless, forgotten working stiff who used to be part of what was called
the middle class loves Trump. He is the human molotov cocktail that they've been waiting for.
The human hand grande that they can legally throw into the system that stole their lives from
them.
the act of opening the newspaper started to feel like tuning in to a Cold War propaganda
station.
That's a very accurate summary. The first step to winning next time is to understand why you
lost this time. The establishment view was that people were going to get Hillary Clinton whether
they liked it or not. Next time try listening to people who are angry that their pay has fallen
in real terms for 10 years. Try listening to people whose views you disagree with rather than
'no platform' them lest your delicate sensibilities be offended.
The list of celebrities and pundits and surrogates taking his side on the campaign trail was extremely
short.
I often wonder is having a celebrity endourse you counter productive. I saw many celebs appear
on TV and social media telling people they shouldn't vote for Trump. Some went as far as to call
people who might vote for Trump idiots. How many people got fed up with rich, famous people telling
them how they should vote? If you're someone sitting in America's rust belt, no job or low paid
crap job, being told by someone you think probably owns a Hollywood mansion and does very little
work, would you not feel a little resentful being told by them how to vote? Wouldn't you take
a dislike to a candidate who appears on stage with these celebs and yet you feel ignores you?
Just a thought.
If you have the right to vote, the responsibility is to think through the implications of using
that vote for X or Y candidate, to work out for yourself what will happen to you, your family,
your community and your country if you vote for X or Y.
If you vote for Y because you feel "resentful" that someone is using their freedom of speech
to urge voting for X rather than Y - perhaps you shouldn't really be voting at all. Just a thought.
More than just an odd thought my friend. The sight of a procession of wealthy, smug and self entitled
celebs, often utter hypocrites, expecting to deliver their Facebook followers to a politician
is nauseating and angers more than a few. Few of these celebs are famous for their brains so being
called an idiot by a halfwit with money hardly endears them. But still society is in thrall to
the concept of celebrity following. It begs the question of what all these followers are actually
following. Perhaps Lady Gaga et al have confused the pathological need for an entertainment fix
with an adoration of their thoughts and outlook.
Killing off the neo-liberal virus in the Democratic Party would be a start, but won't be enough,
if the Democrats simply put the American equivalents of Jeremy Corbyn in its place. What's desperately
needed here are fresh ideas--something analogous to the Keynesian ideas that gave intellectual
underpinning to the New Deal.
The American white-collar class just spent the year rallying around a super-competent
professional (who really wasn't all that competent) and either insulting or silencing everyone
who didn't accept their assessment. And then they lost. Maybe it's time to consider whether
there's something about shrill self-righteousness, shouted from a position of high social status,
that turns people away.
I think this is a very succinct assessment and goes most of the way to explaining this result,
and the Brexit result too. People don't want to be lectured, they want to be listened to (yes,
even if you think they're wrong).
You see, their sneering attitude to the British working class, their name-calling, their bogus
judgements about the working class for not wanting any more of their rights and opportunities
taken away from them.
The 'liberals' are hated as much as the toffs. Brexit was a great example of the bile and hatred
the 'liberals' spew out at the disadvantaged working class.
It wasn't the 'liberals' housing and schools, communities and healthcare, employment rights
and opportunities that was being eroded though was it? No. But that didn't stop the 'liberals'
branding the working class as 'racists' and 'stupid' and 'blind' did it.
Maybe you now can see yourself, on this poxy 'liberal' website and see how YOU have created
a situation where the working class want ANYTHING other than more of your poison.
Look at the people bleating about Brexit: the 'liberals', the politicians, the bankers, big
business, the judges...my goodness, doesn't that tell a story of the haves and have nots. All
the bleaters are the scum that have never had the working class' best interests in mind and yet
you think we, the working class, should take heed of their fatuous, aquisitive, vile, whimpers?
Really?
Multi-Billionaire Media Barons controlling the news on both sides of the Atlantic (the same
Baron in the case of Murdoch) and they in turn backed by the Trillionaire old and true establishment
who are the exact same families as a hundred years ago and hundreds of years before that in many
cases.
Very well written and I agree to a large extent - the problem is.. are people like Trump and blood
Boris Johnson going to be any more cognisant of the lives and problems of the working class than
the liberals? And are they likely to do anything about those problems unless they simultaneously
line their own pockets? If, and it's a very big if, the interests of the working class and the
interests of Trump et al align somehow then there is a silver lining. If not, then the best we
can hope for is that liberals start to reconnect with the people they purport to represent.
the problem is.. are people like Trump and blood Boris Johnson going to be any more cognisant
of the lives and problems of the working class than the liberals?
No. But maybe, just maybe, the 'left-wing' parties will wake and remember what they are supposed
to be for.
Here's the other thing. Clinton and her mates at the New York Times and the Guardian are always
lecturing us on the need to be compassionate and welcoming towards refugees from faraway places
who would like to come and live among us, but there's never a moment of compassion for the people
who are already here and suffering miserably on the margins of our already unequal societies -
the unemployed and badly employed, the badly housed and homeless, those working sixty hours a
week on the minimum wage for some crappy agency. So, guess what. That's why people are voting
for stuff like Brexit and Trump.
If you lot in the metropolitan elite can't see this then you are doomed to keep repeating the
same mistakes.
Just like Silvio Berlusconi, Trumps opponents were incapable to escape the trap of trying to sling
shit at a candidate made out of teflon.
The Clinton camp tried to fight a war in the trenches...but Trump feeds of negativity, they
should have learnt early that nothing was too outrageous or controversial to tarnish him.
The closest they got was the misogyny accusations and even they didn't stick. Just like Berlusconi,
Trump the lover of pageantry and beautiful women was being portrayed as a woman hater but he cleverly
made it sound like he was hater of feminists instead of women.
The problem with Clinton is that she tried to play the integrity card but that was easily debunked
by Trump with email gate.
The voice of sanity. Thank you, Mr. Frank.
The Democratic Establishment didn't give a hoot about what Bernie had to say, because his presidency
would not have served their ambitions. They're more interested in getting nice jobs at Goldman
Sachs than controlling the finance industry. And their sons and daughters will not fight in all
the wars Clinton&Co see as great business opportunity.
The Dem establishment has failed the people, and now we all reep the whirlwind.
I agree with Frank's analysis though not his use of the word 'liberal' which has confusingly different
meanings. I think the same analysis could be used to explain Brexit.
The problem is a political class which wishes to maintain the status quo of a neo-liberal,
globalised economy. For 35 years this economy has redistributed wealth from the poor to the rich
and massively damaged the environment. It has thus disadvantaged the great majority of the people
in the USA, the UK and indeed people across the world. People are quite reasonably fed up with
the lies behind this 'trickle-down' economics. They are angry and want something different. The
vacuum created by the failure of the left to recognise this, and come up with a new solution,
has resulted in Trump, UKIP, Marine LePen etc.
No. I really think liberals have been their own worst enemies during this election.
They have treated ordinary white Americans as if they are shit, spoken about them in ways that
should make them hang their heads in shame and behaved as if they are living in a oligarchy where
they can call the shots instead of a democracy and now they are paying the price.
You can only kick a dog so many times before it turns around and bites you.
I would also question the term"liberals" to describe people who are happy seeing jobs moved
offshore, causing unemployment at home and slave labour conditions abroad; encouraging mass immigration
to bring wages down and create a powerless and easily exploitable servant class and globalisation
that provides them with a luxury lifestyle on the cheap while making it harder for just about
everyone else.
The only "liberal" thing about these people is their attitudes towards trivial personal issues
like sexuality and lifestyle choices.
Wise words from Frank - I hope the Guardian opinionators are made to read it
Clinton's supporters among the media didn't help much, either. It always struck me as strange
that such an unpopular candidate enjoyed such robust and unanimous endorsements from the editorial
and opinion pages of the nation's papers, but it was the quality of the media's enthusiasm
that really harmed her. With the same arguments repeated over and over, two or three times
a day, with nuance and contrary views all deleted, the act of opening the newspaper started
to feel like tuning in to a Cold War propaganda station. Here's what it consisted of:
Hillary was virtually without flaws. She was a peerless leader clad in saintly white, a
super-lawyer, a caring benefactor of women and children, a warrior for social justice.
Her scandals weren't real.
The economy was doing well / America was already great.
Working-class people weren't supporting Trump.
And if they were, it was only because they were botched humans. Racism was the only conceivable
reason for lining up with the Republican candidate.
Absolutely right. And I'm willing to wager the liberal response to this will be to double
down on the identity politics, double down on the victimhood narratives, double down on the march
toward globalism, and double down on the cries for open borders and ever-increasing levels of
immigration. They simply never learn.
It's very clear what happened this morning. Trump won because he picked up the white working
class vote in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Ohio, all of which had previously voted for Obama in
both 2008 and 2012. The people in these states didn't magically become racist over the past four
years. They saw a candidate (Clinton) who represented "business as usual", and they rejected her.
Excellent article. Summarises both Brexit as well as Trump's victory.
The stats are showing that Trump polled higher amongst African and Hispanic Americans. I am
not surprised. The Democrats, like the UK Labour party, like to think they OWN ethnic voters and
they are merely another 'special interest' group alongside women, gays, etc. They don't and us
ethnic voters have the same concerns as any other working or middle class voters. And NO ONE appreciates
being told they are wrong, racist and unintelligent.
This shows Social liberialism is dead and rotten. Well past its used by date, time to chuck
it out. It went off when supposed social justice warriors got into business with big business
and fickle finance.
The elites may be well educated but that they couldn't even bare to bring themselves to understand
the perspectives of another reveals how broadminded they really are - the journalists, academics
etc. They believed in democracy where only one way of thinking and the status quo could be permitted
to flourish. This is the most intelligent article to capture the social change that far too many
liberals are denying. How are they going deal with reality, ie. Are the majority of Americans
and British really racists? The greatest irony is this article is published within the vanguard
of what ordinary people are democratically retaliating against.
When you reach rock bottom the only way is to look up. The problem for the Liberalism of the Democratic
Party of the last three decades is that it has become a social scientific morality of the well
connected and completely unable to deal with the naked populism of Trump let alone the half baked
morass of crony capitalism of George Bush.
Lets be opportunistic. This gives it a chance to wipe the slate clean and at the very least rid
themselves of the influence of the Clintons who from the removal of Glass-Steagal Act demonstrated
their only concerns were with the needs of the Super Rich rather than the majority of the population.
Unfortunately you have that feeling that they are not even capable of doing that.
"Trump... a folly so bewildering, an incompetence so profound ..."
Har, har, har, the foolish and incompetent Trump is now president elect and you are a wise
and competent journalist who foresaw the future clearly.
Maybe you're the foolish incompetent, not Trump. Maybe you should examine the foolish certainty
which made you write your Guardian article headlined "With Trump certain to lose, you can forget
about a progressive Clinton" and many others based on foolish and incompetent assumptions, reasoning
and conclusions
Maybe you and all the rest of the useful idiots on the left should examine all of your convictions
about the world. You might discover how often you have been hoodwinked by your own folly into
believing trash like Trump will lose to Hillary, AGW is a real problem which can be corrected
by funneling trillions to crony capitalist alternative energy companies, fracking is dangerous
and the unlimited immigration of millions of young, able bodied, violent, low IQ men is a good
thing.
Trump will achieve nothing of what he's said he wants to do. Reversing the 'reverse colonisation'
of the white western world will fail, especially in the USA where, after all, the Afro-black population
didn't ask to move to in the first place (though I'll bet tend dollars dollars not a single Afro-black
American would opt for emigrating back to Africa, however much they complain about racial prejudice
in the USA - the financial advantages of living in the developed world are FAR too valuable for
that!).
As for the Hispanics, I doubt even a wall would stop them. The mass population of Central and
South America is far, far greater than that of 'white western America' and their third world economics
keep the USA and the developed world a desperate magnet for them (and I can't blame them - I'd
fight tooth and nail to get in to the rich west as well!)
Nope, the Trump victory is a sad, hopeless rearguard action against the triumph of twenty-first
century 'reverse colonisation' and that is that. The white western world is finished - the only
question is, can it 'westernise' the immigrant population in time to save the developed world,
or are we doomed to another Dark Ages of Global Third Worldism? (Maybe China will take over as
Islam did post Roman Empire, while Europe went savage...)
When you separate identity politics - race and gender - from inequality and class, which is what
Obama and Clinton both did, you end up with Donald Trump moving into the White House ......
The liberal argument has always been about the equality to exploit not an end to exploitation.
It was at the heart of New Labour as well as Obama/Clinton Democrats ...
For the last 30 odd years the liberal left have claimed class no longer mattered. Now the "white"
working class have twice given them a kicking in 2016. When you're at the bottom class really
matters!
And so Democratic leaders made Hillary their candidate even though they knew about her closeness
to the banks, her fondness for war, and her unique vulnerability on the trade issue – each
of which Trump exploited to the fullest.
I really like Thomas Frank, but I wish in this diatribe that he wouldn't cheapen the countless
(because the Americans don't count them) who have paid the price for Hillary's 'fondness for war'
by referring to it like that, in passing, as if it was a fondness for muffins.
I wish that he had a bit more righteous fury about how the crazed neocon warmongers who effectively
rule America and for whom Hillary was the latest acceptable face, with her almost total sense
of entitlement, based on the fact that she was a woman, acted like she was heading for a coronation.
Yes it would be great if a woman had been elected president, I can think of at least two others
one running, and one not, but doesn't even the most basic tenet of critical thinking require us
to ask searching questions, about the specific woman ?
He has run one of the lousiest presidential campaigns ever. In saying so I am not referring
to his much-criticized business practices or his vulgar remarks about women. I mean this in a
purely technical sense: this man fractured his own party.
But did he really 'fracture' his own party? From the superficial point of view, one might have
thought so. Many Democrats hope so.
But I'll suggest this. Anybody who is holding out the faint hope that he will work badly with
the GOP in Congress is going to be very disappointed. He's going to put his signature to virtually
everything they want. They're going to have a lot of fun together.
Even stuff which directly contradicts what he ran on and which upset many in the Republican establishment.
I'm thinking foreign policy and trade agreements.
And those in movement conservatism who didn't like him, like Glenn Beck and Erick Erickson?
Watch them do a 180 over the next six months.
Excellent article, about six months late, but hopefully not too late for liberals everywhere to
wake up to the idea that if you claim to want to help improve the lives of the working class you
better listen to them first, and connect with them second. I always thought laughing and sneering
at Trump and particularly his supporters was never going to work. And sure enough it didn't. Nobody
likes being patronised.
Sometimes you've got to have the courage to move beyond a rotting status quo and into a brave
new world. If you don't you leave the door open for something potentially much much worse to take
that opportunity.
How about doing a piece on how the press keep getting it wrong all the time, how you keep misjudging
the mood of the people, the zeitgeist, how afraid you are of change and how as a result you keep
siding with the establishment when the vast majority of people are fed up with its incessant inaction
and bullshit?
Youre letting the fascists in through the open door because youre too afraid to give up your priviledges
and go towards healthy change. You deserve what youre going to get because you spent too much
time on here waffling bullshit and not enough time on the streets listening to what people want.
Total cognitive dissonance. Social media is no good for assessing the mood of the people, its
for pussy cat photos and selfies.
The republicans feared change, but winning was more important to them. As incongruous as it may
seem, a billionaire businessman reached out to voters disenfranchised by some 30 years of partisan
parlour games. Maybe it'll dawn on the Democrats who they should be reaching out to and maybe
it'll dawn on the Republicans that there's more to being a politician than banging on about God
and being against abortion.
I don't like the guy and find some of his views abhorrent and would even have preferred HC,
but... but... this may be a wake up call for politics in America. Not sure it will be because
after Brexit, the finger was pointed at the London middle classes and older voters whereas the
strength of the vote came from the post-industrial heartland destroyed by Thatcher and virtually
ignored by both parties ever since. Still, we'll see.
"With the same arguments repeated over and over, two or three times a day, with nuance and contrary
views all deleted, the act of opening the newspaper started to feel like tuning in to a Cold War
propaganda station. "
Spot on analysis.
Let the soul-searching amongst the mainstream journalistic elites begin.
People have rspecially started to notice the "with nuance and all contrary views deleted" part.
That is part of the problem and part of the reason Trump got elected as a sort of collective middle
finger to the establishment by ordinary people who are sick of being told what to think and how
to think by unelected elites whose job it is supposed to be to report the FACTS, and not to dictate
what people are allowed to say or think. Because as a great person once said "Facts are sacred."
And as JS Mill said in his famous essay 'On Liberty' - we should not censor unpopular views because
even though the unpopular view may be incorrect we may come to a better understanding of why our
own view is correct by seeing its collision with error. (Quite apart from the fact that the unpopular
view is not always correct and by suppressing it we may never know the truth.)
I hope the mainstream media learn from this disaster and start living up to the ideals of the
intellectual founders of our liberal democracies such as JS Mill who would no doubt be appalled
at the lerhaps well intentioned but counterproductive censorsgip of views which run counter to
that of the prevailing orthodoxy.
It's because they believe we are stupid. The intellectual snobbery of the oxbridge set, think
they are better than us. Little suspecting that most of us can't be arsed with that shite.
The thing that keeps coming back to me with this election, as with Brexit, was the established
candidates ignoring what people were saying. In Brexit, the remain side utterly ignored immigration,
whilst the leave side focused on it. I don't think the remain side realised that immigration wasn't
just conjured up by Daily Mail headlines but was a genuine issue for many people.
In the US, Trump spoke openly about jobs; bringing them back and preventing outsourcing. Looking
again at trade deals to make sure American jobs were protected. Clinton's team ignored this.
Take heed for the future, politicians. Listen to what people actually say, not just the bits
they say that you agree with.
Indeed, that's the problem, a narrow political elite expecting the population to vote as they
think, rather than as the population think. The disconnect between the consensus and the politicians
is wide, the left in particular withdraws to the safety of it's narrow agenda when threatened
leaving the centre wide open.
"Cold War propaganda station. Here's what it consisted of:
- Hillary was virtually without flaws.
- She was a peerless leader clad in saintly white, a super-lawyer, a caring benefactor of women
and children, a warrior for social justice.
- Her scandals weren't real.
- The economy was doing well / America was already great.
- Working-class people weren't supporting Trump.
- If they were, it was only because they were botched humans. Racism was the only
conceivable reason for lining up with the Republican candidate."
Funny how all of these points were constantly touted in the Guardian... oh the ironny
The neoliberals weren't listening and probably still aren't listening. They will be blaming the
white working class rednecks but there isn't enough of white working class rednecks to cause this
upset. Professional neoliberal policians have neither the insight nor the intelligence to figure
out they are the problem, they alienated the people they ignored while looking after the rich.
We see the same problem in the Labour Party here. The neoliberal Blairites spent 13 years using
identity politics as a way to pretend to be radical while showing utter contempt for the white
(and black) working class. When they lost two elections and Scotland, they blamed the left, as
though no one could reject neoliberalism. Sorry professional neoliberal politicians, your days
of your front trotters in the trough are almost up, you are being rejected and anyone but you
seems to be the preference.
You, Sir or Madam, are a genius. Your analysis - like the analysis of the article - is spot on
and your prose is punchy, concise and grammatically correct. You should be pick of the day.
The neoliberals weren't listening and probably still aren't listening. They will be blaming the
white working class rednecks but there isn't enough of white working class rednecks to cause this
upset. Professional neoliberal policians have neither the insight nor the intelligence to figure
out they are the problem, they alienated the people they ignored while looking after the rich.
We see the same problem in the Labour Party here. The neoliberal Blairites spent 13 years using
identity politics as a way to pretend to be radical while showing utter contempt for the white
(and black) working class. When they lost two elections and Scotland, they blamed the left, as
though no one could reject neoliberalism. Sorry professional neoliberal politicians, your days
of your front trotters in the trough are almost up, you are being rejected and anyone but you
seems to be the preference.
You, Sir or Madam, are a genius. Your analysis - like the analysis of the article - is spot on
and your prose is punchy, concise and grammatically correct. You should be pick of the day.
Very interesting, and striking, parallels with Brexit. A disaffected majority, who don't believe
they are listened to, rally round people who speak their language, engage with their fears and
concerns and give them easy solutions to difficult problems.
Both decisions are tragically wrong, in my view, but its clear there is a huge disconnect between
those on the left (notional or otherwise) and their usual target voters.
Absolutely spot on. And broadly applicable right across the western world. It wasn't Hillary the
personality, or Hillary the crook, or Hillary the incompetent who lost the election.
It was the Hillary the archetypal representative of the smug 'n' shabby liberal stitch-up that's
done us all over, basking in its meritocratic delusions, and raising all the ladders (and greasing
the sides) to the lifeboats in which those delusions were acted out to delusional acclaim...
...even as it was busy handing the world over first (greedily) to transnational capitalism
and now (stupidly) to the marauding squads of pinhead fascists that'll be everywhere in the US
within weeks, maybe days. A couple of million George fucking pinhead Zimmermans.
"Socialism or Barbarism" (rings truer and truer!) is a choice that excludes liberalism only
because liberalism is too morally and aesthetically insubstantial to make the cut. Imagine the
choice in the form of a movie, and liberalism would be the twitching little grass who betrays
the hero for the price of a bottle of White Lighting.
(In real life it's not a bottle of cider, of course: it's more likely a nice old house in a
gentrified area that still holds on to the charming character of the people it displaced,
some of whom spend 5 hours a day on the bus to come back and work in the charming shops
and eateries, or as nannies and cleaners....).
This is a very good piece (as you'd expect from a cultural critic as smart as Frank is), but it
really needs to be read alongside Adolph L. Reed's
excoriating
article in Harper's from 2014, "Nothing Left: The Slow Surrender of American Liberals":
The left has no particular place it wants to go. And, to rehash an old quip, if you have
no destination, any direction can seem as good as any other. The left careens from this oppressed
group or crisis moment to that one, from one magical or morally pristine constituency or source
of political agency (youth/students; undocumented immigrants; the Iraqi labor movement; the
Zapatistas; the urban "precariat"; green whatever; the black/Latino/LGBT "community"; the grassroots,
the netroots, and the blogosphere; this season's worthless Democrat; Occupy; a "Trotskyist"
software engineer elected to the Seattle City Council) to another. It lacks focus and stability;
its métier is bearing witness, demonstrating solidarity, and the event or the gesture. Its
reflex is to "send messages" to those in power, to make statements, and to stand with or for
the oppressed.
We are in a very bad place right now, in terms of ideas and arguments. The opposition, in pretty
much every western hemisphere country, has been colonised by the same people: professional politicians,
upper-middle-class in social background, educated at the same small group of elite universities,
reflexively committed to meritocratic ideology. They're very good at expressing sympathy for the
marginalised, at saying the right words, at, as Reed says, "sending messages" and engaging in
representational politics. But all those gestures do nothing for the constituencies they supposedly
represent. They're ultimately selfish -- focussed on their own career advancement and the narrow
class interests of the meritocratic-professional elite itself. The opposition, as Frank himself
once said, "has ceased to oppose" in any economically meaningful sense. (Although they're very
good at symbolic forms of opposition on cultural and historical issues.)
And now their constituencies have noticed and have withdrawn their votes.
according to exit polls every section of white America, old, young, affluent, low-income, educated/not
voted Trump, all bar 'young college educated white females', older college educated white females
also voted Trump.
Same here with Brexit, voting patterns show the all white groups voted out, nothing to do with
education levels, income or age.
The pundits write about 'the crisis of liberalism',, hhmmm, I think it should more be 'the rejection
of illiberal openess'. When we say 'immigration needs to be reduced' the 'elites' reach for the
favourite fall back 'you're a white that's racist/fascist/backward/uneducated' etc etc etc response.
Well, turns out, the white part is right, the rest is just class based ignorance. Clinton was
the absolute embodiment of this type of ignorance and arrogance. That basket of deplorables thing
was disgusting, I felt personally insulted by it myself (i'm in the UK). Absolute standard 'elite'
arrogance and hatred of those that don't agree with you. She's just paid for that hate by alienating
absolutely EVERY SINGLE section of white America.
Trump's politics is a rejection of a globalism that has damaged the interests of so many, we're
all far far too open to the forces of the world coming in at us from all directions, Catholics
in Eastern Europe are not allowed their Christian values, are smeared as backward and ordered
by foreign 'elites' in Brussels to drop all that they hold dear or face fines. We've all watched
as the Remoaners showed to the world just exactly how 'tolerant' and 'accepting' they are of those
they don't agree with, erupting into a torrent of class based ignorance and venomous hatred.
Well, they've all been at all this for far too long, and we're all pushing back against it. Spew
race based hate at those that don't agree with you, BBC journalists shouting 'Nazi, fascist, racist'
at any slight tightening up of immigration, Hilary Clinton labelling most white working-class
a basket of fascist deployarables and hey presto, you lose to a repulsive cartoon like Trump.
They need to start thinking on about just exactly who it is in reality that's the race haters.
Most are on the Left.
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Given that Republicans have been opposed to intervention by Big Government at least since the
Great Depression if Trump gets the go ahead for some of his ideas it will be a case of 4 legs
good 2 legs better.
With the same arguments repeated over and over, two or three times a day, with nuance and
contrary views all deleted, the act of opening the newspaper started to feel like tuning in
to a Cold War propaganda station.
Quite so. And now the elitist corporate media which got everything wrong, including their highly
confident predictions about the result, will now tell you in a highly confident manner all the
things that are going to happen as a result of the thing they said wouldn't happen. First to dash
off a thousand words of hyperventilating predictions?
Jonathan Freedland , so top marks to him for speed, if nothing else.
Interesting article, and in a way I sensed it coming unfortunately, at least in the meaning that
I have always felt that certain liberal and "progressive" thoughts are just too alien from basic
human nature, and are being forced to enter the mainstream a bit too fast, and that this is a
huge risk in the sense that when people decide they are not ready for these and it's time to reject
them properly, then all the valuable, truly liberating and forward-thinking ideas will be drained
along with them and that means dark times ahead indeed.
I am from Eastern-Europe, and, while I don't have a lot of personal memories of the communist
times myself, most of the liberal bits of my cultural heritage comes from the counter-culture,
a lot of the things we value today in my country were, albeit not necessarily all illegal as such,
certainly more of the taboo sort, than they would have been in the West. Now it looks like that
with all this Brexit and America, the West will have to learn to use the liberal thinking to serve
as meaningful criticism of the system that will be built in the future by these new people. It's
the Westerner's turn now, to learn to read between the lines and produce culture with purpose
other than entertainment (if there is any positive side to this, then it should be the rise of
new, creative movies and the end of the high-budget superhero era, and the birth of music with
lyrics worth listening to lol, that's what I keep telling myself as my silver lining for now at
least.)
It's obviously difficult to compare, nothing, in the entire world at the time was this commercialised
and business and technology and life and everything was obviously very different. And, crucially,
whilst the commies declared themselves to be ruling in the name of the common working people,
they had their own breed of intellectuals, at least in my country, there was an approved bunch
of scientists, artists etc, who could stretch it and provide some sense. So, worryingly enough,
from this point of view I wouldn't say they were comparable to the type of anti-intellectualist
mob rule seemingly putting these people into power, and that is my real fear, that these new rulers
will not even have their own bunch of approved scientists who might not approve the views of atheists
or feminists or whatever, but would at least be ready to provide these new governments with sound
advice on the environment, education, health, etc.
I'm not sure how avoidable this could have been in reality, but it should have been, because
we have no time for such ideological bullsh*t games (excuse my words), the damage we are doing
to our own, living planet is becoming irreparable, and we really, absolutely, from all backgrounds
and cultures must work together to basically stay alive.
The arrogance and snotty mindedness of the progressive liberal establishment has be dealt a righteous
slap in the face which they have been asking for, for decades. The Revolt of the Deplorables.
This was the winter of our discontent. Now it is our turn.
Time will tell whether this upset is the beginning of a much better era in the U.S.
I voted for Trump not because I like him (personally I find him repulsive) but because he was
a wrecking ball and a sledge hammer to be used against the liberal progressives that have been
running the U.S. into the ground for decades.
This the Moment of the Ticked Off Deplorables.
This is also a surprise. This is the most exciting time since Truman defeated Dewey.
Except it was the Republicans (not the "white collar liberals") who deregulated the Wall Street
banks. It was the Republicans who gave tax breaks to the wealthy 1% and it was the Republicans
who got rid of welfare. The biggest con of all? That the majority of uneducated Americans who
just voted Republican, think that the GOP represent thier interests and it's all the fault of
the "liberals". We are without doubt witnessing the beginning of the end of the American empire...
We are without doubt witnessing the beginning of the end of the American empire...
And about time, too! That said, you are right about the GOP being the party of deregulation,
tax-breaks for the rich etc. but since in the 35 years since Reagan, when bank deregulation began
in earnest (I know, Nixon repealed the Gold Standard), we have had 16 years of Democratic rule,
and NOTHING has been done to reverse it; in fact, quite the opposite. Most of the damage was done
between Clinton (who repealed Glass-Steigel) and his chairman of the Fed, Alan Greenspan.
We are without doubt witnessing the beginning of the end of the American empire...
And about time, too! That said, you are right about the GOP being the party of deregulation,
tax-breaks for the rich etc. but since in the 35 years since Reagan, when bank deregulation began
in earnest (I know, Nixon repealed the Gold Standard), we have had 16 years of Democratic rule,
and NOTHING has been done to reverse it; in fact, quite the opposite. Most of the damage was done
between Clinton (who repealed Glass-Steigel) and his chairman of the Fed, Alan Greenspan.
Thomas Frank is right on the money. People voted for Trump precisely because both parties represent
business as usual and people are sick of it. Same with Brexit.
ank is right on the money. People voted for Trump precisely because both parties represent
business as usual and people are sick of it. Same with Brexit.
The silent majority,the ones who go to work pay their taxes and quietly get on with life have
spoken. Don't underestimate us. We're intelligent, humble and caring. We're entitled to a view.
We've had enough, we don't have to bully scream and shout to get our way, we go down to the polling
station and we put a cross in the box we feel passionately about and we go home back to our quiet
lives-job done.Well done the people of America,you have had the equivalent to our Brexit and now
let's get the world back to how it should be. One of the most satisfying parts is listening to
the Lefties,Luvvies and BBC crying their eyes out. The times they are a changing.
It is a liberalism of the rich, it has failed the middle class, and now it has failed on its
own terms of electability. Enough with these comfortable Democrats and their cozy Washington system.
Enough with Clintonism and its prideful air of professional-class virtue. Enough!
Amen to that. Thank you, Thomas Frank, for articles such as this one. A lone voice of progressive
reason at the Guardian (neo)liberal circus.
We need to overhaul the DNC, as well as the Guardian and NYT editorial boards.
She was the Democratic candidate because it was her turn and because a Clinton victory would
have moved every Democrat in Washington up a notch.
Spot on. And this is exactly the misery that infects both wings of the Labour Party.
People in politics jostling for power and status, like it's a hobby for them, a kind of shoot-em
up where the consequences of policy affect only other people.
Cameron and Johnson and all the slime of the Tory party suffer from the same disease.
Why do you want to be prime minister, you spam faced Tefal foreheaded dilettante?
"Well, I think I'd be rather good at it."
Well, you weren't. You were awful at it, because you had no basic guiding principles, just
like all the other dilettantes from Eton and all the other posh boy Petri dishes where hubris
is cultivated.
"... He overcame all the odds, beat back both political parties, jumped around all the powerful special interest industries that own Washington and scored an unprecedented victory for the people. ..."
"... And he did it all while circumventing the massive media machine that worked in lockstep unison to block him at every turn. Every mainstream newspaper and television outlet - after months of gorging themselves at the profit trough of his monster ratings - shirked all pretense of covering the election fairly. ..."
"... Mr. Trump - excuse me, President-elect Trump - was smeared as a racist, xenophobic misogynist with tiny hands and a small bank account. ..."
"... these people have no one to blame but themselves and the outgoing current President, Barack Obama, who promised them the world and promised all of us a healed country. "Post-racial" they were calling it in 2008. ..."
"... Well, he has surely failed on that score. Race relations in this country have not been this ugly and strained in decades. The president's divisive, racialist language and posture throughout his presidency has set the country back many, many painful years. ..."
He overcame all the odds, beat back both political parties, jumped around all the powerful special
interest industries that own Washington and scored an unprecedented victory for the people.
And he did it all while circumventing the massive media machine that worked in lockstep unison
to block him at every turn. Every mainstream newspaper and television outlet - after months of gorging
themselves at the profit trough of his monster ratings - shirked all pretense of covering the election
fairly.
Mr. Trump - excuse me, President-elect Trump - was smeared as a racist, xenophobic misogynist
with tiny hands and a small bank account.
Then he beat the last GOP standard-bearer among blacks and Hispanics. Even Hillary Clinton's much
ballyhooed appeal to women shrank a bit from President Obama's levels in the past two elections.
Those right there are the single most devastating statistics out of the whole election. The mainstream
media has cried wolf for the last time. Nobody is listening to any of them anymore.
The only people left believing these liars and slime artists are these melting snowflakes calling
in sick and hovering in safe places under their beds - the dopes marching in the streets demanding
civility as they shout threats to grab Trump by his genitals.
Or these thug criminals beating the tar out of a Trump voter at a street intersection.
These snowflakes need to tread very, very carefully because these kinds of wild and violent and
ugly demonstrations will only strengthen President-elect Trump and his now-vocal majority.
Anyway, these people have no one to blame but themselves and the outgoing current President, Barack
Obama, who promised them the world and promised all of us a healed country. "Post-racial" they were
calling it in 2008.
Well, he has surely failed on that score. Race relations in this country have not been this ugly
and strained in decades. The president's divisive, racialist language and posture throughout his
presidency has set the country back many, many painful years.
Now we have a new president. He sweeps into office with a clear and bold mandate from the people.
Trump took what should have been democrats' issues. Clinton should simply have tried
to take all of Sanders positions, working with Sanders, and then position Trump as the faker who
was taking the dems positions. Alas, she did not.
Clinton made her usual lame, transparent attempts to co-opt Sanders' positions, but being
Clinton, few people **believe** her.
Sanders backers always said that Clinton was almost uniquely capable of losing to a fraud like
Trump, and here, apparently -- tragically -- we are.
And believing Dems will learn not one goddam thing. Expect the special pleading and blame-shifting
to amp up to jet engine levels. Already Saint Krugman has smeared the Greens for Clinton's loss
in Florida, which seems to mathematically impossible by an order of magnitude.
Clinton lost **Pennsylvania**, for Christ's sake! She seems to have lost Philly!! How does
an even semi-competent candidate pull that off?!?!?
...And Clintonians spent decades claiming neoliberalism was necessary to get moderate voters
who went for Reagan, and that liberalism is too unpopular to win an election. They stuck to that
script in post-Great Recession America, which is not post-Reagan America.
And they stuck with a candidate who has zero ability to get independent voters. Her leftward
moves in response to Sanders on college tuition and more funding for health clinics (which Sanders
said would achieve free primary care in the US) would have got out the vote, but she preferred
to talk in infuriating platitudes and smear Trump as a Russian puppet to get the patriotic vote.
"... but she preferred to talk in infuriating platitudes and smear Trump as a Russian
puppet to get the patriotic vote."
This, I think, is a valid criticism. Hillary and the older Dems were truly out of touch
on this issue and failed to understand how poorly it played with the electorate (which is sad,
because there are some real serious issues with Russia right now). Likewise, they failed to grasp
how desperate Millennials / Rural whites have gotten and thus how important fixing the economy
was for them.
Fix that on "we came, we saw, he died......" with a post up his you know where! Or the no fly
zone thing to give another country to the foundation donors' terrorists. You all missed the point!
All the people don't see what you want us to! You could fool enough of the people when you
needed to!
The Russia nonsense was always overblown, typical Dem tactical ineptitude. I wouldn't be
surprised if it backfired to Trump's advantage.
Dems never stopped to consider that
Any mention of foreign data leakage had to remind people of Clinton's FOIA-avoiding server
escapades, and
You can find lots of Dem "consultants" and "strategists" who themselves have lucrative
histories with sleazy overseas characters (Podesta, Biden's son, etc.).
"The Russia nonsense was always overblown, typical Dem tactical ineptitude. I wouldn't
be surprised if it backfired to Trump's advantage."
From a campaign prospective, right conclusion. Wrong reason. Pushing the Russia connection
damaged Hillary because it played up her "War Hawk" and "Military Industrial complex" ties for
the public, which in turn strengthened the corporocrat accusation.
Worse, to the informed it smelled like W's push for war, and thus reminded everyone of Hillary's
vote on Iraq. And those things hurt.
Clinton is with Bill unmitigated war mongering neoliberalNeocon/ The Clinton Iraq vote
was purely animus! Stepping away is prevarication. What went into Qaddafi was pure evil sent by
Obama and his SecState.
Clinton was more into Sunni/GCC money and influence peddling. The Russian/Putin thing was
fantasy! The main stream media [Stalinist] propaganda did not sell in the 5 key states that went
red from blue.
No, the point is the dems are crooked, Clinton was selected by the DNC (calling it crooked
is repeating myself). I am convinced the US dodged a very severe mistake by electing Trump!
I thought Obama blew it in his first hundred days, when he refused to take on Wall Street,
and instead played idiotic bipartisanship games with totally (and obviously) intransigent Republicans.
But more recently I figured that at least he got the Iran deal going, and that looked like a significant
gain for sanity. Now, if I understand Trump's ramblings on every other Tuesday, the deal is vulnerable.
You mean declare martial law and send the Marines into capture Wall Street, and ship them to
Gitmo? Or didn't you notice the Republicans legalizing financial fraud over the past 40 years?
If you like I can detail the dozen major steps beginning circa 1970 like the camel nose unto
the tent. Step one: retail money market funds as an alternative to bank savings accounts. They
were a big fraud: "safer than FDIC bank savings accounts".
Yes, totally agree with the point that Obama did not understand the strategic moment and
instead aligned himself in a way that legitimized the opposition's points.
Simpson Bowles was benighted. TPP was senseless. How could a party that stood for working
people give away social security and then try to give away jobs some more. Strategists should
have been screaming that this was positioning the party in a way that was opposite to what the
party had stood for in opposition to the republican elite.
Of course, Clinton was the wrong candidate as she is a archetype, tied to Trade deals, Glass
Steagel and even the Iraq war.
I would like to see the democratic party stand fir work in the US.
"Simpson Bowles was benighted. TPP was senseless. How could a party that stood for working people
give away social security and then try to give away jobs some more...."
Just wanted to say, good tactical analysis there.
srbarbour -> sglover... , -1
"I thought Obama blew it in his first hundred days, when he refused to take on Wall Street, and
instead played idiotic bipartisanship games with totally (and obviously) intransigent Republicans."
Hard to say, 2009 had a very different atmosphere and there was a very real desire in the electorate
to return to bipartisanship. Plus, bipartisanship was kind of a major Obama campaign promise.
That said, the only gain Dems got from that was a general fuzzy, awareness the Republican partisanship
is one-sided. A boon that is now tactically useless because the Republicans will control every
branch of the government. So in hindsight, pure fail. However, forgiveable in context.
Anybody but the brain dead could see HRC ran a lazy campaign focused on a non-issue. It's clear
she expected certain quarters of the population's loyalty in voting but offered them nothing.
One hopes these libs begin to wake up.
DemoRats lost working class votes. may be forever (or as long as they stay neoliberal DemoRats).
This is an important defeats of Bill Clinton, who sold the party to wall Street.
Notable quotes:
"... On Thursday night, People for Bernie, a tech-savvy progressive group with ties to Sanders, told CNN it was backing Ellison as a first step in displacing Clinton loyalists with "a leadership untainted by cozy relationships to Wall St. moneymen, corporate behemoths, dictators, or monarchs." ..."
"... In a jab at Dean, People for Bernie co-founder Charles Lenchner added, "Any 50-state strategy must begin with a 50-state accountability project; we reject any effort to unite the party behind the agents of a failed leadership." ..."
As Democrats reel in the wake of Donald Trump's stunning victory, a new storm is brewing inside
the party as competing factions begin to grapple for its leadership.
Howard Dean, who ran the Democratic National Committee from 2005 to 2009, announced on Thursday he
would again seek its top role. Soon after he announced, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and his top allies
began pushing Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison for the role.
But other politicos expressed interest in the job Friday. Former presidential candidate Martin
O'Malley announced that he is throwing his hat in the ring.
"Since the election, I have been approached by many Democrats who believe our party needs new leadership,"
said the former Maryland Governor. "I'm taking a hard look at DNC Chair because I know how badly
we need to reform our nominating process, articulate a bold progressive vision, recommit ourselves
to higher wages and a stronger middle class, and return to our roots as a nationwide, grassroots
party."
New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman and DNC Vice Chair Ray Buckley is exploring a run, according
to the Boston Globe.
... ... ...
Sanders -- a registered independent who caucuses with Democrats and fought a lengthy primary battle
for the party's nomination this year -- and top allies are touting Ellison for the job. The Muslim-American
congressman currently co-chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
... ... ...
On Thursday night, People for Bernie, a tech-savvy progressive group with ties to Sanders,
told CNN it was backing Ellison as a first step in displacing Clinton loyalists with "a leadership
untainted by cozy relationships to Wall St. moneymen, corporate behemoths, dictators, or monarchs."
In a jab at Dean, People for Bernie co-founder Charles Lenchner added, "Any 50-state strategy
must begin with a 50-state accountability project; we reject any effort to unite the party behind
the agents of a failed leadership."
The current head of the DNC is Donna Brazile, a longtime Democratic operative and former CNN contributor,
who is leading in an interim capacity after Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned on the eve of the convention.
Hacked emails appeared to show Wasserman Schultz and other since-departed DNC officials discussing
ways to undermine Sanders' effort to oust Clinton in the primary.
DemoRats lost working class votes. may be forever (or as long as they stay neoliberal DemoRats).
This is an important defeats of Bill Clinton, who sold the party to wall Street.
Notable quotes:
"... But aides said the Clinton campaign's top strategists largely ignored the former president, instead focusing on consolidating the base of voters that helped elect President Barack Obama to the White House. In the closing days of the campaign, Clinton targeted young people, Hispanics and African-Americans with laser like focus, casting Trump as a racist who only sought the presidency to benefit himself. ..."
The campaign communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, said in a statement Friday that "no one
anticipated" losing. She said many factors were at work, but she listed Comey as chief among them.
"We didn't blame everyone but ourselves," Palmieri said. "We acknowledged a lot of challenges we
faced, plenty of mistakes made along the way, some challenges we weren't able to overcome."
She added: "What changed in the last week that made his turn out go up and our's go down? The only
thing apparent was Comey. It was one thing too many. Could not overcome it."
Democrats close to Bill Clinton said Thursday that one mistake Clinton's top aides made was not listening
to the former president more when he urged the campaign to spend more time focusing on disaffected
white, working class voters.
Many in Clinton's campaign viewed these voters as Trump's base, people so committed to the Republican
nominee that no amount of visits or messaging could sway them. Clinton made no visits to Wisconsin
as the Democratic nominee, and only pushed a late charge in Michigan once internal polling showed
the race tightening.
Bill Clinton, advisers said, pushed the campaign early on to focus on these voters, many of whom
helped elected him twice to the White House. The former president, a Clinton aide said, would regularly
call Robby Mook to talk about strategy and offer advice.
But aides said the Clinton campaign's top strategists largely ignored the former president,
instead focusing on consolidating the base of voters that helped elect President Barack Obama to
the White House. In the closing days of the campaign, Clinton targeted young people, Hispanics and
African-Americans with laser like focus, casting Trump as a racist who only sought the presidency
to benefit himself.
"... Some of those applications are coming from the #NeverTrump crowd, the source said, and include former national security officials who signed one or more of the letters opposing Trump. ..."
"... Fifty GOP national security experts signed an August letter saying Trump "would put at risk our country's national security and well-being" because he "lacks the character, values and experience" to occupy the Oval Office, making him "the most reckless president in American history." ..."
"... Another bipartisan letter cited concern about potential foreign conflicts of interest Trump might encounter as president, and called on him to disclose them by releasing his tax returns. Trump has refused to do so, saying he is under audit and will make the returns public only once that is done. ..."
The extraordinary repudiation -- partly based on Trump's rejection of basic US foreign policy
tenets, including support for close allies -- helped spark the hashtag #NeverTrump. Now, a source
familiar with transition planning says that hard wall of resistance is crumbling fast.
There are "boxes" of applications, the source said. "There are many more than people realize."
Some of those applications are coming from the #NeverTrump crowd, the source said, and include
former national security officials who signed one or more of the letters opposing Trump. "Mea
culpas" are being considered -- and in some cases being granted, the source said -- for people who
did not go a step further in attacking Trump personally.
... ... ...
Fifty GOP national security experts signed an August letter saying Trump "would put at risk
our country's national security and well-being" because he "lacks the character, values and experience"
to occupy the Oval Office, making him "the most reckless president in American history."
Another bipartisan letter cited concern about potential foreign conflicts of interest Trump might
encounter as president, and called on him to disclose them by releasing his tax returns. Trump has
refused to do so, saying he is under audit and will make the returns public only once that is done.
It remains to be seen what kind of team Trump will pull together, how many "NeverTrumpers" will apply
for positions and to what degree the President-elect will be willing to accept them.
There's a fight underway within the Trump transition team about whether to consider "never Trumpers"
for jobs, one official tells CNN. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who is leading the transition
team, has been working to persuade Trump and other top officials to consider Republicans who openly
opposed his campaign. That has caused some friction with those who see no place for people who didn't
support their candidate.
"... Prioritizing foreign over domestic policy, Jackson's former aides Richard Perle , Douglas Feith , and Elliott Abrams - along with some fellow travelers like Paul Wolfowitz - eventually shifted their allegiance to the right-wing Republican Ronald Reagan. They formed an important pro-Israel, "peace through strength" nucleus within the new president's foreign policy team. ..."
John Feffer Director, Foreign Policy
In Focus and Editor, LobeLog Much has been made of the swing in political allegiances of neoconservatives
in favor of Hillary Clinton.
As a group, Washington's neocons are generally terrified of Trump's unpredictability and his flirtation
with the alt-right. They also support Clinton's more assertive foreign policy (not to mention her
closer relationship to Israel). Perhaps, too, after eight long years in the wilderness, they're daydreaming
of an appointment or two in a Clinton administration.
This group of previously staunch Republicans, who believe in using American military power to
promote democracy, build nations, and secure U.S. interests abroad, have defected in surprising numbers.
Washington Post columnist
Robert Kagan , the Wall Street Journal 's
Bret Stephens , and the
Foreign
Policy Initiative 's
James Kirchick have all endorsed Clinton. Other prominent neocons like The National Review
's William Kristol
, the Wall Street Journal 's
Max Boot , and SAIS's
Eliot Cohen have rejected
Trump but not quite taken the leap to supporting Clinton.
A not particularly large or well-defined group, neoconservatives have attracted a disproportionate
amount of attention in this election. For the Trump camp, these Republican defectors merely prove
that the elite is out to get their candidate, thus reinforcing his outsider credentials (never mind
that Trump initially
wooed neocons like Kristol).
For the left , the neocons are flocking to support a bird of their feather, at least when it
comes to foreign policy, which reflects badly on Clinton. The mainstream media, meanwhile, is attracted
to the man-bites-dog aspect of the story (news flash: members of the vast right-wing conspiracy support
Clinton!).
As we come to the end of the election campaign, which has been more a clash of personalities than
of ideologies, the neocon defections offer a much more interesting storyline. As the Republican Party
potentially coalesces around a more populist center, the neocons are the canary in the coal mine.
Their squawking suggests that the American political scene is about to suffer a cataclysm. What will
that mean for U.S. foreign policy?
A History of Defection
The neoconservative movement began within the Democratic Party. Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a Democrat
from Washington State, carved out a new position in the party with his liberal domestic policies
and hardline Cold War stance. He was a strong booster of civil rights and environmental legislation.
At the same time, he favored military build-up and a stronger relationship with Israel. He was also
dismayed with the Nixon administration's détente with the Soviet Union.
Prioritizing foreign over domestic policy, Jackson's former aides
Richard Perle
, Douglas Feith
, and Elliott
Abrams - along with some fellow travelers like
Paul Wolfowitz
- eventually shifted their allegiance to the right-wing Republican Ronald Reagan. They formed
an important pro-Israel, "peace through strength" nucleus within the new president's foreign policy
team.
At the end of the Reagan era, their commitment to such policies as regime change in the Middle
East, confrontation with Russia, and opposition to multilateral institutions like the United Nations
brought them into conflict with realists in the George H.W. Bush administration. So many of them
defected once again to support Bill Clinton.
Writes
Jim Lobe:
A small but not insignificant number of them, repelled by George H.W. Bush's realpolitik, and
more specifically his Middle East policy and pressure on then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to
join the Madrid peace conference after the first Gulf War, deserted the party in 1992 and publicly
endorsed Bill Clinton. Richard Schifter, Morris Amitay of the Jewish Institute for National Security
Affairs, Angier Biddle Duke, Rita Freedman of the Social Democrats USA, neocon union leaders John
Joyce and Al Shanker, Penn Kemble of the Institute for Religion and Democracy, James Woolsey,
Marty Peretz of The New Republic, and Joshua Muravchik of the American Enterprise Institute all
signed a much-noted ad in The New York Times in August 1992 endorsing Clinton's candidacy. Their
hopes of thus being rewarded with top positions in a Clinton administration were crushed.
The flirtation with Clinton's Democratic Party was short-lived. Woolsey, Schifter, and Kemble
received appointments in the Clinton administration, but the neocons in general were unhappy with
their limited influence, Clinton's (albeit inconsistent) multilateralism, and the administration's
reluctance to intervene militarily in Rwanda, Somalia, and Bosnia. Disenchantment turned to anger
and then to organizing. In 1997, many of the same people who worked for Scoop Jackson and embraced
Ronald Reagan put together
the Project for the New American Century in an effort to preserve and expand America's post-Cold
War unilateral power.
A handful of votes in Florida in 2000 and the attacks on September 11 the following year combined
to give the neocons a second chance at transforming U.S. foreign policy. Dick Cheney became perhaps
the most powerful vice president in modern American history, with Scooter Libby as his national security
adviser. Donald Rumsfeld became secretary of defense, with Paul Wolfowitz as his deputy and Feith
as head of the policy office. Elliott Abrams joined the National Security Council, and so on. Under
their guidance, George W. Bush abandoned all pretense of charting a more modest foreign policy and
went on a militarist bender.
The foreign policy disasters of the Bush era should have killed the careers of everyone involved.
Unfortunately, there are plenty of think tanks and universities that value access over intelligence
(or ethics) - and even the most incompetent and craven administration officials after leaving office
retain their contacts (and their arrogance).
Those who worry that the neocons will be rewarded for their third major defection - to Reagan,
to Bill Clinton, and now to Hillary Clinton - should probably focus elsewhere. After all, the Democratic
nominee this year doesn't have to go all the way over to the far right for advice on how to construct
a more muscular foreign policy. Plenty of mainstream think tanks - from
the Center for a New American Security on the center-right to the leftish
Center for American Progress - are offering their advice on how to "restore balance" in how the
United States relates to the world. Many of these positions - how to push back against Russia, take
a harder line against Iran, and ratchet up pressure on Assad in Syria - are not very different from
neocon talking points.
But the defections do herald a possible sea change in party alignment. And that will influence
the trajectory of U.S. foreign policy.
The Walking Dead
The Republican Party has been hemorrhaging for nearly a decade. The Tea Party dispatched many
party centrists - Jim Leach, Richard Lugar - who once could achieve a measure of bipartisanship in
Congress. The overwhelming whiteness of the party, even before the ascendance of Trump, made it very
difficult to recruit African Americans and Latinos in large numbers. And now Trump has driven away
many of the professionals who have served in past Republican administrations, including the small
clique of neoconservatives.
What remains is enough to win state and local elections in certain areas of the country. But it's
not enough to win nationally. Going forward, with the further demographic shift away from white voters,
this Republican base will get older and smaller. Moreover, on foreign policy, the Trumpistas are
leading the party in a
nationalist,
apocalyptic direction that challenges the party leadership (in emphasis if not in content).
It's enough to throw dedicated Republicans into despair. Avik Roy, who was an advisor to the presidential
campaigns of Marco Rubio, Mitt Romney, and Rick Perry,
told
This American Life :
I think the Republican Party is a lost cause. I don't think the Republican Party is capable
of fixing itself, because the people who are most passionate about voting Republican today are
the Trump voters. And what politician is going to want to throw those voters away to attract some
unknown coalition of the future?
One of his Republican compatriots, Rob Long, had this to say on the podcast about how anti-Trump
survivors who stick with the party will navigate the post-election landscape:
It'll be like The Walking Dead, right? We're going to try to come up with bands of people and
walk across the country. And let's not get ourselves killed or eaten and hook up with people we
think are not insane or horrible or in some way murderous.
Coming out of this week's elections, here's my guess of what will happen. The Republican Party
will continue to be torn apart by three factions: a dwindling number of moderates like Susan Collins
(R-ME), right-wing fiscal conservatives like Paul Ryan (R-WI), and burn-the-house-down Trumpsters
like Jeff Sessions (R-AL). Foreign policy won't be much of an issue for the party because it will
be shut out of the White House for 12 years running and will focus instead on primarily domestic
questions. Perhaps the latter two categories will find a way to repair their breach; perhaps the
party will split in two; perhaps Trump supporters will engineer a hostile takeover.
The Democratic Party, meanwhile, may suffer as a result of its success. After all, how can a single
party play host to both Bernie Sanders and
Robert Kagan ?
How can the party promote both guns and butter? How can Hillary Clinton preserve Obama's diplomatic
successes - the Iran deal, the Cuba détente, the efforts to contain climate change - and be more
assertive militarily? Whatever unity the party managed during the elections will quickly fall apart
when it comes to governing.
In one sense, Clinton may well resurrect the neocon legacy by embracing a more or less progressive
domestic policy (which would satisfy the Sanderistas) and a more hawkish foreign policy (which would
satisfy all the foreign policy mandarins from both parties who supported her candidacy).
At the same time, a new political axis is emerging: internationalists vs. insularists, with the
former gathering together in the Democratic Party and the latter seeking shelter in a leaky Republican
Party. But this categorization conceals the tensions within each project. Internationalists include
both fans of the UN and proponents of unilateral U.S. military engagement overseas. Insularists,
who have not turned their back on the world quite as thoroughly as isolationists, include both xenophobic
nationalists and those who want to spend war dollars at home.
The trick of it for progressives is to somehow steal back the Democratic Party from the aggressive
globalists and recapture those Trump voters who are tired of supporting war and wealthy transnational
corporations. Or, perhaps in the wake of the Republican Party's collapse, progressives could create
a new party that challenges Clinton and the neocons.
One thing is for certain, however. With a highly unpopular president about to take office and
one of the major political parties on life support, the current political moment is highly unstable.
Something truly remarkable could emerge. Or voters in 2020 might face something even more monstrous
than what has haunted this election cycle.
It also remains to be seen how the Oligarchy will respond to Trump's victory. Wall Street and
the Federal Reserve can cause an economic crisis in order to put Trump on the defensive, and they
can use the crisis to force Trump to appoint one of their own as Secretary of the Treasury. Rogue
agents in the CIA and Pentagon can cause a false flag attack that would disrupt friendly relations
with Russia. Trump could make a mistake and retain neoconservatives in his government.
With Trump there is at least hope. Unless Trump is obstructed by bad judgment in his appointments
and by obstacles put in his way, we should expect an end to Washington's orchestrated conflict
with Russia, the removal of the US missiles on Russia's border with Poland and Romania, the end
of the conflict in Ukraine, and the end of Washington's effort to overthrow the Syrian government.
However, achievements such as these imply the defeat of the US Oligarchy. Although Trump defeated
Hillary, the Oligarchy still exists and is still powerful.
Trump said that he no longer sees the point of NATO 25 years after the Soviet collapse. If he sticks
to his view, it means a big political change in Washington's EU vassals. The hostility toward Russia
of the current EU and NATO officials would have to cease. German Chancellor Merkel would have to
change her spots or be replaced. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg would have to be dismissed.
We do not know who Trump will select to serve in his government. It is likely that Trump is unfamiliar
with the various possibilities and their positions on issues. It really depends on who is advising
Trump and what advice they give him. Once we see his government, we will know whether we can be hopeful
for the changes that now have a chance.
If the oligarchy is unable to control Trump and he is actually successful in curbing the power
and budget of the military/security complex and in holding the financial sector politically accountable,
Trump could be assassinated.
"... Oh, what does anyone know about Pence? Folks have been saying he's going to be Trump's Cheney (and apparently Cheney is a Pence's avowed role model and personal hero). Cheney had a lifetime of insider experience and I'm guessing is both ambitious and intelligent (if evil). ..."
"... Did anyone catch Peter Thiel's speech to the National Press Club? Listen to this and tell me it is not spot on. His is actually on Rumps transition team. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfYLEPRiIyE ..."
"... "The deep state ushered in Trump because he's clearly their most useful decoy. As the country hopes in vain, the crooked men behind the curtain will go on with business as usual. Trump is simply an Obama for a different demographic. Nothing will change for the better." ..."
"... So is Trump Hope and Change for the Angry White Male demographic? ..."
"... I doubt very much that the Obama is providing "continuity". IMO this is a naive reading. Obama has just created a smokescreen that allows for preparing to 'facts on the ground' that will force Trump to respond accordingly. ..."
"... To claim the trump is more powerful and has more influence over the US deep state on day one is just ludicrous. ..."
"...the paradox problem is they'll have to charge Clinton before da boy can pardon her..."
That's one of those facts that sounds right but isn't true. If the law was logical that might
be correct, but then mathematicians would get the highest scores on the Law School Admission Test
(which supposedly tests aptitude to "think like a lawyer.")
The President of the U.S. can't pardon someone in advance for possible later crimes, but can give
a pardon for any and all past crimes without specifying those crimes. That's how Ford was able to
pardon Nixon, who had not been indicted, for any crimes "he might have committed."
If Obama wants he can pardon the Clintons for everything and anything they MIGHT have done up
to the final minutes of swearing in Trump. In that case they would never need to concede they had
ever broken any laws at all.
Remember, the U.S. Constitution was written by aristocrats who were still in many ways monarchists
who didn't want to give up all their power. That mindset also put the electoral college process into
the constitution.
Are you saying that Obama could pardon Bill Clinton and his entire foundation for financial crimes
(apparently) being investigated in New York wrt New York's laws regarding charitable foundation
practices? That seems like it would be "bigger than Marc Rich" demonstration of Democratic misuse
/ abuse of power, cronyism, etc.
If he can do it, he might do it ... if the punishment/threat for not doing it was sufficient.
I've not been impressed by Obama's "brilliance" or "vision" ... I have been impressed rather by
his self-promotion and self-interest -- Neither Bush or Bill Clinton had the sort of job opportunities
that GHWB enjoyed.
Oh, what does anyone know about Pence? Folks have been saying he's going to be Trump's
Cheney (and apparently Cheney is a Pence's avowed role model and personal hero). Cheney had a
lifetime of insider experience and I'm guessing is both ambitious and intelligent (if evil).
Does Pence have genuine potential as Cheney II ... and where does the awkward relationship
between the GOP establishment and Trump put "Pence as a new Cheney" ... The GOP might love it.
Is Trump ideologically consistent enough (don't laugh) to recognize the contradictions?
Did anyone catch Peter Thiel's speech to the National Press Club? Listen to this and tell
me it is not spot on. His is actually on Rumps transition team. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfYLEPRiIyE
Early days indeed. An alternative view of the recent events, by someone who said more or less
the same about Obama when he was selected.
"The deep state ushered in Trump because he's clearly their most useful decoy. As the country
hopes in vain, the crooked men behind the curtain will go on with business as usual. Trump is
simply an Obama for a different demographic. Nothing will change for the better."
I agree with Hoarsewhisperer @11: ... it's a crock and a trick.
I doubt very much that the Obama is providing "continuity". IMO this is a naive reading.
Obama has just created a smokescreen that allows for preparing to 'facts on the ground' that will
force Trump to respond accordingly.
We are at a very very dangerous point in time.
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
Also, giving ANY credence to 'Obama legacy' BS is misguided in the extreme. His 'legacy'
is dissembling and treachery. Anything thing beyond that is just BS meant to keep adversary's
off-balance.
@22 Where do you get the idea that those countries are somehow bad for USA? If we ramp up industries
in USA it will cost substantially more than in those countries. They've benefitted USA immensely.
If the industries come back to USA it won't go over too well, unless slave wages are truly instituted
I don't know if Trump can take credit ... but rather that the Clinton wing of the Pentagon
and CIA, etc. has been defanged and the threat of a coup (if Obama acted in ways contrary to Clinton
and the General's plans) is now neutralized ... Clinton's loss, I hope, will mean future books
will be more candid than might have been possible if she were in office... yes, I wanna know how
bad it's been these last 8 years.
Obama's personal stock wrt his future as a consultant, motivational speaker and all around
leader fell dramatically both with Clinton's campaign (and anticipated sharp turn from Obama's
foreign policy) but also with her defeat (now his legacy). He was spared the ongoing shaming by
a Clinton administration. Likely too little, too late ... when does Kerry get back from the Antarctica?
He's got a chance at some legacy mending as well.
I believe reports that the Clintons and the Obamas loathe each other ... particularly since
the Clintons hate everyone/anyone who does not grovel perfectly. Did Obama sell-out to the DLC
Democrats to secure his future $$$ with all their and the foundation's friends... it will be fun
to watch and look for breadcrumbs, particularly if the foundation implodes under scrutiny.
I think your worst case senario is now off the table. I believe Turkey has been told to keep
its planes out of Syria, and the US only conducts missions within reach of the Russian air defences
with Russian approval.
Turkey using only ground forces to achieve its aims? I suspect this is part of the reason the
Russian naval force is loitering off the Syrian coast (apart from securing the area prior to constructing
the naval base at Tartus).
Cruise missiles would decimate any conventional ground forces, and I believe the Granit anti
ship missiles have a land strike capability, also the S-300 S-400 may also have a ground strike
capability.
That would be as part of the carveup that we are not supposed to talk about because it is a
wicked "conspiracy theory"...
Posted by: paul | Nov 11, 2016 12:12:44 PM | 17
That's a mini-conspiracy compared with the one that the Fake War Of Terror has distracted people's
attention from. The Privatisation of almost every Publicly-owned asset and piece of infrastructure
in the West. The Neolib takeover was well-advanced in 1999 but slipped into overdrive in 2001.
Banks, Insurance Cos, Telcos, Airlines, Childcare, Hospitals, Health Clinics (preventative), Roads,
Rail, Electrical Generation and distribution.
In Oz the Govt/people used to own all of the above, or a competitive participant in the 'market'
in the case of banking, insurance, health clinics, airlines etc. In 2016 the govt owns only unprofitable
burdens. Public Education is currently under extreme pressure to be Privatised for Profit.
(The Yanks call it Anti-Communism but consumers call it an Effing Expensive way to get much
crappier service than in the Good Old Days).
I think you give Barrack Obongo way too much credit. He is a "selfishly concerned" narcissist
alright but that's about it. All his years at the bathhouses and public lavatories with his wookie-in-drag
in Chicago, has not made him particularly smarter you know, rather the opposite...
Dropping AQ means dropping KSA, i.e. the 9/11 enquiry will probably go ahead. As for the MB/Qatar
who run a bunch of other groups, this is left to the EU to decide what it want to do with Turkey.
You bet the Eurocrats are having a headache. And Hollande shows his muscles (sic) and claims he
will talk with Trump on the phone and gets some "clarifications" about his programme.
MSM are reporting on a daily basis of the huge problems with the "Syrian refugees" crossing
the Mediterranean Sea although there is just a handful of Syrians compared to Eritreans, Sudanese,
Gambians etc.
According to the report, the last time Turkish jets participated in airstrikes against terrorists
in Syria was on October 23, three days after around 200 PKK/PYD terrorists were killed.
Ash Carter is, together with John Brennan, the major anti-Russian force in the Obama administration.
He is a U.S. weapon industry promoter and the anti-Russia campaign, which helps to sell U.S. weapons
to NATO allies in Europe, is largely of his doing.
BTW, I do believe he re-won his senate seat, against the true patriot Arpaio there.
Hence his absence from the public scene these months.
So things have not changed much if at all, since still 70 days to Jan20, except for appearances
as they've rearranged some furniture & color-matched the curtains to the upholstery in the act/play
is all.
@11 Hoarsewhisperer - I think it's unrealistic to expect the US simply to leave..
...
Posted by: Grieved | Nov 11, 2016 12:33:02 PM | 27
Today, your guess is as good as mine (at least).
But I regard FrUKUS as Ter'rism Central and if Russia & China et al think they can put a stop
to TerCent without dislodging some teeth and kneecapping them, they're pissing into the wind/dreaming.
It's a bit ambiguous but China, according to CCTV Nov 12, during a chat about Sun Yat Sen and
China/Taiwan unity, seems to be issuing a Global reminder to Loyal Chinese Citizens overseas similar
to the one that Russia issued a month ago.
Saudi Arabia's government has set aside 100 billion riyals ($26.7 billion) to pay debts that
it owes to private sector companies after payment delays that have lasted months, an official
document seen by Reuters shows.
To help curb a huge budget deficit caused by low oil prices, the government of the world's
largest oil exporter has slashed spending and reduced or suspended payments that it owes to
construction firms, medical establishments and even some of the foreign consultants who helped
to design its economic reforms.
But the payment delays have seriously damaged some companies, slowing the economy,
and earlier this week the government said it would make all delayed payments by the end
of this year.
This seems to suggest that Saudi mismanagement is or is about to cost citizens their paychecks
even jobs ... KSA is such a black box police state, it's dangerous to speculate what public opinion
"might be."
I figured the "rebels" in Syria would keep fighting until the paychecks stopped coming,
but I've wondered how many "rebels" were dislodged from relatively personally safe "rebel strongholds"
recently and decided they'd rather quit than die.
Contra Obama's attempt to cleanse his legacy by using the US military to actually attack ISIS,
Russian media report that Ass Carter has warned the president not to cooperate with Russia in
Syria until they are sure Moscow will 'do the right thing'. The report is based on data avaialable
at the af.mil website
Disgusting as it is, yes, my understanding is Obama can do exactly that. My guess is, want
to or not, he probably will come under so much pressure he will have to pass out plenty of pardons.
Or maybe Lynch will give everyone involved in the Clinton Foundation immunity to testify and then
seal the testimony -- or never bother to get any testimony. So many games.
For Obama, it might not even take all that much pressure. From about his second day in office,
from his body language, he's always looked like he was scared.
Instead of keeping his mouth shut, which he would do, being the lawyer he is, Giuliani has
been screaming for the Clintons' scalps. That's exactly what a sharp lawyer would do if he was
trying to force Obama to pardon them. If he really meant to get them he would be agreeing with
the FBI, saying there doesn't seem to be any evidence of wrong doing, and then change his mind
once (if) he's AG and it's too late for deals.
With so many lawyers, Obama, the Clintons, Lynch, Giuliani, Comey, no justice is likely to
come out of this.
@ Posted by: Ken Nari | Nov 11, 2016 2:51:53 PM | 55
I heard a podcast on Batchelor with Charles Ortel which explained some things -- even if
there are no obvious likely criminal smoking guns -- given that foundations get away with a lot
of "leniency" because they are charities, incomplete financial statements and chartering documents,
as I recall. I was most interested in his description of the number of jurisdictions the Foundation
was operating under, some of whom, like New York were already investigating; and others, foreign
who might or might be, who also have very serious regulations, opening the possibility that if
the Feds drop their investigation, New York (with very very strict law) might proceed, and that
they might well be investigated (prosecuted/banned??) in Europe.
The most recent leak wrt internal practices was just damning ... it sounded like a playground
of favors and sinecures ... no human resources department, no written policies on many practices
...
This was an internal audit and OLD (2008, called "the Gibson Review") so corrective action
may have been taken, but I thought was damning enough to deter many donors (even before Hillary's
loss removed that incentive) particularly on top of the Band (2011) memo. Unprofessional to the
extreme.
It's part of my vast relief that Clinton lost and will not be in our lives 24/7/365 for the
next 4 years. (I think Trump is an unprincipled horror, but that's as may be, I'm not looking
for a fight). After the mess Clinton made of Haiti (and the accusations/recriminations) I somehow
thought they'd have been more careful with their "legacy" -- given that it was founded in 1997,
2008 is a very long time to be operating without written procedures wrt donations, employment
"... HiIlary Clinton is a perfect enemy of Trump. She has become rich in office, and as Harry Truman said "anyone who gets rich in politics is a crook". She has dedicated her life to political power at the top while growing ever wealthier from its use. And she loves foreign wars. She has supported a long line of eco-genocidal attacks and bombings of Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine, all of them still in motion and waiting for her to be escalated further. ..."
"... Know a man by his enemies. Trump has countless enemies, but most of them march to the drums of endless wars of aggression and care less about the casualties of tens of millions of lost good jobs in America. Most are neo-liberals in fact, the bipartisan doctrine of dispossession of citizens and foreign wars to grow the system further. The worst have been Washington servants of the world corporate machine looting the world. They above all condemn his peace overtures to Russia and his promise to repeal NAFTA – both unspeakable heresies on the US public stage until Trump's movement against them. ..."
"... Where Trump agrees with the US money-and-war party is on Israel and Iran. He started with a policy of more neutrality towards the Israel-Palestine conflict, but soon backed out when the attack-dogs went into action with a $50 million gift for his campaign from a wealthy Zionist at the same time. Then he declared " Israel is America". So Trump can proclaim opposite positions without a blink, including on the continuous war crimes of Israel supported by the US. ..."
"... When you join the dots to Trump preaching a policy revolt against the insatiable corporate jaws feeding on trillions of dollars of public budgets in Washington, the underlying meaning emerges. He wants to stop the non-productive transnational corporations from feasting on the public purse. At the beginning after 2008, he even dared to recognize that Wall Street should be nationalized, as it once was by the American Revolution, Abraham Lincoln and FDR's Federal Reserve. This would be as big a turn of US government in the people's interests as stopping ruinous foreign wars. ..."
"... Trump also once said that the US "must be neutral, an honest broker" on the Israel-Palestine conflict – as unspeakable as it gets in US politics. Big Pharma was also called out with "$400 billion to be saved by government negotiation of prices". He even confronted the more powerful HMO's with the possibility of a "one-payer system" far better than the Obamacare pork-barrel for ever higher insurance premiums. ..."
HiIlary Clinton is a perfect enemy of Trump. She has become rich in office, and as Harry Truman
said "anyone who gets rich in politics is a crook". She has dedicated her life to political power
at the top while growing ever wealthier from its use. And she loves foreign wars. She has supported
a long line of eco-genocidal attacks and bombings of Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine,
all of them still in motion and waiting for her to be escalated further.
Know a man by his enemies. Trump has countless enemies, but most of them march to the drums of
endless wars of aggression and care less about the casualties of tens of millions of lost good jobs
in America. Most are neo-liberals in fact, the bipartisan doctrine of dispossession of citizens and
foreign wars to grow the system further. The worst have been Washington servants of the world corporate
machine looting the world. They above all condemn his peace overtures to Russia and his promise to
repeal NAFTA – both unspeakable heresies on the US public stage until Trump's movement against them.
HiIlary Clinton is a perfect enemy of Trump. She has become rich in office, and as Harry Truman
said "anyone who gets rich in politics is a crook". She has dedicated her life to political power
at the top while growing ever wealthier from its use. And she loves foreign wars. She has supported
a long line of eco-genocidal attacks and bombings of Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine,
all of them still in motion and waiting for her to be escalated further.
She wants a return to this bombing in Syria as a "free-fly zone" – free for US and NATO bombers
– just as she led Libya's destruction from 2011 on. She abuses Russia and slanders Putin at every
opportunity and she supported the neo-Nazi coup overthrowing the elected government of Ukraine and
the civil war since. She has done nothing but advocate or agree to endless US-led war crimes without
any life gain but only mass murder, social ruin and terror which she ignores. Like her mentor Madeleine
Allbright , even the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children in Iraq by Clinton-led bombing are
"worth the price".
Where Trump agrees with the US money-and-war party is on Israel and Iran. He started with
a policy of more neutrality towards the Israel-Palestine conflict, but soon backed out when the attack-dogs
went into action with a $50 million gift for his campaign from a wealthy Zionist at the same time.
Then he declared " Israel is America". So Trump can proclaim opposite positions without a blink,
including on the continuous war crimes of Israel supported by the US.
Trump also bellows against on the giveaway of many billions of US money to Iran and prefers to
bomb their nuclear facilities as Israel wants, and has already done in Syria. He does not tell his
audience that all of this US money is Iran's money being returned to it from its US seizure
in exchange for its nuclear disarmament never suggested for Israel which has enough nuclear weaponry
to blow up the whole Middle East and beyond. Trump too is not to be trusted when it suits his run
to be US President. Yet even here Trump still holds to his position that use of nuclear weapons means
"game over". Clinton and the bipartisan money-and-war party express no such constraint.
Why the Establishment Hates Trump, But Will Accept Him
All of them have reason to hate Trump for a more basic reason. He is seemingly alone in the money-media-military
establishment to publicly deplore the rigged electoral system in which big money and media rule –
formerly unspeakable in the press and political discussion on stage. Trump has even voiced suspicion
of the 9-11 killing spectacle and the "six-trillion- dollar" haemorrhage of US money on Middle East
and Afghanistan wars propelled and justified by 9-11 from 2001 on.
Yet here again the problem is that Trump backs off as soon as he thinks he will not be able to
sell it. This is the art of political lying at which Trump, like Reagan, is a master. But the hard-line
difference between Trump and Reagan and neo-con-lib rulers over the last 30 years is deep – Trump's
denunciation of NAFTA and willingness to have peace with other nations not bowing to Uncle Sam.
Before Trump, job-destroying edicts of transnational global corporations and captive states called
'free trade' have been anathema to oppose in official society. But Trump sticks to his heretical
position. Right up to the election he has promised a "35% tariff" on products of US factories that
disemploy workers to get cheaper labor elsewhere. No-one in the US political establishment has risked
such a position, or blamed these corporate-rights treaties for hollowing out American society itself.
It is apostasy in the corporate 'free press'.
Trump is still hated for such deviations from the official corporate-state line. But the haters
cannot say this. They stick to the politically correct repudiations, and call him "racist", "sexist",
"bigot" and so on even if the conclusion does follow from what he says or does. Selected instances
are the ruling fallacy here.
Trump and the Media-Lie System
Trump is unique in calling out the major mass media as continuous purveyors of lies and propaganda
– although he centers it on himself and not global corporate rule across borders which they worship.
Anyone not doing so is excommunicated from the press. This profound disorder is never allowed into
the mass media as an issue, and Trump never raises it. He too is a believer, but one who sees the
life costs of the sacrifice-workers rule inside the US. He also advocates job-creating public spending
on physical infrastructure which is as crucial to his movement as it was to FDR. It is no longer
taboo inside the dumkopfen party
Trump is a first. Never before has anyone been able to denounce the mass media framing, half-truths
and fabrications and still come out stronger The onslaught of ideological assassination by
a hireling intelligentsia and media of record like the New York Times has always succeeded
before. Trump reacts only as it affects his own position, but his raw defiance right into the cameras
has been eye-popping and unique in America.
This may be Trump's most remarkable achievement. He has been slandered and demonized more than
Russia's Putin, and Russia-baiting him with McCarthy-like accusations of collaboration with Putin
has been part of the attack by Hillary and the press. Yet passionate voter support of Trump has still
grown in the face of all this denunciation by the political establishment.
An underlying revolution in thinking has occurred. Trump has tapped the deep chords of worker
rage at dispossession by forced corporate globalization, criminally disastrous Middle East wars,
and trillions of dollars of bailouts to Wall Street. He never connects the dots on stage. But by
Clinton's advocacy of all of them, she has made them her own and will go down because of it.
Trump's unflinching vast ego and media savvy have been what she and the political establishment
are too corrupted to defeat, The underlying contradiction that now raises its head pits the mass
media against the President of the United States himself – against the long sacred office of the
commander-in-chief of US power across the world, precisely what he is proposing to pacify with friendly
relations instead of ruinous war invasions as in Iraq. Many observers think that Wall Street and
big money won't let it happen. Or that Trump will like others before him will be determined by the
office. Or that Clinton's billion dollars of PAC money will succeed work in the end. But the meaning
is out and cannot be reversed out of sight.
Whatever happens next in this saga it will be ground-shaking. The worst that can happen to Trump's
enemies is that he wins despite the all-fronts attack. They define his underlying meaning, just as
the Enemy they construct abroad defines them. If he loses, there will be a carnival of the money-war-media
party pretending a healing of the great division that has come to view. But this is not a Republican-Democrat
division. It is as deep as all the lost jobs and lives since 2001, and it is ultimately grounded
in the tens of millions of dispossessed people which the life-blind global market system and its
wars have imposed on America too.
The Great Division Will Not Go Away
Trump is the closest to an egomaniac that has ever run for the presidential office. If he were
not, he could not have withstood the public shaming heaped upon him by the political establishment
and dominant media everywhere.
But the tens of millions of Americans for whom Trump speaks tend to have one thing in common more
than anything else. They have been dispossessed and smeared by the neo-con/ neo-liberal alliance
that has taken or traded away their life security and belittled them with political correctness –
the establishment's patronizing diversion from their fallen state.
All the while, the ruling money party behind the media and the wars is system-driven to seek limitlessly
more money under masks of 'free trade' and "America's interests abroad'. The majority is left behind
as the sacrificial living dead. Multiplying transnational money sequences of the very rich have bled
the world into a comatose state, and perpetual wars against the next Enemy of the cancerous system
have sown chaos across the world.
Trump at least starts remission by seeing a criminally blind rule and chaos inside America itself.
Before his campaign, there was helplessness against the invading wars and money sequences always
profiting from the global ruin. The reality has been taboo to see in public. Only entertainments
have appeared in ever new guises as the corporate money-and-war machine has rolled and careened on
across all borders, now marching East through Ukraine into Russia, Brazil to Venezuela to the Caribbean,
from the Congo to the South China Sea.
The Trump entertainment, the most watched in the world, may be the long bridge to taking down
the neo-liberal pillars of majority dispossession and war-criminal state.
Trump is the Opposite to Reagan in Policy Directions
On the face of it, Trump is an ideal leader for US empire. He is like Ronald Reagan on steroids.
His long practiced camera image, his nativist US supremacism, his down-home talk, and his reality-show
confidence all go one better. He is America come to meet itself decades down the road as its pride
slips away in third-world conditions.
But unlike Reagan and Bush who spoke to the rich becoming richer, Trump speaks to the losing white
working class and those who have come to hate the money-corrupted Washington forging the policies
of dispossession Reagan started.
Washington has since ignored and patronized their plight over 30 years. Trump's constituency has
been the disposable rejects from the corporate global system that it is rigged from top to bottom
with rights only for the profits of transnational abroad and bought politicians at home.
The Trump constituency may have no clear idea of this inner logic of the system. But they directly
experience the unemployment, underemployment, ever lower pay, deprived pensions, degraded living
conditions, public squalor, contempt from official society, and no future for their children.
At the surface level, what drives them mad is the 'political correctness' that diverts all attention
from their plight to pant-suit 'feminists' getting a leg up, racial rights with no life substance,
sexual queers they had been conditioned to abhor, and other symbols of oppression changed as the actually ruling system of dispossession becomes inexorably worse all the
way down to their grand children.
Here too Hillary Clinton has been an embodiment of the smug ideology of the system that bleeds
the unseen job-deprived into powerless humiliation: an existential crisi where the secure jobs and
goods of US life have been stripped from them in continuous eviction from the American way with no
notice.
While Trump's narrative is that the American Dream seeks recovery again, the dominant media and
political elite relentlessly denounce him for his message. He gives lots of ammunition to them. His
most popular line is "build the wall", "build the great wall" between Mexico and the US. No political
correctness cares that the biggest source of near-slave labor for the big businesses of the US South
is Mexican 'illegals', and Trump himself never mentions this. He prefers to blame the Mexican illegals
themselves for drugs, rape and violence, the standard lie of blame-the-poorer for your problems.
Trump also wants to tax their slim earnings to pay for the wall. This is the still running sore of
America beneath the lost jobs.
Trump has thus attracted lots of votes. But many non-ignorant people too recognise that the tens
of millions of illegal migrants seeking work in the richer USA cannot continue in any country with
borders, or any nation that seeks to keep worker wages up not down by lower priced labor flooding
in. The legal way must be the only way if the law of nations is to exist and working people are to
be secure from dispossession by starvation wages illegal migrants can be hired for. Borders are,
few notice, the very target of the carcinogenic neo-liberal program.
Of course the political discourse never gets to this real and complex economic base of the problem.
Nor does Trump. His choral promise is "'l'll fix it. Believe me". But something deeper than demagoguery
and blaming the weak is afoot here. An untapped historic resentment is boiling up from underneath
which has long been unspeakable on the political stage. Trump has mined it and proposed a concrete
solution – one grand gate through which immigrants must pass.
Is this really racist? It is rather that Trump is very good at bait and switch. From his now deserted
promise to halve the Pentagon's budget to getting the Congress off corporate-donation payrolls, now
by fixed congressional terms, the public wealth that the politicians and corporate lobbies stand
to lose from a Trump presidency is very disturbing to them. The Mexican wall does not fit the borderless
neo-liberal program either. But all of it is welcome to citizens' ears. That is why the establishment
hates Trump for exposing all these issues long kept in the closet and covered over by politically
correct identity politics.
On the other hand, Trump leaves the halving of the Pentagon's budget behind as soon as he sees
the massive private money forces against it. It is Reagan in reverse. He now promises hundreds of
billions more to the military – but he still opposes foreign wars. That might even do it. But this
most major issue of the election has been completely ignored by the media and opposing politicians
alike. It is the historic core of his bid for the presidency.
Yet the US political establishment across parties cannot yet even conceive it so used are they
to the Reagan-led war state, the military corporate lobbies paying them off in every Senate seat,
anti-union policies at macro as well as micro levels, and always designated foreign enemies to bomb
for resistance. "Say Uncle" said Reagan to the Sandinistas when they asked what could stop the mercenary
killers paid by US covert drug running from bombing their harbours, schools and clinics.
Trump is going the opposite direction in foreign affairs, but the establishment commentators call
it "isolationist" to discredit it. Clinton talks of overcoming the divisions in America, but has
never mentioned holding back on foreign wars. On the contrary, she approves more war power against
Russia and in Syria and in the Ukraine. This is the biggest danger that no media covers – ever more
ruinous US wars on other continents. The formula is old and Reagan exemplified it. Russia is portrayed
as the evil threat to justify pouring up to two billion dollars-a-day of public money into the US
war-for-profit machine occupying across the world, now prepping for China.
But the bipartisan war party backed by Wall Street is going down if Trump's policy can prevail.
This may be the salvation of America and the world, but it is silenced up to election day.
Trump Against the Special Interests
At the beginning g of his public campaign, Trump's policy claims threatened almost every big lobby
now in control of US government purse strings. And these policies grounded in no more foreign wars
which have already cost over 'six trillion dollars' of US public money. At the same time, the country's
physical infrastructures degrade on all levels, and its people's lives are increasingly impoverished
and insecure for the majority. Trump promises to rebuild them all.
Yet the cut-off of hundreds of billions of public giveaways to the Big Corps that Trump advocated
did not end here. It hit almost every wide-mouthed transnational corporate siphon into the US Treasury,
taxpayers' pockets and the working majority of America. Masses of American citizens increasingly
without living wages and benefits and in growing insecurity listened to what the political establishment
and corporate media had long silenced.
Trump raised the great dispossession into the establishment's face, and this is why he will win.
"In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for
the vintage"."The grapes of wrath have risen from the long painful stripping of the people's livelihoods,
their social substance and their cities by corporate globalization selecting for the limitless enrichment
of the few living off an ever-growing takes from public coffers and the impoverishment of America's
working citizens. A primal rage has united them across party lines in the public person of Donald
Trump.
Can he deliver? Well he certainly has shown the guts necessary to do so, most uniquely in facing
down the corporate media and Washington politicians.
Looking Past the Victory
The issue still remains that Trump does not promise any fixing of the greatest transfer of wealth
to the very rich in history that Reagan started. This great transfer of wealth includes his own.
We may recall that his model Ronald Reagan started this Great Dispossession to "make America great
again" too.
Now Trump has promised a massive tax cut to the rich and private capital gains as Reagan did.
In the meantime nothing has been less talked about in election commentary than the globally powerful
interests Trump promised to rein back from the public troughs bleeding the country's capacities to
build for and to employ its people. On this topic, there has been only silence from the media and
politicians, and retreating vague generalizations from Trump.
At the beginning, he not only went after the foreign wars, but the sweetheart deals of the government
with Big Pharma, the health insurance racket, lobby-run foreign policy, off-shore tax evasion, and
global trade taking jobs in the tens of millions from home workers. This is why the establishment
so universally hated him. Most of their private interests in looting public wealth were named. He
reversed the tables on the parasite rich in Washington lobbying and gobbling up public money faster
than it could be bribed, printed and allocated to their schemes – except on real estate, his own
big money 'special interest' not centered in Washington. Indeed Trump loves 'eminent domain', state
seizure of people's private property for big developers like him.
This is where Trump joins hands with those depending on the deep system corruptions he has promised
to reverse. He even asked, in his loud way, how these huge private interests go on getting away with
a corporate-lobby state transferring ever more public wealth and control to them at the expense of
the American working majority and their common interest as Americans. But it had all pretty well
slid away by election day except the hatred of self-enriching Washington fixers like Hillary, Mexican
illegals, the Obamacare new charges (with no mention of the HMO's doing it), and the disrespect for
people bearing arms by the second-amendment right.
Do we have here the familiar positional determinism where political and economic class
leaders desert what they promised as they enter into elected office or have sold the goods?
Yet the victory Trump is about to reap is far from empty for America and the world if he keeps
to the promises he made. The money-and media-rigged elections have stayed front and center where
no-one in official politics dared say it before. The black-hole of US foreign wars has above all
has remained his historic target.
His entire strategy has been based on getting public attention, and he is a master at it. He is
unbuyably rich, has energy beyond a rock star, and is the most watched person in America across the
country and the world for months on end. He can't be shut up. Media stigmatization and slander without
let-up do not work as always before.
Trump is also capable of meeting perhaps the world's most important challenges, holding back the
global US war machine from perpetual eco-genocidal aggression and investing back into public infrastructure
and workers' productive jobs.
Most importantly, Trump challenges "the Enemy" cornerstone of US ideology when he says "wouldn't
it be nice to get along with Russia and China for a change?" And as he said to Canada whose branch-plant
corporate state still plays minion to its US corporate masters, "congratulations. You have become
independent".
As for Trump's much publicized 'denial of climate change, it is not really accurate. He has said
little on the topic, but has expressed his opposition to "bullshit government spending" on preventing
climate. So does James Lovelock, the famous global ecologist behind 'the Gaia hypothesis '. Certainly
the green-wash hoaxes of the private corporations (and Al Gore) becoming much richer than before
on solutions that do not work to prevent the global market-led climate destabilization do need more
astute appraisal.
When you join the dots to Trump preaching a policy revolt against the insatiable corporate
jaws feeding on trillions of dollars of public budgets in Washington, the underlying meaning emerges.
He wants to stop the non-productive transnational corporations from feasting on the public purse.
At the beginning after 2008, he even dared to recognize that Wall Street should be nationalized,
as it once was by the American Revolution, Abraham Lincoln and FDR's Federal Reserve. This would
be as big a turn of US government in the people's interests as stopping ruinous foreign wars.
Trump also once said that the US "must be neutral, an honest broker" on the Israel-Palestine
conflict – as unspeakable as it gets in US politics. Big Pharma was also called out with "$400 billion
to be saved by government negotiation of prices". He even confronted the more powerful HMO's with
the possibility of a "one-payer system" far better than the Obamacare pork-barrel for ever higher
insurance premiums.
Trump is no working-class hero. He has long been a predatory capitalist with all the furies of
greed, egoism and self-promotion that the ruling system selects for. But he is not rich from foreign
wars of aggression, or from exporting the costs of labor to foreign jurisdictions with subhuman standards.
He has not been getting richer or more smug by seeking high office in a context of saturating slander
and denunciation from official society. He has initiated a long overdue recognition of parasite capitalism
eating out and wasting the life capacities of the US itself as well as the larger world.
Trump has now won the first major step that his enemies declared inconceivable, and he can now
do what he has promised 'in the place where the buck stops'.
Prof. John McMurtry is author of The Cancer Stage of Capitalism: From Crisis to Cure (available
from University of Chicago Press) and an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
"... At the start of the 2016 election cycle, this power structure proclaimed Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush shoo-ins for the nominations of the Democratic and Republican parties. After all, both of these individuals had deep bases of funders, well-established networks of political insiders, experienced political advisers and all the political name recognition any candidate could possibly want. ..."
"... Recent economic indicators may be up, but those indicators don't reflect the insecurity most Americans continue to feel, nor the seeming arbitrariness and unfairness they experience. Nor do the major indicators show the linkages many Americans see between wealth and power, stagnant or declining real wages, soaring CEO pay, and the undermining of democracy by big money. ..."
"... Median family income is lower now than it was 16 years ago, adjusted for inflation. ..."
"... Wealth, power and crony capitalism fit together. Americans know a takeover has occurred, and they blame the establishment for it. ..."
"... Bill Clinton and Obama also allowed antitrust enforcement to ossify – with the result that large corporations have grown far larger, and major industries more concentrated. The unsurprising result of this combination – more trade, declining unionization and more industry concentration – has been to shift political and economic power to big corporations and the wealthy, and to shaft the working class. This created an opening for Donald Trump's authoritarian demagoguery, and his presidency. ..."
"... The power structure is shocked by the outcome of the 2016 election because it has cut itself off from the lives of most Americans. Perhaps it also doesn't wish to understand, because that would mean acknowledging its role in enabling the presidency of Donald Trump. ..."
What has happened in America should not be seen as a victory for hatefulness over decency. It
is more accurately understood as a repudiation of the American power structure.
At the core of that structure are the political leaders of both parties, their political operatives,
and fundraisers; the major media, centered in New York and Washington DC; the country's biggest corporations,
their top executives, and Washington lobbyists and trade associations; the biggest Wall Street banks,
their top officers, traders, hedge-fund and private-equity managers, and their lackeys in Washington;
and the wealthy individuals who invest directly in politics.
At the start of the 2016 election cycle, this power structure proclaimed Hillary Clinton and
Jeb Bush shoo-ins for the nominations of the Democratic and Republican parties. After all, both of
these individuals had deep bases of funders, well-established networks of political insiders, experienced
political advisers and all the political name recognition any candidate could possibly want.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the White House. The presidency was won by Donald Trump,
who made his fortune marketing office towers and casinos, and, more recently, starring in a popular
reality-television program, and who has never held elective office or had anything to do with the
Republican party. Hillary Clinton narrowly won the popular vote, but not enough of the states and
their electors secure a victory.
Hillary Clinton's defeat is all the more remarkable in that her campaign vastly outspent the Trump
campaign on television and radio advertisements, and get-out-the-vote efforts. Moreover, her campaign
had the support in the general election not of only the kingpins of the Democratic party but also
many leading Republicans, including most of the politically active denizens of Wall Street and the
top executives of America's largest corporations, and even former Republican president George HW
Bush. Her campaign team was run by seasoned professionals who knew the ropes. She had the visible
and forceful backing of Barack Obama, whose popularity has soared in recent months, and his popular
wife. And, of course, she had her husband.
Trump, by contrast, was shunned by the power structure. Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential
candidate in 2012, actively worked against Trump's nomination. Many senior Republicans refused to
endorse him, or even give him their support. The Republican National Committee did not raise money
for Trump to the extent it had for other Republican candidates for president.
What happened?
There had been hints of the political earthquake to come. Trump had won the Republican primaries,
after all. More tellingly, Clinton had been challenged in the Democratic primaries by the unlikeliest
of candidates – a 74-year-old Jewish senator from Vermont who described himself as a democratic socialist
and who was not even a Democrat. Bernie Sanders went on to win 22 states and 47% of the vote in those
primaries. Sanders' major theme was that the country's political and economic system was rigged in
favor of big corporations, Wall Street and the very wealthy.
... ... ...
The power structure of America wrote off Sanders as an aberration, and, until recently, didn't
take Trump seriously. A respected political insider recently told me most Americans were largely
content with the status quo. "The economy is in good shape," he said. "Most Americans are better
off than they've been in years."
Recent economic indicators may be up, but those indicators don't reflect the insecurity most
Americans continue to feel, nor the seeming arbitrariness and unfairness they experience. Nor do
the major indicators show the linkages many Americans see between wealth and power, stagnant or declining
real wages, soaring CEO pay, and the undermining of democracy by big money.
Median family income is lower now than it was 16 years ago, adjusted for inflation. Workers
without college degrees – the old working class – have fallen furthest. Most economic gains, meanwhile,
have gone to top. These gains have translated into political power to elicit bank bailouts, corporate
subsidies, special tax loopholes, favorable trade deals and increasing market power without interference
by anti-monopoly enforcement – all of which have further reduced wages and pulled up profits.
Wealth, power and crony capitalism fit together. Americans know a takeover has occurred, and
they blame the establishment for it.
The Democratic party once represented the working class. But over the last three decades the party
has been taken over by Washington-based fundraisers, bundlers, analysts, and pollsters who have focused
instead on raising campaign money from corporate and Wall Street executives and getting votes from
upper middle-class households in "swing" suburbs.
Democrats have occupied the White House for 16 of the last 24 years, and for four of those years
had control of both houses of Congress. But in that time they failed to reverse the decline in working-class
wages and economic security. Both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama ardently pushed for free trade agreements
without providing millions of blue-collar workers who thereby lost their jobs means of getting new
ones that paid at least as well.
They stood by as corporations hammered trade unions, the backbone of the white working class –
failing to reform labor laws to impose meaningful penalties on companies that violate them, or help
workers form unions with simple up-or-down votes. Partly as a result, union membership sank from
22% of all workers when Bill Clinton was elected president to less than 12% today, and the working
class lost bargaining leverage to get a share of the economy's gains.
Bill Clinton and Obama also allowed antitrust enforcement to ossify – with the result that
large corporations have grown far larger, and major industries more concentrated. The unsurprising
result of this combination – more trade, declining unionization and more industry concentration –
has been to shift political and economic power to big corporations and the wealthy, and to shaft
the working class. This created an opening for Donald Trump's authoritarian demagoguery, and his
presidency.
Now Americans have rebelled by supporting someone who wants to fortify America against foreigners
as well as foreign-made goods. The power structure understandably fears that Trump's isolationism
will stymie economic growth. But most Americans couldn't care less about growth because for years
they have received few of its benefits, while suffering most of its burdens in the forms of lost
jobs and lower wages.
The power structure is shocked by the outcome of the 2016 election because it has cut itself
off from the lives of most Americans. Perhaps it also doesn't wish to understand, because that would
mean acknowledging its role in enabling the presidency of Donald Trump.
I'm in agreement with RR, as far as he goes. He could have gone further, but it's probably not
the time or place for that, anyway, that road is depressing.
Trump's an opportunist, certainly, but a very, very, successful one indeed. He has, after all,
made an awful lot of money that way, so he's not that lacking in intelligence and ruthlessness.
If only Sanders had been more ruthless and willing to stick the knife into the Democratic Party
when he had the chance.
Trump, essentially ran as an independent. First he needed to defeat the Republican Party's
establishment, which he did, take over the party and only then was he ready to challenge the Democrats
and beat them down. He succeeded in his strategy, beating both of them, which is an astonishing
feat, historic in character.
It actually gets worse for liberals. Trump also took on the liberal media and despite their
best efforts to destroy him, brazenly supporting Clinton and ridiculing Trump and his supporters...
Trump didn't just survive the onslaught, but crushed the media as well. Vast swathes of the population
hate and despise the media as much as they loathe the political elite. People simply don't believe
the media anymore, so most of their attacks on Trump were useless and ineffective when they came.
And it really isn't Trump that's important here. It's the character of the wave he surfed
on and lifted him into the White House. But the media ignored the wave and have done for years
and years. Now, the fascist chickens have really come home to roost and much of the responsibility
lies with the incredible ignorance, arrogance and mind-numbing stupidity that characterizes so
much of the media.
"Democrats once represented the working class. Not any more."
And they haven't since Bill Clinton had his way with the party in the 90s.
As much as the right enjoys calling the Clintons liberals, they're not.
They're neo-liberals, which is a whole different philosophy.
The Dems abandoned those who supported them for generations and we are all living in the ever-worsening
result of that betrayal.
So Robert Reich spent the past year enthusiastically encouraging us to vote for a candidate who
embodied every last bit of the formula that he now tells us was a sure loser. Should he perhaps
have warned his long-time good friend Hillary that she was on the wrong road? That being the servant
of Wall Street and promising the status quo with incremental progress was a recipe for failure?
As you say, sir:
"The power structure is shocked by the outcome of the 2016 election because it has cut itself
off from the lives of most Americans. Perhaps it also doesn't wish to understand, because that
would mean acknowledging its role in enabling the presidency of Donald Trump."
This includes Obama's role as enabler.
Ironic, that Obama was a charismatic campaigner who failed entirely to become a charismatic president.
And he lost to a candidate who had another sort of charisma: That of a lying, sneering, insulting,
self-important clown.
Shows how bad things have become for a once hard-working & productive middle class now set adrift.
The same power structure that has for decades ignored the plight of millions in favour of it's
own elitist wealth building, little wonder this election result. The neo liberals by their arrogance
and lack of empathy have brought us to this setting us back decades. Clinton was definately does
not hold any sympathy for the downtrodden, she cannot, she's in another class, the billionaire
type. That is why we must never trust them or ever look again to people with this background to
help us. They are responsible for the descent towards fascism and the people are responsible for
their utter gullability in believing them in the first place.
Obama is the worst president and most divisive. he is the master race baiter as well.
Nov 11, 2016 | Pinterest
How the 2016 US election night unfolded
The power structure of America wrote off Sanders as an aberration, and, until recently, didn't
take Trump seriously. A respected political insider recently told me most Americans were largely
content with the status quo. "The economy is in good shape," he said. "Most Americans are better
off than they've been in years."
Recent economic indicators may be up, but those indicators don't reflect the insecurity most
Americans continue to feel, nor the seeming arbitrariness and unfairness they experience. Nor
do the major indicators show the linkages many Americans see between wealth and power, stagnant
or declining real wages, soaring CEO pay, and the undermining of democracy by big money.
Median family income is lower now than it was 16 years ago, adjusted for inflation. Workers
without college degrees – the old working class – have fallen furthest. Most economic gains, meanwhile,
have gone to top. These gains have translated into political power to elicit bank bailouts, corporate
subsidies, special tax loopholes, favorable trade deals and increasing market power without interference
by anti-monopoly enforcement – all of which have further reduced wages and pulled up profits.
Wealth, power and crony capitalism fit together. Americans know a takeover has occurred, and
they blame the establishment for it.
The Democratic party once represented the working class. But over the last three decades the
party has been taken over by Washington-based fundraisers, bundlers, analysts, and pollsters who
have focused instead on raising campaign money from corporate and Wall Street executives and getting
votes from upper middle-class households in "swing" suburbs.
Democrats have occupied the White House for 16 of the last 24 years, and for four of those
years had control of both houses of Congress. But in that time they failed to reverse the decline
in working-class wages and economic security. Both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama ardently pushed
for free trade agreements without providing millions of blue-collar workers who thereby lost their
jobs means of getting new ones that paid at least as well.
They stood by as corporations hammered trade unions, the backbone of the white working class
– failing to reform labor laws to impose meaningful penalties on companies that violate them,
or help workers form unions with simple up-or-down votes. Partly as a result, union membership
sank from 22% of all workers when Bill Clinton was elected president to less than 12% today, and
the working class lost bargaining leverage to get a share of the economy's gains.
Bill Clinton and Obama also allowed antitrust enforcement to ossify – with the result that
large corporations have grown far larger, and major industries more concentrated. The unsurprising
result of this combination – more trade, declining unionization and more industry concentration
– has been to shift political and economic power to big corporations and the wealthy, and to shaft
the working class. This created an opening for Donald Trump's authoritarian demagoguery, and his
presidency.
Now Americans have rebelled by supporting someone who wants to fortify America against foreigners
as well as foreign-made goods. The power structure understandably fears that Trump's isolationism
will stymie economic growth. But most Americans couldn't care less about growth because for years
they have received few of its benefits, while suffering most of its burdens in the forms of lost
jobs and lower wages.
The power structure is shocked by the outcome of the 2016 election because it has cut itself
off from the lives of most Americans. Perhaps it also doesn't wish to understand, because that
would mean acknowledging its role in enabling the presidency of Donald Trump.
I've known Hillary Clinton since she was 19 years old, and have nothing but respect for
her. In my view, she's the most qualified candidate for president of the political system we now
have.
But Bernie Sanders is the most qualified candidate to create the political system we should
have, because he's leading a political movement for change.
The upcoming election isn't about detailed policy proposals. It's about power – whether
those who have it will keep it, or whether average Americans will get some as well. [...]
Which explains a paradox I found a few months ago when I was on book tour in the nation's
heartland: I kept bumping into people who told me they were trying to make up their minds in
the upcoming election between Sanders and Trump.
At first I was dumbfounded. The two are at opposite ends of the political divide. But as
I talked with these people, I kept hearing the same refrains. They wanted to end "crony capitalism."
They detested "corporate welfare," such as the Wall Street bailout.
They wanted to prevent the big banks from extorting us ever again. Close tax loopholes for
hedge-fund partners. Stop the drug companies and health insurers from ripping off American consumers.
End trade treaties that sell out American workers. Get big money out of politics. [...]
You don't care about the details of proposed policies and programs.
You just want a system that works for you.
If you click his name at the byline you'll see how many articles published in 2016. Now think
about the number of pieces published that pushed the pro-Clinton argument of more of the same.
"Third-Way" Democrats made an art form of triangulating a position between the old-line liberal
Democrats the positions made by the mainstream corporate Republican party. By tacking as far right
as possible, these corporate Democrats could scrape off enough of the business friendly, socially
progressive Independents and Republicans to stymie any sort of Republican Presidential bid. Corporate
America gave to both parties, but loves first and foremost to be on the side of the winner, where
its influence can manifest itself in business friendly legislation, politically friendly appointments,
no prosecutions for criminal behavior. no enforcement of labor or business legislation and no
break-ups of monopolies using the still existent anti-trust legislation.
One of the things that made Republicans furious during Bill Clinton's term was that he was skilled
in the extreme at taking issues the Republicans were pushing and getting out in front of them
and making the issue his own, making the result at least somewhat palpable to the old liberals
of the world.
The Democrats became the other war party, the other big business party, the other big banking
party, the other big agriculture party, the other big oil party, the other big communications
party, the other international exploitation party, the other anti-union party the other big medical
party, the other big pharmaceutical party, the other international trade deal party.
Bill Clinton sat down with Alan Greenspan and agreed to be the other austerity party. He supported
low tax rates on the billionaires and corporations and low tariffs. That led to lower services
for the public and small businesses and the tax burden being borne by the long suffering middle
class and working poor. The non-working poor suffered as well with no welfare, more stringent
unemployment benefits, and a stagnant job market for meaningful jobs. At the same time, law enforcement
was focusing on them, putting them in prison for extreme amounts of time for often trivial matters.
But Bill had an overall good economy because of the Computer Generation, so the economy grew and
he was able to deliver to George W. Bush a budget surplus, which, if maintained, would have entirely
paid off the national debt by now.
Unfortunately all those economic gains were being funneled to the top. Overall wages of working
people actually declined since Ronald Reagan came in to begin the austerity measures while the
wealth of the top 1% quadrupled. Working people were losing good paying jobs and having to have
both wage earners in a family work lesser jobs to make up for hemorrhaging income. These lesser
jobs not only had less wages, they had less benefits. Against an out of control health care industry,
banking industry, communications industry and investment industry they were being sucked dry well
before retirement. No amount of savings could stand up to catastrophic illness. People's 401K
plans were repeatedly slaughtered while the big guys who precipitated the mess ended up owning
more and more of the means of generating wealth in our country. Remember the absolutely sinful
Republican law that made student debt unforgivable at the same time that school costs were skyrocketing?
It was so unpopular, Republicans needed help from Joe Biden and other corporate Democrats to get
it passed.
Never mind the corporate media and Republican lies about Barack Obama being a "Liberal", he was,
in fact, another version of corporate Democrat. Since he was black, the racist Republicans could
do the unprecedented in America politics: they decided to block everything. For no good reason.
Other than he was black and no one would hold them accountable. He went along with the austerity
plan because he had no other option. Able enough manager, he was able to drastically reduce the
national deficit virtually on his own. But he kept up the wars. Hell, he and Hillary Clinton started
wars for oil and natural gas. Just like the Republicans. Along with the very expensive war and
secret intelligence budget and police state budget. He has restarted the nuclear weapons program,
never mind that we already have enough nukes to destroy the world 100 times over. He also longed
for hanging his hat on another record-breaking Trans Pacific Partnership international trade deal
encompassing 40% of the world's Gross Domestic Product. Like Bill Clinton/George HW Bush's NAFTA
on steroids. Jobs would be flowing out to low wage countries and waves of filthy international
profits would come flowing back in to: the top 1%, where presumably the fraud of trickle down
economics would waged on the American worker once again.
Yup the elites got hammered Tuesday. Even though they say they are for democracy, they aren't.
The elites want open borders and the people at the bottom of the wage scale are having to compete
against these low wage border jumpers.
How can the elites say they are for open borders and for raising wages. It isn't possible.
It is the law of supply and demand. Sure the government could pass minimum wage increases but
that will drive businesses to automate as much as possible. That ain't going to help these people
either!
Wikileaks proved that the Democrat party is the party of the ruling class elites, no question.
Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders? Give me a break, These two phonies are owned lock stock and
barrel by Wall Street and the Big Banks. Warren's Consumer Protection racket is like Dodd-Frank
- a Potemkin village of fake reforms designed to kill off any competition to the ruling class
oligarchs.
A better analysis than the hysterical white/kkk/racist/woman hater etc pieces that have been flooding
the pages lately.
Its "dont piss on my back and tell me its raining" stuff, Obamacare has stung those in work,
in some cases badly, and those out of work see no hope or change either.
No-one went to jail for screwing the world economy.
Even the government agencies who had oversight, and failed to see one single indicator of trouble
saw no-one demoted, just a call for more power.
And lastly importing more people to compete for low skilled jobs from overseas does keep downward
pressure on wages, and make jobs harder to find for the native born. Pretending otherwise in some
misguided sense of international "solidarity" is punishing your own people for outsiders advantage.
The roles of the two parties have been interchanged over the years, but they both ended up the
same way -- serving the Davos community.
Some have suggested the formation of a third party as a possible remedy. I don't think that
is the solution. As long as campaigns are financed through private contributions, the politicians
elected would be beholden to the rich, regardless of the number of parties involved. The voice
of the less privileged voters will not be heard. To have a truly representative body of elected
officials, private (including corporate) campaign contributions should be eliminated from politics.
Candidates should disseminate their message and platform in publicly funded campaigns. So I would
say don't worry about the number of parties. Just get rid of Citizens United and limit spending
for political campaigns to public funding.
The present Republican-controlled government will not do that. HRC had promised to get rid
of Citizens United. The only remedy now is to organize and try to give the House in 2 years to
whoever will do so.
If was the duffus you worked for Mr. Reich who repealed the Glass-Steagall Act ushering in the
tech bubble, the housing bubble and now the 'everything' bubble. A financialization of our economy
that has benefited only the top 10 to 15 percent of the population.
I don't usually agree w Sex Reich but he mostly right here. The Democratic Party has been corrupted
& a tool of Goldman Sachs, Wall Street, Big Banks, & Corrupt Democrat billionaires ...
Wall Street does care if the kill growth & jobs as long as they keep interest rates at Zero
& Print trillions to fuel the market & fill their pockets. Same w the banks.
The Democrats have Total comtempt for working Americans out here in what they call flyover land.
You know... IW WI MI OH. So Reich is right there but more Gov, more socialism is not the answers.
Economic growth & free Enterprise w sound monetary policy to crest jobs & raise incomes is what
we need & what Trump will provide.
There's definitely a failure of government to do its job: to ensure that the market economy works
to improve the lives of all people (they instead ensure that they get a job at a Goldman Sachs
or a Morgan Stanley once they leave government). Robert Reich points out in the article that the
government never steps in to prevent anti-monopoly practices. To his point, one has only to look
at the over-valued market capitalizations of the financial and pharmaceutical sectors to see that
these guys are getting a free ride. Since not everyone can be a Paul Volcker, one may have to
raise the pay grade of civil servants to attract the best talents.
Whether he's a Democrat or a Republican, the white voter is a bit lost, unable to find his
way in a world where the white man no longer dominates. This doesn't apply to the working or middle
class.
This said, it's not because we want change that we're going to cast our vote for a monster
like Trump. We know what happened in 1933 in Germany, in 1917 in Russia. Whether it's gas chambers
or the Goulag, these psychopaths (Hitler, Stalin) can go very far. The worst ones are the toned-down
versions: a Hitler Light. I sure won't vote for Marine Le Pen.
It's truly a worrying time for the intelligent citizen. Democrats fail the middle class, yet for
all my life there's only been one party who would throw their own mother on hot coals and walk
over her body to give a rich man a tax cut: the Republican Party. I hope it's true that Trump
represents their defeat just as much as the Democrats. They've sold out their base for decades
now, peddling condescending lies and culture war excuses for their greed and cronyism. Not a single
Republican used to be an expert scientist until reducing pollution was going to cost their donors
a few dollars, then all of sudden they all knew better than a PhD how the climate worked. Their
last President started a war and gave no-bid government contracts to his friends, and even tried
to privatize Social Security so business associates could skim off the top of that too, consequences
be damned. When neither side is either willing or able to save you, what can you do?
Mr. Reich, you can't see the forest for the trees. Hillary promised that AFTER you lost your job
to bad trade deals, she'd help you to retrain to become a 7-11 night clerk. In essence, she was
offering to bury your job in a fine casket. Donald offered to fight for your job and shake up
America's trade deals if he had to in order to level the playing field and keep our manufacturing
here. And oh yea, bring some jobs back home too. He also said he would protect them from cheap
labor pouring across the border legally and illegally. Illegal Latinos don't all work picking
lettuce - some drive trucks, do construction, are plumbers, carpenters, electricians, shipyard
workers, you know - jobs our own citizens want. It's not about whether you can strangle another
company with union demands, it's about the lack of jobs period. So in essence, Hillary wanted
open borders and all of our jobs going to Latinos. Donald wants the opposite.
Wonder what makes you Einsteins think the republicans are now suddenly for the working man? Republicans
have always been on the side of big money interests, and nothing has changed. Trump is just there
to placate the mid western rubes. 'Mericuns are so naive. (no tolerance for propaganda like the
Euros or Russians seem to have.) Trump is just a head fake. Its business as usual. He's just gonna
pick up where Obama and Shrub left off. Seen this trick before.
The Guardian needs to publish an editorial apologizing for being part of this problem. During
the Sanders-Clinton race, the Guardian was nothing but derisive towards Sanders, and elevated
Clinton as the responsible and adult choice to stop Donald Trump. They even compared Sanders to
Nader as a spoiler from 2000, not realizing that all the warning signs were there that Clinton
would play the role of John Kerry in 2004.
There were comments in the comment section with people saying "I still don't fully understand
the difference between Clinton and Sanders, can someone please explain it to me?" That was the
Guardian's job. For the record, here is the correct explanation.
For decades the Democratic Party has abandoned working people and embraced globalization at
their expense. Clinton was the candidate of continuity with that policy, Sanders was the candidate
of "Hey, that was actually a bad idea, our mistake, we'll start caring about your issues as well."
It was obvious that Clinton would be vulnerable in a general election against anyone who ran a
populist platform, which Trump was doing.
This train wreck was obvious from a mile away. The DNC and the media need to own this blunder.
You are correct. I would add that electing trump has ended the dlc Democratic party. Of course
my conjecture remains to be proved by events going forward. Still this rightwing shift has a real
chance now to remain in power like the collapsed dlc Clinton Obama clique for a considerable period
ahead. And besides that a restive U.S. working class is in motion with little obvious direction
to the left right now. I would expect though a left opposition is coming rather soon.
The US is a country with a lot of very angry and unhappy people. The nation is in decline and
the people are fearful; they know something is terribly wrong but they do not have the political
acumen to deal with the situation. The two political parties, co-opted if not largely owned by
the plutocracy-, offer no respite from the oppression of which, in fact, they are the instruments
being vassals of their plutocratic masters.
Unfortunately, the plutocracy and their subservient mass media have convinced about half of
the population to vote, to their own destruction, for continual transfer of wealth and power to
the corporations and plutocrats-. The Trumpers, arguably less educated, politically ignorant and
naive, easily manipulated, and riddled with fear fueled with bigotry, are the leading edge of
the discontent and fright. However, their blindness to reality is a severe obstacle to any possibility
of getting that nation back on the track. The plutocrats-, like all parasites, will drain the
nation of its lifeblood and then move on to another country to exploit.
As long as the Trumpeters and those of their ilk can be so easily duped and manipulated, it
is unlikely that there will be any common ground. In fact, common ground is not what is needed.
Rather, what is needed is an aggressively progressive agenda to restore democracy, economic recovery
and re-establishment of a rapidly disappearing middle class.
Politicians like Clinton and Obama give paid speeches behind closed doors on Wall St, whom they
bailed out at the expense of the people. They throw $10k-a-plate fundraisers with celebrities,
and cozy up to the profit-over-people industries like big pharmaceutical and big oil. They are
for hedge fund managers, payday lenders, defense contractors, and credit card companies. Then
they have the gall to send out "tweets" saying we must overturn Citizens United.
I realize the Republicans are no better, in fact, they're even worse, but everyone knows who
and what they are. They make no bones about it, they don't dress up in wolf's clothing and pretend
they are for the working man.
Democrats do. Democrats are like the Republicans from 30 years ago. Over the last 3 decades,
the left has moved to the right and the right has moved into an insane asylum. So now it's the
Democrats who do the red-baiting (see their treatment of Sanders) and the RNC are accusing neoliberal
centre-right politicians like Obama of being a socialist. Socialist? He's not even a liberal.
You are forgetting to add in the "for profit' colleges. How much did Debbie Dearest get from *that*
lobby? How many millions did Bill get to sit on their boards? These political grifters got paid
big money by the very entities which were foreclosing on homes, suffocating kids with student
loan debt, and tanking the economy via Wall Street schemes. The Dems thought we weren't paying
attention?
Trump is offering a solution, that's all. Can he implement it, probably not, but no one else is
even talking about re negotiating NAFTA, penalizing China or anything else to bring back millions
of good paying factory jobs.
Our politicians are out of touch, and corrupted by the oceans of money thrown at them. The 58
million people who voted for Trump want anyone to talk to them about what has happened to their
lives and opportunities and address their problems.
Hillary may in fact be the most competent politician, but that is the problem. She never came
across as a leader who would lead us out of our problems. So we elected a lying misogynist who
is, at least, not a politician!
Reich debated Chris Hedges on democracynow before the election, Hedges pointed out
to him that under Ronald Ray-Gun the levers of power were given over to all the
corp's of the world, there isn't a DNC or a RNC, it's a less than one percent secure hold
on all power, Trump is just another puppet --
The last two paragraphs are absolutely dead on with what happened. You can't cater to minorities
and expect the majority to stick with you forever as they suffer. The Democrats are so blind they
didn't understand why Bernie surged or why Trump won but this writer has real clarity and speaks
the truth absolutely on it. If you ignore the majority, which is mostly working class or rural
citizens, you lose election after election with never ever holding total power for long. Trump
truly needs to be a Teddy Roosevelt up there and set the barn on fire to chase all of the rats
out and rebuild it.
That's what we need and at least there is the tiniest sliver of hope he will, whereas with
Hillary we would have received more establishment politics which always include purposeful half-truths
and omissions at the working class's expense. Seriously, Schumer and Pelosi need to be investigated
with Hillary Clinton because the way they act up there is exactly what made America a stagnant
decaying landscape.
I think it's time we get to the real issues the majority and minority citizens face together
and stop beating to death your four issues that are inconsequential to the other 90 % of us in
one way or another. That goes for both parties too. It makes me wonder if they ever talk to anyone
but the people who have money. It would seem so and it needs to change now because them people
live in a bubble and bubbles always burst. Drag the swamp Donald on both sides of the isle and
you will be my hero forever. Fail and you will be my most hated president yet.
And on a final note, thank god the Guardian has pulled back from the left some now and is being
a good news source again. Thank you for this article and a big thank you to this writer for telling
it like it
Once the Democratic Party was the party of the working man. The union member. Blue collar.
Trying to get higher wages for the working man.
The Republican Party was the party of capital. Bankers. Corporate types. Millionaires.
The Democrats abandoned the working man for the underclass.
Now it seems to becoming that the Republicans are the party of people who work for a living
at a private job, along with the business owners.
The Democrats represent those who either don't work, or those who work for the State: welfare
recipients, students, public union members, most every staffer in DC. Hollywood types. Millionaires,
especially dot com ones.
Despite calling it racist over and over, unfettered immigration holds wages down. Free trade
with China and Mexico guts unions and makes the proposed $15/hr minimum wage a joke when factories
have all moved to Mexico or China. It's a fine thing with Britain, Germany or Canada, but a big
loser with low wage countries. Especially with China who puts barriers in place for OUR exports.
It also didn't help when Katy Perry, Madonna and J.Lo endorsed Hillary. It sent more people
towards the Republicans looking for people who looked like them. Who got up in the morning to
go to work.
If U.S. Democrats have any sense, they'll kick the DNC leadership losers out and let Bernie and
Elizabeth Warren lead the Party. Then we'll have at least one party that represents the interests
of Workers.
Trump has two years to make the lives of his supporters substantially better. Looking
at the people around him, that's not likely to happen. I can't wait to see him make the case that
more tax cuts for Huuge corporations will somehow help Working People! If they try more of the
same, then the market crash will happen on their watch.
Good luck in 2018 then. Dems re-take House & Senate, with Bernie & Elizabeth Warren leading
the way...
We are living through the death of "growth", the death of capitalism. The 1% are using the 99%
as human shields to buffer themselves from the collapse of their religion and their Gawd, horded
wealth. Trump will sellout his Chumps worse than Obama... And the idea that the TwoParty will
ever move to meet the social needs of humanity is a pipe dream. The only way we will get this
is by Direct Democracy. The 99% votes policy. The government are employees who implement those
policies... or they are fired.
Nearly every single elected politician currently in office on both sides is bought and paid for
and works in the best interest of large corporations, not in the best interest of we the people.
A complete purge, a system flush is required if we are to take our country back.
It seams like a monumental task, it looks like an impossible mission when you look at the sheer
amount of money and power in play but it is actually simple and it's all on us, all we need to
do is stop voting for Repocrats and start voting for people of integrity outside of these two
establishment parties.
That is the only way to quickly affect real change and if everyone did that we'd have our country
back in no time. So stop bashing the people who are voting third party and independent, stop telling
them that their vote is wasted or a vote for the "other side", realize that there are no two sides
really and join them in voting the Repocrats out of everything and voting in the people who will
overturn Citizens United, outlaw lobbying and pass a new campaign finance law that will take the
money complete out of politics and allow us to elect the congress and the president that will
work for us, not the Wall Street or MIC.
Is Trump's election really a rejection of the "power structure"? How could that be since that
power structure, whether Democrat or Republican, remains intact decade after decade? I don't think
Trump's victory is a rejection of the power structure. The rejection of the power structure was
embodied, if anywhere, by the Sanders campaign, but it was defied by the Clinton's and by actors
like Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and by the fraud employed by those actors during the primaries.
In a system of only two parties voting for one or the other can simply be a vote based in anger
about an excluded middle, or a non-existent "left". These frustrating complaints tell you more
about the result than does "the power structure" who could care less which party wins, so long
as their interests are served.
Some sanity at last amidst the demented ragings of the identity politics crowd that STILL does
not understand that it was them who put Trump in the White House. Not white male rage. Not the
shy white female vote. Not any other race/gender/sexuaity category that you wish to dream up.
What put Trump in the White House was a deeply dysfunctional political system. The fact that
the symbol of this deeply dysfunctional political system happened to be female is neither here
nor there. Understand this. Understand this and learn.
Ditch the identity politics. Become a real progressive, not a fake progressive deriving fatally
deluded ideas from exclusio
Reich has some points, but is ignoring several key circumstances, such as the 72K$ median income
among Trump supporters, but mainly hostile legislators blocking anything more than incremental
changes as to wealth redistribution such as the ACA. Neither Obama nor Clinton have supernatural
powers to get progressive measures passed through republican congress.
The Guardian once represented the working class. Not any more.
The next president had been decided. The elites, the lobbyists, the corporate bosses, and the
media all decided the next president. Only one thing missing. The voters. They weren't playing
ball! Those pesky working class voters! Now the media get to pretend they were with us all along!
"In an article out today at The Washington Post, Freddie DeBoer makes this case. He points
out that Sanders during the Democratic primary won in key states, like Michigan and Wisconsin,
that Clinton lost in the general, and that Sanders was able to attract independent voters. He
also notes Sanders's higher favorability and popularity ratings. Of course, such arguments are
entirely speculative. We don't know how Sanders would have fared under Republican attacks. And
we can't forget that Sanders lost the primary, by a not insignificant amount.
"But one of the biggest arguments made by Clinton and her supporters was that she was pragmatic
and electable-the safe candidate. Sanders's campaign, with its proposals for a $15 minimum wage
and universal health care, was derided as pie-in-the-sky, and the candidate himself painted his
platform as an electoral disaster. I suspect that more than a few Democrats went with their heads
instead of their hearts when casting their votes for Clinton. But we found out that playing a
safe and moderate campaign (i.e., picking Tim Kaine, the most forgettable man in existence) doesn't
necessarily translate into a winning one. Clinton failed to pick up moderate Republicans and white
women. And many of her supporters skated over her extreme unfavorability ratings and her inability
to generate excitement.
"There is no concrete evidence that Sanders would have won. But we were sold a candidate who
we were told was electable, when most of the signs pointed to the fact that she wasn't."
Democratic party turned into a party of identity politics painting by the numbers. Here is how
they assemble their base by pandering to each group specifically:
*women - check
*blacks - check
*latino - check
*lgbt -check
*millenials - check
*educated white collar progressives - check
But then it turns out these groups are not one-dimensional and their voting is not based on
just a single identity. They are complex people. And this is how the Democratic voting base splintered.
There was no message unifying them.
First Brexit, now Trump ... world politics are not going the way that Guardianistas envisaged!
So where has it all gone wrong for the left?
What Rubin says about the democrats abandoning the working class in the US could equally apply
to Labour in the UK.
Serves the Washington and London elites f***ing well right, you might say.
But whereas the Washington/New York democrats will just have to lump it, the London elites don't
want to accept Brexit because they didn't get the result they wanted, and they will try to do
anything to stop it.
If they do, and they might because they will stop at nothing, it will destroy any fleeting idea
of democracy in Britain.
And for what?
To remain a member of a corrupt and bankrupt euro project that is running off the rails?
The euro elite is as bent as they come. What they did and are doing to the greeks is unforgivable.
Yanis Varoufakis was against Brexit not because he supports the Brussels autocrats, but because
he thinks that the best way to combat the world's biggest threats - i.e., climate change - is
through combined efforts (not much point in one country trying to combat climate change on its
own if no one else bothers).
The euro project is doomed. The 28 or 30 countries can agree on nothing (response to refugee crisis?),
except to punish those that dissent
Trump & the GOP don't represent the working class [either]. All the misguided "uneducated, poor
white folk" will find that out soon enough when the new regime is allowed to ride roughshod over
all the gov't support programs they've relied on.
Think he served one year and resigned. He was too much of an idealist as came from educational
system and could not enough accomplished to justify himself being in that position as per what
I saw him say many years ago.
Yes Reich was a Clinton appointee. He wrote a book about his four years as Secretary of Labor.
It is an interesting read. My take from that book was how Bill gutted labor influence inside his
admin.
The Clintos and Obama watched as their fellow blue-class and middle class workers were gobbled
up by larger and larger corporations, and now they are surprised that they refuse to vote for
them? Trumps message to African Americans was simple and so painfully true: "Vote for me, what
do you have to lose?". In the end, most voters decided "what do I have to lose?"
Because four million people voted for someone even more right wing then trump. If you think Gary
Johnson is a supporter of expanded government services, then you're entirely unfamiliar with his
career as new mexico's governor.
Thomas Ferguson granted an interview this morning. In it he said,
(in a paper from 2014 he predicted that) "Hillary Clinton would have a lot of trouble putting
together the old coalition of effectively Wall Street and if you'll allow me to speak quickly
and directly for the sake of communication, identity politics. They're really interesting to study.
You can see for example in the white college age women that Hillary only got 6% more of those
than Trump did which is sort of unbelievable. But let me come to what I think is probably the
heart of the matter. I think we really are at the end of the classical democratic formula of the
Clinton period which was Wall Street plus identity politics. I think this is it. You're never
going to be able to put that humpty dumpty back together again. If the democrats want to win they're
going to actually have to make a strong appeal to working class Americans. Now you know the problem
this is going to create. There's a ton of money in the democratic party. It is not going to sit
there and tolerate candidates like Sanders. They just really despised and hated Sanders. So we're
now going to have a very interesting situation where you've got a top heavy party with cash at
the top and no mass at the base at all, or very little."
The interesting thing about Ferguson is he doesn't speak or write that often as he dislikes
arguing, but when he does come to a conclusion he is willing to share he is seldom wrong.
I think you, Reich and Ferguson are spot on. It is very hard to argue against "identity" politics
since it is basically arguing that minorities (racial, sexual, religious, whatever) have rights.
Unfortunately these "identity" groupings somehow left out the working class. So the Democratic
Party ended up representing a coalition that involved Wall Street (at its center) and many other
small minority groups. What was left out of this coalition was any voice for the working class.
Now that is a classical example of divide and conquer. And yes this is a case of the big money
of capitalism dividing America's workers.
Fifty years ago organized labor unions had a seat at the table who could speak for American
workers (whatever small group the individual worker may have belonged to). Today that is gone.
Hopefully in the coming years the Democratic Party can restore its roots and begin to represent
that class of Americans who actually work for a living. These workers can be divided into hundreds
of different groups -- white, black, male, female, straight,gay, wonks, blue collar, hispanic,
many others. But together they can have a voice in the national dialogue. If electing Trump is
the way to educate the Democratic Party honchos on what is required then perhaps Trump's win will
serve a useful purpose.
Bill Clinton moved the Democratic Party to the right. Although rejected by the GOP (racism) Obama
continued that move. Hillary could have easily won the election by reaching out to the millions
disenfranchised for more than 30 years, but failed to do so. What and who made her stick to a
campaign of 'Not Trump' and elitism is puzzling but not an enigma.
My guess is Bill and Wall Street created the plan, and it went down in a blaze.
"Democrats once represented the working class. Not any more".
A good article which explains the route the Democrats have taken over the years. Faced with
the Republican victories of Ronald Reagan from 1981-1989 the democrats chose to move to the right,
the party having a previous lineage with ordinary workers back to FDR and further. Bill Clinton
in 1992 took onboard the third way calling itself the New Democrats. In the UK Tony Blair copied
this following on after the tories Margaret Thatcher and John Major with his New Labour transformation
of the party into a virtual copy of the tories.
Just like the 2010 election in the UK with Labour, many people who would have voted Democrat
simply did not turn out for Hilary Clinton and did not vote at all. With complete establishment
backing including Wall Street and the MSM she lost to Donald Trump. Many would have voted for
him anyway but a sizeable percentage must have used him as an anti Clinton vote. Jill Stein called
Hilary Clinton corrupt. Clinton is a war hawk she supported the Iraq war and doesn't appear to
have learnt from the disaster as she was mainly responsible for the catastrophy in Libya. She
loves to boast, we came, we saw, he died, meaning Col. Gaddafi she is more reserved about the
later deaths of the ambassador Christopher Stevens and some of his colleagues in the Libyan embassy
as a direct result of supporting the jihadis. While still secretary of state she said that she
would arm anyone fighting against President Assad thats turned out well. She supported the coup
in Honduras and was instrumental in laying the ground out for the coup in Ukraine. The recent
wikileaks indicated she knew the Saudis were financing ISIS but she said nothing as they were
contributing to the Clinton Foundation.
Hillary Clinton Lies About Attending Bilderberg While In Denver
An excellent analysis. Clinton was an awful candidate. She represents the establishment in every
possible way; the same establishment that has stood shamelessly by while the US working and middle
classes have been abandoned.
She offered precisely nothing other than not being Donald Trump. Her campaign resembled a coronation.
This sheer hubris and arrogance cost the Democrats the presidency. Forget the tiresome shrieks
of racism and fascism for a minute: Trump won because Clinton failed to get support among the
masses of underemployed and unemployed industrial working class in the Rust Belt; because she
offered nothing new, no answers other than more of the same.
They failed to address the very real concerns and fears of everyday Americans. They have no
one to blame but themselves for this disaster.
Nonsense.The article nails it. A failure to address the Economic Vampirism that Clinton champions.Sure,
there are plenty of racists and misogynists in the GOP, but willfull ignorance couched in identity
rhetoric is how the party lost so much.until establishment dems realize that, things will continue
to get bleaker for them.
This is a very good article, but it doesn't pay enough attention to the human, emotional aspect
of political leadership. The really sad thing is that the Democrats had somebody in Bernie Sanders
who could have beaten Trump, as all polls earlier this year indicated, but the determination of
Hillary to be President combined with the vast web of Clinton connections led to the result we
have. Everybody knew about her problems going into the primary campaign, but the attraction of
electing a female President combined with unease with Sanders' roots and radicalism (actually,
not such big difficulties) led to her rock-solid "super-delegate" support and sufficient voter
support in the primaries. I doubt the DNC "dirty tricks" were quite enough to cause Sanders' defeat,
but the Party establishment support no doubt swayed some voters, too. Unfortunately, Sanders will
be too old to carry the torch, as is Elizabeth Warren; they should now lead the battle in the
Senate and write the books so needed to shape American progressive thought in the coming years.
The Democrats need to completely rebuild, so that in eight years they can be ready again for executive
power, with the essential support of Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress. It's not
worth their while winning the Presidency without control of Congress. It means building a real
party, a social movement and organization, not just a label, with leaders who can connect emotionally
with citizens.
"Bill Clinton and Barack Obama helped shift power away from the people towards corporations..."?
What about the landslide shift of power to corporations, lobbyists, and the rich under the
Bush and Reagan regimes?
I always agree with you, Mr Reich, and gain insight from your writings/columns, but I think
you're really missed the boat here. A demagogue told the big lie to people, and many bought it!
For all the Democrats' (many shortcomings), the BLAME for the sad state of the middle-class,
working class, and non-1% is on the Republicans' heads!
And the war on unions is one of the right-wing's key rallying points
Clinton is at least partly responsible for Brexit.
1) She led the US into invading Libya. Persuaded Obama, who was initially against it, and now
calls it his biggest mistake as president.
2) As Gaddafi predicted, his regime was the "cork in the bottle of Africa" (Assange's words)
since Libya was patrolling the region. Removing him opened the first front of the European migrant
crisis.
3) Destabilizing Libya provided a base for ISIS and other factions, which helped destabilize
Syria, opening the second front of the European migrant crisis.
4) The European migrant crisis was one of the primary drivers of Brexit.
Well regular Joe Blow has been mocked and ignored for years. Joe Blow might not live in a trailer
park, he might have some nice house but he and Jane Blow are working double shifts to pay for
it. Joe and Jane have long given up on politics because 'it does not change a thing anyways',
they have never seen a politician outside the election phase to descend to their rather unremarkable
town in the middle of nowhere. Unions are nowhere to be seen, no one actually gives a damn about
them and no one listens to their concerns.
But they understand. They do not have a college degree so those people from NY or Detroit might
be right that they do not understand the big picture, watching the news they see that their elected
officials have much more important things to take care of. Gender neutral bathrooms, organizing
community hours to paint the safe space at the nearby college, giving debt and tax reliefs to
the same banks threatening the two of them to foreclose their house, apparently they are really
busy.
But now, after years, someone is coming around and listens. He might not really care and only
pretend to but he DOES listen. For the first time ever.
And we really wonder about the outcome of this election?!
Reich's article pretty much nails it. The Democratic bigwigs preferred the company of corporate
fat cats, facilitated their greed and lost touch with their base....
This is one of the few articles that provides any insight into the 2016 presidential election.
The reality is that Americans don't like either political party and don't trust politicians. American
voters identify with political parties far less than voters in other countries, and most Americans
assume that politicians are crooks. That's just the way it is.
Presidential candidates hire consultants to provide marketing expertise to their political
campaigns. Trump, by contrast, is himself a marketing expert. As a young man in his twenties,
he had the insight that he could increasing the value of real estate by branding it, just as luxury
automobiles are branded.
The people who have been mocking Donald Trump for being a real estate magnate and reality show
TV impresario fail to realize that those are pursuits where it is impossible to succeed without
understanding what the consuming public wants. Many people find Trump to be outrageously offensive,
but that is part of a persona he has developed over decades in his property development and TV
enterprises in order to attract large numbers of people to his golf courses and hotels, and to
attract viewers to The Apprentice.
In politics, Trump's persona translated into a vicious political style that led his opponents
to focus on his persona rather than his message. The message was that the increasing deemphasis
on national borders (in the form of globalized trade, illegal immigration, and arguably even international
terrorism) should be dialed back because it is changing America for the worse. That message resonated
with a large number of people and resulted in his election.
Throughout the 2016 election cycle, Trump's opponents failed to address his message and focused
instead on his persona. Every opponent who tried to take out Trump by attacking his outrageous
and offensive persona was destroyed in the process. During the Republican primary, candidates
were talking about Donald Trump so much that they were defining themselves in terms of Donald
Trump. Hillary Clinton made the same mistake the 16 unsuccessful Republican primary candidates
made. Her campaign was a social message that used Donald Trump as a bogeyman.
The appeal to social interest groups did not address the objective and important issues that
Trump was (arguably inarticulately) articulating, which are the issues that really attracted voters
to him attracted voters to him. Like Britain, America has a lot of towns where the local economy
has been destroyed by the closing of, for example, a steel mill. Trump knew how to address the
voters in those towns, and that's how he got elected.
The missing piece from your comment is Trumps use of media that was relatively new compared to
prior presidential elections. In Trump's case this was Twitter and Twitter bot accounts re-tweeting
messages to smartphones. Obama did well harnessing social media, just as Reagan used taped video
feeds appearing to be live (have to remember how primitive color transmissions were not that long
ago), Kennedy used television, and earlier presidents won harnessing radio.
That is true, as well. Trump's campaign was arguably the American equivalent of the Twitter revolutions
that swept North Africa and the Ukraine a few years ago. One question is whether that use of social
media is why Trump won or whether it is more narrowly why his win was not predicted by pollsters.
This may also be relevant to the unexpectedness of the results of the Brexit referendum.
It's also a reminder to those who shout "power to the people" in the expectation that empowered
people will return a particular result. With Trump, and with Brexit, the people appear to have
repudiated those who see themselves as empowerers of the people. It's worth some reflection.
This is an excellent article. In a perverse way it was those zealously anti Trump wailers who
unwittingly made him the 45th president of the USA.
Words of wisdom for those disappointed by the result: Understand why those who voted for Trump
did. Don't just write them all of as racist/xenophobic. The majority are not. They are angry because
politicians, including and especially those Democrats who were supposed to be on their side, sold
their souls to the devil - globalisation, big corporations etc.
In fact one may argue that Bill Clinton signing the NAFTA free trade agreement back in 1994
sowed the seeds for this current situation. Think about it
Exactly! These people are suffering, and instead of getting help from the Democratic Party they
were just all labeled as a bunch of racists, xenophobes. homophobes, etc. Most people who voted
for Trump didn't vote for the man. They voted for the hope that they could take their country
back from a bunch of elitist, corporatists, and rich bankers who have stolen it from them. You
aren't going to win them back by denigrating them further.
Yet the mainstream media will persist in explaining the Trump disaster in terms of race or gender
issues, never in terms of economic class.
This is how they keep us divided.
Yes. I live in rural Missouri, and I absolutely agree with this analysis. The bit that worries
me is that none of the embryonic "plans" suggested by Trump -- the wall, the deportations, the
repeal of the Affordable Care Act -- will do anything but make the less well-off less well-off
in every way. Does anyone really believe, for example, that lowering the tax on business will
induce any businessman with any sense to rebuild an old factory in a small, crumbling midwestern
town with an uneducated workforce? Let alone allow a union to form, provide decent salaries, pensions
and healthcare like their grandfathers had from companies like Ford, General Motors, Caterpillar,
John Deere etc? Of course, there's always a war as a last resort: that used to get the economy
going, using up lots of materials and lots of surplus young men, didn't it? But I'm afraid the
Chinese don't want to fight us, they want to buy us. There's still so much useable, badly-tended
space in the middle of America ...
"The bit that worries me is that none of the embryonic "plans" suggested by Trump -- the wall,
the deportations, the repeal of the Affordable Care Act -- will do anything but make the less
well-off less well-off in every way."
Actually, GETTING ELECTED was the best thing he could have done. At least it's a CHANCE for
the Democratic Party to wake the **** up and see the working class (not the WHITE working class,
the WHOLE working class) has been slipping away from them and at an accelerating rate. And they
are FURIOUS at getting the shaft while their union "leaders" ORDER them to "vote blue no matter
who" and are bullied and browbeaten if they so much as DARE to ask what happened to all those
empty promises from last campaign season that have been DOWNGRADED yet again into something even
smaller and less ambitious, only to be silenced with "the other guys will be the apocalypse so
don't you dare ask any questions you dirty racists!"
My husband and two friends and I traveled from SF to Philly to protest the DNC convention.
The protestors - most of whom were under 35 - were corralled in FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT PARK.
The delegates lounged in WELLS FARGO CENTER. They even shut down the subway station used by both
groups so that only delegates could use it. They did this even though at the end of the day a
torrential electrical storm was drenching the protesters. Nope, folks. That PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION
IS FOR THE DNC ONLY.
Did Hillary really think we didn't NOTICE?? Did she think that making FIVE TIMES the average
annual income of Americans for a 45 minutes speech to Gold In Sacks would be ignored? That we
didn't care that she and Bill RENEGED on the deal with Russia that Bush One made re NATO is pushing
Europe to the brink of war? That she loves loves loves the TPP?
Just how fucking stupid did Hillary think we were NOT to notice her Wall Street/MIC worshiping
history and positions?
Trump is a domestic disaster. We'll have to deal with that. But I am at least slightly comforted
that he wants to stop this war machine (bon chance) and does not support the treasonous, sovereignty-killing
TPP - which Hillary SUPPORTED.
The only one who got Trump elected was HILLARY CLINTON and her arrogant followers.
i hope mr reich can help to clear out the faux liberal power elites from the democratic
party ... the wall street apparatchiks and senior officials that preside over the various electoral
'plantations' for the clintons: millenials, blacks, lgbt/trans and hispanics
this type of politics is regressive because it provides cover for vested interests (that
derive their wealth through ownership of capital) to colonise democracy against the vast majority
of people that depend upon wages for a living
the power structure at the top of the democratic party is corrupt and corrupting ... the way
this organisation has sought and cultivated minority votes (not in the pursuit of some higher
class goal) but to enhance the career prospects of an 'out of touch' political class on capitol
hill is the ultimate form of betrayal
in particular, the way impoverished black communities across america have been used by a 'praetorian
guard' of senior black democratic leaders to support the dynastic ambitions of the clinton family
must come to an end
it is down to enlightened thinkers like mr reich to ensure that the democratic party transitions
from being the 'last plantation owner in america' (and trader in chief of minority votes) towards
a champion of working people and their class interests
this would be a good start: i would fire most senior black leaders in the democratic party
... (you know, the likes of donna brazile!) for activities incompatible with representing the
class interests of working americans - period
One problem the left has to overcome is the sheer seductiveness of the argument that the Farages
and Trumps of this world put forward - they tell those who have not fared well under capitalism
that the fault is not their own, that the real problem is immigrants - it is a cynical but effective
lie that those who feel left behind find hard to resist.
In truth the problem is that the system they - Trump and Farage - actually favour is utterly
dependent on workers who will work for very little whether they are immigrants or not. The tragic
irony is that the right has absolutely no intention of improving the lot of the poor fools who
vote for them.
In a multi party parliamentary system the US labor unions and the US' left-leaning social justice
voters would not be represented by the same party.
Too many people make the mistake of thinking labor in the US is a left-wing movement. It hasn't
been for decades. US labor unions don't fight for workers rights, they fight for their workers
pocketbooks and nothing else.
In 1972 labor abandoned the Democrats when they chose a too-progressive candidate for president.
Since that time the relationship between progressives and the working class has been a nothing
but a marriage of convenience. That marriage seems to have broken up.
17% of American indusrtry is union. There wasn't much of a marriage to break up. Factory mechanization
was accompanied by moving out of the rust belt into anti-union Southern states. Later, they left
for China.
The value of unions to Democrats has little to do with the voters in their ranks. Unions have
long been the Democrat's counterbalance against Republican wealth - they can't buy as many ads
but they can provide nearly unlimited free labor to the Democrats canvassing and telephone campaigns.
WIthout unions the Democrats would have even fewer seats in the House and Senate and Woodrow Wilson
would probably have been their last president.
No, the democrats no longer represent the working classes in the US . As the Labour party here
no longer does. I listened to Ed Miliband this morning on the radio and when asked whether he
supported Brexit he said he was worried about coloured people, Muslims, transgender and almost
everyone else, but he didn't mention the working class at all.
This is why the Tories can get away with doing whatever they want, because Labour is finished
in most working class areas. They became a party for minorities and encouraged mass immigration.
Now they mean less than nothing to most ordinary, indigenous people in this country!
We don't need a Trump, we've got the Tories and UKIP instead!
That would be because the classical working class is an 1860s-1970s phenomenon. It's not describing
any meaningful "class" of people anymore. Some people may "feel" working class, but the truth
of the matter is that for everyone who feels that way, there's someone with similar living conditions
who doesn't.
While I find much to agree with in analyses like Reich's and Frank's, I find that they tend to
romanticize the white working class and ignore the elephants in the room, those being racism,
xenophobia, homophobia, and the rest. I feel I can say this because I come from a white working-class
background in small-town Arkansas (Bill Clinton's hometown and mine were thirty-five miles apart).
Believe me, Robert, there is a virulent strain of racism among many of those folks, and It's something
that needs to be better addressed by analyses such as yours and Tom Frank's. It's not just something
that GOP fear mongering conjured out of thin air. It has deep historical roots and cannot be brushed
easily aside by discussions based solely on economic arguments. (See, for example, Stacy Patton's
article:
http://www.damemagazine.com/2016/11/01/why-i-have-no-sympathy-angry-white-men .)
My GF comes from a similar background. I posted this earlier on this thread.
I know the "working classes" in the USA, especially the midwestern variety. Dumb, ill informed,
incurious. Obsessed with macho posturing, weapons, military exploits.
Rampant racism, misogyny, extreme religiosity. Birtherism, creationism, paranoia, you name
it. You have to read the anti-Obama and Clinton vitriol from people lke that to believe it.
From people who do not have a pot to piss in.
My GF hails from some dot in the middle of nowhere in IA. She describes being raised there
as living in a cult. She had to come to Long Island to realise that there actually were still
jews alive today. She more or less thought they were like the Hittites and the Sumerians, something
you read about in the bible. To this day she loves to watch documentaries on TV because the
education she received in school was so poor and narrow minded.
A lot of that rascism, xenophobia, homophobia etc is born out of the frustration that the working
class find themselves in. Many believe, rightly or wrongly, that foreigners, the LGBTQ community,
Arfrican Americans, Latino's, Asians and so on, are given special treatment. These groups have
jumped to the front of the cue to reach the American Dream, while the working class have been
stuck in line at the back for years and they have become frustrated and angry. It doesn't excuse
those views, but if you look at it from their perspective you can see why they hit out.
Additionally, these views are held right across the demographic makeup of the US, not just
the Working Class.
hopefully once the dust has died down this is the sort of considered writing that we will see
in the Guardian - not the ludicrous outpourings of bile we have seen in the past few days.
I listened to the live radio account from the BBC and noted the evident discomfiture as the
result differed from the script. At the end of a presidential election the assembled studio experts
should have more to say about a candidate than bewailing perceived racism, perceived misogyny
(I doubt that Trump is a true misogynist!) and Mexican walls yet listening to the BBC since then
it's as if the programme presenters are working to a script. Likewise. I'm afraid, The Guardian.
What I find truly remarkable is the analogous positions of Trump and Corbyn: both outsider
candidates who relied on votes from outside their respective Establishments to win through. Trump
had little to do with the Republicans in the past. Corbyn was best known for voting against his
party. Both have been reviled by their own party elites (and by the Guardian). Corbyn has faced
a coup rumoured to have been organised from outside the PLP. Leading Republicans wore the fact
that they had not voted for their own candidate as a badge of honour. Of course this was solely
intended to save their political necks, but in the event did no harm whatsoever to Trump or Corbyn
- indeed it may have positively assisted them. Had Corbyn been positively endorsed by say, Harriet
Harman, he would possibly never have survived.
The US and UK political elites set great store by their acceptance of other faiths and ethnicities
yet seem curiously intolerant to the outsiders in their own milieu.
Clinton, Blair and Schroeder came up with the third way. Snake oil salesmen that all profited
from sucking up to the corporations and selling their influence. Schroeder signed a deal with
the Russians supply gas to Germany before joining Nordstream the company set up to do so. As for
Clinton and Blair the list is long a sto how they have lined their pockets. The third way has
never been about the ordinary working man. Wages have not risen in Germany in real terms for years
as they havent in the US. In the UK easy credit has masked the real situation and now peple are
suffering.
What Robert Reich has written has hit the nail on the head.
Schroeder signed a deal with the Russians supply gas to Germany before joining Nordstream
the company set up to do so.
Except he merely served on the supervisory board.
The third way has never been about the ordinary working man. Wages have not risen in Germany
in real terms for years as they havent in the US.
"The working man" is waffling. Contrary to propaganda, Schroeder's reforms have contributed
massively to Germany not being hit as hard by the financial crisis as others - and contrary to
legends, it has improved the situation of the poor. It's the people peddling those legends, devoid
of any understanding how the situation was before, who contribute to the unemployed feeling outcast.
It's the 21st century. Wake up. Waffling about the "Working Man" is the same as waffling about
Cowboys and believing cattle farming is still being done like in 1850.
Guardian columnists such as Hadley Freeman, Lucia Graves, Wolff, Abramson, Freedland and company
should be forced to read this article. These columnists very rarely if ever talk about the Gilded
Age style inequality levels in the West, and the USA in particular. Instead it is all about identity
politics for them. Can these individuals start writing about the disastrous chasm between the
very rich and the rest please?
Definitely. Identity politics has been coopted by the neoliberal technocracy to divert attention
from wealth inequalities, the operation of big corporations in politics and the general lack of
democratic accountability in governance.
Thank you Mr Reich. Best article I have read for months.
The vote for Trump was a protest vote. It was a non violent revolution. A significant part
of the US electorate were angry. They saw their quality of life eroded. They saw little change
of their children having a chance of a better life. Trump was the perfect outsider. He was not
part of the "corrupt system". If you are living on your knees why not vote for someone who might
bring the whole corrupt rotting edifice crashing down?
THe usual media suspects have been trying to explain what happen in their normal closeted,
university educated, urban, smug, condesending manner. But when people are angry, when they are
protesting they want action, they want change , they don't want the status quo. During the French
revolution the mobs didn't ask "whats your policy on gender based minorities?"...they just shouted
"off with their heads"
Until the media, the politicians, the policy makers, the wealthy elite start properly listening
to the people left behind, then we will continue to see more Trumps and Brexits.
Excellent analysis . Mr Reich was Labour secretary under Clinton and so she shares the responsibility
of his policies. Of note is media complicity including so called liberal progressive media no
heavy weights. It seems that 'generating ' money / growth/ markets etc etc seem to be the all
important factors . Citizens' solidarity and the needs of the most vulnerable are at the bottom
of the checklist if it is ther at all. These progressives have fallen or perhaps fallen into the
trap of believing that talking about 'progressive' topics e.g. misogyny and gender etc is enough
to earn the badge of 'progressives and liberals '.
It is very strange indeed in the midst of all this ther is no mention of JC and McDonnel and
co and their ' old 'foolish' 'defunct' types of policies that no one wants to vote for because
.......
Finally it is curious to note that many US citizens voted for Trump because of the disillusionment
with political establishment. The odd thing is that ' those in the know ' did not know about their
anger -- To complicate matters further and using this an example does US and the West really know
what ordinary citizens in Afghanistan, Iraq and the rest of ME Asia and Africa really think about
the ruinous roles of the West in making their lives and their children's lives and their countries
and their future a waste . Just because ther are strategic and national security and economic
interests of West and their local reps. Do we have to believe the stories and features of the
natives and their 'backgrward ' oppressors or just believe ( as US election showed ) what we want
to believe that the natives, want , deserve and should get --
And yes we are in 21 st century and using all the powers of Internet and modern society to
be acquainted with the outside world -- Doh --
This article and simon Jenkins article on trump are the best two articles I've read in the guardian
for a long time! Spot on .keep reminding people that gw bush supported h. Clinton ,bush whose
personal vendetta against Saddam cost thousands of lives ,Iraqi ,us ,UK ,etc! And how million
american workers were put on the dole by bill clinton !ill
The Clintons also helped corrupt the Democratic party to deny Bernie Sanders the opportunity
to put many of these popular views to the test on Tuesday.
That also meant denying the voters the chance of having someone like Tulsi Gabbard as vice-president:
Exactly. Messrs Thatcher/Major/Blair/Cameron followed the same path here and that is why we have
decided that we , the people , want to take back control and showed it by voting to recover our
sovereignty by leaving the EU .
Remember, Trump used to be a Democrat. The fact that he has led the Republicans to peers suggests
very little difference between establishment parties, as in the U.K. Trump is a savvy enough schemer
to play to the fears and feelings of the dispossed. Let's see what he can deliver. I doubt much.
All I can hope is that he recruits right wing Us Supreme Court justices in the vein of Scalia.
Mr Justice Scalia, by his verdict in the Citizens United case, sold US politics to the highest
bidder. He and his devout followers have done more harm to their country than any other supreme
Court Justice. A man who supposedly believed in the 10 commandments, but who lacked the integrity
to hear any death penalty cases. A hypocrite.
Glass-Steagall, which was used to protect ordinary savers from high risk investment banking, was
removed by Clinton, not GWB. Sure, Congress and House were dominated by Republicans, but the Democrats
had Bill Clinton and could have filibustered (see how effective the Republicans have been since).
Instead, Gramm-Leach-Biley passed with bipartisan support. And let's not even talk about
NAFTA.
The Socialist bread van resprayed in a liberalism, neoliberalism, multiculturalism, political
correctness, globalism and liberal interventionism pretty colour by the Blairites, the Clintonites
and EU political elites, was still the same old failed product under the bonnet.
Guaranteed whenever it is taken out on the roads to breakdown and take a Nation or Federal
Superstate to the brink of bankruptcy before the passengers(electorate) see it for what it really
is - they had been sold a clapped out old banger with a new coat of paint!
UK Socialists, memorably described by Margaret Thatcher as people who when in power always
run out of other peoples money, are mostly a well meaning lot, but their bread van which crashed
spectacularly in the 1970's and got taken to the scrap yard as beyond repair, was years later
deviously bought(hijacked) as a 'damaged repairable', by a small group of liberal metropolitan
elite scam artists who had quietly infiltrated the Labour Party.
After a little tinkering under the bonnet(parachuting their own candidates into Labour heartland
seats) and a new touchy feely PR paint job, they relaunched it onto the streets as a New Model
'Green' Socialist vehicle, when in reality it just a bunch of second hand car dealers in sharp
suits operating an industrial scale 'cut and shut' job scam of Madoff proportions on hoodwinked
buyers(the electorate).
Working hand in glove with Goldman Sachs and big business, they made themselves extremely rich
but now have a lot to answer for, as they're responsible for the rise of the left and right wing
populist genie out of the bottle. Once out, like the inflation genie it is a devilishly difficult
task to put back in.
As evidenced by the latest utterances of a beaming Nigel Farage, aka Mr Brexit, following the
Trump Presidential winning campaign:
"Brexit, and now Trump, and now the wagons roll on to the rest of Europe for all the elections
next year," Farage said, smiling like a cheshire cat. "This is a really exciting time. As someone
who has now become a demolitions expert I'm thoroughly enjoying what's going on."
With bold, brash, crass, in your face characters like Trump and Farage at the forefront of
the political stage, the next few years, like a fairground ride could be rather wild and bumpy,
but never dull.
What so you're saying Trump and Farage lied? ....They're not going to protect our lifestyles and
western living standards using left wing socialist protectionism? ....who woulda thunk it?
It may be a repudiation of the American power structure, or the result of building certain perceptions
in the American public over the years by the mainstream media that Trump pounced upon and crudely
exploited to the hilt. The US media couldn't steer the beast it had created when it wanted to.
Think it's wishful thinking that we're not in for a period of great upheaval, possibly tragedy.
We saw what happened during the Bush presidency, an ugly war with a tally of tens of thousands
of lives and global financial meltdown. This time it could be much, much worse.
The Democratic party once represented the working class. But over the last three decades
the party has been taken over by Washington-based fundraisers, bundlers, analysts, and pollsters
who have focused instead on raising campaign money from corporate and Wall Street executives
and getting votes from upper middle-class households in "swing" suburbs.
Change "Democratic" for "Labour", "Washington" for "Westminster", "Wall Street" for "the City",
and it still rings true. Corbyn and the swing to the left isn't the cause of the crisis, it's
a response. What happens with Sanders and his base next will be pivotal.
Compulsory reading for all who formed & remain part of what is described with forensic precision,
including many contributing journalist to this paper. To be taken seriously, not immediately denounced,
Robert Reich could only put pen to paper with confidence after Trump won so decisively, & why
we are still reeling from reality about to unfold from success of the Brexit campaign. Fundamental
change in reactionary maverick hands.
Both Trump & UKIP/Farage/ Tory right engaged willingly, without shame, in a campaign of authoritarian
demagoguery, with elevation of racist, xenophobic sentiments to being new national virtue of saying
it as it is.
Existing power structures with their intricate connections, web of back rubbing fundraising, &
legislation to enable profit accumulation to continue unhindered by challenges from 'shopfloor'
labour groups, failed to see what was under their noses. Insulated, blinkered privileged they
dismissed as unelectable what was coming down on them like a ton of bricks.
Great piece, well worth reading more than once.
It is more an indictment of the mainstream political parties than the electorates that politicians
like Trump, Farage, Le Pen and all the other hate preachers are attracting so much support. It
is equally an indictment of the leftist media that they cling to the discredited leaders of the
so called centre left parties. But then they have personally done very nicely out of the cozy
relationships they have with leaders who are held in as much contempt by the ordinary voters as
the misnamed liberal media holds them.
The Democratic party once represented the working class. But over the last three decades
the party has been taken over by Washington-based fundraisers, bundlers, analysts, and pollsters
who have focused instead on raising campaign money from corporate and Wall Street executives
and getting votes from upper middle-class households in "swing" suburbs.
That is the most relevant paragraph I've seen here in recent months. exactly the same for the
UK Labour party, Nobody with any real prospect of power represents the working class. The only
shadows left are the unrealistic promises of Trump, or Brexit that we know will be ignored once
the vote is cast. But what else is there?
The "lumpenproletariat" that brought the social democratic parties in europe to power and made
the european communist political parties a force to reckon with no longer exist. The old working
classes have been superseded by an underclass who do the truly unskilled work, and a middle class,
the successful children of the former workingclass who now are nurses, administrators, middle
managers, etc.
Steel, mining, ship building, car manufacturing, etc, used to employ thousands or even tens of
thousands of people in a single plant. Those days are over. Everywhere. To exclusively focus on
the 20% of the population that are truly left behind is political suicide. And why a guy like
Corbyn will never see an electoral win.
And then one needs to keep in mind that the American working class are much more right leaning
than their european counterparts.
First past the post does have benefits e.g., stable governments that last 4-5 years, manifesto's
printed up-front rather than debated behind closed doors, prevention of extremist parties achieving
influence via balance of power.
UK, USA main two parties are actually 'large tents/broad churches' where multiple views exist
rather than narrow dogma.
Democracy is not perfect - but the peaceful transfer of power - in the UK, US is to be commended
and not taken for granted.
(ps I agree with gerrymandering in US but that's a result of the States vs Federal system. Also
one more thing - FPTP is the only way to choose a President whether by Electoral College or popular
vote).
Stable governments that don't represent voter's views or needs. Manifestos that are manifestly
ignored at the earliest convenience, policies that were never announced or publicised, pursued
in the interests of political lobbyists, donors or corporations. Politicians whose default position
is to lie if it serves them better than the truth and the electorate offered the only opportunity
to dismiss them at the next election, when they can reliably expect to be rewarded with a seat
in the Lords or any number of sinecures in the form of directorships and consultancies.
The system is not fit for purpose and that's just the way our political class likes it.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you, Secy. Reich. I cannot say enough!
Yes, Sir no one can fool all the people all the time. The Clintons were masters at this game
and believed they could get the people to believe that 2+2=5 assisted with their unlimited corporate
money, Wall St. influence, and the dissemination of misinformation aided by the media.
There would not have been any need for organizations like Wikileaks, if journalists had a modicum
of integrity.
As for the Guardian, it had to have their favorite, and the most corrupt, candidate defeated
at the elections resoundingly in order to have voices, the like that of Secy. Reich express his
views in this otherwise skewed newspaper. With the increase in corruption in public office, journalistic
integrity followed that same path.
The frustration of the people with establishment politics rose to such a level where they did
not care even if the opposing non-establishment candidate was Donald Trump or Donald Duck who
groped other ducklings.
The Guardian was one of Clinton's loudest barking dogs, following the Goldman Sachs playlist to
the letter. Adverse comments BTL about her or the Guardian's election coverage were deleted.
"Democrats once represented the working class. Not anymore "
Republicans never represented the working class but the working classes continued to vote them
into office.
The destruction of the trade union movement has always been one of the highest priorities for
Conservatives – the success they have had in large part due to the concerted efforts of Ronnie
and Maggie (who are now engaged in a torrid posthumous affair).
In the UK there is a sinister parallel between zero hour contracts and workers during the depression
standing in the streets hoping to pick up a day's work.
Apparently "job security" is a threat to the prosperity of the nation and so it goes on.
Now that the unions have been dealt with the Tories in the UK have set their sights on dismantling
the NHS (by incrementally starving it to death) and there is presently nothing to stop them.
Trump clearly tailored his message to reach the disenfranchised but unfortunately there
doesn't appear to be any evidence that (a) he really cares about them and (b) anything substantial
is about to improve their lot.
Its quite ironic that right-wing, neo-lib ideology, created what we have now, and at the same
time its the right and far right that are getting all the gains. The popularity of Trump. Farage
and this movement tells you how utterly and totally the left and liberals in general have failed
in connecting with the working classes and offer something different.
Bill Clinton and Barack Obama helped shift power away from the people towards corporations.
It was this that created an opening for Donald Trump
Sums things up succintly. If you're concentrating on stealing their clothes, they can steal
yours, especially when you only wave them about listlessly yet refuse to wear them.
That's been happening since Reagan. I get the blame on Clinton & Obama in the context of "Dems
played the same game as GOP", but not in a more open context. This has been happening for 35 years
with trickle down economy. It also happens to "coincide" with the widening of wealth gap...
It was a repudiation of President Barack Obama and his leftist [neoliberal] policies that decimated
middle class jobs, health insurance and the respect for the rule of law.
Obama just nailed the whole working class with a massive Obamacare rate hike. What did they expect
was going to happen? You cannot provide free healthcare to the poor on the backs of the working
class while the upper mids and wealthy pay nothing. The upper mids already have employer insurance,
people, and they do not get an opinion. OCare is hitting me for $400 a month for insurance with
a $13,000 deductible! That is fraud! I am a working class liberal- Obama broke every campaign
promise he ever made to us, and Clinton has done nothing to shed her 'corrupt DNC insider' image
or distance herself from Obama's treacherous policies. ALL of the reasons the Trump people are
giving for voting for Trump are VALID and we can blame this one on THE DNC. BERNIE WOULD HAVE
WON.
I find it poetic that the Guardian, which seemed this past year to be competing with the other
US majors in the grotesque sidelining and marginalizing of Bernie Sanders, is now On their hands
and knees with their contribution drive. I will never give a dime to these hacks. What's funny
is that had they stuck to their principles of fearless reporting I have no doubt a huuuge number
of readers would have jumped at the opportunity to make a worthwhile contribution. Like the DNC,
they had a clear thoroughbred in the stable and they drowned it in the backyard. i have no sympathy
for this rag. I have contempt for it.
Just as after Brexit, this paper is flooded with articles claiming how 'minority' groups, BMEs,
LGBTQ...s, and even women, are now being attacked in numbers and how vulnerable they feel.
I follow the MSM and have seen nothing of substance that backs this up.
Nor do I feel that Trump is going to mount major campaigns against such groups.
Interestingly I believe it true that 29% of the 'Hispanic' minority actually voted for Trump.
Similarly was the figure for white women not c.50% ?
Many fewer blacks did, but should Trump's economics actually bring back jobs for the 'working
class' why would blacks in this group of both (all ?) sexes not benefit also and if that is the
case watch how their voting patterns change next time.
Thankfully there are articles like this.
Media other than Guardian who don't care to give this thought the time of the day, slip into irrelevance.
I mean the MSMs here who all embody Trotzkism.
Trotzkism dictates that the livelihoods of people ought to be taken away to make them pliable.
China bought US-TBs (for US government aggrandizement) upon US shipping jobs over there. Feeding
the hungry? With the Fed going into overdrive. Banks together with govt concocted the financial
crisis to profit off bear strategies that mortals can't do. In following years, the elite coined
high-flying ideals such as globalization, which is good for them because they sit in govt, teach
in universities or are detached ueber-owners of businesses. Joe Blow was screamed at when he would
ask: How am I gonna pay for stuff that the big wigs have now manufactured overseas, when we now
make, or get as welfare, $10 instead of $25 an hour?
Hard to reverse the destruction, but worth a try.
I never thought I would be in agreement with Robert Reich but I am today. Every election cycle
the Democratic Party spouts happy talk about being the people's party and the worker's party (in
contrast to the supposedly blue blooded, monied Republican Party.) While that may once have been
a somewhat accurate portrayal, it has long since become a sham of an image.
Today's Democratic Party is the party of the corporate billionaires, the tech titans, and the
globalist elitists who don't want a simplistic notion like that of national borders to get in
the way of their profit seeking. Naturally, the entertainment and media stars gravitate toward
their corporate masters and shill for the Democrats. Throw in a fixation on divisive identity
politics and the Democratic establishment and its less loud and proud Republican counterpart thought
that the authentic voice of the American people could forever be drowned out. The success of Bernie
Sanders (done in by the rigged Democratic Party rules) and Donald Trump demonstrates that the
people will no longer be silenced.
Hey GUARDIAN, where is that 99% chance of Hillary winning???
I personally know three people that didnt vote because they thought she had a win in the bank.
Shame on the Guardian.
Those pollsters along with GUARDIAN should be summarily FIRED.
And don't let the door hit them in the a$$.
Thank you for your voice of intelligence & grounded wisdom. As I read elsewhere, the treaties
that Mr. Clinton & Obama have backed have unravelled the middle class. And let's not forget Mr.
Reagan who reversed high tax rates on the wealthy and broke the back of unions. Neither party
represents working people anymore. Certainly Mr. Trump does not. And playing to that disenfranchisement
won him the election---but I fear that he has no interest in redeeming the middle class. He was
interested in getting elected and telling people anything they want to hear.
The western first world dominance is coming to an end. People in the west like to think they are
the top of the food chain but reality is the second world of Asia and the far east is rapidly
stepping into their shoes. Capitalism dictates that maximum profits are returned for minimum outlay
so if you can make a product for minimal cost i.e. wages, and sell for the maximum price then
you have a successful business model. Protectionism has been tried before and Trump's version
trying to roll back globalisation will be no more successful. ..same applies to brexit. It'll
get even worse as robotics take over more and more, the only solution will be social control mechanisms
to ensure that suppliers have consumers to sell their products to. It's going to take a while
for this realism to sink in...but it's unavoidable.
Sense at last in a Guardian article.
But still not enough sense to say clearly what a weak campaigner and what a poor choice of candidate
Hillary Clinton was.
Oh well... maybe the Guardian will use the period between now and January 20 to reflect on
how they cheer-led for a candidate who didn't have what it takes to win an election.
Or maybe not. Maybe they will continue to print and post stories that are tinged with hurt surprise
that democracy means one -and only one- vote for every citizen who cares to cast it. How can
democracy function if all those white unemployed and immiserated vote against the candidates
that the rich have prepared for them?
As is usual Mr. Reich hits the nail squarely on the head.
The working class had long been the backbone of the Democratic Party electorate. They no longer
are because the Democratic Party is no longer the party of the working class. The banks, the upscale
suburban liberals, minorities and specific issue oriented groups are the people that matter most
to the Democratic Party. The working class support has been taken for granted for far too long
by the Dems. I can't remember how many times I have heard said, or seen written, by Democratic
insiders "where else do they have to go (for candidates to support)?"
The working class has to be a part, and an important part, of the left's coalition going forward
or risk seeing more shock election results like this. Their lots have not improved in this brand
new global economy championed by both parties. And while their numbers aren't as large as when
Reagan was elected (and before) there are more than enough of them to be an election decider.
It also will be helpful to choose candidates who will not to insult them like who, for example,
call them all a "basketful of deplorables".
the biggest factor in the Trump victory,and in the Brexit mayhem,is quite simply Globalization.
it is Globalization that has exported jobs,and skills out of the western world. it is responsible
for ghost towns in the industrial and manufacturing heartlands. western governments have had no
strategy for regeneration on anything like a great enough scale. unless the consequences of globalization
are addressed and reversed, the West faces ever falling living standards and huge unrest.
Yes, what we call "globalization" is quite simply the universalizing of a certain set of relations
between capital and labor -- it's clear that if the process is allowed to proceed without proper
safeguards, capital will be greatly favored, while labor will be reduced to the lowest possible
level. Marx pointed out a long time ago that the tendency of capitalism is to squeeze the greatest
amount of "surplus value" out of the workforce while granting them only as much money as necessary
for them to scrape by from day to day. Essentially, under capitalism, he wrote, people exist to
produce things and are less important than the things they produce. Marx may have been wrong about
the viability of "scientific socialism," but he was often spot-on as an analyst of the way capitalism
works and who it really benefits.
Trade is wonderful, but only when it doesn't proceed by reducing us all to wage slaves. Maybe
Dems who keep supporting bullshit neoliberal trade deals need to go read some of old Uncle Karl's
delightfully sarcastic works. Capital, Vol. 1 would be a fine start: see in particular
the chapter, "The Fetishism of the Commodity and the Secret Thereof." It's a masterpiece.
Can anyone turn back the tide of globalisation and power of the corporations? What is the role
of MSM? Are they all part of the problem? Interesting times. Maybe Trump will be force for good.
We certainly need stronger leadership from our politicians, on both sides of the pond.
Yes, I think of lot of that sort of stuff is misplaced. True, there are some despicable people
supporting Trump -- the Klan, neo-Nazi types, and so forth. But most people who voted for him
aren't like that. It's probably more the case that they put aside considerable disdain for Trump's
wretched behavior and voted for him based on his promise to "unforget" the working class. Personally,
I think he's a brazen demagogue who doesn't give any more of a rat's bottom about the poor and
the working class than Hitler did in Germany, what with all his "national socialist" promises
of "two chickens in every pot." But it isn't hard to understand the appeal of such populist rhetoric
when people are suffering and insecure. The American Left needs to rediscover its proper role
as a moderator of the harsher side of capitalism -- it has forgotten that role, and the bill for
that forgetfulness just came due. I don't blame Hillary personally -- Secretary Reich is right
to frame the problem in much broader terms, i.e. as having to do with the Democratic leadership
as a whole.
The business of government has morphed into the government for businesses.
Take a hint from what President Xi of China is doing, in managing the PRC. A good yardstick of
good governance comes from the analects of Confucius.
For instance, once upon a time in Germany, social democrats represented the working class.
Not anymore. People couldn't care less about Germany's wonderful economic growth either, as most
of the surplus goes to the top.*
The "social democrat" Schröder demolished the welfare state and introduced a new low wage sector,
much beloved by his corporate buddies. Thanks to his and Angela Merkel's efforts, numbers of working
poor and food banks are increasing. So is the wealth gap.* Thanks to an ongoing media hate campaign
against the meritocratic losers, most people suffered in silence. And now everyone acts shocked
and confused that a right-winged populist party is on the rise.
Well, thank you Angela Merkel, these are the fruits of your beloved austerity. The next vote
in Germany is going to be interesting. And just for the record: austerity was employed by Brüning
to boot. And that turned out so well, didn't it?
Capitalism is the best economic system we have but it becomes increasingly self destructive and
unstable if it is not managed properly. The moderate left and right would both agree on this normally
but the left would prioritise the interests of workers and the right the interests of capitalists.
However both, self interestedly, would support policies and institutions that kept the system
stable and growing.
Unfortunately hubris and market fundamentalism has turned the right's head and allowed the
rich and greedy to destructively run rampant. This is in no-one's longer term interest as the
impoverishment of the middle class and destruction of a prosperous mas market will eventually
undermine even most of the wealthy. The economic elite need to be dragged back under control.
Theodore Roosevelt broke up the trusts in the 20s and Franklin brought in the New Deal in the
Great Depression. It has been done before. It needs to be done again.
Now Americans have rebelled by supporting someone who wants to fortify America against foreigners
as well as foreign-made goods. The power structure understandably fears that Trump's isolationism
will stymie economic growth. But most Americans couldn't care less about growth because for years
they have received few of its benefits, while suffering most of its burdens in the forms of lost
jobs and lower wages.
Exactly, and the parallels with the Brexit vote and against an EU corporate bureaucracy set
up to benefit the wealthy are stark. You could apply the same phrasing here in the UK:
Now British voters have rebelled by supporting a campaign that wants to fortify the UK against
foreigners as well as foreign-made goods. The power structure understandably fears that Brexit's
isolationism will stymie economic growth. But most British workers couldn't care less about growth
because for years they have received few of its benefits, while suffering most of its burdens
in the forms of lost jobs and lower wages.
The Democrats have more or less sold out the working class to the rich and powerful. They are,
in large part, the rich and powerful as this article points out. If the left wants to counter
right wing populists such as Trump it will need to address the growing anger of the white working
class towards policies that have put them in a position where they will be a minority in their
own country where they have historically been a large majority. It will also have to look after
the unemployed, working and middle classes at the expense of Wall Street, big tech and big business
generally. Ironically the right needs to do exactly the same thing. And both need to do these
things while protecting the well-being of minorities. Will these mainstream politicians be able
to escape the orbit of the rich? It is difficult to be optimistic.
Maybe so, but the only solution offered here is more Unions... if you think that's a solution
to the stagnating earnings of the bottom half of the population then I'm afraid you are way off
the mark.
The problem, and it's one that Trump will utterly fail to address and strikes at the heart
of our beliefs, is that a modern economy has little use (and places little economic value) on
low and unskilled labour. There is not a thing that can't be done cheaper by foreign factories
and machines (computers/robots/automation). This is deeply unpalatable and I do not like it, but
without a solution to how we ensure fair treatment of people who are, day by day, becoming less
economically valuable to the modern economy, this issue will not go away. Trump is a reaction,
but he is not the solution but he will set out to blame every minority, foreign government, trade
agreement he can because he can't or won't address this issue, and that will be very bad for everyone.
Its much worse than that. The modern economy places no real value on labour at all. Over the coming
years about 1/3 of all jobs are considered at risk of automation, including doctors, lawyers (already
happening), journalists (already happening) etc. The liberal elite in some of these jobs are like
lobsters in a slowly heating pot - they are too busy congratulating themselves on how toasty warm
their situation is to realise what is going on, and so all too happy to applaud the status quo.
Certainly it's a rising tide that threatens to wash away at everyone, though the higher skilled
the safer you are likely to be, at least for now.
I think the challenges are ultimately going to affect everyone, the question is going to be
who benefits politically. The left (which is where my political sympathies lie) is currently in
a real funk and lacks meaningful answers, the right is reducing it's message to 'blame the others,
they take your job, benefit at your expense etc'. No real answers.
P.S. I think your reference to the 'liberal elite' is misplaced, I'm not sure if the local
GP or bloke who writes wills in the local high street really count as an elite, just ordinary
people doing relatively well for themselves. The risk in this kind of language is that the tendency
is to think they are some kind of other who are to blame for all this, when what's happening is
actually far more wide ranging and fundamental.
And the liberal elite are by definition to blame for this because they are the ones whose privilege
got them the managerial and leadership positions they hold yet whose ideology and political views
have meant they have carried out these roles so badly.
I agree that neither side has the answers because both sides are in effect faces of the same
coin, cut from the same metal, imbued with the same flaws. Corbyn no more has answers than Trump.
What Trump has done is prove that no politician can go forward ignoring the questions. Hillary
firmly expected to.
Mirrored exactly with the new labour. Billionaires and celebrities rubbing shoulders with the
political elite, little wonder why we became disillusioned with them. For years now, the government
neglected the working class. Industries and jobs vanished ever since replaced with ZHC jobs and
low pay, keeping the broken system going on the back of a 'trickle-down effect' lie.
The Democrats had their party, Perry turned up, endorsed by lines of celebrities, we are looking
back with perplexed bemused expressions. If we elect her, it would be more of the same. The free
market shite started off a few decades ago, heavily entrenched by corporations and billionaires,
the scandal of offshore trust funds, we are dumped and forgotten.
What struck me as a tourist to San Francisco in 2014 were the sheer numbers of very visible homeless
on the streets, begging or just looking beaten . Yet all around them there were mass preparations
for the annual Gay Pride celebration. Obviously I am not decrying Gay Pride but the sense of priorities
seemed strange and I was forced to think that America is a pretty insane place. It is going the
same way here, a lot easier to celebrate identity than to tackle systemic injustice. That used
to be Governments` job but they have largely abandoned their historic responsibilities. Time for
Labour to bring those fundamental responsibilities back --
All told, San Francisco spends close to three quarters of a Billion dollars every year on "homeless"
of which close to $200 million is a specific department and budget item. As such, many flock to
San Francisco, which is also well known for lack of enforcement of many laws. Many of the beggars
are already housed at taxpayer expense and prefer to generate additional income outdoors on a
schedule of their choice, which is where they also purchase and consume items never sold in stores.
The working classes have been stripped of their dignity, whole communities have become wastelands
and virtual ghettos. The working class don't trust the left to sort things out for them and that
is why and how a figure like Trump can come along and say 'I will save you all' and become President.
Meanwhile, the socialist left sit around scratching their heads, unable to work out what has happened
and squabble about the spirit of socialism and ideology that in all honesty, most working class
people don't give a toss about. They just want jobs that pay a decent wage, a nice house to own,
nice food on the table, two cars and nice holidays. They want to be middle class in other words.
But democrats are not left. They right wing too. If Americans think that Democrats are left, they
don´t know what left is at all. And what socialist goverment has USA had. I see Americans saying
tthat Democrats are socialists, really?.Hillary left and socialist?. Trump and Hillary are both
right wing, only that Trump is more extreme.
A respected political insider recently told me most Americans were largely content with
the status quo. "The economy is in good shape," he said. "Most Americans are better off than
they've been in years."
The political elite of *both* parties are completely out of touch with the citizenry. The economy
has been restructured over the last 20-30 years to completely de-value labor and prioritize the
rich and corporations.
Having said that, I believe people just want to be heard. Voting for Trump was seen as voting
against the status quo, and voting for Hillary was voting for the big establishment. Much like
Brexit, I don't think voters were thinking through the long-term consequences of their decision.
Monday morning quarterbacking of the worst kind. That the Democrats have lost the white working
class is obvious. But to blame the Democrats, such as Hillary, is misplaced. It is the Dems who
have attempted to help the working poor and propose improvements in health care and child care
and tax redistribution. It is not a lack of concern that is the issue. What Reich ignores is that
voters are voting an ideology and not self-interest. They have bought into the notion that getting
rid of immigrants and taking care of the rich will solve all problems.
The voters had a clear choice and they chose the demagogue peddling a non-solution. They wanted
to believe that they are wonderful people and problems can be solved by a wealthy idiot who promises
to turn the clock back. In Democracy sometimes it is the voters who get it wrong.
The analysis is correct more of less , the issue here is class , the Republicans and Democrats
are the two wings of the same party. The party of property and money and the powerful , the vote
for Trump is one of those events that happens much like Obama being elected twice after the Republicans
stole the two previous elections via the supreme court and election fraud. It can happen but the
system remains the same , there is no serious challenge to the supremacy of the ruling class.
The one analysis you will not hear in the media is a class one and if it is then it will be
howled down lest it gain currency and the wage slaves realise they have been conned yet again
, Trump is not unusual in his attitudes or views , it's just that the campaign gave them wide
publicity.
In the UK the same kind of thing has happened to Labour , they lost Scotland and the 2010 election
and the remain vote because ordinary working people are tired just as they are in the US of seeing
the rich get every richer and their own living standards fall and nothing in the future but more
pain and misery. They vote UKIP/SNP here as a cry in the wilderness and they voted for Trump for
the same reason because they aren't what they've had before , the real problem will come when
the right wing populists have been in power for a while and nothing has really improved.
For the last thirty years, there has been no left or right wing governments - not economically
or fiscally. Third way centrism (liberal progressiveness) embraced the primacy of unfettered market
capitalism and corporate globalism, and focused exclusively on using political power as a tool
to win the culture war instead. That's fine if you've done materially very well out of unfettered
market capitalism and corporate globalism, and all that therefore matters to you is social justice
issues. But if you were once in a secure job with a decent income and decent prospects for your
children, and all of that has been ripped away from you by unfettered market capitalism and corporate
globalism, and the people responsible for preventing that - or at least fixing it when it happens
- are more concerned with policing the language you use to express your fears and pain, and demonstrating
their compassion by trying to improve the life chances of people on other continents, then social
justice issues become a source of burning resentment, not enlightenment. There has been a crushing
rejection of globalism and corporate plutocracy by Western electorates. The Western progressive
left will only survive if it has the courage to recognise that, and prioritises the fight for
economic and fiscal policies that promote the interests and prospects of its own poor and middle
class, over and above the cultural issues that have defined it for a quarter of a century. We
should always remain vigilant, but the truth is that the culture war is won. It would be tragic
beyond words if that victory was reversed by an explosion of resentment caused by the left's determination
to guard old battle fields, while ignoring the reality that its thinkers and activists are needed
to right new injustices. Trump's success doesn't represent the victory of hate over hope, it just
represents the loss of hope. The left has to see that or its finished.
It's not quite as simple as that. Some things like clothes are certainly still made by people
(in horrific conditions for terrible pay) but more and more factories are automated with a bare
skeleton staff running the show. The BBC series 'Inside the Factory' was an eye opener for me.
The UK food manufacturing industry for example is heading toward almost full automation - I'd
imagine the US industry is even further down the automated road. This is why the UK and US have
moved to services and these areas are the vast bulk of unskilled jobs now.
The Democratic party once represented the working class
Now it sneers at them as a "basket of deplorables". The same has happened in the UK; only this
morning Owen Jones was asking the left to reach out to the working class, and in the very same
article labelled them as racist, misogynist homophobes.
The consequences of this disdain are entirely predictable
Re: "basket of deplorables" -- if you care about accuracy, she didn't sneer at them as a basket
of deplorables; she sneered at *half* of them as a basket of deplorables. In the same paragraph,
she described the other half as having legitimate concerns that weren't being addressed.
As far as her criticisms of half of Trump's voting base -- politically, stupid as hell. But
valid? Well, what do carefully-taken public opinion polls from the 15 months before the election
tell us? 2/3 of Trump supporters believe Obama is a Muslim who was born in another country. 63%
want to amend the Constitution to eliminate citizenship for people born in the U.S. 40% consider
African-Americans lazier than white people. A third of Trump supporters believe that the internment
of Japanese-Americans during WW2 was a good thing. 31% believe in banning homosexuals from entering
the United States. A quarter of them believe that Antonin Scalia was murdered in a conspiracy.
A quarter believe that vaccines cause autism. 16% believe that whites are a superior race, and
another 14% just aren't sure.
I don't see a very strong case that she was wrong.
It's the same problem the UK had with brexit. People feel squeezed, invariably because of neoliberalist
policies that benefit the wealthy, and the rising wage and wealth gap drives resentment because
of it.
Suddenly, you get populists who spring up with "solutions" to such problems, but rather than
being actual solutions seem to scapegoat totally unrelated factors, such as immigration, free
trade, power blocs, specific groups of people who may be out of favour at the moment, rather than
the actual correct causes in the first place.
Your post actually chimes with what I've been saying. There was a big moment for the left, that
came in 2008 in the USA. A mixed race opponent of the Iraq War, sounding plausibly leftish leaning,
praised public healthcare, accused relentlessly by the right of being a communist/socialist, of
being a muslim, of not born in the USA. And he won. So only 8 years ago, there was a moment where
American electorate shifted left, it'd seem. But instead Obama brought back Rubin, Summers, Geithner,
same old 1990's wall street cabal. FDR he was not.
There'll be a moment within a decade for things to move left, who will head 'the left' (Clinton
and Blair types?) will tell whether things actually do move in that direction.
"... Specifically, she adduced the Clinton Foundation, with its $600,000 salary to Chelsea Clinton, and Hillary's receipt of cash from Saudi Arabia and Morocco, as well as complaining about Benghazi and something that I took to be death panels. ..."
I talked to an elated Trump voter today. She had little to say about Trump, other than "Give
him a chance." No, her elation was at the defeat of Hillary, and the attendant possibility that
opened up to get rid of the corruption in Washington. Specifically, she adduced the Clinton
Foundation, with its $600,000 salary to Chelsea Clinton, and Hillary's receipt of cash from Saudi
Arabia and Morocco, as well as complaining about Benghazi and something that I took to be death
panels.
@138 The woman is wrong. Chelsea Clinton was not paid $600 k from the Clinton Foundation.
Chelsea Clinton was paid $600 k per year from 2011 by NBC for 'work' as a special correspondent,
whilst also pocketing $300 k per year plus stock options as a 'board member' of IAC. Chelsea's
speaking fees were a mere $65 k per.
The NYT offers a more severe critique of the IAC board deal readable by clicking through
the links. There will be those who see nothing improper about a fifth-estate firm paying a 31
year-old graduate student $600 k, or awarding her a board seat and stock options at $300k. Others
may disagree, and perhaps with some good reason.
The defeat of the democratic candidate by a rodeo clown is a slap in the face. Contra Manta
@71 I do not believe that anything less than a slap in the face of this order would be enough
to jar the successful and well-fed out of their state of complacency and indifference to the plight
of both the blacks and whites left behind by 8 years of Democratic rule, and far longer when we're
talking about urban African-Americans.
As noted, I believe the Republican candidate to be far and away the more sober, safer choice
both on domestic and foreign policy. Now we'll find out.
Thanks for the kind words to Rich, Bruce, T, bob mc, and others.
The headline is "Did third-party candidates Jill Stein and Gary Johnson lose Clinton the election?"
and the short answer is no, but Chalabi takes the time to point out the reasoning behind the answer.
Thanks for the link. Don't get me wrong, there are 1 or 2 writers still worth reading and some
articles that actually provide content.
It's just that, overall, the jist the of paper seems to have established a deliberate policy
of contradictory messaging to cloud important issues, or momentarily providing balance to only
later use the apparent balance a to push a one-sided agenda.
The Blairite faction's attack on Corbyn and the guardian's coverage comes to mind. It was pure
hack journalism. The political careerists were so obviously in league with the hack journalist
careerists.
Apart from the Science & Tech stuff I've really only been reading the Graun recently (esp since
its utterly scandalous treatment of Corbyn (*)) for the Thomas Frank pieces. Is he publishing
these anywhere else on-line ?
(*) They're probably kicking themselves for not labeling them as `deplorables' & letting the
Clinton team get to this phrase first.
HClinton outspent (campaign + SuperPACs) Trump by 45% ($534M to $367M per the election Wiki
page, given preliminary FEC reports currently available) in the election, yet lost. Perhaps the
most clear sign as to what a horrible candidate HClinton was, both in policies & campaign tactics.
When was the last Pres election the top fundraiser did NOT win? How many times has this happen,
say since the 1980 Reagan election or since the 1948 post-WW2 election? IIRC, Thomas Ferguson
with his Investment Theory of Politics shows that in the vast majority (90%+ ?) of US elections
(Fed/State/Local), the biggest fundraiser wins.
"... "Sanders and Trump inflamed their audiences with searing critiques of Capitalism's unfairness.
Then what? Then Trump's response to what he has genuinely seen is, analytically speaking, word salad.
Trump is sound and fury and garble. Yet - and this is key - the noise in his message increases the apparent
value of what's clear about it. The ways he's right seem more powerful, somehow, in relief against the
ways he's blabbing." ..."
"... "But Trump's people don't use suffering as a metric of virtue. They want fairness of a sort,
but mainly they seek freedom from shame. Civil rights and feminism aren't just about the law after all,
they are about manners, and emotions too: those "interest groups" get right in there and reject what
feels like people's spontaneous, ingrained responses. People get shamed, or lose their jobs, for example,
when they're just having a little fun making fun. Anti-PC means "I feel unfree." ..."
bob mcmanus 11.10.16 at 1:45 pm I thought someone above talked about Trump's rhetoric
1) Tom Ferguson at Real News Network post at Naked Capitalism says (and said in 2014) that the
Democratic coalition of Wall Street (Silicon Valley) + Identity Politics is imploding, because it
can't deliver populist goodies without losing part of it's core base.
Noted no for that, but for my equation of Neoliberalism (or Post-Capitalism) = Wall Street + Identity
Politics generated by the dematerialization of Capital. CDO's are nothing but words on paper or bytes
in the stream; and identity politics has much less to do with the Body than the culture and language.
Trumpists were interpellated as White by the Democrats and became ideological. Capital is Language.
2) Consider the above an intro to
Lauren
Berlant at the New Inquiry "Trump or Political Emotions" which I think is smart. Just a phrase
cloud that stood out for me. All following from Berlant, except parenthetical
It is a scene where structural antagonisms - genuinely conflicting interests - are described in
rhetoric that intensifies fantasy.
People would like to feel free. They would like the world to have a generous cushion for all their
aggression and inclination. They would like there to be a general plane of okayness governing social
relations
( Safe Space defined as the site where being nasty to those not inside is admired and approved.
We all have them, we all want them, we create our communities and identities for this purpose.)
"Sanders and Trump inflamed their audiences with searing critiques of Capitalism's unfairness.
Then what? Then Trump's response to what he has genuinely seen is, analytically speaking, word salad.
Trump is sound and fury and garble. Yet - and this is key - the noise in his message increases the
apparent value of what's clear about it. The ways he's right seem more powerful, somehow, in relief
against the ways he's blabbing."
(Wonderful, and a comprehension of New Media I rarely see. Cybernetics? Does noise increase the
value of signal? The grammatically correct tight argument crowd will not get this. A problem I have
with CT's new policy)
"You watch him calculating, yet not seeming to care about the consequences of what he says, and
you listen to his supporters enjoying the feel of his freedom. "
(If "civil speech" is socially approved signal, then noise = freedom and feeling. Every two year
old and teenage guitarist understands)
"But Trump's people don't use suffering as a metric of virtue. They want fairness of a sort,
but mainly they seek freedom from shame. Civil rights and feminism aren't just about the law after
all, they are about manners, and emotions too: those "interest groups" get right in there and reject
what feels like people's spontaneous, ingrained responses. People get shamed, or lose their jobs,
for example, when they're just having a little fun making fun. Anti-PC means "I feel unfree."
The Trump Emotion Machine is delivering feeling ok, acting free. Being ok with one's internal
noise, and saying it, and demanding that it matter. Internal Noise Matters. " …my emp
Noise again. Berlant worth reading, and thinking about.
I watched one of Trump's last speeches before the election. In it, he said, "Tomorrow, the
working class takes back this country." I was struck. No contemporary Democratic politician would
(or could, credibly) say those words. Afraid of scaring off their donors or being red-baited,
most Democrats won't even utter the phrase "working class"-preferring the capacious and increasingly
meaningless "middle class" or, at best, "working families."
But Trump said it. His rural and exurban white supporters have a class consciousness of
sorts. They despise elites. They feel that the system is rigged. But that antipathy is entirely
entangled with their fear of a black president, of eroding racial and gender hierarchies, and
their perception that multi-cultural elites are helping minorities at their expense. Trump can
say "working class" because everyone in his audience hears the unsaid word "white" preceding it.
It is, as it has ever been, the left's task to build a mass political movement where there are
no words silently preceding the term "working class." It's not hyperbole to say that everything
depends on it.
I'm going to be as diplomatic as I can about the lack of gravitas clearly displayed in the comments
here as I can, whilst at the same timing reviewing some of the data that many clearly missed.
One of the key reasons I remained confident that Hillary would lose irrespective of what the
FBI did, or did not do, if you're interested, is that I was keenly interested in the attitudes
of African-American voters from the outset of this election. As I've said throughout, I do not
regard Trump as a 'Republican' in anything like the conventional sense of the word, but rather
see him as a New York celebrity vulgarian with liberal inclinations. Trump from the outset had
a clear plan to appeal to African-American voters, even it was far from fleshed-out. And given
the 'of course, African-American voters will support the Democrat' attitude of practically every
white supporter of Hillary, I was confident Trump wouldn't need much of a plan beyond saying:
'vote for me, what have you got to lose?' to do fairly well no matter how badly he was smeared.
Turns out I was right. Low black turn-out numbers in key states, such as Michigan, NC, and
Florida came as no surprise to me because I watched Leslie Wimes one week before the election
explain that it was 'already over' for Hillary in Florida.
Not one to mince words, Ms. Wimes, who voted early for Clinton, reports that she warned the
Clinton campaign and the DNC as early as September that black voters in Florida were not, repeat
not, going to be turning out in sufficient numbers to permit Hillary to carry this critical state.
But nobody wanted to hear. Funny, that.
Layman 11.11.16 at 11:13 am
266
mclaren: "No, what I was pointing out is that the two candidates who set the electorate on fire
were the two populist candidates, Trump and Sanders."
You're abusing the term 'the electorate'. 'The electorate' in a primary (or a caucus!) is a different
thing than 'the electorate' in a general election, and results in one don't translate into results
in another. The point of the Obama Idaho 2008 example is this: Obama beat Clinton by 60 points in
that caucus, but this did not mean he was going to win Idaho in a general election, and in fact he
got trounced there in the general election. This is because, again, 'the electorate' is a different
thing in those two contests. No one knows if Sanders would have done better in this general election,
and primary results don't provide an answer to that question.
Sorry, but I do not see in this thread any attempt to discuss Hillary extreme militarism and jingoism
as well as attempt to make Russophobia a part of the platform of the Democratic Party, effectively
positioning it as yet another War Party.
In some areas of foreign policy Hillary looks like John McCain in the pantsuit. There is no military
intervention that she did not like, and she was always prone to the most hawkish positions on any
war related issues, trying to outdid her male counterparts in jingoism, as if overcompensating her
hidden sense of inferiority.
That might be another negative factor affecting the elections results. Few people outside military
industrial complex lobbyists are exited about the possibility of unleashing WWIII (for example via
enforcing "no fly zone" in Syria) even with conventional weapons. And a lot of people, especially
among more educated part of electorate, still remember her role in the destruction of Iraq, Libya
and Syria. Especially the latter (
moonofalabama.org)
The people loyal to the Syrian government are happy with Donald Trump winning the U.S. election:
At the passport counter, a Syrian officer's face lit up when he saw an American traveler.
"Congratulations on your new president!" he exclaimed, giving an energetic thumbs up. Mr. Trump,
he said, would be "good for Syria."
The first significant step of the new administration comes while Trump is not even in offices.
Obama, selfishly concerned with his historic legacy, suddenly makes a 180 degree turn and starts
to implement Trump polices. Lets consider the initial position:
Asked about Aleppo in an October debate with Clinton, Trump said it was a humanitarian disaster
but the city had "basically" fallen. Clinton, he said, was talking in favor of rebels without
knowing who they were.
The rebels fighting Assad in western Syria include nationalists fighting under the Free Syrian
Army banner, some of them trained in a CIA-backed program, and jihadists such as the group formerly
known as the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.
The Obama administration, through the CIA led by Saudi asset John Brennan, fed weapons, training
and billions of dollars to "moderate rebels". These then turned around (vid) and either gave the
CIA gifts to al-Qaeda in Syria (aka Jabhat al Nusra) or joined it themselves.
The scheme was no secret at all and Russia as well as Syria pointed this out several times.
The Russian foreign Minister Lavrov negotiated with the U.S. secretary of State Kerry who promised
to separate the "moderate rebels" from al-Qaeda. But Kerry never delivered. Instead he falsely
accuse Russia of committing atrocities that never happened. The CIA kept the upper hand within
the Obama administration and continued its nefarious plans.
continued its nefarious plans.
likbez 11.12.16 at 3:20 am
289
Another interesting question that needs to be discussed is the "cleansing" of DNC from Clinton
loyalists (the word "super delegate" smells of corruption) and thus weakening the dominant neoliberal
wing of the party:
"You can't tell working people you're on their side while at the same time you're raising money
from Wall Street and the billionaire class," Sanders said. "The Democratic Party has to be focused
on grass-roots America and not wealthy people attending cocktail parties."
Sanders acknowledged the need for the party to continue its function as a fundraising vehicle
but suggested a model akin to his presidential campaign, which raised much of its money from small-dollar
donors.
… … …
Leaders of several progressive groups, who had been courting Clinton as a potential ally on many
of their causes, have expressed anger in the aftermath of the election, arguing that the result
was a repudiation of a campaign driven by the Democratic establishment.
"The Democratic establishment had their chance with this election," said Stephanie Taylor,
co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. "It's time for new leadership of the
Democratic Party - younger, more diverse and more ideological - that is hungry to do things differently,
like leading a movement instead of dragging people to the polls."
… … …
Neil Sroka, a spokesman for the liberal group Democracy for America, said Ellison would be "a
potentially phenomenal choice" as DNC chairman, but said the organization was open to other choices,
provided they weren't part of the party establishment.
"I think Tuesday night was a tremendous loss that must sit at the feet of the political establishment
of a Democratic Party that preordained the primary process from the very beginning," said Sroka,
whose group backed Sanders in the primaries. "The folks that enabled the loss need to step back
and let the grass roots lead it."
In a sign of tension at the DNC, a staff meeting there was interrupted Thursday by a staff
member who stood up and blamed Trump's win on Brazile, the Huffington Post reported.
One telling comment:
PackersFanWisconsin
The Democrats abandoned Midwestern working voters and now they want us back??? Dream on! My
town voted Dem for years, they used to care about us, then they want all bonkers social justice
white people are all bad and sent all our jobs overseas. We will never vote Democrat again, Democrats
betrayed us and they had the nerve to think we wouldn't notice!
Suzanne 11.11.16 at 4:24 pm
284
Agreeing with everything said by LFC in#280. Certainly many people are still not in a good place
after eight years of slow recovery; in this respect Clinton's defeat can also be seen as a partial
rejection of her boss, since traditionally putting the heir in power has been a marker for a popular
presidency.
Also, @246, don't forget that some of us where also whingeing about sexism.
@239: Clinton is a decent Democrat who ran to the left of Obama. She is not and never has been
the superstar he was. The Democratic Party has a perennial issue with getting portions of their base
out when it's an off-year election and also when the presidential candidate is okay but doesn't send
a thrill up their leg.
What we need to focus on now is the obvious question: what the hell went wrong? What species
of cluelessness guided our Democratic leaders as they went about losing what they told us was
the most important election of our lifetimes?
There are several excerpts from the news media since Tuesday night that help drive home the point
I make in that title about Trump and the Democrats in the immediate future. But the excerpts are
about Clinton, not Trump:
There are several excerpts from the news media since Tuesday night that help drive home the
point I make in that title about Trump and the Democrats in the immediate future. But the excerpts
are about Clinton, not Trump:
There are vast rural, small-town or post-industrial areas of the country where Barack Hussein
Obama will have greatly outperformed Clinton
– twitter.com/AlecMacGillis of Pro Publica, Nov. 8, late evening
The left-behind places are making themselves heard, bigly
– twitter.com/AlecMacGillis of Pro Publica, Nov. 8, late evening
From Pennsylvania to Wisconsin, industrial towns once full of union voters who for decades
offered their votes to Democratic presidential candidates, even in the party's lean years, shifted
to Mr. Trump's Republican Party. One county in the Mahoning Valley of Ohio, Trumbull, went to
Mr. Trump by a six-point margin. Four years ago, Mr. Obama won there by 22 points.
– Donald Trump Is Elected President in Stunning Repudiation of the Establishment , Matt
Flegenheimer and Michael Barbaro, New York Times, yesterday
Clinton and her operatives went into the race predicting her biggest problems would be inevitability
and her age, trying to succeed a two-term president of her own party. But the mood of the country
surprised them. They recognized that Sanders and Trump had correctly defined the problem-addressing
anger about a rigged economy and government-and that Clinton already never authentically could.
Worse still, her continuing email saga and extended revelations about the Clinton Foundation connections
made any anti-establishment strategy completely impossible.
So instead of answering the question of how Clinton represented change, they tried to change
the question to temperament, what kind of change people wanted, what kind of America they wanted
to live in. It wasn't enough.
Using Trump as a foil and a focus, she hit on a voice and an argument for why she should actually
be president that perhaps only she could have, and that she'd struggled for so long to find on
her own. That wasn't enough either.
Meanwhile, her staff harnessed all the money and support they could to out organize, first
in the primaries and then in the general, grinding out victories while her opponents had movements.
None of it was enough, though all of it should have been, and likely would have been for another
candidate. She couldn't escape being the wrong candidate for the political moment.
Interviews over the closing weeks of the 2016 campaign with members of Clinton's innermost
circle, close advisers and other aides reveal a deep frustration with their failure to make a
dent, a consuming sense that their candidate's persecution paranoia might actually be right, and
a devastating belief that they might never persuade Americans to vote for her.
"There was no way to generate momentum," one top adviser said.
Any positive storyline from Clinton "was always fragile," admitted that adviser, and issues
related to the emails inevitably stripped away any uptick in Clinton's favorable ratings.
– Inside the Loss Clinton Saw Coming: Publicly they seemed confident, but in private her
team admitted her chances were 'always fragile.' , Edward-Isaac Dovere, Politico, yesterday
To several top aides, the best day of this whole campaign was a year ago, before the Sanders
headache or the Trump threat really materialized, when the House of Representatives hauled Clinton
and her emails in with the single aim of destroying her candidacy over Benghazi. …
She delivered tirelessly [that day], knocking back the Republicans one by one, complete with
facial expressions that have launched GIFs that have been all over Democrats' Facebook and Twitter
feeds ever since. She renewed her shaken team's faith that she was the leader they wanted to follow
into what was already shaping up to be a dejecting primary battle.
"It reminded people of everything they like about her," said one of her senior advisers. "It's
toughness, but also a calm, adult presence of someone you can actually see being president of
the United States."
– Inside the Loss Clinton Saw Coming: Publicly they seemed confident, but in private her
team admitted her chances were 'always fragile.'
Bill Clinton had his own problems, but never that one [his gender], and neither did Trump,
who openly disparaged women throughout his campaign and still prevailed. The result was at once
unfathomably difficult for the Clintons and yet not entirely surprising to Bill. He saw the signs
all along the way of this campaign. He knew the people who were voting for Trump, and also the
people who during the primaries were voting not for his wife but for Bernie Sanders. He saw the
anger and the feelings of disconnection, but he did not know how he, or his wife's campaign, could
connect to it effectively without resorting to demagoguery or false populism, something Hillary
was not good at even if she was disposed to try.
– The Clintons were undone by the middle-American voters they once knew so well , David
Maraniss, Washington Post, today
Last year, a prominent group of supporters asked Hillary Clinton to address a prestigious St.
Patrick's Day gathering at the University of Notre Dame, an invitation that previous presidential
candidates had jumped on. Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr. had each addressed the group, and
former President Bill Clinton was eager for his wife to attend. But Mrs. Clinton's campaign refused,
explaining to the organizers that white Catholics were not the audience she needed to spend time
reaching out to.
As it became clear on Tuesday night that Mrs. Clinton would lose to Donald J. Trump, supporters
cast blame on everything from the news media to the F.B.I. director's dogged pursuit of Mrs. Clinton
over her personal emails, and to a deep discomfort with electing a woman as president.
But as the dust settled, Democrats recognized two central problems of Mrs. Clinton's flawed
candidacy: Her decades in Washington and the paid speeches she delivered to financial institutions
left her unable to tap into the antiestablishment and anti-Wall Street rage. And she ceded the
white working-class voters who backed Mr. Clinton in 1992.
Though she would never have won this demographic, her husband insisted that her campaign aides
do more to try to cut into Mr. Trump's support with these voters. They declined, reasoning that
she was better off targeting college-educated suburban voters by hitting Mr. Trump on his temperament.
Instead, they targeted the emerging electorate of young, Latino and African-American voters
who catapulted Mr. Obama to victory twice, expecting, mistakenly, that this coalition would support
her in nearly the same numbers. They did not.
– Hillary Clinton's Expectations, and Her Ultimate Campaign Missteps , Amy Chozick,
New York Times, yesterday
And then there is this:
Clinton picked Mook, instead of promoting a campaign manager out of loyalty from her own inner
circle. She persuaded Podesta, who had kept his distance in 2008 because he didn't get along with
polarizing top strategist Mark Penn, to join as the guiding hand and the buffer for all the "friends
of" who streamed in with advice and second-guessing.
But that didn't mean there weren't serious problems. Bill Clinton complained throughout that
Mook was too focused on the ground game and not enough on driving a message-based campaign. Without
a chief strategist in the mold of Penn or David Axelrod, the campaign was run by a committee of
strong-willed aides struggling to assert themselves in the same space. Longtime consultant Mandy
Grunwald and Palmieri grappled at points over message control as Palmieri worked her way into
the inner circle. Mook and strategist Joel Benenson barely spoke to each other for the month of
April, battling over their roles.
– Inside the Loss Clinton Saw Coming: Publicly they seemed confident, but in private her
team admitted her chances were 'always fragile.'
And here it is, in summation of all of the above:
Whoever takes over what's left of the Democratic Party is going to have to find a way to appeal
to a broader cross section of the country. It may still be true that in the long term, Republicans
can't win with their demographics, but we found out Tuesday that the long term is still pretty
far away. Democrats have to win more white voters. They have to do so in a way that doesn't erode
the anti-racist or anti-sexist planks of the modern party, which are non-negotiable. If
only there were a model for this. [Link in original. Do click it.]
The few Democratic leaders who remain are going to say that it was just a bad note struck here
or there, or the lazy Bernie voters who didn't show up, or Jim Comey, or unfair media coverage
of Clinton's emails, to blame for this loss. I am already seeing Democrats blaming the Electoral
College, which until a few hours ago was hailed as the great protector of Democratic virtue for
decades to come, and Republicans were silly for not understanding how to crack the blue "wall."
They will say, just wait for Republicans to overreach. Then we'll be fine.
Don't listen to any of this. Everything is not OK. This is not OK.
– The Democratic Party Establishment Is Finished , Jim Newell, Slate, yesterday
Among all the email exchanges leaked from Podesta's hacked email account-the ones I read; I read
a couple of articles quoting from each group of releases-the most revealing, in my opinion, were
two sets of exchanges released about a week before the Comey outrage. Both were from early 2015,
a few weeks before Clinton was scheduled, finally, to announce her candidacy in mid-April.
One shows newly hired campaign manager Robby Mook asking for John Podesta's and Huma Abedin's
help in persuading Clinton to ask her husband to cancel a $225,000 speech to Morgan Stanley scheduled
for a few days after her announcement and while she was scheduled to be in Iowa on her inaugural
campaign trip.
The difficulty wasn't resistance from Bill; it was resistance from Hillary, at whose instance
the speech had been arranged. The email exchanges indicate that Hillary could not be persuaded to
all the cancellation, because it had been arranged personally by her and Tom Nides, a top aide to
Clinton at the State Dept. and by then a top executive at Morgan Stanley.
Finally it was decided that Abedin would get Bill to agree to cancel the speech, and she would
tell Hillary that Bill (who apparently did have qualms about the speech) was the one who decided
to cancel it. Abedin reported back to Podesta and Mook that Clinton was angry about it for a couple
of days but then moved on.
The other one is from about the same time and is somewhat similar. This series of exchanges was
among Mook, Abedin, Podesta and Neera Tanden, and concerned Hillary's appearance in early May, shortly
after her campaign announcement, at a massive Clinton Global Initiative gala in Morocco paid for
by the king of Morocco, a friend of Clinton's, who all told would donate $12 million to the foundation.
This, too, had been arranged by Hillary, and was not strongly supported by Bill or anyone else at
the foundation.
Abedin's emails suggest (without saying outright) that she and perhaps others had tried to dissuade
Clinton from arranging this, and then, once Clinton had set the date of mid-April for her campaign
announcement, tried to persuade Clinton to cancel it. But by the time of this email exchange with
Mook and Podesta, Abedin said it was so late and Clinton had had earlier opportunities to cancel
but instead had assured her presence there, that it will break a lot of glass" (or some such phrase)
for Clinton to cancel. Mook did manage to get Clinton's agreement to have Bill attend instead of
her.
These instances illustrate what was a constant throughout: Mook and two or three others, including
Podesta, having to put on a full court press to stop Clinton from acting as though she weren't a
candidate for president. Or a candidate for anything. Both Podesta and Tanden complained about Clinton's
"instincts," a euphemism for "I'm completely unaware of the overarching mood of the public in this
election cycle. Or, I don't give a damn about the overarching mood of the public in this election
cycle. And I certainly don't give a damn about down-ballot Dems. Or about Dems. Or about anything
other than what I want to do."
Clinton arranged to clear the Democratic field of anyone thought in early 2015 to have chance
against her in the primaries. She just wasn't willing to swear off anything else she wanted, besides
the presidency, in order to reduce the chance that she would lose the general election.
This wasn't Lent, after all. And anyway, Clinton isn't Catholic.
Had Mook not killed that $225,000 speech to Morgan Stanley by Bill Clinton in April 2015, Bernie
Sanders-whom Clinton could not clear the field of until June 6, 2016-would have won the nomination
and would be president-elect now, accompanied by a newly elected Senate, and maybe House, Democratic
majority. That fee would have been identified in the Clintons' tax returns, filed presumably in last
April and (presumably) released shortly afterward.
In early 2015, when Hillary was arranging for Bill to give that speech-undoubtedly arrangements
made shortly after Elizabeth Warren removed any doubt that she would run-Clinton looked to be free
of any challenge from the left. So it didn't bother her one whit that this would be revealed during
the primary season.
Nor, since she expected her general election opponent to be Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio, did it concern
her that this would be known during the general election campaign. It wasn't as if Bush wasn't a
wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street. Or Rubio owned by other highly unpretty financial interests.
And even if it did, well, it was worth the risk. After all, after the general election, the gravy
train for both her and her husband would stop. And it wasn't blue collar workers in the Rust Belt
who were her target votes, so it wasn't all that big a risk anyway.
So we were saddled with a Democratic presidential nominee whose decades in Washington and the
paid speeches she delivered to financial institutions left her unable to tap into the antiestablishment
and anti-Wall Street rage. Someone who had to cede the white working-class voters who backed Barack
Obama in 2008 and again in 2012, because the only way someone who'd taken so very much money from
Wall Street as personal income for doing so very little-someone who was selling her anticipated presidency
to Wall Street-had no avenue with which to connect effectively with working class Rust Belters without
resorting to demagoguery or false populism, something she was not good at even if she was disposed
to try.
The answer then was to highlight her high status and the importance she placed on connections
with celebrities and the pillars of the establishment in various venues, by campaigning hardly at
all, by spending August secluded in the Hamptons, by parading with entertainment celebrities at the
few rallies she had.
And by incessantly rolling out ever more names of the most elite establishment people to endorse
her or at least make clear that they, too, recognized that her opponent is unfit to hold the office
of the presidency. Because even though the targeted audience has access to the same information on
that the elite establishment did, and were reminded by Clinton and her ad campaign of these lowlights
so often that they lost their resonance, there might be a few people whose decision would turn on
the opinion of these elites.
They just weren't the people the blue collar Rust Belters who, it seemed clear all along would
play an outsize role in the outcome of the election. As they had in 2008 and 2012.
Nor, apparently, did she have any avenue to point out whom Trump's financial campaign backers
actually were, who was writing his budget and regulatory proposals, who was selecting his court and
agency-head nominees, his SEC, FTC and NLRB member nominees, and why. They're not people with labor
union backing, nor do they have the interests of blue collar folks at heart. Their interests are
diametrically opposite those of blue collar workers. And Trump wasted not so much as a day in handing
over to them the entire panoply of powers of the federal government.
But having sold her avenue for informing people of this, to Wall Street and any other huge-money
interest waiving a mega-check around in exchange for a 45-minute-long speech by or question-and-answer
session with, the likely president she was limited to reminding voters of what they themselves saw,
and assuring them that elites viewed him just as they did. Which may be why her campaign manager,
Mook, wasn't as focused on messaging as Bill Clinton wished. Normally, a candidate has one.
This candidate had foreclosed to herself the message she needed to have, and had nothing much filling
in for it. That wasn't Mook's fault.
Trump wasn't going to co-opt Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell were
going to co-opt Trump. All the indications were that that is what would happen. And that, Trump has
made unabashedly clear now, is what will happen. Our nominee couldn't-or at least wouldn't campaign
on this anything resembling consistency.
The way to contain this is for high-profile Democrats to make clear to the public what is happening.
And to threaten massive campaigns on this in none other than the Rust Belt, in the 2018 election
cycle. And to start very, very soon. People who supported Obama in 2008 and 2012 aren't Donald Trump's
base. Most of them would have flocked to Sanders or to Elizabeth Warren in this election.
The latter should be shoved in anyone's face who starts blathering about sexism hurting Clinton
among the hoi polloi . The former should answer the question about whether racism was
part of the appeal to the voters who put Trump over the top, by one per cent, in Michigan, Wisconsin
and Pennsylvania, and came within barely more than a point of doing son in New Hampshire and, of
all states, Minnesota. All states went comfortably for Obama, and all except Pennsylvania went for
Sanders in the primary, as did Indiana. And had Warren instead of Sanders been Clinton's primary
challenger, she like Sanders would have voted for her.
People who claim otherwise on either point don't know the region. It is not the South and it is
not the Southwest. Trump's racism and xenophobia did not win those states for Trump. Nor did Clinton's
gender.
The first step is to appoint a strong Sanders backer in charge of the DNC. Jeff Weaver, maybe.
Or Jim Dean. No war for the soul of the party. That ship sailed on Tuesday.
Recognize that.
And join me in wishing Hillary and Bill Clinton a happy jaunt in their retirement as they luxuriate
in the massive wealth that, while possibly still not quite enough to sate them, we are about to pay
very dearly for.
People have lost their sense of security, status and even identity. This result is the scream
of an America desperate for radical change
They will blame James Comey and the FBI. They will blame voter suppression and racism. They will
blame Bernie or bust and misogyny. They will blame third parties and independent candidates. They
will blame the corporate media for giving him the platform, social media for being a bullhorn, and
WikiLeaks for airing the laundry.
But this leaves out the force most responsible for creating the nightmare in which we now find
ourselves wide awake: neoliberalism. That worldview – fully embodied by Hillary Clinton and her machine
– is no match for Trump-style extremism. The decision to run one against the other is what sealed
our fate. If we learn nothing else, can we please learn from that mistake?
Here is what we need to understand: a hell of a lot of people are in pain. Under neoliberal policies
of deregulation, privatisation, austerity and corporate trade, their living standards have declined
precipitously. They have lost jobs. They have lost pensions. They have lost much of the safety net
that used to make these losses less frightening. They see a future for their kids even worse than
their precarious present.
At the same time, they have witnessed the rise of the Davos class, a hyper-connected network of
banking and tech billionaires, elected leaders who are awfully cosy with those interests, and Hollywood
celebrities who make the whole thing seem unbearably glamorous. Success is a party to which they
were not invited, and they know in their hearts that this rising wealth and power is somehow directly
connected to their growing debts and powerlessness.
For the people who saw security and status as their birthright – and that means white men most
of all – these losses are unbearable.
Donald Trump speaks directly to that pain. The Brexit campaign spoke to that pain. So do all of
the rising far-right parties in Europe. They answer it with nostalgic nationalism and anger at remote
economic bureaucracies – whether Washington, the North American free trade agreement the World Trade
Organisation or the EU. And of course, they answer it by bashing immigrants and people of colour,
vilifying Muslims, and degrading women. Elite neoliberalism has nothing to offer that pain, because
neoliberalism unleashed the Davos class. People such as Hillary and Bill Clinton are the toast of
the Davos party. In truth, they threw the party.
Trump's message was: "All is hell." Clinton answered: "All is well." But it's not well – far from
it.
Neo-fascist responses to rampant insecurity and inequality are not going to go away. But what
we know from the 1930s is that what it takes to do battle with fascism is a real left. A good chunk
of Trump's support could be peeled away if there were a genuine redistributive agenda on the table.
An agenda to take on the billionaire class with more than rhetoric, and use the money for a green
new deal. Such a plan could create a tidal wave of well-paying unionised jobs, bring badly needed
resources and opportunities to communities of colour, and insist that polluters should pay for workers
to be retrained and fully included in this future.
It could fashion policies that fight institutionalised racism, economic inequality and climate
change at the same time. It could take on bad trade deals and police violence, and honour indigenous
people as the original protectors of the land, water and air.
People have a right to be angry, and a powerful, intersectional left agenda can direct that anger
where it belongs, while fighting for holistic solutions that will bring a frayed society together.
Such a coalition is possible. In Canada, we have begun to cobble it together under the banner
of a people's agenda called The Leap Manifesto, endorsed by more than 220 organisations from Greenpeace
Canada to Black Lives Matter Toronto, and some of our largest trade unions.
Bernie Sanders' amazing campaign went a long way towards building this sort of coalition, and
demonstrated that the appetite for democratic socialism is out there. But early on, there was a failure
in the campaign to connect with older black and Latino voters who are the demographic most abused
by our current economic model. That failure prevented the campaign from reaching its full potential.
Those mistakes can be corrected and a bold, transformative coalition is there to be built on.
That is the task ahead. The Democratic party needs to be either decisively wrested from pro-corporate
neoliberals, or it needs to be abandoned. From Elizabeth Warren to Nina Turner, to the Occupy alumni
who took the Bernie campaign supernova, there is a stronger field of coalition-inspiring progressive
leaders out there than at any point in my lifetime. We are "leaderful", as many in the Movement for
Black Lives say.
So let's get out of shock as fast as we can and build the kind of radical movement that has a
genuine answer to the hate and fear represented by the Trumps of this world. Let's set aside whatever
is keeping us apart and start right now.
Here is what we need to understand: a hell of a lot of people are in pain. Under neoliberal
policies of deregulation, privatisation, austerity and corporate trade, their living standards
have declined precipitously.
You forgot to mention identity politics. Neoliberalism and identity politics go hand in
hand. I don't think it's a surprise that after the 50's and the Second Red Scare, HUAC, McCarthyism
and the John Birch Society the socialist, communist and other left-wingers were gone from the
US and identity politics became ascendant.
We don't see SJW being dragged in front of Congress and them losing their jobs, nor
do we see the National Guard coming in to break up Slut Walks. Instead, we see them in the highest
positions of power and with governments and corporations embracing their ideas. The reason is
simple; identity politics and SJWs are no threat to people in power.
Keep people divided into ever smaller identities and they can't fight back. Keep demonizing
people for objecting, calling them sexist and racist for speaking up, and you muzzle the opposition.
If someone wants to take on neoliberalism then they need to abandon identity politics.
Glass-Steagal was repealed, Wall St. stole itself rich, people wanted change (Yes we can!). But
not a single bankster megathief was even investigated and in the rust belt and elsewhere millions
suffered. They were told that they needed to shut up because they were evil privileged white males
who needed to be HRC's blue wall because she owned them. Refusal to comply meant they were racist
misogynists.
So now they are racist misogynists and proud of it.
And why all this? Because Hillary's ego is so large that it bumps into the edges of the universe.
She calls that her class ceiling.
Thanks Hillary. You brought us Trump. You and that bunch of privileged DNC-ers that are in
bed with Wall Street.
The left's reflections are getting closer, but we're still not quite there it seems.
... ... ...
The visible, real-life consequences of globalisation and modern capitalism are those targets
picked out (hardly by coincidence) by Trump and Farage. The most obvious sign of globalisation
is not a billionaire's yacht, but that when you call to sort out being overcharged or crappy service,
you finally get through to an outsourced offshored call centre. And when the right attacks them
and the left inevitably and correctly defends them - that immigrants do contribute to the economy,
but are still disadvantaged economically, that women are paid less for the same work, that muslims
face discrimination every day - we're infact subliminally reinforcing Trump/Farage's blunter message:
that the left's priority constituents are immigrants, people of colour, muslims and women.
And then we criticise a 50 year old white unemployed or zero-hour-contract man for being "selfish"
and "stupid" when he votes for the only candidate who *appears* to put him first, when we seem
to ask him to put everyone else first.
The left is losing the argument because our answers to modern problems are removed from everyday
experience. Correct, but complex. Trump and Farage understand KISS. If we think the solution is
to just keep saying the same thing louder, like an English tourist abroad, we'll carry on losing.
"It was the Democrats' embrace of neoliberalism that won it for Trump"
Yes indeed, I have seen this coming since the mid nineties, when the -fairly high tech- Company,
where I worked for at the time, became a victim of globalization, 120 people got fired, a.o. me.
Gladly I was able to still find a job at 50, a hell of a lot of others did not.
Besides, I have been active in International business since the early 1960's until recently,
so I know what I am talking about.
We are spoiling 200 years of social economic improvement to the short term interests of capital
at supersonic speed. (modern communication and transport, the free movement of capital)
Both the republicans and the democrats made that happen (as their followers did in Europe)
The Globalizing, Outsourcing, Monetary, Laissez-Faire, Supply side economy.
That is the one thing that I was in agreement with, with Trump, for the rest, by the way he
is talking now, it looks very much as if we will be having to deal with a liar. (and a cheat?)
After all he did say a lot of different things while selling himself in the campaign from the
image that he seems to depict now..
The worst things are in my opinion his wish to destroy the livelyhood of lots of people world
wide by not accepting the human influences on the climate, this besides lots of others things
is in my opinion extremely selfish, especially seen the fact that a green economy can be -at least-
as profitable (in work and money) as the fossil one was.
And of course the repeal of Obamacare, one of the few successes that Obama could materialize
in his mainly obstructed time in office.
What is 'Neoliberalism'
Neoliberalism is a policy model of social studies and economics that transfers control of economic
factors to the private sector from the public sector. It takes from the basic principles of
neoclassical economics, suggesting that governments must limit subsidies, make reforms to tax
law in order to expand the tax base, reduce deficit spending, limit protectionism, and open
markets up to trade. It also seeks to abolish fixed exchange rates, back deregulation, permit
private property, and privatize businesses run by the state.
Liberalism, in economics, refers to a freeing of the economy by eliminating regulations
and barriers that restrict what actors can do. Neoliberal policies aim for a laissez-faire
approach to economic development.
"It's a belief that the human social system works best if there's almost no government, and
almost everything is done through markets... and also it says there should be no trade unions,
no tariffs, remove all the controls and the economy will work better.
Now that's only true of a system if it is inherently stabilizing, it's like saying 'this ship
will go a lot faster if you take off all the stuff that's there to stabilize it.' Yeah it will
but it'll go upside down at some point and sink."
From the British perspective this is true here as well. After a number of high powered meetings
over a fifteen year period, the Labour Party embraced NeoLiberalism and paid when it failed. Those
meetings where pretty big and millions turned up. Those meetings took place in 19779, 983, 1987
and the final one was in 1992. The general public announced that no one would elect anyone who
did not support wholesale privatisation, free markets at every turn with a special emphasis on
labour market laws. Any devience, under any circumstances from Tory ideology was punished at the
ballot box. Labour was forced to drop clause four as a sop to get elected.
And when this neo liberal wet dream started to crumble in the form of crippling PFI schemes,
light touch banking, zero hour agency work and possibly bigger than the light touch banking collapse,
the free movement of Labour for the biggest companies in the UK. Who did the public blame for
these Tory driven Liberalism? The Tories? Themselves for forcing the Labour Party to adopt these
flawed policies? The Newspapers who condemned anything other than free market ideology? Nope,
the blamed the very people who had been campaigning against Tory policies all along. The people
who got blamed for the banking collapse was not the people who DEMANDEDbanks be deregulated, not
the Party who carried out the deregulation, but the poor saps in power when it blew up.
Who gets blamed for the importing of labour? The political ideology that people had supported
for thirty years? Nope, again the Party that bent over backwards to accommodate the Tesco, ASDA
and sports direct et al.
And guess what? After punishing anything to the Left of Reagan or questioning free trade at
the ballot box, and dismissing it as 'Socailism' it turns out they voted for a protectionist who
is opposed to free trade and multi Nationals. The Party who are opposed to free trade, multinationals
and 'What is good for GM is good for America'? The protector of jobs and regulated labour markets?
Why the GOP of course. The Party whose DNA has all this time been at the heart of protecting jobs
who shun free trade agreements and are at the very heart of the socialist movement are the Republican
movement. And nobody even said anything. We all just moved into a parallel universe where the
Republican movement have been campaigning against free trade for two hundred years.
"The indisputable fact is that prevailing institutions of authority in the West, for decades,
have relentlessly and with complete indifference stomped on the economic welfare and social security
of hundreds of millions of people. While elite circles gorged themselves on globalism, free trade,
Wall Street casino gambling, and endless wars (wars that enriched the perpetrators and sent the
poorest and most marginalized to bear all their burdens), they completely ignored the victims
of their gluttony, except when those victims piped up a bit too much - when they caused a ruckus
- and were then scornfully condemned as troglodytes who were the deserved losers in the glorious,
global game of meritocracy."
"Neoliberal policies of deregulation, privatisation, austerity and corporate trade..." Are you
sure those are neoliberal policies? They sound exactly like conservative Republican mainstays
to me. Didn't Trump run on these very things?
Exactly, they are virtually the same, with the difference being that the GOP adds "nostalgic nationalism
and anger at remote economic bureaucracies – whether Washington, the North American free trade
agreement the World Trade Organisation or the EU. And of course, they answer it by bashing immigrants
and people of colour, vilifying Muslims, and degrading women".
In difficult times, people want relief as fast as possible and they want to blame *anyone*
for their plight. This is what a demagogue offers; it's why Trump is in the White House. Prepare
yourselves, and never give in to Trump's cynicism.
Warren sold Sanders out. Sanders sold his supporters out for Debbie Wasserman Shultz, who incidentally
was reelected. Hillary was forced on the ticket by the oligarchy. Change will not come from Trudeau,
or Obama, or Trump, or Sanders or Warren. These people have betrayed what they said. Where do
we go from here? Which is the way that's clear? Dunno, but all of the above have shown to be frauds.
Whose next?
In this election, Donald Trump was the lesser evil, so I am glad that he won. There won't be nu
clear war on Iran or wherever, and better relations with Russia, China, and hopefully, the rest
of the world.
As for domestic politics, we'll take care of those issues ourselves, forcefully protesting
against, if necessary. It'll be few and far between, I project.
In this election, Donald Trump was the lesser evil, so I am glad that he won. There won't be nu
clear war on Iran or wherever, and better relations with Russia, China, and hopefully, the rest
of the world.
As for domestic politics, we'll take care of those issues ourselves, forcefully protesting
against, if necessary. It'll be few and far between, I project.
"...a green new deal. Such a plan could create a tidal wave of well-paying unionised jobs, bring
badly needed resources and opportunities to communities ... and insist that polluters should pay
for workers to be retrained and fully included in this future."
That is, at least, the only positive suggestion that's been made. I think it's a good one the
needs to be developed. I'm far from an economist but perhaps we need also to start thinking about
blended economic systems rather than just one type as well.
What I don't agree with is the continuation of identity politics. It's suffering badly from
overuse and also from its juxtaposition with the application of economic pain to those who are
also consistently abused with every vile epithet known to man. In brief, people have been operant
conditioned to either worship at its feet or loathe it with most or all of their being. It's past
its use-by date and needs to grow into the real expression of its stated aims.
As an example, Merkel is quoted as saying, ""Germany and America are connected by values of
democracy, freedom, and respect for the law and the dignity of man, independent of origin, skin
colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or political views."
The words are just positive framing. We all know now that 'democracy' (defined by the UN as
extreme terrorism to be fought and eliminated when iit involves public voting) refers to voting
by an elite group. For the rest of it, Junckers right hand man was quoted this week as saying
it's to be achieved by 'elimination of all national, cultural, ethnic, and faith identity'.
There is a unbridgable gulf between those two concepts, and the first one is simply dishonest.
But journalists never explain that.
The way forward is to treat all people with dignity and respect, as long as they're not harassing
or killing each other, and stop trying to brainwash them. If someone is a racist and content to
keep that to themselves, leave them alone. Likewise with all the other -isms and -obias. The law
and institutions need to treat people equally indeed. No negative and no positive discrimination.
'Indigenous peoples' could have a special role- but not to dispossess, sponge off, or lord it
over others. Religious holidays need to be observed for all religions, not for none. I can hear
the business howls now but the reality is we need to be decreasing industrial pollution and having
less 'stuff', not increasing it.
I wanted Trump to win but if I saw someone(including him) harassing someone else racially,
homophobically, or any other -ism or -obia, I would defend the victim to the death as long as
they were in my presence. That includes male victims of domestic violence. Everything has its
day and identity politics is in that category.
We need a new way and it needs to honour the reality described in the fraudelent rhetoric of
the recent past globalist, multiculturalsit, and liberalist concepts. We need a completely new
economic system or blend of the old which serves the needs of all the people, al the time. And
we need democratic systems which empower constant feedback from those people on how far its succeeding.
Here is what we need to understand: a hell of a lot of people are in pain. Under neoliberal
policies of deregulation, privatisation, austerity and corporate trade, their living standards
have declined precipitously. They have lost jobs. They have lost pensions. They have lost much
of the safety net that used to make these losses less frightening. They see a future for their
kids even worse than their precarious present.
Agree 100% with this, but am at an utter loss to grasp why this is chalked up to the hip new lingo
of "neoliberalism." Bullshit. It's as pure a distillation of conservatism as has ever been penned.
This obsession with renaming things for the sake of confusion serves no one well. This is prime
Trickle Down and the Conservative Manifesto through and through.
I am afraid the author is correct in describing the problem as Neo Liberalism - It is not Conservatism
or Capitalism.
This is Neo Liberalism - You are the CEO of a plant employs 5,000 people that makes widgets.
You don't know how to make a better widget but you want to increase profits so you decide to close
down your plant and outsource 4,000 of the jobs to a low wage economy where workers don't have
the same rights (remember China doesn't have democracy or freedom of speech).
Now your making widgets cheaper but you still aren't making enough money so you offshore the
tax liability to a tax haven - There goes schools, roads, hospitals.
Now your making so much more money for the company what do you do? You give yourself a pay
rise. Not any old pay rise. You pay yourself five or ten times as much.
And then you buy shares because the share price goes way up.
And then you donate to politicians and they tell the great unwashed (that's you and me) this
wheeze is FREE TRADE, or conservatism or capitalism or trickle down.
It isn't its Neo Liberalism and both left and right in most of Europe and the USA has embraced
it to the detriment of its citizens.
Naomi Klein: The Democratic party needs to be either decisively wrested from pro-corporate
neoliberals, or it needs to be abandoned.
It starts by having the DNC follow its own rules. The superdelegates were dutifully counted
as Hillary supporters from Day One of the primaries. Something like 507 to begin with! When Sanders
won successive states, more and more superdelegates mysteriously appeared supporting Hillary.
People understand what a rigged game means. This was Thumb-On-The-Scale tactics and people saw
through it. The Party chose Hillary and that was that. That's not democracy. The Democratic Party
needs a complete transformation from root to branch.
But yes, the bigger picture must be a focus on institutional reform. Not just for America but
everywhere.
I agree with Klein's take on neoliberalism, its Panglossian economic model, as a cause of much
angst in the world, but the remedy is simple in the US -- regulation. Break up the big banks,
end monopolies based on third-party payments, licensing and credentialing (health care, the universities,
etc.), and levy higher taxes on the wealthy. I truly believe that race relations among Americans
have never been better, and that most "problems" have largely been manufactured. What America
is crying out for is good, pragmatic government.
Naomi is spot on. She is speaking a truth that too many have no wish to hear because it tampers
with their idealize status quo. They have theirs and to hell with everyone else. That time has
past and the groaning of the privileged- people who do not CARE (which does not include many people
with means- that is stupid to relegate the carers to hell with the criminals) is so LOUD right
now. They are spinning bank reports and market doom and gloom.
It has been said that HALF of the USA is a 'basket of deplorables' - WOW that is reductionist
logic and it explains nothing.
I am not American and yet, what I know is that PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE- human beings- so please-
what a bullshit argument- that you have tried all too often with Brexit (its not working for you
so who is the insane one? Wasn't it Einstein who said that the definition of insanity is doing
the same thing over and over while expecting a different result?
RESEARCH says that people are usually very informed about the issues of their own lives. All
they have left is their lives and the lives of their children. A LITTLE respect would be nice.
Many creatures can only see things that are moving. Maybe some people are like that once they
trust. WE ALL trusted government, police, agencies because we wanted to believe in a common good.
That trust was ABUSED. The last grasping woke people up. They saw that grab very clearly.
And this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCWNqMV4Bgs
(I was married to a cop at that time and the interviewee is one of the most staid journalists
in Canada with a program on public television.
Someone has to OWN those facts before casting aspersions on mankind. The voters are not stupid
ESPECIALLY when it comes to SURVIVAL and it is brink time.
You expect them to DIE QUIETLY? Dream on in your precious nightmare.
And people have been saying that for decades but no one has been listening, least of all the
trendy neoliberals who thought they had found the final economic solution.
You cannot strip away a person's identity, life and loves, without them losing their dignity
-totally. You must prepare and assist every one of them for change over realistic time scales
dealing with every consequence as it happened. None of that was done because all of what has happened
is the product of opportunism - cash today think about it tomorrow.
These trendy neoliberals have cheated us all, not once, not twice, but all the time, and they
show no guild, no guilt at all. They will continue to pay the price until they listen to us and
change.
Naomi is spot on. She is speaking a truth that too many have no wish to hear because it tampers
with their idealize status quo. They have theirs and to hell with everyone else. That time has
past and the groaning of the privileged- people who do not CARE (which does not include many people
with means- that is stupid to relegate the carers to hell with the criminals) is so LOUD right
now. They are spinning bank reports and market doom and gloom.
It has been said that HALF of the USA is a 'basket of deplorables' - WOW that is reductionist
logic and it explains nothing.
I am not American and yet, what I know is that PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE- human beings- so please-
what a bullshit argument- that you have tried all too often with Brexit (its not working for you
so who is the insane one? Wasn't it Einstein who said that the definition of insanity is doing
the same thing over and over while expecting a different result?
RESEARCH says that people are usually very informed about the issues of their own lives. All
they have left is their lives and the lives of their children. A LITTLE respect would be nice.
Many creatures can only see things that are moving. Maybe some people are like that once they
trust. WE ALL trusted government, police, agencies because we wanted to believe in a common good.
That trust was ABUSED. The last grasping woke people up. They saw that grab very clearly.
And this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCWNqMV4Bgs
(I was married to a cop at that time and the interviewee is one of the most staid journalists
in Canada with a program on public television.
Someone has to OWN those facts before casting aspersions on mankind. The voters are not stupid
ESPECIALLY when it comes to SURVIVAL and it is brink time.
You expect them to DIE QUIETLY? Dream on in your precious nightmare.
Perfect. Thank you, Naomi, for the best column on the 2016 election. Democrats are proving to
be sore losers but they can come around if they all or most read your take on the outcome of our
presidential election. Neoliberal has been our downfall but still most Americans are not aware
of even the word. Times to get explanation of the ideology and the negative effect on the world.
It has been so cruel and so horrible since Jimmy Carter who started this whole thing but the Clintons
were the cruelest of all. I am so glad Hillary did not win. I could not vote for Trump so voted
for Jill Stein.
It was also their (and the left in general's) embrace of identity politics. Welcoming the whiny
'social justice warrior' attitude that puts everyone into little groups and puts those groups
into little lanes, and no one can ever leave their group or lane. Calling people racist or bigoted,
not for actual racism or bigotry, but for merely expressing a different opinion. White privilege-
trying to shut down the opinions of white people. Cultural appropriation- witch-hunting people
for wearing a certain hairstyle or costume. Safe spaces- creating echo chambers and segregating
people from even hearing opposing opinions or ideas. Microagressions- claiming offense over perceived
slights and insults in harmless remarks. not to mention trying to police, ban, and control speech.
I'm a liberal, I lean left, my ideals and values and principles and what I stand for are more
in line with left-wing ideology, but if they want to be taken seriously and have a chance at winning
again, the left needs to let identity politics die.
An ideology that believes that if you give rich people absolutely unfettered ability to make
even more money, they'll magically look after everyone else.
The center left's shameful, braindead acceptance of Thatcher-Reaga, Dumbonomics has been a
worldwide plague.
The EU, supposedly a bulwark of common sense, is still officially austerian and neoliberal,
even though some hard thinking is going on.
Anger-fuelled adoption of far right policies and economics is a further lurch in the same direction:
deregulation, unchecked corporate power, quashing of workers' rights.
A bad time for the disenfranchised all over the world, now being used as electoral cannon fodder
by their owners.
As an English woman who lived in America for some years, it was perfectly clear to me that voters
there have a choice between cuddly-right and hard-right.
There is no "left" in America, and there is none in the UK either in any meaningful, workable
sense. All we have is the soft-right and an unreconstructed 70s Trot. Brilliant.
Nice as it might seem, " The Leap Manifesto, endorsed by more than 220 organisations from Greenpeace
Canada to Black Lives Matter Toronto, and some of our largest trade unions" sounds like yet another
loose coalition of pressure groups with no cohesive platform or plan. Same old, same old.
Absolutely spot on. I remember, as a rare liberal working at a GOP-run Enron, how disheartened
I was watching Bill Clinton pander to the GOP elites and shove NAFTA through a GOP-run Congress
while the majority of Democrats voted against it. He also sought, for political expediency, many
neoliberal solutions that doomed the working class to subsistence. The GOP crowed that Reagan
won the Cold War when actually it was the shift of wealth from the West to the 3rd world as a
bribe that ultimately brought us to the globalized mess we find ourselves in. This was during
Clinton's presidency. Unfortunately Obama did a u-turn and continued GW's disastrous tenure in
what really matters: wars, globalization, abandonment of the working class. Why didn't the Democratic
elite not remind voters that the GOP was behind globalization and the shift of wealth from the
middle class to overseas?
A Message from the Rust Belt: It's the NAFTA, Stupid
The road to President Trump began with the enactment of NAFTA, a heinous betrayal by the Democratic
Party of its blue collar base and of it's most basic principles, taking it from the party of the
New Deal to the party of the Brave New Global World Order Deal, screwing it's most loyal constituents
in favor of Wall Street.
The next step on the road to the Trump House was the Clinton's reckless deregulation, culminating
in the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, yet again in the name of a bigger, more profitable, more
powerful Wall Street at the peril of Main Street.
But perhaps the most decisive factor in sending blue collar rust belt America into the arms
of an orange-haired demon is what happened when they put their faith, heart and souls into electing
Barack Obama, a man who ran as a progressive, promising hope and change, but who then immediately
governed as a neo-lib.
I know what some of you are saying right now, that given the fierce opposition he was up against,
he accomplished what he could; but that's a bunch of bull, as we say in the Midwest.
No one forced him to appoint, immediately upon taking office, Wall Street insiders to his cabinet
and make Larry Summers (the architect of deregulation, neo-lib style) his chief economic adviser.
No one forced him to appoint corporate toady, Common Core loving, privatization loving (through
charter schools) Arne "teach to the test" Duncan to Secretary of Education.
No one forced him to immediately abandon, in the fight for Obamacare, the public option.
No one forced him to ultimately come up with a health care plan, that at its base, is of by
and big Pharma and the insurance industry, one that lowers costs not by controlling them but by
rationing care (that's what those huge deductibles and co-pays are for and they're working--working
Americans, even while insured, don't dare visit the doctor, except when at death's door, for fear
the doctor will order tests they can't afford to pay.)
Most now use their insurance as catastrophic policies to be used only in emergencies. This
is why Obamacare is so hated in America--not because it's socialist, but because it isn't. (Remember,
they voted for hope and change)
No Republican cabal forced Obama to embrace TPP, NAFTA on steroids and so univerally hated
here in the heartland.
Ah, but you say, Hillary has come out against it. But only after praising it and only in cagey
language, about not approving it in its present form (and she has yet to comment on the viscerally
hated NAFTA forever linked to the Clintons and the Democrats).
Much is made (and rightly so) of Trump's threats to constitutionality and the rule of law.
Yet Democrats seem blissfully unaware of their own full-frontal assaults on the Constitution.
For elected officials who have taken an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United
States, supporting NAFTA and TPP, which sign over US sovereignty to unelected, unaccountable (corporate
controlled) international tribunals, giving them the power to, in essence, overturn any US, state
or federal, is nothing less than an act of treason. You might as well just take the Constitution,
rip it to shreds, and throw it up in the air like confetti.
(It's so easy to see Trump's threats to the Constitution, so difficult for Democratic elites
to see their own obliteration of it.)
Why is the hatred of NAFTA, of TPP (and of the Clintons) so visceral in rust-belt America?
I know people who watched the plants they worked in dismantled piece by piece and shipped off
to Mexico. I've spoken to people who've had the humiliating experience of going to Mexico to train
their replacements. I've talked to union members who've reported that employers, at the bargaining
table, have demanded huge cuts in pay and benefits, saying that unless they concede, they're moving
to Mexico.
It's personal.
It's not like blue collar, rust-belt America hasn't given the Democrats chance after chance.
They've been voting Democratic since 1992.
They gave Obama two chances, believing his promises of hope and change, only to witness his
championing of TPP.
Time and again, the Clintonian Democrats have deceived and betrayed their blue collar, rust-belt
base. Time and again rust-belt blue collar America has supported them, nonetheless, hoping, like
Charlie Brown, that this time they wouldn't have the football pulled away.
But the accumulating decay, the devastation of the great recession (and the feeble, corporate
oriented Democratic response) have left them with no hope left. The vote for Donald is a howl
of rage and desperation. He was the only way left for them to vent their rage (after the Democratic
elites dispensed with Bernie Sanders).
The next four years are going to be hell. But for heartland rust-belt America, the last thirty-five
years have been hell (and they have nothing left to lose).
On the one hand you don't want immigrants in your mist because they undercut local workers.
And in the other hand you don't want those same people to get good jobs in their own country,
because they undercut your own workers.
You think you have a God given right to jobs for which you aren't productive enough.
In other words you don't want to compete.
You want to sell us your stuff allright ( NAFTA slaughtered the Mexican farming sector, specially
subsistence farming) but you would rather don't buy Mexican stuff, unless it is raw materials
so you can add value and sell it back to us.
NAFTA has made countless articles cheaper to all of you, and has slowed down illegal immigration
which has been in the decline for a while.
But you want it all, no matter how unrealistic.
Having you cake and eat it. While riding an unicorn please.
Why Klein doesn't mention Jews in her list of targets of this right wing hate and reaction is
surprising. In defining the reason neo-liberalism failed so many people, she states "At the same
time, they have witnessed the rise of the Davos class, a hyper-connected network of banking and
tech billionaires, elected leaders who are awfully cosy with those interests, and Hollywood celebrities
who make the whole thing seem unbearably glamorous. Success is a party to which they were not
invited, and they know in their hearts that this rising wealth and power is somehow directly connected
to their growing debts and powerlessness." And this paragraph directly applies to how the Trumpettes,
the KKK, who endorsed him, the Alt-right who he played a major role of normalizing, sees JEWS.
Central to the ideology of the extreme right is their hatred of Jews. How Klein missed that is
really baffling.
Naive comment. The "lefts" criticism of Israel is largely unrelated to the growing right's hostility
to Jews. It's the latter you need to be concerned about.
What right's hostility in the US? Where are they. There isn't a single Republican member of Congress
who is hostile to Israel. David Duke ran for senate in Lousiana and got 3% of the vote.
Naomi: "But this leaves out the force most responsible for creating the nightmare in which we
now find ourselves wide awake: neoliberalism."
Is this completely correct, leaving out as it does something that has grown since at least
the last days of WWII and throughout the Cold War, something that some call the "Deep State?"
Here's one view of it, written by a former Republican congressional staffer but in an essay
found on the Bill Moyers and Company's website (Bill Moyers is definitely neither a Republican
nor a conservative):
"Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of
Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according
to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by,
the visible state whose leaders we choose. My analysis of this phenomenon is not an exposé of
a secret, conspiratorial cabal; the state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight, and
its operators mainly act in the light of day."
Lofgren's description is not exhaustive, not really focusing on the darkest heart within the
"military industrial complex" that is intimately associated with the deep state, namely the covert,
classified areas of the intelligence and security components. (I find the fact that the present
president recently renewed the illegal and unconstitutional 9/11 State of Emergency Act for the
eighth year in a row, just as his predecessor did every year he was in office after
the Act was first signed in September, 2001, telling.)
Still, it's good starting point.
It looks to me that this huge beast is more about empire than Neoliberalism (or even NeoConservatism
-- it encompasses both; it's not necessarily "left" or "right" as most use the terms, not truly
Democrat or Republican).
Hillary has promised to be a president for everyone…that is, everyone who contributes to 'The
Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation'.
According to the Foundation's website, it is a 'non-profit 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization.'
The easiest way to make an organisation non-profit is to pay out all earnings - seven-figure director
fees, first class travel, Fifth Avenue offices…oh how you can spend your way to a luxurious non-profit
outcome! And whatever is left over after your personal indulgences have been satisfied, you can
spend on a few pet projects.
The Clintons are seen as money grubbers who'd sell their own family members for the right price.
Hillary is a despised person.
Trump is no better. The only difference between him and Hillary is that he is openly corrupt.
Whereas Hillary hides her corruption behind a cloak of establishment respectability.
The dumbest thing about the response to this is is how everyone is just shoehorning their own
narrative into this. If this was just about neoliberalism, nobody would have voted for the Republican
party. Trump won for a variety of factors. It wasn't that he was against globalisation, it's that
he lied that he could change it. These people believed his "we'll bring back all the jobs" over
concrete plans.
Such a coalition is possible. In Canada, we have begun to cobble it together under the banner
of a people's agenda called The Leap Manifesto, endorsed by more than 220 organisations from
Greenpeace Canada to Black Lives Matter Toronto, and some of our largest trade unions.
I hang around in liberal circles in Toronto and even there, Black Lives Matter is hardly popular.
I know socialists see the result and think that they can be next, but they won't be.
The political class assiduously serves the needs of the wealthy, while the working people fend
for themselves. The banks get a bailout, the bankers get a bonus, and the consumer gets his house
foreclosed on. The oil companies and hedge funds get loopholes built into the tax code, and the
middle class hears that they might not be able to draw their Social Security until they're seventy.
It's not hard to see why people are unhappy, and Trump was unafraid to call the system rigged
and the players corrupt. You can analyze the results of this election until you're blue in the
face, but I think what it ultimately comes down to is that the working people have been thrown
under the bus in favor of corporate profit for far too long.
True enough, but Trump's "solutions" will just make it worse for the same group of people and
continue to support corporations and the wealthy. Sadly yet again the voters have been duped.
Probably. The only hope I have is that Trump is a vanity candidate, so I expect he really will
try to do the best job he can for as many people as he can. He genuinely has no love for the political
class and our campaign finance or lobbying systems. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that
something half decent might yet come of his election. Probably not any of the big issues, and
it's a shame about the environment and the Supreme Court, but you never know... Or so I'll keep
telling myself.
1] Since the Eighties the powerless left have been saying that the solutions are on the left
... while the voters kept moving right. Repeating the same thing but louder doesn't make it work
any better.
2] Since the Eighties every faction of the left has been calling unto the other flavours of left
to 'unite' ... whereas as what they usually meant was 'join us'. Even now I see no evidence that
the left is capable of running a 'united-self' ... let alone capable of uniting and healing the
deep rift in the society of Trumpian-US or Brexit-UK.
This ship has sailed! The Modern Left has failed to prevent this fascist take-over every bit
as much as 'Old Left' failed to stand-up in the Europe of the 1930's and 'Older Left' failed to
withstand the nationalist fervor of '14-'18. No, I am afraid that, as in all previous episode,
this fascism must be fought. We better start preparing while we still can.
But the problem with your story is that the left were defeated some time back. What we've had
since are liberals (i.e. the neo-liberal right) tacking ever-rightward, constantly insisting that's
the only way to avert the hard populist right. The result has been complete failure, as all that
right-ward movement by liberals has achieved is to further create the conditions that lead to
the rise of the right.
Its pretty much the same thing that happened in Russia post-communism. Neo-liberalism/liberalism
(they are, in fact, the same thing) led to the rise of watered-down kind of fascism.
The modern pro-capitalist/non-populist right has failed to prevent this fascist take-over every
bit as much as 'Old Right' failed to stand-up in the Europe of the 1930's...
This article is spot on. Neoliberalism creates its own hierarchy which has no place for the peole
who voted for Trump. Two quotes from US voters (with acknowledgements to Sky News).
1. A black man who voted for Trump...'most blacks have more in common with white woeking class
families trying to make ends meet than they do with the democrats'
2. A well heeled white democrat man in shock....'trying to come to terms with an election which
has shown me a side of America I was unaware of...'
Shock horror....Trump was elected by ordinary people.
It was interesting to see that nearly each and every newspaper in the US and the UK and everywhere
else and nearly all the TV channels started a barrage of anti-Trump rhetoric always repeating
his sexual escapades and his racist and sexist comments. Only a few alternative blogs or news
channels dared to criticise Hillary or question her integrity.
Now that Trump has won has shocked all these news channels and everybody is asking who voted for
him ? All those "deplorable" people as mentioned by Hillary or all those sexist, racist or uneducated
whites ? Were they angry ? If so, why ? Was it a protest vote ? Why ?
It is interesting to read Charles Hugh Smith's writing "The source of our rage" below and wonder
why all these "expert" commentators got it wrong -- https://goo.gl/VuEGZy
Turn on your television or pick up a paper. Listen to a radio or read the online news. There's
always someone telling us how we should think, and what we should do.
The belief that they know better - that they are superior to the rest of us - permeates every
corner of our lives. Those that disagree with and challenge the 'consensus' are considered ignorant
or uneducated.
This is the argument that's been trotted out since Brexit. The poor old folks didn't know what
they were doing. That somehow, those who grew up under the black cloud shadowing post-Second World
War Britain couldn't comprehend the implications of seeking to regain control of their economy
and borders.
That's the way society has gone - the megaphone minority blasting away in our ear. The elites
who believe their values and opinions are the only ones that matter. Pity the poor taxpayer who
picks up the tab.
The international 'specialist' who flies in for a couple of days to lecture us on what they
think we're doing wrong. From how farmers should manage their land, the type of energy we should
use, through to how to control our borders. How these self-appointed experts love to enlighten
the great unwashed. It happens at the local level as well. It could be the council dictating something
as simple as the colour a homeowner is allowed to paint their fence.
There's the local action group. After moving into an area and setting themselves up as they
see fit, they seek to restrict who can join them, and what their fellow residents can do.
A paddock that once held a herd of sheep has been subdivided, and then subdivided again. Yet the
new owner places a placard on their new fence protesting against any future developments.
The events of yesterday in the US have turned the world on its head. World leaders are struggling
to know how to respond, to Trump's victory.
While so much of the commentary and analysis by the experts has been about the two personalities
involved, the US election results reflect something much more basic than that.
It's that the ones who do the lifting - that is, those who set their alarms early and go off
to work - are tired of subsidising those that are the recipients of the public purse. They've
had enough of paying for the lifestyles of those who look down on them. This includes the political
class who lecture them, and everyone else.
The commentariat are putting their spin on the US election result. Much like Brexit, they're
arguing that the poor uneducated folks didn't know what they were doing. The result is a two-fingered
salute to the political elite who sign off on trade agreements with little regard for those that
will lose their jobs. It's a protest against those elected to represent the voters' interests
but rarely, if ever, visit the factory floor.
But it's not only the political class who left the majority behind. The result also reflects
the great chasm that continues to grow between the wealthy elite - Wall Street - and those on
the other side where wages have gone nowhere for years.
The post-GFC world has only pumped more money into the top few percent, while everybody else
has been left a long way behind. While the Dow Jones Industrial Index has increased more than
two-and-a-half times since the lows of 2009, real wages have barely increased a dime.
Nobody knows how the Trump presidency will play out. I doubt he even knows himself. And as
the elites predict, it might turn out to be one of the US' great follies.
Some are calling the result a swing back to conservatism. But the result illustrates ever so strongly
how the so-called 'silent majority' are deciding to reclaim the way their lives are governed.
It's a major blow to elitism, and is a trend that will only grow.
Perhaps if The Guardian and every other major left media site would have been understanding this
the past few years instead of ignoring Bernie, plugging for Clinton, and pushing the SJW stuff
there wouldn't have been a Trump presidency. Everyone shares a bit of blame for his win. Hopefully
we can not get so obsessed with blind Dem support and identity politics going forward.
Ya think? Finally someone says something sensible. Neo-liberal economic policy and neo-con foreign
policy I might add. There is a German blogger who is a polyglot. He speaks German, French, Italian,
English and Russian. He reads the romance languages at least I don't know about Russian. He monitors
how different news events are spun to the various populations. Which facts are presented, which
omitted, obfuscations, lies and who's controlling the narrative. Because of the time difference
he went to bed before the election results were known and woke up after. The opening sentence
on his piece that morning was, "So I just woke up and found that the world has changed. World
War III was called off."
Which in my estimation is accurate. Perhaps not WWIII but certainly another major war. And
what's the result over here in America? It's the Hillary supporters who are behaving violently.
Rioting, destroying property, assaults, interfering with transportation etc. Not covered in your
press of course because it is the republicans who were supposed to be the violent monsters and
it doesn't fit the narrative.
First, neo-con warring, an essential subcomponent of neoliberalism, for when CIA manipulation
of political strife isn't possible. Indonesia versus Iraq, for example.
Second, Hillary supporters rebelling is in the news this morning, though they aren't a) airing
it as an alarming event, nor b) having the same paramilitary police response to it.
Third, R has been pushing for warring and I've no idea where you'd (they'd?) come up with an all
R Washington isn't going to jump right in. Particularly, post election, when congress refuels
the "campaign donation" money laundering machine, defense contractors (Northrop, etc.) and infrastructure
(Parsons Brinckerhoff, etc.), with the gifting of federal contracts, which will no doubt run way
over budget as cost plus contracts.
There's a whole lot of less than Whole Truth used to manipulate. Some intentional, some due to
ignorance.
Long ago I asked, what is the difference between ignorance and arrogance, and about the only thing
I can come up with is ignorance is unintentional while arrogance is confident ignorance.
And people like Trump never went to Davos? Republicans don't do that? Yes, a lot of people are
in economic pain, and the Democrats and Clinton share that blame. I agree that the Democratic
party needs to be either decisively wrested from pro-corporate neoliberals, or it needs to be
abandoned, but Trump's victory is not just about economic pain. It's also about fear of the diverse
country we are becoming. You want to know who is to blame for the election of Donald Trump? The
people who voted for him. They are the ones who fell for the con that he was their solution.
What you say is correct, but the point is that it is expected that the GOP will protect business
interests and profit at the expense of people. That is why they exist. The Democrats have historically
been the party that protects the working class. As the author points out, they have abandoned
that role during the last 40 years, leaving the working class without protection from the concentration
of corporate wealth, power and influence. Working class whites, Latinos and blacks should be allies,
not competitors for the scraps left after the Davos party. The conservative right in America is
successful because they have successfully pitted these natural allies against each other, but
they have been aided the the embrace of corporate neoliberalism by the Democratic party leadership.
Bill Clinton gave us Bush the Younger thanks to having the self control of an adolescent chimpanzee.
Now the Democrat establishment aided by another Clinton gave us Trump. When are we going to stop
buying into the neo-liberal bullshit. They have played us like suckers since the revolution the
French won for us. Speaking of the French, their revolution scared the shit out of the "founding
fathers" especially the parts about equality and fraternity. I saw Trump coming a long time ago,
but I thought someone would stand up. It wasn't as if we weren't warned. Instead all the talking
fucking heads are telling us it's time to heal to work together. Right, like the way the Republicans
worked with Obama. Are we going to work together, are we going to fight? Nah. We"ll find someone
new to bomb in the name of liberty and some new shinny thing will come along and we'll just stay
bent over. But never forget, we are the greatest and the most exceptional.
Good post. But it was also Obama who recently led us here. He didn't do anything. Sure he was
stymied by the Republican congress. But he didn't even use the bully pulpit.
He seemed to me to want to work for the rest of the world more than he did the U.S. He couldn't
even see that the trade agreements are a problem for our citizens. And I supported him more than
any previous presidential candidate, because I thought he cared.
Generally speaking, American and British media supports neoconservative foreign policy (regime
change in Libya and Syria, military confrontation with Russia and China, expanded funding for
NATO, the Iraq War WMD lies, etc.). At the same time, it tends to support neoliberal trade policies
(free flow of capital, offshoring manufacturing to sweatshop zones) that enrich billionaires while
impoverishing the middle class.
The only real difference between "conservative" and "liberal" media outlets is in their take
on identity politics; this is why people view media as propaganda that tries to point people away
from the more important issues of global war and wealth inequality. It's a distraction tactic.
Naomi Klein is right about the neoliberalism that played such a huge role in the creation of massive
wealth inequality in the United States, but the other issue is that Hillary Clinton embraced the
Bush-era neoconservative program (just look at her record as Secretary of State with Honduras,
Haiti, Libya and Syria, as well as all the arms deals and support for Saudi Arabia and Israel).
In addition, she was completely loyal to the Wall Street interests who crashed the economy in
2008 and yet were never criminally charged by the Obama Administration.
Obama shares much of the blame - despite coming in with Congress in Democratic hands, he quickly
abandoned his populist base in favor of pro-Wall Street agendas; he expanded the domestic mass
surveillance program and persecuted whistleblowers like nobody before him; and he was seduced
by the CIA's regime change/drone assassination program. His peace prize is now the punchline of
a joke. He didn't help out homeowners who'd been targeted by Wall Street; he instead pushed for
a massive taxpayer bailout of Wall Street - and minority homeowners in particular were hit hard
by the banks. As far as all the young people who supported him? He did nothing to alleviate student
loan debt; that's not what Wall Street wanted. As far as renewable energy? He did little if anything
on that front; instead he quietly OK'd offshore oil drilling, oil exports, and pipelines like
Dakota Access. He betrayed his base and served Wall Street, and of course that's what Hillary
Clinton would have done as well.
Bernie Sanders, in contrast, had good policies on all these issues and would have won the primary
if it hadn't been rigged by the DNC, the Clinton campaign, and the corporate media.
The Democratic Party reforms needed are obvious:
(1) A fixed number of debates in the primary (Sanders vs. Clinton? 9 debates. Obama vs. Clinton?
26 debates).
(2) Elimination of the superdelegate system. (In Feb 2008, Clinton had 241 to Obama's 181; in
Feb 2016, Clinton had 451 to Sander's 19)
(3) Opening the primaries to independent voters in places like New York, at the very least allowing
last-minute party registration for independent voters.
That all takes power away from Wall Street-tied party elites, who will otherwise continue to
pick losers that will serve Wall Street interests in exchange for big donations - but who are
unpopular with the general public. That rigged process is why Bernie Sanders, who would obviously
have beaten Trump with enthusiastic millenial support, was prevented from winning the Democratic
Primary.
The other party in this debacle, the corporate media - they deserve to be broken up by anti-trust
legislation. TimeWarner, Disney, etc. should all be forced to break up into a hundred independently
owned news outlets, otherwise it'll be an endless stream of Wall Street propaganda from them.
" Hillary Clinton embraced the Bush-era neoconservative program (just look at her record as Secretary
of State with Honduras, Haiti, Libya and Syria, as well as all the arms deals and support for
Saudi Arabia and Israel). In addition, she was completely loyal to the Wall Street interests who
crashed the economy in 2008 and yet were never criminally charged by the Obama Administration."
Very much so. Hillary Clinton to me was pretty indistinguishable from George Bush. I never
voted for Bush and I wasn't going to vote for a female version of him.
"They will blame James Comey and the FBI. They will blame voter suppression and racism. They will
blame Bernie or bust and misogyny. They will blame third parties and independent candidates. They
will blame the corporate media for giving him the platform, social media for being a bullhorn,
and WikiLeaks for airing the laundry."
And in the Guardian, of course, they'll work out some way to blame Jeremy Corbyn...
We need to ask why the polling was wrong. People who normally vote did not, and people who
normally don't vote did. Clinton really did rig the election as proven by Wikileaks, and lots
of Bernie supporters could not bring ourselves to vote for her ; and Clinton called Trump's
redneck base "a basket of deplorables", and many of those folks who would have watched the election
from a bar stool got up to kick her ass. Naturally the same persons who pretended that Clinton
did not rig the election want to continue to pretend. But Naomi, she really did.
I too believe Clinton and the DNC sealed their own fate. But the "bucket of losers" accusation has
proved to be false, the product of a spoof Podesta email.
So in other words Naomi Klein admits that "rampant insecurity and inequality exist" and that something
is required to be done to correct this - which I think many of us realise is a balancing of the needs
of national autonomy and globalisation, but then Naomi has the audacity to attribute these "responses
" to "neo fascists" So suffer on you poor under privileged unwashed. but should you rise up then
we ( the enlightened) know that you are being prodded by neo fascists !! A totally ridiculous idea
which can only be explained as the last desperate gasp of the politically correct whose credibility
is not only on the line but is now clearly beyond the pale
Beautifully said. Eight years of neo-liberal acting/progressive talking Barack Obama and the prospect
of more of the same from the deeply flawed Hillary Clinton was enough to hand the presidency to the
grotesque Donald Trump. The Democratic party is smoldering and needs to be rebuilt as Naomi says
by and for the 99%.
Naomi Klein is right about the neoliberalism that played such a huge role in the creation of massive
wealth inequality in the United States, but the other issue is that Hillary Clinton embraced the
Bush-era neoconservative program (just look at her record as Secretary of State with Honduras, Haiti,
Libya and Syria, as well as all the arms deals and support for Saudi Arabia and Israel). In addition,
she was completely loyal to the Wall Street interests who crashed the economy in 2008 and yet were
never criminally charged by the Obama Administration.
Obama shares much of the blame - despite coming in with Congress in Democratic hands, he quickly
abandoned his populist base in favor of pro-Wall Street agendas; he expanded the domestic mass
surveillance program and persecuted whistleblowers like nobody before him; and he was seduced by
the CIA's regime change/drone assassination program. His peace prize is now the punchline of a joke.
He didn't help out homeowners who'd been targeted by Wall Street; he instead pushed for a massive
taxpayer bailout of Wall Street - and minority homeowners in particular were hit hard by the banks.
As far as all the young people who supported him? He did nothing to alleviate student loan debt;
that's not what Wall Street wanted. As far as renewable energy? He did little if anything on that
front; instead he quietly OK'd offshore oil drilling, oil exports, and pipelines like Dakota Access.
He betrayed his base and served Wall Street, and of course that's what Hillary Clinton would have
done as well.
Bernie Sanders, in contrast, had good policies on all these issues and would have won the primary
if it hadn't been rigged by the DNC, the Clinton campaign, and the corporate media.
The Democratic Party reforms needed are obvious:
(1) A fixed number of debates in the primary (Sanders vs. Clinton? 9 debates. Obama vs. Clinton?
26 debates).
(2) Elimination of the superdelegate system. (In Feb 2008, Clinton had 241 to Obama's 181; in Feb
2016, Clinton had 451 to Sander's 19)
(3) Opening the primaries to independent voters in places like New York, at the very least allowing
last-minute party registration for independent voters.
That all takes power away from Wall Street-tied party elites, who will otherwise continue to pick
losers that will serve Wall Street interests in exchange for big donations - but who are unpopular
with the general public. That rigged process is why Bernie Sanders, who would obviously have beaten
Trump with enthusiastic millenial support, was prevented from winning the Democratic Primary.
The other party in this debacle, the corporate media - they deserve to be broken up by anti-trust
legislation. TimeWarner, Disney, etc. should all be forced to break up into a hundred independently
owned news outlets, otherwise it'll be an endless stream of Wall Street propaganda from them.
" Hillary Clinton embraced the Bush-era neoconservative program (just look at her record as Secretary
of State with Honduras, Haiti, Libya and Syria, as well as all the arms deals and support for Saudi
Arabia and Israel). In addition, she was completely loyal to the Wall Street interests who crashed
the economy in 2008 and yet were never criminally charged by the Obama Administration."
Very much so. Hillary Clinton to me was pretty indistinguishable from George Bush. I never voted
for Bush and I wasn't going to vote for a female version of him.
While I'm troubled by many of the implications of this electoral result, I think the main story is
that the Democrats have bled so many votes that an extremely unpopular Republican candidate was able
to win simply by holding on to most of the votes that Romney managed to get 4 years ago and flipping
a few swing voters. When the final tally comes in, Hillary Clinton will likely have received over
8 million fewer votes than Obama in 2008 and nearly 5 million less than he got in 2012. Trump got
fewer still, and he'll now be president because he managed to sway just enough voters in the rust
belt to win several of those states.
It could not be clearer that Sanders' approach would have been the better one for this election
by far. He spoke to the anger at the economic hollowing out of so much of this country while offering
prescriptions that were in the best interests of the vast majority of people and framed the discussion
in a way that made it clear race was not at the center, that the unchecked pursuit of the class interests
of the wealthy & well-connected was responsible for so much of the human devastation that can easily
be observed in so many parts of the country.
Anyone who zealously advocated for this view was derided as a "Bernie bro" or mocked with sneering
suggestions that Bernie was only a viable candidate in white states. (Nevermind that being
absolute bunkum) Clinton supporters and other DNC hacks falsely equated working class white people
in states like Wisconsin and Ohio supporting a more left-leaning economic program that placed a lesser
emphasis on racial & identity issues to engaging in some sort of insidious white male identity politics-
and they did so deliberately, to muddy the waters.
They forced a widely reviled, ethically challenged, evasive servant of the establishment who deemed
TPP "the gold standard" of trade agreements, supported the Iraq war, was content to let the financial
sector completely off the hook for the last financial meltdown and engineered the disastrous Libya
intervention down everyone's throat on the premise that Americans didn't have a choice. Anyone who
expressed their fear that this would result in a loss to Trump, much less voiced a slight preference
for Trump over Clinton (even if absolutely de minimis), was vilified to such a degree that I am confident
that it stifled some of the public discussion about how to electorally confront Trump. The only acceptable
answer was voting for Hillary Clinton without reservation, even accepting that many criticisms of
her were valid was tantamount to enabling fascism.
Look where we are now. There's a lesson in this: you cannot rely on progressive issues on a few
social positions as a fig leaf to cover up a massive failure to challenge the systemic rot of our
economy, our governmental institutions and our legal system. Standing up for a person's right to
peace, security and opportunity irrespective of race, ethnicity or creed is absolutely the right
thing to do. Same goes for women's right to make family planning decisions or the rights of gay people
to marry and live free of discrimination. None of these can begin to mask massive system-wide failures,
that we are seemingly hopelessly chained to an economic paradigm that is grossly indifferent- even
actively hostile- to the welfare of the majority of our citizens.
I think Sanders' response to Trump's election is entirely appropriate. If Trump does follow through
on some of his challenges to globalization, lobbyists or modernizing and improving our infrastructure,
we should offer our qualified support. If he attempts to push through massive deregulation, lopsided
tax cuts for the wealthy, stripping of environmental protections, or anything to stoke the flames
of bigotry and division we should unite in principled, civil opposition.
Excellent and intelligent post. I especially agree with your last sentence. Trump may have saved
us from an insane war with Russia. But mass resistance is called for if he and the blood-red Congress
try to turn us into Christo-fascist serfs.
Absolutely on target, thanks Naomi! The DLC (Democratic Leadership?? Council) won this for Trump.
They may have taken a couple of presidencies--mostly on false promises--but their wishywashy presidents
did nothing for real people and worked solely for the rich oligarchs and imperialists. The "Leadership"
was only toward the Right. This election was the Revolt of the Rustbelt and the Dead Small Towns.
But Drumpf will do nothing for them except postpone, then forget, and finally turn against any who
dare complain.
And just think--if not for the DLC stuffed shirts and Wall Street bootlickers who held power in
the Dem establishment, we might be happy that Bernie & Jane Sanders--AUTHENTIC feminists and genuine
reformers--were going to the White House. I'm 80 years old, may not be around to see the young people's
victory, so I get sick thinking of how much we almost gained, but was lost by the DLC Beltway minds
and the GOP (Greedy Oil Party) solipsists. We lost more than Trump can guess, until his Miami properties
are all swallowed by the sea. It takes a heavy knock on his orange noggin to get that egomaniac's
attention.
I firmly believe that we must bring down BOTH of our over-age, limping, idiot-led political parties,
or reform them from the grassroots up! (If they can be saved, which I doubt.) It's time to revive
the LaFollette Progressive Republicans and the New Deal Democrats, but under different names--and
this time NOT just for privileged, "entitled" white males. Yes, I know Bob LaFollette tried to be
inclusive, but the time is way past when our children and grandchildren must support and empathize
with the entire HUMAN race, not just the paleface branch who've grabbed all the goodies.
As for the macho white males, offer the cowboys a chance to put their he-man cravings to work
at the top of wind-powered electric generators 200 feet tall out in the deep ocean, or avoiding glass
slashes from large solar trombe wall collectors or even small glass solar cells, or staying alive
around unexpected flares of methane, or getting caught in the ebb of a massive tidal bore and swept
out to sea. All of these are renewable energy generating systems, safe for the planet but requiring
daredevils who would marvel at how comparably un-scary mining and lumberjacking were back in the
Olden Days.
Trump was born into the 1% and has stayed there; inherited wealth don't ya know. His policies and
those of the Republican hierarchy include : union busting, lower taxes at the top, austerity at the
bottom, financial deregulation below 2008 levels, and privatization of government services. Democratic
policies are the complete opposite in each of these cases.
Trump doesn't stand for less neoliberalism but more.
"People have lost their sense of security, status and even identity."
That's about the only part that's correct. Globalisation and the threat of open borders is what
does that. Everyone wants to feel secure in their home, individually or collectively, without the
threat that anyone who likes your home better than theirs can invite themselves over and redecorate.
Canada's elite smugly refuse to recognize that its seeming imperviousness to "ethnophobic nationalism"
is precisely because it has secure borders and an immigration policy that selects immigrants.
Obama was elected twice in very recent history. If the country consisted mostly
of bigots, that would have never happened. To chalk this up to bigotry is
exactly the wrong thing to do - it makes one feel all smug and superior without
bothering to engage with the real issues, like the ones that Klein is discussing.
The Democrats have failed as a party of the middle and working classes. They
are the party of Wall Street bankers and the MIC and the Hollywood elite, who
are more concerned with eating organic arugula and with the bathroom rights of
transgender people than they are with the economic plight of the majority of
people in this country. And they nominated the one person who almost perfectly
embodies this establishment: Clinton - a war mongering, corrupt establishment neoconservative who
revels in Hollywood fund raisers with $50,000/person
tickets, gets paid a quarter of million dollars by Goldman Sachs for an 1-hour
speech, and salivates at the prospect of starting more wars in the middle east
and poking Putin in the eye. That's why the lost, not because of bigotry.
This piece is exactly right. The infiltration of the neoliberals has poisoned mainstream politics
and hijacked the left. It is given form by the Washington Consensus:
1. Fiscal policy discipline, with avoidance of large fiscal deficits relative to GDP;
2. Redirection of public spending from subsidies ("especially indiscriminate subsidies") toward
broad-based provision of key pro-growth, pro-poor services like primary education, primary health
care and infrastructure investment;
3. Tax reform, broadening the tax base and adopting moderate marginal tax rates;
4. Interest rates that are market determined and positive (but moderate) in real terms;
5. Competitive exchange rates;
6. Trade liberalization: liberalization of imports, with particular emphasis on elimination of
quantitative restrictions (licensing, etc.); any trade protection to be provided by low and relatively
uniform tariffs;
7. Liberalization of inward foreign direct investment;
8. Privatization of state enterprises;
9. Deregulation: abolition of regulations that impede market entry or restrict competition, except
for those justified on safety, environmental and consumer protection grounds, and prudential oversight
of financial institutions;
10. Legal security for property rights.
Trump is planning to tear up a lot of this, and he is quite right to do it, even if for the wrong
reasons. Globalisation has screwed working people in the developed world and enabled multinationals
to form an unholy alliance with the chinese communists to exploit the chinese people to make bigger
profits, whilst the old manufacturing base in the developed economies has been hollowed out and sent
to China.
The Democratic Party changed fundamentally under Carter/Clinton in the 1980s/1990s. Very much like
Labour in the UK changed during the same period under Blair. During that period, both parties morphed
from domestic worker's parties into global capitalist parties with (somewhat) progressive social
agendas. In both instances, the move away from core left economic values was justified by electability.
The sweeping elections of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair in the early 1990s won the argument and relegated
the original base of the parties (workers) to the periphery.
Now that neoliberals are no longer electable, what's the justification for their continued existence?
No one on the left is happy with their core policies (deregulation, privatization, free trade, unfettered
immigration, coziness with corporations/banks, etc.). If they aren't advancing progressive social
issues y winning elections, why should we continue putting up with the neolibs co-opting our economic
policies?
Ideally, Democrats would use this opportunity to revert back into being a domestic worker's party
with genuine progressive/leftist values (much like Labour did in the UK by electing Corbyn). It almost
happened with Sanders. Given the enthusiasm/turnout he generated, that's clearly the way forward.
Sadly, if I were betting, I'd imagine the Democratic establishment will do exactly what the Labour
establishment did in the UK post Brexit...circle the wagons and double down. And with the anger being
directed at Trump rather than the Democratic establishment's malpractice in this botched election,
they may get away with it (unlike the Blairites in the UK).
The New Democrats (neoliberals) have been circuling the wagons for awhile now. They have tried to
shoot down progressive candidates running in primaries for office and support the neoliberal ones.
The guy who lost to Rubio was a former republican who became a New Democrat while the party shut
down any progressives.
It will take alot of battles to change the party back to their New Deal roots. The party saw the
reaction to the true son of the New Deal, Bernie Sanders. Instead of taking lessons from that and
what the democratic voters craved, they did everything to undermine him and shut him down.
It will take very heavy equipment to remove the entrenched neoliberals from the party and put true
democrats in their rightful place
It's strange to watch...the UK seems to be about half an election cycle ahead of us in its rejection
of neoliberalism. Everything happening in UK politics is echoed over here about 6 month's later.
Down to the fact that, in both countries, wealthy orange haired baboons somehow managed to speak
to the disaffected working class. If Gove hadn't snaked Boris Johnson at the death, both countries
would currently be led by said orange haired baboons. I mean, what are the odds?
Granted, it is the Year of the Monkey per the Chinese calendar...so there might be something in
that after all.
Relatedly, I cannot wait until the UK's new Secretary of State has a photo op with our President
elect. Which one is the doppelganger?
This is a very decent article, indeed the mainstream left made a deal with the devil and now he's
getting his due. But on the other hand I think it's terribly optimistic to assume everything boils
down to kick starting a new democratic-socialist movement, raking in all those votes that have just
been waiting for it to happen(and only voted for a right wing populist because it didn't yet, sure)
and fixing everybody's problems forever.
For one, the neoliberals managed to singlehandedly to make the left look like even more of a villain
in the eyes of those who already eschewed it, alienate those who believed in a left solution but
were not diehard about it, and fracture the remaining group into niches who refuse to engage in dialogue
or even in recognize each other as fellow lefties. Managing to form a stable coalition is a beginning
but it only deals with the latter problem, the left still has a huge public image problem to solve
before it can make a return.
And for another, the very idea of safety nets and benefits seems to have fallen out of fashion with
the electorate: the "I had to climb the hill both ways to get here, so nobody dare cut a tunnel through
it" mentality has been on the rise lately. It seems the neoliberals' failures somehow managed to
make us all even more individualist, if only a bit more tribal too. Thus, for a new left to rise
it wouldn't be enough to restore trust among all the isolated left groups, but also among society
as a whole.
But, when you have people homeless, starving, falling through society's cracks you have a rise in
crime.
Many who are suffering are not shiftless. Many are working but, don't make enough to pay bills and
put food on the table.
Many do not have access to healthcare.
Children go to bed without food.
When society is uncaring, mean and causes undue suffering, society falls apart and into haves and
have nots.
All the money that went to help people is the same money that now lines the pockets of the uber wealthy.
Our schools cannot teach with rats and cockroaches, ceillings falling in and no heat. When children
cannot get a lunch anymore, how do they learn?
When we cannot pay teachers or even support them, you end up with the bottom of the barrel teaching
the upcoming generation inadequately.
You can tell the strength of a society from how it cares for its poor and in need.
Ours is a 'i got mine' selfish shallow society now.
And it is violent and people are filled with hate.
Maybe because we have stopped caring and making sure people have opportunities and jobs and education
and help when they fall on hard times.
Agreed, except for the major actors who started this globalization's depression ofN. American and
European workers-- the Reagan and the Bush corporate supporters and puppet masters. Clintons and
other neolibs have followed suit because they wrongly believed that they could beat them by joining
them yet still do a bit of good for their voters. Wrong. But yes, the Revolution continues. Whether
it can save the planet -- the environment, however, is doubtful, and nothing matters nearly as much.
For years on is far to late.
Yes it was the Democrats promotion of neo-liberalsim aided by such claptrap as this opinion from
another Guardian scribbler.
"Centrism has failed these and many other voters. Clinton was not handpicked by the Democratic
party's elite: she defeated an unexpectedly successful challenge by self-described socialist Bernie
Sanders, partly because of his failure to inspire African Americans. "
That a closet Clinton supporter should have the temerity to write something like this to explain
Clintons defeat is beyond belief, when we know from Wikileaks e-mails that the DNC actively opposed
Sanders.
The reality is that all politics is dominated by the golden rule: he who has the gold rules.
Well meaning scribblers like Naomi can scribble all they want it will never change the situation.
Even revolution will not change the situation for the simple facts are "the oppressed are potential
oppressors".
The achievement of dominance and superiority seems to be built into human genes, and why not it is
so in the rest of the animal world.
Forget Richard Dawkins, dominance is certainly not universal among living creatures. If a species
exists with a plentiful supply of food, domination and competition are unnecessary. Think of the
cooperative bonobo and the symbiosis of insects and field flowers. On the other hand, where resources
are scare, competition begins and we have social structures like the baboons and leafy trees that
kill competitive seedlings by their own shade.
However, throughout evolution cooperation outweighs competition. If it didn't we'd still be solitary
single-celled amoebae. As things are, our own bodies are well-furnished with microscopic critters
from RNA through viruses and bacteria, many of whom run the shop in the background. Cooperation,
whether vestigial, symbiotic or by choice, is the way that leads to life. Competition is the way
of violence and death. That's not Marxism. It's nature.
"Forget Richard Dawkins, dominance is certainly not universal among living creatures. If a species
exists with a plentiful supply of food, domination and competition are unnecessary."
There is a plentiful supply of food for the human species.
So how can you explain the general situation that exists on the planet whereby governing elites control
and enjoy the major part of all that human labour creates to the detriment of over 50% of the human
population ?
"Neo-fascist responses"? Get over yourself Klein. Trump won because the Clinton's "own" the Democrat
Party and they and Goldman Sachs were confident she would be the nominee and millions of gullible
Americans would vote for Hillary.
By far the best candidate was Bernie Sanders but the Clintons had him run off the road by "Super
Delegates". Oh and by the way is it not odd that the Democrats did not change the electoral system
when they were in power?
House of Cards comes close to showing us just how ruthless the Clintons really are.
Well, that it is worthwhile reading. At the beginning I thought: good that someone pointed that out.
People haven't forgotten NAFTA and Hillary's speeches in closed wall street circles and so on. I
just wanted to remark that it was probably a multitude of reasons that explain the Democratic loss.
Comey's interference and other stuff that is outright dismissed by the author also played a role.
However, as I read on I couldn't help but realize that there seems to be another person who wasn't
even aware that Bernie and Elizabeth supported Hillary and wasn't aware of their arguments or the
Democratic platform Bernie Sanders fought so hard for. The last two paragraphs speak volumes of Ms.
Klein's realism or rather the lack thereof.
And how clear does it have to be that "the Network" is and has been purely supra and post-national?
How many trillions in dark loot in shadow banks and other asset dumps which the Panama Papers only
show a fraction of?
These Fokkers and Fuggers, what drives them? How much is enough? There's always been this cadre
of people who figure out how to scam and manipulate and "transcend boundaries," but to the extent
that exists today? With the habitability of the planet in question?
But then I have to remember that these people are into self-pleasing on a gargantuan scale, are
what we call sociopaths, who have been with the species since "we" figured out how to grow grains
and build granaries and walls to protect the granaries and warriors to man the walls and attack the
neighbors and take their stuff, and artisans to make the weapons and "improvements," and kings to
issue the orders, and priests to justify it all as the Hand and Will of God -- what we call "civilization."
And the people at the top have known since forever that if they insulate themselves adequately from
the rabble, they face no consequences for their predations, and can live out their lives of looting
and indulgence and die comfortably, cared for by loving nurses and doctors who will ease their passing
(unlike what the rest of us now face). Because as they have known since forever, "Apres ils le deluge,"
"IBG-YBG,"
http://tradicionclasica.blogspot.com/2006/01/expression-aprs-moi-le-dluge-and-its.html ,
And what are the rest of us going to do when they have passed on, or fled like the Nazis with
the gold from the teeth of millions and the art treasures and other portable wealth of demolished
and decimated nations, to live out their lives as CIA "assets" or in comfortable temperate South
American and African places? Dig up their corpses and desecrate them, or try to find their "cremains"
and burn them again? They do not care what happens to their children, even.
I wish us ordinary people all the luck in the world trying to create and maintain a different
order that will let everyone eat only to their honest hunger and drink only to their reasonable thirst...
Couldn't agree more. The neo-liberalism orthodoxy instead of suddenly knocking at the door has come
silently home to roost. The Democrats in America and Labor in UK were hand in glove with elites in
the greatest robbery the history has ever seen. The concentration of wealth in one percent which
was rationalized as panacea of all economic ills has turned out to be an opening of mythical Pandora's
box unleashing evils of racism, xenophobia, misogyny etc. The abhorrent echo of "too big to fail"
is still heard by the those who were let down by the same oligarchs. I have yet to find an answer
to the vexing question as to why enormous benefits of human knowledge and scientific advances be
exclusively extracted by one percenters.
Guardian commentators use identity politics and cries of "racism, sexism and xenophobia" to try and
distract the working class from noticing how internationalism, globalization and immigration has
stagnated their wages, moved meaningful jobs oversees and stoked up asset prices allowing a homeowner
in London to earn more by twiddling their thumbs than their Polish cleaner gets paid in a year.
No matter how shrill the likes of Owen, Jonathan, Paul, Polly and Hadley try and distract us with
their daily dribble of identity politics, we increasingly see them as just another faded facet of
the corporatist, internationalist status quo.
The union excesses (which have largely been killed off and the union and former and would-be union
workers looted and impoverished along with the rest of the "lower orders) are just part of the disease
-- which is corruption, and self-pleasing at the expense of everyone else. Union "leaders," absent
disinterested "regulation" by government (which has been mostly corrupted too) and thanks to cooptation
by "capitalists," definitely screwed the ordinary people (who one must acknowledge included quite
a few rank-and-file that aspired to leadership so they could join the looting).
There probably is stuff that needs to be built and manufactured (not the 7,000 pound SUVs and
big Dodge and GMC and Ford F-series and "TUNDRA" trucks) to try to keep the species and culture alive.
But killing the ability of ordinary people to organize, essentially making unions illegal except
in tiny niches, just makes the end-game even worse. And continuing to punch down on working people
on account of some 1962 wages (NOT "salaries," these were hourly payrolls, with "benefits" that in
may cases like pension funds were subsequently looted by "private equity" vampire-squids and captured-government
actions) just makes it harder for ordinary people to come together AS A CLASS and fight the 0.01%
for a decent future.
my post on Facebook that mirrors Naomi:
My thoughts about last night:
Bill Clinton's New Democrats were incinerated last night...arrogant, ivy league, sleeping with Wall
Street, multinational corporations, insurance companies... and thinking that if they wrap themselves
in the social issues from abortion to gay marriage that wage starved workers with enormous bills
and debts, evaporating opportunities, disappearing pensions, shit schools and deteriorating infrastructure
wouldn't notice they were overlooked and forgotten. This election underscores that Economic injustice
is color blind
What I want to know though is that, given the reality of what you are saying, did none of this
occur to the Democratic party prior t the election?
If they knew all this why did they not respond to it instead of continuing to plough the same
old furrow regardless of the likely consequences for ordinary voters?
Why? Because the Dem Elites knew that with Hillary their perks, access, power, etc. was secure. They
wanted status quo and, just as they have behaved the past years, failed to listen to their constituencies,
ignored them. They should have known just by seeing Bernie's exceptional campaign and the enthusiasm
that fueled it, giving him more money than what Hillary often raised from her wealthy donors each
month, that no one was excited about more of the same. Arrogantly, they chose to ignore and minimize
what was before their eyes.
The most cogent analysis I have read so far. Bravo Ms. Klein. In a year where the country was screaming
for populist change, the Democratic party establishment who had their own highly effective populist
candidate, CHOSE to offer up possibly the most "establishment" candidate in history. Fly-over America
responded with a sharply erect, if ignorantly self-destructive middle finger.
Spot on diagnosis. People are angry that neolibralism has failed them and does not given a damn about
them. Clinton offered nothing but the same to too many people. Trump was a molotov cocktail, warts
and all, that they got to throw into Washington.
I don't buy the racist argument. People that elected Obama in 2008 and 2012, but Trump in 2016
are not racist. At the same time I acknowledge that all the KKK people did vote Trump.
Question is, does the left have an answer that is palatable to the people? It would be good if
it did, but I'm not holding my breath. Corbyn isn't it, that you can be certain of.
Clinton was a comically bad choice that made no sense whatsoever. The left often gets told that it
has to endlessly suffer centrist/neo-liberal "lesser evil" candidates in order to defeat the right
as they're more electable, which is an argument that at least makes some logical sense under some
circumstances, even if I disagree with it. But in the case of this election, everyone has known
for years that Clinton is wildly unpopular, and there was a radical alternative to her available
who consistently out-polled her against Trump in the form of Sanders.
Now her backers, such as Hadley Freedman on here today, rather than admitting their massive and
obvious mistake in supporting her against Sanders and generally backing the "centrist" policies that
brought us to this point, are suggesting nonsense such as the idea that those who voted for Trump
should be "held responsible." What does that even mean? What are you going to do, elect a new people?
You could have had a radical candidate who unlike Clinton could have brought about real change, and
unlike Clinton would have attracted many of Trump's blue collar supporters and, you know, won
.
All that lesser evil neoliberal politics gives us is a lack of change that allows the right to
make even more radical changes during the periods they're in power and eventually leads to the rise
of people like Trump, and it's particularly stupid when it throws up deeply unpopular and unelectable
people like Clinton, Miliband or the various empty suits lined up against Corbyn. It's time this
paper decisively turned its back on the concept.
I don't have a lot of confidence in the prospect of political ideologies forged in the Industrial
Age - "left", "right", "conservative", liberal" - being able to meet the challenges of this post-Industrial
age and the future beyond.
Western societies are fracturing into ever-smaller social groups defined by different, complex
combinations of social/economic/national/ethnic/topographical/sexual/religious factors which mushrooming
sub-groups all create their own realities based on the unregulated information they they select from
divisive, self-reflexive social media sources rather than inclusive "mainstream" news media which
have become increasingly corrupted and not trusted.
Fragmentation, disintegration of societies - these lead to paranoia and aggression aimed at the
"other" - and we can see this on both the "left" and the "right" in the blame-games that have followed
Brexit and Trump's victory. The 19th century liberals and conservative who provided the foundations
for the institutions of Western Democracy didn't foresee the emergence of global corporations and
banks with interests that could defy "the national good" or disrupt the moderately equitable distribution
of wealth and replace it with a massive diversion of wealth to a tiny global elite (So long affluent
workers! Goodbye aspiring middle-class!) - while placating most of the population with a consumerist,
material lifestyle mostly funded by debt. The old system is broken.
In both the Brexit referendum and the US election the most striking split was between the old
- the over-50s, clinging to the past - and young people, disconnected in their social media silos,
wanting a different future but, as a generation, not able to organize and politically express their
unhappiness and their hopes for the future because inadequate conventional Left/Right political thinking
doesn't chime with the reality of their lives.
Not everyone who voted for Donald Trump is a racist or a misogynist. Not everyone who voted for
Hillary Clinton has no sympathy with an unemployed factory worker in a mid-west town whose future
has been written off. However, everywhere you look - people are anxious and fearful that "the others"
are trying to stop them getting what they solipsistically feel they deserve.
Donald Trump won't be able to get Apple of Walmart to switch their product sourcing from China
to the US, nor will he be able to halt the long-term economic decline of the US any more than Theresa
May will be able to prevent post-Brexit economic decline in the UK: the challenges our dysfunctional
political institutions face are too complex for politicians who are strong on rhetoric and promises
but intellectually feeble and cowardly when it comes to decision-making and execution.
We need education, public-service-based information, new political ideas and new political parties
that can cut through the destructive white noise of Twitter and Facebook and focus on values that
bring people together and counter the greed of the supra-national elites - something more powerful
than divisive, out-dated concepts like Left and Right.
What a lot of words to say bugger all.
Why do people with no answers always say we need more education ?
We have to get rid of this notion that we US and UK are post industrial.
We have made a huge mistake offshoring our industry and must relocate the more essential parts. We
cannot be a service economy without making things.
Bashing metal turning wood molding plastics must be part of our future.
We cannot be a nation of management consultants and hairdressers.
The boom in population during the Boom didn't help. We are overpopulated, and our current economic
structure cannot support the material lifestyles and the narratives of freedom that we grew up living
with or dreaming about. That's the education that's needed.
Until we accept our current situation, we cannot understand or construct new political ideas,
parties, or narratives.
Neoliberal globalization is the worst kind of socialism, whether or not it is actually socialism.
It's what we're going to get if young people don't become collectively more informed and quickly.
There is an attitude of entitlement among young people that drives towards a socialist mentality
and the left has picked up the scent. They're going to chase that vote and those disaffected voters
are going to chase that lie right down the rabbit hole eventually. If Hillary and Obama have their
way, the riots that are being orchestrated right now will start the process immediately.
A very confused article. Neo liberalism is unfettered Global Capitalism given a nice sounding name.
It is an invention of the right. To think that the most extreme Republican President ever, will improve
the lot of the common man is quite simply bizzare.
A good chunk of Trump's support could be peeled away if there were a genuine redistributive
agenda on the table. An agenda to take on the billionaire class with more than rhetoric, and use
the money for a green new deal
Particularly as Trump himself is a member of that billionaire class and clearly has no interest
in redistributing wealth away from himself, or in doing anything to overhaul the economic system
that has made him very rich.
Trump was elected US President by riding the same wave of anger & disaffection that fuelled Brexit.
Many of those who were disappointed by the result were quick to console themselves with the (wishful)
thought that he will not attempt to implement his more radical proposals, or that, if he tries, he
will be thwarted by the Republicans (who now hold majorities in both the House and the Senate). It
is important to bear in mind however, that any who dare oppose him will know that they do so at the
risk of their seats.
The "Inconvenient Truth" is that the politics of Donald Trump has much in common with movements like
Attack and Occupy Wall Street, and hence with Naomi Klein. They both want to stop, or put a break
on, international trade. Donald Trump wants to revive local production through protectionism. Klein
sees international trade as a source of both environmental and social degradation.
Naomi, thus, carries some responsibility for Donald's success.
The combined Trump/Klein policies would see the old rust belt workers boarding self driven electrical
buses to go to work in the new windmill factories. These windmills, normally, would be both more
expensive and less effective than if the business was subject to international competition, hence
the electricity they produced would be more expensive, giving domestic business a disadvantage.
The new environmental businesses would require support from the public purse (if not, we would
already have had them). The taxpayers seem in no mood for such grand scale subsidies.
History does not repeat itself, but in the 1930s the industrial nations raised barriers to trade
in order to protect their work forces. As a result, everybody got poorer and reacted by electing
extremist politicians.
Michael Moore outlines his post-election strategy. Point 1 is Take over the Democratic Party and
return it to the people. They have failed us miserably.
Exactly the same as what is happening in the Labour Party. But in that case The Guardian supports
neoliberalism and seeks to undermine the ones who are trying to change things.
Sadly I think the electorate in some western societies are in danger of becoming just as ineffective
as 'the proles' in 1984, while the vice like grip of the military/industrial complex is just as tenacious
as that exerted by Big Brother and the party.
Since the entire political class, or least those with any clout all sing from the same hymn sheet
while moderate, or leftist figures, like Corbyn, or Sanders, are bound to be shredded by their own
party and by the media, then what hope, eh, unless that hope is something new and outside of party
politics?
Thank you, thank you, thank you Naomi. Even after an unbelievable defeat, the neoliberals still don't
get it. Blame game articles are starting already but no self reflection.
The role of the media (The Guardian included big time) have a responsibility and offended people's
intelligence and sensitivity about democracy, elites etc. Now they are running for cover. Today,
Hadley Freeman writes "Misogyny won the US election – let's stop indulging angry white men". Disgrace,
offensive and arrogant. Also, Hadley Freeman with "The US has elected its most dangerous leader"...No
remorse, no responsibility, blaming American people for being angry, for swallowing the same medicine
again...
Compare the Guardian and AP (recall who called California early and rigged the pre-selection against
Sanders?) and Waleed Aly here: (
http://www.theage.com.au/comment/us-election-2016-its-not-about-racism-or-sexism-its-about-class-warfare-20161109-gslxzs.html)...What
options did the "forgotten", vast majority, the "insignificant other", the disadvantaged, the
powerless have? When one is drowning, the relatively privileged onlooker has a duty to help rather
than blame the one drowning for "pulling our hair". Of course the future looks terribly bleak for
democracy, gender/racial relations etc...
Seriously, could Clinton be an answer for the family that struggles to pay rent, the homeless,
the unemployed, those scared of terrorism or a WWIII, the working poor, those in debt due to college
fees, those who lost their house and jobs for the sake of "free trade"...These are many, many people
folks...real people with flesh, dreams and humanity...
Understanding their pain and their lack of options (thanks to NDC & the Media) does not mean one
identifies with Trump and the ugly fascist monsters creeping behind him...It's not about us or one's
dream about equality, freedom...It's about survival & human dignity for millions of US people...
Did the demonizing of many working people send them straight to Trump land? Waleed Aly: "progressives
have treated the working class largely as a source of xenophobia ... ignore it at our peril" --
Excellent article much of which could have been written during the past thirty years.
We all know hindsight is a wonderful thing, but I was puzzled as to why Mrs Clinton seemed to
cold shoulder Bernie Sanders. He had already connected with many of the 'left behind' by putting
a Social Democratic view opposite to Mr Trump's views. Both had identified the problems that the
Chicago economists and neoliberalism had caused, but not having Mr Sanders involved or even accepting
that his views would be part of her next administration, Mrs Clinton left the field open to her opponent.
If only she had remembered her husband's slogan 'Its the economy, stupid', it may have turned fire
on Trump's campaign.
There is an irony that although it was right wing politicians who bought in the neo liberal policies
which have impoverished working people, it is the social democratic parties on both sides of the
Atlantic who have suffered by trying to make neoliberalism work. They could not demonstrate however
how 'trickledown' benefitted the poorest and the image left was of rich people sucking up more wealth
and more influence over politicians as Ms Klein points out.
On our side of the Atlantic Mrs Thatcher ensured that the right have a strong supportive press
due to her ownership reforms and the right is gradually weakening our BBC so that any opposition
views will be stifled. Mr Corbyn has already been character assassinated. It remains to be seen if
Mr Trump carries out his threats to the American press supporters of Mrs Clinton to reinforce only
right wing views.
The smell of authoritarian regimes is now appearing in many places.
There was an almost dynastic arrogance in the Clinton's assumption that they would carry the day.
I have often been impressed with Bill's eloquence and Hillary's tough fight for a rational health
and insurance system, but have never heard a word of self-criticism about the dire effects of deregulation
and the financial crisis. The democrats missed their chance for radical measures when they had control
of Congress just after Lehman Bros.
Still, for international affairs, climate change, any sane kind of approach Trump is an unmitigated
disaster. Hillary has much experience in international affairs, but her opportunism in the wake of
9/11 had led her to support the intervention in Iraq. Of course we were all opposed to Saddam's régime,
but not with those means and in that kind of way, made much worse of course by Bush jr. Islamic State
is a direct consequence of the chaos and unemployment in Iraq created under the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld
administration.
"Neo-fascist responses"
"Trump-style extremism"
"they answer it by bashing immigrants and people of colour, vilifying Muslims, and degrading women"
You call my right to vote the way I choose "stupid".
You just don't get it. Millions of Americans voted exactly this way. A big middle finger to the establishment,
media, Wall Street, "experts", and yes moral posturing know-it-alls is a great way to use your vote.
You completely misunderstand Trump. He is far more for the working man than Clinton. The poor
voted for him in droves. And for good reason.
I am an angry white male, and I am not a misogynist, as this paper would have it.
I am fully aware of the appalling nature of Donald Trump.
On the other hand, I fully understand the bureaucratic nature of the Democrat Party, the embedded
interests of Wall Street and the military-industrial complex in that bureaucracy, the dirty tricks
that that bureaucratic machinery got up to in order to extinguish Bernie Sander's campaign.
I am aware of how that machinery has been ramping up a situation of global conflict, shamelessly
recreating an aggressive Cold war Mk II situation with Russia and China, which is simply cover for
the US racist colonial assumption that the world and its resources belongs to it in its sense of
itself as an exceptional entity fulfilling its manifest destiny upon a global stage that belongs
to its exceptional, wealthy and powerful elites.
And I am aware of how Hillary was so keen to service this reality and American image of itself.
And to go beyond that, and bomb Libya for 6 months, killing thousands of civilians (Middle eastern
unpeople) and, may I suggest, doing nothing whatsoever for the women of Libya. Quite the opposite!
Michael Moore, in a talk in which he predicted the victory of Trump before the election, notes
how Trump went into an American car factory and told the executives of that company that if they
relocated to Mexico, he would put a huge tax on their cars coming into America. Not all was misogyny
in the vote for Trump. Whether he delivers on his threat or not, unlike the democrat bureaucratic
machinery, he showed he was actually listening to working class Americans and that he was ;prepared
to face up to company executives.
What has this paper got to say about Hillary and the Democrat Party's class bigotry – its demonstrable
contempt for 10s of millions of Americans whose lives are worse now than in 1973, while productivity
and wealth overall has skyrocketed over those 43 years.
What has this paper got to say about the lives of African American women, which have been devastated
by Republican/Democrat bipartisan policy over the last 43 years?
What has Hadley Freeman got to say about Hillary's comment that President Mubarek of Egypt was "one
of the family? A president whose security forces used physical and sexualised abuse of female demonstrators
in the Arab Spring?
A feminist would need more than a peg on their nose to vote for Hillary – a feminist would need
all the scented oils of Arabia. Perhaps Wahhabi funded Hillary can buy them up.
Great article, but Hilary was hardly responsible for privatization and austerity in the USA. She
only had 2 terms in the senate (and was only one of 450+ in congress). She was in fact mildly center-left
and at least nominally and aginst the TPPA. She could have led a progressive congress (as in the
Johnson year) if her coattails were long enough.
I have never in my long life ever seen a politician so demonized... not by the mainstream media,
but by the new media run mostly by the alt-right and funded by the likes of the Koch brothers. It
worked.
The climate accord is now finished ..any movement towards single payer or paid parental leave,
minimum wage increase ...gone. - military spending is now going up, and Trump is proposing tolls
on all roads -all to be privatized to pay for tax cuts for the top earners. and this is tip of the
iceberg...and not including the racist upswing.
That said, the DNC has a lot to answer for with its undemocratic superdelegates and documented
undemining of Sanders...as did the media who either ignored him or unfairly lambasted him. The RealClearPolitics
average from May 6-June 5 had Sanders at 49.7% to Trump's 39.3%, a 10.4-point cushion...polling that
included independents. In that same time frame, Trump was polling close to Clinton and was even ahead
in multiple polls. Most people were well aware of Sander's so-called "socialist" label since October
the previous year, so I'm unclear if that would have been a factor in the general election.
An analysis of the media is long over due : It was remarkable to see the media, including American
media, go into shock mode and scramble to reorganise the script and the thinking to run a perspective
on what was happening on the night the votes were counted. The media had conditioned themselves to
a Clinton win. Clearly the editors and the reporters were not out on the streets and in the hustings
getting all the messages. The Guardian is in shock mode after the British Referendum and the American
Presidential Election. The most politically dangerous person is a discontented voter with a ballot
paper. How could the media have not spotted in advance what was happening ? I do not buy the lazy
perspective that the voters deceived the media into their voting intentions. Personally, I think
the media have got fat and lazy and need to come out from behind their editorial desks.
Naomi, has omitted one very important detail: automation, i.e. the use of AI to replace
jobs.
This absolutely requires us to restructure society to provide security and purpose to each every
one of us who is not part of the super rich owners.
For example we will see driving jobs rapidly disappearing within the next five to ten years.
I also notice that where the worst effects of rampant capitalism are ameliorated there appear
to be fewer issues. I'm thinking of many Western European nations where the issues do not yet seem
to have the over fifty percent traction that they have in the US and the UK. If Australia were suffering
a similar economic slow down it may well join the US and UK. But what's happening in Canada and New
Zealand?
The problem with centre left parties throughout the western world is that they sold out to corporate
capitalism, which forced people who rejected neoliberalism to go to the extremes to protest. The
question is, once someone's loyalty has been broken, it is that much more difficult to win loyalty
back, if it is possible at all.
And you're right - the neoliberal capture of centre-left legacy parties from the Democrats to
the German SPD and French Socialist Party has created an exceptionally unpromising landscape and
public mood. Trust has been broken. Responsibilities betrayed. Intellectual traditions traduced,
distorted, or simply cast aside.
In moments of humiliation or defeat - and make no mistake, this was both - there needs to be reflection
and a willingness to return to first principles as well as evolving new strategies and insights appropriate
to the present.
Economic realities shape cultural and social relations. The left should always listen to the experiences
of people and build a consensus based on solidarity between groups and not the alienated support
of different self-interested demographics. Exploitation is the corner-stone of capitalism when it
is left to run unchecked. Without regulation, capitalism tends towards monopolies that end up subverting
democracy itself.
These are the issues Bernie Sanders raised and the enthusiasm with which it was greeted is testimony
to the fact that there are white working class voters hungry for a politics of positive, radical
social change. Intoning with robotic piety that the people have never had it so good despite overwhelming
evidence to the contrary is a form of deceit; when it comes from the mouths of corporate Democrats,
it is political obscenity.
In moments of humiliation or defeat - and make no mistake, this was both - there needs to be
reflection and a willingness to return to first principles
I think what I've realised from the Brexit and Trump results is how desperate people are for something
to believe in. What used to be called 'the vision thing'.
For decades we've had to choose between different forms of managerialism and variations on a theme
of 'there is no alternative to rule by the market'. We just had to put up and shut up, there was
nothing to get excited about. Nobody's ever jumped up and down shouting "What do want? Trickle-down
economics! When do we want it? Now!"
The thing about demagogues is they offer that emotional release. What we need is principled political
movements that also enable it.
Absolutely right. One of the by-products of There Is No Alternative, though, is that managerialism
and wonkiness have been fetishised. Hillary Clinton's devastatingly uninspiring offer to the American
people was hailed by some as a mark of her "maturity", "experience", and "competence". Bernie Sanders,
by contrast, was attacked for firing people up, for inspiring them to believe change was possible
- by implication, of course, such attacks rest on the belief that change is in fact not possible
at all. It is a bleak nihilism that states the best that can be hoped or organised for is a slightly
better management of existing structures.
There is a hypocrisy, too, when someone like Clinton derides Trump's economic plans as "Trumped-up
trickle-down". In reality, they were arguing simply over who would offer the *bigger* tax cuts. The
notion that there were alternative visions on the economy, on climate change, on racial equality
or healthcare and education, not to mention foreign policies, was almost completely absent.
This is why I wrote that in some ways Hillary Clinton was the greater evil in this election. It
is one thing to hark backwards to a mythical past, as Donald Trump did. It is quite another to put
such tight constraints on the entire notion of what is possible in the future. Trump offered nostalgia.
Clinton offered the tyranny of low expectations - forever.
But that is all in the past now - for the future, I agree with you that there needs to be a willingness
to offer radical, inspirational and visionary alternatives to a system that has simply not worked
for the majority of people who through no fault of their own find their quality of life, possibilities
and security in decline while wealth flows ceaselessly upwards and into the pockets of those already
insulated from the harm their favoured politicians unleash.
Bernie showed what can be done - he also showed that people are willing to finance such campaigns
and thus liberate the political process from the death-grip of corporate donations. Personally, I
am sceptical of whether the Democratic Party is an appropriate vehicle for such politics (I know
that Bernie doesn't agree with me!) Regardless, his campaign should provide somewhat of a model for
what can be done - and likewise his statement from today. Amidst the headlong rush - in this paper
as well - to denigrate and smear voters for failing to advance bourgeois liberal interests, it is
imperative that deprived, working class voters of all races are listened to properly and not labelled
racists and bigots. A few no doubt are. But these are, in many instances, the same people that helped
elect Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. They are crying out for something to organise around. Hillary
Clinton failed because she was not and never has been a person capable of, even interested in, offering
that.
This is a great article. Alas, I fear it is all too late.
Everyone knew what was wrong with Clinton and the whole rotten DNC operation, but they supported
her anyway. When her flaws were pointed out, people kept saying 'but she's a woman.' As if that even
mattered.
Fundamentally the left has to abandon its obsession with identity politics, embrace national identity
and individual liberty. Then it will be able to get over its economic message and win the day.
The Donald's victory is on the Dem estab who rigged the primaries. It's on the MSM who acted as Hillary's surrogate and cheerleader
and who slandered Sanders' voters at every opportunity. And they're STILL slandering Sanders' voters. More important for the Dem
estab to keep control of the party than to win against the GOP. Bernie would'a beat Trump, imo.
But not "respectable" coat tails. Remember, the Democratic Party is the "respectable" left, not those hooligan socialists that
want to make bosses and workmen peers (ew).
Ironically, "respectability" is an intrinsically far-right notion in the first place.
"... Abedin had top secret information on a laptop in her home that she never disclosed to FBI interviwers. She and her husband had money, or a source of income, above & beyond what their salaries would indicate. The latter could be the former. ..."
"... If military intelligence folk gave Trump his insider knowledge about Weiner's laptop, maybe they suspected the source of leaking intelligence. Dig? ..."
Willing to go out on a speculative limb. Some people want answers like Giuliani, and not because
they're interested, as Holder shrilly claimed, in 'jail[ing] political opponents.'
Abedin had top secret information on a laptop in her home that she never disclosed to FBI
interviwers. She and her husband had money, or a source of income, above & beyond what their salaries
would indicate. The latter could be the former.
sou812
3h ago
0
1
The Democrats abandoned the only people that are paying
the bills in this country - period! And the working class
sent a message loud and clear. The arrogance and ignorance
of he left is astounding: focused on the novelty of
getting a woman elected to the presidency even though she
was the worst of choices. An arrogant, dishonest, bought
and paid for Wall Street elitist like her husband, they
thought that her experience was enough to seal her
success. Ta!
The Dem's have lost it all and it will take two decades to
recover, if ever.
After 8 years of "no change" Obama, a president totally owned by the corporations, banks, big
money etc. and the man who failed to do anything about that huge and ever widening wealth gap
the Democrats were obviously out of favour with the poor working class. But the voters seem to
have forgotten than Trump still stands for the Republicans and thats where he will enrol his
cabinet from, he can not act alone. Those same weak, ineffective ultra right loonies that
stood against Trump and made him look special will now stand with him in government. Its still
money politics.
Mutinous DNC Staffers Rage At Donna Brazile: "You Are Part Of The Problem... You Let This Happen"
Tyler Durden Nov 11, 2016 2:55 PM 0 SHARES Liar, cheat, and fired CNN contributor Donna Brazile faced
an angry crowd on Thursday night ... as Democratic Party officials held their first staff meeting since Hillary Clinton was crushed
by the "least qualified candidate for President ever."
As The Huffington Post reports, Donna Brazile, the interim leader of the Democratic National Committee, was giving what one
attendee described as "a rip-roaring speech" to about 150 employees, about the need to have hope for wins going forward, when
a staffer identified only as Zach stood up with a question.
"Why should we trust you as chair to lead us through this?" he asked, according to two people in the room. "You backed a
flawed candidate, and your friend [former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz] plotted through this to support your own gain
and yourself."
Some DNC staffers started to boo and some told him to sit down. Brazile began to answer, but Zach had more to say.
"You are part of the problem," he continued, blaming Brazile for clearing the path for Trump's victory by siding with Clinton
early on . "You and your friends will die of old age and I'm going to die from climate change. You and your friends let this
happen, which is going to cut 40 years off my life expectancy."
Zach gathered his things and began to walk out. When Brazile called after him, asking where he was going, he told her to
go outside and "tell people there" why she should be leading the party.
Two DNC staffers confirmed the exchange, and Brazile appeared to confirm the exchange also...
"As you can imagine, the individual involved is a member of the staff and I personally do not wish to discuss our internal
meetings."
Brazile could move to stay on as chair after March, but Thursday's meeting shows at least some party officials want fresh blood
at the top.
"The party is at a crossroads. They have been using the same playbook for decades, and now, they won't let anyone else come
in and change it up," said one former longtime DNC staffer, who requested anonymity to speak freely.
"The fact that Democrats just sat through a devastating defeat and now have to trust the leadership that not only contributed
to Clinton's loss, but the crushing 2014 midterm losses, well, what do they expect?"
Mutiny at the DNC? And where does Brazile go now? No TV network will hire a proven liar and cheat. There's no Democratic campaign
for her to jump to like Wasserman-Schultz... So Brazile will probably find herself worling at The Clinton Foundation.
Disgusting as it is, yes, my understanding is Obama can do
exactly that. My guess is, want to or not, he probably will come under so much pressure
he will have to pass out plenty of pardons. Or maybe Lynch will give everyone involved
in the Clinton Foundation immunity to testify and then seal the testimony -- or never
bother to get any testimony. So many games.
For Obama, it might not even take all that much pressure. From about his second day
in office, from his body language, he's always looked like he was scared.
Instead of keeping his mouth shut, which he would do, being the lawyer he is,
Giuliani has been screaming for the Clintons' scalps. That's exactly what a sharp lawyer
would do if he was trying to force Obama to pardon them. If he really meant to get them
he would be agreeing with the FBI, saying there doesn't seem to be any evidence of wrong
doing, and then change his mind once (if) he's AG and it's too late for deals.
With so many lawyers, Obama, the Clintons, Lynch, Giuliani, Comey, no justice is
likely to come out of this.
@ Posted by: Ken Nari | Nov 11, 2016 2:51:53 PM | 55
I heard a podcast on Batchelor
with Charles Ortel which explained some things -- even if there are no obvious likely
criminal smoking guns -- given that foundations get away with a lot of "leniency"
because they are charities, incomplete financial statements and chartering documents, as
I recall. I was most interested in his description of the number of jurisdictions the
Foundation was operating under, some of whom, like New York were already investigating;
and others, foreign who might or might be, who also have very serious regulations,
opening the possibility that if the Feds drop their investigation, New York (with very
very strict law) might proceed, and that they might well be investigated
(prosecuted/banned??) in Europe.
The most recent leak wrt internal practices was just damning ... it sounded like a
playground of favors and sinecures ... no human resources department, no written
policies on many practices ...
This was an internal audit and OLD (2008, called "the Gibson Review") so corrective
action may have been taken, but I thought was damning enough to deter many donors (even
before Hillary's loss removed that incentive) particularly on top of the Band (2011)
memo. Unprofessional to the extreme.
It's part of my vast relief that Clinton lost and will not be in our lives 24/7/365
for the next 4 years. (I think Trump is an unprincipled horror, but that's as may be,
I'm not looking for a fight). After the mess Clinton made of Haiti (and the
accusations/recriminations) I somehow thought they'd have been more careful with their
"legacy" -- given that it was founded in 1997, 2008 is a very long time to be operating
without written procedures wrt donations, employment
Ed209
5h ago
2
3
Good article, but it fails to mention immigration as a
further factor hammering the working class. Of course it's
pc to pretend that immigrants create jobs rather than
taking them etc etc. But I would put this question to any
economist, journalist or politician who doesn't believe
that immigration hurts the working classes: how would you
like it if a million workers arrived, all qualified to
your level or above in economics/journalism/politics, and
all willing to work for much less than you make?
Of course, in the case of the UK it hasn't been one
million, but more than three million. And in the case of
the USA, untold millions (illegals alone are thought to
number 10 million).
It's because economists, journalists and politicians
never have to face this kind of competition for their own
jobs that they are so keen on mass immigration. But
low-skill/no-skill workers face this reality everyday.
Nika2015
Ed209
4h ago
0
1
Telling it like it is...Bravo!
Reply
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Dana Todd
Ed209
4h ago
0
1
There's a pretty in-depth analysis of immigration's
effect on economy and workers/wages here
http://cis.org/immigration-and-the-american-worker-review-academic-literature
Bottom line is, it's complicated, and not all
immigrants are the same - or the same value to a
country. Immigrants with college degrees definitely add
to the GDP of their new home, typically estimated in
six figures cumulative per individual contribution.
Immigrants without college degree do place a drain on
the country, through depressed wages, because there's
parity (and since we haven't invested as much in our
educations here, we are not as competitive to outside
labor). Illegal immigrants cause a definite deficit,
albeit not so big as to threaten an entire economy -
but by creating an artificial competition they drive
wages down.
I am by all measures a liberal and very open to
immigration - I think we can't measure in dollars what
we get in new ideas, new energy, culture, art, food,
music - but for those who take a hard line look at the
return/impacts, it's worth taking the time to
understand the more complex story in the data.
The Democrats did a fine job of stomping out any enthusiasm by sabotaging
Bernie Sanders.
The DNC became a wholly owned subsidiary of Clinton Family Inc. starting
in about 2008. Control the rulemakers/money flow, and you can control who
the nominee is. At least that is the conventional thinking, and Clinton Inc.
is nothing if not conventional.
To buy the DNC, she chose to go to the Wall Street banksters, and others.
Essentially an "up front" bribe. No smoking gun needed to be created. They
knew what they were paying for, without it being said.
(I'm curious to see how many "donations" the Clinton Foundation receives,
now that she's been pushed out on an ice floe.)
They never anticipated a challenger who didn't need the DNC, or it's
cash.
They ignored the stats showing how many people wouldn't vote for Hillary
Clinton under any circumstance. Just call them racist/sexist/dumbazz hicks,
and call them "deplorables". Ask Mitt Romney how that worked out for him.
She lost an election to DONALD TRUMP. Even without the airwaves filled
with Republican attack ads. (Lack of RNC enthusiasm for Trump? Or a
recognition that Hillary's negatives couldn't be covered in a 30 second
commercial?).
If it wasn't for the Clinton's collective ego, and lust for power/money
(after all, we all now that in the current state of affairs, the moneyed
class drives policy), we'd all (well, all of us who don't live in the
rarefied air of the 1%ers/Banksters) be celebrating the upcoming
inauguration of President Sanders.
". Clinton raised $154 million in September for her campaign and the party.
And people "getting the resources they needed"? Seems odd."
smells like the allegations thrown at the Clinton Foundation--insiders
directing very generous contracts to other insiders. with competence or
efficacy secondary.
How Podesta may have caused Clinton to weaken her position on Wall Street.
New Wikileak shows he pushed her to show "love" for Obama rather than criticism
of BHO's handling of reform
The next day, an OpEd under the byline of Hillary Clinton appeared at
Bloomberg News. Obama's name was mentioned four separate times in a highly
favorable light. Clinton said Obama had signed into law "important new
rules" after the 2008 financial crash; she was going to "build on the
progress we've made under President Obama"; "thanks to President Obama's
leadership" the economy is now on "sounder footing"; and the Dodd-Frank
financial reform legislation that Obama signed into law had "made important
reforms, but there's more to do."
Since Bloomberg News is heavily read by people on Wall Street, this was a
signal to them that Hillary Clinton would leave the bulk of her husband's
cash cow deregulation in place by following in the footsteps of Obama. What
Obama's administration had done in 2010 was to create the illusion of
regulating Wall Street by proposing hundreds of vaguely worded rules in the
Dodd-Frank legislation, then putting crony Wall Street regulators in charge
at the SEC and U.S. Treasury to be sure the rules were never actually
implemented in any meaningful way. (Under Dodd-Frank, the U.S. Treasury
Secretary now sits atop a new financial stability body known as the
Financial Stability Oversight Council. The crony Federal Reserve, which
failed to see the crisis coming, was given enhanced supervisory powers over
the largest Wall Street bank holding companies.) Obama even ignored one of
his own rules in Dodd-Frank. It called for Obama to appoint a Vice Chairman
for Supervision at the Federal Reserve to police Wall Street.[…]
There is another telling fact in the email. Hillary Clinton seems to have
had very little to do with actually fashioning her policies. Another Clinton
adviser, Dan Schwerin, indicates that WJC (William Jefferson Clinton, i.e.
Bill Clinton) had edited the OpEd with "further refinements from policy
team," but there is no mention that Hillary Clinton was involved in her own
OpEd that would bear her byline.
So not just by Podesta but victimized by her philandering husband one last
time? Awhile back Pat Lang suggested it was really Bill who pushed her into
running. The impeach-ee needed his legacy redeemed.
Hillary Clinton seems to have had very little to do with actually
fashioning her policies.
This is a point that has irked me ever since I waded into the Podesta
emails - how even the smallest public statement or even just a Tweet
required numerous rounds of revisions, feedback, vetting and tweaking from
the Clinton insiders.
It seemed that Clinton rarely had a fire in the belly on any particular
position. It was whatever her team determined was the most politcally
advantageous at the moment.
Maybe this is how most presidential candidates function, but it made me
see Clinton as Presidential Robot Version 2016, programmed by her team to
simulate the appearance of a person with convictions.
I'm sure she has some real convictions and I'm sure she has done real
good in the world. But maybe Assange is right - she has been consumed by
power and greed and was seduced by the possibility of more.
In the wreckage of Hillary Clinton's unexpected loss, liberal lawmakers and advocacy groups have started plotting a major overhaul
of the Democratic National Committee, with the aim of using the staid organization to reconnect the party with working-class voters
it lost to President-elect Donald Trump.
Much of the talk since Tuesday's election has focused on selecting a new chairman, with the most frequently mentioned successor
being Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), a leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus who backed the primary bid of Sen. Bernie
Sanders (I-Vt.).
On Thursday afternoon, former Vermont governor Howard Dean (D) offered his service for a second tenure as DNC chairman, saying
on Twitter: "The dems need organization and focus on the the young. Need a fifty State strategy and tech rehab. I am in for chairman
again."
Evil Incarnate1956
I think the Republicans should get down on their knees and give thanks to God for Barack Obama. I'm serious.
He did great at getting himself elected, and he had some coattails when he was on the ballot. When he wasn't on the ballot,
the Dems' election performance has been one unmitigated disaster after another- midterm epic-fails in 2010 and 2014, and Tuesday's
election the frosting on the cake.
Where is the Democrats' bench strength? Where is their future? Besides Barack Obama, the face of their party today is Hillary
Clinton, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Steny Hoyer.
Obama, by cramming Obamacare down people's throats against their will, and his executive order overreach, has taken a wrecking
ball to the Democrat Party.
I hope the Democrats will adopt a strategy to continue the trend.
NewbieWaDoobie
Neat trick.....if you were to take the overtones of the media at large and the messaging coming from the HRC camp you can easily
see why she lost the rust belt. I worked as a carpenter in South Bend, IN from about 2002-2008 and she was never going to win
those people without a MESSAGE....when did she ELEVATE AND STUMP HARD for income equality and the platform....NEVER!!!! It
was against her principles and the interests of the people who surrounded her and the DNC.....FOOLS!!!!!
Neoliberalism is DEAD....even the IMF, published a report on this back in June 2016....take a look at Glen Greenwald's piece
while you're at it.
The GOP has the White House, the Senate and the House, the 33 state Governerships and, for the next 30 years, the US Supreme Court
(once Trump picks the next 3 Justices).
What we do know is that people like me, and probably like most readers of The New York Times,
truly didn't understand the country we live in. We thought that our fellow citizens would not, in
the end, vote for a candidate so manifestly unqualified for high office, so temperamentally unsound,
so scary yet ludicrous.
We thought that the nation, while far from having transcended racial prejudice and misogyny, had
become vastly more open and tolerant over time.
We thought that the great majority of Americans valued democratic norms and the rule of law.
It turns out that we were wrong. There turn out to be a huge number of people - white people,
living mainly in rural areas - who don't share at all our idea of what America is about. For them,
it is about blood and soil, about traditional patriarchy and racial hierarchy. And there were many
other people who might not share those anti-democratic values, but who nonetheless were willing to
vote for anyone bearing the Republican label.
I don't know how we go forward from here. Is America a failed state and society? It looks truly
possible.
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton – as senator, secretary of
state, and active partner in the Clinton Foundation – has had the privilege of
influencing major players in governments across the globe.
The result of her efforts has largely been the unfettered consolidation of
autocratic power, instability (when not total collapse) in vulnerable states, and
a global jihadist movement with its own Caliphate infiltrating some of the world's
most strategic locations.
SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER
The above map shows the nations of the world Clinton's policies have
destabilized and, below, an explanation of why each is labeled the way it is. This
is meant to be a comprehensive list, though by no means complete: there are few
nations in which an American secretary of state has no influence whatsoever.
Emboldened Autocrats
China
As secretary of state, Clinton presided over a policy known as the "
pivot
to Asia
," meant to increase American visibility in the continent and, in
particular, bring China and the United States closer together. Clinton publicly
supported the "
one-China
policy
" – China's way of imposing itself on the Republic of China (Taiwan),
Tibet, Hong Kong, and the western Xinjiang region – and encouraged China to
buy up U.S. debt
.
Following her tenure as secretary of state, Clinton expressed support for
incoming president Xi Jinping in private. In a 2013 private speech now public,
thanks to the organization WikiLeaks, Clinton
said
it was "good news" that Xi was "doing much more to try to assert his
authority" than his predecessor, Hu Jintao.
Since then, Xi has declared himself the "
core
"
leader,
comparable to Mao Zedong
;
colonized
the maritime territory of six nations in the South China Sea; used
state violence
to crack down on the nation's skyrocketing Christian
population; and engaged in multiple Communist Party purges, citing unspecified "
corruption
."
Cuba
Hillary Clinton has loudly supported President Obama's policy to "normalize"
relations with Cuba, and her associates
maintain close ties
to the Washington, D.C., community that benefits from
relations with the Castro regime. President Obama's "normalization" has
triggered a boom
in violent arbitrary arrests of political dissidents and a
new wave of refugees seeking to leave the communist dictatorship before the United
States changes its mind about treating them as political refugees.
Iran
Hillary Clinton's work to embolden the Iranian Islamic dictatorship began early
in her term as secretary of state. During Clinton's tenure, the Obama
administration all but ignored the Iranian Green Revolution, a series of protests
against then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
Clinton's State Department
rejected requests for funding
from groups doing the work on the grounds of
documenting Khamenei's rampant human rights abuses against unarmed protesters.
The Obama administration's crowning achievement in securing the Shiite
Caliphate's rule came years later, of course, in the form of the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action, or the Iran nuclear deal. While the parties signed
the deal long after her departure from State, Clinton was responsible for "naming
the negotiators for the nuclear talks and approving two major U.S. concessions to
Iran in 2011 – guaranteeing Iran the right to enrich uranium and agreeing to close
the IAEA's investigation of Iran's past nuclear weapons work,"
according to Fred Fleitz of the Center for Security Policy
.
Malaysia
Under Prime Minister Najib Razak, Malaysia has become a hotbed of
corruption
and,
increasingly,
radical
Islamic sentiment
. The Obama administration has, nonetheless, cozied up to
Kuala Lumpur, including
improving
its human rights ratings
to make it an eligible partner in the Trans-Pacific
Partnership. Among the allies Clinton world
feared
would
challenge Clinton, the presidential candidate, on Malaysia were labor leader
Richard Trumka and George Soros.
Secretary of State Clinton approached North Korea with a policy known as "
strategic
patience
," which one expert described as "sitting back and watching while
North Korea continued to build up its nuclear weapons program." North Korea has
detonated two nuclear weapons since Clinton has been out of office, in part
emboldened by "strategic patience" and in part, many argued after the fourth of
five tests,
emboldened by the Iranian nuclear deal
.
Russia
Clinton has attempted to convince the American people that her arch-rival in
the presidential election is Russian President Vladimir Putin, but long before it
was politically expedient for her to do so, Clinton was the face of President
Obama's "Russian reset" – the one that preceded the collapse of Ukraine – and
bragged privately to big-money donors of her close ties to Putin. The strongman
trusted her so much, she once boasted, that he invited her to his "
inner
sanctum
."
Turkey
In her memoir,
Hard Choices
, Clinton reserved praise from President
(then-Prime Minister) Recep Tayyip Erdogan that sounded not unlike her optimistic
profiling of Xi Jinping. Erdogan,
she said
, was "an ambitious, forceful, devout and effective politician." Of
his government, she said Erdogan was correct to seek "zero problems with
neighbors." WikiLeaks-released emails
have since revealed
that Erdogan sought to buy influence through campaign
donations to the Clintons.
During his tenure as president, Erdogan has advanced the cause of Islamism in
Turkey to unprecedented levels since the rule of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, going so
far as to allow Islamic prayers in the Hagia Sophia, an iconic Christian landmark.
He has also conducted
mass arrests of political enemies
and shut down numerous media outlets who
dare challenge his government
. Last Friday, Erdogan's government
arrested the leaders
of the People's Democratic Party (HDP) – a pro-Kurdish,
pro-Christian center-left party – in a midnight raid on dubious "terrorism"
charges.
Venezuela
Clinton served as secretary of state during the tail end of the tenure of
socialist dictator Hugo Chávez, who died shortly after she departed. Chávez
presided over a bleak time in Venezuelan history: nationalizing private
industries, cozying up to enabling autocrats in Cuba, Iran, and China, and using
violence to suppress anti-socialist opposition.
In 2009, Clinton defended negotiating with Chávez and fostering diplomacy with
him, telling a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing that the U.S.
should dismiss
Chávez's ties to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and communist China
because "we've isolated him, so he's gone elsewhere. I mean, he's a very sociable
guy."
Venezuela's economy is now in free fall as dozens of prisoners of conscience
languish in prison under Chávez's hand-picked successor, Nicolás Maduro. Maduro's
management of his own government has been so abysmal that, with Clinton gone,
President Obama has declared Venezuela
a national security threat
.
Emboldened Corruption
Algeria
The government of Algeria is involved in one of the most egregious corruption
schemes of the Clinton Foundation: offering the Clintons a $500,000 check. "The
donation reportedly coincided with an intense effort by Algeria to lobby Mrs
Clinton's State Department over US criticism of its human rights record,"
The
Telegraph
notes
.
Brazil
Earlier this year, Brazil
impeached and ousted
its socialist President Dilma Rousseff for a variety of
fiscal improprieties, including the misrepresentation of government funds to lure
investors. Triggering protests that numbered in the millions, however, was
Rousseff's deep involvement in something known as "Operation Car Wash," a
sprawling corruption scheme in which dozens of government officials took millions
in kickbacks from projects commissioned by the state-run oil company Petrobras.
As secretary of state, Clinton had longtime ties to Rousseff and
praised
"her commitment to openness, transparency," stating that "her fight
against corruption is setting a global standard" in 2012.
Haiti
The Clinton Foundation's
exploitation
of Haiti's poverty and the damage caused by a 2010 earthquake has
left many of those nation's leaders disgusted enough to speak up about the
corruption. An operation to aid earthquake victims run by the Clintons was also
found to have "
played
a role
" in an unprecedented cholera outbreak in that country.
Kazakhstan
Among the more alarming deals Clinton cut at the State Department was the
nuclear deal that handed one-fifth of America's uranium production capacity to
Russia. While Russia usurped control of the Uranium One corporation, the Clinton
Foundations coffers filled with Russian money.
In addition to Uranium One control, the
New York Times
reports
that Russia gained control of "mines in Kazakhstan that are among the
most lucrative in the world."
Morocco
A more recent WikiLeaks reveal shows that the Clinton Foundation received a $12
million donation from the King of Morocco in exchange for Hillary Clinton's
presence at a Foundation summit. At the last minute, she
did not attend
.
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia has enjoyed longstanding ties to the Clinton family and
donated
at least $50 million to the Clinton Foundation. These ties persisted
even as Clinton
privately admitted
she had evidence that Saudi Arabia provided "clandestine
financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the
region."
United States
While the Clinton Foundation often served as a
laundry service for foreign donations
, Clinton fostered questionable ties with
plenty of domestic entities, as well. Clinton
has raked in millions
in donations from big business in America, donors to
which she privately promised "
open
borders
." Clinton's ties to Department of Justice officials in the wake of an
investigation into her use of an illicit private server for state business has
also raised many questions regarding cronyism and corruption within our own
country.
Jihadist Boom
Afghanistan
President Obama famously declared that the war in Afghanistan
was over
for American soldiers in 2014. The policies that led to that point
only exacerbated the damage a vacuum of American power in the nation wrought
following the announcement.
Under Clinton, the State Department
largely ignored
a sprawling corruption problem that left Afghanistan with few
resources to combat the Taliban or al-Qaeda. Clinton policies elsewhere in the
world also led to the development of an Islamic State presence in the nation.
Currently, U.S. officials
warn
that the Taliban is stronger than it has been since September 11, 2001.
Indonesia
One of Clinton's first stops as secretary of state was Indonesia, where she
proclaimed, "If you want to know whether Islam, democracy, modernity and women's
rights can co-exist, go to Indonesia."
At the time
(2009), her visit was met with chants of "Allahu akbar" and an
inauspicious shoe-throwing protest against her.
Since then, Clinton's foreign policy greatly contributed to the creation of the
Islamic State, a jihadist group
actively courting Indonesian recruits
. "Between 300 and 700 Indonesians are
believed to have joined the group in Syria and Iraq over the past two years," the
BBC reported in July, adding that 30 Indonesian groups had pledged allegiance to
Islamic State "Caliph" Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Iraq
Unlike Syria, the collapse of which followed violent acts of oppression by a
ruthless tyrant, Iraq's collapse is more closely tied to American foreign policy
due to the nation's longtime occupation there. An American presence on the ground
in Iraq did more to subdue jihadist elements there than any action to routinely
fleeing Iraqi military and its corrupt leadership took.
While Clinton was in office, President Obama
withdrew
most of America's troops from Iraq, leaving a power vacuum rapidly
filled by the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, and Iran-backed Shiite militias. Military
experts
have agreed
that a prolonged American presence in the country would have
contributed to stability and withdrawing left the nation vulnerable to Islamist
colonization.
Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Cameroon
The nations surrounding Lake Chad continue to struggle with the rise of Boko
Haram, a jihadist group
founded in 2002
but active throughout the 2010s in northeast Borno state,
Nigeria. Boko Haram is currently the deadliest wing of the Islamic State and
responsible for killing
an
estimated 15,000
and displacing millions. The group rose to international
prominence following the abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls from a secondary
school in the Borno region in 2014. Most of these girls remain in captivity,
"married" off to Boko Haram jihadists for use as sex slaves.
As secretary of state, Clinton
refused to designate
Boko Haram, at the time affiliated with al-Qaeda, a
Foreign Terrorist Organization. The move
severely hindered
the Nigerian government's ability to target and neutralize
the group, as they could not seek U.S. aid for the mission.
Somalia, Kenya
Clinton
traveled to Somalia
personally in 2009 t0 offer support against al-Shabaab, an
al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist group. Following that visit, al-Shabaab made its
ties to al-Qaeda public and went on two high-profile rampages against civilians in
Kenya: the
Westgate Mall massacre
in 2013 and the
Garissa University attack
of 2015. It has since then become a popular enough
jihadist group to have found itself the object of courtship of both its al-Qaeda
overlords and the Islamic State.
The United States did little in those in-between years to subdue al-Shabaab,
including a "
Yemen-like
"
drone policy to target leadership and an embarrassing
failed raid
on an al-Shabaab camp in 2013. Clinton herself merely
implored the terrorists
to allow humanitarian aid.
Collapse of State
Libya
Clinton's role
in the death of Americans, including a U.S. Ambassador, in the
September 11, 2012, siege of Benghazi is now well-known. She had a major role in
pushing for the decision to support Libya's uprising against dictator Muammar
Gadhafi, as well, however – a move President Obama followed up with little
strategy to ensure that a stable, secular government would replace Gadhafi. The
collapse of the Gadhafi dictatorship has left Libya a failed state, at first
governed by
two rival parties
, but now partially governed by the
Islamic State
,
al-Qaeda
, and a variety of Islamist tribal militias.
The Syrian Civil War began in 2011, during Clinton's stewardship of the State
Department. The Secretary reportedly
pushed President Obama
to arm Sunni Arab Syrian rebels, armed militias that
included a high number of jihadist elements, many of whom would move on to fight
for the Islamic State. The President
reportedly did not heed Clinton's advice
, though he failed to do much of
anything else, either.
In 2011, however, Clinton referred to dictator Bashar al-Assad as "
a
reformer
" by reputation, whose nascent rule was cause for optimism, casting
some doubt on how adamantly she pushed President Obama to arm the Syrian rebels.
Today, Syria remains a land mass governed piecemeal by the Islamic State,
Kurdish militias, al-Qaeda linked armed Sunni groups, and the
Iranian-Russian-Assad alliance. Assad
claimed in an interview
earlier this month that Syria is now "much better off"
than before the civil war.
Sudan/South Sudan
The creation of South Sudan, the world's youngest nation, was a direct product
of Clinton's foreign policy. Years of civil war in Sudan between the northern
Muslim population and the Christian south gave way to secession and a war between
two nations, not one. By the time Clinton visited in 2012,
the
Washington Post
referred to the refugee crisis there as one of
the worst in the world (soon to be eclipsed by the Syrian crisis).
The State Department persisted in aiding the South Sudanese government, even
continuing to provide funding after evidence surfaced that the government
employed
child soldiers
. Subsequent reports unveiled that Clinton-related firms
received money
from the South Sudanese government, as well.
Clinton's State Department support appears to have done little to
stabilize South Sudan. Report of
mass rape
at UN camps are common, and the country is
now facing a famine
.
Ukraine/Georgia
The Obama administration's tepid responses to Russian colonization of former
Soviet states have left Ukraine without its Crimea region and its eastern
provinces in collapse. In Georgia, the breakaway regions of
Abkhazia and South Ossetia
, invaded in 2008, remain under pseudo-Russian
control.
Hillary Clinton presided over a "Russian reset" policy meant to dissuade
Vladimir Putin from pillaging his neighbors. Clinton even gave her Russian
counterpart Sergei Lavrov a literal "reset button" as a gift,
leaving him baffled
. The reset succeeded in keeping Russia from obstructing
the negotiation of the Iran nuclear deal and the invasion of Libya
, but did
little to convince Putin to change his foreign policy.
Subsequent revelations showed the Clintons
taking money from both sides
of the Ukraine conflict and being careful of
making too tough a stand against Putin's aggression.
Yemen
As secretary of state, Clinton made the first visit as America's top diplomat
to Yemen since 1990. There, she told Ali Abdullah Saleh that
she
would support
a program to return al-Qaeda terrorists imprisoned at Guantánamo
Bay, Cuba, to Yemen, while also acknowledging that Yemen was a hotbed of
al-Qaeda activity. Saleh is now an ally of the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, which
have launched a civil war against current President Abd Rabbo Mansur Hadi.
Al-Qaeda is possibly the most stable entity in a nation where
80 percent
of
civilians live off of humanitarian aid,
quadrupling its presence in the nation in a year
. Yemen is a failed state torn
apart by an emboldened Iran and Saudi Arabia, both major beneficiaries of the
Clinton State Department's policies.
The Migrant Crisis
Austria, Belgium, the Balkan nations, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Germany,
Greece, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Turkey, Sweden, the UK
The Obama administration's Syria and Libya policies (See above.), executed
while Clinton was secretary of state, have triggered a flood of
nearly five million
displaced Syrians
and
more
than one million Libyans
seeking refuge in Europe and the Middle East.
Refugees from Afghanistan, Pakistan, sub-Saharan Africa, and other volatile
regions have added to the masses seeking a new home, rejected in countries like
Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia who have criticized the West for being
unwelcoming.
"... The origins of Daesh, known commonly as the Islamic State or ISIS, tie back directly to Obama and Clinton policy delusions and half measures of the Iraq and Syria conflicts. ..."
"... The FSA exerted zero control over the dozens of rival militias fighting each other and the Assad regime in Damascus. The Syrian Rebel groups were like dozens of hungry baby vultures in a nest all competing for resources, and the worst and meanest destroyed their counterparts using the aid given them by their misguided American benefactors. ..."
"... The Sunni Arab Gulf states piled on behind the U.S. government to help their Sunni brethren with more arms and cash. The result was a true race to the bottom of Syrian Rebel groups. ..."
"... The chaos sewn globally by ISIS today grew directly from the bad seeds planted by the Clinton/Obama failures in the basics of statecraft. ..."
"... Obama/Clinton continued to approach the Middle East with the same naivety that led the Bush Administration into Iraq in the first place. For all of the criticism that Obama levied on Bush, he continued to apply a deeply delusional Washington perspective to Middle Eastern politics and culture - ignoring all we should have learned in 13 years of Iraq conflict and warfare. ..."
The origins of Daesh, known commonly as the Islamic State or ISIS, tie back directly to Obama
and Clinton policy delusions and half measures of the Iraq and Syria conflicts.
With the recent release of an August 2012
classified intelligence memo to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton detailing the presence
of the organization that became ISIS among the Syrian oppositional forces supported by the West,
it's important to remember the history of exactly how the Islamic State arose from the ashes of a
failed Obama/Clinton foreign policy.
The Syrian "Arab Spring" agitations that began in March 2011, where majority Sunnis rebelled against
an Assad run Alawite Shia Ba'th Party, quickly dissolved into a multi sided proxy war. Clinton State
Department policy grew into helping these Sunni rebels under the banner of the "Free Syrian Army
(FSA)" with weapons, money and diplomatic support.
However, the reality is that the FSA existed only in the minds of the State Department leadership.
The FSA exerted zero control over the dozens of rival militias fighting each other and the Assad
regime in Damascus. The Syrian Rebel groups were like dozens of hungry baby vultures in a nest all
competing for resources, and the worst and meanest destroyed their counterparts using the aid given
them by their misguided American benefactors.
The Sunni Arab Gulf states piled on behind the U.S. government to help their Sunni brethren
with more arms and cash. The result was a true race to the bottom of Syrian Rebel groups. All
the while the Assad regime's traditional allies of Russia and Iran provided weapons, training, and
even thousands of fighters themselves to combat the U.S. supported Sunni rebels. The Obama/Clinton
team couldn't even do a proxy war correctly.
The chaos sewn globally by ISIS today grew directly from the bad seeds planted by the Clinton/Obama
failures in the basics of statecraft.
... ... ...
Obama/Clinton continued to approach the Middle East with the same naivety that led the Bush
Administration into Iraq in the first place. For all of the criticism that Obama levied on Bush,
he continued to apply a deeply delusional Washington perspective to Middle Eastern politics and culture
- ignoring all we should have learned in 13 years of Iraq conflict and warfare.
Erik Prince is a former Navy SEAL, founder of Blackwater, and currently a frontier market
investor and concerned parent.
"... If one "fact" is known to be false then one is inclined to think those "facts" one is unfamiliar with are also false. I'll always think of Clinton's behavior on hearing of Gadaffi's death. That's the thing you want running the most powerful corporation on earth. ..."
"... I don't remember Krugman saying that Bush Sr. spent his days at the CIA so he trained as a professional assassin. ..."
If one "fact" is known to be false then one is inclined to think those "facts" one is unfamiliar
with are also false. I'll always think of Clinton's behavior on hearing of Gadaffi's death. That's
the thing you want running the most powerful corporation on earth.
The election was rigged by Russian intelligence, which was almost surely behind the hacking of
Democratic emails, which WikiLeaks then released with great fanfare. Nothing truly scandalous
emerged, but the Russians judged, correctly, that the news media would hype the revelation that
major party figures are human beings, and that politicians engage in politics, as somehow damning....
-- Paul Krugman
[ A wildly speculative, purposely inflaming even dangerous passage. And in keeping with previously
expressed, inflaming Krugman stereotypes.
I know, I know, the Russians are going to eat our children for breakfast but I am in no mood
for another era of Cold War McCarthyism. Children for what? OMG. ]
OMG, the Russians not being satisfied with eating the children of Cleveland are also going to
eat the Baltics and we all know that Baltics are already endangered (climate change and all).
Who knew?
"Save the Baltics from hungry Russians," must be the cry through the land. Save the Baltics,
I am ready.
I'm hearing is simply a recognition that Putin is a problem and that his agents are trying to
influence the election, which they sure appear to be doing and have done in many other cases in
many countries. It's SOP for this guy....
[ I know, I have no idea how to portray this as absurd as it actually is. Remember though,
I am always ready to go to the Baltics when called to battle. ]
What is important and saddening is the wild Cold War prejudice, a prejudice that extends to China
and would readily descend to name-naming. I get this, fortunately I get the prejudice.
No matter, when called as I have made clear I will be naming-names from A to Z, but I get this.
That's why a British court has effectively overturned the results of the Brexit vote – in
a lawsuit brought by a hedge fund manager and former model – and thrown the fate of the country
into the hands of pro-EU Tories, and their Labor and Liberal Democrat collaborators.
This stunning reversal was baked in to the legislation that enabled the referendum to begin
with, and is par for the course as far as EU referenda are concerned: in 1992,
Danish voters rejected the EU, only to have the Euro-crats demand a rematch with a "modified"
EU treaty which won narrowly. There have been repeated attempts to modify the modifications,
which have all failed. Ireland voted against both the Lisbon Treaty and the Nice Treaty, only
to have the issue brought up again until the "right" result was achieved.
"... We know those in Washington with a vested interest in maintaining a US empire overseas will fight to the end to keep the financial gravy train flowing. The neocons and the liberal interventionists will continue to preach that we must run the world or everything will fall to ruin. But this election and many recent polls demonstrate that their time has passed. They may not know it yet, but their failures are too obvious and Americans are sick of paying for them. ..."
Regardless of How America Votes, Americans Want a Different Foreign Policy
,
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I have said throughout this presidential campaign that it doesn't matter much which candidate
wins. Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are authoritarians and neither can be expected to roll
back the leviathan state that destroys our civil liberties at home while destroying our economy and
security with endless wars overseas. Candidates do not matter all that much, despite what the media
would have us believe. Ideas do matter, however. And regardless of which of these candidates is elected,
the battle of ideas now becomes critical.
The day after the election is our time to really focus our efforts on making the case for a peaceful
foreign policy and the prosperity it will bring. While we may not have much to cheer in Tuesday's
successful candidate, we have learned a good deal about the state of the nation from the campaigns.
From the surprising success of the insurgent Bernie Sanders to a Donald Trump campaign that broke
all the mainstream Republican Party rules – and may have broken the Republican Party itself – what
we now understand more clearly than ever is that the American people are fed up with politics as
usual. And more importantly they are fed up with the same tired old policies.
Last month a fascinating poll was conducted by the Center for the National Interest and the Charles
Koch Institute. A broad ranging 1,000 Americans were asked a series of questions about US foreign
policy and the 15 year "war on terror." You might think that after a decade and a half, trillions
of dollars, and thousands of lives lost, Americans might take a more positive view of this massive
effort to "rid the world of evildoers," as then-president George W. Bush promised. But the poll found
that only 14 percent of Americans believe US foreign policy has made them more safe! More than 50
percent of those polled said the next US president should use less force overseas, and 80 percent
said the president must get authorization from Congress before taking the country to war.
These results should make us very optimistic about our movement, as it shows that we are rapidly
approaching the "critical mass" where new ideas will triumph over the armies of the status quo.
We know those in Washington with a vested interest in maintaining a US empire overseas will fight
to the end to keep the financial gravy train flowing. The neocons and the liberal interventionists
will continue to preach that we must run the world or everything will fall to ruin. But this election
and many recent polls demonstrate that their time has passed. They may not know it yet, but their
failures are too obvious and Americans are sick of paying for them.
What is to be done? We must continue to educate ourselves and others. We must resist those who
are preaching "interventionism-lite" and calling it a real alternative. Claiming we must protect
our "interests" overseas really means using the US military to benefit special interests. That is
not what the military is for. We must stick to our noninterventionist guns. No more regime change.
No more covert destabilization programs overseas. A solid defense budget, not an imperial military
budget. US troops home now. End US military action in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and so on.
Just come home.
Americans want change, no matter who wins. We need to be ready to provide that alternative.
This neocon propagandists (or more correctly neocon provocateur) got all major facts wrong. And
who unleashed Flame and
Stuxnet I would like to ask him.
Was it Russians? And who invented the concept of "color revolution" in which influencing of election
was the major part of strategy ? And which nation instituted the program of covert access to email boxes
of all major webmail providers? He should study the history of malware and the USA covert operations
before writing this propagandist/provocateur opus to look a little bit more credible...
Notable quotes:
"... Email, a main conduit of communication for two decades, now appears so vulnerable that the nation seems to be wondering whether its bursting inboxes can ever be safe. ..."
The 2016 presidential race will be remembered for many ugly moments, but the most lasting historical
marker may be one that neither voters nor American intelligence agencies saw coming: It is the first
time that a foreign power has unleashed cyberweapons to disrupt, or perhaps influence, a United States
election.
And there is a foreboding sense that, in elections to come, there is no turning back.
The steady drumbeat of allegations of Russian troublemaking - leaks from stolen emails and probes
of election-system defenses - has continued through the campaign's last days. These intrusions, current
and former administration officials agree, will embolden other American adversaries, which have been
given a vivid demonstration that, when used with some subtlety, their growing digital arsenals can
be particularly damaging in the frenzy of a democratic election.
"Most of the biggest stories of this election cycle have had a cybercomponent to them - or the
use of information warfare techniques that the Russians, in particular, honed over decades," said
David Rothkopf, the chief executive and editor of Foreign Policy, who has written two histories of
the National Security Council. "From stolen emails, to WikiLeaks, to the hacking of the N.S.A.'s
tools, and even the debate about how much of this the Russians are responsible for, it's dominated
in a way that we haven't seen in any prior election."
The magnitude of this shift has gone largely unrecognized in the cacophony of a campaign dominated
by charges of groping and pay-for-play access. Yet the lessons have ranged from the intensely personal
to the geostrategic.
Email, a main conduit of communication for two decades, now appears so vulnerable that the
nation seems to be wondering whether its bursting inboxes can ever be safe. Election systems,
the underpinning of democracy, seem to be at such risk that it is unimaginable that the United States
will go into another national election without treating them as "critical infrastructure."
But President Obama has been oddly quiet on these issues. He delivered a private warning to President
Vladimir V. Putin of Russia during their final face-to-face encounter two months ago, aides say.
Still, Mr. Obama has barely spoken publicly about the implications of foreign meddling in the election.
His instincts, those who have worked with him on cyberissues say, are to deal with the problem by
developing new norms of international behavior or authorizing covert action rather than direct confrontation.
After a series of debates in the Situation Room, Mr. Obama and his aides concluded that any public
retaliation should be postponed until after the election - to avoid the appearance that politics
influenced his decision and to avoid provoking Russian counterstrikes while voting is underway. It
remains unclear whether Mr. Obama will act after Tuesday, as his aides hint, or leave the decision
about a "proportional response" to his successor.
Cybersleuths, historians and strategists will debate for years whether Russia's actions reflected
a grand campaign of interference or mere opportunism on the part of Mr. Putin. While the administration
has warned for years about the possibility of catastrophic attacks, what has happened in the past
six months has been far more subtle.
Russia has used the techniques - what they call "hybrid war," mixing new technologies with old-fashioned
propaganda, misinformation and disruption - for years in former Soviet states and elsewhere in Europe.
The only surprise was that Mr. Putin, as he intensified confrontations with Washington as part of
a nationalist campaign to solidify his own power amid a deteriorating economy, was willing to take
them to American shores.
The most common theory is that while the Russian leader would prefer the election of Donald J.
Trump - in part because Mr. Trump has suggested that NATO is irrelevant and that the United States
should pull its troops back to American shores - his primary motive is to undercut what he views
as a smug American sense of superiority about its democratic processes.
Madeleine K. Albright, a former secretary of state who is vigorously supporting Hillary Clinton,
wrote recently that Mr. Putin's goal was "to create doubt about the validity of the U.S. election
results, and to make us seem hypocritical when we question the conduct of elections in other countries."
If so, this is a very different use of power than what the Obama administration has long prepared
the nation for.
Four years ago, Leon E. Panetta, the defense secretary at the time, warned of an impending "cyber
Pearl Harbor" in which enemies could "contaminate the water supply in major cities or shut down the
power grid across large parts of the country," perhaps in conjunction with a conventional attack.
Here's something you probably never saw or heard about in the west. This is Putin answering questions
regarding ISIS from a US journalist at the Valdai International Discussion Club in late 2014.
from the U.S.. much love for you Putin. you really opened the eyes of many, even in our country.
this man is the definition of president and the u.s hasnt had one for over 40 years... smh.
As an American I can say that all of this is very confusing. However, one thing I believe is
true, Obama and Hillary are the worst thing to ever happen to my country !!!! Average Americans
don't want war with Russia. Why would we ?? The common people of both countries don't deserve
this !!!!
+Emanuil Penev Obama is a human puppet who chose to be controlled, He is therefore culpable
for his action of supporting Islamic terrorists. Right now Islamic invasion of western countries
is the real problem. The USA is now under the control of Obama the Muslim Trojan horse who wants
the world to be under the rule of an Islamic empire. USA's military action in the Middle East
is the result of USA being under occupation by a Muslim Trojan horse that wants to create tidal
waves of Muslim refugees harboring Muslim radicals and terrorists for invading Europe and the
USA. Watch video (copy and paste for search) *From Europe to America The Caliphate Muslim Trojan
Horse The USA is a victim, not a culprit, in the Muslim invasion of western counties. Obama and
his cohorts are the culprits.
basically Russia wants to be friends with America again and America ain't having it. they have
the capabilities to set up shop all around the world. it's like putting guard towers in everyone's
lawn just in case somebody wants commit crime. but you never see inside the towers or know who
is in them but they have giant guns mounted on them ready to kill. that's how Putin feels. I mean
I get it but every other country has nukes. get rid of the nukes and the missile defense will
go away. if the situation were reversed it would be out president voicing this frustration. but
Putin said it, America is a good example of success that's what Russia needs to do is be more
like America. they have been doing it in the last year or so. I think America will come around
and we will have good relations with Russia again. so wait... did we support isis as being generally
isis or support all Qaeda / Saddam's regime which lead to isis??
The US supported multiple Rebel Groups that fought against Syria, they armed them, gave them
money, and members of those groups split up and formed more Rebel groups or joined different ones.
ISIS (at the time, not as large) was supported by the rebel groups the US armed and they got weapons
and equipment from said Rebel Groups, even manpower as well.. That is how ISIS came to be the
threat it is today.
putin doesnt view the us as a threat to russia..?? he has said countless times that he considers
the us as a threat.. and that russian actions are a result of us aggression
US people are a threat for all the world because they are not interested in politics, they
don't want to know truth, they believe to their one-sided media and allow their government and
other warmongers in the US military industry to do whatever they wish all over the world. US politics
are dangerous and lead to a new big war where US territory won't stay away this time. It''s time
for Americans to understand it. If you allow your son to become a criminal, don't be surprised
that your house will be burned some day.
Obama and Clinton are progressive evil cunts funded by Soros. Their decision making is calculated
and they want these horrendous results because it weakens the US and benefits globalism. Putin
kicked the globalists the fuck out, and when Trump wins he will do the same! They are scared shitless.
TRUMP/PENCE 2016
With a stupid and warmongering opponent such as the USA, Russia do not need to construct a
narrative or think out some elaborate propaganda. Russia simply needs to speak the truth. And
this is why the US and its puppets hates Russia and Putin so much.
"... An awful lot of people out there think we live in a one-party state-that we're ruled by what is coming to be called the "Uniparty." ..."
"... There is a dawning realization, ever more widespread among ordinary Americans, that our national politics is not Left versus Right or Republican versus Democrat; it's we the people versus the politicians. ..."
"... Donald Trump is no nut. If he were a nut, he would not have amassed the fortune he has, nor nurtured the capable and affectionate family he has. ..."
"... To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss. ..."
"... Trump has all the right instincts. And he's had the guts and courage-and, just as important, the money -to do a thing that has badly needed doing for twenty years: to smash the power of the real nuts in the GOP Establishment. ..."
A couple of remarks in
Professor Susan
McWillams' recent Modern Age piece celebrating the 25th anniversary of Christopher Lasch's
1991 book
The True and Only Heaven , which analyzed the cult of progress in its American manifestation,
have stuck in my mind. Here's the first one:
McWilliams adds a footnote to that: The 19 percent figure is from 2012, she says. Then she tells
us that in 1964, 64 percent of Americans agreed with the same statement.
Wow. You have to think that those two numbers, from 64 percent down to 19 percent in two generations,
tell us something important and disturbing about our political life.
Second McWilliams quote:
In 2016 if you type the words "Democrats and Republicans" or "Republicans and Democrats" into
Google, the algorithms predict your next words will be "are the same".
I just tried this, and she's right. These guesses are of course based on the frequency with which
complete sentences show up all over the internet. An awful lot of people out there think we live
in a one-party state-that we're ruled by what is
coming to be called the "Uniparty."
There is a dawning realization, ever more widespread among ordinary Americans, that our national
politics is not Left versus Right or Republican versus Democrat; it's we the people
versus the politicians.
Which leads me to a different lady commentator: Peggy Noonan, in her October 20th Wall Street
Journal column.
The title of Peggy's piece was:
Imagine
a Sane Donald Trump . [
Alternate link ]Its gravamen:
Donald Trump has shown up the Republican Party Establishment as totally out of touch with their base,
which is good; but that he's bat-poop crazy, which is bad. If a sane Donald Trump had done
the good thing, the showing-up, we'd be on course to a major beneficial correction in our national
politics.
It's a good clever piece. A couple of months ago on Radio Derb I offered up one and a half cheers
for Peggy, who gets a lot right in spite of being a longtime Establishment Insider. So it
was here. Sample of what she got right last week:
Mr. Trump's great historical role was to reveal to the Republican Party what half of its
own base really thinks about the big issues. The party's leaders didn't know! They were shocked,
so much that they indulged in sheer denial and made believe it wasn't happening.
The party's leaders accept more or less open borders and like big trade deals. Half the base
does not! It is longtime GOP doctrine to cut entitlement spending. Half the base doesn't want
to, not right now! Republican leaders have what might be called assertive foreign-policy impulses.
When Mr. Trump insulted George W. Bush and nation-building and said he'd opposed the Iraq invasion,
the crowds, taking him at his word, cheered. He was, as they say, declaring that he didn't want
to invade the world and invite the world. Not only did half the base cheer him, at least half
the remaining half joined in when the primaries ended.
End of pause. OK, so Peggy got some things right there. She got a lot wrong, though
Start with the notion that Trump is crazy. He's a nut, she says, five times. His brain is "a TV
funhouse."
Well, Trump has some colorful quirks of personality, to be sure, as we all do. But he's no nut.
A nut can't be as successful in business as Trump has been.
I spent 32 years as an employee or contractor, mostly in private businesses but for two years
in a government department. Private businesses are intensely rational, as human affairs go-much more
rational than government departments. The price of irrationality in business is immediate and plainly
financial. Sanity-wise, Trump is a better bet than most people in high government positions.
Sure, politicians talk a good rational game. They present as sober and thoughtful on the Sunday
morning shows.
Look at the stuff they believe, though. Was it rational to respond to the collapse of the U.S.S.R.
by moving NATO right up to Russia's borders? Was it rational to expect that post-Saddam Iraq would
turn into a constitutional democracy? Was it rational to order insurance companies to sell healthcare
policies to people who are already sick? Was the Vietnam War a rational enterprise? Was it rational
to respond to the 9/11 attacks by massively increasing Muslim immigration?
Make your own list.
Donald Trump displays good healthy patriotic instincts. I'll take that, with the personality quirks
and all, over some earnest, careful, sober-sided guy whose head contains fantasies of putting the
world to rights, or flooding our country with unassimilable foreigners.
I'd add the point, made by many commentators, that belongs under the general heading: "You don't
have to be crazy to work here, but it helps." If Donald Trump was not so very different from run-of-the-mill
politicians-which I suspect is a big part of what Peggy means by calling him a nut-would he have
entered into the political adventure he's on?
Thor Heyerdahl sailed across the Pacific on a hand-built wooden raft to prove a point, which
is not the kind of thing your average ethnographer would do. Was he crazy? No, he wasn't. It was
only that some feature of his personality drove him to use that way to prove the point he
hoped to prove.
And then there is Peggy's assertion that the Republican Party's leaders didn't know that half
the party's base were at odds with them.
Did they really not? Didn't they get a clue when the GOP lost in 2012, mainly because millions
of Republican voters didn't turn out for Mitt Romney? Didn't they, come to think of it, get the glimmering
of a clue back in 1996, when Pat Buchanan won the New Hampshire primary?
Pat Buchanan is in fact a living counter-argument to Peggy's thesis-the "sane Donald Trump" that
she claims would win the hearts of GOP managers. Pat is Trump without the personality quirks. How
has the Republican Party treated him ?
Our own
Brad Griffin , here at VDARE.com on October 24th, offered a couple more "sane Donald Trumps":
Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee. How did they fare with the GOP Establishment?
Donald Trump is no nut. If he were a nut, he would not have amassed the fortune he
has, nor nurtured the capable and affectionate family he has. Probably he's less well-informed
about the world than the average pol. I doubt he could tell you what
the capital of Burkina Faso is. That's secondary, though. A President has people to look up that
stuff for him. The question that's been asked more than any other about Donald Trump is not, pace
Peggy Noonan, "Is he nuts?" but, "
Is he conservative? "
I'm sure he is. But my definition of "conservative" is temperamental, not political. My touchstone
here is the sketch of the conservative temperament given to us by the English political philosopher
Michael Oakeshott :
To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried
to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the
near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present
laughter to utopian bliss.
That fits Trump better than it fits any liberal you can think of-better also than many senior
Republicans.
For example, it was one of George W. Bush's senior associates-probably Karl Rove-who scoffed at opponents
of Bush's delusional foreign policy as "the reality-based community." It would be hard to think of
a more un -Oakeshottian turn of phrase.
Trump has all the right instincts. And he's had the guts and courage-and, just as important,
the money -to do a thing that has badly needed doing for twenty years: to smash the power
of the real nuts in the GOP Establishment.
I thank him for that, and look forward to his Presidency.
Donna Brazile was noticeably uncomfortable for every second of the following 10-minute interview
with Megyn Kelly of Fox News. Kelly pushed hard on the recent Project Veritas undercover videos showing
DNC operatives plotting to incite violence at Trump rallies and commit massive voter fraud and over
Brazile's leaked email showing that she provided a CNN debate question to Hillary ahead of a March
2016 debate with Bernie. Brazile tried every trick in the book to deflect and pivot but Kelly held
her feet to the fire.
Vladimir Putin in particular, and Russia in general, have been the focus of an intensive high-drama
propaganda campaign of late. Are you buying it? For the time being, Russophobia has replaced Islamophobia
as the driving force behind the lies. Various US officials have been frantically warning Americans
that the Russians are behind everything: hacking the DNC, controlling Trump, influencing the election
and breaking the Syrian ceasefire agreement. They might as well add making your girlfriend break
up with you, making your toast get burnt and making your car run out of fuel for all the evidence
they have presented. Many of these totally unfounded allegations stem from (naturally) the Clinton
campaign, home to career criminals
Bill and
Hillary
Clinton , who are desperately seeking to find something to gain some sort of shred of popularity
or advantage over Trump, who fills up arenas with 1000s of people more easily than Clinton can fill
a high school gym with 50. Many US officials and war hawks are trying to get in on the action; CIA
man Mike Morell indicated
it would be a good idea to covertly kill Russians to make them "pay a price" ;
Hillary Clinton called
Vladimir Putin the "grand godfather of extreme nationalism" and blamed him for the rising
popularity of right-wing leaders; and even standing VP
Joe Biden came out and
said that, "We're sending a message to Putin it will be at the time of our choosing and under
the circumstances that have the greatest impact" . It seems there is no depth to which some US
leaders won't stoop in order to gain some political advantage, even it means lying, demonizing and
destroying geopolitical partnerships in order to garner a few brownie points.
Vladimir Putin: It's All About Distraction During Election Season
You would think Russian President Vladimir President would be agitated by all of this mud-slinging.
At times he has been, for instance when he
issued a warning a few months ago about an impending WW3 due to NATO's constant aggression and
advancement towards Russian borders. However, judging by his own words and mostly calm demeanor,
he has seen through the agenda and understands what is going on. Putin spells out how it's all inflamed
rhetoric before an election season, an old trick used by politicians to distract when they have no
meaningful solutions for internal and domestic problems.
"You can expect anything from our American friends the only novelty is that for the first
time, on the highest level, the United States has admitted involvement in these activities, and
to some extent threatened [us] – which of course does not meet the standards of international
communication. As if we didn't know that US Government bodies snoop on and wiretap anyone? Everyone
knows this
Apparently, they are nervous. The question is why. I think there is a reason. You know,
in an election campaign, the current government carefully crafts a pre-election strategy, and
any government, especially when seeking re-election, always has unresolved issues. They need to
show, to explain to the voters why they remain unresolved. In the US, there are many such problems
for example, the massive public debt is a time bomb for the US economy and global financial
system more examples can be cited in foreign policy in these conditions, many choose to resort
to the usual tactics of distracting voters from their problems try to create an enemy and rally
the nation against that enemy
Iran and the Iranian threat did not work well for that. Russia is a more interesting story."
And that's exactly what this whole thing is: a giant story. However, as Voltaire once said, if
you can make someone believe absurdities, you can make them commit atrocities. Let's see what else
Vladimir Putin has to say on other topics of interest.
Russian Hacking: A Laughable Claim so the Clintons and DNC Can Try to Avoid Culpability
Let's face it: the whole Russophobia affair is about avoiding blame, dodging responsibility and
evading liability. Thanks to WikiLeaks, Project Veritas and many other sources, we know the entire
Hillary Clinton campaign has been rigged beyond belief. Fake primaries, fake speeches, fake images,
fake videos, fake crowds, fake supporters and fake debates. There is seemingly no depth of criminality
to which that woman won't sink. She's selling out the presidency before she even gets there, such
as the stunt of trying to promise future presidential executive orders to mega donors. There is not
a shred of evidence that Russia is affiliated with WikiLeaks or behind any of the DNC hacks. As this
Zero Hedge article
NSA Whistleblower: US Intelligence Worker Likely Behind DNC Leaks, Not Russia states:
"On "Judge Napolitano Chambers," the Judge said that while the DNC, government officials,
and the Clinton campaign all accuse the Russians of hacking into the DNC servers, "the Russians
had nothing to do with it." Napolitano then mentioned Binney, arguing the NSA veteran and whistleblower
who "developed the software that the NSA now uses, which allows it to capture not just metadata
but content of every telephone call, text message, email in the United States of every person
in [the country]" knew the NSA had hacked the DNC - not the Russians.
If Judge Napolitano and Binney are right and the NSA did hack the DNC, what was the motive?
According to the Judge, "members of the intelligence community simply do not want [Clinton]
to be president of the United States."
"She doesn't know how to handle state secrets," Napolitano continued. And since "some of
the state secrets that she revealed used the proper true names of American intelligence agents
operating undercover in the Middle East," some of these agents were allegedly captured and killed,
prompting NSA agents to feel compelled to act. Whether NSA agents hacked the DNC or not, one thing
is clear: there's no real evidence linking the DNC and Arizona and Illinois voting system hacks
to the Russian government."
The Mythical "Russian Threat"
Vladimir Putin directly addressed another mythical story, that of the so-called Russian threat
and Russian aggression , at the recent Valdai forum in Sochi from October 24-27, 2016:
"There is another mechanism to ensure the transatlantic security, European security, the
OC security and their attempt at turning this organization (NATO) into an instrument of someone's
political interests. So what the OC is doing is simply void. Mythical threats are devised like
the so-called Russian military threat. Certainly this can be (used to) gain some advantage, get
new budgets, make your allies comply with your demands, make NATO deploy the equipment and troops
closer to our border Russia is not trying to attack anyone. That would be ridiculous The population
of Europe is 300 million and the population of the US is 300 million, while the population of
Russia is 140 million, yet such menaces are served as a pretext. Hysteria has been fueled in the
US with regard to Russia's alleged influence with the current presidential election.
Is there anyone who seriously thinks that Russia can influence the choice of the American
people? Is the US a banana republic? The US is a great power. If I'm wrong please correct me."
Here's what he had to say about who the real aggressor is when it comes to the US (around and
Russia:
"Is it known to you that Russia, in the 90s, completely halted (as did the USSR) any strategic
aviation in the further afield regions of patrol, i.e. not in the closer abroad. We halted such
activity completely. US geostrategic aviation however, with nuclear weapons on board. They continued
to encircle us! What for? Who are you concerned about? Or why are you threatening us? We continued
with the non-patrol year after year. It is only since about 3 years ago that we restarted aviation
patrol further abroad.
Which party is the provocateur here? Is it us?
We have only 2 military bases abroad. They are known areas of terrorism dangers US bases
on the other hand are all over the world. And you are telling me that I am the aggressor? Have
you any common sense?
What are US forces doing in Europe, including nuclear weaponry? What business have they
got there? Listen to me. Our military budget, while increased slightly from last year, in the
dollar equivalent, is about US$50 billion. The military budget of the Pentagon is almost 10 times
that amount. $575 billion, I think Congress singed off on. And you're telling me I'm the aggressor
here? Have you no common sense at all? Is it us putting our forces on the border of the US? Or
other states? Is it NATo, or who, that is moving their bases closer to us? Military infrastructure!
It's not us. Does anyone even listen to us? Or try to have some kind of dialogue with us? The
repeated answer we get is 'mind your own business' and 'each country can choose its own security
measures'. Very well, so will we
And finally, on the antiballistic missile defense system, who was it that exited from the
treaty which was vital to the entire system of international security? Was it us? No. It was the
States. In a one-sided way, they simply withdrew from the treaty. Now they are threatening us,
turning their missiles towards us, not only from Alaska, but also from Europe too
We want to develop normal relations in the sphere of security, in the fight against terrorism,
in the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. We want to work together with you so long as you
want that too."
US Repeatedly Broke Its Promises to Russia and Destroyed Trust
The Western MSM is so one-sided in its coverage of geopolitical events like Ukraine and Syria.
Anyone not toeing the line with US-UK-NATO interests is painted in a bad light. In point of fact,
it has actually been the US who has been breaking agreements with Russia since the end of the Cold
War. US leaders lied to Russian leaders at the time, by promising that NATO would not extend any
further eastward, and possibly even hinting that Russia could join NATO. As Eric Zuesse explains
in his article
America Trashes NATO Founding Act; Rushes Weapons to Russia's Borders :
"The NATO
Founding
Act was agreed to between the US and Russia in 1997 in order to provide to Russia's leader
Boris Yeltsin some modicum of assurance that America wouldn't invade his country. When his predecessor
Mikhail Gorbachev had ended the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact military alliance in 1991, the
representatives of US President GHW Bush told him that NATO wouldn't move "one inch to the east"
(toward Russia), but as soon as Gorbachev committed himself to end the Cold War, Bush
told his agents, regarding what they had all promised to Gorbachev (Bush's promise which had
been conveyed through them), "To hell with that! We prevailed, they didn't". In other words: Bush's
prior instructions to them were merely his lies to Gorbachev, his lies to say that the US wouldn't
try to conquer Russia (move its forces eastward to Russia's borders); but, now, since Gorbachev
was committed and had already agreed that East Germany was to be reunited with and an extension
of West Germany (and the process for doing that had begun), Bush pulled that rug of lies out from
under the end of the Cold War "
Bill Clinton carried on the great American legacy of exceptionalism (that is, excepting themselves
from obeying international law) spearheaded by Daddy Bush of surrounding and dominating Russia by
allowing NATO into the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. Russia got shafted by trusting the US
numerous times after the fall of the Soviet Union. Here's Vladimir Putin once again on America's
broken promises (in April
2016):
"In the early 2000s, we agreed with the Americans to destroy weapons-grade plutonium, on
both sides. We were talking about the excessive amounts that were manufactured by both the US
and Russia. This is the enriched uranium from which nuclear weapons are made. 34000 tonnes, from
both sides. We signed an agreement, and decided that this material would be destroyed in a specific
manner. It would be destroyed in an industrial way – for which special plants needed to be built.
We fulfilled our obligations – we built the necessary plant. Our American partners did not. Moreover,
recently they announced that rather than destroy the enriched material in the manner that we agreed,
and signed an international agreement on, that they would dilute it and store it in a holding
capacity. This means they retain the potential to bring it back
Surely our American partners must understand that, jokes are one thing, such as creating
smear campaigns against Russia, but questions of nuclear security are another thing entirely they
must learn to fulfill their promises.
They once said they would close down Guantanamo. And? Is it closed? No."
Incidentally, this is the exact same plutonium agreement which made the news last month, when
as reported on October 3rd, 216,
Russia suspended
their deal with the US on disposal of plutonium from decommissioned nuclear warheads. A decree
signed by Vladimir Putin lists " the radical change in the environment, a threat to strategic
stability posed by the hostile actions of the US against Russia, and the inability of the US to deliver
on the obligation to dispose of excessive weapons plutonium under international treaties, as well
as the need to take swift action to defend Russian security" as the reasons for why Russia chose
to suspend the deal.
Conclusion: Wake up and Smell the Russophobia
Expect Vladimir Putin and Russia to keep being demonized by the Clintons – and more importantly
the NWO manipulators who so desperately want them in power. Although the Clintons are a powerful
modern American mafia family, replete with a long body count behind them, it's important to remember
they are lackeys for far greater and more pervasive powers (check out some of
Hillary's lovey-dovey letters to Lynn Forester de Rothschild here ). There's a lot at stake here.
Right now, Vladimir Putin and Russia are being used with the sole purpose of getting Clinton elected.
Although Putin is not perfect and has his own dark side, he deserves respect for standing his ground
and refusing to become another US puppet. If we are to believe his own words, he has no qualm with
Americans or even America itself, but rather the selfish, imperialistic and murderous agenda of the
NWO agents running the USA:
"We have a great deal of respect and love for the United States, and especially for the
American people [however] the expansion of jurisdiction by one nation beyond the territory of
its borders, to the rest of the world, is unacceptable and destructive for international relations."
It's up to the American public to switch off CNN (Clinton News Network) and all the other duplicitous
MSM channels and get truly informed. Vladimir Putin is reaching out his hand to America, in the hope
that enough Americans can reclaim their country and work together with other nations in peace. On
the issue of Vladimir Putin and Russia, the MSM is not just one-sided, it's outright lying.
"... progressivism & humanitarianism in war profiteering aka mongering...... "Civilian protective operations" panders a neocon excuse for organized state run murder. Bill went after the Tsar as soon as his closet neocon found out they could have the Germans send a mechanized brigade of Warsaw Pact armaments to the Croats and Yeltsin did nothing. ..."
"... The Russian version of Chamberlain and Munich was Croatian independence. ..."
"... Most career military pilots I knew were terrified by the thought of no more perpetual bombing. ..."
"... They would think Clinton and the neocons can keep a low boil going in the PNAC for another 100 years without tripping into a real war, or bankrupting the USA. ..."
"... It is a signifier of the moral bankruptcy that the exceptional carry as a badge. ..."
War hysteria in a country with imperial nostalgia, one-man rule and a weak economy cannot be
taken lightly.
Michael Khodarkovsky is a professor of history at Loyola University.
[ The fostering of fear of and disdain for Russia is continual now and however false the characterizations
of Russia are, and they are indeed false, the fear and disdain will influence and be self-defeating
for American foreign policy from here till a dramatic change comes from another administration.
I unfortunately find no such change in the offing. ]
progressivism & humanitarianism in war profiteering aka mongering......
"Civilian protective operations" panders a neocon excuse for organized state run murder.
Bill went after the Tsar as soon as his closet neocon found out they could have the Germans
send a mechanized brigade of Warsaw Pact armaments to the Croats and Yeltsin did nothing.
The Russian version of Chamberlain and Munich was Croatian independence.
ilsm -> anne... , -1
Most career military pilots I knew were terrified by the thought of no more perpetual bombing.
They would think Clinton and the neocons can keep a low boil going in the PNAC for another
100 years without tripping into a real war, or bankrupting the USA.
It is a signifier of the moral bankruptcy that the exceptional carry as a badge.
With the "defenses available" to Syria they could enforce no fly zones on GCC and their blood
thirsty allies as as might US over Raqqa.
All of this loses sight of how much the framing effects have skewed this entire discussion.
Bush's signature use of military force and the defining initiative of his presidency-the invasion
of Iraq-was an unusually extreme act as measured either by past U.S. foreign policy or standards
of international conduct that the United States expects of others.
One of the many flaws in the idea that the U.S. should seek a "middle ground" between Bush and
Obama is that it treats their respective records as offering equally damaging and extreme alternatives.
Of course, the cost to the U.S. from the two presidencies is drastically different. Bush's legacy
was to launch wars that have cost trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives, while Obama's
has been his failure to extricate the U.S. from them at a significant but much reduced cost. Obama
has certainly made some very serious and even indefensible mistakes (supporting the war on Yemen
being among the worst), but in terms of the damage done to U.S. interests the costs have been much
lower.
To believe that the U.S. needs to "moderate" between Bush's disasters and Obama's failures
is to believe that the U.S. needs a foreign policy that will be even more costly in American lives
and money than the one we have right now.
That is not only not a "moderate" position to take, but it is also a highly ideological one
that insists on the necessity of U.S. "leadership" no matter how much it costs us.
The 'middle ground" that Clinton offers is no middle ground at all, but rather represents moving
the U.S. in the direction of one of the worst foreign policy records in our history. Obama's great
foreign policy failure was that he could not or would not move the U.S. away from the disastrous
policies of the Bush era, and under Clinton there won't even be the pretense that the U.S. should
try to do this.
"Jen you probably have more on this but it looks like POTUS just said he found out HRC was using her personal email when he
saw it in the news we need to clean this up – he has emails from her – they do not say state.gov"
"How is that not classified?" Huma Abedin to FBI when shown email between Clinton & Obama using his pseudonym. Abedin then
expressed her amazement at the president's use of a pseudonym and asked if she could have a copy of the email."
I can't state how huge this is, it's a cover up involving the President of the United States. There are a lot of emails implying
this, but this email states it very clearly so anyone can understand. The email proves obstruction of justice and shows how they
lied to the FBI, and likely perjury of Congress. This at the very least proves intent by her Chief of Staff.
Obama used executive privilege on their correspondence. Cheryl Mills (who was given immunity) states they need to "clean up"
the Clinton/Obama e-mails because they lacked state.gov.
Additionally, Obama on video publicly denied knowing
about the server. He also claimed on video that he learned
about the secret server through the news like everyone else. The corruption goes all the way to the top! Obama is lying to the
American public.
Hillary Clinton set up her private server to hide her pay to play deals discovered throughout these leaks, and to prevent FOIA
(Freedom of Information Act) requests.
Paul Combetta was hired to modify the email headers that referred to a VERY VERY VIP individual, i.e. change the name of who
it was from. If you
read Stonetear/Combetta
story , it's easy to see this is exactly what he was attempting. He wanted to change header information on already sent mail
to show "state.gov" instead of Hillary's private email address. Multiple people informed him of the infeasibility (and illegality)
of it, so somewhere in the next 6 days it was decided that simply eradicating them was the only option left.
The FBI said they could not find intent of trying to break the law, therefore no recommendation of prosecution. This email
proves, in plain language, that there was intention, and knowingly broke the law.
Ask yourselves: why would they both be communicating on a secret server to each other? Why not through normal proper channels?
What were they hiding? We may soon find out
(Source: The Top 100 Most
Damaging WikiLeaks )
_ _ _
For the uninitiated this breakdown essentially says that President Barack Obama is stone-cold guilty of crimes and cover-ups that
would make Watergate look like a walk in the park .
In fact, Obama is so deeply involved with the criminal workings of State that he had no choice but to lie about his knowledge
of Clinton's private server and personal email account. This is why Emailgate is so HUGE- it's a massive cover-up of the greatest
crimes EVER committed by the US Government . And Obama lied his way all through the never-ending conspiratorial saga. As follows:
Why thousands of emails were forwarded to unsecured computer shared by Abedin with her husband?
How they were forwarded, were they forwarded individually or as a batch operation ?
How many of them are those 30K deleted by Hillary "private" emails ?
Does this batch contains any of previously discovered classified emails?
What was the purpose of forwarding those emails to home computer.
Notable quotes:
"... Somebody at the F.B.I. must have picked up on the fact that the "FIX" was exposed hence on Friday an announcement was made by the F.B.I. that they had found further e-mails, I suspect that all the e-mails will have to be re-examined in the light of the lenient views taken by some F.B. I. Officers taken at the first pass or some more deletions will of necessity have to take place. ..."
"... Meanwhile Clinton is shouting and screaming at the F.B.I. because she now knows that a new fix will be very difficult or impossible in the light of the revealed information and her "charity donations" of over $800,000 have not only been wasted but have exposed her flank! ..."
"... ...the agents discovered the existence of tens of thousands of emails, some of them sent between Ms. Abedin and other Clinton aides, according to senior law enforcement officials ..."
"... Nevertheless, how do you forward tens of thousands of emails? I don't think it can be a batch operation, they must have been forwarded individually. And what of the 30,000 destroyed (by Clinton) emails? ..."
"... "We don't know what this means yet except that it's a real bombshell. And it is unthinkable that the Director of the FBI would take this action lightly, that he would put this letter forth to the Congress of the United States saying there is more information out there about classified e-mails and call it to the attention of congress unless it was something requiring serious investigation. So that's where we are..." ..."
The other day I was reading an article which was talking about two "charity donations" given to the wife of an F.B.I. Officer
involved in the e-mail investigation by "friends of the Clinton's".
The article was very low key it's author briefly wondered if the officer concerned should have excused himself from the investigation.
I also thought it strange that the officers interest had not been declared. Some time later I was reading about details concerning
the e-mails sent from Clinton's staff to members of the F.B.I. ,basically what was happening was that the security rating of the
information contained in non deleted mails was being talked down, at which point for me at least alarm bells were ringing loud
and clear but I did not expect there to be any reaction. O.K. So I'm that cynical.
Somebody at the F.B.I. must have picked up on the fact that the "FIX" was exposed hence on Friday an announcement was made
by the F.B.I. that they had found further e-mails, I suspect that all the e-mails will have to be re-examined in the light of
the lenient views taken by some F.B. I. Officers taken at the first pass or some more deletions will of necessity have to take
place.
Meanwhile Clinton is shouting and screaming at the F.B.I. because she now knows that a new fix will be very difficult or
impossible in the light of the revealed information and her "charity donations" of over $800,000 have not only been wasted but
have exposed her flank!
My Fellow Americans - Here is what the NYT is reporting in contrast to the WaPost's email count of more than 1,000, in terms of
an actual number of emails to be reviewed:
"...the agents discovered the existence of tens of thousands of emails, some of them sent between Ms. Abedin and other
Clinton aides, according to senior law enforcement officials."
Subsequently, that could change what the initial investigation by the Bureau had to look at this summer, and the understanding
that all of the parties acknowledge that about 30k emails were deleted. So the "tens of thousands" may be duplicates or perhaps
copies of the "thumb-drive" that one of HRC's lawyers was said to have been given?
At any rate, this must bring into play at least 18 U.S. Code § 2071 - Concealment, removal, or mutilation generally - and raise
the question about whether conflicting DOJ internal "policy" has any affect on any of the Administration's current or former appointees,
in terms of their "oath of office" or moving forward. And that would bring 5 U.S. Code § 3331 - Oath of office - into play as
well as the 5-year statute of limitations.
We're likely still "Doomed" - so don't get too happy just yet, because EPA could still disallow "draining" anything as a result
of the Clean Water Act, as amended.
CanardNoir 2:41 PM EDT
And here's the Sec. 2071 reason "why":
(b) "Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and
unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned
not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United
States..."
[Edited] Lynch had to recuse herself after meeting with Bill Clinton. Had there not been information showing intent to violate
espionage laws, Comey would have never acted. The fact is she is a criminal and cannot be elected . Image an elected Hillary who
is impeached. The USA deserves better than a this and must turn the Clintons out to pasture forever.
The FBI used to be a respected agency. Now, not so much. Working for, and in collusion with Obama, Loretta Lynch, the Clinton's
and the media makes their "investigation" suspect, to say the least.
Hillary "will say anything and do anything" (Obama's words, not mine) to get elected. Trying to blame her malfeasance on the
FBI is simply stupid. She is so obsessed with money and power that she openly states "I have spent my life helping children and
women". Right. Like when she was an 8 year Senator who only introduced 3 bills naming a couple highways and a bank. Her followers
are dupes and dunces and we can only hope they don't outnumber rationally thinking people.
To think that Weiner and who knows who else had access to U.S. National Security information on the Weiner/Abedin computer.
Sure sounds like the FBI is after Abedin not Clinton.
Dems loved Comey when he slapped Clinton on the wrist for playing loose with U.S. National Security on her email server. Now
those same Dems want to burn Comey at the stake.
Let's not forget how Comey has come to be such a respected official http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic...
In vivid testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, Comey said he alerted FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and raced,
sirens blaring, to join Ashcroft in his hospital room, arriving minutes before Gonzales and Card. Ashcroft, summoning the strength
to lift his head and speak, refused to sign the papers they had brought. Gonzales and Card, who had never acknowledged Comey's
presence in the room, turned and left.
ad_icon
The sickbed visit was the start of a dramatic showdown between the White House and the Justice Department in early 2004 that,
according to Comey, was resolved only when Bush overruled Gonzales and Card. But that was not before Ashcroft, Comey, Mueller
and their aides prepared a mass resignation, Comey said. The domestic spying by the National Security Agency continued for several
weeks without Justice approval, wheresthechow
2:27 AM EST The Clinton's are just so amazing in their cavalier above-the-law attitude that they can't even renovate their
house without breaking the law.
Mr. Weiner has not aged well.....and it is not over....avoid park benches do not visit remote areas.....People you and I know
may have a Boat moored in a slip at a Dock or a Yacht club that's Normal Americana....Yet A.G.Loretta Lynch was waiting on the
Tarmac in her Jet Plane as Bill Clinton leaves His Jet Plane to chat with Loretta ....this is an area of privilege far above yacht
club status....and this meeting broke several laws very quickly...so the A.G. has no authority to comment on what the head of
F.B.I. has done regarding The Weiner Email discovery and whatever Bill had swindled for future favors or past I.O.U's has now
become a waste of AA jet fuel for the,"IN", crowd.....Hillary is starting to look a little like Mr.Weiner; facial tension ,gaunt,hollow
cheeks,terse lips,Bill was supposed to take care of all this....right?Now Mr. Comey had taken the J. Edgar Hoover pledge to Serve
and protect and that would have been us under all other circumstances.....but he has to be loyal to his associates for they are
the top 2% of the entire population and they deserve to be treated as the most important the bureau has....what transpired on
the first pass left them in Mayberry P.D. limbo and will never happen could someone help Loretta Lynch to see the light or the
exit sign ....Please
711810943 10/29/2016 10:56 PM EST
Yep, we're definitely talking about the battle of the twin dumpster fires here...
Celebrity gossip trumps policy, if you'll forgive the expression. But what can you expect in a country that can name three
Kardashian sisters, but not one foreign head of state.
Hmmm... Those deck chairs need rearranging... See ya...
Laptop or PC is property of US once claissified info discovered. 18USC 798, right? Who says a warrant is needed to seize, protect?
No so. And, for sure, they will read, use of which may or may not be impeded thereby. Still, there is allot to investigate, incl.
numerous apparent violations of ethics in govt. act, etc, failures to disclose gifts / income, etc.
The Clintons run a morally corrupt RICO that holds itself above the law. With Obama's support, the Justice Dept., IRS, FBI,
State Dept. have aided and abetted the Clinton corruption of our government. This illustrates Hayek's point in The Road To Serfdom
that when very powerful government institutions are created, "the worst rise to the top". Public power and money attract the least
scrupulous, least honest, most power hungry, and most determined. Though Clinton's cabal publicly poses themselves as humanitarian
progressives, the Doug Band statement of operations among Teneo, CGI, the Foundation, and the Clintons presents the underlying
purpose of selling influence and the crony capital structure devised to split the proceeds. The Clinton Foundation operates outside
the law. So where's the MSM, the IRS, the FBI, Justice...what justice?
To think that Weiner and who knows who else had access to U.S. National Security information on the Weiner/Abedin computer.
Sure sounds like the FBI is after Abedin not Clinton.
Dems loved Comey when he slapped Clinton on the wrist for playing loose with U.S. National Security on her email server. Now
those same Dems want to burn Comey at the stake.
Let's not forget how Comey has come to be such a respected official http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic...
In vivid testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, Comey said he alerted FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and raced,
sirens blaring, to join Ashcroft in his hospital room, arriving minutes before Gonzales and Card. Ashcroft, summoning the strength
to lift his head and speak, refused to sign the papers they had brought. Gonzales and Card, who had never acknowledged Comey's
presence in the room, turned and left.
ad_icon
The sickbed visit was the start of a dramatic showdown between the White House and the Justice Department in early 2004 that,
according to Comey, was resolved only when Bush overruled Gonzales and Card. But that was not before Ashcroft, Comey, Mueller
and their aides prepared a mass resignation, Comey said. The domestic spying by the National Security Agency continued for several
weeks without Justice approval, he said.
"I was angry," Comey testified. "I thought I just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man, who did not have
the powers of the attorney general because they had been transferred to me."
[Edited] In a previous release of information as a result of a Freedom of Information suit, it became known that Huma Abedin
had forwarded emails from Clinton's private email server, to Ms. Abedin's personal yahoo email account.
The new bit of news today, is that the FBI found TENS OF THOUSANDS of Clinton related emails on Weiner's (shared with Abedin?)
laptop. I understand that Mrs. Clinton was SOS for four years.
Nevertheless, how do you forward tens of thousands of emails? I don't think it can be a batch operation, they must have
been forwarded individually. And what of the 30,000 destroyed (by Clinton) emails?
The only thing that makes sense, is that the newly discovered emails include some of the missing emails. As Carl Bernstein
(one of the two original Post reporters who broke the Watergate story, which led to Nixon's resignation) said yesterday:
"We don't know what this means yet except that it's a real bombshell. And it is unthinkable that the Director of the
FBI would take this action lightly, that he would put this letter forth to the Congress of the United States saying there is
more information out there about classified e-mails and call it to the attention of congress unless it was something requiring
serious investigation. So that's where we are..."
"... A key justification of the Bush administration's purported strategy of 'democratising' the Middle East is the argument that democracies are pacific, and that Muslim democracies will therefore eventually settle down peacefully under the benign hegemony of the US. ..."
"... The president's title of 'commander-in-chief' is used by administration propagandists to suggest, in a way reminiscent of German militarists before 1914 attempting to defend their half-witted Kaiser, that any criticism of his record in external affairs comes close to a betrayal of the military and the country. ..."
"... The new American militarism is the handiwork of several disparate groups that shared little in common apart from being intent on undoing the purportedly nefarious effects of the 1960s. Military officers intent on rehabilitating their profession; intellectuals fearing that the loss of confidence at home was paving the way for the triumph of totalitarianism abroad; religious leaders dismayed by the collapse of traditional moral standards; strategists wrestling with the implications of a humiliating defeat that had undermined their credibility; politicians on the make; purveyors of pop culture looking to make a buck: as early as 1980, each saw military power as the apparent answer to any number of problems. ..."
"... Two other factors have also been critical: the dependence on imported oil is seen as requiring American hegemony over the Middle East; and the Israel lobby has worked assiduously and with extraordinary success to make sure that Israel's enemies are seen by Americans as also being those of the US. ..."
"... And let's not forget the role played by the entrenched interests of the military itself and what Dwight Eisenhower once denounced as the 'military-industrial-academic complex'. ..."
"... The security elites are obviously interested in the maintenance and expansion of US global military power, if only because their own jobs and profits depend on it. ..."
"... To achieve wider support in the media and among the public, it is also necessary to keep up the illusion that certain foreign nations constitute a threat to the US, and to maintain a permanent level of international tension. ..."
"... They would include the element of messianism embodied in American civic nationalism, with its quasi-religious belief in the universal and timeless validity of its own democratic system, and in its right and duty to spread that system to the rest of the world. ..."
"... Wall Street Journal ..."
"... Important sections of contemporary US popular culture are suffused with the language of militarism. ..."
"... Red Storm Rising ..."
"... Indeed, a portrait of US militarism today could be built around a set of such apparently glaring contradictions: the contradiction, for example, between the military coercion of other nations and the belief in the spreading of 'freedom' and 'democracy'. Among most non-Americans, and among many American realists and progressives, the collocation seems inherently ludicrous. But, as Bacevich brings out, it has deep roots in American history. Indeed, the combination is historically coterminous with Western imperialism. Historians of the future will perhaps see preaching 'freedom' at the point of an American rifle as no less morally and intellectually absurd than 'voluntary' conversion to Christianity at the point of a Spanish arquebus. ..."
"... Today, having dissolved any connection between claims to citizenship and obligation to serve, Americans entrust their security to a class of military professionals who see themselves in many respects as culturally and politically set apart from the rest of society. ..."
"... British power was far from unlimited. The British Empire could use its technological superiority, small numbers of professional troops and local auxiliaries to conquer backward and impoverished countries in Asia and Africa, but it would not have dreamed of intervening unilaterally in Europe or North America. ..."
"... As Iraq – and to a lesser extent Afghanistan – has demonstrated, the US can knock over states, but it cannot suppress the resulting insurgencies, even one based in such a comparatively small population as the Sunni Arabs of Iraq. ..."
"... Recognizing this, the army is beginning to imitate ancient Rome in offering citizenship to foreign mercenaries in return for military service – something that the amazing Boot approves, on the grounds that while it helped destroy the Roman Empire, it took four hundred years to do so. ..."
"... The fact that the Democrats completely failed to do this says a great deal about their lack of political will, leadership and capacity to employ a focused strategy. ..."
The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War by
Andrew Bacevich
Oxford, 270 pp, £16.99, August 2005, ISBN 0 19 517338 4
A key justification of the Bush administration's purported strategy of 'democratising' the
Middle East is the argument that democracies are pacific, and that Muslim democracies will therefore
eventually settle down peacefully under the benign hegemony of the US. Yet, as Andrew Bacevich
points out in one of the most acute analyses of America to have appeared in recent years, the United
States itself is in many ways a militaristic country, and becoming more so:
at the end of the Cold War, Americans said yes to military power. The skepticism about arms
and armies that informed the original Wilsonian vision, indeed, that pervaded the American experiment
from its founding, vanished. Political leaders, liberals and conservatives alike, became enamoured
with military might.
The ensuing affair had, and continues to have, a heedless, Gatsby-like aspect, a passion pursued
in utter disregard of any consequences that might ensue.
The president's title of 'commander-in-chief' is used by administration propagandists to suggest,
in a way reminiscent of German militarists before 1914 attempting to defend their half-witted Kaiser,
that any criticism of his record in external affairs comes close to a betrayal of the military and
the country. Compared to German and other past militarisms, however, the contemporary American
variant is extremely complex, and the forces that have generated it have very diverse origins and
widely differing motives:
The new American militarism is the handiwork of several disparate groups that shared little
in common apart from being intent on undoing the purportedly nefarious effects of the 1960s. Military
officers intent on rehabilitating their profession; intellectuals fearing that the loss of confidence
at home was paving the way for the triumph of totalitarianism abroad; religious leaders dismayed
by the collapse of traditional moral standards; strategists wrestling with the implications of
a humiliating defeat that had undermined their credibility; politicians on the make; purveyors
of pop culture looking to make a buck: as early as 1980, each saw military power as the apparent
answer to any number of problems.
Two other factors have also been critical: the dependence on imported oil is seen as requiring
American hegemony over the Middle East; and the Israel lobby has worked assiduously and with extraordinary
success to make sure that Israel's enemies are seen by Americans as also being those of the US.
And let's not forget the role played by the entrenched interests of the military itself and
what Dwight Eisenhower once denounced as the 'military-industrial-academic complex'.
The security elites are obviously interested in the maintenance and expansion of US global
military power, if only because their own jobs and profits depend on it. Jobs and patronage
also ensure the support of much of the Congress, which often authorizes defense spending on weapons
systems the Pentagon doesn't want and hasn't asked for, in order to help some group of senators and
congressmen in whose home states these systems are manufactured. To achieve wider support in
the media and among the public, it is also necessary to keep up the illusion that certain foreign
nations constitute a threat to the US, and to maintain a permanent level of international tension.
That's not the same, however, as having an actual desire for war, least of all for a major conflict
which might ruin the international economy. US ground forces have bitter memories of Vietnam, and
no wish to wage an aggressive war: Rumsfeld and his political appointees had to override the objections
of the senior generals, in particular those of the army chief of staff, General Eric Shinseki, before
the attack on Iraq. The navy and air force do not have to fight insurgents in hell-holes like Fallujah,
and so naturally have a more relaxed attitude.
To understand how the Bush administration was able to manipulate the public into supporting the
Iraq war one has to look for deeper explanations. They would include the element of messianism
embodied in American civic nationalism, with its quasi-religious belief in the universal and timeless
validity of its own democratic system, and in its right and duty to spread that system to the rest
of the world. This leads to a genuine belief that American soldiers can do no real wrong because
they are spreading 'freedom'. Also of great importance – at least until the Iraqi insurgency rubbed
American noses in the horrors of war – has been the development of an aesthetic that sees war as
waged by the US as technological, clean and antiseptic; and thanks to its supremacy in weaponry,
painlessly victorious. Victory over the Iraqi army in 2003 led to a new flowering of megalomania
in militarist quarters. The amazing Max Boot of the Wall Street Journal – an armchair commentator,
not a frontline journalist – declared that the US victory had made 'fabled generals such as Erwin
Rommel and Heinz Guderian seem positively incompetent by comparison'. Nor was this kind of talk restricted
to Republicans. More than two years into the Iraq quagmire, strategic thinkers from the Democratic
establishment were still declaring that 'American military power in today's world is practically
unlimited.'
Important sections of contemporary US popular culture are suffused with the language of militarism.
Take Bacevich on the popular novelist Tom Clancy:
In any Clancy novel, the international order is a dangerous and threatening place, awash with
heavily armed and implacably determined enemies who threaten the United States. That Americans
have managed to avoid Armageddon is attributable to a single fact: the men and women of America's
uniformed military and its intelligence services have thus far managed to avert those threats.
The typical Clancy novel is an unabashed tribute to the skill, honor, extraordinary technological
aptitude and sheer decency of the nation's defenders. To read Red Storm Rising is to
enter a world of 'virtuous men and perfect weapons', as one reviewer noted. 'All the Americans
are paragons of courage, endurance and devotion to service and country. Their officers are uniformly
competent and occasionally inspired. Men of all ranks are faithful husbands and devoted fathers.'
Indeed, in the contract that he signed for the filming of Red October, Clancy stipulated
that nothing in the film show the navy in a bad light.
Such attitudes go beyond simply glorying in violence, military might and technological prowess.
They reflect a belief – genuine or assumed – in what the Germans used to call Soldatentum:
the pre-eminent value of the military virtues of courage, discipline and sacrifice, and explicitly
or implicitly the superiority of these virtues to those of a hedonistic, contemptible and untrustworthy
civilian society and political class. In the words of Thomas Friedman, the ostensibly liberal foreign
affairs commentator of the ostensibly liberal New York Times, 'we do not deserve these people.
They are so much better than the country they are fighting for.' Such sentiments have a sinister
pedigree in modern history.
In the run-up to the last election, even a general as undistinguished as Wesley Clark could see
his past generalship alone as qualifying him for the presidency – and gain the support of leading
liberal intellectuals. Not that this was new: the first president was a general and throughout the
19th and 20th centuries both generals and more junior officers ran for the presidency on the strength
of their military records. And yet, as Bacevich points out, this does not mean that the uniformed
military have real power over policy-making, even in matters of war. General Tommy Franks may have
regarded Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense, as 'the stupidest fucking guy on the planet',
but he took Feith's orders, and those of the civilians standing behind him: Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld
and the president himself. Their combination of militarism and contempt for military advice recalls
Clemenceau and Churchill – or Hitler and Stalin.
Indeed, a portrait of US militarism today could be built around a set of such apparently glaring
contradictions: the contradiction, for example, between the military coercion of other nations and
the belief in the spreading of 'freedom' and 'democracy'. Among most non-Americans, and among many
American realists and progressives, the collocation seems inherently ludicrous. But, as Bacevich
brings out, it has deep roots in American history. Indeed, the combination is historically coterminous
with Western imperialism. Historians of the future will perhaps see preaching 'freedom' at the point
of an American rifle as no less morally and intellectually absurd than 'voluntary' conversion to
Christianity at the point of a Spanish arquebus.
Its symbols may be often childish and its methods brutish, but American belief in 'freedom' is
a real and living force. This cuts two ways. On the one hand, the adherence of many leading intellectuals
in the Democratic Party to a belief in muscular democratization has had a disastrous effect on the
party's ability to put up a strong resistance to the policies of the administration. Bush's messianic
language of 'freedom' – supported by the specifically Israeli agenda of Natan Sharansky and his allies
in the US – has been all too successful in winning over much of the opposition. On the other hand,
the fact that a belief in freedom and democracy lies at the heart of civic nationalism places certain
limits on American imperialism – weak no doubt, but nonetheless real. It is not possible for the
US, unlike previous empires, to pursue a strategy of absolutely unconstrained Machtpolitik.
This has been demonstrated recently in the breach between the Bush administration and the Karimov
tyranny in Uzbekistan.
The most important contradiction, however, is between the near worship of the military in much
of American culture and the equally widespread unwillingness of most Americans – elites and masses
alike – to serve in the armed forces. If people like Friedman accompanied their stated admiration
for the military with a real desire to abandon their contemptible civilian lives and join the armed
services, then American power in the world really might be practically unlimited. But as Bacevich
notes,
having thus made plain his personal disdain for crass vulgarity and support for moral rectitude,
Friedman in the course of a single paragraph drops the military and moves on to other pursuits.
His many readers, meanwhile, having availed themselves of the opportunity to indulge, ever so
briefly, in self-loathing, put down their newspapers and themselves move on to other things. Nothing
has changed, but columnist and readers alike feel better for the cathartic effect of this oblique,
reassuring encounter with an alien world.
Today, having dissolved any connection between claims to citizenship and obligation to
serve, Americans entrust their security to a class of military professionals who see themselves
in many respects as culturally and politically set apart from the rest of society.
This combination of a theoretical adulation with a profound desire not to serve is not of course
new. It characterized most of British society in the 19th century, when, just as with the US today,
the overwhelming rejection of conscription – until 1916 – meant that, appearances to the contrary,
British power was far from unlimited. The British Empire could use its technological superiority,
small numbers of professional troops and local auxiliaries to conquer backward and impoverished countries
in Asia and Africa, but it would not have dreamed of intervening unilaterally in Europe or North
America.
Despite spending more on the military than the rest of the world combined, and despite enjoying
overwhelming technological superiority, American military power is actually quite limited. As
Iraq – and to a lesser extent Afghanistan – has demonstrated, the US can knock over states, but it
cannot suppress the resulting insurgencies, even one based in such a comparatively small population
as the Sunni Arabs of Iraq. As for invading and occupying a country the size of Iran, this is
coming to seem as unlikely as an invasion of mainland China.
In other words, when it comes to actually applying military power the US is pretty much where
it has been for several decades. Another war of occupation like Iraq would necessitate the restoration
of conscription: an idea which, with Vietnam in mind, the military detests, and which politicians
are well aware would probably make them unelectable. It is just possible that another terrorist attack
on the scale of 9/11 might lead to a new draft, but that would bring the end of the US military empire
several steps closer. Recognizing this, the army is beginning to imitate ancient Rome in offering
citizenship to foreign mercenaries in return for military service – something that the amazing Boot
approves, on the grounds that while it helped destroy the Roman Empire, it took four hundred years
to do so.
Facing these dangers squarely, Bacevich proposes refocusing American strategy away from
empire and towards genuine national security. It is a measure of the degree to which imperial thinking
now dominates US politics that these moderate and commonsensical proposals would seem nothing short
of revolutionary to the average member of the Washington establishment.
They include a renunciation of messianic dreams of improving the world through military force,
except where a solid international consensus exists in support of US action; a recovery by Congress
of its power over peace and war, as laid down in the constitution but shamefully surrendered in recent
years; the adoption of a strategic doctrine explicitly making war a matter of last resort; and a
decision that the military should focus on the defense of the nation, not the projection of US power.
As a means of keeping military expenditure in some relationship to actual needs, Bacevich suggests
pegging it to the combined annual expenditure of the next ten countries, just as in the 19th century
the size of the British navy was pegged to that of the next two largest fleets – it is an index of
the budgetary elephantiasis of recent years that this would lead to very considerable spending reductions.
This book is important not only for the acuteness of its perceptions, but also for the identity
of its author. Colonel Bacevich's views on the military, on US strategy and on world affairs were
profoundly shaped by his service in Vietnam. His year there 'fell in the conflict's bleak latter
stages long after an odor of failure had begun to envelop the entire enterprise'. The book is dedicated
to his brother-in-law, 'a casualty of a misbegotten war'.
Just as Vietnam shaped his view of how the US and the US military should not intervene in the
outside world, so the Cold War in Europe helped define his beliefs about the proper role of the military.
For Bacevich and his fellow officers in Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, defending the West from possible
Soviet aggression, 'not conquest, regime change, preventive war or imperial policing', was 'the American
soldier's true and honorable calling'.
In terms of cultural and political background, this former soldier remains a self-described Catholic
conservative, and intensely patriotic. During the 1990s Bacevich wrote for right-wing journals, and
still situates himself culturally on the right:
As long as we shared in the common cause of denouncing the foolishness and hypocrisies of the
Clinton years, my relationship with modern American conservatism remained a mutually agreeable
one But my disenchantment with what passes for mainstream conservatism, embodied in the Bush
administration and its groupies, is just about absolute. Fiscal irresponsibility, a buccaneering
foreign policy, a disregard for the constitution, the barest lip service as a response to profound
moral controversies: these do not qualify as authentically conservative values.
On this score my views have come to coincide with the critique long offered by the radical
left: it is the mainstream itself, the professional liberals as well as the professional conservatives,
who define the problem The Republican and Democratic Parties may not be identical,
but they produce nearly identical results.
Bacevich, in other words, is skeptical of the naive belief that replacing the present administration
with a Democrat one would lead to serious changes in the US approach to the world. Formal party allegiances
are becoming increasingly irrelevant as far as thinking about foreign and security policy is concerned.
Bacevich also makes plain the private anger of much of the US uniformed military at the way in
which it has been sacrificed, and its institutions damaged, by chickenhawk civilian chauvinists who
have taken good care never to see action themselves; and the deep private concern of senior officers
that they might be ordered into further wars that would wreck the army altogether. Now, as never
before, American progressives have the chance to overcome the knee-jerk hostility to the uniformed
military that has characterized the left since Vietnam, and to reach out not only to the soldiers
in uniform but also to the social, cultural and regional worlds from which they are drawn. For if
the American left is once again to become an effective political force, it must return to some of
its own military traditions, founded on the distinguished service of men like George McGovern, on
the old idea of the citizen soldier, and on a real identification with that soldier's interests and
values. With this in mind, Bacevich calls for moves to bind the military more closely into American
society, including compulsory education for all officers at a civilian university, not only at the
start of their careers but at intervals throughout them.
Or to put it another way, the left must fight imperialism in the name of patriotism. Barring a
revolutionary and highly unlikely transformation of American mass culture, any political party that
wishes to win majority support will have to demonstrate its commitment to the defense of the country.
The Bush administration has used the accusation of weakness in security policy to undermine its opponents,
and then used this advantage to pursue reckless strategies that have themselves drastically weakened
the US. The left needs to heed Bacevich and draw up a tough, realistic and convincing alternative.
It will also have to demonstrate its identification with the respectable aspects of military culture.
The Bush administration and the US establishment in general may have grossly mismanaged the threats
facing us, but the threats are real, and some at least may well need at some stage to be addressed
by military force. And any effective military force also requires the backing of a distinctive military
ethic embracing loyalty, discipline and a capacity for both sacrifice and ruthlessness.
In the terrible story of the Bush administration and the Iraq war, one of the most morally disgusting
moments took place at a Senate Committee hearing on 29 April 2004, when Paul Wolfowitz – another
warmonger who has never served himself – mistook, by a margin of hundreds, how many US soldiers had
died in a war for which he was largely responsible. If an official in a Democratic administration
had made a public mistake like that, the Republican opposition would have exploited it ruthlessly,
unceasingly, to win the next election. The fact that the Democrats completely failed to do this
says a great deal about their lack of political will, leadership and capacity to employ a focused
strategy.
Because they are the ones who pay the price for reckless warmongering and geopolitical megalomania,
soldiers and veterans of the army and marine corps could become valuable allies in the struggle to
curb American imperialism, and return America's relationship with its military to the old limited,
rational form. For this to happen, however, the soldiers have to believe that campaigns against the
Iraq war, and against current US strategy, are anti-militarist, but not anti-military. We have needed
the military desperately on occasions in the past; we will definitely need them again.
The success of [civil rights and anti-apartheid] movements did not end racism, but drove
it underground, allowing neoliberals to exploit racist and tribalist political support while
pursuing the interests of wealth and capital, at the expense of the (disproportionately non-white)
poor.
That coalition has now been replaced by one in which the tribalists and racists are dominant.
For the moment at least, [hard] neoliberals continue to support the parties they formerly controlled,
with the result that the balance of political forces between the right and the opposing coalition
of soft neoliberals and the left has not changed significantly.
There's an ambiguity in this narrative and in the three-party analysis.
Do we acknowledge that the soft neoliberals in control of the coalition that includes the inchoate
left also "exploit racist and tribalist political support while pursuing the interests of wealth
and capital, at the expense of the (disproportionately non-white) poor."? They do it with a different
style and maybe with some concession to economic melioration, as well as supporting anti-racist
and feminist policy to keep the inchoate left on board, but . . .
The new politics of the right has lost faith in the hard neoliberalism that formerly furnished
its policy agenda of tax cuts for the rich, war in the Middle East and so on, leaving the impure
resentment ungoverned and unfocused, as you say.
The soft neoliberals, it seems to me, are using anti-racism to discredit economic populism
and its motivations, using the new politics of the right as a foil.
The problem of how to oppose racism and tribalism effectively is now entangled with soft neoliberal
control of the remaining party coalition, which is to say with the credibility of the left party
as a vehicle for economic populism and the credibility of economic populism as an antidote for
racism or sexism. (cf js. @ 1,2)
The form of tribalism used to mobilize the left entails denying that an agenda of economic
populism is relevant to the problems of sexism and racism, because the deplorables must be deplored
to get out the vote. And, because the (soft) neoliberals in charge must keep economic populism
under control to deliver the goods to their donor base.
"... Now the threat is real; and for the foreseeable future we will have to live with and seek to reduce two closely interlinked dangers: the direct and potentially apocalyptic threat posed by terrorists, mainly (though by no means exclusively) based in the Muslim world, and the potential strengthening of those terrorists' resolve by misguided US actions. ..."
"... The most unilateralist Administration in modern American history has been forced to recognise, in principle at least, the country's pressing need for allies ..."
"... Apart from the fact that most European armies are useless when it comes to serious warfare, they are already showing great unwillingness to give the US a blank cheque for whatever military action the Bush Administration chooses to take. ..."
"... A strong sense of righteousness has always been present in the American tradition; but until 11 September, an acute sense of victimhood and persecution by the outside world was usually the preserve of the paranoid Right. ..."
"Who says we share common values with the Europeans? They don't even go to church!" Will the atrocities
of September 11 push America further to the right or open a new debate on foreign policy and the
need for alliances? In this exclusive online essay from the London Review of Books, Anatol Lieven
considers how the cold war legacy may affect the war on terrorism
Not long after the Bush Administration took power in January, I was invited to lunch at a glamorous
restaurant in New York by a group of editors and writers from an influential American right-wing
broadsheet. The food and wine were extremely expensive, the decor luxurious but discreet, the clientele
beautifully dressed, and much of the conversation more than mildly insane. With regard to the greater
part of the world outside America, my hosts' attitude was a combination of loathing, contempt, distrust
and fear: not only towards Arabs, Russians, Chinese, French and others, but towards 'European socialist
governments', whatever that was supposed to mean. This went with a strong desire - in theory at least
- to take military action against a broad range of countries across the world.
Two things were particularly striking here: a tendency to divide the world into friends and enemies,
and a difficulty verging on autism when it came to international opinions that didn't coincide with
their own - a combination more appropriate to the inhabitants of an ethnic slum in the Balkans than
to people who were, at that point, on top of the world.
Today Americans of all classes and opinions have reason to worry, and someone real to fear and
hate, while prolonged US military action overseas is thought to be inevitable. The building where
we had lunch is now rubble. Several of our fellow diners probably died last week, along with more
than six thousand other New Yorkers from every walk of life. Not only has the terrorist attack claimed
far more victims than any previous such attack anywhere in the world, but it has delivered a far
more damaging economic blow. Equally important, it has destroyed Americans' belief in their country's
invulnerability, on which so many other American attitudes and policies finally rested.
This shattering blow was delivered by a handful of anonymous agents hidden in the wider population,
working as part of a tightly-knit secret international conspiracy inspired by a fanatical and (to
the West) deeply 'alien' and 'exotic' religious ideology. Its members are ruthless; they have remarkable
organisational skills, a tremendous capacity for self-sacrifice and self-discipline, and a deep hatred
of the United States and the Western way of life. As Richard Hofstader and others have argued, for
more than two hundred years this kind of combination has always acted as a prompt for paranoid and
reactionary conspiracy theories, most of them groundless.
Now the threat is real; and for the foreseeable future we will have to live with and seek to reduce
two closely interlinked dangers: the direct and potentially apocalyptic threat posed by terrorists,
mainly (though by no means exclusively) based in the Muslim world, and the potential strengthening
of those terrorists' resolve by misguided US actions.
The latter danger has been greatly increased by the attacks. The terrorists have raised to white
heat certain smouldering tendencies among the American Right, while simultaneously - as is usually
the case at the start of wars - pushing American politics and most of its population in a sharply
rightward direction; all of which has taken place under an unexpectedly right-wing Administration.
If this leads to a crude military response, then the terrorists will have achieved part of their
purpose, which was to provoke the other side to indiscriminate retaliation, and thereby increase
their own support.
It is too early to say for sure how US strategies and attitudes will develop. At the time of writing
Afghanistan is the focus, but whatever happens there, it isn't clear whether the US Administration
will go on to launch a more general campaign of military pressure against other states which have
supported terrorist groups, and if so, what states and what kind of military pressure? US policy
is already pulled in two predictable but contradictory directions, amply illustrated in the op-ed
pages of US newspapers and in debates within the Government.
The most unilateralist Administration in modern American history has been forced to recognise,
in principle at least, the country's pressing need for allies. There are the beginnings, too, of
a real public debate on how US policy needs to be changed and shaped to fight the new 'war'. All
this is reminiscent of US attitudes and behaviour at the start of the Cold War, when Communism was
identified as the central menace to the US and to Western capitalism and democracy in general.
On the other hand, the public desire for revenge has strengthened certain attitudes - especially
in the Republican Party and media, as well as parts of the Administration - which, if they prevail,
will not only be dangerous in themselves, but will make the search for real allies difficult. And
real allies are essential, above all in the Arab and Muslim worlds. In the longer run, only the full
co-operation of Arab regimes - along with reform and economic development - can prevent the recruitment,
funding and operations of Arab-based terrorist groups.
As for Europe, British military support may be unconditional, but most European countries - Russia
among them - are likely to restrict their help to intelligence and policing. Apart from the fact
that most European armies are useless when it comes to serious warfare, they are already showing
great unwillingness to give the US a blank cheque for whatever military action the Bush Administration
chooses to take.
Yet a blank cheque is precisely what the Administration, and the greater part of US public opinion,
are asking for. This is Jim Hoagland, veteran establishment foreign correspondent and commentator,
in the generally liberal Washington Post:
"Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and many of the other Arab states Powell hopes to recruit for the bin
Laden posse have long been part of the problem, not part of the solution to international terrorism.
These states cannot be given free passes for going through the motions of helping the United States.
And European allies cannot be allowed to order an appetiser of bin Laden and not share in the costs
of the rest of a meal cooked in hell."
If this is the Post, then the sentiments in the right-wing press and the tabloids can well be
imagined. Here is Tod Lindberg, the editor of Policy Review, writing in the Washington Times:
"The United States is now energetically in the business of making governments pick a side: either
with us and against the terrorists, or against us and with them... Against the category of enemy
stands the category of 'friend'. Friends stand with us. Friends do whatever they can to help. Friends
don't, for example, engage in commerce with enemies, otherwise they aren't friends."
A strong sense of righteousness has always been present in the American tradition; but until 11
September, an acute sense of victimhood and persecution by the outside world was usually the preserve
of the paranoid Right. Now it has spread and, for the moment at least, some rather important ideas
have almost vanished from the public debate: among them, that other states have their own national
interests, and that in the end nothing compels them to help the US; that they, too, have been the
victims of terrorism - in the case of Britain, largely funded from groups in the United States -
but have not insisted on a right of unilateral military retaliation (this point was made by Niall
Ferguson in the New York Times, but not as yet in any op-ed by an American that I have seen); and
that in some cases these states may actually know more about their own part of the world than US
intelligence does.
Beyond the immediate and unforeseeable events in Afghanistan - and their sombre implications for
Pakistan - lies the bigger question of US policy in the Arab world. Here, too, Administration policy
may well be a good deal more cautious than the opinions of the right-wing media would suggest - which
again is fortunate, because much opinion on this subject is more than rabid. Here is AM Rosenthal
in the Washington Times arguing that an amazing range of states should be given ultimatums to surrender
not only alleged terrorists but also their own senior officials accused by the US of complicity:
"The ultimatum should go to the governments of Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Sudan and
any other devoted to the elimination of the United States or the constant incitement of hatred against
it... In the three days the terrorists consider the American ultimatum, the residents of the countries
would be urged 24 hours a day by the United States to flee the capital and major cities, because
they would be bombed to the ground beginning the fourth."
Rosenthal isn't a figure from the lunatic fringe ranting on a backwoods radio show, but the former
executive editor of the New York Times, writing in a paper with great influence in the Republican
Party, especially under the present Administration.
No Administration is going to do anything remotely like this. But if the Secretary of State, Colin
Powell, has emerged as the voice of moderation, with a proper commitment to multilateralism, other
voices are audible, too. Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defence, has spoken of "ending states
which support terrorism", and in the case of Iraq, there are those who would now like to complete
the work of the Gulf War and finish off Saddam Hussein.
Here, too, the mood of contempt for allies contributes to the ambition. Thus Kim Holmes, vice-president
of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, argued that only deference to America's Arab allies prevented
the US from destroying the Iraqi regime in 1991 (the profound unwillingness of Bush Senior to occupy
Iraq and take responsibility for the place also played its part in the decision): "To show that this
war is not with Islam per se, the US could be tempted to restrain itself militarily and accommodate
the complex and contradictory political agendas of Islamic states. This in turn could make the campaign
ineffectual, prolonging the problem of terrorism."
Getting rid of Saddam Hussein is not in itself a bad idea. His is a pernicious regime, a menace
to his own people and his neighbours, as well as to the West. And if the Iraqi threat to the Gulf
States could be eliminated, US troops might be withdrawn from Saudi Arabia: it was their permanent
stationing on the holy soil of Islam that turned Osama bin Laden from an anti-Soviet mujahid into
an anti-American terrorist.
But only if it were to take place in the context of an entirely new policy towards Palestine would
the US be able to mount such a campaign without provoking massive unrest across the Arab world; and
given what became of promises made during the Gulf War, there would first of all have to be firm
evidence of a US change of heart. The only borders between Israel and Palestine which would have
any chance of satisfying a majority of Palestinians and Arabs - and conforming to UN resolutions,
for what they are worth - would be those of 1967, possibly qualified by an internationalisation of
Jerusalem under UN control. This would entail the removal of the existing Jewish settlements in the
Occupied Territories, and would be absolutely unacceptable to any imaginable Israeli Government.
To win Israeli agreement would require not just US pressure, but the threat of a complete breach
of relations and the ending of aid.
There may be those in the Administration who would favour adopting such an approach at a later
stage. Bush Sr's was the most anti-Israeli Administration of the past two generations, and was disliked
accordingly by the Jewish and other ethnic lobbies. His son's is less beholden to those lobbies than
Clinton's was. And it may be that even pro-Israeli US politicians will at some point realise that
Israel's survival as such is not an issue: that it is absurd to increase the risk to Washington and
New York for the sake of 267 extremist settlers in Hebron and their comrades elsewhere.
Still, in the short term, a radical shift is unlikely, and an offensive against Iraq would therefore
be dangerous. The attacks on New York and the Pentagon and the celebrations in parts of the Arab
world have increased popular hostility to the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular,
a hostility assiduously stoked by Israeli propaganda. But when it comes to denouncing hate crimes
against Muslims - or those taken to be Muslims - within the US, the Administration has behaved decently,
perhaps because they have a rather sobering precedent in mind, one which has led to genuine shame:
the treatment of Japanese Americans during world war two.
This shame is the result of an applied historical intelligence that does not extend to the Arab
world. Americans tend - and perhaps need - to confuse the symptoms and the causes of Arab anger.
Since a key pro-Israel position in the US has been that fundamental Palestinian and Arab grievances
must not be allowed legitimacy or even discussed, the only explanation of Arab hostility to the US
and its ally must be sought in innate features of Arab society, whether a contemporary culture of
anti-semitism (and anti-Americanism) sanctioned by Arab leaderships, or ancient 'Muslim' traditions
of hostility to the West.
All of which may contain some truth: but the central issue, the role of Israeli policies in providing
a focus for such hatred, is overwhelmingly ignored. As a result, it is extremely difficult, and mostly
impossible, to hold any frank discussion of the most important issue affecting the position of the
US in the Middle East or the open sympathy for terrorism in the region. A passionately held nationalism
usually has the effect of corrupting or silencing those liberal intellectuals who espouse it. This
is the case of Israeli nationalism in the US. It is especially distressing that it should afflict
the Jewish liberal intelligentsia, that old bedrock of sanity and tolerance.
An Administration which wanted a radical change of policy towards Israel would have to generate
a new public debate almost from scratch - which would not be possible until some kind of tectonic
shift had taken place in American society. Too many outside observers who blame US Administrations
forget that on a wide range of issues, it is essentially Congress and not the White House or State
Department which determines foreign policy; this is above all true of US aid. An inability or unwillingness
to try to work on Congress, as opposed to going through normal diplomatic channels, has been a minor
contributory factor to Britain's inability to get any purchase on US policy in recent years.
The role of Congress brings out what might be called the Wilhelmine aspects of US foreign and
security policy. By that I do not mean extreme militarism or a love of silly hats, or even a shared
tendency to autism when it comes to understanding the perceptions of other countries, but rather
certain structural features in both the Wilhemine and the US system tending to produce over-ambition,
and above all a chronic incapacity to choose between diametrically opposite goals. Like Wilhelmine
Germany, the US has a legislature with very limited constitutional powers in the field of foreign
policy, even though it wields considerable de facto power and is not linked either institutionally
or by party discipline to the executive. The resulting lack of any responsibility for actual consequences
is a standing invitation to rhetorical grandstanding, and the pursuit of sectional interests at the
expense of overall policy.
Meanwhile, the executive, while in theory supremely powerful in this field, has in fact continually
to woo the legislature without ever being able to command its support. This, too, encourages dependence
on interest groups, as well as a tendency to overcome differences and gain support by making appeals
in terms of overheated patriotism rather than policy. Finally, in both systems, though for completely
different reasons, supreme executive power had or has a tendency to fall into the hands of people
totally unsuited for any but the ceremonial aspects of the job, and endlessly open to manipulation
by advisers, ministers and cliques.
In the US, this did not matter so much during the Cold War, when a range of Communist threats
- real, imagined or fabricated - held the system together in the pursuit of more or less common aims.
With the disappearance of the unifying threat, however, there has been a tendency, again very Wilhelmine,
to produce ambitious and aggressive policies in several directions simultaneously, often with little
reference at all to real US interests or any kind of principle.
The new 'war against terrorism' in Administration and Congressional rhetoric has been cast as
just such a principle, unifying the country and the political establishment behind a common goal
and affecting or determining a great range of other policies. The language has been reminiscent of
the global struggle against Communism, and confronting Islamist radicalism in the Muslim world does,
it's true, pose some of the same challenges, on a less global scale, though possibly with even greater
dangers for the world.
The likelihood that US strategy in the 'war against terrorism' will resemble that of the Cold
War is greatly increased by the way Cold War structures and attitudes have continued to dominate
the US foreign policy and security elites. Charles Tilly and others have written of the difficulty
states have in 'ratcheting down' wartime institutions and especially wartime spending. In the 1990s,
this failure on the part of the US to escape its Cold War legacy was a curse, ensuring unnecessarily
high military spending in the wrong fields, thoroughly negative attitudes to Russia, 'zero-sum' perceptions
of international security issues in general, and perceptions of danger which wholly failed, as we
now see, to meet the real threats to security and lives.
The idea of a National Missile Defense is predicated on a limited revival of the Cold War, with
China cast in the role of the Soviet Union and the Chinese nuclear deterrent as the force to be nullified.
Bush's foreign and security team is almost entirely a product of Cold War structures and circumscribed
by Cold War attitudes (which is not true of the President himself, who was never interested enough
in foreign policy; if he can get his mind round the rest of the world, he could well be more of a
free-thinker than many of his staff).
The collapse of the Communist alternative to Western-dominated modernisation and the integration
(however imperfect) of Russia and China into the world capitalist order have been a morally and socially
ambiguous process, to put it mildly; but in the early 1990s they seemed to promise the suspension
of hostility between the world's larger powers. The failure of the US to make use of this opportunity,
thanks to an utter confusion between an ideological victory and crudely-defined US geopolitical interests,
was a great misfortune which the 'war against terrorism' could in part rectify. Since 11 September,
the rhetoric in America has proposed a gulf between the 'civilised' states of the present world system,
and movements of 'barbaric', violent protest from outside and below - without much deference to the
ambiguities of 'civilisation', or the justifications of resistance to it, remarked on since Tacitus
at least.
How is the Cold War legacy likely to determine the 'war against terrorism'? Despite the general
conviction in the Republican Party that it was simply Reagan's military spending and the superiority
of the US system which destroyed Soviet Communism, more serious Cold War analysts were always aware
that it involved not just military force, or the threat of it, but ideological and political struggle,
socio-economic measures, and state-building. The latter in particular is an idea for which the Bush
team on their arrival in office had a deep dislike (if only to distance themselves from Clinton's
policies), but which they may now rediscover. Foreign aid - so shamefully reduced in the 1990s -
was also a key part of the Cold War, and if much of it was poured into kleptocratic regimes like
Mobutu's, or wasted on misguided projects, some at least helped produce flourishing economies in
Europe and East Asia.
The Republican Party is not only the party of Goldwater and Reagan, but of Eisenhower, Nixon and
Kissinger. Eisenhower is now almost forgotten by the party. 'Eisenhower Republicans', as they refer
to themselves, are usually far closer to Tony Blair (or perhaps more accurately, Helmut Schmidt)
than anyone the Republican Party has seen in recent years, and I'd wager that the majority of educated
Americans have forgotten that the original warning about the influence of the 'military industrial
complex' came from Eisenhower.
Kissinger is still very much alive, however, and his history is a reminder that one aspect of
the American capacity for extreme ruthlessness was also a capacity for radical changes of policy,
for reconciliation with states hitherto regarded as bitter enemies, and for cold-blooded abandonment
of close allies and clients whose usefulness was at an end. It would not altogether surprise me if
we were now to see a radical shift towards real co-operation with Russia, and even Iran.
In general, however, the Cold War legacies and parallels are discouraging and dangerous. To judge
by the language used in the days since 11 September, ignorance, demonisation and the drowning out
of nuanced debate indicate that much of the US establishment can no more tell the difference between
Iran and Afghanistan than they could between China and the Soviet Union in the early 1960s - the
inexcusable error which led to the American war in Vietnam. The preference for militarised solutions
continues (the 'War on Drugs', which will now have to be scaled back, is an example). Most worryingly,
the direct attack on American soil and American civilians - far worse than anything done to the US
in the Cold War - means that there is a real danger of a return to Cold War ruthlessness: not just
in terms of military tactics and covert operations, but in terms of the repulsive and endangered
regimes co-opted as local American clients.
The stakes are, if anything, a good deal higher than they were during the Cold War. Given what
we now know of Soviet policymaking, it is by no means clear that the Kremlin ever seriously contemplated
a nuclear strike against America. By contrast, it seems likely that bin Laden et al would in the
end use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons if they could deliver them.
There is also the question of the impact of US strategies (or, in the case of Israel, lack of
them) on the unity of the West - assuming that this is of some importance for the wellbeing of humanity.
However great the exasperation of many European states with US policy throughout the Cold War, the
Europeans were bound into the transatlantic alliance by an obvious Soviet threat - more immediate
to them than it was to the US. For the critical first decade of the Cold War, the economies of Europe
were hopelessly inferior to that of the US. Today, if European Governments feel that the US is dragging
them into unnecessary danger thanks to policies of which they disapprove, they will protest bitterly
- as many did during the Cold War - and then begin to distance themselves, which they could not afford
to do fifty years ago.
This is all the more likely if, as seems overwhelmingly probable, the US withdraws from the Balkans
- as it has already done in Macedonia - leaving Europeans with no good reason to require a US military
presence on their continent. At the same time, the cultural gap between Europeans and Republican
America (which does not mean a majority of Americans, but the dominant strain of policy) will continue
to widen. 'Who says we share common values with the Europeans?' a senior US politician remarked recently.
'They don't even go to church!' Among other harmful effects, the destruction of this relationship
could signal the collapse of whatever hope still exists for a common Western approach to global environmental
issues - which would, in the end, pose a greater danger to humanity than that of terrorism.
· Anatol Lieven is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington
DC.
"... So we have a traitor as POTUS that is not only corrupt, but compromised...and a woman that is a serial liar, perjured herself multiple times at the Hearing whom is running for POTUS. ..."
WASHINGTON - Senior Justice Department officials warned the FBI that Director James B. Comey's
decision to notify Congress about renewing the investigation into Hillary Clinton's private
email server was not consistent with long-standing practices of the department, according to
officials familiar with the discussions.
"Comely went off the farm all on his own and must answer for his actions. Simple as that."
IMHO that's extremely naïve. Such a "career limiting move"(CLM) in Washington-speak almost
never done "on his own". Exception are whistleblowers like William Binney, who already decided
for themselves that "this is the last stand" and are ready to face consequences.
Few Washington bureaucrats want to became outcasts within the administration, even the lame
duck administration. Bureaucracy, at the end, is just another flavor of a political coalition
and they tend to cling to power by whatever means possible including criminal.
Moreover, Comey so far was viewed as an "Obama man" who abruptly squashed the "emailgate"
investigation instead of expanding it investigating Bill Clinton for his "accidental" meeting
with Loretta Lynch and possibly putting the old fogey on the bench for the obstruction of justice.
And who at the end granted immunity to all key members of Clinton entourage including Huma Abedin
who proved to be, security wise, not the sharpest tool in the shed.
The only plausible explanation that I see is that Comey action reflects a deep split within
the USA elite including internal cracks and pressure within FBI brass (possibly from rank-and-file
investigators, who understand what's going on) as for viability Hillary as the next POTUS.
I would ask you a very simple question: do you really want a POTUS that has, say, 80% probability
to be impeached by the House during the first year of his/her administration?
And any security specialist will tell you that Hillary creation of "shadow IT" within the
State Department is a crime. The behavior that would never be tolerated not only in super-secretive
State Department (which recently assumed some functions previously performed by CIA), but in any
large corporation.
It also might well be that there are new highly compromising evidence (not necessary from
Wiener case) which changed the "grand calculation".
Wikileaks needs to get this out (I have not verified the info sent to me last night):
So here's the REAL story.
Amb. Stevens was sent to Benghazi post haste in order to retrieve US made Stinger
missiles supplied to Ansar al Sharia without Congressional oversight or permission.
Hillary brokered the deal through Stevens and a private arms dealer named Marc Turi.
Then some of the shoulder fired missiles ended up in Afghanistan used against our own military.
It was July 25th, 2012 when a Chinook helicopter was taken down by one of our own Stingers,
but the idiot Taliban didn't arm the missile and the Chinook didn't explode, but had to
land anyway.
An ordnance team recovered the serial number off the missile which led back to a cache
of Stingers being kept in Qatar by the CIA
Obama and Hillary were now in full panic mode and Stevens was sent in to retrieve the
rest of the Stingers. This was a "do-or-die" mission, which explains the stand down orders
given to multiple commando teams.
It was the State Dept, not the CIA that supplied them to our sworn enemies, because Petraeus
wouldn't supply these deadly weapons due to their potential use on commercial aircraft.
Then, Obama threw Gen. Petraeus under the bus after he refused to testify that he OK'd the
BS talking points about a spontaneous uprising due to a Youtube video.
Obama and Hillary committed treason...and THIS is what the investigation is all about,
why she had a private server, (in order to delete the digital evidence), and why Obama,
two weeks after the attack, told the UN that the attack was because of a Youtube video,
even though everyone knew it was not.
Further...the Taliban knew that this administration aided and abetted the enemy without
Congressional approval when Boehner created the Select Cmte, and the Taliban began pushing
the Obama Administration for the release of 5 Taliban Generals. Bowe Bergdahl was just a
pawn...everyone KNEW he was a traitor.
So we have a traitor as POTUS that is not only corrupt, but compromised...and a woman
that is a serial liar, perjured herself multiple times at the Hearing whom is running for
POTUS.
Only the Dems, with their hands out, palms up, will support her. Perhaps this is why
no military aircraft was called in because the administration knew our enemies had Stingers.
"... FBI agents looking at Weiners weiner on his laptop, sees tons of Huma emails and Clinton emails, turn and tell their boss they are disgusted with all this and he needs to disrupt her winning office or they are going public. That's what happened! ..."
"... I think you are spot on with that observation. Comey was forced to tell Congress the Clinton e-mail investigation was being reopened. If he did not then sure as hell the existence of those e-mails on the Weiner computer would be leaked. ..."
"... I agree, it is all puppet theatre with some humor added. The more outrageous the more believable, right? ..."
"... It achieves some "unity" around Trump when there wasn't enough going down the home stretch, it became OBVIOUS she's not a winner, which anyone with half a brain has known since she announced? So maybe they are pulling the plug and she's been beat officially? Which leaves the question is Trump for real? ..."
"... I must say, fake or not he fought hard? I like Trump. I hope he realizes if he did decide to do GOOD, he could become very powerful. Why these leaders get to these positions and give it all up for a little greed is beyond me? They could be 10 times more powerful by just being GOOD? You've got the money Trump, if your GOOD, you'll obtain the power? Trump has some political capital and makes him more attractive to the establishment. My guess is, im being too optimistic for good things to happen? I hope Im wrong. ..."
"... The Clintons are a great success story. They never set out to be legal, only not to get sent to jail. By this standard they have succeeded. They have wealth and power and are 2 of the most admired people on earth. Lawyers and fines are just businesses expenses. ..."
"... I want to share my intentions with my fellow ZH Bloggers and Patriots, beginning today, I am going to be sending a series of communications directly to Paul Ryan by using his WEBSITE found at the following URL: http://www.speaker.gov/contact ..."
"... I plan to both encourage and challenge the Speaker. I know many on ZH look at Paul Ryan as a hypocrite. I understand why you may hold this position. I too am very disappointed with recent REPUBLICAN positions and communications. However, now is the time to unite as "WE THE PEOPLE". All of the data is suggesting that leadership within US Government Agencies is corrupted by special interests and their own fleshly nature. We see evidence of TREASON everywhere. But I believe brighter days lie ahead for America at least in the short term. ..."
"... AMERICA has lost her way and this needs to be corrected. ..."
FBI agents looking at Weiners weiner on his laptop, sees tons of Huma emails and Clinton emails, turn and tell their boss
they are disgusted with all this and he needs to disrupt her winning office or they are going public. That's what happened!
I think you are spot on with that observation. Comey was forced to tell Congress the Clinton e-mail investigation was being
reopened. If he did not then sure as hell the existence of those e-mails on the Weiner computer would be leaked.
I agree, it is all puppet theatre with some humor added. The more outrageous the more believable, right?
It achieves some "unity" around Trump when there wasn't enough going down the home stretch, it became OBVIOUS she's not
a winner, which anyone with half a brain has known since she announced? So maybe they are pulling the plug and she's been beat
officially? Which leaves the question is Trump for real?
I must say, fake or not he fought hard? I like Trump. I hope he realizes if he did decide to do GOOD, he could become very
powerful. Why these leaders get to these positions and give it all up for a little greed is beyond me? They could be 10 times
more powerful by just being GOOD? You've got the money Trump, if your GOOD, you'll obtain the power? Trump has some political
capital and makes him more attractive to the establishment. My guess is, im being too optimistic for good things to happen? I
hope Im wrong.
I've been burned so many times by BIG GOV. both DEM & REP? I just cant trust anyone that is near it?
They take lots of ideas from ZH these days, and its not good..... ZH offers them the ideas, the power, and the creativity of
the crowd. They use it against us, a very powerful tool.
The Clintons are a great success story. They never set out to be legal, only not to get sent to jail. By this standard they
have succeeded. They have wealth and power and are 2 of the most admired people on earth. Lawyers and fines are just businesses
expenses.
I want to share my intentions with my fellow ZH Bloggers and Patriots, beginning today, I am going to be sending a series
of communications directly to Paul Ryan by using his WEBSITE found at the following URL:
http://www.speaker.gov/contact
I plan to both encourage and challenge the Speaker. I know many on ZH look at Paul Ryan as a hypocrite. I understand why
you may hold this position. I too am very disappointed with recent REPUBLICAN positions and communications. However, now is the
time to unite as "WE THE PEOPLE". All of the data is suggesting that leadership within US Government Agencies is corrupted by
special interests and their own fleshly nature. We see evidence of TREASON everywhere. But I believe brighter days lie ahead for
America at least in the short term.
AMERICA has lost her way and this needs to be corrected.
I encourage everyone who reads this message to send a note to the SPEAKER encouraging him to do four things:
Get on board the TRUMP/PENCE train no matter what it takes which includes eating "HUMBLE PIE".
Go after Hillary R. Clinton and press for swift and immediate justice.
Enforce existing laws for TREASON that are on the books.
Do whatever it takes to ensure the integrity of the American POTUS Election process. MAKE OUR VOTE COUNT.
I plan to do this today and will be sending the speaker notes and comments from ZH.
If everyone contacts the SPEAKER, he will get the POINT.
GOD's SPEED in whatever you decide to do as a CITIZEN of these UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
Or the racism of the middle class. People are tribal and arguably it is baked into our DNA.
That doesn't excuse the mental laziness of trafficking in stereotypes but one could make a case
that racism is as much a matter of ignorance as of evil character.
Obama with his "bitter clingers" and HIllary with her "deplorables" are talking about people
about whom they probably know almost nothing.
One of the long ago arguments for school integration was that propinquity fosters mutual understanding.
This met with a lot of resistance. And for people like our Pres and would be Pres a broader view
of the electorate would be inconvenient.
As
an old SDS-er, I found it hard to see Tom Hayden go. However meandering his path, he was at the heart
of radical history in the 60s, an erstwhile companion, if not always a comrade, on the route of every
boomer lefty.
One of his finer moments for me, which I've never seen mentioned (including among this week's
encomia) since he wrote it, was his 2006
article
, published on CounterPunch with an introduction by Alexander Cockburn, in which he apologized
for a "descent into moral ambiguity and realpolitick that still haunts me today." It would be respectful
of Hayden's admirers and critics, on the occasion of his passing, to remember which of his actions
"haunted" him the most.
The title of the article says it clearly: "I Was Israel's Dupe." In the essay, Hayden apologizes
for his support of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, which was for him that "descent into
moral ambiguity" More importantly, he explains why he did it, in a detailed narrative that everyone
should read.
Hayden sold out, as he tells it, because, in order to run as a Democratic candidate for the California
State Assembly, he had get the approval of the influential Democratic congressman Howard Berman.
Berman is a guy who, when he became Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was proud to
tell the
Forward that he took the job because of his "interest in the Jewish state" and that: "Even before
I was a Democrat, I was a Zionist."
Hayden had to meet with Howard's brother Michael, who, acting as "the gatekeeper protecting
Los Angeles' Westside for Israel's political interests," told Hayden: "I represent the Israeli Defense
Forces"-a sentence that could serve as the motto of most American congress critters today. The "Berman-Waxman
machine," Hayden was told, would deign to "rent" him the Assembly seat on the "one condition: that
I always be a 'good friend of Israel.'"
But American congressmen were not the only "gatekeepers" through whose hands Hayden had to pass
before being allowed to run for Congress. Other "certifiers" included "the elites, beginning with
rabbis and heads of the multiple mainstream Jewish organizations, the American-Israel Political
Action Committee (AIPAC), [and].. Israeli ambassadors, counsels general and other officials."
In fact, Hayden had to, in his words, be "declared 'kosher' by the ultimate source, the region's
representative of the state of Israel," Benjamin Navon, Israel's Counsul-general in Los Angeles.
In other words, in this article Hayden was describing, in an unusually concrete way, how the
state of Israel, through its state officials and their compliant American partners, was effectively
managing-exercising veto power over Democratic Party candidates, at the very least-American elections
down to the level of State Assembly . In any constituency "attuned to the question of Israel,
even in local and state elections," Hayden knew he "had to be certified 'kosher,' not once but over
and over again."
This experience prompted Hayden to express a "fear that the 'Israeli lobby' is working overtime
to influence American public opinion on behalf of Israel's military effort to 'roll back the clock'
and 'change the map' of the region." Hayden warned of the "trepidation and confusion among rank-and-file
voters and activists, and the paralysis of politicians, especially Democrats," over support of Israel.
He vowed to "not make the same mistake again," and said: "Most important, Americans must not be timid
in speaking up, as I was 25 years ago."
Whatever else he did-and he was never particularly radical about Palestine-this article was a
genuinely honest and unusual intervention, and it deserves a lot more notice-as a moment in Tom Hayden's
history and that of the American left-than it has got. Looking back and regretfully acknowledging
that one had been duped and morally compromised by what seemed the least troublesome path 25 years
earlier, saying "I woulda, shoulda, coulda done the right thing," is a haunting moment for anyone.
Doing it in a way that exposes in detail how a foreign country constantly manipulates American elections
over decades is worthy of everyone's notice.
I doubt Hillary and her Democratic supporters will have anything to say about this "interference
"in American elections, even local and state. But I do hope many of those who are touched by the
loss of Tom Hayden heed these words from him, and don't wait another 25 years to overcome their "fear
and confusion" about saying and doing the right thing regarding the crimes of Israel, troublesome
as that might be.
President Vladimir Putin on Thursday accused American politicians of whipping up hysteria about a
mythical Russian threat as a ploy to distract voters from their own failings in the run-up to the
U.S. presidential election.
Putin, addressing an audience of foreign policy experts gathered in southern Russia, repeatedly
lashed out at the Obama administration, saying it did not keep its word on Syria, did not honour
deals, and had falsely accused Moscow of all manner of sins.
The U.S. government has formally accused Russia of a campaign of cyber attacks against Democratic
Party organisations, while Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has accused Republican rival Donald
Trump of being a Putin "puppet".
Putin said he found it hard to believe that anyone seriously thought Moscow was capable of influencing
the Nov. 8 election.
"Hysteria has been whipped up," said Putin.
He said that was a ruse to cover up for the fact that the U.S. political elite had nothing to
say about serious issues such as the country's national debt or gun control.
War hysteria in a country with imperial nostalgia, one-man rule and a weak economy cannot
be taken lightly.
Michael Khodarkovsky is a professor of history at Loyola University.
[ The fostering of fear of and disdain for Russia is continual now and however false the
characterizations of Russia are, and they are indeed false, the fear and disdain will influence
and be self-defeating for American foreign policy from here till a dramatic change comes from
another administration. I unfortunately find no such change in the offing. ]
progressivism & humanitarianism in war profiteering aka mongering......
"Civilian protective operations" panders a neocon excuse for organized state run murder.
Bill went after the Tsar as soon as his closet neocon found out they could have the Germans
send a mechanized brigade of Warsaw Pact armaments to the Croats and Yeltsin did nothing.
The Russian version of Chamberlain and Munich was Croatian independence.
ilsm -> anne... , -1
Most career military pilots I knew were terrified by the thought of no more perpetual bombing.
They would think Clinton and the neocons can keep a low boil going in the PNAC for another
100 years without tripping into a real war, or bankrupting the USA.
It is a signifier of the moral bankruptcy that the exceptional carry as a badge.
With the "defenses available" to Syria they could enforce no fly zones on GCC and their
blood thirsty allies as as might US over Raqqa.
"... If you say so. For now I'll leave any decisions or actions taken on these outcomes to Russian citizens. I would, however, kindly tell Victoria Nuland and her ilk to fuck off with their senile Cold War fantasies, morally bankrupt, third-rate Great Game machinations, and total spectrum dominance sociopathy. ..."
"... "Personally, I don't believe that Ukraine is governed by fascists, or that Ukraine shot down that jetliner, but I'm sure a lot of Russians do." ..."
"... There's definitely some of 'em hanging about, but yeah it mostly seems to be a motley assortment of oligarchs, gangsters, and grifters tied into international neoliberal capital and money flows. No doubt Russian believe a lot things. I find Americans tend to believe a lot things as well. ..."
"So democratic structures have to be robust and transparent before we care about them?"
No.
My point was it's very misleading. Misleading to set the parameters of discussion on U.S. posture
toward Russia in such a way as to assume that Putin's actions against a purported Russian "democracy"
have anything at all to do with USian antagonism of Russia. I'm sure you'll note current U.S.
military cooperation with that boisterous hotbed of democratic activity, Saudi Arabia, in Yemen.
Our allies in the house of Saud require help in defending their democratic way of life against
the totalitarianism of Yemeni tribes, you see. The U.S. opposes anti-democratic forces whenever
and where ever it can, especially in the Middle East. I guess that explains USian antipathy to
Russia.
"I'd give a pretty high value to an independent press and contested elections."
Yeah, it'd be interesting to see what the U.S. looked like with those dynamics in place.
"Those have been slowly crushed in Russia. The results for transparency have not been
great."
If you say so. For now I'll leave any decisions or actions taken on these outcomes to Russian
citizens. I would, however, kindly tell Victoria Nuland and her ilk to fuck off with their senile
Cold War fantasies, morally bankrupt, third-rate Great Game machinations, and total spectrum dominance
sociopathy.
"Personally, I don't believe that Ukraine is governed by fascists, or that Ukraine shot
down that jetliner, but I'm sure a lot of Russians do."
There's definitely some of 'em hanging about, but yeah it mostly seems to be a motley assortment
of oligarchs, gangsters, and grifters tied into international neoliberal capital and money flows.
No doubt Russian believe a lot things. I find Americans tend to believe a lot things as well.
"... Any analysis that starts with the assumption reactionaries still has a great deal to its agenda to achieve, such as promoting regressive taxation; privatization of Social Security; limiting Medicare; privatization of education; expansion of the police state; using the military to support the dollar, banking, world markets, etc., rather than Corey Robin's belief that "the Right" has won is in my view an improvement on the OP. ..."
"... In the end, Putin will be done in by his oligarchs, despite the care he has taken to give them their share if they just refrain from wrecking everything with their excesses. Again, no need for NGOs. ..."
This is a very good analyses. But I am less pessimistic: the blowback against neoliberal globalization
is real and it is difficult to swipe it under the carpet.
There are some signs of the "revolutionary situation" in the USA in a sense that the neoliberal
elite lost control and their propaganda loss effectiveness, despite dusting off the "Red scare"
trick with "Reds in each computer" instead of "Reds under each bed". With Putin as a very convenient
bogeyman.
As somebody here said Trump might be a reaction of secular stagnation, kind of trump card put
into play by some part of the elite, because with continued secular stagnation, the social stability
in the USA is under real threat.
But the problem is that Hillary with her failing health is our of her prime and with a bunch
of neocons in key positions in her administration, she really represents a huge threat to world
peace. She might not last long as the level of stress inherent in POTUS job make it a killing
ground for anybody with advanced stage of Parkinson or similar degenerative neurological disease.
But that might make her more impulsive and more aggressive (and she always tried to outdo male
politicians in jingoism, real John McCain is the red pantsuit).
All-in-all it looks like she in not a solution for neoliberal elite problems, she is a part
of the problem
Adventurism of the US neoliberal elite, and especially possible aggressive moves in Syria by
Hillary regime ("no fly zone"), makes military alliance of Russia and China very likely (with
Pakistan, Iran and India as possible future members). So Hillary might really work like a powerful
China lobbyist, because the alliance with Russia will be on China terms.
Regime change via color revolution in either country requires at dense network of subservient
to the Western interests and financed via shadow channels MSM (including TV channels), strong
network of NGO and ability to distribute cash to selected members of the fifth column of neoliberal
globalization. All those condition were made more difficult in Russia and impossible in mainland
China. In Russia the US adventurism in Ukraine and the regime change of February 2014 (creation
of neo-fascist regime nicknamed by some "Kaganat of Nuland" (Asia Times
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/CEN-01-100315.html
)) essentially killed the neoliberal fifth column in Russia and IMHO it no longer represent
a viable political force.
Also Russians probably learned well lesson of unsuccessful attempt of regime change by interfering
into Russian Presidential election process attempted by Hillary and Obama in 2011-2012. I would
like to see the US MSM reaction if Russian ambassador invited Sanders and Trump into the embassy
and promised full and unconditional support for their effort to remove criminal Obama regime,
mired in corruption and subservient to Wall Street interests, the regime that produced misery
for so many American workers, lower middle class and older Americans ;-)
Ambassador McFaul soon left the country, NED was banned and screws were tightened enough to
make next attempt exceedingly difficult. Although everything can happen I would discount the possibility
of the next "White Revolution" in Russia. So called "Putin regime" survived the period of low
oil prices and with oil prices over $60 in 2017 Russian economy might be able to grow several
percent a year. At the same time the US "post-Obama" regime might well face the winds of returning
higher oil prices and their negative influence of economy growth and unemployment.
In China recent troubles in Hong Cong were also a perfect training ground for "anti color revolution"
measures and the next attempt would much more difficult, unless China experience economic destabilization
due to some bubble burst.
That means that excessive military adventurism inherent in the future Hillary regime might
speed up loss by the USA military dominance and re-alignment of some states beyond Philippines.
Angela Merkel regime also might not survive the next election and that event might change "pro-Atlantic"
balance in Europe.
Although the list in definitely not complete, we can see that there are distinct setbacks for
attempts of further neoliberalization beyond Brexit and TPP troubles.
So there are some countervailing forces in action and my impression that the Triumphal march
of neoliberalism with the USA as the hegemon of the new neoliberal order is either over, or soon
will be over. In certain regions of the globe the USA foreign policy is in trouble (Syria, Ukraine)
and while you can do anything using bayonets, you can't sit on them.
So while still there is no viable alternative to neoliberalism as a social system, the ideology
itself is discredited and like communism after 1945 lost its hold of hearts and minds of the USA
population. I would say that in the USA neoliberalism entered Zombie stage.
My hope is that reasonable voices in foreign policy prevail, and the disgust of unions members
toward DemoRats (Neoliberal Democrats) could play the decisive role in coming elections. As bad
as Trump is for domestic policy, it represent some hope as for foreign policy unless co-opted
by Republican establishment.
#70 But the problem is that Hillary with her failing health is our of her prime and with a bunch
of neocons in key positions in her administration, she really represents a huge threat to world
peace. She might not last long as the level of stress inherent in POTUS job make it a killing
ground for anybody with advanced stage of Parkinson or similar degenerative neurological disease.
But that might kale her more impulsive and more aggressive (and she always tried to outdo her
male politicians in jingoism, real John McCain is the red pantsuit).
Does the new CT moderation regime have any expectations about the veracity of claims made by
commenters? Because I think it would be useful in cases like this.
Yes, it was late and I was tired, or I wouldn't have said something so foolish. Still, the
point is that after centuries of constant war, Europe went 70 years without territorial conquest.
That strikes me as a significant achievement, and one whose breach should not be taken lightly.
phenomenal cat @64
So democratic structures have to be robust and transparent before we care about them? I'd give
a pretty high value to an independent press and contested elections. Those have been slowly crushed
in Russia. The results for transparency have not been great. Personally, I don't believe that
Ukraine is governed by fascists, or that Ukraine shot down that jetliner, but I'm sure a lot of
Russians do.
Russian leaders have always complained about "encirclement," but we don't have to believe them.
Do you really believe Russia's afraid of an attack from Estonia? Clearly what Putin wants is to
restore as much of the old Soviet empire as possible. Do you think the independence of the Baltic
states would be more secure or less secure if they weren't members of NATO? (Hint: compare to
Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova.)
' .makes military alliance of Russia and China very likely '
Any analysis which arrives at this conclusion is profoundly ignorant.
Meta-comment: Is it permitted to say that a moderation scheme which objects to engels as a
troll, while permitting this tripe from likbez has taken a wrong turn somewhere. Seriously, some
explanation called for.
Does the new CT moderation regime have any expectations about the veracity of claims made
by commenters? Because I think it would be useful in cases like this.
I would like to apologize about the number of typos, but I stand by statements made. Your implicit
assumption that I am lying was not specific, so let's concentrate on three claims made:
1. "Hillary has serious neurological disease for at least four years", 2. "Obama and Hillary tried to stage color revolution in Russia in 2011-2012 interfering in Russian
Presidential elections" 3. "Hillary Clinton is a neocon, a warmonger similar to John McCain"
1. Hillary Health : Whether she suffers from Parkinson disease or not in unclear, but signs
of some serious neurological disease are observable since 2012 (for four years). Parkinson is just
the most plausible hypothesis based on symptoms observed. Those symptoms suggests that she is at
Stage 2 of the disease due to an excellent treatment she gets:
http://www.viartis.net/parkinsons.disease/news/100312.htm
The average time taken to progress from Stage 1 (mild) to Stage 2 (mild but various symptoms)
was 1 year 8 months. The average time taken to progress from Stage 2 to Stage 3 (typical) was
7 years and 3 months. From Stage 3 to Stage 4 (severe) took 2 years. From Stage 4 to Stage 5 (incapacitated)
took 2 years and 2 months. So the stage with typical symptoms lasts the longest. Those factors
associated with faster progression were older age at diagnosis, and longer disease duration. Gender
and ethnicity were not associated with the rate of Parkinson's Disease progression.
These figures are only averages. Progression is not inevitable. Some people with Parkinson's
Disease have either : stayed the same for decades, reduced their symptoms, rid their symptoms,
or worsened at a rapid rate. For more current news go to Parkinson's Disease News.
Concern about Hillary health were voiced in many publications and signs of her neurological disease
are undisputable:
3. The opinion that Hillary as a neocon is supported by facts from all her career , but
especially during her tenure as the Secretary of State. She voted for Iraq war and was instrumental
in unleashing Libya war and Syria war. The amount of evidence can't be ignored:
If you have more specific concerns please voice them and I will try to support my statements with
references and known facts.
stevenjohnson 10.26.16 at 1:50 pm
likbez @70 Any analysis that starts with the assumption reactionaries still has a great
deal to its agenda to achieve, such as promoting regressive taxation; privatization of Social
Security; limiting Medicare; privatization of education; expansion of the police state; using
the military to support the dollar, banking, world markets, etc., rather than Corey Robin's
belief that "the Right" has won is in my view an improvement on the OP. But whether mine
is actually a deep analysis seems doubtful even to me.
But the OP is really limiting itself solely to domestic politics, and in that context the
resistance to "neoliberal globalization," (Why not use the term "imperialism?") is more or
less irrelevant. The OP seems to have some essentialist notion of the "Right" as openly aimed
at restoring the past, ignoring the content of policies. Reaction would be something blatant
like restoring censorship of TV and movies, instead of IP laws that favor giant
telecommunications companies, or abolition of divorce, instead of discriminatory enforcement
of child protection laws that break up poor families. This
cultural/psychological/moralizing/spiritual approach seems to me to be fundamentally a
diversion from a useful understanding.
There may be some sort of confused notions about popular morals and tastes clearly evolving
in a more leftish direction. Free love was never a conservative principle for instance, yet
many of its tenets are now those of the majority of the population. Personally I can only
observe that there's nothing quite like the usefulness of laws and law enforcement,
supplemented by the occasional illicit violence, to change social attitudes. The great model
of course is the de facto extermination of the Left by "McCarthyism." No doubt the
disappearance of the left targeted by "McCarthyism" is perceived to be a purification of the
real left. It is customary for the acceptable "left" to agree with the McCarthys that
communism lost its appeal to the people, rather than being driven out by mass repression. As
to populism, such reactionary goals as the abolition of public education are notoriously sold
as service to the people against the hifalutin' snobs, starting of course with lazy ass
teachers. It seems to me entirely mistaken to see the populist reactionaries as out of
ammunition because the old forms of race-baiting aren't working so well.
By the way, there already is a Chinese bourgeoisie, in Taiwan, Singapore, the Philippines,
Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, as well as elements in SEZs in China proper and select circles
in various financial capitals. Restoration of capitalism in China has run into the difficulty
that capitalism isn't holding up its end. President Xi Jinping is finding it difficult for
capitalism to keep the mainland economy growing at a sufficiently rapid rate to keep the
working class pacific, much less generate the so-called middle class whose stock market
portfolios will bind them to the new ruling class forever. These are the sources for a
revolution in China, not NGOs or a color revolution. In the end, Putin will be done in by
his oligarchs, despite the care he has taken to give them their share if they just refrain
from wrecking everything with their excesses. Again, no need for NGOs.
Val @72 I remember that there were only rare, vague hints about Reagan, not factual
evidence. So unless you are committed to the proposition his Alzheimer's disease only set in
January 21, 1992, demanding factual evidence about the mental and physical health of our
elective divinities seems unduly restrictive I think.
Layman @79 The Shanghai Cooperation Organization alone makes an analysis that a military
alliance between Russia and China reasonable enough. Even if incorrect in the end, it is not
"profoundly ignorant."
Meta-comment: Engels post was perceived as mocking, which was its offense. As for "trolling,"
that's an internet thing...
"... There are some signs of the "revolutionary situation" in the USA in a sense that the neoliberal elite lost control and their propaganda loss effectiveness, despite dusting off the "Red scare" trick with "Reds in each computer" instead of "Reds under each bed". With Putin as a very convenient bogeyman. ..."
"... But it looks like newly formed shadow "Committee for Saving [neo]Liberal Order" (with participation of three latter agencies, just read the recent "Red scare" memorandum ( https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/215-press-releases-2016/1423-joint-dhs-odni-election-security-statement ) want Hillary to be the POTUS. ..."
1. An ABC news poll says that Clinton has 50% of somebody (the electorate, likely voters?)
supporting her rabidly reactionary rhetoric. She demonizes Putin, imputes treason to a major party
candidate in a way hitherto seen only in Birch Society attacks on Eisenhower, shrieks that it
is utterly impossible to even hint that the current electoral system has no real legitimacy.
The only real criticisms acceptable in the face of her reactionary screeds are hints that
she is a traitor for Clinton Foundation cash and that she is lax on security . (The claim
that Clinton is pro-war are regressions to the Obama primary campaign in 2008. Since he promptly
proved the irrelevance of an anti-war rhetoric, the observations that Clinton has none are equally
irrelevant.)
2. The high levels of indecision suggest that a Trump defeat may well leave the Republican
establishment more or less as it was. Depending on turnout, which even at this late date is highly
uncertain, it is entirely possible the Republicans will maintain control of the Senate. At this
point it is probable they will keep the House. In any event, Clinton has openly committed to
a bipartisan a campaign against the Trump hijacking of the Republican party.
3. Consider the longevity of reactionary leaderships in the major parties. The Democratic
Leadership Council approach has dominated its party for decades. The Republican party projects
like ALEC, the Federalist Society, the Mighty Wurlitzer, the designated superstar talk personality
(no, shifting from Limbaugh to Beck is not a sea change,) everywhere you look behind the scenes
you see the same faces. What new faces appear turn out (like Obama) to be employees of the same
old political establishments. Alleged exceptions like Sanders and Warren are notable primarily
for their lack of commitment.
4. There are bold thinkers willing to imagine the conservative future. Think Jason Brennan
and his book Against Democracy. Even worse, the real strength of the conservatives lies in the
bottom line, not in polemics. Tragically, it's when the bottom line is written in read that it
shrieks the loudest, with the most conviction and the most urgent desire for the masters to unite
against the rest of us.
5. California politics has set the pace once again, demonstrating the absolute irrelevance
of a "Left" defined as a spiritual posture. The annihilation of an ugly materialist Left by "McCarthyism"
has purified the souls of the righetous, leaving socialism/communism unthinkable. California leftism
is entirely safe for capitalism, imperialism and a free market of ideas where the refined consumers
of ideas can have their gated neighborhoods of ideas.
6. The majority support for a more tolerant society makes no difference in policy. Being nicer
is not politics.
There is a fundamental reason for despair, the failures of the right to win the Holy Grail
of a functional capitalist society. Despite their successes in destroying organized labor (with
the help of counter-revolutionary "leftists" to be sure,) in limiting women's rights, in blunting
the real world effects of desegregation, the short-run prospects of capital are disquieting. And
the long run prospects, insofar as these people can see past the quarterly statement, are even
more frightening. Urged by their fears, the system will be ever more destabilized by desperate
adventures. The replacement of Social Security of course will be high on the agenda. The absolutely
vital need for ever more control over the world, including regime change in Russia and China,
has driven foreign policy in direct support of the dollar and banking since at least Bush 41.
But in the end, it is not the madness of the owners that is the cause for despair, but the
absolute indifference of the spiritual leftists who have joined in the rabidly reactionary campaign
against Clinton from the right. (You would have thought it rather difficult to criticize Clinton
from the right, but never underestimate the exigencies of struggle against totalitarianism.) Win
or lose, this campaign has endorsed reaction, top to bottom. On the upside, the likelihood of
a Clinton impeachment offers much value for your entertainment dollar.
likbez 10.26.16 at 1:10 am
stevenjohnson
@58
This is a very good analyses. But I am less pessimistic: the blowback against neoliberal globalization
is real and it is difficult to swipe it under the carpet.
There are some signs of the "revolutionary situation" in the USA in a sense that the neoliberal
elite lost control and their propaganda loss effectiveness, despite dusting off the "Red scare"
trick with "Reds in each computer" instead of "Reds under each bed". With Putin as a very convenient
bogeyman.
As somebody here said Trump might be a reaction to secular stagnation, kind of trump card put
into play by some part of the elite, because with continued secular stagnation, the social stability
in the USA is under a real threat.
But the problem is that Hillary with her failing health is our of her prime and with a bunch
of neocons in key positions in her administration, she really represents a huge threat to world
peace. She might not last long as the level of stress inherent in POTUS job make it a killing
ground for anybody with advanced stage of Parkinson or similar degenerative neurological disease.
But that might kale her more impulsive and more aggressive (and she always tried to outdo her
male politicians in jingoism, real John McCain is the red pantsuit).
All-in-all it looks like she in not a solution of neoliberal elite problems, she is a part
of the problem
Adventurism of the US neoliberal elite, and especially possible aggressive moves in Syria by
Hillary regime ("no fly zone"), makes military alliance of Russia and China very likely (with
Pakistan, Iran and India as possible future members). So Hillary might really work like a powerful
China lobbyist, because the alliance with Russia will be on China terms.
Regime change via color revolution in either country requires at dense network of subservient
to the Western interests and financed via shadow channels MSM (including TV channels), NGO and
ability to distribute cash to selection members of fifth column of neoliberalism. All those condition
were made more difficult in Russia and impossible in mainland China. In Russia the US adventurism
in Ukraine and the regime change of February 2014 (creation of neo-fascist regime nicknamed by
some "Kaganat of Nuland" (Asia times
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/CEN-01-100315.html
) essentially killed the neoliberal fifth column in Russia and IMHO it no longer represent
a viable political force.
Also Russians probably learned well lesson of unsuccessful attempt of regime change by interfering
into Russian Presidential election process attempted by Hillary and Obama in 2011-2012. I would
like to see the US MSM reaction if Russian ambassador invited Sanders and Trump into the embassy
and promised full and unconditional support for their effort to remove criminal Obama regime,
mired in corruption and subservient to Wall Street interest, the regime that produced misery for
so many American workers, lower middle class and older Americans ;-)
Ambassador McFaul soon left the country, NED was banned and screws were tightened enough to
make next attempt exceedingly difficult. Although everything can happen I would discount the possibility
of the next "While Revolution" in Russia. So called "Putin regime" survived the period of low
oil prices and with oil prices over $60 in 2017 Russian economy might be able to grow several
percent a year. At the same time the US "post-Obama" regime might well face the winds of returning
higher oil prices and their negative influence of economy growth and unemployment.
In China recent troubles in Hong Cong were also a perfect training ground for "anti color revolution"
measures and the next attempt would much more difficult, unless China experience economic destabilization
due to some bubble burst.
that means that excessive military adventurism inherent in the future Hillary regime might
speed up loss by the USA military dominance and re-alignment of some states beyond Philippines.
Angela Merkel regime also might not survive the next election and change "pro-Atlantic" balance
in Europe.
Although the list in definitely not complete, we can see that there are distinct setbacks for
attempts of further neoliberalization - Brexit and TPP troubles.
So there are some countervailing forces in action and my impression that the Triumphal march
of neoliberalism with the USA as a hegemon of the new neoliberal order is either over or soon
will be over. In certain regions of the globe the USA foreign policy is in trouble (Syria, Ukraine)
and while you can do anything using bayonets, you can't sit on them.
So while still there is no viable alternative to neoliberalism as social system, the ideology
itself is discredited and like communism after 1945 lost its hold of hearts and minds of the USA
population. I would say that in the USA neoliberalism entered Zombie stage.
My hope is that reasonable voices in foreign policy prevail, and the disgust of unions members
toward DemoRats (Neoliberal Democrats) could play the decisive role in coming elections. As bad
as Trump is for domestic policy, it represent some hope as for foreign policy unless co-opted
by Republican establishment.
likbez :
October 24, 2016 at 12:00 PM
My impression is that that key issue is as following: a vote
for Hillary is a vote for the War Party and is incompatible
with democratic principles.
She is way too militant, and is not that different in this
respect from Senator McCain. That creates a real danger of
unleashing the war with Russia.
Trump with all his warts gives us a chance to get some
kind of détente with Russia.
Just a hunch: a lot of this hoo-hah will simmer down after
the election.
But yeah, I'm really bummed that we are going
to be seeing a return of a lot of the same creeps who gave us
the foreign policy of the 90's that went belly up in 2001-03.
Just a reminder: I called attention several times to this
article in 2014 and 2015:
The Next Act of the Neocons
Are Neocons Getting Ready to Ally With Hillary Clinton?
By JACOB HEILBRUNN
WASHINGTON - AFTER nearly a decade in the political
wilderness, the neoconservative movement is back, using the
turmoil in Iraq and Ukraine to claim that it is President
Obama, not the movement's interventionist foreign policy that
dominated early George W. Bush-era Washington, that bears
responsibility for the current round of global crises.
Even as they castigate Mr. Obama, the neocons may be
preparing a more brazen feat: aligning themselves with
Hillary Rodham Clinton and her nascent presidential campaign,
in a bid to return to the driver's seat of American foreign
policy.
To be sure, the careers and reputations of the older
generation of neocons - Paul D. Wolfowitz, L. Paul Bremer
III, Douglas J. Feith, Richard N. Perle - are permanently
buried in the sands of Iraq. And not all of them are eager to
switch parties: In April, William Kristol, the editor of The
Weekly Standard, said that as president Mrs. Clinton would
"be a dutiful chaperone of further American decline."
But others appear to envisage a different direction - one
that might allow them to restore the neocon brand, at a time
when their erstwhile home in the Republican Party is turning
away from its traditional interventionist foreign policy.
It's not as outlandish as it may sound. Consider the
historian Robert Kagan, the author of a recent, roundly
praised article in The New Republic that amounted to a
neo-neocon manifesto. He has not only avoided the vitriolic
tone that has afflicted some of his intellectual brethren but
also co-founded an influential bipartisan advisory group
during Mrs. Clinton's time at the State Department.
Mr. Kagan has also been careful to avoid landing at
standard-issue neocon think tanks like the American
Enterprise Institute; instead, he's a senior fellow at the
Brookings Institution, that citadel of liberalism headed by
Strobe Talbott, who was deputy secretary of state under
President Bill Clinton and is considered a strong candidate
to become secretary of state in a new Democratic
administration. (Mr. Talbott called the Kagan article
"magisterial," in what amounts to a public baptism into the
liberal establishment.)
Perhaps most significantly, Mr. Kagan and others have
insisted on maintaining the link between modern
neoconservatism and its roots in muscular Cold War
liberalism. Among other things, he has frequently praised
Harry S. Truman's secretary of state, Dean Acheson, drawing a
line from him straight to the neocons' favorite president:
"It was not Eisenhower or Kennedy or Nixon but Reagan whose
policies most resembled those of Acheson and Truman."
Other neocons have followed Mr. Kagan's careful centrism
and respect for Mrs. Clinton. Max Boot, a senior fellow at
the Council on Foreign Relations,noted in The New Republic
this year that "it is clear that in administration councils
she was a principled voice for a strong stand on
controversial issues, whether supporting the Afghan surge or
the intervention in Libya."
And the thing is, these neocons have a point. Mrs. Clinton
voted for the Iraq war; supported sending arms to Syrian
rebels; likened Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, to
Adolf Hitler...
This former associate of Dick Cheney managed to completely
destroy pretty nice European county, unleashing the horror of
real starvation on the population.
Ukraine now is essentially Central African country in the
middle of the Europe. Retirees often live on less then $1 a
day. most adults (and lucky retirees) on less then $3 a day.
$6 a day is considered a high salary. At the same time
"oligarchs" drive on Maybachs, and personal jets.
Sex tourism is rampant. Probably the only "profession"
that prospered since "Maydan".
Young people try to get university education and emigrate
to any county that would accept them (repeating the story of
Baltic countries and Poland).
Now this a typical IMF debt slave with no chances to get
out of the hole.
Politically this is now a protectorate of the USA with the
USA ambassador as the real, de-facto ruler of the country.
Much like Kosovo is.
Standard of living dropped approximately three times since
2014.
"If the country continues on its present course, Odessa's
reformist governor Mikheil Saakashvili has noted
sarcastically, Ukraine will not reach the level of GDP it had
under former president Viktor Yanukovych for another fifteen
years"
"In Kiev, which is by far the wealthiest city in Ukraine,
payment arrears for electricity have risen by 32 percent
since the beginning of this year."
The Next Act of the Neocons
Are Neocons Getting Ready to Ally With Hillary Clinton?
By JACOB HEILBRUNN
WASHINGTON - AFTER nearly a decade in the political wilderness, the neoconservative movement
is back, using the turmoil in Iraq and Ukraine to claim that it is President Obama, not the movement's
interventionist foreign policy that dominated early George W. Bush-era Washington, that bears
responsibility for the current round of global crises.
Even as they castigate Mr. Obama, the neocons may be preparing a more brazen feat: aligning
themselves with Hillary Rodham Clinton and her nascent presidential campaign, in a bid to return
to the driver's seat of American foreign policy.
To be sure, the careers and reputations of the older generation of neocons - Paul D. Wolfowitz,
L. Paul Bremer III, Douglas J. Feith, Richard N. Perle - are permanently buried in the sands of
Iraq. And not all of them are eager to switch parties: In April, William Kristol, the editor of
The Weekly Standard, said that as president Mrs. Clinton would "be a dutiful chaperone of further
American decline."
But others appear to envisage a different direction - one that might allow them to restore
the neocon brand, at a time when their erstwhile home in the Republican Party is turning away
from its traditional interventionist foreign policy.
It's not as outlandish as it may sound.
Consider the historian Robert Kagan, the author
of a recent, roundly praised article in The New Republic that amounted to a neo-neocon manifesto.
He has not only avoided the vitriolic tone that has afflicted some of his intellectual brethren
but also co-founded an influential bipartisan advisory group during Mrs. Clinton's time at the
State Department.
Mr. Kagan has also been careful to avoid landing at standard-issue neocon think tanks like
the American Enterprise Institute; instead, he's a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution,
that citadel of liberalism headed by Strobe Talbott, who was deputy secretary of state under President
Bill Clinton and is considered a strong candidate to become secretary of state in a new Democratic
administration. (Mr. Talbott called the Kagan article "magisterial," in what amounts to a public
baptism into the liberal establishment.)
Perhaps most significantly, Mr. Kagan and others have insisted on maintaining the link between
modern neoconservatism and its roots in muscular Cold War liberalism. Among other things, he has
frequently praised Harry S. Truman's secretary of state, Dean Acheson, drawing a line from him
straight to the neocons' favorite president: "It was not Eisenhower or Kennedy or Nixon but Reagan
whose policies most resembled those of Acheson and Truman."
Other neocons have followed Mr. Kagan's careful centrism and respect for Mrs. Clinton. Max
Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted in The New Republic this year
that "it is clear that in administration councils she was a principled voice for a strong stand
on controversial issues, whether supporting the Afghan surge or the intervention in Libya."
And the thing is, these neocons have a point. Mrs. Clinton voted for the Iraq war; supported
sending arms to Syrian rebels; likened Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, to Adolf Hitler...
Anne and I have seen this for a while.
Nothing new Strobe Talbott was closeted [neocon], and
brought Mrs Kagan aka Victoria Nuland in to State in 1993.
Bill bearded the bear breaking Kosovo and Bosinia out of Serbia... The down payment for
Kyiv in 2012 was in 1996.
This former associate of Dick Cheney managed to completely destroy pretty nice European county,
unleashing the horror of real starvation on the population.
Ukraine now is essentially Central African country in the middle of the Europe. Retirees often
live on less then $1 a day. most adults (and lucky retirees) on less then $3 a day. $6 a day is
considered a high salary. At the same time "oligarchs" drive on Maybachs, and personal jets.
Sex tourism is rampant. Probably the only "profession" that prospered since "Maydan".
Young people try to get university education and emigrate to any county that would accept them
(repeating the story of Baltic countries and Poland).
Now this a typical IMF debt slave with no chances to get our the hole.
Politically this is now a protectorate of the USA with the USA ambassador as the real, de-facto
ruler of the county. Much like Kosovo is.
Standard of living dropped approximately three times since 2014.
"If the country continues on its present course, Odessa's reformist governor Mikheil
Saakashvili has noted sarcastically, Ukraine will not reach the level of GDP it had under former
president Viktor Yanukovych for another fifteen years"
"In Kiev, which is by far the wealthiest city in Ukraine, payment arrears for electricity
have risen by 32 percent since the beginning of this year."
"... Geithner's comments about his sacrifices in public service did not elicit any outcry from the media at the time because his perspective was widely shared. The implicit assumption is that the sort of person who is working at a high level government job could easily be earning a paycheck that is many times higher if they were employed elsewhere. In fact, this is often true. When he left his job as Treasury Secretary, Geithner took a position with a private equity company where his salary is likely several million dollars a year. ..."
"... The CEOs who are paid tens of millions a year would like the public to think that the market is simply compensating them for their extraordinary skills. A more realistic story is that a broken corporate governance process gives corporate boards of directors - the people who largely determine CEO pay -little incentive to hold down pay. Directors are more closely tied to top management than to the shareholders they are supposed to represent, and their positions are lucrative, usually paying six figures for very part-time work. Directors are almost never voted out by shareholders for their lack of attention to the job or for incompetence. ..."
"... We also have done little to foster medical travel. This could lead to enormous benefits to patients and the economy, since many high cost medical procedures can be performed at a fifth or even one-tenth the U.S. price in top quality medical facilities elsewhere in the world. In this context, it is not surprising that the median pay of physicians is over $250,000 a year and some areas of specialization earn close to twice this amount. In the case of physicians alone, if pay were reduced to West European-levels the savings would be close to $100 billion a year (@ 0.6 percent of GDP). ..."
"... As a technical matter, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is a private bank. It is owned by the banks that are members of the Federal Reserve System in the New York District. ..."
Yves here. We are delighted to feature an excerpt from Dean Baker's new book
Rigged , which you can find at
http://deanbaker.net/books/rigged.htm via either a free download
or in hard copy for the cost of printing and shipping. The book argues that policy in five areas, macroeconomics, the financial sector,
intellectual property, corporate governance, and protection for highly paid professionals, have all led to the upward distribution
of income. The implication is that the yawning gap between the 0.1% and the 1% versus everyone else is not the result of virtue ("meritocracy")
but preferential treatment, and inequality would be substantially reduced if these policies were reversed.
I urge you to read his book in full and encourage your friends, colleagues, and family to do so as well.
By Dean Baker, Co-Director, Center for Economic and Policy Research
Chapter 1: Introduction: Trading in myths
In winter 2016, near the peak of Bernie Sanders' bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, a new line became popular among
the nation's policy elite: Bernie Sanders is the enemy of the world's poor. Their argument was that Sanders, by pushing trade policies
to help U.S. workers, specifically manufacturing workers, risked undermining the well-being of the world's poor because exporting
manufactured goods to the United States and other wealthy countries is their path out of poverty. The role model was China, which
by exporting has largely eliminated extreme poverty and drastically reduced poverty among its population. Sanders and his supporters
would block the rest of the developing world from following the same course.
This line, in its Sanders-bashing permutation, appeared early on in Vox, the millennial-oriented media upstart, and was quickly
picked up elsewhere (Beauchamp 2016).
[1] After all, it was pretty irresistible. The ally of the downtrodden and enemy of the rich was pushing policies that would
condemn much of the world to poverty.
The story made a nice contribution to preserving the status quo, but it was less valuable if you respect honesty in public debate.
The problem in the logic of this argument should be apparent to anyone who has taken an introductory economics course. It assumes
that the basic problem of manufacturing workers in the developing world is the need for someone who will buy their stuff. If people
in the United States don't buy it, then the workers will be out on the street and growth in the developing world will grind to a
halt.
In this story, the problem is that we don't have enough people in the world to buy stuff. In other words, there is a shortage
of demand. But is it really true that no one else in the world would buy the stuff produced by manufacturing workers in the developing
world if they couldn't sell it to consumers in the United States? Suppose people in the developing world bought the stuff they produced
raising their living standards by raising their own consumption.
That is how the economics is supposed to work. In the standard theory, general shortages of demand are not a problem.
[2] Economists have traditionally assumed that economies tended toward full employment. The basic economic constraint was a lack
of supply. The problem was that we couldn't produce enough goods and services, not that we were producing too much and couldn't find
anyone to buy them. In fact, this is why all the standard models used to analyze trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership
assume trade doesn't affect total employment.
[3] Economies adjust so that shortages of demand are not a problem.
In this standard story (and the Sanders critics are people who care about textbook economics), capital flows from slow-growing
rich countries, where it is relatively plentiful and so gets a low rate of return, to fast-growing poor countries, where it is scarce
and gets a high rate of return (Figure 1-1).
So the United States, Japan, and the European Union should be running large trade surpluses, which is what an outflow of capital
means. Rich countries like ours should be lending money to developing countries, providing them with the means to build up their
capital stock and infrastructure while they use their own resources to meet their people's basic needs.
This wasn't just theory. That story accurately described much of the developing world, especially Asia, through the 1990s. Countries
like Indonesia and Malaysia were experiencing rapid annual growth of 7.8 percent and 9.6 percent, respectively, even as they ran
large trade deficits, just over 2 percent of GDP each year in Indonesia and almost 5 percent in Malaysia.
These trade deficits probably were excessive, and a crisis of confidence hit East Asia and much of the developing world in the
summer of 1997. The inflow of capital from rich countries slowed or reversed, making it impossible for the developing countries to
sustain the fixed exchange rates most had at the time. One after another, they were forced to abandon their fixed exchange rates
and turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for help.
Rather than promulgating policies that would allow developing countries to continue the textbook development path of growth driven
by importing capital and running trade deficits, the IMF made debt repayment a top priority. The bailout, under the direction of
the Clinton administration Treasury Department, required developing countries to switch to large trade surpluses (Radelet and Sachs
2000, O'Neil 1999).
The countries of East Asia would be far richer today had they been allowed to continue on the growth path of the early and mid-1990s,
when they had large trade deficits (Figure 1-2). Four of the five would be more than twice as rich, and the fifth, Vietnam, would
be almost 50 percent richer. South Korea and Malaysia would have higher per capita incomes today than the United States.
In the wake of the East Asia bailout, countries throughout the developing world decided they had to build up reserves of foreign
exchange, primarily dollars, in order to avoid ever facing the same harsh bailout terms as the countries of East Asia. Building up
reserves meant running large trade surpluses, and it is no coincidence that the U.S. trade deficit has exploded, rising from just
over 1 percent of GDP in 1996 to almost 6 percent in 2005. The rise has coincided with the loss of more than 3 million manufacturing
jobs, roughly 20 percent of employment in the sector.
There was no reason the textbook growth pattern of the 1990s could not have continued. It wasn't the laws of economics that forced
developing countries to take a different path, it was the failed bailout and the international financial system. It would seem that
the enemy of the world's poor is not Bernie Sanders but rather the engineers of our current globalization policies.
There is a further point in this story that is generally missed: it is not only the volume of trade flows that is determined by
policy, but also the content. A major push in recent trade deals has been to require stronger and longer patent and copyright protection.
Paying the fees imposed by these terms, especially for prescription drugs, is a huge burden on the developing world. Bill Clinton
would have much less need to fly around the world for the Clinton Foundation had he not inserted the TRIPS (Trade Related Aspects
of Intellectual Property Rights ) provisions in the World Trade Organization (WTO) that require developing countries to adopt U.S.-style
patent protections. Generic drugs are almost always cheap -patent protection makes drugs expensive. The cancer and hepatitis drugs
that sell for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year would sell for a few hundred dollars in a free market. Cheap drugs
would be more widely available had the developed world not forced TRIPS on the developing world.
Of course, we have to pay for the research to develop new drugs or any innovation. We also have to compensate creative workers
who produce music, movies, and books. But there are efficient alternatives to patents and copyrights, and the efforts by the elites
in the United States and other wealthy countries to impose these relics on the developing world is just a mechanism for redistributing
income from the world's poor to Pfizer, Microsoft, and Disney. Stronger and longer patent and copyright protection is not a necessary
feature of a 21 st century economy.
In textbook trade theory, if a country has a larger trade surplus on payments for royalties and patent licensing fees, it will
have a larger trade deficit in manufactured goods and other areas. The reason is that, in theory, the trade balance is fixed by national
savings and investment, not by the ability of a country to export in a particular area. If the trade deficit is effectively fixed
by these macroeconomic factors, then more exports in one area mean fewer exports in other areas. Put another way, income gains for
Pfizer and Disney translate into lost jobs for workers in the steel and auto industries.
The conventional story is that we lose manufacturing jobs to developing countries because they have hundreds of millions of people
willing to do factory work at a fraction of the pay of manufacturing workers in the United States. This is true, but developing countries
also have tens of millions of smart and ambitious people willing to work as doctors and lawyers in the United States at a fraction
of the pay of the ones we have now.
Gains from trade work the same with doctors and lawyers as they do with textiles and steel. Our consumers would save hundreds
of billions a year if we could hire professionals from developing countries and pay them salaries that are substantially less than
what we pay our professionals now. The reason we import manufactured goods and not doctors is that we have designed the rules of
trade that way. We deliberately write trade pacts to make it as easy as possible for U.S. companies to set up manufacturing operations
abroad and ship the products back to the United States, but we have done little or nothing to remove the obstacles that professionals
from other countries face in trying to work in the United States. The reason is simple: doctors and lawyers have more political power
than autoworkers.
[4]
In short, there is no truth to the story that the job loss and wage stagnation faced by manufacturing workers in the United States
and other wealthy countries was a necessary price for reducing poverty in the developing world.
[5] This is a fiction that is used to justify the upward redistribution of income in rich countries. After all, it is pretty
selfish for rich country autoworkers and textile workers to begrudge hungry people in Africa and Asia and the means to secure food,
clothing, and shelter.
The other aspect of this story that deserves mention is the nature of the jobs to which our supposedly selfish workers feel entitled.
The manufacturing jobs that are being lost to the developing world pay in the range of $15 to $30 an hour, with the vast majority
closer to the bottom figure than the top. The average hourly wage for production and nonsupervisory workers in manufacturing in 2015
was just under $20 an hour, or about $40,000 a year. While a person earning $40,000 is doing much better than a subsistence farmer
in Sub-Saharan Africa, it is difficult to see this worker as especially privileged.
By contrast, many of the people remarking on the narrow-mindedness and sense of entitlement of manufacturing workers earn comfortable
six-figure salaries. Senior writers and editors at network news shows or at the New York Times and Washington Post
feel entitled to their pay because they feel they have the education and skills to be successful in a rapidly changing global economy.
These are the sort of people who consider it a sacrifice to work at a high-level government job for $150,000 to $200,000 a year.
For example, Timothy Geithner, President Obama's first treasury secretary, often boasts about his choice to work for various government
agencies rather than earn big bucks in the private sector. His sacrifice included a stint as president of the Federal Reserve Bank
of New York that paid $415,000 a year.
[6] This level of pay put Geithner well into the top 1 percent of wage earners.
Geithner's comments about his sacrifices in public service did not elicit any outcry from the media at the time because his perspective
was widely shared. The implicit assumption is that the sort of person who is working at a high level government job could easily
be earning a paycheck that is many times higher if they were employed elsewhere. In fact, this is often true. When he left his job
as Treasury Secretary, Geithner took a position with a private equity company where his salary is likely several million dollars
a year.
Not everyone who was complaining about entitled manufacturing workers was earning as much as Timothy Geithner, but it is a safe
bet that the average critic was earning far more than the average manufacturing worker - and certainly far more than the average
displaced manufacturing worker.
Turning the Debate Right-Side Up: Markets Are Structured
The perverse nature of the debate over a trade policy that would have the audacity to benefit workers in rich countries is a great
example of how we accept as givens not just markets themselves but also the policies that structure markets. If we accept it as a
fact of nature that poor countries cannot borrow from rich countries to finance their development, and that they can only export
manufactured goods, then their growth will depend on displacing manufacturing workers in the United States and other rich countries.
It is absurd to narrow the policy choices in this way, yet the centrists and conservatives who support the upward redistribution
of the last four decades have been extremely successful in doing just that, and progressives have largely let them set the terms
of the debate.
Markets are never just given. Neither God nor nature hands us a worked-out set of rules determining the way property relations
are defined, contracts are enforced, or macroeconomic policy is implemented. These matters are determined by policy choices. The
elites have written these rules to redistribute income upward. Needless to say, they are not eager to have the rules rewritten which
means they have no interest in even having them discussed.
But for progressive change to succeed, these rules must be addressed. While modest tweaks to tax and transfer policies can ameliorate
the harm done by a regressive market structure, their effect will be limited. The complaint of conservatives - that tampering with
market outcomes leads to inefficiencies and unintended outcomes - is largely correct, even if they may exaggerate the size of the
distortions from policy interventions. Rather than tinker with badly designed rules, it is far more important to rewrite the rules
so that markets lead to progressive and productive outcomes in which the benefits of economic growth and improving technology are
broadly shared
This book examines five broad areas where the rules now in place tend to redistribute income upward and where alternative rules
can lead to more equitable outcomes and a more efficient market:
Macroeconomic policies determining levels of employment and output. Financial regulation and the structure of financial markets.
Patent and copyright monopolies and alternative mechanisms for financing innovation and creative work. Pay of chief executive
officers (CEOs) and corporate governance structures. Protections for highly paid professionals, such as doctors and lawyers.
In each of these areas, it is possible to identify policy choices that have engineered the upward redistribution of the last four
decades.
In the case of macroeconomic policy, the United States and other wealthy countries have explicitly adopted policies that focus
on maintaining low rates of inflation. Central banks are quick to raise interest rates at the first sign of rising inflation and
sometimes even before. Higher interest rates slow inflation by reducing demand, thereby reducing job growth, and reduced job growth
weakens workers' bargaining power and puts downward pressure on wages. In other words, the commitment to an anti-inflation policy
is a commitment by the government, acting through central banks, to keep wages down. It should not be surprising that this policy
has the effect of redistributing income upward.
The changing structure of financial regulation and financial markets has also been an important factor in redistributing income
upward. This is a case where an industry has undergone very rapid change as a result of technological innovation. Information technology
has hugely reduced the cost of financial transactions and allowed for the development of an array of derivative instruments that
would have been unimaginable four decades ago. Rather than modernizing regulation to ensure that these technologies allow the financial
sector to better serve the productive economy, the United States and other countries have largely structured regulations to allow
a tiny group of bankers and hedge fund and private equity fund managers to become incredibly rich.
This changed structure of regulation over the last four decades was not "deregulation," as is often claimed. Almost no proponent
of deregulation argued against the bailouts that saved Wall Street in the financial crisis or against the elimination of government
deposit insurance that is an essential part of a stable banking system. Rather, they advocated a system in which the rules restricting
their ability to profit were eliminated, while the insurance provided by the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation, and other arms of the government were left in place. The position of "deregulators" effectively amounted to arguing
that they should not have to pay for the insurance they were receiving.
The third area in which the rules have been written to ensure an upward redistribution is patent and copyright protection. Over
the last four decades these protections have been made stronger and longer. In the case of both patent and copyright, the duration
of the monopoly period has been extended. In addition, these monopolies have been applied to new areas. Patents can now be applied
to life forms, business methods, and software. Copyrights have been extended to cover digitally produced material as well as the
internet. Penalties for infringement have been increased and the United States has vigorously pursued their application in other
countries through trade agreements and diplomatic pressure.
Government-granted monopolies are not facts of nature, and there are alternative mechanisms for financing innovation and creative
work. Direct government funding, as opposed to government granted monopolies, is one obvious alternative. For example, the government
spends more than $30 billion a year on biomedical research through the National Institutes of Health - money that all parties agree
is very well spent. There are also other possible mechanisms. It is likely that these alternatives are more efficient than the current
patent and copyright system, in large part because they would be more market-oriented. And, they would likely lead to less upward
redistribution than the current system.
The CEOs who are paid tens of millions a year would like the public to think that the market is simply compensating them for their
extraordinary skills. A more realistic story is that a broken corporate governance process gives corporate boards of directors -
the people who largely determine CEO pay -little incentive to hold down pay. Directors are more closely tied to top management than
to the shareholders they are supposed to represent, and their positions are lucrative, usually paying six figures for very part-time
work. Directors are almost never voted out by shareholders for their lack of attention to the job or for incompetence.
The market discipline that holds down the pay of ordinary workers does not apply to CEOs, since their friends determine their
pay. And a director has little incentive to pick a fight with fellow directors or top management by asking a simple question like,
"Can we get a CEO just as good for half the pay?" This privilege matters not just for CEOs; it has the spillover effect of raising
the pay of other top managers in the corporate sector and putting upward pressure on the salaries of top management in universities,
hospitals, private charities, and other nonprofits.
Reformed corporate governance structures could empower shareholders to contain the pay of their top-level employees. Suppose directors
could count on boosts in their own pay if they cut the pay of top management without hurting profitability, With this sort of policy
change, CEOs and top management might start to experience some of the downward wage pressure that existing policies have made routine
for typical workers.
This is very much not a story of the natural workings of the market. Corporations are a legal entity created by the government,
which also sets the rules of corporate governance. Current law includes a lengthy set of restrictions on corporate governance practices.
It is easy to envision rules which would make it less likely that CEOs earn such outlandish paychecks by making it easier for shareholders
to curb excessive pay.
Finally, government policies strongly promote the upward redistribution of income for highly paid professionals by protecting
them from competition. To protect physicians and specialists, we restrict the ability of nurse practitioners or physician assistants
to perform tasks for which they are entirely competent. We require lawyers for work that paralegals are capable of completing. While
trade agreements go far to remove any obstacle that might protect an autoworker in the United States from competition with a low-paid
factory worker in Mexico or China, they do little or nothing to reduce the barriers that protect doctors, dentists, and lawyers from
the same sort of competition. To practice medicine in the United States, it is still necessary to complete a residency program here,
as though there were no other way for a person to become a competent doctor.
We also have done little to foster medical travel. This could lead to enormous benefits to patients and the economy, since many
high cost medical procedures can be performed at a fifth or even one-tenth the U.S. price in top quality medical facilities elsewhere
in the world. In this context, it is not surprising that the median pay of physicians is over $250,000 a year and some areas of specialization
earn close to twice this amount. In the case of physicians alone, if pay were reduced to West European-levels the savings would be
close to $100 billion a year (@ 0.6 percent of GDP).
Changing the rules in these five areas could reduce much and possibly all of the upward redistribution of the last four decades.
But changing the rules does not mean using government intervention to curb the market. It means restructuring the market to produce
different outcomes. The purpose of this book is to show how.
[1] See also Weissman (2016), Iacono (2016), Worstall (2016), Lane (2016), and Zakaria (2016).
[2] As explained in the next chapter, this view is not exactly correct, but it's what you're supposed to believe if you adhere
to the mainstream economic view.
[3] There can be modest changes in employment through a supply-side effect. If the trade deal increases the efficiency of the
economy, then the marginal product of labor should rise, leading to a higher real wage, which in turn should induce some people to
choose work over leisure. So the trade deal results in more people choosing to work, not an increased demand for labor.
[4] For those worried about brain drain from developing countries, there is an easy fix. Economists like to talk about taxing
the winners, in this case developing country professionals and rich country consumers, to compensate the losers, which would be the
home countries of the migrating professionals. We could tax a portion of the professionals' pay to allow their home countries to
train two or three professionals for every one that came to the United States. This is a classic win-win from trade.
[5] The loss of manufacturing jobs also reduced the wages of less-educated workers (those without college degrees) more generally.
The displaced manufacturing workers crowded into retail and other service sectors, putting downward pressure on wages there.
[6] As a technical matter, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is a private bank. It is owned by the banks that are members
of the Federal Reserve System in the New York District.
"Markets are never just given. Neither God nor nature hands us a worked-out set of rules determining the way property relations
are defined, contracts are enforced, or macroeconomic policy is implemented. These matters are determined by policy choices. The
elites have written these rules to redistribute income upward. Needless to say, they are not eager to have the rules rewritten
which means they have no interest in even having them discussed."
======================================================
It is one of those remarkable hypocrisies that free "unregulated" trade requires deals of thousands of pages .
but if these deals weren't so carefully structured to help the 1%, support would melt like snowmen in Fresno on a July day
Or check your local indy, or one of those that take orders (I refrain from naming my favorite co-op in Chicago, and anyway
I admit there are others). Nice to support those when you can.
Almost no proponent of deregulation argued against the bailouts that saved Wall Street in the financial crisis or against
the elimination of government deposit insurance that is an essential part of a stable banking system.
Actually I believe there were some Republicans who denounced the Wall Street bailout as a violation of capitalist principles.
My state's Mark Sanford comes to mind. It was the Dems at the urging of Pelosi who saved the bailout. On the other hand many of
my local politicians are big on "public/private" partnerships which would be a violation of laissez-faire that they approve. Perhaps
it was simply that there are no giant banks headquartered in SC.
The truth is there is no coherent intellectual basis to how the US economy is currently run. It's all about power and what
you can do with it. Which is to say it is our politics, above all, that is broken.
"That is how the economics is supposed to work. In the standard theory, general shortages of demand are not a problem.[2]
Economists have traditionally assumed that economies tended toward full employment. The basic economic constraint was a lack of
supply. The problem was that we couldn't produce enough goods and services, not that we were producing too much and couldn't find
anyone to buy them. In fact, this is why all the standard models used to analyze trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership
assume trade doesn't affect total employment.[3] Economies adjust so that shortages of demand are not a problem."
Unbelievable.
By the 1920s they realised the system produced so much stuff that extensive advertising was needed to shift it all.
One hundred year's later, we might take this on board.
What is the global advertising budget?
The amount necessary to shift all the crap the system produces today.
We need to move on from Milton Freidman's ideas and discover what trade in a globalized world is really about.
We are still under the influence of Milton Freidman's ideas of a globalised free trade world.
These ideas came from Milton Freidman's imagination where he saw the ideal as small state, raw capitalism and thought the public
sector should be sold off and entitlement programs whittled down until everything must be purchased through the private sector.
"You are free to spend your money as you choose"
Not mentioning its other meaning:
"No money, no freedom"
After Milton Freedman's "shock therapy" in Russia, people were left with so little money they couldn't afford to eat and starved
to death. In Greece people cannot afford even bread today.
But this is economic liberalism, the economy comes first.
Milton Freidman used his imagination to work out what small state, raw capitalism looked like whereas he could have looked
at it in reality through history books of the 18th and 19th centuries where it had already existed.
The Classical Economists studied it and were able to see its problems first hand and noted the detrimental effects of the rentier
class on the economy. They were constantly looking to get "unearned" income from doing nothing; sucking purchasing power out of
the economy and bleeding it dry.
Adam Smith observed:
"The Labour and time of the poor is in civilised countries sacrificed to the maintaining of the rich in ease and luxury.
The Landlord is maintained in idleness and luxury by the labour of his tenants. The moneyed man is supported by his extractions
from the industrious merchant and the needy who are obliged to support him in ease by a return for the use of his money. But every
savage has the full fruits of his own labours; there are no landlords, no usurers and no tax gatherers."
Adam Smith saw landlords, usurers (bankers) and Government taxes as equally parasitic, all raising the cost of doing business.
He sees the lazy people at the top living off "unearned" income from their land and capital.
He sees the trickle up of Capitalism:
1) Those with excess capital collect rent and interest.
2) Those with insufficient capital pay rent and interest.
He differentiates between "earned" and "unearned" income.
Today we encourage a new rentier class of BTL landlords who look to extract the "earned" income of generation rent for "unearned"
income. If you have a large BTL portfolio you can become a true rentier, do nothing productive at all and live off "unearned"
income extracted from generation rent, the true capitalist parasite. (UK)
The Classical Economists realised capitalism has two sides, the productive side where "earned" income is generated and the
unproductive, parasitic, rentier side where "unearned" income is generated.
You should tax "unearned" income to discourage the parasitic side of capitalism.
You shouldn't tax "earned" income to encourage the productive side of capitalism.
You should provide low cost housing, education and services to create a low cost of living, giving a low minimum wage making
you globally competitive. This is to be funded by taxes on "unearned" income.
The US has probably been the most successful in making its labour force internationally uncompetitive with soaring costs of
housing, healthcare and student loan repayments.
These all have to be covered by wages and US businesses are now squealing about the high minimum wage.
That's Milton Freidman's imagined small state, raw capitalism.
What he imagined bears little resemblance to the reality the Classical Economists saw firsthand.
We need to move on from Milton Freidman fantasy land.
Small state, raw capitalism as observed by Adam Smith:
"But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity and fall with the declension of the society.
On the contrary, it is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going
fastest to ruin."
When rates of profit are high, capitalism is cannibalising itself by:
1) Not engaging in long term investment for the future
2) Paying insufficient wages to maintain demand for its products and services
In the 18th Century they would have understood today's problems with growth and demand.
Luckily Jeff Bezos didn't inhabit Milton Freidman fantasy land.
He re-invested almost everything to turn Amazon onto the global behemoth it is today.
' The commitment to an anti-inflation policy is a commitment by the government, acting through central banks, to keep wages
down. '
This is strikingly silly. Insert the word 'nominal' before wages, and it's not a howler anymore.
Anti-inflation policy in fact has little influence on real wages (the variable of concern, not nominal wages). But it has a
lot to do with preventing the social chaos of constantly rising prices, strikes for higher wages, inability of first-time home
buyers to borrow at affordable rates, and so on.
Inflationism is greasy kid stuff not to mention a brazen fraud on the public.
As one who walked the corridors of power in a very modest capacity in my country in the early to mid 1990s, can I just say
that people with power or influence then were aware that globalisation would create winners and losers. I recall the consensus
of those I knew then was that steps would need to be taken to compensate the losers. The tragedy is that these steps were never
taken, or, if they were, only to a wholly inadequate degree.
The always elusive referents for cost, price and value the flip-side of social chaos would seem the entropic degradation of
wasted lives, excluded from participating {either-OR} abandoned as irredeemable
Higher interest rates slow inflation by reducing demand, thereby reducing job growth, and reduced job growth weakens workers'
bargaining power and puts downward pressure on wages.
Your assertion that anti-inflation policy has little influence on real wages does not address Baker's statement about the mechanism
by which he says it does. Given an argument between two people, one of whom cites a mechanism he is probably prepared to document
with numbers and one of whom merely declares his belief, which are people more likely to trust? Granted always, they should go
look for the numbers before they fully accept the statement, his credibility is currently higher than yours on this subject.
By contrast, since the 1970s real wages stalled, while interest rates round-tripped back to 2 percent.
Over nearly seven decades, the correlation is quite the opposite from that made up claimed by Dean Bonkers.
Namely, real wages soared under a regime of steadily rising nominal interest rates.
Since my original reply has disappeared in limbo, I will merely note that numbers are probably even crunchier when you don't
generalize across a span of decades: first there was A, then there was B, nothing else happened. It's a sure way to obscure patterns.
And Jim, please quit the ad hominem stuff! It's ugly and needless. If you really have an argument you don't need it, and if
you don't you don't gain by it. You know perfectly well he's not making things up and he's not bonkers. When you say stuff like
that, the obvious presumption is that you just don't want to consider his arguments because they lead somewhere you don't want
to go.
Perhaps I am missing the point being made, but if you are suggesting that increases in real wages in the 1945-1975 period caused
inflation, why not provide the data on inflation which would in fact show that inflation was essentially tame for 20 years in
this period (1952-1972, with a slight hiccup in 1969-1971), thereby contradicting your point? And if you are suggesting that Fed
increases in interest rate have not resulted in suppression of wages you will have to demonstrate that using analysis that takes
into account the lag in time between increase in rate and transmission to wages, and in that case would you not also use the Fed
Funds Rate itself as a variable?
Bulltwacky, they have been globalizing wages downwards while globalizing housing prices upwards!
Every time some stupid and moronic newsy floozy on one of the CorporateNonMedia outlets claims housing purchases may be going
down because consumer confidence is plummeting, they CHOOSE to ignore the foreign buyers of said houses!
Did I get this right? Full employment is an assumed boundary condition and so is fixed balance of trade? If the model is to
work as advertised then the boundary conditions must be hard wired to be true, right?
If the top 25 hedge fund managers saved around $5 billion per year in being taxed on their income at capital gains rate (carried
interest ruling in tax code - utterly corrupt), then think of the amount that is being robbed from the tax base when one considers
ALL the hedge fund people, and ALL the private equity types (who also do this), a conservative amount of tax revenues remitted
should be around $100 billion per year!
The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed
the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political
organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and
WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations
of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the
US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow-the Russians have used similar tactics
and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We
believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most
officials could have authorized these activities.
First of all the fact that intelligence community issue a statement on such a matter is
very strange. There is executive branch and three letter agencies should generally keep their
mouth shut and allow others to voice the concerns, etc.
This might be a sigh of complete disorganization of executive branch with intelligence agencies
becoming a power players. Kind of "Deep State" morphing into "surface state".
There are might be also multiple valid reasons for disclosing such a sensitive information:
1. I want your money stupid Pinocchio.
2. Smoke screen to hide their own nefarious activities and/or blunders within the USA. Actually
existence of Hillary private server is somewhat incompatible with the existence of NSA.
This is one thing when Podesta using gmail. It's quite another when the Secretary of state
uses "bathroom server" with incompetent or semi-competent tech staff and completely clueless
entourage.
3. Pre-emptive strike reflecting some internal struggle within US Intelligence community
itself with a neocon faction going "all in" to force the viewpoint, and more aggressive toward
Russia stance, which might not be shared by others.
Please note that CIA and DOD are fighting each other in Iraq and Syria to a certain extent.
4. Increase Anti-Russian hysteria, which helps Hillary as a candidate of neocon establishment.
5. Russians might recently uncover some nefarious activities (I heard FSB did discover compromised
computers in some ministries) and this is the preparation for the blowback.
The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and
by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed
efforts....
-- Joint Statement from the Department of Homeland Security
and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security
[ "Consistent with the methods and motivations..." is a shocking supposition to be made
public, but we have been subject to such suppositions, seemingly with increasing frequency,
for these last 15 years. ]
Weapons of Mass Destruction! We have irrefutable evidence! Yellowcake!
Keith B. Alexander:"Those who would want to weave the story that we have millions or hundreds
of millions of dossiers on people, is absolutely false From my perspective, this is absolute
nonsense."
...
Senator Wyden: "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of
millions of Americans?"
DNI Clapper"No, sir."
Senator Wyden: "It does not?"
DNI Clapper:"Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, collect,
but not wittingly."
The [IN]operative word there was "collect" which in NSAspeak does not mean... collect.
Not shocking at all unless you are ignorant about tracing and analyzing hacks. The traces and
approaches are like fingerprints. Nobody in the business have any doubts that the Russians
did this - but they will never give you the details of how they got to that conclusion, because
this is a public website and the hacking wars are like the missile wars, if the other side
knows what you got they can counter it and make your job harder.
likbez -> DeDude... , -1
You might be a little bit naïve as for traces.
The first rule of such activities on state level is to pretend that you are somebody else
deliberately leaving false clues (IP space, keyboard layout, etc), everything that you call
traces.
Historically it was the USA that started cyberwar and who developed the most advanced capabilities
in this space. Remember the worm which tried to subvert functionality of Iranian centrifuges
electronics using specially designed malware and Trojans like Flame?
Using botnets essentially gives anybody substantial freedom about what IP space you want
to use. You can pretend to be Russian if you want to and use computers from Russian IP space.
More "paranoid claptrap" (or should that be Clappertrap?):
Edward Snowden: "...the breaking point was seeing the Director of National Intelligence,
James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress. Seeing that really meant for me there was
no going back."
That's not untrue, but it seems to me to be getting worse.
Or at least, we had been making progress, but now we are seeing a massive regression. There
have always been racists and misogynists but they used to be hidden under rocks, and the GOP
used to take pains to make their dog whistles to them subtle.
Trump really has brought them out and given the gen a sense of validation and community.
Though my working theory is that he merely hopped on to an existing trend, driven by the
way digital media allows people to create their own comfortable ideological bubbles and find
community for whatever spiteful, paranoid or asinine beliefs people have. This includes left
and right, though pretty obviously the wingnuts on the right dominate their party and have
more numbers and power.
Speaking as someone who grew up under segregation in Oklahoma in the 50s and 60s, it has been
getting progressively worse since the 1980s (it did did significantly better from 1968- the
early 80s). Nixon started this with his "Southern Strategy" and Reagan dialed it up with his
"Welfare Queens" and "strapping young bucks." All Trump did was replace the dog whistles with
a bullhorn.
"That's not untrue, but it seems to me to be getting worse."
Because of economic stagnation and anxiety among lower class Republicans.
Trump blames immigration and trade unlike traditional elite Republicans. These are economic
issues.
Trump supporters no longer believe or trust the Republican elite who they see as corrupt
which is partly true.
They've been backing Nixon, Reagan, Bush etc and things are just getting worse. They've
been played.
Granted it's complicated and partly they see their side as losing and so are doubling down
on the conservatism, racism, sexism etc.
But Trump *brags* that he was against the Iraq war. That's not an elite Republican opinion.
likbez -> DrDick... , -1
My impression is that Trump_vs_deep_state is more about dissatisfaction of the Republican base with the
Republican brass (which fully endorsed neoliberal globalization), the phenomenon somewhat similar
to Sanders.
Working class and lower middle class essentially abandoned DemoRats (Clinton democrats)
after so many years of betrayal and "they have nowhere to go" attitude.
Looks like they have found were to go this election cycle and this loss of the base is probably
was the biggest surprise for neoliberal Democrats.
Now they try to forge the alliance of highly paid professionals who benefitted from globalization("creative
class"), financial speculators and minorities. Which does not look like a stable coalition
to me.
Some data suggest that among unions which endorsed Hillary 3 out of 4 members will vote against
her. And that are data from union brass. Lower middle class might also demonstrate the same
pattern this election cycle.
In other words both Parties are now split and have two mini-parties inside. I am not sure
that Sanders part of Democratic party would support Hillary. The wounds caused by DNC betrayal
and double dealing are still too fresh.
We have something like what Marxists call "revolutionary situation" when the elite loses
control of "peons". And existence of Internet made MSM propaganda far less effective that it
would be otherwise.
They are the same neocon creeps... They forgot nothing and learn nothing.
Notable quotes:
"... My impression is that that key issue is as following: a vote for Hillary is a vote for the War Party and is incompatible with democratic principles. ..."
"... Trump with all his warts gives us a chance to get some kind of détente with Russia. ..."
"... In other words no real Democrat can vote for Hillary. ..."
"... Why do you think "wet kiss with neocons" is compatible with democratic principles ? ..."
"... I'm really bummed that we are going to be seeing a return of a lot of the same creeps who gave us the foreign policy of the 90's that went belly up in 2001-03. ..."
"... But most of the liberal bloggers obediently kept their mouths shut about it. ..."
Just a hunch: a lot of this hoo-hah will simmer down after the election.
But yeah, I'm really bummed that we are going to be seeing a return of a lot of the same
creeps who gave us the foreign policy of the 90's that went belly up in 2001-03.
Just a reminder: I called attention several times to this article in 2014 and 2015:
"... The Democratic nominee in the final debate reiterated her bellicose stance towards Syria. Combined with her 2003 vote for war in Iraq, and her central role in getting the U.S. into the 2011 war in Libya, Clinton could become the most hawkish candidate elected president in most Americans' lifetimes. ..."
"... Enforcing a no-fly zone is "basically an act of war," Michael Knights, a no-fly-zone expert at the Washington Institute told me in the run up to the Libyan war. ..."
"... "Hillary's War," was the Washington Post's headline for a flattering feature on the Secretary of State's central role in driving the U.S. to intervene in Libya's civil war in 2011. ..."
"... Clinton staff, published emails have shown, worked hard to get Clinton credit for the war. Clinton's confidante at the State Department Jake Sullivan drafted a memo on her "leadership/ownership/stewardship of this country's Libya policy from start to finish." ..."
"... Hillary's war was illegal-because the administration never obtained congressional authorization for it-and it was also disastrous. "Libya is in a state of meltdown," John Lee Anderson wrote in the Atlantic last summer. ..."
"... Yet somehow, through three general election debates, she never got a single question on Libya. Consider that: a former Secretary of State touted a war as a central achievement of hers, is running on her foreign-policy chops, and she is escaping accountability for that disastrous war. ..."
"... Clinton, of course, also voted for the Iraq War in 2003. She says now she thinks that war was a mistake because it destabilized region. But somehow she doesn't apply that supposed lesson to Libya or to Syria. ..."
"... The pattern is clear: Hillary Clinton is consistently and maybe blindly pro-war. She is now the clear frontrunner to become our next president. The antiwar movement that flourished under President George W. Bush has disappeared under President Obama . Will it revive under Hillary? Will Republicans have the power or the desire to check her ambitious interventionism. ..."
Hillary Clinton
can change her views in an instant on trade, guns, gay marriage, and all sorts of issues, but
she's consistent in this: she wants war.
The Democratic nominee in the final debate reiterated her bellicose stance towards Syria. Combined
with her 2003 vote for war in Iraq, and her central role in getting the U.S. into the 2011 war in
Libya, Clinton could become the most hawkish candidate elected president in most Americans' lifetimes.
"I am going to continue to push for a no-fly zone and safe havens within Syria," Clinton said
Wednesday night. Totally separate from the fight against ISIS, Clinton's "no-fly zones and safe havens"
are U.S. military intervention in the bloody and many-sided conflict between Syria's brutal government,
terrorist groups, and rebel groups.
Enforcing a no-fly zone is "basically an act of war," Michael Knights, a no-fly-zone expert at
the Washington Institute told me in the run up to the Libyan war. Air Force Gen. Paul Selva, vice
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the Senate that a no-fly zone created "the
potential of a direct conflict with the Syrian integrated air defense system or Syrian forces or,
by corollary, a confrontation with the Russians."
Defense Secretary Ash Carter testified in the same hearing that "safe zones" would require significant
U.S. boots on the ground.
So while Hillary says she doesn't want war with Russia or Syria, or boots on the ground in Syria,
she pushes policies that the Pentagon says risk war and require boots on the ground.
Hillary showed that same cavalier attitude toward war earlier this decade, laughingly
declaring "we came, we
saw, he died." This was her version of George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" moment, and Libya
was her smaller - and less legal - version of Bush's Iraq War.
"Hillary's War," was the Washington Post's headline for a flattering feature on the Secretary
of State's central role in driving the U.S. to intervene in Libya's civil war in 2011.
Clinton staff, published emails have shown, worked hard to get Clinton credit for the war.
Clinton's confidante at the State Department Jake Sullivan drafted a memo on her "leadership/ownership/stewardship
of this country's Libya policy from start to finish."
Sullivan listed, point-by-point, how Clinton helped bring about and shape the war. Before Obama's
attack on Moammar Gadhafi, "she [was] a leading voice for strong UNSC action and a NATO civilian
B5 protection mission," the memo explained.
Hillary's war was illegal-because the administration never obtained congressional authorization
for it-and it was also disastrous. "Libya is in a state of meltdown," John Lee Anderson wrote in
the Atlantic last summer.
ISIS has spread, no stable government has arisen, and the chaos has led to refugee and terrorism
crises.
Clinton nevertheless calls her war "smart power at its best," declaring during the primary season,
"I think President
Obama made the right decision at the time."
Yet somehow, through three general election debates, she never got a single question on Libya.
Consider that: a former Secretary of State touted a war as a central achievement of hers, is running
on her foreign-policy chops, and she is escaping accountability for that disastrous war.
Clinton, of course, also voted for the Iraq War in 2003. She says now she thinks that war
was a mistake because it destabilized region. But somehow she doesn't apply that supposed lesson
to Libya or to Syria.
The pattern is clear:
Hillary Clinton
is consistently and maybe blindly pro-war. She is now the clear frontrunner to become our next
president. The antiwar movement that flourished under President George W. Bush has disappeared under
President Obama
. Will it revive under Hillary? Will Republicans have the power or the desire to check her ambitious
interventionism.
If Hillary wins big and sweeps in a Senate majority with her, we could be in for four more years
of even more war.
Timothy P. Carney, the Washington Examiner's senior political columnist, can be contacted at
[email protected]. His column appears
Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
"... Obama said back in 2008: "I want to be honest, it's not as if it's just Republicans who have monkeyed around with elections in the past. Sometimes, Democrats have, too." ..."
"... hillary goes along with CIA and the neocon/zionist/MIC agenda but she's replaceable. ..."
"... An out of control, above the law, criminal mafia acting on behalf of the Saudis and Israelis (if you think Syria is about the petrodollar or a Qatari pipeline... Think again - it's about Iran and Russia and about Greater Israel and its Leviathan and Golan gas most of all - Zbig et al would prefer to be full battle rattle in Ukraine and Chechnya...) is stopped how? ..."
A U.K. based company that has provided voting machines for 16 states, including important battleground
states like Florida and Arizona, has direct ties with billionaire leftist and Clinton crusader George
Soros.
As Lifezette
reports , the fact that the man in control of voting machines in 16 states is tied directly to
the man who has given millions of dollars to the Clinton campaign and various progressive and globalist
causes will surely leave a bad taste in the mouth of many a voter.
The balloting equipment tied to Soros is coming from the U.K. based Smartmatic company, whose
chairman Mark Malloch-Brown is a former UN official and sits on the board of Soros' Open Society
Foundation.
According to Lifezette , Malloch-Brown was part of the Soros Advisory Committee on Bosnia and
also is a member of the executive committee of the International Crisis Group, an organization he
co-founded in the 1990s and built with funds from George Soros' personal fortune.
In 2007 Soros appointed Malloch-Brown vice-president of his Quantum Funds, vice-chairman of Soros
Fund Management, and vice-chairman of the Open Society Institute (former name of OSF).
Browns ties also intertwine with the Clintons as he was a partner with Sawyer-Miller, the consulting
firm where close Clinton associate Mandy Grunwald worked. Brown also was also a senior advisor to
FTI Consulting, a firm at which Jackson Dunn, who spent 15 years working as an aide to the Clintons,
is a senior managing director.
When taking that into account, along with the poor track record Smartmatic has of providing free
and fair elections, this all becomes quite terrifying.
An astonishing 2006 classified U.S. diplomatic cable obtained and released by WikiLeaks reveals
the extent to which Smartmatic may have played a hand in rigging the 2004 Venezuelan recall election
under a section titled "A Shadow of Fraud." The memo stated that "Smartmatic Corporation is a
riddle both in ownership and operation, complicated by the fact that its machines have overseen
several landslide (and contested) victories by President Hugo Chavez and his supporters."
"The Smartmatic machines used in Venezuela are widely suspected of, though never proven conclusively
to be, susceptible to fraud," the memo continued. "The Venezuelan opposition is convinced that
the Smartmatic machines robbed them of victory in the August 2004 referendum. Since then, there
have been at least eight statistical analyses performed on the referendum results."
"One study obtained the data log from the CANTV network and supposedly proved that the Smartmatic
machines were bi-directional and in fact showed irregularities in how they reported their results
to the CNE central server during the referendum," it read.
With such suspicion and a study which claims to prove that the U.K. firm's equipment tampered
with the 2004 Venezuelan recall election, should be enough for states to reject these machines if
they desire a fair election.
Smartmatic is providing machines to Arizona, California, Colorado, Washington DC, Florida, Illinois,
Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington and
Wisconsin, which means these Soros and Clinton linked machines are going to take the votes of thousands
of Americans.
While GOP nominee Donald Trump has been voicing his opinion that the elections are indeed rigged
due to media bias, and the proof that
mainstream polls are heavily weighted to favor Clinton , it is needless to say that if the results
show Hillary as a winner in November, there is going to a mess to shuffle through to find signs of
honesty.
MSNBC are reporting that Hillary is absolutely surging and now leading by double digits! America
is going absolutely wild for Hillary!! This is very exciting – I can sense victory, and I see
that bitter right-wingers can sense defeat as they pre-emptively blame their loss on vote rigging.
There is no such thing as election rigging, unless we're talking about Al Gore losing to Bush
– there was clear evidence of rigging during this election. But Republicans are known for rigging
elections. Democrats have never, and will never rig an election.
Two words: PAPER BALLOTS!!! How anyone with 3 brain cells or more can't see that paper ballots
are the way to go when voting is beyond me. There is a paper trail, and they cannot be hacked.
They can be recounted. Machines are easily manipulated and there is NO PAPER trail to recount.
Use paper ballots and tell Gerge Soros to go fuck himself.
The Soros voting machine issue is one of the largest problems with this election. Trump has mentioned
him by name twice during the debates and has also talked openly about a 'rigged' election. I hope
he will address this directly.
We're already seeing the polls skew in Clinton's direction in unusual states like Arizona so
even that is on the cards to be stolen.
LOL, not even your big hero Barry would claim that. To wit: Obama said back in 2008: "I want
to be honest, it's not as if it's just Republicans who have monkeyed around with elections in
the past. Sometimes, Democrats have, too."
And this time, it seems to be more than some monkeying on part of Hitlery and Barry. Rather
"we rigged some votes and screwed some folks." Go figure.
Speaking at a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, Million Dollar Bonus said: "To say you won't
respect the results of the election, that is a direct threat to our democracy.
"The peaceful transfer of power is one of the things that makes America America.
And look, some people are sore losers, and we just got to keep going" It was actually Hillary
Clinton who said that, same difference lol,
You make a good point, and to distill the matter to its essence, apart from a controlled media
and well established and entrenched special, foreign and banking interests in DC... The CIA is
a CRIMINAL MAFIA acting under color of law, currently taking Saudi money to pay jihadi and 'blackwater'
type mercs in Syria, and by the way Yemen, and elsewhere, to include the slow ramp up in E Ukraine.
hillary goes along with CIA and the neocon/zionist/MIC agenda but she's replaceable.
No they can and will steal this election if, in fact, Trump were to get a majority of votes
(which by the way is unlikely - study the demographics... trump can not beat hillary when she
has 70/80% of women, the latinos, blacks, leftists, and so on) - but the underlying issue remains:
An out of control, above the law, criminal mafia acting on behalf of the Saudis and Israelis
(if you think Syria is about the petrodollar or a Qatari pipeline... Think again - it's about
Iran and Russia and about Greater Israel and its Leviathan and Golan gas most of all - Zbig et
al would prefer to be full battle rattle in Ukraine and Chechnya...) is stopped how?
Considering that US military personnel may quite literally be killed by CIA provided weapons,
one might posit that one scenario is CIA personnel being hunted down and arrested (or not) by
elements of the US special forces although this doesn't happen without either strong and secure
leadership or some paradigm-shifting revelation.
For example- if more knew how exceedingly likely it is that 9/11 was an inside/Israeli job...
Knew it... Things might change.
but I'm not optimistic.
hillary means ww3, and we are not the good guys. If we ever were..
Things were way different back when JFK was killed, I know I was around then.
For one thing there was no internet, and people trusted and respected the media (TV and Newspapers)
This trust made it very easy to coverup and / or bury details.
People overwhelmingly trusted government officials, Very few people questioned what government
and media told them, again this makes it super easy to lie and coverup
I repect your question, and I hope you consider what I said. I am trying to make the case that
assasination is no longer an option, not unless they want to truly start a real civil war. Which
I would not rule out. But if they wish to keep the status quo and the sheep silent, assasination
is way way to risky for the reasons I mentioned above
"... It is an obvious fact that the oligarchic One Percent have anointed Hillary, despite her myriad problems to be President of the US. There are reports that her staff are already moving into their White House offices. This much confidence before the vote does suggest that the skids have been greased. ..."
"... Stolen elections are the American tradition. Elections are stolen at every level-state, local, and federal. Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley's theft of the Chicago and, thereby, Illinois vote for John F. Kennedy is legendary. The Republican US Supreme Court's theft of the 2000 presidential election from Al Gore by preventing the Florida vote recount is another legendary example. The discrepancies between exit polls and the vote count of the secretly programmed electronic voting machines that have no paper trails are also legendary. ..."
"... The presstitutes have gone all out to demonize both Trump and any mention of election rigging, because they know for a fact that the election will be stolen and that they will have the job of covering up the theft. ..."
"... Don't believe the polls that say Hillary won the Q&A sessions or the polls that say Hillary is ahead in the election. Pollsters work for political organizations. If pollsters produce unwelcome results, they don't have any customers. The desired results are that Hillary wins. The purpose of the rigged polls showing her to be ahead is to discourage Trump supporters from voting. ..."
"... Don't vote early. The purpose of early voting is to show the One Percent how the vote is shaping up. From this information, the oligarchs learn how to program the electronic machines in order to elect the candidate that they want. ..."
It is an obvious fact that the oligarchic One Percent have anointed Hillary, despite her myriad
problems to be President of the US. There are reports that her staff are already moving into their
White House offices. This much confidence before the vote does suggest that the skids have been greased.
The current cause celebre against Trump is his conditional statement that he might not accept
the election results if they appear to have been rigged. The presstitutes immediately jumped on him
for "discrediting American democracy" and for "breaking American tradition of accepting the people's
will."
What nonsense! Stolen elections are the American tradition. Elections are stolen at every
level-state, local, and federal. Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley's theft of the Chicago and, thereby,
Illinois vote for John F. Kennedy is legendary. The Republican US Supreme Court's theft of the 2000
presidential election from Al Gore by preventing the Florida vote recount is another legendary example.
The discrepancies between exit polls and the vote count of the secretly programmed electronic voting
machines that have no paper trails are also legendary.
So what's the big deal about Trump's suspicion of election rigging?
The black civil rights movement has fought vote rigging for decades. The rigging takes place in
a number of ways. Blacks simply can't get registered to vote. If they do get registered, there are
few polling places in their districts. And so on. After decades of struggle it is impossible that
there are any blacks who are not aware of how hard it can be for them to vote. Yet, I heard on the
presstitute radio network, NPR, Hillary's Uncle Toms saying how awful it was that Trump had cast
aspersion on the credibility of American election results.
I also heard a NPR announcer suggest that Russia had not only hacked Hillary's emails, but also
had altered them in order to make incriminating documents out of harmless emails.
The presstitutes have gone all out to demonize both Trump and any mention of election rigging,
because they know for a fact that the election will be stolen and that they will have the job of
covering up the theft.
Don't believe the polls that say Hillary won the Q&A sessions or the polls that say Hillary
is ahead in the election. Pollsters work for political organizations. If pollsters produce unwelcome
results, they don't have any customers. The desired results are that Hillary wins. The purpose of
the rigged polls showing her to be ahead is to discourage Trump supporters from voting.
Don't vote early. The purpose of early voting is to show the One Percent how the vote is shaping
up. From this information, the oligarchs learn how to program the electronic machines in order to
elect the candidate that they want.
"... Yes if next week motherland security and other 3 letter govt. are crying they need more cash to fight this then just maybe they did to themselves. ..."
"... Internet hacks - it's this election cycle's white power in an envelope! ..."
"... I would laugh so hard if a selection of sites [that] were shut down. ..."
"... We so need to officially declare this whole bloody mess a parody: ..."
I would laugh so hard if a selection of sites [that] were shut down. Waaah! Assange won't shut up!
So Twitter, WL.org, Reddit, where else would make good spots to shut down discussion in these
last days before the election. WL thought they had a good marketing gimmick going with the drip,
drip and who knows maybe a special event for C's birthday? or creating a November surprise (I
really liked that idea as it reflects how quickly info moves)
The petty back and forth between C and WL on top is a sight.
"... Submitted by Darius Shahtamasebi via TheAntiMedia.org, ..."
"... Consider the source. Biden is a blowhard and an embarassment. He said it for domestic consumption. Obama knows the Russians are not responsible and he will do nothing. ..."
"... > ... "... Joe Biden's statement that the White House was preparing to send Vladimir Putin a "message" ..." ..."
"... Absolutely. If the US and Russia got together - talk about a SUPERPOWER. The NeoCons are way too stupid to realize what a win-win this could be ..."
"... "Americans marvel at the level and effectiveness of brainwashing in North Korea, and express shock that North Koreans revere Kim Jung-un as god, but the truth is that Americans are every bit as brainwashed and just as effectively. The god most Americans worship today is materialism." ..."
"... the patriot VA state Senator who knows the truth as well https://www.sott.net/article/318592-Virginia-State-Senator-Richard-Black... ..."
This past week, America's oldest continuously published weekly magazine, the Nation, asked the
question : has the White House declared war on Russia?
As the two nuclear powers sabre-rattle over conflicts within Syria, and to some extent, over the
Ukrainian crisis, asking these questions to determine who will pull the trigger first has become
more paramount than it was at the peak of the Cold War.
The Nation's contributing editor, Stephen F. Cohen, reported Vice President Joe Biden's statement
that the White House was preparing to send Vladimir Putin a "message" - most likely in the form of
a cyber attack - amounted to a virtual "American declaration of war on Russia" in Russia's eyes.
Biden's threat is reportedly in response to allegations that Russia hacked Democratic Party offices
in order to disrupt the presidential election.
Chuck Todd, host of the "Meet the Press" on NBC,
asked Joe Biden: "Why haven't we sent a message yet to Putin?"
Biden responded, "We are sending a message [to Putin] We have a capacity to do it, and "
"He'll know it?" Todd interrupted.
"He'll know it. It will be at the time of our choosing, and under the circumstances that will
have the greatest impact," the U.S. vice president replied.
What are the effects of this kind of rhetoric when dealing with international relations? Western
media decided to pay little attention to Biden's statements, yet his words have stunned Moscow. As
reported by the Nation:
" Biden's statement, which clearly had been planned by the White House, could scarcely have
been more dangerous or reckless - especially considering that there is no actual evidence or logic
for the two allegations against Russia that seem to have prompted it."
The statements will not come without any measured response from Russia. According to presidential
spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Russia's
response
is well underway:
"The fact is, US unpredictability and aggression keep growing, and such threats against Moscow
and our country's leadership are unprecedented, because the threat is being announced at the level
of the US Vice President. Of course, given such an aggressive, unpredictable line, we have to
take measures to protect our interests, somehow hedge the risks."
The fact that our media refuses to pay attention to the dangers of our own establishment in sending
warnings to adverse nuclear powers based on unasserted allegations shows our media is playing a very
dangerous game with us - the people. This attempt to pull the wool over our eyes and prepare us for
a direct confrontation with Russia can be seen clearly in the battle for Aleppo, Syria.
As the Nation astutely noted:
"Only a few weeks ago, President Obama had agreed with Putin on a joint US-Russian military
campaign against 'terrorists' in Aleppo. That agreement collapsed primarily because of an
attack by US warplanes
on Syrian forces. Russia and its Syrian allies continued their air assault on east Aleppo now,
according to Washington and the mainstream media, against anti-Assad 'rebels.' Where, asks Cohen,
have the jihad terrorists gone? They had been deleted from the US narrative, which now accused
Russia of 'war crimes' in Aleppo for the same military campaign in which Washington was to have
been a full partner."
So where is this conflict headed? A top U.S. general, Marine General Joseph Dunford,
told the
Senate Armed Services Committee in September of this year that the enforcement of a "no-fly zone"
in Syria would mean a U.S. war with both Syria and Russia. Hillary Clinton is well aware of the repercussions
of this war, as she acknowledged in a
secret
speech to Goldman Sachs (recently released by Wikileaks):
"To have a no-fly zone you have to take out all of the air defense, many of which are located
in populated areas. So our missiles, even if they are standoff missiles so we're not putting our
pilots at risk - you're going to kill a lot of Syrians So all of a sudden this intervention that
people talk about so glibly becomes an American and NATO involvement where you take a lot of civilians."
This is the same establishment that has been calling out Russia for allegedly committing war crimes
in Aleppo even though Clinton's proposal would result in far more civilian deaths and likely lead
to a direct war with Russia.
As the war against Syria transitions into a much wider global conflict that could include nuclear
powers Russia and China, our own media is deceiving us by dishonestly reporting on the events leading
up to the
activation of the doomsday clock.
History doesn't occur in a vacuum; when the U.S. and Russia confront each other directly, it won't
be because of a mere incident occurring in Syrian airspace.
It will be because the two nuclear powers have been confronting each other with little resistance
from the corporate media, which keeps us well entertained and preoccupied with political
charades
, celebrity gossip
, and outright
propaganda .
Zacktly. It's the NSA who is leaking the crooked DNC emails. Not Vlad.
MalteseFalcon d 847328_3527 •Oct 23, 2016 8:50 PM
"What are the effects of this kind of rhetoric when dealing with international relations?
"
Consider the source. Biden is a blowhard and an embarassment. He said it for domestic consumption.
Obama knows the Russians are not responsible and he will do nothing.
... "... Several US, Turkish, Saudi, Qatari and British officers were
also killed along with the Israeli officers. The foreign officers who were killed in
the Aleppo operations room were directing the terrorists' attacks in Aleppo and Idlib. ..."
This is why Israhell is furious with this Prez. And why they are seen in the Podesta emails
making sure that none of 'those two-state solution' people get into key foreign/defense posts
under Her Fury.
It's going to be all war, all the time, boys, according to Israeli timetables and objectives.
Unless We The People say NO on Nov. 8 and make it stick.
Interesting that you bring up the "two-state solution" speculation along those lines goes like
this. Clinton & Rabin were working on a two-state solution Rabin was assinated and Clinton was
trolled by a modern day "Esther" to ensnare Clinton and destroy the two-state solution. You heard
it here first on ZH my friend
Anti-colonial agenda. Plus, Barry was bottom bitch to his Paki lover back in the day.
Mandel Bot -> jmack •Oct 23, 2016 8:33 PM
Absolutely. If the US and Russia got together - talk about a SUPERPOWER. The NeoCons are
way too stupid to realize what a win-win this could be.
ebworthen •Oct 23, 2016 7:59 PM
Hitlary and the M.I.C. (and Wall Street/D.C. Imperial City) have no idea how much at risk they
put themselves and the rest of us.
Russia has been here and where America never has been, and they have defeated many, many, a
foe. Abject stupidity to poke the Russian bear and disrespect our agreements post WWII and Cold
War.
Shameful, absolutely shameful! Rot in HELL you D.C. Vichy!
RawPawg •Oct 23, 2016 7:59 PM
Meanwhile...in 'Merica. Sunday afternoon Football stands are Full. very surreal given the times
we live in,eh?
Lost in translation -> RawPawg •Oct 23, 2016 8:23 PM
After I explained that Americans don't care about the Podesta emails as long as the NFL is
on, and have no idea what WikiLeaks is but can tell you everything about the NLCS, Mrs. Lost said...
"Americans marvel at the level and effectiveness of brainwashing in North Korea, and express
shock that North Koreans revere Kim Jung-un as god, but the truth is that Americans are every
bit as brainwashed and just as effectively. The god most Americans worship today is materialism."
The native Orthodox Christian Russian people took back their nation when they collapsed the
Soviet Union and drove the mass murdering Bolsheviks out, many of whom came to the US & EU nations
""You must understand, the leading Bolsheviks who took over Russia were not Russians. They
hated Russians. They hated Christians. Driven by ethnic hatred, they tortured and slaughtered
millions of Russians without a shred of human remorse. It cannot be overstated, Bolshevism
committed the greatest slaughter of all time. The fact that most of the world is ignorant and
uncaring about this enormous crime is proof that the global media is in the hands of the perpetrators"""
Agreed. Just because we have a mad president, please don't think that we Americans are mad
(in the British sense of the word). We wish the Russian people no harm. In fact, many of us, myself
included, cheer your efforts in Syria to wipe out the rabid dogs of ISIS.
Please keep bombing the living shit out of them. And this is important, so please listen carefully...
That's explains vicious campaign by neoliberal MSM against Trump and swiping under the carpet all
criminal deeds of Clinton family. They feel the threat...
Notable quotes:
"... It should be remembered that fascism does not succeed in the real world as a crusade by race-obsessed lumpen. It succeeds when fascists are co-opted by capitalists, as was unambiguously the case in Nazi Germany and Italy. And big business supported fascism because it feared the alternatives: socialism and communism. ..."
"... That's because there is no more effective counter to class consciousness than race consciousness. That's one reason why, in my opinion, socialism hasn't done a better job of catching on in the United States. The contradictions between black and white labor formed a ready-made wedge. ..."
It should be remembered that fascism does not succeed in the real world as a crusade by
race-obsessed lumpen. It succeeds when fascists are co-opted by capitalists, as was unambiguously
the case in Nazi Germany and Italy. And big business supported fascism because it feared the alternatives:
socialism and communism.
That's because there is no more effective counter to class consciousness than race consciousness.
That's one reason why, in my opinion, socialism hasn't done a better job of catching on in the
United States. The contradictions between black and white labor formed a ready-made wedge.
The North's abhorrence at the spread of slavery into the American West before the Civil War
had more to do a desire to preserve these new realms for "free" labor-"free" in one context, from
the competition of slave labor-than egalitarian principle.[…]
There is more to Clintonism, I think, than simply playing the "identity politics" card to
screw Bernie Sanders or discombobulate the Trump campaign. "Identity politics" is near the core
of the Clintonian agenda as a bulwark against any class/populist upheaval that might threaten
her brand of billionaire-friendly liberalism.
In other words it's all part of a grand plan when the Clintonoids aren't busy debating the finer
points of her marketing and "mark"–a term normally applied to the graphic logo on a commercial product.
The only way Hillary could be stopped would be if the Republican Party elite stood with Trump,
so Soros and the other donor who owns voting machines could be blocked from flipping/fractionalizing
votes. But that isn't happening. Soros machines are in key swing states like Colorado and Pennsylvania,
and we already have data from the primary that a good 15% (at least) can be flipped, compared to
exit polls/hand counts/paper trail or non-donor machines.
I guess it's still possible, like what happened in the Michigan Democratic primary, that the real
numbers are more like a 10% lead for Trump and they come out in force in unexpected locations, and
Clinton's small, unenthusiastic base stays home, thus making it too difficult to successfully flip.
But I'm trying not to count on something like that, because it seems too close optomism bias driven
"poll unskewing" – I mean, the polls clearly ARE skewed in favor of Hillary, but I doubt they're
off by 15%.
Stein could never take over the Democratic Party. It isn't even clear to me that the Greens could
replace the Democrats, although I do think their massive increase in ballot access this year is a
credit to the party and to Stein. That shows real organizing and management effectiveness.
I started this campaign season advocating for purging Clintonians out of the now hollow Democratic
Party and taking it over. That still seems like the most efficient path to an actual left national
party, in part because our current system is so corrupted and calcified. But I'm not sure it's possible.
At this point, I can imagine a cataclysmic revolution happening during Clinton's term more easily
than a reformed, citizen friendly Democratic Party.
I respect Juan Cole as a scholar, but his political commentary got so muddled in apologizing for
the Libyan disaster. I wrote him several times about problems in the Sahel, particularly among Tuareg,
resulting from the Libyan invasion, but he wriggled out of it, going to Libya and talking about how
great it was there and otherwise excusing the massacre.
Why suggest a no fly zone in Syria that can't be implemented. It is baffling.
Is it really that baffling? Read her emails. The No Fly Zone was the strategy used to destroy Gaddafi.
It's HRC's telegraph for invasion.
Cole misses that when Wallace asked her if she'd shoot down a Russian plan that violated the no-fly
zone, she dodged.
So what are people's sense of Clinton re Russia? Is it hubris, stupidity, or conspiracy, or
some combination of the three? I ask because her Wall Street speeches and foreshadowed Grand Bargain
are clearly conspiratorial; while her nonchalant violation of every security protocol seems pure
hubris; I guess I don't see how war with Russia could really benefit her that much, unless she
thinks it's the one thing that can keep her from being impeached; is that it, or is it something
else that's driving this, or just stupidity?
All the very serious people know the Russians are gonna cave. Who would fight a nuclear war
for Syria/ukraine? They can't match the US conventionally so we can just bleed them till they
let go.
It's been pointed out here that wargame scenarios of Russia vs NATO usually come out with Russia
winning. Why wouldn't that apply to other areas as well?
The War on Terra is getting tiresome and as pointed out above doesn't justify the really big
hardware, aircraft carriers, tanks etc.
They need a bigger enemy to keep the $$$ flowing from the chump taxpayer's pockets to billionaire
Raytheon shareholders' accounts in Panama. She serves Money and Death, and does a really good
job of it. You'd even say she's an expert.
And one point: GE owns NBC, and GE makes billions from war machines. Can't have a president
who might slow down the revenue stream, better yet to get a woman to put a friendly face on WW
III and why we need it so badly. Kinda like getting a young African American to sell health care
extraction and bank crimes and how they're really good, if just more young people would sign up
and if people would just stop "peddling fiction" about how awesome the economy is.
Oops! Good news then, I guess we really do have a diverse and unbiased press with no interest
is furthering the prospects of one candidate over another.
WJ wrote about Clinton on Russia: " Is it hubris, stupidity, or conspiracy, or some combination
of the three?"
Or is it that she thinks that the USA can fight a war against Russia, and win?
I suspect that a lot of the US foreign policy establishment are feeling bullish about their
BMD systems. They feel sure that they have finally escaped the toils of MAD. In other words, they
feel convinced, if it comes down to it, the USA can affordably prevail over Russia in a war at
any level of escalation, even though that would demand that the USA launch first strike.
If you want to see arrogance, just wait to see how that US elite behaves after they
win a major war, and come to enjoy truly unchecked power.
I'm sure. Luckily odds are most of us will be dead before that happens. Because it will either
be a long long time from now OR most of the country will be destroyed before victory can be declared
long enough to gloat.
If it weren't for the fact that it is a such a godawful idea for everyone BUT the elites, I'd
almost like to see the latter possibility which includes the loss of a whole lot of very expensive
"toys". But there are still humans attached to those toys, it will take a lot for them to get
they aren't winning, and even then they won't take responsibility for the massive amounts of damage
their hubris and sociopathy have caused – see Clinton in re either Honduras or Libya or both.
I'm pretty sure the Pentagon does NOT believe that our BMD systems can protect against a full
scale Russian ICBM attack on the US mainland. I would hope if any foreign policy types believed
so, they would be quickly garroted from behind with piano wire.
Then again, maybe they did go ahead and convert a bunch of West Virginia coal mines to luxury
condos, like Dr. Strangelove suggested.
Russia has re-stated their policy not to strike first. By contrast, in 2012 Obama reversed
America's long-standing commitment not to do so.
That we are even discussing this shows just how far the War Party and their money pig-men have
descended into true clinical mental illness territory, Dr. Strangelove has nothing on the levels
of reality-bending criminal insanity of our Dear Leaders.
No idea if this is accurate or not, but Wikipedia states that BMD systems are not effective
against ICBMs, which can now travel at hypersonic (Mach 5-6) speeds delivering up to eight separate
warheads (!) with pinpoint accuracy. So that's something to look forward to.
I do like the piano wire remedy :-{). There are a bunch of people in the State Department that
signed a memo recently that clearly fit the requisite description for its use.
"In the run up to the Iraq War when false intelligence abounded and dominated the discussion,"
The problem is that you see everything through a Donkey vs Elephant prism in stark Manichean terms.
People see the elite lying over the Iraq war - which Trump brags he opposed - and then they see
the elite Hillary and DNC using Russia interference as a way to distract for the content of the leaked
emails.
They don't see Hillary as their champion, just another lying elite.
Obama's NSA chief blatantly lied to the American people and said they weren't spying on us en
masse.
Why should we trust them about anything?
If (when) Hillary is elected I'm sure she'll make Russia pay if it's behind these hacks. Otherwise
Russia is an excuse not to discuss the hacked email.
Maybe Putin is that stupid and he feels threatened over the way Hillary championed the democratic
opposition in a recent election, but it seems to me to be colossally stupid for Russia to pick a
fight with the U.S.
You don't think Hillary is going to push back if (when) she's elected? Given that she's a hawk
and was courting the support of hawks like Paul Wolfowitz during the election she was probably going
to push Russia anyway no matter the hacking.
I think many Americans are deeply skeptical by now of the competence, aims and basic good will
of much of the US foreign policy establishment. Faced with a choice between the Putin approach
to global security and stability, and that represented by the zealot, neocon-tilting HRC wing
of the US establishment, it's a tough call.
Clinton has had abundant opportunity to attempt to distance herself from the many Iraq-era
neocons who are embracing her campaign. She hasn't. That is telling and worrisome.
The crazily prejudiced disdain * that folks at the Economist have for Russia by the way extends
to China. The Economist reflects perfectly the British regret that China is no longer part of
what was a sun-never-sets empire. As for Russia, the prejudiced disdain that has been fostered
by the foreign policy establishment is blinding.
What was the position of the economist on invading Iraq? Right.
Someone who a few months ago told me "no one is stupid enough to want war with Russia", just
this week changed that to "no one wants a hot war" and "we don't have the troops for a hot war"
because well it turns out that Clinton knows the no fly zone will mean war with Russia.
Sadly this is one of the many who think that Clinton is the sane one.
Everything tells me that whatever the real goal (and no it is not obvious what that is) Hillary
Rodham Clinton is stupid enough to not care about war with Russia, doesn't understand that we
don't have the troops for a hot war, and frankly is perfectly willing to play chicken with a nuclear
power killing this country in the process. So far, Putin has been far saner than Hillary Clinton
has ever been, but I'm pretty damn sure his patience is wearing out. I can only hope that Europe
begins to wake up and realize that America following the wishes of SA and Israel are causing their
refugee problems NOT Russia. And sanely decide that following America further down the rat hole
is a loser for them and the world, because that might be the only thing that wakes them up from
their fevered dream.
Luckily (for the planet) I suspect Putin is content to play the long game - increase the alliance
(especially economic) with China, build up relationships with e.g. Iran and Turkey (and now cf
Philippines), and most of all court the EU states who are most terrified of increased sabre-rattling
by the US.
It is so bizarre that in such an unstable world with such critical issues - global warming,
horrific global debt and faltering bubble-based economies, Mideast chaos - HRC and her cronies
think it is a good idea to stir up trouble with Russia! Talk about "opportunity cost" at the very
least.
The War on Terror has never really been profitable enough for the military-industrial complex,
and anyway may be approaching its sell-by date. The MIC wanted a return to big-platform - aircraft
carriers, big ships, enormously expensive new planes, and missile systems, big artillery - programs
and spending.
For big-platform spending you need a big-platform enemy to justify it. Hence, the Russkies.
Patrick Cockburn is good on this.
Not incidentally, the arms industry of the early 20th century was a big reason for WWI; probably
including in July 1914 being behind the assassination of Jean Jaurès, a top French socialist,
who was blocking it.
The fun one to watch today is the US Army versus the CIA (Milo Minderbinder would be thrilled).
In Iraq the US Army is supporting the government against al-Qaeda in Mosul. In Syria of course
the CIA is backing al-Qaeda in Aleppo against the government.
So the breathless press coverage of the son et lumiere of the Mosul push is turning
into a dud. Why? Because al-Qaeda is slinking away out of Mosul. But where are they going? Oh,
look, the US is helpfully providing buses to take 6000 of them to the fight in Syria, once they
cross that imaginary line known as "the border" they magically turn into good guys again.
Cue John McCain high-fiving! And cue Lurch our Secretary of State, telling
the UN and the world that Russia is the one that is guilty of war crimes. LOLOLOLOL
For months she had only intimated it, or delegated the real dirty work to her surrogates and campaign
staff, but at the final televised debate this week Hillary Clinton finally let loose: Donald Trump
is "a puppet" of the Kremlin, she declared.
It's worth pausing to consider just how extreme and incendiary that allegation is. For Trump
to be a "puppet" of a hostile foreign power-especially Russia, arguably America's oldest continuous
adversary-would be an event of earth-shaking magnitude, unrivaled in all U.S. history. It would
mean that by some nefarious combination of subterfuge and collusion, the sinister Russian leader
Vladimir Putin had managed to infiltrate our political system at its very core, executing a
Manchurian Candidate -style scheme that would've been dismissed as outlandish in even the
most hyperbolic 1960s-era espionage movie script.
Trump is often accused of violating the "norms" that typically govern the tenor of U.S. presidential
campaigns. And these accusations very often have validity: at the same debate, he declined to
preemptively endorse the legitimacy of the election outcome, which appears to be without precedent.
As everyone is now keenly aware, he's unleashed a constant torrent of brash histrionics that defy
discursive standards and violate "norms" of many kinds-You're rigged! I'm rigged! We're all rigged!
But Hillary too violated a longstanding norm this week with her "puppet" screed, which was
the culmination of her campaign's months-long effort to tarnish Trump as a secret Russian lackey
using the kind of retrograde nomenclature ("Puppet"? Really?) that would've made even the most
hardened old-time Cold Warrior blush. Because of Hillary's barb, there will henceforth be a precedent
for accusing a rival major-party nominee of being a stealth agent of a fearsome foreign power,
based on only the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence.
Extrapolating from Trump's stated belief that cooperation, rather than antagonism, with nuclear-armed
Russia is desirable, Hillary's boosters have long surmised that he must therefore be under the
spell of a devious foreign spymaster: it can't be that he genuinely prefers to be friendly with
Russia and forge an alliance with their military. The only tenable explanation by their lights
is this harebrained mind-control conspiracy theory.
One central irony to all this is that Trump basically has the same position vis-à-vis
Russia as Barack Obama. As Trump pointed out in the Wednesday night debate, Obama attempted
to broker a military alliance with Putin's Russia only a few weeks ago; it fell through after
American forces in Syria bombed soldiers loyal to Assad in direct contravention of the terms of
the agreement. But it was an instance of deal-making nevertheless, so if Trump is guilty of accommodating
the dastardly Russian menace, Obama must be similarly guilty.
Hillary's increasingly hostile rhetoric on the homefront also likely contributed to "nuking"
the accord with Russia, as she's repeatedly accused Putin of subverting the American electoral
process by way of hacks, as well as lambasting him as the
"grand godfather'' of global extremist movements-including the U.S. "alt-right."
It would be one thing if these fantastic claims were ever substantiated with ample evidence,
but they're just not. At the debate, Hillary attributed her theory regarding the Russian orchestration
of recent hacks on her campaign and the Democratic National Committee to unnamed "intelligence
professionals." These unspecified individuals have also failed to produce tangible evidence linking
Russia to Trump, or Russia to the hacks. They are also the same sorts of people whose proclamations
about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq were uncritically parroted by media allies.
She launched into the "puppet" rant after moderator Chris Wallace quoted an excerpt from one
of her speeches delivered to a foreign bank, which had been published by WikiLeaks. It should
be reiterated that Hillary had actively concealed these speech transcripts over the course of
the entire presidential campaign, and the only reason the American public can now view them is
thanks to WikiLeaks. But in an effort to change the subject from her newly revealed (and damning)
comments before admiring cadres of financial elites, Hillary accused the rogue publishing organization
of being party to a Russian plot. "This has come from the highest levels of the Russian government,
clearly, from Putin himself," Hillary proclaimed.
What evidence has been furnished that demonstrates "Putin himself" directed such efforts? Absolutely
none that we are yet aware of. One could feasibly posit that such a blithe willingness to launch
baseless attacks against foreign leaders is indicative of a poor temperament on Hillary's part;
it's exactly the kind of bluster that could escalate into hot conflict, and will likely sour the
U.S.-Russia bilateral relationship for years to come under a prospective Clinton Administration.
In addition to accusing Putin of hacking the U.S. election, Hillary again announced her staunch
support for a "no-fly zone" in Syria, which would necessitate the deployment of thousands more
U.S. ground troops to the war-torn country and provoke direct, hostile confrontation with Russia,
which is sustaining its client Assad. When asked by Wallace if she would authorize the shoot-down
of Russian warplanes, Hillary evaded the question. (A simple "no" would've been nice.)
It's long been known that Hillary is a hawk; she is supported by
many of the same neoconservatives who once gravitated to George W. Bush. But her bellicosity
toward Russia, which climaxed with the "puppet" diatribe, demonstrates that her hawkish tendencies
are far from conventional; they are extreme. Hillary seems to be at her most animated (and one
might say, perhaps even crazed) when she is aiming ire at supposed foreign adversaries, which
of late has almost entirely been Russia, Russia, Russia. (Russia was the number-one topic broached
at all this year's debates,
according
to a tally by Adam Johnson of the media-watchdog organization FAIR.)
The tenor of the international situation has gotten exceptionally dire. Last Friday it was
reported that the CIA is preparing to launch an "unprecedented" cyberattack on Russia; relations
between the two states are at a dangerous nadir not seen in decades, to the point that former
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has warned that a nuclear exchange is perilously likely.
Trump, for all his faults, has long advocated a sort of détente .
So why aren't these developments front-and-center in media coverage of the campaign? Instead,
it's still a relentless focus on Trump's many foibles, notwithstanding what appears to be Hillary's
steady sleepwalk into a potentially catastrophic war.
Michael Tracey is a journalist based in New York City.
"... I find the spectacle of liberals heroically mounting the barricades against Trump-fascism rather amusing. ..."
"... Second thing is, Trump isn't fascist. In my opinion, Trump's an old-fashioned white American nativist, ..."
"... Tagging him as "fascist" allows his critics to put an alien, non-American gloss on a set of attitudes and policies that have been mainstreamed in American politics for at least 150 years and predate the formulation of fascism by several decades if not a century. Those nasty vetting/exclusion things he's proposing are as American as apple pie. For those interested in boning up on the Know Nothings and the Chinese Exclusion Act, I have this piece for you . ..."
"... Real fascism, in theory, is a rather interesting and nasty beast. In my opinion, it turns bolshevism on its head by using race or ethnic identity instead of class identity as the supreme, mobilizing force in national life. ..."
"... In both fascism and bolshevism, democratic outcomes lack inherent legitimacy. National legitimacy resides in the party, which embodies the essence of a threatened race or class in a way that Hegel might appreciate but Marx probably wouldn't. Subversion of democracy and seizure of state power are not only permissible; they are imperatives. ..."
"... The purest fascism movement I know of exists in Ukraine. I wrote about it here , and it's a piece I think is well worth reading to understand what a political movement organized on fascist principles really looks like. And Trump ain't no fascist. He's a nativist running a rather incompetent campaign. ..."
"... The most interesting application of the "fascist" analysis, rather surprisingly, applies to the Clinton campaign, not the Trump campaign, when considering the cultivation of a nexus between big business and *ahem* racially inflected politics. ..."
"... White labor originally had legal recourse to beating back the challenge/threat of African-American labor instead of accommodating it as a "class" ally; it subsequently relied on institutional and customary advantages. ..."
"... The most reliable wedge against working class solidarity and a socialist narrative in American politics used to be white privilege which, when it was reliably backed by US business and political muscle, was a doctrine of de facto white supremacy. ..."
"... The perception of marginalized white clout is reinforced by the nomination of Hillary Clinton and her campaign emphasis on the empowerment of previously marginalized but now demographically more important groups. ..."
"... The Clinton campaign has been all about race and its doppelganger -actually, the overarching and more ear-friendly term that encompasses racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual loyalties-"identity politics." ..."
"... The most calculated and systematic employment of racial politics was employed by the Hillary Clinton campaign in the Democratic primary to undercut the socialist-lite populist appeal of Bernie Sanders. ..."
"... My personal disdain for the Clinton campaign was born on the day that John Lewis intoned "I never saw him" in order to dismiss the civil rights credentials of Bernie Sanders ..."
"... In the primary, this translated into an attack on Sanders and the apparently mythical "Bernie bro" as racist swine threatening the legacy of the first black president, venerated by the African American electorate, Barack Obama. In the general, well, Donald Trump and his supporters provided acres more genuine grist for the identity warrior mill. ..."
"... Trump's ambitions to gain traction for a favorable American/populist/outsider narrative for his campaign have been frustrated by determined efforts to frame him as anti-Semitic, racist against blacks and Hispanics, sexist, and bigoted against the disabled-and ready to hold the door while Pepe the Frog feeds his opponents, including a large contingent of conservative and liberal Jewish journalists subjected to unimaginable invective by the Alt-Right– into the ovens. ..."
"... That campaign pretty much went by the wayside (as did Black Lives Matter, a racial justice initiative partially funded by core Clinton backer George Soros; interesting, no?) as a) black nationalists started shooting policemen and b) Clinton kicked off a charm campaign to help wedge the black-wary GOP establishment away from Trump. ..."
"... "Identity politics" is near the core of the Clintonian agenda as a bulwark against any class/populist upheaval that might threaten her brand of billionaire-friendly liberalism. ..."
"... Clinton's enduring and grotesque loyalty to her family's charitable foundation, an operation that in my opinion has no place on the resume of a public servant, as a font of prestige, conduit for influence, and model for billionaire-backed global engagement. ..."
"... By placing the focus of the campaign on identity politics and Trump's actual and putative crimes against various identity groups, the Clinton campaign has successfully obscured what I consider to be its fundamental identity as a vehicle for neoliberal globalists keen to preserve and employ the United States as a welcoming environment and supreme vehicle for supra-sovereign business interests. ..."
"... Clintonism's core identity is not, in other words, as a crusade for groups suffering from the legacy and future threat of oppression by Trump's white male followers. It is a full-court press to keep the wheels on the neoliberal sh*twagon as it careens down the road of globalization, and it recognizes the importance in American democracy of slicing and dicing the electorate by identity politics and co-opting useful demographics as the key to maintaining power. ..."
"... Trump has cornered the somewhat less entitled and increasingly threatened white ethnic group, some of whom are poised to make the jump to white nationalism with or without him. ..."
"... Clinton has cornered the increasingly entitled and assertive global billionaire group, which adores the class-busting anti-socialist identity-based politics she practices. ..."
I find the spectacle of liberals heroically mounting the barricades against Trump-fascism
rather amusing.
For one thing, liberals don't crush fascism. Liberals appease fascism, then they exploit fascism.
In between there's a great big war, where communists crush fascism. That's pretty much the lesson
of WWII.
Second thing is, Trump isn't fascist. In my opinion, Trump's an old-fashioned white American
nativist, which is pretty much indistinguishable from old-fashioned racist when considering
the subjugation of native Americans and African-Americans and Asian immigrants, but requires that
touch of "nativist" nuance when considering indigenous bigotry against Irish, Italian, and Jewish
immigrants and citizens.
Tagging him as "fascist" allows his critics to put an alien, non-American gloss on a set of
attitudes and policies that have been mainstreamed in American politics for at least 150 years and
predate the formulation of fascism by several decades if not a century. Those nasty vetting/exclusion
things he's proposing are as American as apple pie. For those interested in boning up on the Know
Nothings and the Chinese Exclusion Act,
I have this piece for you .
And for anybody who doesn't believe the US government does not already engage in intensive "extreme"
vetting and targeting of all Muslims immigrants, especially those from targeted countries, not only
to identify potential security risks but to groom potential intelligence assets, I got the Brooklyn
Bridge to sell you right here:
Real fascism, in theory, is a rather interesting and nasty beast. In my opinion, it turns
bolshevism on its head by using race or ethnic identity instead of class identity as the supreme,
mobilizing force in national life.
In both fascism and bolshevism, democratic outcomes lack inherent legitimacy. National legitimacy
resides in the party, which embodies the essence of a threatened race or class in a way that Hegel
might appreciate but Marx probably wouldn't. Subversion of democracy and seizure of state power are
not only permissible; they are imperatives.
The need to seize state power and hold it while a fascist or Bolshevik agenda is implemented dictates
the need for a military force loyal to and subservient to the party and its leadership, not the state.
The purest fascism movement I know of exists in Ukraine.
I wrote about it here , and it's a piece I think is well worth reading to understand what a political
movement organized on fascist principles really looks like. And Trump ain't no fascist. He's a nativist
running a rather incompetent campaign.
It's a little premature to throw dirt on the grave of the Trump candidacy, perhaps (I'll check
back in on November 9), but it looks like he spent too much time glorying in the adulation of his
white male nativist base and too little time, effort, and money trying to deliver a plausible message
that would allow other demographics to shrug off the "deplorable" tag and vote for him. I don't blame/credit
the media too much for burying Trump, a prejudice of mine perhaps. I blame Trump's inability to construct
an effective phalanx of pro-Trump messengers, a failure that's probably rooted in the fact that Trump
spent the primary and general campaign at war with the GOP establishment.
The only capital crime in politics is disunity, and the GOP and Trump are guilty on multiple counts.
The most interesting application of the "fascist" analysis, rather surprisingly, applies to
the Clinton campaign, not the Trump campaign, when considering the cultivation of a nexus between
big business and *ahem* racially inflected politics.
It should be remembered that fascism does not succeed in the real world as a crusade by race-obsessed
lumpen . It succeeds when fascists are co-opted by capitalists, as was unambiguously the case
in Nazi Germany and Italy. And big business supported fascism because it feared the alternatives:
socialism and communism.
That's because there is no more effective counter to class consciousness than race consciousness.
That's one reason why, in my opinion, socialism hasn't done a better job of catching on in the
United States. The contradictions between black and white labor formed a ready-made wedge. The North's
abhorrence at the spread of slavery into the American West before the Civil War had more to do a
desire to preserve these new realms for "free" labor-"free" in one context, from the competition
of slave labor-than egalitarian principle.
White labor originally had legal recourse to beating back the challenge/threat of African-American
labor instead of accommodating it as a "class" ally; it subsequently relied on institutional and
customary advantages.
If anyone harbors illusions concerning the kumbaya solidarity between white and black labor
in the post-World War II era, I think the article The Problem of Race in American Labor History
by Herbert Hill ( a freebie on
JSTOR ) is a good place to start.
The most reliable wedge against working class solidarity and a socialist narrative in American
politics used to be white privilege which, when it was reliably backed by US business and political
muscle, was a doctrine of de facto white supremacy.
However, in this campaign, the race wedge has cut the other way in a most interesting fashion.
White conservatives are appalled, and minority liberals energized, by the fact that the white guy,
despite winning the majority white male vote, lost to a black guy not once but twice, giving a White
Twilight/Black Dawn (TM) vibe to the national debate.
The perception of marginalized white clout is reinforced by the nomination of Hillary Clinton
and her campaign emphasis on the empowerment of previously marginalized but now demographically more
important groups.
The Clinton campaign has been all about race and its doppelganger -actually, the overarching
and more ear-friendly term that encompasses racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual loyalties-"identity
politics."
The most calculated and systematic employment of racial politics was employed by the Hillary
Clinton campaign in the Democratic primary to undercut the socialist-lite populist appeal of Bernie
Sanders.
My personal disdain for the Clinton campaign was born on the day that John Lewis intoned "I
never saw him" in order to dismiss the civil rights credentials of Bernie Sanders while announcing
the Black Congressional Caucus endorsement of Hillary Clinton. Bear in mind that during the 1960s,
Sanders had
affiliated his student group at the University of Chicago with Lewis' SNCC, the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee; during the same era, Hillary Clinton was at Wellesley
condemning
"the snicks" for their excessively confrontational tactics.
Ah, politics.
To understand the significance of this event, one should read Fracture by the guru of woke
Clintonism, Joy Reid. Or read
my piece on the subject . Or simply understand that after Hillary Clinton lost Lewis's endorsement,
the black vote, and the southern Democratic primaries to Barack Obama in 2008, and she was determined
above all to secure and exploit monolithic black support in the primaries and, later on, the general
in 2016.
So, in order to prevent Sanders from splitting the black vote to her disadvantage on ideological/class
lines, Clinton played the race card. Or, as we put it today when discussing the championing of historically
disadvantaged a.k.a. non white male heterosexual groups, celebrated "identity politics".
In the primary, this translated into an attack on Sanders and the apparently mythical "Bernie
bro" as racist swine threatening the legacy of the first black president, venerated by the African
American electorate, Barack Obama. In the general, well, Donald Trump and his supporters provided
acres more genuine grist for the identity warrior mill.
Trump's populism draws its heat from American nativism, not "soak the rich" populism of the Sandernista
stripe, and it was easily submerged in the "identity politics" narrative.
Trump's ambitions to gain traction for a favorable American/populist/outsider narrative for
his campaign have been frustrated by determined efforts to frame him as anti-Semitic, racist against
blacks and Hispanics, sexist, and bigoted against the disabled-and ready to hold the door while Pepe
the Frog feeds his opponents, including a large contingent of conservative and liberal Jewish journalists
subjected to unimaginable invective by the Alt-Right– into the ovens.
As an indication of the fungible & opportunistic character of the "identity politics" approach,
as far as I can tell from a recent visit to a swing state, as the Clinton campaign pivoted to the
general, the theme of Trump's anti-black racism has been retired in favor of pushing his offenses
against women and the disabled. Perhaps this reflects the fact that Clinton has a well-advertised
lock on the African-American vote and doesn't need to cater to it; also, racism being what it is,
playing the black card is not the best way to lure Republicans and indies to the Clinton camp.
The high water mark of the Clinton African-American tilt was perhaps the abortive campaign to
turn gun control into a referendum on the domination of Congress by white male conservatives. It
happened a few months ago, so who remembers? But John Lewis led a sit-in occupation of the Senate
floor in the wake of the Orlando shootings to highlight how America's future was being held hostage
to the whims of Trump-inclined white pols.
That campaign pretty much went by the wayside (as did Black Lives Matter, a racial justice
initiative partially funded by core Clinton backer George Soros; interesting, no?) as a) black nationalists
started shooting policemen and b) Clinton kicked off a charm campaign to help wedge the black-wary
GOP establishment away from Trump.
There is more to Clintonism, I think, than simply playing the "identity politics" card to screw
Bernie Sanders or discombobulate the Trump campaign. "Identity politics" is near the core of
the Clintonian agenda as a bulwark against any class/populist upheaval that might threaten her brand
of billionaire-friendly liberalism.
In my view, a key tell is Clinton's enduring and grotesque loyalty to her family's charitable
foundation, an operation that in my opinion has no place on the resume of a public servant, as a
font of prestige, conduit for influence, and model for billionaire-backed global engagement.
By placing the focus of the campaign on identity politics and Trump's actual and putative
crimes against various identity groups, the Clinton campaign has successfully obscured what I consider
to be its fundamental identity as a vehicle for neoliberal globalists keen to preserve and employ
the United States as a welcoming environment and supreme vehicle for supra-sovereign business interests.
Clintonism's core identity is not, in other words, as a crusade for groups suffering from
the legacy and future threat of oppression by Trump's white male followers. It is a full-court press
to keep the wheels on the neoliberal sh*twagon as it careens down the road of globalization, and
it recognizes the importance in American democracy of slicing and dicing the electorate by identity
politics and co-opting useful demographics as the key to maintaining power.
In my view, the Trump and Clinton campaigns are both protofascist.
Trump has cornered the somewhat less entitled and increasingly threatened white ethnic group,
some of whom are poised to make the jump to white nationalism with or without him.
Clinton has cornered the increasingly entitled and assertive global billionaire group, which
adores the class-busting anti-socialist identity-based politics she practices.
But the bottom line is race. U.S. racism has stacked up 400 years of tinder that might take a
few hundred more years, if ever, to burn off. And until it does, every politician in the country
is going to see his or her political future in flicking matches at it. And that's what we're seeing
in the current campaign. A lot. Not fascism.
(Reprinted from
China Matters by permission of author or representative)
Please note that Hillary's path to the top was marked by proved beyond reasonable doubt DNC fraud.
With information contained in recent email leaks some DNC honchos probably might go to jail for
violation of elections laws. So for them this is a death match and people usually fight well when
they are against the wall. The same in true about Obama and his entourage.
And while this Nobel Peace Price winner managed to bomb just eight countries, Hillary might
improve this peace effort, which was definitely insufficient from the point of view of many diplomats
in State Department. Also the number of humanitarian bombs could be much greater. Here Hillary
election can really help.
From the other point of view this might well be a sign of the crisis of legitimacy of the US
ruling neoliberal elite (aka financial oligarchy).
After approximately 50 years in power the level of degeneration of the US neoliberal elite
reached the level when the quality of candidates reminds me the quality of candidates from the
USSR Politburo after Brezhnev death. Health-wise Hillary really bear some resemblance to Andropov
and Chernenko. And inability of the elite to replace either of them with a more viable candidate
speaks volumes.
The other factor that will not go away is that Obama effectively pardoned Hillary for emailgate
(after gentle encouragement from Bill via Loretta Lynch). Otherwise instead of candidate to POTUS,
she would be a viable candidate for orange suit too. Sure, the rule of law is not applicable to
neoliberal elite, so why Hilary should be an exception? But some naive schmucks might think that
this is highly improper. And be way too much upset with the fruits of neoliberal globalization.
Not that Brexit is easily repeatable in the USA, but vote against neoliberal globalization (protest
vote) might play a role.
Another interesting thing to observe is when (and if) the impeachment process starts, if she
is elected. With some FBI materials in hands of the Congress Republicans she in on the hook. A
simple majority of those present and voting is required for each article of impeachment, or the
resolution as a whole, to pass.
All-in-all her win might well be a Pyrrhic victory. And the unknown neurological disease that
she has (Parkinson?) makes her even more vulnerable after the election, then before. The role
of POTUS involves a lot of stress and requires substantial physical stamina as POTUS is the center
of intersection of all important government conflicts, conversations and communications. That's
a killing environment for anyone with Parkinson. And remember she was not able to survive the
pressure of the role of the Secretary of State when she was in much better health and has an earlier
stage of the disease.
Another interesting question, if the leaks continue after the election. That also can contribute
to the level of stress. Just anticipation is highly stressful. I do not buy the theory about "evil
Russians." This hypothesis does not survive Occam razor test. I think that there some anti-Hillary
forces within the USA ruling elite, possibly within the NSA or some other three letter agency
that has access to email boxes of major Web mail providers via NSA.
If this is a plausible hypothesis, that makes it more probable that the leaks continue. To
say nothing about possible damaging revelations about Bill (especially related to Clinton Foundation),
who really enjoyed his retirement way too much.
Those who vote for Hillary for the sake of stability need to be reminded that according to
the Minsky Theory stability sometimes can be very destabilizing
When Krugman is appointed to a top government post by Hillary Clinton we will be able to FOIA
his pay and attach a value to all the columns "electioneering" Krugman has written.
likbez -> anne...
Anne,
"An intolerably destructive essay that should never have been posted, and I assume no
such essay will be posted again on this blog. Shameful, shameful essay."
You mean that voting for the female warmonger with some psychopathic tendencies ("We came,
we saw, he died") is not shameful ?
An interesting approach I would say.
I am not fun of Trump, but he, at least, does not have the blood of innocent women and children
on his hands. And less likely to start WWIII unlike this completely out of control warmonger.
With the number of victims of wars of neoliberal empire expansion in Iraq, Libya and Syria,
you should be ashamed of yourself as a women.
Please think about your current position Anne. You really should be ashamed.
"... which may be the story one wishes for. But if there were a spread to compare her win against, it was Bernie who massively beat the spread. I'll leave it as an exercise to others to determine if her unfair advantages were as large as the winning margin. ..."
"... He makes a good point and you dismiss it. You bashed Bernie Sanders and "Bernie Bros" during the primary. Then you lie about it. That's why you're the worst. Dishonest as hell. ..."
"... Remember one thing anne, America is not a country. It is an idea. You cannot arrest it, murder it, or pretend it isn't there. We as a people are not perfect. But Mr Putin is stabbing directly at our democracy, not Hillary Clinton and not Paul Krugman. Time to be a little more objective, of which you are even more capable of than me. ..."
"... It is not exactly McCarthyism as stated (although kthomas with his previous Putin comments looks like a modern day McCarthyist). I think this is a pretty clear formulation of the credo of American Exceptionalism -- a flavor of nationalism adapted to the realities of the new continent. ..."
"... And Robert Kagan explained it earlier much better ... I wonder if Victoria Nuland and Dick Cheney vote for Hillary too. ..."
"...Mrs. Clinton won the Democratic nomination fairly easily..."
which may be the story one wishes for. But if there were a spread to compare her win against,
it was Bernie who massively beat the spread. I'll leave it as an exercise to others to determine
if her unfair advantages were as large as the winning margin.
"Why do people like you pretend to love Sen Sanders so much!?"
Why do you say he is pretending? What did he write to make you think that?
Are you just a dishonest troll centrist totebagger like PGL.
Peter K. -> to pgl...
What does that have to do with anything?
He makes a good point and you dismiss it. You bashed Bernie Sanders and "Bernie Bros" during
the primary. Then you lie about it. That's why you're the worst. Dishonest as hell. Are most
New Yorkers as dishonest as you, Trump, Guiliani, Christie, etc?
No. I am a fan of Sen Sanders, and not even he would believe your nonsense. History will not remember
it that way. What it will remember is how Putin Comrade meddled. And there is a price for that.
Sen Sanders wanted one, stated thing: to push the narrative to the left. He marginally accomplished
this. What he did succeed in was providing an opportunity for false-lefties like you and Mr Putin
who seem to think that America is the root of all evil.
Remember one thing anne, America is not a country. It is an idea. You cannot arrest it,
murder it, or pretend it isn't there. We as a people are not perfect. But Mr Putin is stabbing
directly at our democracy, not Hillary Clinton and not Paul Krugman. Time to be a little more
objective, of which you are even more capable of than me.
Sen Sanders wanted one stated thing: to push the narrative to the left. He marginally accomplished
this. What he did succeed in was providing an opportunity for false-lefties like --- and -- -----
who seem to think that America is the root of all evil....
[ Better to assume such an awful comment was never written, but the McCarthy-like tone to a
particular campaign has been disturbing and could prove lasting. ]
It is not exactly McCarthyism as stated (although kthomas with his previous Putin comments
looks like a modern day McCarthyist). I think this is a pretty clear formulation of the credo
of American Exceptionalism -- a flavor of nationalism adapted to the realities of the new continent.
BS, a remarkable.
No, I am sure he will be remembered more than that.
Bernard Sanders, last romantic politician to run his campaign on an average of $37 from 3,284,421
donations (or whatever Obama said at The Dinner). Remarkable but ineffectual. A good orator in
empty houses means he was practicing, not performing.
Why does Obama succeed and Sanders fail? Axelrod and co.
Peter K. -> cal... , -1
He was written off by the like of Krugman, PGL, you, KThomas etc.
He won what 13 million votes. Young people overwhelmingly voted for Sanders. He won New Hampshire,
Colorado, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Washington, Oregon, etc. etc. etc. And now the "unromantic"
complacent people have to lie about the campaign.
"... Instead of the investigative process being focused on achieving justice, Kucinich says it was "a very political process" that had "everything to do with the 2016 presidential election" in which Clinton is the Democratic nominee. Kucinich elaborates that "the executive branch of government made an early determination that no matter what came up that there was no way that Hillary Clinton was going to have to be accountable under law for anything dealing with the mishandling of classified information." ..."
Speaking Monday on Fox News with host Neil Cavuto, former Democratic presidential candidate
and United States House of Representatives Member from Ohio Dennis Kucinich opined that, from
early on, the US government's investigation of Hillary Clinton for mishandling confidential
information while she was Secretary of State was fixed in her favor.
Instead of the investigative process being focused on achieving justice, Kucinich says it
was "a very political process" that had "everything to do with the 2016 presidential election" in
which Clinton is the Democratic nominee. Kucinich elaborates that "the executive branch of
government made an early determination that no matter what came up that there was no way that
Hillary Clinton was going to have to be accountable under law for anything dealing with the
mishandling of classified information."
debate is over!
Back to the real world.
Anyone here care to give a more detailed view of this mess, who is allied with who where, etc?
OCT 20
Syria War 2016 - GoPro POV Footage Of Turkish Backed Turkmen Fighters In Heavy Clashes With The
Syrian Army In Latakia
First Person point of view GoPro footage of Turkish backed Turkmen fighter groups in heavy
clashes with the Syrian Arab Army in the border region between Turkey and Syria.
The fighters you see here are part of the so called Syrian Turkmen Brigades an informal armed
opposition structure composed of Syrian Turkmen primarily fighting against the Syrian Army, Islamic
State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) and the Syrian Democratic Forces (YPG+FSA).
They are aligned with the Syrian opposition and are heavily supported by Turkey, who provides
funding and military training along with artillery and aerial support.
"... criminal record had to be suppressed by the Obama regime in order to move the oligarchs' candidate in the direction of the White House. So here we are on the verge of nuclear war with Russia and China, and the important issue before the American people is Trump's lewd comments with Billy Bush about sexually attractive women. ..."
"... why is lewd talk about women more important than military conflict with Russia, which could mean nuclear war and the end of life on earth? ..."
"... For Killary-Hillary the Russian issue is the unsupported and false allegation that the Russian government, in league with Donald Trump, hacked her emails and released them to WikiLeaks. The purpose of this absurd claim is to focus voters' attention away from the damning content of the emails. ..."
"... The real issue is that the idiots in Washington have convinced the Russian government that Russia is going to be the target of a pre-emptive nuclear strike. Once a nation is convinced of this, it is unlikely that they will just sit there waiting, especially a powerful nuclear power like Russia, which appears to have a strategic alliance with another major nuclear power-China. ..."
Russia's very able Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova,
said that
the US presidential campaign is "simply some sort of a global shame" unworthy of the American people.
She certainly hit the nail on the head.
Hitlery's criminal record had to be suppressed by the Obama regime in order to move the oligarchs'
candidate in the direction of the White House. So here we are on the verge of nuclear war with Russia
and China, and the important issue before the American people is Trump's lewd comments with Billy
Bush about sexually attractive women.
I mean really. Men's talk about women is like their fish and hunting stories. It has to be taken
with a grain of salt. But this aside, why is lewd talk about women more important than military
conflict with Russia, which could mean nuclear war and the end of life on earth?
Trump has declared that he sees no point in conflict with Russia and that he sees no point in
NATO a quarter century after the demise of the Soviet Union.
Is Trump's lewd talk about women worse than Hitlery's provocative talk about Russian President
Vladimir Putin, whom Hitlery calls "the new Hitler"? What kind of utter fool would throw gratuitous
insults at the President of a country that can wipe the US and all of Western Europe off of the face
of the earth in a few minutes?
Would you rather face a situation in which a few women were groped, or be vaporized in nuclear
war? If you don't know the correct answer, you are too stupid to be alive.
Are the American women really going to elect Hillary as a rebuff to Trump's lewd talk? If so,
they will confirm that it was a mistake to give women the vote, although there will be no one left
alive to record the mistake in the history books.
Hitlery, with the aid of the presstitutes-the whores who lie for a living and who constitute the
American print and TV media-have succeeded in focusing America's election of a president on issues
irrelevant to the dangerous situation with which Hitlery and her neoconservative colleagues confront
the world.
For Killary-Hillary the Russian issue is the unsupported and false allegation that the Russian
government, in league with Donald Trump, hacked her emails and released them to WikiLeaks. The purpose
of this absurd claim is to focus voters' attention away from the damning content of the emails.
The real issue is that the idiots in Washington have convinced the Russian government that
Russia is going to be the target of a pre-emptive nuclear strike. Once a nation is convinced of this,
it is unlikely that they will just sit there waiting, especially a powerful nuclear power like Russia,
which appears to have a strategic alliance with another major nuclear power-China.
A vote for the crazed killer bitch Hitlery is a vote for the end of life on earth.
"... Clinton says publically she believes that. Meanwhile supposedly smart economists like Tyler Cowen say they don't. Boston Fed President Rosengren says there are too many jobs. We need more unemployed. I'm Fed Up with regional Fed Presidents like him. ..."
"... Class issues are now a tough nut to crack, partly I think because the Democrats and some liberals take demands for economic fairness and try to give us identity politics instead, ..."
"... The meritocratic class who Krugman speaks for and centrist politicians like Clinton will slow-walk class issues like how Tim Geithner slow-walked financial reform. It's part of their job description and milieu. ..."
"... It's funny when neo-liberals/libertarians hate an activity engaged in by workers in what is clearly the product of a free market -- exercising the right of free association and organizing to do collective bargaining -- while think it is perfectly OK -- indeed, so "natural" that any question wouldn't even occur to them -- for owners of capital to organize themselves under the special protections of the state-created corporation. ..."
"... It's understandable, though, that they would consider the corporation to be ordained by natural law: the Founding Fathers, after all, were dedicated to the proposition that all men and corporations are endowed with certain unalienable rights by their Creator. (Never mind that the creator of the corporations is the state.) ..."
I liked how Hillary said in the third debate that she was for raising the minimum wage because
people who work full time shouldn't live in poverty. And "Donald" is against it. That's why people
are voting for her.
That's an ethical or moral notion, combined with "morally neutral" economics. People who work
hard full time, play by the rules and pay their dues shouldn't live in poverty.
Clinton says publically she believes that. Meanwhile supposedly smart economists like Tyler
Cowen say they don't. Boston Fed President Rosengren says there are too many jobs. We need more
unemployed. I'm Fed Up with regional Fed Presidents like him.
Think about the debate between the centrists and progressives over Trump supporters. The centrists
argue Trump supporters (nor anyone else besides a few) aren't suffering from economic anxiety
- that it's racism all of the way down. Matt Yglesias. Dylan Matthews. Krugman. Meyerson. Etc.
The progressives admit there's racism, but there's a wider context. The Nazis were racists,
but there was also the Treaty of Versailles and the Great Depression. And Germany got better in
the decades after the war just as the American South is better than it once was. Steve Randy Waldman
and James Kwak discussed in blog post how the wider context should be taken into consideration.
On some "non-economic issues" there has been progress even though the recent decades haven't
been as booming as the post-WWII decades were with rising living standards for all.
A black President. Legalized gay marriage. Legalized pot. I wouldn't have thought these things
as likely to happen when I was a teenager because of the bigoted authoritarian nature of many
voters and elites. During the Progressive era and when the New Deal was enacted, racism and sexism
and bigotry and anti-science thinking was virulent. Yet economic progress was made on the class
front.
Class issues are now a tough nut to crack, partly I think because the Democrats and some
liberals take demands for economic fairness and try to give us identity politics instead,
not that the latter isn't worthwhile. Partly b/c of what Mike Konczal discussed in his recent
Medium piece.
If we can just apply the morality and politics of electing a black President and legalizing
gay marriage and pot, to class issues. The meritocratic class who Krugman speaks for and centrist
politicians like Clinton will slow-walk class issues like how Tim Geithner slow-walked financial
reform. It's part of their job description and milieu.
But Clinton did talk to it during the third debate when she said she'd raise the minimum wage
because people who work full time shouldn't live in poverty. That is a morale issue as the new
Pope has been talking about.
Hillary should have joked last night about what God's Catholic representative here on Earth
had to say about Trump.
urban legend said...
It's funny when neo-liberals/libertarians hate an activity engaged in by workers in what is
clearly the product of a free market -- exercising the right of free association and organizing
to do collective bargaining -- while think it is perfectly OK -- indeed, so "natural" that any
question wouldn't even occur to them -- for owners of capital to organize themselves under the
special protections of the state-created corporation.
It's understandable, though, that they would consider the corporation to be ordained by
natural law: the Founding Fathers, after all, were dedicated to the proposition that all men and
corporations are endowed with certain unalienable rights by their Creator. (Never mind that the
creator of the corporations is the state.)
"... Clinton also says that the no-fly zone bombing in Syria she is arguing for "would kill a lot of Syrians" - all for humanitarian reasons of course. ..."
"... While this military/para-military operation is moving forward, we need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia , which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region. ..."
"... Not new - the 2012 DIA analysis provided as much , and more, - but these email's prove that Clinton was and is well aware that U.S. allies are financing the radical Islamists in Syria and Iraq. ..."
Quotes from the Wikileaks stash of Hillary
Clinton speeches and emails
from her campaign chair John Podesta.
Clinton in a 2013 speech to the Jewish United Fund Advance & Major Gifts Dinner (via
The Intercept ):
[Arming moderates has] been complicated by the fact that the Saudis and others are shipping large
amounts of weapons-and pretty indiscriminately-not at all targeted toward the people that we think
would be the more moderate, least likely, to cause problems in the future, ...
Clinton also says that the no-fly zone bombing in Syria she is arguing for "would kill a lot
of Syrians" - all for humanitarian reasons of course.
The following was written by Podesta, a well connected former White House Chief of Staff, in an
2014 email to Clinton.
As introduction Podesta notes: "Sources include Western intelligence, US intelligence and sources
in the region.":
While this military/para-military operation is moving forward, we need to use our diplomatic
and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi
Arabia , which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical
Sunni groups in the region.
Not new - the 2012 DIA analysis
provided as much , and more, - but these email's prove that Clinton was and is well aware that
U.S. allies are financing the radical Islamists in Syria and Iraq.
"... It is fortunate for Saudi Arabia and Qatar that the furor over the sexual antics of Donald Trump is preventing much attention being given to the latest batch of leaked emails to and from Hillary Clinton . Most fascinating of these is what reads like a US State Department memo , dated 17 August 2014, on the appropriate US response to the rapid advance of Isis forces, which were then sweeping through northern Iraq and eastern Syria. ..."
"... The memo says: "We need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to Isis and other radical groups in the region." ..."
"... An earlier WikiLeaks release of a State Department cable sent under her name in December 2009 states that "Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaeda, the Taliban, LeT [Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan]." But Saudi complicity with these movements never became a central political issue in the US. Why not? ..."
"... The answer is that the US did not think it was in its interests to cut its traditional Sunni allies loose and put a great deal of resources into making sure that this did not happen. They brought on side compliant journalists, academics and politicians willing to give overt or covert support to Saudi positions. ..."
"... Iraqi and Kurdish leaders said that they did not believe a word of it, claiming privately that Isis was blackmailing the Gulf states by threatening violence on their territory unless they paid up. ..."
"... Going by the latest leaked email, the State Department and US intelligence clearly had no doubt that Saudi Arabia and Qatar were funding Isis. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton should be very vulnerable over the failings of US foreign policy during the years she was Secretary of State. But, such is the crudity of Trump's demagoguery, she has never had to answer for it. ..."
"... A Hillary Clinton presidency might mean closer amity with Saudi Arabia, but American attitudes towards the Saudi regime are becoming soured, as was shown recently when Congress overwhelmingly overturned a presidential veto of a bill allowing the relatives of 9/11 victims to sue the Saudi government. ..."
It is fortunate for
Saudi Arabia and Qatar
that the furor over the
sexual antics of Donald
Trump is preventing much attention being given to the latest batch of leaked emails to and from
Hillary Clinton.
Most fascinating of these is what reads like a
US State Department memo, dated 17 August 2014, on the appropriate US response to the rapid advance
of Isis forces, which were then sweeping through northern Iraq and eastern Syria.
At the time,
the US government was not admitting that Saudi Arabia and its Sunni allies were supporting
Isis and
al-Qaeda-type movements.
But in
the leaked memo, which says that it draws on "western intelligence, US intelligence and sources
in the region" there is no ambivalence about who is backing Isis, which at the time of writing was
butchering and raping Yazidi villagers and slaughtering captured Iraqi and Syrian soldiers.
The memo says: "We need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to
bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial
and logistic support to Isis and other radical groups in the region." This was evidently received
wisdom in the upper ranks of the US government, but never openly admitted because to it was held
that to antagonise Saudi Arabia, the Gulf monarchies, Turkey and Pakistan would fatally undermine
US power in the Middle East and South Asia.
For an extraordinarily long period after 9/11, the US refused to confront these traditional Sunni
allies and thereby ensured that the "War on Terror" would fail decisively; 15 years later, al-Qaeda
in its different guises is much stronger than it used to be because shadowy state sponsors, without
whom it could not have survived, were given a free pass.
It is not as if Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State and the US foreign policy establishment
in general did not know what was happening. An earlier WikiLeaks release of a State Department
cable sent under her name in December 2009 states that "Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial
support base for al-Qaeda, the Taliban, LeT [Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan]." But Saudi complicity
with these movements never became a central political issue in the US. Why not?
The answer is that the US did not think it was in its interests to cut its traditional Sunni
allies loose and put a great deal of resources into making sure that this did not happen. They brought
on side compliant journalists, academics and politicians willing to give overt or covert support
to Saudi positions.
The real views of senior officials in the White House and the State Department were only periodically
visible and, even when their frankness made news, what they said was swiftly forgotten. Earlier this
year, for instance, Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic wrote a piece based on numerous interviews
with Barack Obama in which Obama "questioned, often harshly, the role that America's Sunni Arab allies
play in fomenting anti-American terrorism. He is clearly irritated that foreign policy orthodoxy
compels him to treat Saudi Arabia as an ally".
It is worth recalling White House cynicism about how that foreign policy orthodoxy in Washington
was produced and how easily its influence could be bought. Goldberg reported that "a widely held
sentiment inside the White House is that many of the most prominent foreign-policy think tanks in
Washington are doing the bidding of their Arab and pro-Israel funders. I've heard one administration
official refer to Massachusetts Avenue, the home of many of these think tanks, as 'Arab-occupied
territory'."
Despite this, television and newspaper interview self-declared academic experts from these same
think tanks on Isis, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf are wilfully ignoring or happily disregarding
their partisan sympathies.
The Hillary Clinton email of August 2014 takes for granted that Saudi Arabia and Qatar are funding
Isis – but this was not the journalistic or academic conventional wisdom of the day. Instead, there
was much assertion that the newly declared caliphate was self-supporting through the sale of oil,
taxes and antiquities; it therefore followed that Isis did not need money from Saudi Arabia and the
Gulf. The same argument could not be made to explain the funding of Jabhat al-Nusra, which controlled
no oilfields, but even in the case of Isis the belief in its self-sufficiency was always shaky.
Iraqi and Kurdish leaders said that they did not believe a word of it, claiming privately
that Isis was blackmailing the Gulf states by threatening violence on their territory unless they
paid up. The Iraqi and Kurdish officials never produced proof of this, but it seemed unlikely
that men as tough and ruthless as the Isis leaders would have satisfied themselves with taxing truck
traffic and shopkeepers in the extensive but poor lands they ruled and not extracted far larger sums
from fabulously wealthy private and state donors in the oil producers of the Gulf.
Going by the latest leaked email, the State Department and US intelligence clearly had no
doubt that Saudi Arabia and Qatar were funding Isis. But there has always been bizarre discontinuity
between what the Obama administration knew about Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states and what they would
say in public. Occasionally the truth would spill out, as when Vice-President Joe Biden told students
at Harvard in October 2014 that Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates "were so determined
to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war. What did they do? They poured hundreds
of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad.
Except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra and al-Qaeda and the extremist elements
of jihadis coming from other parts of the world". Biden poured scorn on the idea that there were
Syrian "moderates" capable of fighting Isis and Assad at the same time.
Hillary Clinton should be very vulnerable over the failings of US foreign policy during the
years she was Secretary of State. But, such is the crudity of Trump's demagoguery, she has never
had to answer for it. Republican challenges have focussed on issues – the death of the US ambassador
in Benghazi in 2012 and the final US military withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 – for which she was not
responsible.
A Hillary Clinton presidency might mean closer amity with Saudi Arabia, but American attitudes
towards the Saudi regime are becoming soured, as was shown recently when Congress overwhelmingly
overturned a presidential veto of a bill allowing the relatives of 9/11 victims to sue the Saudi
government.
Another development is weakening Saudi Arabia and its Sunni allies. The leaked memo speaks of
the rival ambitions of Saudi Arabia and Qatar "to dominate the Sunni world". But this has not turned
out well, with east Aleppo and Mosul, two great Sunni cities, coming under attack and likely to fall.
Whatever Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and the others thought they were doing it has not happened and
the Sunni of Syria and Iraq are paying a heavy price. It is this failure which will shape the future
relations of the Sunni states with the new US administration.
"... President Obama acknowledged that danger at the end of the Nuclear Security Summit meeting in Washington early this month. He warned of the potential for "ramping up new and more deadly and more effective systems that end up leading to a whole new escalation of the arms race." ... ..."
"... United States' first 'smart' nuclear bomb signals new arms race with China and Russia: analysts South China Morning Post - August 18 ..."
"... Washington's green light for a new generation of steerable and smart tactical nuclear weapons may signal the start of a new US nuclear arms race with China and Russia, military analysts say. ..."
"... Russia and China are believed to have been developing similar weapons for decades, but Chinese experts are apparently keen to learn the lessons of the former Soviet Union's failed attempt to keep up with the United States in the cold war. ..."
"... Tactical nuclear weapons, known as non-strategic nuclear weapons, are designed to support naval, land and air forces in areas close to friendly forces and perhaps even on contested friendly territory. ..."
"... The new US weapon, the B61-12, is America's first guided, or "smart" nuclear bomb. It weighs 350kg and can penetrate fortified structures several metres underground. ..."
"... These nuclear happenings are why I think Hillary Clinton's labeling of Donald Trump as 'Putin's Puppet' is the more important takeaway for last night's debate, much more so than Trump's refusal to go on record as accepting the results of the election. ..."
"... The American Voting Public has 19 days to discover the loss of detente, the three way nuclear weapon build up ..."
By Paul Sonne & Julian E. Barnes & Gordon Lubold...Oct 19, 2016...5:47 p.m. ET
"The U.S. has summoned Russia to a mandatory meeting before a special treaty commission to answer
accusations that Moscow has violated a Cold War-era pact that bans the production, maintenance or
testing of medium-range missiles, according to U.S. and Western officials.
The U.S. for years has alleged that Russia is breaching the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces
Treaty, or INF Treaty, an agreement Washington and Moscow signed in 1987 to eliminate land-based
nuclear and conventional missiles with ranges from 500 to 5,500 kilometers, as well as their launchers.
Russia, in turn, has accused the U.S. of violating the pact.
Now the U.S. is convening the treaty's so-called Special Verification Commission to press its
case against Russia, triggering the compliance body's first meeting in 16 years, according to the
U.S. and Western officials. They said the SVC meeting would take place in the coming weeks."
Putin is one of the few sane politicians left in Europe. I would not object importing him and
putting him as a POTUS here instead of one psychically debilitated neocon warmonger (who is definitely
in the pocket of Wall Street, if not Russians, due to the amount of "compromat" on her and Bill
floating around) and another bombastic know-nothing billionaire who is unable to neither clearly
articulate, no capitalize on his winning anti-globalization position against such a compromised,
widely hated opponent.
Especially after the dirty details of her sinking Sanders became known. Why on the Earth he
can't just de-legitimize her by stressing that she obtained her position as the candidate from
Democratic Party by proven fraud by DNC is beyond me.
Looks like you might not understand that and the fact that neocons have had driven the US into
another useless war in Syria to protect not so much our own but Israeli and Saudi interests (the
key idea is partitioning of Syria and establishing a Sunni state as the counterweight the loss
of Iraq to Shiites, which means Iran) .
Race for Latest Class of Nuclear Arms Threatens
to Revive Cold War http://nyti.ms/268HJT6
NYT - WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER - APRIL 16, 2016
The United States, Russia and China are now aggressively pursuing a new generation of smaller,
less destructive nuclear weapons. The buildups threaten to revive a Cold War-era arms race and
unsettle the balance of destructive force among nations that has kept the nuclear peace for more
than a half-century.
It is, in large measure, an old dynamic playing out in new form as an economically declining
Russia, a rising China and an uncertain United States resume their one-upmanship.
American officials largely blame the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, saying his intransigence
has stymied efforts to build on a 2010 arms control treaty and further shrink the arsenals of
the two largest nuclear powers. Some blame the Chinese, who are looking for a technological edge
to keep the United States at bay. And some blame the United States itself for speeding ahead with
a nuclear "modernization" that, in the name of improving safety and reliability, risks throwing
fuel on the fire.
President Obama acknowledged that danger at the end of the Nuclear Security Summit meeting
in Washington early this month. He warned of the potential for "ramping up new and more deadly
and more effective systems that end up leading to a whole new escalation of the arms race." ...
---
United States' first 'smart' nuclear bomb signals new arms race with China and Russia:
analysts South China Morning Post - August 18
Washington's green light for a new generation of steerable and smart tactical nuclear weapons
may signal the start of a new US nuclear arms race with China and Russia, military analysts say.
Russia and China are believed to have been developing similar weapons for decades, but
Chinese experts are apparently keen to learn the lessons of the former Soviet Union's failed attempt
to keep up with the United States in the cold war.
Tactical nuclear weapons, known as non-strategic nuclear weapons, are designed to support
naval, land and air forces in areas close to friendly forces and perhaps even on contested friendly
territory.
The new US weapon, the B61-12, is America's first guided, or "smart" nuclear bomb. It weighs
350kg and can penetrate fortified structures several metres underground.
Unlike banned weapons of mass destruction, the B61-12 is designed to be carried by high-speed
stealth fighter jets to hit targets precisely with limited damage to structures and lives nearby.
...
im1dc -> im1dc... , -1
These nuclear happenings are why I think Hillary Clinton's labeling of Donald Trump as 'Putin's
Puppet' is the more important takeaway for last night's debate, much more so than Trump's refusal
to go on record as accepting the results of the election.
The American Voting Public has 19 days to discover the loss of detente, the three way nuclear
weapon build up , and connect Trump to Putin as Putin's Puppet.
This is far more important going forward than Trump being seen as a whiner and sore loser.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said she believes the US presidential campaign
is not worthy of the nation's people, calling it a "catastrophe" and "simply some sort of a global
shame" during a meeting with students on Tuesday.
Commenting on the heated 2016 presidential race in the US, Zakharova lamented that by accusing
Moscow of mounting cyber-attacks with an alleged aim of meddling in American politics, Washington
has turned Russia into a "real, serious factor of pre-election rhetoric."
They are constantly saying that Russia is carrying out cyber-attacks on certain US facilities,"
she said. Zakharova stressed that the US side provided no proof or any other data on the alleged
hackers' links to Moscow, which she says makes the allegations appear to be a "smokescreen" to cover
up serious domestic issues.
According to the spokeswoman, this "public bickering on Russia"as well as "locker-room jokes"
are "unworthy of a great power, [and] great people" of America.
"I simply believe that this campaign is not worthy of their people. As a person who was engaged
in information technologies when studying at the university, I believe that this is a catastrophic
campaign. May the colleagues of all kinds and countries forgive me, but I believe that this is simply
some sort of a global shame," Zakharova said at a meeting with students at the Moscow Aviation Institute,
Life.ru reported.
Earlier in October, the US government claimed it was "confident" that Russia was behind the hacking
attacks on US officials and organizations, alleging that revelations by WikiLeaks, DCLeaks and Guccifer
2.0. were directly authorized by the Russian government with the intention to "interfere with the
US election process."
"We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most
officials could have authorized these activities," read the report, published by the Director of
National Intelligence James Clapper. The accusations were based on the fact that attacks "in most
cases originated from servers operated by a Russian company."
Moscow, for its part, completely dismissed the allegations, denying any involvement in the attacks.
Commenting on the report, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov labeled the accusations "yet
another fit of nonsense,"adding that while many cyber-attacks Russia faces on a daily basis can be
traced back to US services, Russia refrains from calling US government responsible for cybercrimes.
This crazy warmonger Hillary Insists Putin Wants a 'Puppet' as US President. The truth is that with
the amount of "compromat" against her she is a puppet.
It didn't take long for the
final presidential debate in the US to be shifted to the Clinton campaign's favorite topic: accusing
the Trump campaign of being involved in a Russian plot to hack the US election to his benefit. Indeed,
it didn't even wait until the brief foreign policy segment.
During questions about immigration, the moderator asked a question of Hillary Clinton regarding
her comments at a closed-door speech to a Brazilian bank about open borders. Clinton quickly and
dramatically changed focus, noting that the quote came from WikiLeaks and declaring "what's really
important about WikiLeaks is that the Russian government has engaged in espionage against Americans."
She went on to declare that it was "clearly" Russian President Vladimir Putin behind the WikiLeaks
releases, and insisted that the entire intelligence community had confirmed Putin was doing so "to
influence our election." She then demanded Republican nominee Donald Trump "admit" to it.
When Trump noted that Clinton has "no idea" who was behind the hacks, and that he'd never even
met Putin, Clinton declared that Putin wanted Trump elected to be his puppet as US president. Trump
insisted it was Clinton, by contrast, who was the puppet.
Trump went on to say he'd condemn any foreign interference in the US election, no matter who it
was, but did say that he thought if the US and Russia got along it "wouldn't be so bad." Clinton
accused him of spouting "the Putin line."
The Clinton campaign has been accusing Russia of trying to hack the election since their summer
convention, blaming them for materially every leak that proved embarrassing to her campaign. Since
then, the allegations have gone hand-in-hand with claims that Trump is in on the matter. Russia denies
any involvement in the hacking, and has noted there is no public evidence to support the claims.
Beyond continuing to advance these allegations, the debate touched on foreign policy in a limited
fashion, with Clinton reiterating promises to impose a no fly zone in Syria to "gain some leverage
on the Russians." When asked about the possibility of that starting a war with Russia, she shifted
focus again to her confidence the no-fly zone would "save lives."
Feeling the heat from congressional critics, Comey last week argued that the case was investigated by career FBI agents, "So
if I blew it, they blew it, too."
But agents say Comey tied investigators' hands by agreeing to unheard-of ground rules and other demands by the lawyers for
Clinton and her aides that limited their investigation.
"In my 25 years with the bureau, I never had any ground rules in my interviews," said retired agent Dennis V. Hughes, the first
chief of the FBI's computer investigations unit.
Instead of going to prosecutors and insisting on using grand jury leverage to compel testimony and seize evidence, Comey allowed
immunity for several key witnesses, including potential targets.
What's more, Comey cut a deal to give Clinton a "voluntary" witness interview on a major holiday, and even let her ex-chief
of staff sit in on the interview as a lawyer, even though she, too, was under investigation.
Agreed retired FBI agent Michael M. Biasello: "Comey has singlehandedly ruined the reputation of the organization."
Comey made the 25 agents who worked on the case sign nondisclosure agreements. But others say morale has sunk inside the bureau.
"The director is giving the bureau a bad rap with all the gaps in the investigation," one agent in the Washington field office
said. "There's a perception that the FBI has been politicized and let down the country."
While the above article focused on the opinions of retired agents, today's article zeros in on the growing frustrations of current
agency employees.
FBI agents say the bureau is alarmed over Director James Comey deciding not to suggest that the Justice Department prosecute
Hillary Clinton over her mishandling of classified information.
According to an interview transcript given to The Daily Caller, provided by an intermediary who spoke to two federal agents
with the bureau last Friday, agents are frustrated by Comey's leadership.
"This is a textbook case where a grand jury should have convened but was not. That is appalling," an FBI special agent who
has worked public corruption and criminal cases said of the decision. "We talk about it in the office and don't know how Comey
can keep going."
Another special agent for the bureau that worked counter-terrorism and criminal cases said he is offended by Comey's saying:
"we" and "I've been an investigator."
After graduating from law school, Comey became a law clerk to a U.S. District Judge in Manhattan and later became an associate
in a law firm in the city. After becoming a U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, Comey's career moved through the
U.S. Attorney's Office until he became Deputy Attorney General during the George W. Bush administration.
After Bush left office, Comey entered the private sector and became general counsel and Senior Vice President for Lockheed
Martin, among other private sector posts. President Barack Obama appointed him to FBI director in 2013 replacing out going-director
Robert Mueller.
"Comey was never an investigator or special agent. The special agents are trained investigators and they are insulted that
Comey included them in 'collective we' statements in his testimony to imply that the SAs agreed that there was nothing there to
prosecute," the second agent said. "All the trained investigators agree that there is a lot to prosecuted but he stood in the
way."
In light of the latest revelations that the
NSA is spying on the communications of millions of Verizon customers courtesy of information provided by the FBI, it probably
makes sense to know a little more about Obama's nominee to head that Bureau. That man is James Comey, and he was a top Department
of Justice attorney under John Ashcroft during the George W. Bush Administration (since then he has worked at Lockheed Martin
and at the enormous Connecticut hedge fund Bridgewater Associates). This guy defines the revolving door cancer ruining these United
States.
Now back to The Daily Caller.
According to Washington D.C. attorney Joe DiGenova, more FBI agents will be talking about the problems at bureau and specifically
the handling of the Clinton case by Comey when Congress comes back into session and decides to force them to testify by subpoena.
DiGenova told WMAL radio's
Drive at Five last week, "People are starting to talk. They're calling their former friends outside the bureau asking for
help. We were asked to day to provide legal representation to people inside the bureau and agreed to do so and to former agents
who want to come forward and talk. Comey thought this was going to go away."
He explained, "It's not. People inside the bureau are furious. They are embarrassed. They feel like they are being led by a
hack but more than that that they think he's a crook. They think he's fundamentally dishonest. They have no confidence in him.
The bureau inside right now is a mess."
He added, "The most important thing of all is that the agents have decided that they are going to talk."
Corruption in the USA has now reached the level where it starts destroying the entire fabric of society itself. This is a very
dangerous moment.
It's already been done. After the Boston Marathon false flag, a number of FBI agents were assigned to the case. Two in particular
probably got too close to the hoax because suddenly they were sent on a naval training assignment. The FBI on a naval training
assignment in the middle of an investigation?
Excellent post pods. These agents are using the Nazi excuse of "just following orders". We'll, a corrupt order is corrupt.....and
so are you if you blindly follow it.
The NDAs were obviously procured through fraud thereby nullifying their binding nature. Dirty hands all over the Washington D.C.
cesspool. Are we ready to clean house yet?
The FBI has lost total street cred first after failing to indict Crooked Hillary, and then granting immunity to her co-conspirators.
the icing on the cake was Comey blaming other FBI.
When I was wanering thru the sports store yesterday, the feeling of animosity toward the FBI was very high. Once they were
highly respected...Comey has trashed that agency badly...People like John Malone 9who once heade the NYC FBI office), Tompkins
in the louisville area, etc would be revolted by Crooked Comey.
... I'm not implying that those 900(?) FBI files of prominent Americans given by the FBI to the Klinton Krime Kartel were being
used for blackmail ... and perhaps the reason why the dynamic duo keeps getting "get-out-of-jail-free" cards whenever they need
it ...
@hedgeless horseman: The FBI did not release the "Dancing Israelis." It was Judge Michael Chertoff. He was in charge of the Criminal
Division in the Justice Department on 9/11. Essentially responsible for the 9/11 non-investigation. He let hundreds of Israeli
spies who were arrested prior to and on 9/11 go back home to Israel. He was also a prosecuting judge in the first terrorist attack
on the WTC in 1993. Chertoff purportedly holds dual citizenship with the US and Israel. His family is one of the founding families
of the state of Israel and his mother was one of the first ever agents of the Mossad, Israel's spy agency. His father and uncle
are ordained rabbis and teachers of the Talmud.
He was subsequently named head of the Dept of Homeland Security. His company arranged for placement of Rapascan nude scanners
in American airports. Who says crime doesn't pay?
..... Comey last week argued that the case was investigated by career FBI agents, "So if I blew it, they blew it, too."
...... agents say Comey tied investigators' hands by agreeing to unheard-of ground rules and other demands by the lawyers
for Clinton and her aides that limited their investigation.
...... In my 25 years with the bureau, I never had any ground rules in my interviews," said retired agent Dennis V.
Hughes, the first chief of the FBI's computer investigations unit.
Time for Comey, Bill, Hillary, Lynch, Obama, MSM Media, and on, and on, to ALL
DANCE ON THE FUCKING AIR !!!
(Method of neck suspension, NOT rope.....piano wire..)
I get a kick out of these career FBI agents worrying that Comey has sullied the reputation of the FBI (he has). Here is a fucking
news flash for you assholes, if Clinton gets elected there is an almost certain chance that she starts a fucking thermo nuclear
war with Russia. You, your families and the precious FBI won't exist 30 minutes after that starts seeing that you are sitting
at ground zero. Does that do anything to get you off your asses and perhaps do your fucking jobs?
There is now about 30 minutes of video that proves the Clinton campaign conspired to incite violence at Trump rallys. How about
you fuckers get off your ass and start investigating this and the "pay to play" shit the Podesta tapes came out with? Or, how
about the email that indicates POTUS illegally influenced the Supreme Court Justice on ACA??? Christ, it's a target rich environment
for felony convictions out there and you guys are doing what????
Allegedly, there was a much larger contingent of Mossad agents that were detained immediately after 9/11. An additional 100 or
so were in the States "studying art" and similar cover stories when in fact they were carefully casing various buildings including
banks and Federal sites. For reasons never made public, the FBI let them all go back to Israel. Without waterboarding Dick Cheney,
the public will never know the truth.
" Sorry, intentions are one thing actions another at least among adults."
Actually, it can also be part of the game. Eisenhower is well known for his MIC warning on TV just as he was leaving office.
However, if you look at what he did, and what he allowed Allen Dulles to do, he was part of it. Making fake apologies after the
fact provides some balm but doesnt undo the damage.
I'm tellin ya.... rank-and-file aren't sitting around giggling that this fucking cunt is walking on water on shit they would be
hung out to dry for. The Podesta leaks are NSA standard intercepts. Anyone could have grabbed them from a standard intercept.
Tja, that's the problem when you go hooovering up the entire internet. Pretty fucking hard to compartmentalize collection efforts
on that scale.
We applaud and support the members of our armed forces and intelligence community who take their oath of office seriously and
refuse to let these murderous internationalists tear down our country without a fucking fight.
When Hillary gets in there all these old FBI white boyz will be shown the door and replaced with pussylesbo power. These are the
good old days,be afraid.
But come January, Democrats will continue to be the dominant political faction in the U.S. - more
so than ever - and the tactics they are now embracing will endure past the election, making them
worthy of scrutiny. Those tactics now most prominently include dismissing away any facts or documents
that reflect negatively on their leaders as fake, and strongly insinuating that anyone who questions
or opposes those leaders is
a stooge or agent of the Kremlin, tasked with a subversive and dangerously un-American mission
on behalf of hostile actors in Moscow.
To see how extreme and damaging this behavior has become,
let's just quickly examine two utterly false claims that Democrats over the past four days - led
by party-loyal journalists - have disseminated and induced thousands of people, if not more, to believe.
On Friday, WikiLeaks published its first installment of emails obtained from the account of Clinton
campaign chair John Podesta. Despite WikiLeaks' perfect, long-standing record of only publishing
authentic documents,
MSNBC's favorite ex-intelligence official, Malcolm Nance, within hours of the archive's release,
posted a tweet claiming - with zero evidence and without citation to a single document in the WikiLeaks
archive - that it was compromised with fakes:
As you can see, more than 4,000 people have re-tweeted this "Official Warning." That includes
not only random Clinton fans but also
high-profileClinton-supporting
journalists, who by spreading it around gave this claim their stamp of approval, intentionally
leading huge numbers of people to assume the WikiLeaks archive must be full of fakes, and its contents
should therefore simply be ignored. Clinton's campaign officials spent the day
fueling these
insinuations, strongly implying that the documents were unreliable and should thus be ignored.
Poof: Just like that, unpleasant facts about Hillary Clinton disappeared, like a fairy protecting
frightened children by waving her magic wand and sprinkling her dust over a demon, causing it to
scatter away.
Except the only fraud here was Nance's claim, not any of the documents published by WikiLeaks.
Those were all real. Indeed, at Sunday night's debate, when asked directly about the excerpts of
her Wall Street speeches found in the release, Clinton herself confirmed their authenticity. And
news outlets such as the New York Times and AP reported - and
continue to report - on their contents without any caveat that they may be frauds. No real print
journalists or actual newsrooms (as opposed to campaign operatives masquerading as journalists) fell
for this scam, so this tactic did not prevent reporting from being done.
But it did signal to Clinton's most devoted followers to simply ignore the contents of the release.
Anyone writing articles about what these documents revealed was instantly barraged with claims from
Democrats that they were fakes, by people often pointing to
"articles" like this one.
That article was shared almost 22,000 times on Facebook alone. In Nance's defense, it is true that
some unknown, random person posted a doctored email on the internet and claimed it was real, but
that did not come from the WikiLeaks archive and has nothing to do with assessing the reliability
of the archive (any more than
fake NYT stories on the internet impugn the reliability of articles in that paper). Not one person
has identified even a single email or document released by WikiLeaks of questionable authenticity
- that includes all of the Clinton officials whose names are listed as their authors and recipients
- yet these journalists and "experts" deliberately convinced who knows how many people to believe
a fairy tale: that WikiLeaks' archive is pervaded with forgeries.
More insidious and subtle,
but even worse, was what Newsweek and its Clinton-adoring writer Kurt Eichenwald did last night.
What happened - in reality, in the world of facts - was extremely trivial.
One of the emails
in the second installment of the WikiLeaks/Podesta archive - posted yesterday - was from Sidney Blumenthal
to Podesta. The sole purpose of Blumenthal's email was to show Podesta one of Eichenwald's endless
series of Clinton-exonerating articles,
this one about Benghazi. So in the body of the email to Podesta, Blumenthal simply pasted the
link and the full contents of the article. Although the purpose of Eichenwald's article (like everything
he says and does) was to defend Clinton, one paragraph in the middle acknowledged that one minor
criticism of Clinton on Benghazi was possibly rational.
Once WikiLeaks announced that this second email batch was online, many news organizations (including
The Intercept, along with the NYT and AP) began combing through them to find relevant information
and then published articles about them. One such story was published by Sputnik, the Russian government's
international outlet similar to RT, which highlighted that Blumenthal email. But the Sputnik story
inaccurately attributed the text of the Newsweek article to Blumenthal, thus suggesting that one
of Clinton's closest advisers had expressed criticism of her on Benghazi. Sputnik quickly removed
the article once Eichenwald pointed out that the words were his, not Blumenthal's. Then, in his campaign
speech last night, Trump made reference to the Sputnik article (hours after it was published and
spread on social media), claiming (obviously inaccurately) that even Blumenthal had criticized Clinton
on Benghazi.
That's all that happened. There is zero suggestion in the article, let alone evidence, that
any WikiLeaks email was doctored: It wasn't. It was just Sputnik misreporting the email. Once
Sputnik realized that its article misattributed the text to Blumenthal, it took it down. It's not
hard to imagine how a rushed, careless Sputnik staffer could glance at that email and fail to realize
that Blumenthal was forwarding Eichenwald's article rather than writing it himself. And while nobody
knows how this erroneous Sputnik story made its way to Trump for him to reference in his speech,
it's very easy to imagine how a Trump staffer on a shoddy, inept campaign - which has previously
cited InfoWars and white supremacist sites, among others - would have stumbled into
a widely shared
Sputnik story that had been published hours earlier on the internet and then passed it along
to Trump for him to highlight, without realizing the reasons to be skeptical.
In any event, based on the available evidence, this is a small embarrassment for Trump: He cited
an erroneous story from a non-credible Russian outlet, so it's worth noting. But that's not what
happened. Eichenwald, with increasing levels of hysteria, manically posted
no fewer than
three dozen tweets last night about his story, each time escalating his claims of what it proved.
By the time he was done, he had misled large numbers of people into believing that he found proof
that: 1) the documents in the WikiLeaks archive were altered; 2) Russia put forgeries into the WikiLeaks
archive; 3) Sputnik knew about the WikiLeaks archive ahead of time, before it was posted online;
4) WikiLeaks coordinated the release of the documents with the Russian government; and 5) the Russian
government and the Trump campaign coordinated to falsely attribute Eichenwald's words to Blumenthal.
In fact, Eichenwald literally has zero evidence for any of that. The point is not that his evidence
for these propositions is inconclusive or unpersuasive; the point is that there is zero evidence
for any of it. It's all just conspiracy theorizing and speculation that he invented. Worse, the article,
while hinting at these claims and encouraging readers to believe them, does not even expressly claim
any of those things. Instead, Eichenwald's increasingly unhinged tweets repeatedly inflated his insignificant
story from what it was - a misattribution of an email by Sputnik that Trump repeated - into a five-alarm
warning that an insidious Russian plot to subvert U.S. elections had been proven, with Trump and
fake WikiLeaks documents at the center.
By itself, this is not so notable: All journalists are tempted to hype their stories. But
Eichenwald went way, way beyond that, including - as demonstrated below - demonstrable lies.
But what makes it so significant is how many reasoned, perfectly smart journalists - just as they
did with Nance's "Official Warning" - started falling prey to the dual hysteria of Twitter group
dynamics and election blinders, to the point where CNN featured Eichenwald this morning to highlight
his major scoop linking Putin, Trump, and WikiLeaks in the plot to feed Americans heaps of Russian
disinformation.
Just watch how this warped narrative played out in a very short period of time, with nobody wanting
to get in the way of the speeding train for fear of being castigated as a Trump supporter or Putin
stooge (accusations that are - yet again - inevitably on their way as a result of this article):
To call all this overwrought deceit is to understate the case. In particular, the repeated claim
that his story has anything to do with, let alone demonstrates, that "wikileaks is working w/Putin"
or "wikileaks is compromised" is an outright fraud. The assertion in the second tweet - that "only
those two [Trump and Russia] knew" about the article - is an outright lie, since by the time Trump
cited it, it had been published hours earlier on the internet and shared widely on social media.
Moreover, none of the documents released by WikiLeaks have yet to be identified as anything but completely
authentic.
But look at his tweets: Each has been re-tweeted by close to 1,000 people, and in the case of
the most sensationalistic ones, many more. And they were quickly hyped by people who should know
better because anyone supporting Hillary Clinton wants to believe that this is true:
Russsia leaked hacked emails but created forgeries first plagiarizing a
reporter. Only Russian news posted the lie. Yet,
@realDonaldTrumphttps://t.co/mGizfPpHWF
Literally none of that happened. Or at least there is zero evidence that it did. These are smart,
rational people falling for a scam. Why? It's in part because Twitter fosters this group-think and
lack of critical thought - you just click a button and, with little effort, you've spread whatever
you want people to believe - but it's also because they're so convinced of the righteousness of their
cause (electing Clinton/defeating Trump) that they have cast all limits and constraints to the side,
believing that any narrative or accusation or smear, no matter how false or conspiratorial, is justified
in pursuit of it.
But while Donald Trump's candidacy poses grave dangers, so does group-think righteousness, particularly
when it engulfs those with the greatest influence. The problem is that none of this is going to vanish
after the election. This election-year machine that has been constructed based on elite unity in
support of Clinton - casually dismissing inconvenient facts as fraudulent to make them disappear,
branding critics and adversaries as tools or agents of an Enemy Power bent on destroying America
- is a powerful one. As is seen here, it is capable of implanting any narrative, no matter how false;
demonizing any critic, no matter how baseless; and riling up people to believe they're under attack.
For a long time, liberals heralded themselves as part of the "reality-based community" and derided
conservatives as faith-based victims of "epistemic closure." The dynamics seen here are anything
but byproducts of reason.
The decision to let Hillary Clinton off the hook for mishandling classified information has roiled the FBI and Department of Justice,
with one person closely involved in the year-long probe telling FoxNews.com that career agents and attorneys on the case unanimously
believed the Democratic presidential nominee should have been charged.
The source, who spoke to FoxNews.com on the condition of anonymity, said Obama appointee FBI Director James Comey's dramatic July
5 announcement that he would not recommend to the Attorney General's office that the former secretary of state be charged left members
of the investigative team dismayed and disgusted. More than 100 FBI agents and analysts worked around the clock with six attorneys
from the DOJ's National Security Division, Counter Espionage Section, to investigate the case.
"No trial level attorney agreed, no agent working the case agreed, with the decision not to prosecute - it was a top-down decision,"
said the source, whose identity and role in the case has been verified by FoxNews.com.
A high-ranking FBI official told Fox News that while it might not have been a unanimous decision, "It was unanimous that we all
wanted her [Clinton's] security clearance yanked."
"It is safe to say the vast majority felt she should be prosecuted," the senior FBI official told Fox News. "We were floored while
listening to the FBI briefing because Comey laid it all out, and then said 'but we are doing nothing,' which made no sense to us."
The FBI declined to comment directly, but instead referred Fox News to multiple public statements Comey has made in which he has
thrown water on the idea that politics played a role in the agency's decision not to recommend charges.
Clinton is converting Democratic Party into party of war with Russia...
Hillary was the Secretary of State when the USA tried to implement color revolution in Russia in
2011-2012.
Notable quotes:
"... Washington Post ..."
"... Clinton told a press conference Monday there were now "credible reports about Russian interference in our elections," adding, "I want everyone-Democrat, Republican, Independent-to understand the real threat that this represents." ..."
"... Clinton's suggestion of a Trump-Putin axis was followed up Tuesday in a speech in North Carolina by her vice-presidential running mate, Senator Tim Kaine, which was billed as a "major national security address" by the Democratic campaign. ..."
"... Clinton appeared Monday at several Labor Day rallies, but she chose to focus her attack on Trump on national security issues, where she has consistently attacked the billionaire real estate speculator from the right. ..."
"... Asked by a reporter if the alleged Russian actions amounted to a cyberwar, Clinton replied, "I'm not comfortable using the word 'war'." This demurral was only to disguise her intentions from the American people. However, in a speech last week to the American Legion convention, Clinton declared that cyberattacks on the United States should be answered by military force. ..."
"... Clinton claimed that Putin had all but confirmed Russia's role in the hacking of the DNC-a flat-out lie-adding, "The team around him certainly believe that there is some benefit to them to doing this." She then declared that the prospect of additional hacking into the state government systems used to conduct the November 8 elections represented "a threat from an adversarial foreign power." ..."
"... The Democratic candidate also criticized the role of the Russian government in Syria, in backing the regime of President Bashar al-Assad against Islamist forces armed and financed by the United States and the Gulf monarchies. She denounced "the refusal of the Russians and the Iranians to put the kind of pressure on Assad that is necessary " ..."
"... The article published Monday by the Washington Post ..."
"... As in previous reports by the Post ..."
"... Meanwhile, the claims of Russian hacking are being used to whip up a crisis atmosphere about the administration of the election itself. Earlier this summer the FBI issued a "flash" alert to election officials in all 50 states over the threat of cyber intrusions. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson suggested that the entire US election system, including 9,000 polling places and 50 separate state election authorities, should be declared "critical infrastructure" subject to the same counterterrorism efforts as nuclear power plants and electrical power grids. ..."
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton this week publicly accused the Russian government
of intervening in the American election on behalf of her Republican opponent Donald Trump.
She cited an investigation by US intelligence agencies, first reported Monday night by the
Washington Post , into alleged Russian government hacking into the computer systems of the state
election officials in the United States.
Clinton told a press conference Monday there were now "credible reports about Russian interference
in our elections," adding, "I want everyone-Democrat, Republican, Independent-to understand the real
threat that this represents."
Clinton referred both to the Post report about hacking into state government computers
in Arizona and Illinois, and to the alleged Russian hacking of the emails of the Democratic National
Committee (DNC), which revealed backroom efforts by top DNC officials to ensure Clinton's victory.
Clinton's suggestion of a Trump-Putin axis was followed up Tuesday in a speech in North Carolina
by her vice-presidential running mate, Senator Tim Kaine, which was billed as a "major national security
address" by the Democratic campaign.
Kaine contrasted Clinton's going "toe-to-toe with Putin" as US secretary of state, to Trump's
suggestion that NATO was outmoded and that he could negotiate more successfully with Russia. He then
raised the question "why Trump seems to support Russian interests at the expense of American ones,"
suggesting that the billionaire real estate speculator was keeping his tax returns secret because
they might shed light on his financial ties to Russia. He concluded by citing the claim of former
acting CIA Director Michael Morell that Trump is an "unwitting agent" of the Russian intelligence
services.
Clinton appeared Monday at several Labor Day rallies, but she chose to focus her attack on
Trump on national security issues, where she has consistently attacked the billionaire real estate
speculator from the right.
Asked by a reporter if the alleged Russian actions amounted to a cyberwar, Clinton replied,
"I'm not comfortable using the word 'war'." This demurral was only to disguise her intentions from
the American people. However, in a speech last week to the American Legion convention, Clinton declared
that cyberattacks on the United States should be answered by military force.
Clinton claimed that Putin had all but confirmed Russia's role in the hacking of the DNC-a
flat-out lie-adding, "The team around him certainly believe that there is some benefit to them to
doing this." She then declared that the prospect of additional hacking into the state government
systems used to conduct the November 8 elections represented "a threat from an adversarial foreign
power."
The Democratic candidate also criticized the role of the Russian government in Syria, in backing
the regime of President Bashar al-Assad against Islamist forces armed and financed by the United
States and the Gulf monarchies. She denounced "the refusal of the Russians and the Iranians to put
the kind of pressure on Assad that is necessary "
Clinton reiterated her support for imposing a no-fly zone over parts of Syria held by the US-backed
"rebels," which would require US air strikes against Syrian anti-aircraft positions and could lead
to confrontations between Russian and American warplanes, which both conduct air strikes in the country.
"I think we need leverage," she said. "I've always believed that if that were on the table and
it were clear we were going to pursue it, that would give us the leverage we don't have now." Coming
just after the well-publicized failure of talks last weekend between Obama and Putin at the G20 summit
in China, Clinton was clearly seeking to stake out a more aggressive position on Syria than that
of the Obama administration.
The Democrat's claim to have discovered a Trump-Putin axis has two purposes: first, to cement
Clinton's standing as the consensus choice of the US military-intelligence apparatus; and second,
to integrate the election campaign itself into the war preparations by US imperialism, both in the
Middle East and against Russia (as well as China).
If Clinton wins the November 8 election over Trump, she will claim this to be a mandate for the
escalation of US military operations in Iraq and Syria, as well as the continued NATO military buildup
throughout Eastern Europe, openly aimed at preparing for war with Russia, a country with the world's
second-largest nuclear arsenal.
In her complaints about Russian interference in the US elections, Clinton is joining in the campaign
waged by the Pentagon and CIA to prepare US public opinion for such a conflict.
The article published Monday by the Washington Post is little more than a handout
from the intelligence agencies. It reports that the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and Department
of Homeland Security have started an investigation, led by Director of National Intelligence James
Clapper, into a "broad covert Russian operation in the United States to sow public distrust in the
upcoming presidential election and in US political institutions."
In addition to discrediting the election among the American people-hardly necessary given that
the entire political system is deeply despised and the two main candidates hated-Russian officials
allegedly seek to "provide propaganda fodder to attack US democracy-building policies around the
world," the Post claimed.
As in previous reports by the Post and the New York Times about alleged
Russian hacking of the DNC, no evidence of any kind is cited in the article, only the unsupported
claims of intelligence officials, who even the Post reporters admit lack "definitive proof"
of either cyberattacks or even plans for cyberattacks.
Apparently the public is expected to treat such claims as the gospel, despite the decades of lying
by these agencies to cover up assassinations, coup plots and other conspiracies abroad, and the systematic
violation of the democratic rights of the American people at home.
Meanwhile, the claims of Russian hacking are being used to whip up a crisis atmosphere about
the administration of the election itself. Earlier this summer the FBI issued a "flash" alert to
election officials in all 50 states over the threat of cyber intrusions. Homeland Security Secretary
Jeh Johnson suggested that the entire US election system, including 9,000 polling places and 50 separate
state election authorities, should be declared "critical infrastructure" subject to the same counterterrorism
efforts as nuclear power plants and electrical power grids.
"... Can you imagine the reaction if Russian ambassador invited Trump and Sanders to the embassy and offered full and unconditional support for their noble cause of dislodging the corrupt neoliberal regime that exists in Washington. With cash injections to breitbart.com, similar sites, and especially organizations that conduct polls after that. ..."
"... Why Russia can't have something similar to help struggling American people to have more honest elections despite all the blatantly undemocratic mechanisms of "first to the post", primaries, state based counting of votes, and the United States Electoral College ? ..."
"... It would be really funny if Russians really resorted to color revolution tricks in the current presidential elections :-) ..."
"... Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sharply criticized what she called "troubling practices" before and during the vote in Russia. "The Russian people, like people everywhere, deserve the right to have their voices heard and their votes counted," she said in Bonn, Germany. ..."
In a way Hillary laments about Russia interference are what is typically called "The pot calling
the kettle black" as she is exactly the specialist in this area. BTW there is a documented history
of the US interference into Russian elections of 2011-2012.
In which Hillary (via ambassador McFaul and the net of NGOs) was trying to stage a "color revolution"
(nicknamed "white revolution") in Russia and prevent the re-election of Putin. The main instrument
was claiming the fraud in ballot counting.
Can you imagine the reaction if Russian ambassador invited Trump and Sanders to the embassy
and offered full and unconditional support for their noble cause of dislodging the corrupt neoliberal
regime that exists in Washington. With cash injections to breitbart.com, similar sites, and especially
organizations that conduct polls after that.
And RT covered staged revelations of "Hillary campaign corruption" 24 x 7. As was done by Western
MSM in regard to Alexei Navalny web site and him personally as the savior of Russia from entrenched
corruption ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Navalny
)
Actually the USA has several organizations explicitly oriented on interference in foreign elections
and promotion of "color revolutions", with functions that partially displaced old functions of
CIA (as in Italian elections of 1948). For example, NED.
Why Russia can't have something similar to help struggling American people to have more
honest elections despite all the blatantly undemocratic mechanisms of "first to the post", primaries,
state based counting of votes, and the United States Electoral College ?
It would be really funny if Russians really resorted to color revolution tricks in the
current presidential elections :-)
Here is a quote that can navigate them in right direction (note the irony of her words after
DNC throw Sanders under the bus ;-)
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sharply criticized what she called "troubling
practices" before and during the vote in Russia. "The Russian people, like people everywhere,
deserve the right to have their voices heard and their votes counted," she said in Bonn, Germany.
With 99.9 percent of ballots processed, election officials said that United Russia had won
238 seats in Parliament, or about 53 percent, from 315 seats or 70 percent now. The Communist
Party won 92 seats; Just Russia, a social democratic party, won 64 seats and the national Liberal
Democratic Party won 56 seats.
"... Most establishment news reporting has taken note that no evidence has been offered by the U.S. officials making the attribution. Clearly, someone thinks it matters, because the attribution is being made. I doubt that getting hold of Podesta's email password required the mysterious skillz of Russian super hackers, but sure ymmv. Why does the NSA spend billions and billions again? I mock because it is impossible to make sense of any of it. ..."
"... Yes, apparently, you think that the U.S. should be in there blowing up hospitals and civilians instead. The Russians just cannot handle the job, while the U.S. has its Afganistan and Iraq training and experience in bringing an end to those horrific civil wars in a few short Friedman units. Proven expertise! ..."
"... The history of humanitarian intervention is long and glorious. Only just last week, America's great and good ally, the Saudi monarchy, was blowing up a funeral in Yemen with American munitions, killing over 100. But, I indulge in irrelevancies, the better to mock you. ..."
LFC: We do have Bruce Wilder mocking the notion that the Russians hacked into the DNC email.
Cyber specialists think it was the Russians to a 90 percent certainty, but of course Wilder knows
better. Anyway, who cares whether the Russians hacked the ******* email?
Most establishment news reporting has taken note that no evidence has been offered by the
U.S. officials making the attribution. Clearly, someone thinks it matters, because the attribution
is being made. I doubt that getting hold of Podesta's email password required the mysterious skillz
of Russian super hackers, but sure ymmv. Why does the NSA spend billions and billions again? I
mock because it is impossible to make sense of any of it.
LFC: I'm more concerned w the fact that Russian planes are deliberately blowing up hospitals
and civilians.
Yes, apparently, you think that the U.S. should be in there blowing up hospitals and civilians
instead. The Russians just cannot handle the job, while the U.S. has its Afganistan and Iraq training
and experience in bringing an end to those horrific civil wars in a few short Friedman units.
Proven expertise!
Oh, I'm so sorry I mocked you again, didn't I?
The history of humanitarian intervention is long and glorious. Only just last week, America's
great and good ally, the Saudi monarchy, was blowing up a funeral in Yemen with American munitions,
killing over 100. But, I indulge in irrelevancies, the better to mock you.
Follow events in Syria day by day if you like, but don't pretend you are a humanitarian cheering
for the underdog rather than a voyeur entertained by mass tragedy.
likbez 10.16.16 at 2:43 pm
@305
bruce wilder 10.16.16 at 12:43 pm
LFC: We do have Bruce Wilder mocking the notion that the Russians hacked into the DNC email.
Cyber specialists think it was the Russians to a 90 percent certainty, but of course Wilder
knows better. Anyway, who cares whether the Russians hacked the ******* email?
Most establishment news reporting has taken note that no evidence has been offered by the
U.S. officials making the attribution.
It looks like LFC is completely clueless about such notion as Occam's razor.
Why we need all those insinuations about Russian hackers when we know that all email boxes in
major Web mail providers are just a click away from NSA analysts.
Why Russians and not something like "Snowden II".
And what exactly Russians will get politically by torpedoing Hillary candidacy. They probably
have tons of "compromat" on her, Bill and Clinton Foundation. Trump stance on Iran is no less
dangerous and jingoistic then Hillary stance on Syria. Aggressive protectionism might hurt Russian
exports. And as for Syria, Trump can turn on a dime and became a second John McCain anytime. Other
then his idea of avoiding foreign military presence (or more correctly that allies should pay
for it) and anti-globalization stance he does not have a fixed set of policies at all.
Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end
of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country
according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled
by, the visible state whose leaders we choose. My analysis of this phenomenon is not an exposé
of a secret, conspiratorial cabal; the state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight,
and its operators mainly act in the light of day. Nor can this other government be accurately
termed an "establishment." All complex societies have an establishment, a social network committed
to its own enrichment and perpetuation. In terms of its scope, financial resources and sheer
global reach, the American hybrid state, the Deep State, is in a class by itself. That said,
it is neither omniscient nor invincible. The institution is not so much sinister (although
it has highly sinister aspects) as it is relentlessly well entrenched. Far from being invincible,
its failures, such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, are routine enough that it is only
the Deep State's protectiveness towards its higher-ranking personnel that allows them to escape
the consequences of their frequent ineptitude.
In view of all this, LFC anti-Russian stance looks extremely naïve and/or represents displaced
anti-Semitism.
In a way Hillary laments about Russia interference are what is typically called "The pot calling
the kettle black" as she is exactly the specialist in this area. BTW there is a documented history
of the US interference into Russian elections of 2011-2012.
In which Hillary (via ambassador McFaul and the net of NGOs) was trying to stage a "color revolution"
(nicknamed "white revolution") in Russia and prevent the re-election of Putin. The main instrument
was claiming the fraud in ballot counting.
Can you imagine the reaction if Russian ambassador invited Trump and Sanders to the embassy
and offered full and unconditional support for their noble cause of dislodging the corrupt neoliberal
regime that exists in Washington. With cash injections to breitbart.com, similar sites, and especially
organizations that conduct polls after that.
And RT covered staged revelations of "Hillary campaign corruption" 24 x 7. As was done by Western
MSM in regard to Alexei Navalny web site and him personally as the savior of Russia from entrenched
corruption ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Navalny
)
Actually the USA has several organizations explicitly oriented on interference in foreign elections
and promotion of "color revolutions", with functions that partially displaced old functions of
CIA (as in Italian elections of 1948). For example, NED.
Why Russia can't have something similar to help struggling American people to have more honest
elections despite all the blatantly undemocratic mechanisms of "first to the post", primaries,
state based counting of votes, and the United States Electoral College ?
It would be really funny if Russians really resorted to color revolution tricks in the current
presidential elections :-)
Here is a quote that can navigate them in right direction (note the irony of her words after
DNC throw Sanders under the bus ;-)
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sharply criticized what she called "troubling
practices" before and during the vote in Russia. "The Russian people, like people everywhere,
deserve the right to have their voices heard and their votes counted," she said in Bonn, Germany.
With 99.9 percent of ballots processed, election officials said that United Russia had won
238 seats in Parliament, or about 53 percent, from 315 seats or 70 percent now. The Communist
Party won 92 seats; Just Russia, a social democratic party, won 64 seats and the national Liberal
Democratic Party won 56 seats.
RP: I mean, people pretty much have to take its effects seriously.
Do they? LFC can probably lecture us on our "complete lack of understanding that the world
contains moral ambiguities and that not everything is black-and-white and open-and-shut" while
hypernormalizing anything with imperative non sequiters.
@ 307, he apparently thinks my use of the Saudi attack in Yemen in my mockery of him is due
to a failure of reading comprehension on my part. He thinks he had criticized U.S. support for
the Saudi's war against Yemen, while arguing that American "standing to object . . . when blatant,
obvious war crimes are being committed" is unaffected when America itself or American allies commit
blatant obvious war crimes. He took the futility express, Rich, and arrived ahead of you, don't
you see? Things are complicated and we must not let our committing blatant obvious war crimes
prevent us from acting to intervene where we can stop blatant obvious war crimes with blatant
obvious war crimes of our own!
Hopefully, this little addendum to my previous mockery is not even worth a response. What are
the chances?
still no mention of the clincher - that proves the entire democrat party has no respect for the office of president - or any other
government office for that matter..
stay on target!!!
(b) Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully
and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned
not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be
disqualified from holding any office under the United States .
Statement of September 11th Advocates
Regarding
Saudia Arabia Support of ISIS
October 12, 2016
"Aren't the Saudis your friends?" Obama smiled. "It's complicated," he
said. "My view has never been that we should throw our traditional
allies"-the Saudis-"overboard in favor of Iran." President Barack Obama
"We have as solid a relationship, as clear an alliance and as strong a
friendship with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia as we have ever had." Secretary
of State John Kerry
"The strategic partnership between the United States and Saudi Arabia is
based on mutual interests and a longstanding commitment to facing our common
threats together." Speaker of the House Paul Ryan
"I think Saudi Arabia is a valuable partner in the war on terror. If you
want to lose Saudi Arabia as an ally, be careful what you wish for." Senator
Lindsey Graham
"There is a public relations issue that exists. That doesn't mean that
it's in our national interest to not have an alliance with them - I mean
they're an important part of our efforts in the Middle East." said Senate
Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker
Citing Western Intelligence, U.S. Intelligence, and Intelligence from the
Region, that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia-not just its rich donors– was
providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other
radical Sunni groups, we would like to know why President Obama, Secretary
of State John Kerry, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Speaker of the
House Paul Ryan, Senator Bob Corker, Senator Lindsey Graham, and Senator
John McCain, would EVER consider the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia our ally.
Markedly, this is not complicated, nor is it a friendship, a special
relationship, a valuable partnership, a clear alliance, a
strategicpartnership, or a public relations issue.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a sponsor of terrorism.
According to Western Intelligence, U.S. Intelligence and Intelligence
from the region, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia clandestinely funds and
logistically supports ISIS.
How could a nation like Saudi Arabia (or Qatar) that funds or
logistically supports ISIS be considered an ally of the United States in the
fight against ISIS?
The Saudis (and the Qataris) are funding and logistically supporting our
enemy.
The United States Government should not condone, enable, or turn a blind
eye to that fact.
As 9/11 family members whose husbands were brutally murdered by 19
radical Sunni terrorists, we strongly request these appointed and elected
officials immediately explain their indefensible positions with regard to
the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its now clearly evident role in underwriting
and logistically supporting radical Sunni terror groups worldwide.
We also look forward to these appointed and elected officials immediately
explaining to the American public why they oppose JASTA or want to re-write
JASTA anti-terrorism legislation specifically designed to hold the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia accountable for its funding and logistical support of
radical Sunni terror groups that kill Americans.
Finally, we would like to, once again, wholeheartedly thank all those
members of Congress who saw the wisdom in making JASTA law. Clearly, this
new evidence further validates your vote and support for JASTA. Furthermore,
this evidence proves that JASTA was not a political vote, but rather a vote
to keep Americans safer from terrorism.
Now that the most terrifyingly potent word in the English language, "PUSSY"
has been rediscovered and resurrected by the Democrat Digital Archaeologists, it is time
for reflection. "Pussy" has been detonated over the Trump campaign. Hillary Clinton will be elected.
Nuclear War with Russia and China now seems likely.
War may break out after Hillary's election but before she takes office (think June 22, 1941)
I am recommending downloading and securely storing as many recipes and photos of meals as possible!
Also war movies and series (Band of Brothers etc). Digital survivalists, the new reality.
Also, we MUST organize battalions of Social Justice Warriors
to pull the dead and dying from the smoking rubble, rebuild the electricity grid, maintain social
order and establish food supplies.
Most likely, the "deplorables" and the "irredeemables" will be otherwise occupied in their
own communities (that probably were not directly targeted)
Podesta's twitter account and i-devices were hacked yesterday using a password found in the
emails.
See here .
That is pretty good evidence that the emails are authentic, unless you believe the hackers
managed to guess his password by an astronomically lucky coincidence.
I think this is also evidence that the hacks were not carried out by an elite team of state-sponsored
cyber experts. Podesta was emailing his password in plain text, using a simple password, using
that password across multiple accounts. Further, he didn't bother to change his password despite
his mailbox being hacked and the contents spreading all over the internet!
This man is a dingbat on computer security matters. Literally anyone could have hacked him
using very simple techniques. That password (Hunter4567) could have been brute forced quickly
using tools available to everyone.
Have to go with Occam's razor and say this was probably not a massive Russian plot to influence
the election and install Trump, just an incompetent person getting caught with their pants down
by someone poking around.
"... Moreover since the DNC hack is a criminal offence, it is a statement of opinion made about a matter which is presumably being investigated by the police. ..."
"... If the statement is merely a statement of opinion based on inference of which guesses about Russian "motivations" apparently form a major part, and one which moreover concerns a matter which is or ought to be the subject of investigation by the police and not therefore the subject of this sort of comment, why was it published at all? ..."
"... The short answer is in order to help Hillary Clinton win the US Presidential election. ..."
"... To that end the statement fulfils two purposes: firstly, it discredits the content of any leaks that might otherwise damage Hillary Clinton's campaign by lending credence to her claim that they are part of a Russian 'dirty tricks' campaign against her; and secondly, it lends credence to the claim popularised by Hillary Clinton's campaign and by Hillary Clinton's supporters in the media that Donald Trump is Putin's candidate and that Putin is trying to help him win the election. ..."
"... That the second is one of the purposes of statement is proved by its reference to US intelligence's "belief" that the leak was authorised by "Russia's senior-most officials ". This is clearly intended to refer to Putin, and is intended to give the impression that Putin himself personally authorised the DNC leak in order to damage Hillary Clinton and to help Trump win the election and become President. ..."
"... US intelligence has meddled in elections in other countries on numerous occasions starting with the Italian parliamentary elections of 1948 ..."
"... To my knowledge this is however the first occasion that US intelligence has directly and publicly meddled in a US national election, acting to help one candidate defeat another. ..."
"... It matters not whether this was done by US intelligence on its own initiative, or whether it was pressured to do so by officials of the Obama administration or of Hillary Clinton's campaign. ..."
"... Either way the disturbing truth must now be faced: the practice of US intelligence meddling in and trying to influence national elections has now been imported home to the US. ..."
The single most important event of the US Presidential election took place last week and to my
knowledge it has gone completely unreported.
This was not the video tape of Donald Trump's grotesque and deeply offensive sexual banter from
2005.
It was the public confirmation that an intelligence agency is directly interfering in an ongoing
US Presidential election.
The intelligence agency in question is not however that of Russia as is being reported. It is
that of the United States itself.
To understand why this is so, consider the statement US intelligence published last week on the
subject of alleged Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee and of other US agencies
involved in the election. It
reads as follows :
"The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian
Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including
from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like
DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the
methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are
intended to interfere with the US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow-the Russians
have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example
, to influence public opinion there . We believe , based on
the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities."
(bold italics added)
The statement is an implicit admission that US intelligence has no evidence to back its allegations
of Russian hacking.
It is merely "confident" – not "sure" – that it is the Russians who are behind the hacking, and
it is clear from the statement that it arrived at this conclusion purely through inference: because
the hacks supposedly were "consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed
efforts".
US intelligence assumes the Russians were behind the hack not because it knows this to be so but
in part because of what it believes Russian motives to be.
The statement backs its claim with a textual trick. It says "the Russians have used similar tactics
and techniques across Europe and Eurasia". It then immediately follows these words with the words
"for example".
These lead to the expectation that an actual example of such Russian "tactics and techniques"
is about to follow. Instead what is provided are the fact free words "to influence public opinion
there".
The words "for example" lend nothing to the meaning of the statement, which would be exactly the
same without them. These two words as used in the statement are actually meaningless. That is a sure
sign that their presence in the statement is intended to confuse the casual reader, and that this
is true of the statement as a whole.
The words are designed to create a subliminal impression to a casual reader that the Russians
have been caught doing this sort of thing before, without however providing a single actual example
when this was the case.
Demonstrating how thin the case of Russian government actually is, the statement then goes on
to say
"Some states have also recently seen scanning and probing of their election-related systems,
which in most cases originated from servers operated by a Russian company. However, we are
not now in a position to attribute this activity to the Russian Government ."
(bold italics added)
In other words US intelligence admits the mere fact servers operated by a Russian company may
have been used for "scanning and probing" – and presumably also for hacking – is not in itself
proof of the involvement of the Russian government.
This is consistent with what I have heard, which is that skilled and well-resourced hackers can
use compromised machines to carry out hacks by remote access, and that the mere discovery that a
particular machine has been used in a hack does not in and of itself implicate the owner. (I should
stress I am not an expert in this field and I may have misunderstood this. However it appears to
be what US intelligence is saying).
This part of the statement seems to me intended to prevent challenges to the eventual outcome
of the election based on US intelligence's claims of Russian hacking. US intelligence does not want
to be drawn into post-election arguments about the validity of the election outcome, which might
lead to demands that it make public its "evidence" of Russian hacking. In the process US intelligence
however casts doubt on what is almost certainly the only actual evidence it has of Russian state
involvement in the hacking.
In summary, the statement is a mere statement of opinion, it is not a statement of fact, and the
evidence upon which it is based is threadbare.
Moreover since the DNC hack is a criminal offence, it is a statement of opinion made about
a matter which is presumably being investigated by the police.
The relevant police agency is presumably the FBI, which significantly is not a co-author
of the statement.
That in turn begs a host of questions: has the FBI been shown the "evidence" upon which US intelligence
expresses its opinion and has made the statement? Has it asked to see this "evidence"? Was it invited
to co-author the statement? What does the FBI think of the public involvement of US intelligence
in a domestic criminal matter which falls within the FBI's exclusive competence?
If the statement is merely a statement of opinion based on inference of which guesses about
Russian "motivations" apparently form a major part, and one which moreover concerns a matter which
is or ought to be the subject of investigation by the police and not therefore the subject of this
sort of comment, why was it published at all?
The short answer is in order to help Hillary Clinton win the US Presidential election.
To that end the statement fulfils two purposes: firstly, it discredits the content of any
leaks that might otherwise damage Hillary Clinton's campaign by lending credence to her claim that
they are part of a Russian 'dirty tricks' campaign against her; and secondly, it lends credence to
the claim popularised by Hillary Clinton's campaign and by Hillary Clinton's supporters in the media
that Donald Trump is Putin's candidate and that Putin is trying to help him win the election.
That the second is one of the purposes of statement is proved by its reference to US intelligence's
"belief" that the leak was authorised by "Russia's senior-most officials ". This is clearly intended to refer to Putin, and is intended to give the impression that Putin
himself personally authorised the DNC leak in order to damage Hillary Clinton and to help Trump win
the election and become President.
To my knowledge this is however the first occasion that US intelligence has directly and publicly
meddled in a US national election, acting to help one candidate defeat another.
It matters not whether this was done by US intelligence on its own initiative, or whether
it was pressured to do so by officials of the Obama administration or of Hillary Clinton's campaign.
Either way the disturbing truth must now be faced: the practice of US intelligence meddling
in and trying to influence national elections has now been imported home to the US.
"... Stated Binney: "Now what he (Mueller) is talking about is going into the NSA database, which is shown of course in the (Edward) Snowden material released, which shows a direct access into the NSA database by the FBI and the CIA Which there is no oversight of by the way. So that means that NSA and a number of agencies in the U.S. government also have those emails." ..."
"... "Yes," he responded. "That would be my point. They have them all and the FBI can get them right there." ..."
"... And the other point is that Hillary, according to an article published by the Observer in March of this year, has a problem with NSA because she compromised Gamma material. Now that is the most sensitive material at NSA. And so there were a number of NSA officials complaining to the press or to the people who wrote the article that she did that. She lifted the material that was in her emails directly out of Gamma reporting. That is a direct compromise of the most sensitive material at the NSA. So she's got a real problem there. So there are many people who have problems with what she has done in the past. So I don't necessarily look at the Russians as the only one(s) who got into those emails. ..."
"... GAMMA compartment, which is an NSA handling caveat that is applied to extraordinarily sensitive information (for instance, decrypted conversations between top foreign leadership, as this was). ..."
Binney also proclaimed that the NSA has all of Clinton's deleted emails, and the FBI could gain access to them if they so wished.
No need for Trump to ask the Russians for those emails, he can just call on the FBI or NSA to hand them over.
Binney referenced
testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in March 2011 by then-FBI Director Robert S. Mueller in which Meuller spoke
of the FBI's ability to access various secretive databases "to track down known and suspected terrorists."
Stated Binney: "Now what he (Mueller) is talking about is going into the NSA database, which is shown
of course in the (Edward) Snowden material released, which shows a direct access into the NSA database by the FBI and the CIA
Which there is no oversight of by the way. So that means that NSA and a number of agencies in the U.S. government also have those
emails."
"So if the FBI really wanted them they can go into that database and get them right now," he stated of Clinton's
emails as well as DNC emails.
Asked point blank if he believed the NSA has copies of "all" of Clinton's emails, including the deleted correspondence, Binney
replied in the affirmative.
"Yes," he responded. "That would be my point. They have them all and the FBI can get them right there."
Binney surmised that the hack of the DNC could have been coordinated by someone inside the U.S. intelligence community angry
over Clinton's compromise of national security data with her email use.
And the other point is that Hillary, according to an
article published by the Observer in March
of this year, has a problem with NSA because she compromised Gamma material. Now that is the most sensitive material at NSA. And
so there were a number of NSA officials complaining to the press or to the people who wrote the article that she did that. She
lifted the material that was in her emails directly out of Gamma reporting. That is a direct compromise of the most sensitive
material at the NSA. So she's got a real problem there. So there are many people who have problems with what she has done in the
past. So I don't necessarily look at the Russians as the only one(s) who got into those emails.
The Observer defined the GAMMA classification:
GAMMA compartment, which is an NSA handling caveat that is applied to extraordinarily sensitive information (for instance,
decrypted conversations between top foreign leadership, as this was).
Over a year before Edward Snowden shocked the world in the summer of 2013 with revelations that have since changed everything
from domestic to foreign US policy but most of all, provided everyone a glimpse into just what the NSA truly does on a daily basis,
a former NSA staffer, and now famous whistleblower, William Binney, gave excruciating detail to Wired magazine about all that
Snowden would substantiate the following summer.
We covered it in a 2012 post titled "
We Are This Far From A Turnkey Totalitarian State" – Big Brother Goes Live September 2013." Not surprisingly, Binney received
little attention in 2012 – his suggestions at the time were seen as preposterous and ridiculously conspiratorial. Only after the
fact, did it become obvious that he was right. More importantly, in the aftermath of the Snowden revelations, what Binney
has to say has become gospel.
Binney was an architect of the NSA's surveillance program. He became a famed whistleblower when he resigned on October 31,
2001, after spending more than 30 years with the agency. He referenced testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in March
2011 by then-FBI Director Robert S. Mueller in which Meuller spoke of the FBI's ability to access various secretive databases
"to track down known and suspected terrorists."
"... Lavrov: Well, I don't know whether this would ... English is not my mother's tongue and I don't know whether - I don't know - whether I would sound - I mean - decent. There are so many pussies around your presidential campaigns on both sides that I prefer not to comment. ..."
"... Reflecting different national usages, cunt is described as "an unpleasant or stupid person" in the Compact Oxford English Dictionary, whereas Merriam-Webster indicates that it is a "usually disparaging and obscene" term for a woman[1] or an "offensive way to refer to a woman" in the United States. ..."
"... So Lavrov's not only a diplomat, he knows a little comedy too. :) He's one of the most interesting people in government today. ..."
The Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov
in a recent interview with CNN's Amanpour:
Amanpour: Russia had its own Pussy Riot moment. What do you think of Donald Trump's pussy riot
moment?
Lavrov: Well, I don't know whether this would ... English is not my mother's tongue and
I don't know whether - I don't know - whether I would sound - I mean - decent. There are so many
pussies around your presidential campaigns on both sides that I prefer not to comment.
CitizenKane123 | Oct 12, 2016 12:02:27 PM | 4
Pussies are soft, warms and comfortable. I think what Lavrov really meant was:
There are so many cunts around your presidential campaigns on both sides that I prefer not
to comment.
It should be noted that British English and American English have different definitions for the
C word, and I suspect Lavrov understands that. From Wikipedia:
Reflecting different national usages, cunt is described as "an unpleasant or stupid person"
in the Compact Oxford English Dictionary, whereas Merriam-Webster indicates that it is a "usually
disparaging and obscene" term for a woman[1] or an "offensive way to refer to a woman" in the
United States.
Although I would suggest that the OED does understate the strength of the word somewhat.
Podesta - what a clown! Is there some rulebook about Presidents having to be protestant, while
all the shady puppetmasters are zionist catholics or zionist zionists?
Looks like Obama in working overclock to ensure the election of Trump ... anti-Russian hysteria
might have results different that he expects. Whether we are to have a world of sovereign nation-states
or one in which a single imperial superpower contends with increasingly fragmentary post-national and
sub-national threats around the globe will depend on the decisions that are made in the near future:
in the next few years.
Greenwald's astute observations were presumably made in response to Secretary of State John Kerry's
recent remarks that both
Russia and Syria should face war crimes investigations for their recent attacks on Syrian civilians.
"Russia and the regime owe the world more than an explanation about why they keep hitting
hospitals, and medical facilities, and women and children," Mr. Kerry said in Washington,
where he spoke alongside French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, as reported by the Independent
.
Unsurprisingly, Russia responded by urging caution regarding allegations of war crimes considering
the United States has been waging wars in a number of countries since the end of World War II. It
has picked up a number of allegations of war crimes in the process.
Kerry's
continuous accusations that Russia bombed hospital infrastructure are particularly hypocritical
in light of the fact the United States has bombed hospitals in
Iraq
and
Afghanistan on more than one occasion over past decade.
Further, former congressman Ron Paul's Institute for Peace and Prosperity hit back at Kerry, accusing
him of completely fabricating the most recent alleged hospital attack. As the Institute
noted :
" In a press event yesterday, before talks with the French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault
about a new UN resolution,
he said
( vid @1:00) about
Syria:
"'Last night, the regime attacked yet another hospital, and 20 people were killed and 100 people
were wounded. And Russia and the regime owe the world more than an explanation about why they
keep hitting hospitals and medical facilities and children and women. These are acts that beg
for an appropriate investigation of war crimes. And those who commit these would and should be
held accountable for these actions.'
" No opposition group has claimed that such an extremely grave event happened. None. No press
agency has a record of it. The MI-6 disinformation outlet SOHR in Britain, which quite reliably
notes every claimed casualty and is frequently cited in 'western media,' has not said anything
about such an event anywhere in Syria. "
However, the most disturbing aspect of Kerry's allegation is that the accusations against
Russia run in tandem with Saudi Arabia's brutal assault on Yemen. Saudi Arabia, with the
aid of a few regional players - and with
ongoing American and British assistance (not to mention
billion dollar arms sales ) - has been bombing Yemen back into the Stone Age without any legal
basis whatsoever. Often, the Saudi-led coalition has completely decimated civilian infrastructure,
which has led a number of groups to accuse the coalition of
committing war crimes in the process.
Civilians and civilian infrastructure have been struck so routinely that the world has
become increasingly concerned the actual targets of the coalition strikes are civilians
(what could be a greater recruitment tool for al-Qaeda and ISIS in Yemen?) As
noted by Foreign Policy :
"The Houthis and their allies - armed groups loyal to Saleh - are the declared targets of the
coalition's 1-year-old air campaign. In reality, however, it is the civilians, such as Basrallah
and Rubaid, and their children, who are predominantly the victims of this protracted war. Hundreds
of civilians have been killed in airstrikes while asleep in their homes, when going about their
daily activities, or in the very places where they had sought refuge from the conflict. The United
States, Britain, and others, meanwhile, have continued to supply a steady stream of weaponry and
logistical support to Saudi Arabia and its coalition."
Just take one example of the cruel and disproportionate use of force that Saudi Arabia has used
in Yemen (using American-made and supplied aircraft and weapons) - against Judge Yahya Rubaid and
his family. As Foreign Policy
reported in March of this year:
"According to family members, Rubaid was a judge on a case against Yemeni President Abed Rabbo
Mansour Hadi, for treason in absentia. It is unclear whether his house was attacked for this reason.
What is clear, however, is that there was no legally valid basis for bombing his home, as he and
his family were civilians and under international law should not have been deliberately targeted."
At the time this article's publication,
over 140 Yemenis had
been killed and another 500 injured in a Saudi-coalition aerial attack on a funeral over the
weekend. The civilian death toll continues to rise in Yemen, completely unchallenged by any major
players at the U.N.
When the U.N. does attempt to quell Saudi actions , the Saudis threaten
severe
economic retaliation.
How Kerry can accuse Russia of committing war crimes in Syria with a straight face is unclear,
as reports of atrocious crimes committed in Yemen continue to surface.
This is not to say Russia and Syria should not be investigated for war crimes – but maybe, just
maybe, we could live in a world where everyone responsible for committing these gross acts could
be held accountable, instead of just those who
pose an economic
threat to the West . Mango327
38BWD22
Oct 11, 2016 3:47 PM
Madeline Albright, "Yes, I think the death of 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of 5 years
old by US sanctions, was a good price that had to be paid so we could get to Sadam Hussein "???
This bitch along with Kissinger, Soros, Rice, Clinton, Obama, Kerry, and all the news organizations
who have been cheerleaders for the slaughter of innocents should all be charged with Crimes against
humanity and SHOT!
"Who wants to be the last man to die for a mistake?" -- John Kerry, 197x
That was the supposed anti-war Kerry speaking of the Vietnam War, who rode
such comments into a congressional seat. We didn't know then that he was Skull and Bones or what
it might mean. Now we know it in spades.
Now it's clear he's just a lying sack of war mongering, deep state shit.
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe
it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political,
economic and/or military consequences of the lie."
Goebbels used "Gas Lighting" as a form of Psychological manipulation on a population on a mass
scale. Operation Mocking Bird. It continues on today. 365 days a year, 24hrs a day, 7 days a week.
The Psyche Warefare / PsyOp War does not clos
There is an assumption that Russia would never go to war with the US over the Syrian dispute.
But yet, Russia is preparing for war. It has both first-strike and counter-strike capability in
the event the west (US State Dept.) continues with its bullying tactics and further escalates
its hostility. Russia is a sovereign nation; it has both the right and the power to do what is
in the best interests of its citizenry and its allies (Assad).
The US used to be that way until it was over-run in a silent, but effective liberal-coup that
has taken full control and stupidly re-newed the cold war with Russia.
And now America has been left more vulnerable that it ever has been. A simple shut-down of
the electric grid for several months, will, by itself, cut the population in half.
Ultra-liberalism is ultra self-destructive... we're about to see just how destructive that
really is.
Well this is a refreshing start, but only a start. Russia certainly had nothing to do with the
gunships that bombed the hospitals in Afghanistan into powder, killing patients including children,
doctors, nurses and other personell.
I for one would like to know who it was who flew those
planes and have them explain to all of us why they did not refuse orders? What sort of morals
have Americans got to behave ths way? The hospitals bombed in Syria, ditto. The Saudis are the
beasts they are and somebody needs to bomb them into oblivion. (Perhaps take out some other smug
financial centers too!) But Yemen is a very poor sandy country to begin with and Saudi must think
there's oil or something there. If some of the weapons used there weren't tactical nukes they
sure looked like them. Gee. Wonder where they got them?
Chomsky's been saying it for decades, "If they do it, they're terrorists; if we do it,
we're freedom fighters."
My take is that if you are the head of a government, you are a psychopath and any categorization
beyond this is moot.
Clinton / Trump, Obama / Putin, Assad / Erdogan, UN / Nationalism, whoever it may be, they're
all playing the same game, and we're not even allowed to watch, much less comment.
The only thing trickling-down (through a historical perspective) should be blood.
"... If nothing else, the I'm-with-her whole hog approach of the media to this election should put the lie to the notion that we have anything resembling a functioning press. ..."
"... Additionally, the blind adherence by the press to Hillary's spin that Trump would put her in jail amounts to a dictatorship ignores the fact that previous to that statement Trump had said he would push for a special prosecutor. IOW, a completely legalized, judicially approved criminal investigation. ..."
"... I agree about the press becoming so bought over by Hillary. Watched some speech Trump was giving a month or so ago and he talked about Iraq as I recall and the press totally spun it into some different meaning altogether. Funny thing was the next day Trump was giving another speech which I also happened to see and made mention of what he said the day before and what the press turned his comment into – from that point on I became very leery of believing anything they tell me. I too was amazed that almost immediately last night the press began reporting that Trump was talking to a dictatorship by saying he wanted her in jail when in fact that was completely taken out of context as well (as you mentioned above). ..."
"... I think the press has become very scary with all the power it has to twist the truth or what has been said as easily and quickly as they do. They must be very frightened by Trump. ..."
Why is the electorate seemingly more concerned with someone who is antagonistic towards certain
women than someone whose policies are antagonistic to whole nations and regions. Why aren't the
Wikileaks email revelations getting more traction or generating more outrage?
True. BigMedia is barely covering the Wikileaks story. My summary is that HClinton has a fake
"public position" & a genuine private position, that is pro-Grand Ripoff SS & MC cuts, & pro-TPP.
It should be a huge story, in that it calls as questionable any of HClinton's stated policies,
& given that Sanders repeatedly made the Wall $treet transcripts a major issue in the Primaries.
It takes a USian with intellectual curiosity, some free time, & enough critical thinking to
go to one of the few internet sources like nakedcapitalism or SecularTalk that actually will cover
the Wikileaks story honestly. IMHO sadly this is a small minority of the US eligible voter population.
BTW for Sanders to maintain my respect, he needs to "make news" in BigMedia by saying something
like "my support of HClinton is contingent on her 'public position' the approves the 2016 D party
platform, which is anti-TPP & anti-SS & MC cuts. If HClinton is elected & signs the TPP or SS/MC
cuts, she will be strongly primary challenged in 2020, & I will not support her if the Rs ever
impeach her"
If nothing else, the I'm-with-her whole hog approach of the media to this election should
put the lie to the notion that we have anything resembling a functioning press.
Just one example–I listened to some Clinton operative on msnbc radio today who was giving his
weaselly spin on Hillary's private position v. public position statement and who said that it
was only a few sentences out of an entire speech and needed to be viewed in context. Chuck Todd,
I think it was, never made note of the fact that there is no context to those statements since
the speeches have not and will not be released. There is no available context and Chuck just muttered
uh huh and let it pass.
Additionally, the blind adherence by the press to Hillary's spin that Trump would put her
in jail amounts to a dictatorship ignores the fact that previous to that statement Trump had said
he would push for a special prosecutor. IOW, a completely legalized, judicially approved criminal
investigation.
I agree about the press becoming so bought over by Hillary. Watched some speech Trump was
giving a month or so ago and he talked about Iraq as I recall and the press totally spun it into
some different meaning altogether. Funny thing was the next day Trump was giving another speech
which I also happened to see and made mention of what he said the day before and what the press
turned his comment into – from that point on I became very leery of believing anything they tell
me. I too was amazed that almost immediately last night the press began reporting that Trump was
talking to a dictatorship by saying he wanted her in jail when in fact that was completely taken
out of context as well (as you mentioned above).
I think the press has become very scary with all the power it has to twist the truth or
what has been said as easily and quickly as they do. They must be very frightened by Trump.
That was probably the best attack of the night, and Clinton looked completely flummoxed, almost
like she couldn't believe he went there with her. And then she jumped up so quick to re-direct.
I lost most of that exchange because the damn video cut out.
> She made millions using the power of her office
Teachout's operational definition of corruption. I imagine we'd see plenty of crony capitalism
under Trump (thinking back to Halliburton, et al, under Bush II). I don't know whether that would
be more or less corrosive than Clinton's style of corruption.
The most telling moment in that regard for me was when he brought up Sidney Blumenthal. She
looked, "anticipatory?" When he said he was a "bad guy" her eyes opened wide, got a visible lump
in her throat and had to swallow the nervous energy. That relationship is a weak point for her.
You might be right. That makes some sense. I believe the original Guccifer hack was on Sidney
Blumenthal's email address and he found out about Clintonemail by reading Sid's emails back and
forth with her.
Also, keep in mind Sidney Blumenthal's son Max is involved in the BDS movement (I think) or
at least speaks out against Israeli apartheid (using that term) and does do some interesting reporting.
With Clinton openly courting Netanyahu, might be a sore point.
"... Cooper consistently tried to cross-examine Trump with follow up questions and "so your saying" statement characterizations. Trump generally wouldn't let him. I saw nary an example of said behavior with HRC. ..."
Question to Radditz: Do you know there is a humanitarian crisis in Libya????????????
How do you think that happened?????
If not,your a disgrace.
If you do, your biased ..
Why don't you ask about libya
Its not the questions asked, its the ones not asked
Cooper consistently tried to cross-examine Trump with follow up questions and "so your
saying" statement characterizations. Trump generally wouldn't let him. I saw nary an example of
said behavior with HRC.
"... I've also seen an interview where Hersh praised Obama for not going through with the planned airstrikes (which were apparently going to be massive as drawn up). But he also criticized Obama for not coming clean with the public and saying "we're not attacking Assad because the rebels launched the gas attack, not Assad." ..."
"... Did you use the loophole? ..."
"... Of course. Just like her friends. I understand the tax code better than anyone. Hillary has friends that want all these provisions. Hillary is leaving carried interest. I used it. As did Buffet, Soros . I love depreciation. ..."
Q Images out of Aleppo. State Dept calls for war crimes investigation
FB If you were President, what about Aleppo. Isn't it like the Holocaust?
CLINTON We need leverage with the Russians because they won't come to the table w no leverage.
Work more closely with partners and allies on the ground.
Issue is ambition and aggressiveness of Russia. They've decided who they want to be President,
and its not me. I did cooperate, which is how we got the nuke treaty. But I do support a war crimes
investigation.
TRUMP The so-called line in the sand.
CLINTON I was gone
TRUMP Obama draws the line in the sand, laughed at. She talks tough but our nuclear program
is old and tired [!!!]. Bad thing. Every time we take rebels we're arming people. And they end
up being worse! Almost everything she's done has been a disaster ..
A treaty with Russia, look at the deal, Iran and Russia are against us. I don't like Assad
at all. But he's killing ISIS. As is Russian and
RADDATZ What would you do? Pence: Provocations by Russian need to be met. Should be prepared
to use force.
TRUMP He and I haven't spoken and I disagree (!!)
TRUMP I believe we have to get ISIS.
RADDATZ What happen if Aleppo falls?
TRUMP Already has. Look at Mosul. We telegraphed our attack and all the leaders left!
RADDATZ Some times there are reasons military does things [drips contempt]
TRUMP Why would we tell them? All I say is this: Patton and MacArthur are spinning in their
graves
RADDATZ You want Assad to go, arming rebels, too late for Aleppo, would you introduce force?
CLINTON Not American ground forces. Our troops should not hold territory. Use special forces.
Use enablers and trainers.
RADDATZ What would you do different?
CLINTON I hope we will have pushed ISIS out of Iraq. A lot of planning going on. To signal
Sunnis and Peshmerga they need to be involved. I would target Bagdadi. Let's arm the Kurds. Kurdish
and Arab fighters on the ground.
I've also seen an interview where Hersh praised Obama for not going through with the planned
airstrikes (which were apparently going to be massive as drawn up). But he also criticized Obama
for not coming clean with the public and saying "we're not attacking Assad because the rebels
launched the gas attack, not Assad."
Sorry - I still won't vote for Hillary even if she did kill the terrorist with her personal
weapon. Can she disassemble and and reassemble that weapon wearing a blindfold!?
TRUMPOf course. Just like her friends. I understand the tax code better than anyone.
Hillary has friends that want all these provisions. Hillary is leaving carried interest. I used
it. As did Buffet, Soros . I love depreciation.
If she has a problem, for thirty years she hasn't been doing anything. It's all talk. Again,
Bernie Sanders, bad judgment. Her and Obama, the vacuum they left, that formed ISIS. Congratulations.
CLINTON Here we go again. In favor of getting rid of 30 years.
TRUMP If you were an effective Senator you could have gotten it done.
CLINTON Under our constitution we have a thing called veto power [drips contempt].
CLINTON CHIP, 10 millino kids. Adoption. First responder help after 9/11. Kids medicine
(dosage?). As SoS go around the world advocate. Negotiated Russian nuke treaty. 400 pieces of
legislation have my name on ias sponsor or co-sponsor.
Hillary Clinton praises about not raising taxes on those who make $250,000, about cutting deficits,
surpluses, the USA getting Russia and Syria prosecuted for war crimes, and I think didn't mention
the public option for ACA.
"... Clinton stated "no fly zone" in Syria. Could no one prepare Trump for this so he could make the simple point that a NFZ means shooting down Russian planes? Then he could have asked Americans: "do you want Clinton as President and gamble she won't start a nuclear war?" ..."
Clinton stated "no fly zone" in Syria. Could no one prepare Trump for this so he could
make the simple point that a NFZ means shooting down Russian planes? Then he could have asked
Americans: "do you want Clinton as President and gamble she won't start a nuclear war?"
Trump did well on the supreme court question – someone who will follow the Constitution. Such
an old fashion sentiment.
"... the DNC is handling the public v. private comments of one Hillary Clinton is to declare all the leaked material suspect because it's "postmarked Russia," according to Donna Brazile, whom I just watched on This Week – so she says she hasn't read them, and is advising that no one read them. If you don't read them, that ends the discussion, which obviously was her goal. ..."
"... And it worked, as near as I can tell. Brazile hammered the public remarks only, so there you have it: just like the DNC hack that showed the games being played with the Sanders candidacy, the Wikileaks release on the paid speeches is delegitimized with one word: Russia. ..."
Well, and just so you know, the way the DNC is handling the public v. private comments
of one Hillary Clinton is to declare all the leaked material suspect because it's "postmarked
Russia," according to Donna Brazile, whom I just watched on This Week – so she says she hasn't
read them, and is advising that no one read them. If you don't read them, that ends the discussion,
which obviously was her goal.
And it worked, as near as I can tell. Brazile hammered the public remarks only, so there
you have it: just like the DNC hack that showed the games being played with the Sanders candidacy,
the Wikileaks release on the paid speeches is delegitimized with one word: Russia.
Not that Stephanopolous seemed all that reluctant to let her off the hook – he can say he brought
it up, but we all know today isn't about Clinton, it's once again about Trump.
I will say this: the town hall debate could be pretty interesting.
Following the first
official accusation lobbed at Russia on Friday by the Department of Homeland Security and Director
of National Intelligence on Election Security, in which US intelligence services formally stated
they were "confident" that the Russian government "directed the recent compromises of emails from
US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations", today Russia responded to
this latest diplomatic escalation by saying that U.S. accusations that Russia was responsible for
cyber attacks against Democratic Party organizations lack any proof and are an attempt by Washington
to fan "unprecedented anti-Russian hysteria", the Foreign Ministry in Moscow said.
After late on Friday the Kremlin called the U.S. allegations "nonsense", on Saturday Russia's
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov,
cited by Reuters , said on the ministry's website that "this whipping up of emotions regarding
'Russian hackers' is used in the U.S. election campaign, and the current U.S. administration, taking
part in this fight, is not averse to using dirty tricks."
"There is no proof whatsoever for such grave accusations," Ryabkov said. "(They are) ...fabricated
by those who are now serving an obvious political order in Washington, continuing to whip up unprecedented
anti-Russian hysteria."
Ryabkov reiterated an offer to Washington, first made last year, to hold consultations on fighting
cyber crime together, but he also criticized John Kerry after the U.S. Secretary of State said late
on Friday that Russian and Syrian actions in the Syrian civil war, including bombings of hospitals,
"beg for" a war crimes investigation.
Such remarks are unacceptable and Moscow is disappointed to hear "new typically U.S. claims for
being a global judge", Ryabkov said in comments to Interfax news agency published on Saturday.
As Reuters adds, referring to a resolution on Syria proposed by France for debate at the United
Security Council later on Saturday, he said: "Unfortunately, we see less and less common sense in
the actions of Washington and Paris". The draft resolution demands an end to air strikes and military
flights over Aleppo. Moscow has already said this draft is unacceptable.
So with hopes of any joint Syrian action in tatters, and the US formally accusing Russia of being
a state sponsor of cyber attacks against the US, with the chairman of the US senate cyber hacking
subcommittee going so far as introducing a bill imposing sanctions on Russia after the political
hacking allegations, which Russia has duly denied, the ball is now again in Obama's court, where
the next step is most likely to be even more diplomatic tensions, and military escalations.
pods: Oct 8, 2016 11:00 AM
US policy: "When did you stop beating your wife?"
jcaz -> RagaMuffin: Oct 8, 2016 11:14 AM
Don't sweat it, Vlad- real America knows what this is about, and who did what.....
Ha, the article actually uses 'the Putin', as in ' featuring the Putin dressed in a suit in
front of the Russian flag with the word "Peacemaker" in capital letters' paging the late
Sen. Joe McCarthy, we have a fifth-column crisis! I blame the Donald for mollycoddling evil commies
like the Putin.
Update on the "banner day for the Putin" – Russian friend notes similar banner was hung in
Dresden, and the occasion is the Putin's birthday, 64th years young today.
Hillary: Huma dear, pour me another double Stoli & tonic, stat!
Huma: What if the schlubs hear you drink Stoli, maybe we should switch to Skyy?
Hillary: It's what Blankfein serves, only the best.
Huma: Maybe we should reconsider first strike, considering the caviar situation. Some VIP donors
will be sucking their thumbs.
Hillary: Memo to Blumenthal, we need a strategic caviar stockpile to last until the rubble is
sorted out.
"... For three years, violent militants have run Aleppo. Their rule began with a wave of repression. They posted notices warning residents: "Don't send your children to school. If you do, we will get the backpack and you will get the coffin." Then they destroyed factories, hoping that unemployed workers would have no recourse other than to become fighters. They trucked looted machinery to Turkey and sold it. ..."
"... Militants, true to form, are wreaking havoc as they are pushed out of the city by Russian and Syrian Army forces. "Turkish-Saudi backed 'moderate rebels' showered the residential neighborhoods of Aleppo with unguided rockets and gas jars," one Aleppo resident wrote on social media. The Beirut-based analyst Marwa Osma asked, "The Syrian Arab Army, which is led by President Bashar Assad, is the only force on the ground, along with their allies, who are fighting ISIS - so you want to weaken the only system that is fighting ISIS?" ..."
"... This does not fit with Washington's narrative. As a result, much of the American press is reporting the opposite of what is actually happening. Many news reports suggest that Aleppo has been a "liberated zone" for three years but is now being pulled back into misery. ..."
"... Americans are being told that the virtuous course in Syria is to fight the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian partners. We are supposed to hope that a righteous coalition of Americans, Turks, Saudis, Kurds, and the "moderate opposition" will win. This is convoluted nonsense, but Americans cannot be blamed for believing it. We have almost no real information about the combatants, their goals, or their tactics. Much blame for this lies with our media. ..."
"... Astonishingly brave correspondents in the war zone, including Americans, seek to counteract Washington-based reporting. At great risk to their own safety, these reporters are pushing to find the truth about the Syrian war. Their reporting often illuminates the darkness of groupthink. Yet for many consumers of news, their voices are lost in the cacophony. Reporting from the ground is often overwhelmed by the Washington consensus. ..."
"... Inevitably, this kind of disinformation has bled into the American presidential campaign. At the recent debate in Milwaukee, Hillary Clinton claimed that United Nations peace efforts in Syria were based on "an agreement I negotiated in June of 2012 in Geneva." The precise opposite is true. In 2012 Secretary of State Clinton joined Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Israel in a successful effort to kill Kofi Annan's UN peace plan because it would have accommodated Iran and kept Assad in power, at least temporarily. No one on the Milwaukee stage knew enough to challenge her. ..."
"... The truth is that Kinzer is right. We have no idea what is going on in Syria. For the elites in Washington and their press lackeys to report that one side is moderate and the other is not is ludicrous. ..."
Coverage of the Syrian war will be remembered as one of the most shameful episodes in the history
of the American press. Reporting about carnage in the ancient city of Aleppo is the latest reason
why.
For three years, violent militants have run Aleppo. Their rule began with a wave of repression.
They posted notices warning residents: "Don't send your children to school. If you do, we will get
the backpack and you will get the coffin." Then they destroyed factories, hoping that unemployed
workers would have no recourse other than to become fighters. They trucked looted machinery to Turkey
and sold it.
This month, people in Aleppo have finally seen glimmers of hope. The Syrian army and its allies
have been pushing militants out of the city. Last week they reclaimed the main power plant. Regular
electricity may soon be restored. The militants' hold on the city could be ending.
Militants, true to form, are wreaking havoc as they are pushed out of the city by Russian
and Syrian Army forces. "Turkish-Saudi backed 'moderate rebels' showered the residential neighborhoods
of Aleppo with unguided rockets and gas jars," one Aleppo resident wrote on social media. The Beirut-based
analyst Marwa Osma asked, "The Syrian Arab Army, which is led by President Bashar Assad, is the only
force on the ground, along with their allies, who are fighting ISIS - so you want to weaken the only
system that is fighting ISIS?"
This does not fit with Washington's narrative. As a result, much of the American press is
reporting the opposite of what is actually happening. Many news reports suggest that Aleppo has been
a "liberated zone" for three years but is now being pulled back into misery.
Americans are being told that the virtuous course in Syria is to
fight the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian partners. We are supposed
to hope that a righteous coalition of Americans, Turks, Saudis, Kurds,
and the "moderate opposition" will win. This is convoluted nonsense, but
Americans cannot be blamed for believing it. We have almost no real information
about the combatants, their goals, or their tactics. Much blame for this
lies with our media.
Under intense financial pressure, most American newspapers, magazines, and broadcast networks
have drastically reduced their corps of foreign correspondents. Much important news about the world
now comes from reporters based in Washington. In that environment, access and credibility depend
on acceptance of official paradigms. Reporters who cover Syria check with the Pentagon, the State
Department, the White House, and think tank "experts." After a spin on that soiled carousel, they
feel they have covered all sides of the story. This form of stenography produces the pabulum that
passes for news about Syria.
Astonishingly brave correspondents in the war zone, including Americans,
seek to counteract Washington-based reporting. At great risk to their own safety, these reporters
are pushing to find the truth about the Syrian war. Their reporting often illuminates the darkness
of groupthink. Yet for many consumers of news, their voices are lost in the cacophony. Reporting
from the ground is often overwhelmed by the Washington consensus.
Washington-based reporters tell us that one potent force in Syria, al-Nusra,
is made up of "rebels" or "moderates," not that it is the local al-Qaeda franchise. Saudi Arabia
is portrayed as aiding freedom fighters when in fact it is a prime sponsor of ISIS. Turkey has for
years been running a "rat line" for foreign fighters wanting to join terror groups in Syria, but
because the United States wants to stay on Turkey's good side, we hear little about it. Nor are we
often reminded that although we want to support the secular and battle-hardened Kurds, Turkey wants
to kill them. Everything Russia and Iran do in Syria is described as negative and destabilizing,
simply because it is they who are doing it - and because that is the official line in Washington.
Inevitably, this kind of disinformation has bled into the American presidential campaign. At the
recent debate in Milwaukee, Hillary Clinton claimed that United Nations peace efforts in Syria were
based on "an agreement I negotiated in June of 2012 in Geneva." The precise opposite is true. In
2012 Secretary of State Clinton joined Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Israel in a successful effort to
kill Kofi Annan's UN peace plan because it would have accommodated Iran and kept Assad in power,
at least temporarily. No one on the Milwaukee stage knew enough to challenge her.
Politicians may be forgiven for distorting their past actions. Governments may also be excused
for promoting whatever narrative they believe best suits them. Journalism, however, is supposed to
remain apart from the power elite and its inbred mendacity. In this crisis it has failed miserably.
Americans are said to be ignorant of the world. We are, but so are people in other countries.
If people in Bhutan or Bolivia misunderstand Syria, however, that has no real effect. Our ignorance
is more dangerous, because we act on it. The United States has the power to decree the death of nations.
It can do so with popular support because many Americans - and many journalists - are content with
the official story. In Syria, it is: "Fight Assad, Russia, and Iran! Join with our Turkish, Saudi,
and Kurdish friends to support peace!" This is appallingly distant from reality. It is also likely
to prolong the war and condemn more Syrians to suffering and death.
Stephen Kinzer is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown
University. Follow him on Twitter @stephenkinzer.
kaisy 02/18/16 03:38 PM
The truth is that Kinzer is right. We have no idea what is going on in Syria. For the
elites in Washington and their press lackeys to report that one side is moderate and the other
is not is ludicrous.
When the uprising against Assad began three years ago, initially we were on the side of the
angels, that is until we found out that they were mostly Al Queda. Fast forward and now we
have ISIS, the sworn enemy of the US and anybody else that disagrees with them. So now,
remarkably, some are looking at Assad as the voice of moderation. This is so akin to
Afghanistan and, decades ago, Vietnam. When you don't understand the players and their
ulterior motives, best to not get involved. Me, I'd leave this to the Saudis and Iran to fight
over. Cruz talks about carpet bombing Syria until the sand glows (btw, real Christianlike
there). I say defer to those over there. Eventually they'll run out of people to do the
fighting (happening already with ISIS), then, and only then, we can go in and pick up the
pieces.
jkupie02/19/16 07:16 AM
"Washington-based reporters tell us that one potent force in Syria, al-Nusra, is made
up of "rebels" or "moderates," not that it is the local al-Qaeda franchise."
I don't know enough about the area to confirm or disprove most of Mr. Kinzer's points but I
DO KNOW that this claim is false.
tyfox"n" 02/19/16 07:40 PM
jkupiue I absolutley agree. I have never read or heard al-Nusra described as anything but
an al-Qaeda group, and it is stated every time al-Nusra is mentioned.
pegnva 02/19/16 07:58 AM
Hard to know the truth...but it is interesting Kinzer was able to QUOTE former Sec'ty of
State, now presidential candidate Hillary Clinton at the recent Milwaukee debate for falsely
taking credit, some might say lying to the Am public.
kaisy 02/19/16 11:24 AM
Hillary is on the wrong side of this. She wants a no fly zone in Syria, just the Repubs.
She doesn't speak to the consequences of the policy. Unfortunately Bernie has not challenged
her on this. He really needs to.
NH-Repub 02/19/16 09:22 AM
Leftout is right and Hillary is the Queen of Doublespeak. Obama and his minions would like
nothing better than to mislead the masses and keep them in the dark about everything. That way
they control the media and by proxy - us!
"... I usually remark that one must look at the 'second tier' of a political cabal to predict future actions by a 'candidate.' The people surrounding the 'candidate' and their track records on issues in their sphere of expertise tell the mind sets that 'drive' policy. Trump comes from the business world, where delegation of responsibility is standard for larger enterprises. His 'advisors' are key to future performance. Clinton seems to be encapsulated in a bubble of sycophants. So, the same rationale applies to her as applies to Trump. Who are her main 'advisors?' ..."
"... As anyone possessed of discernment would have noticed in the 2008 campaign, Obama surrounded himself with 'less than progressive' advisors. His subsequent governance followed suit so that we find the nation in the mess it is in today. ..."
"... Finally, all signs are that the Russians are not taking this slide towards bellicosity lightly. The Russians are demonstrating a clear sighted view of Americas dysfunctions. For the Russians to hold massive Civil Defense drills now is a clear message; "We are preparing for the worst. How about you?" ..."
"... The tone of this piece is remarkably similar to a long article Bacevich headed in a recent Harper's article on US foreign policy. Presented as a roundtable discussion, it centered on the dogged insistence of some State Department-tied clown that Russia is The Aggressor, while Bacevich and a two other participants nicked away at her position, largely, as I recall, by granting the Russians some right to a regional interest. While they slowed her down, the great missing element was a characterization of global aims of the US her position reflected. ..."
"... In short, Bacevich, a good liberal, will not name the beast of US imperialism. As a result he makes it seem as though any policy can be judged on a truncated logic of its own, and so policy debates fragment into a disconnected series of arguments that bid for "fresh thinking" without daring to consider the underlying drivers. It's one of the reasons Eisenhower, with his criticism of the military-industrial complex, still comes across as a guiding light. ..."
"... I'll put it out there: We have too many upper-middle-class white women who claim to understand foreign policy who should have been subject to a draft to concentrate their minds on what happens when a person is forced into the military and sent off to drive around with a rifle as people lob bombs at them. Madeleine Albright is the classic case: "What good is our exquisite military, if I, a compassion-challenged expert, can't waste a lot of lives on my follies?" Bacevich's personal history means that he knows what war is about (as did Gen. Sherman). ..."
"... Perry is forthright when he says: "Today, the danger of some sort of a nuclear catastrophe is greater than it was during the Cold War and most people are blissfully unaware of this danger." He also tells us that the nuclear danger is "growing greater every year" and that even a single nuclear detonation "could destroy our way of life." ..."
"... Perry does not use his memoir to score points or settle grudges. He does not sensationalize. But, as a defense insider and keeper of nuclear secrets, he is clearly calling American leaders to account for what he believes are very bad decisions, such as the precipitous expansion of NATO, right up to the Russian border,* and President George W. Bush's withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, originally signed by President Nixon. ..."
"... Interesting comments by Mr. Perry who had a starring role in 1979's "First Strike" propaganda film where he advocated for the MX ICBM system. ..."
"... So what's a voter to do? ..."
"... Well, I would hope that informed voters who have a healthy fear of the military-industrial-political complex will vote to keep the scariest of the two re: nuclear war out of office. This particular concern is the reason why I will in all likelihood be voting for the man I've been ridiculing for most of the past year, simply because I am terrified of the prospect of Hillary Clinton as Commander-in-Chief. ..."
"... Trump is a bad choice for a long list of reasons, but the most outrageous things he has proposed require legislation and I think it will be possible to defeat his essential sociopathy on that level, since he will face not only the opposition of the Dem Party, but also MSM and a significant number of people from his own party. ..."
"... But when it comes to the President's ability to put American 'boots on the ground' vs. some theoretical enemy, no such approval from Congress is necessary. Hillary Clinton will be in a position to get us into a costly war without having to overcome any domestic opposition to pull it off. ..."
"... What scares me is my knowledge of her career-long investment in trying to convince the generals and the admirals that she is a 'tough bitch', ala Margaret Thatcher, who will not hesitate to pull the trigger. An illuminating article in the NY Times revealed that she always ..."
"... All of her experience re: foreign policy that she's been touting is actually the scariest thing about her, when you look at what her historical dispositions have been. The "No Fly Zone" she's been pushing since last year is just the latest example of her instinct to act recklessly, as it directly invites a military confrontation with Russia. ..."
"... Her greatest political fear-that she might one day be accused by Republicans of being "weak on America's enemies"-is what we have to fear ..."
"... How reckless is Trump likely to be? Well, like Clinton-and all other civilian Commanders-in-Chief, Trump be utterly dependent upon the advice of military professionals in deciding what kind of responses to order. But in the position of The Decider, there is one significant difference between Trump and Clinton. Trump is at least willing and able to 1) view Putin as someone who is not a threat to the United States and 2) is able/willing to question the rationality of America's continued participation in NATO. ..."
"... Of Harding's speechifying, H.L. Mencken wrote at the time, "It reminds me of a string of wet sponges." Mencken characterized Harding's rhetoric as "so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash." So, too, with Hillary Clinton. She is our Warren G. Harding. In her oratory, flapdoodle and balderdash live on. ..."
"... At least Harding was aware of the damage his friends caused to him: "I have no trouble with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies in a fight. But my friends, my goddamned friends, they're the ones who keep me walking the floor at nights! " ..."
"... As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Harding had the political courage to pardon, and free from prison, Eugene V. Debs for his crime of giving an anti-war speech the Wilson administration did not like. ..."
"... Harding did not believe in foreign involvements and was never personally implicated in the financial corruption of his administration. ..."
"... If Clinton is to be compared to Harding, it would be to view Clinton as a "new" Harding who now believes she is well qualified to be President, wants to do much foreign military involvement, perhaps resulting in war, who is now trusting of her sycopathic friends to give her good advice, and who is personally involved in selling government favors (via the Clinton foundation) ..."
"... HRC is more dangerous because she is the 1st woman to become a serious contender for a position that has traditionally been considered a "man's job". Therefore she believes she must not, in any way, be perceived as "soft" or lacking "toughness" or aggressiveness. She feels compelled to "out-macho" the macho guys. ..."
"... The only bright spot in the prospect of a Hellary Klinton presidency is the probability that she may not survive long enough to start a war with Russia. I wonder how the training for the Mark I body double is coming? ..."
"... On the other hand, why should anyone think that a bubble-headed blowhard like Trumpet has the intelligence or gumption to have any effect upon the operations of the Warfare State? When the opinion makers of his own party and the neoliberal leaders of Klinton's party are all riding on the Military-Industrial gravy train looking for the next enemy to keep business booming? ..."
"... And how can anyone with a functioning brain cell think that anything a politician says or promises during an election has any connection to how they will act once elected? Remember Obama, Mr. "Audacity of Hope?" ..."
Prof. Bacevitch has bought up the one overriding problem with this election cycle: Lack of
substance.
I usually remark that one must look at the 'second tier' of a political cabal to predict
future actions by a 'candidate.' The people surrounding the 'candidate' and their track records
on issues in their sphere of expertise tell the mind sets that 'drive' policy. Trump comes from
the business world, where delegation of responsibility is standard for larger enterprises. His
'advisors' are key to future performance. Clinton seems to be encapsulated in a bubble of sycophants.
So, the same rationale applies to her as applies to Trump. Who are her main 'advisors?'
As anyone possessed of discernment would have noticed in the 2008 campaign, Obama surrounded
himself with 'less than progressive' advisors. His subsequent governance followed suit so that
we find the nation in the mess it is in today.
Finally, all signs are that the Russians are not taking this slide towards bellicosity
lightly. The Russians are demonstrating a clear sighted view of Americas dysfunctions. For the
Russians to hold massive Civil Defense drills now is a clear message; "We are preparing for the
worst. How about you?"
As always, Prof. Bacevitch is a joy to read. Live long, prosper, and hope those in positions
of power take his message to heart.
The tone of this piece is remarkably similar to a long article Bacevich headed in a recent
Harper's article on US foreign policy. Presented as a roundtable discussion, it centered on the
dogged insistence of some State Department-tied clown that Russia is The Aggressor, while Bacevich
and a two other participants nicked away at her position, largely, as I recall, by granting the
Russians some right to a regional interest. While they slowed her down, the great missing element
was a characterization of global aims of the US her position reflected.
That's pretty much what's going on here. "Do we really need a trillion dollar upgrade to US
nuclear capability?" Good question. But why, oh why, Andrew is it being proposed in the first
place? (Actually O has been pursuing the preliminaries for some time.) There's nothing about feeding
a military-industrial complex, nothing about trying to further distort the Russian economy to
promote instability, nothing about trying to capitalize on the US' military superiority as its
economic hegemony slips away.
In short, Bacevich, a good liberal, will not name the beast of US imperialism. As a result
he makes it seem as though any policy can be judged on a truncated logic of its own, and so policy
debates fragment into a disconnected series of arguments that bid for "fresh thinking" without
daring to consider the underlying drivers. It's one of the reasons Eisenhower, with his criticism
of the military-industrial complex, still comes across as a guiding light.
The round-table in Harper's, for background. One of the "takeaways" that I had is that both
of the women who participated are gratuitously hawkish. I am now tending to favor a universal
draft.
I'll put it out there: We have too many upper-middle-class white women who claim to understand
foreign policy who should have been subject to a draft to concentrate their minds on what happens
when a person is forced into the military and sent off to drive around with a rifle as people
lob bombs at them. Madeleine Albright is the classic case: "What good is our exquisite military,
if I, a compassion-challenged expert, can't waste a lot of lives on my follies?" Bacevich's personal
history means that he knows what war is about (as did Gen. Sherman).
Knowing what war's all about doesn't help much with knowing why wars come about, I'm afraid.
Bacevich is not helpful here. This reminds me of a great article by Graham Allison on bureaucratic
drivers in the Cuban Missile crisis, set out as three competing/complementary theories. Within
its mypoic scope, excellent, but as far as helping with the Cold War context, nada. He went on
to scotomize away in a chair at Harvard, gazing out his very fixed Overton window of permissible
strategic critique.
Wow. I just went to the TomDispatch site to look at Bacevich's work there. He does have a piece
criticizing Trump and HRC in light of Eisenhower, but slaps Eisenhower, appropriately, for various
crap, including the military-industrial complex takeoff. Why is it missing from this article?
At least Eisenhower criticized it.
Surprised that Bacevitch omits the thrust of Jerry Brown's important review:
My Journey at the Nuclear Brink
by William J. Perry, with a foreword by George P. Shultz
Stanford Security Studies, 234 pp., $85.00; $24.95 (paper)
I know of no person who understands the science and politics of modern weaponry better than
William J. Perry, the US Secretary of Defense from 1994 to 1997. When a man of such unquestioned
experience and intelligence issues the stark nuclear warning that is central to his recent
memoir, we should take heed. Perry is forthright when he says: "Today, the danger of some
sort of a nuclear catastrophe is greater than it was during the Cold War and
most people are blissfully unaware of this danger." He also tells us that the nuclear danger
is "growing greater every year" and that even a single nuclear detonation "could destroy our
way of life."
Perry does not use his memoir to score points or settle grudges. He does not sensationalize.
But, as a defense insider and keeper of nuclear secrets, he is clearly calling American leaders
to account for what he believes are very bad decisions, such as the precipitous expansion of
NATO, right up to the Russian border,* and President George W. Bush's withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty, originally signed by President Nixon.
*"The descent down the slippery slope began, I believe, with the premature NATO expansion,
and I soon came to believe that the downsides of early NATO membership for Eastern European
nations were even worse than I had feared" (p. 152).
Well, I would hope that informed voters who have a healthy fear of the military-industrial-political
complex will vote to keep the scariest of the two re: nuclear war out of office. This particular
concern is the reason why I will in all likelihood be voting for the man I've been ridiculing
for most of the past year, simply because I am terrified of the prospect of Hillary Clinton as
Commander-in-Chief.
Trump is a bad choice for a long list of reasons, but the most outrageous things he has
proposed require legislation and I think it will be possible to defeat his essential sociopathy
on that level, since he will face not only the opposition of the Dem Party, but also MSM and a
significant number of people from his own party.
But when it comes to the President's ability to put American 'boots on the ground' vs.
some theoretical enemy, no such approval from Congress is necessary. Hillary Clinton will be in
a position to get us into a costly war without having to overcome any domestic opposition to pull
it off.
What scares me is my knowledge of her career-long investment in trying to convince the
generals and the admirals that she is a 'tough bitch', ala Margaret Thatcher, who will not hesitate
to pull the trigger. An illuminating
article in the NY Times revealed that she always advocates the most muscular and
reckless dispositions of U.S. military forces whenever her opinion is solicited.
All of her experience re: foreign policy that she's been touting is actually the scariest
thing about her, when you look at what her historical dispositions have been. The "No Fly Zone"
she's been pushing since last year is just the latest example of her instinct to act recklessly,
as it directly invites a military confrontation with Russia.
Her willingness to roll the dice, to gamble with other people's lives, is ingrained within
her political personality, of which she is so proud.
Her greatest political fear-that she might one day be accused by Republicans of being "weak
on America's enemies"-is what we have to fear . That fear is what drives
her to the most extreme of war hawk positions, since her foundational strategy is to get out in
front of the criticism she anticipates.
It is what we can count on. She will most assuredly get America into a war within the first
6-9 months of her Presidency, since she will be looking forward to the muscular response she will
order when she is 'tested', as she expects.
How reckless is Trump likely to be? Well, like Clinton-and all other civilian Commanders-in-Chief,
Trump be utterly dependent upon the advice of military professionals in deciding what kind of
responses to order. But in the position of The Decider, there is one significant difference between
Trump and Clinton. Trump is at least willing and able to 1) view Putin as someone who is not a
threat to the United States and 2) is able/willing to question the rationality of America's continued
participation in NATO.
These differences alone are enough to move me to actually vote for someone I find politically
detestable, simply because I fear that the alternative is a high probability of war, and a greatly
enhanced risk of nuclear annihilation-through miscalculation-under a Hillary Clinton Presidency.
Yep. In the meantime, you have to wonder just how bad the false choice between the GOP / Dem
has to be before people vote in numbers for a better third-party candidate? Really, can it possible
get any worse than Trump v. Clinton?
Between this post and the VP debate I am growing comfortable with a decision to vote Green
and will probably continue voting Green in future elections.
Not that this isn't an important issue, but I disagree on the desirability of posing wonkish
questions in presidential debates, in the hopes of proving that someone didn't do enough homework.
Far too much policy is hidden by the constant recourse to bureaucratic language, which often rests
on other policy positions that remain undiscussed. One example: "chained CPI". Talking about it
/ taking it seriously presupposes that you subscribe to the notion that poor people may be told
to eat cardboard if some economist / committee member designated such an adequate replacement
for food. Yet most listeners will not catch on to that fact, were it ever to even come up in a
debate.
Words are just words, especially for politicians. If you want an idea of how they would govern,
go by what they did in the past. Right now we have the choice between a touchy blowhard with bad
hair and a mendacious conniver with bad judgement; you'd be foolish take anything either says
too seriously, even aside from the fact that they're wannabe politicians.
The response to why the nuclear arsenals need to be so large and constantly updated would have
been an interesting one if it had materialized. The fact is even a fairly limited exchange between
other nuclear powers with much smaller arsenals has the potential for rapid climate change that
renders Earth unlivable.
The Cold War notion that you just have to hole up a few days to avoid fallout doesn't really
make any more sense than using these weapons in the first place.
Just along these line, I did some order of magnitude calculations based on the US SLBM fleet.
Since the MIRV warheads are dial a yield, I calculated a range of 1210 – 1915 Megatons.
I know your point is more on the limited exchange scenario; just wanted to point out the destructive
potential of one country's submarine nuclear capability.
Of Harding's speechifying, H.L. Mencken wrote at the time, "It reminds me of a string of
wet sponges." Mencken characterized Harding's rhetoric as "so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps
into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle
of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash." So, too, with
Hillary Clinton. She is our Warren G. Harding. In her oratory, flapdoodle and balderdash live
on.
And when a person keeps pointing out the importance of keeping one's word, it almost always
means that he or she is lying.
At least Harding was aware of the damage his friends caused to him: "I have no trouble
with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies in a fight. But my friends, my goddamned friends,
they're the ones who keep me walking the floor at nights! "
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Harding had the political courage to pardon, and free from
prison, Eugene V. Debs for his crime of giving an anti-war speech the Wilson administration did
not like.
Harding did not believe in foreign involvements and was never personally implicated in
the financial corruption of his administration.
The Presidency was pushed on him, and he admitted felt he was not qualified.
I believe Harding gets a bad rap because he was not the leader of bold actions (wars) and the
corruption of people in his administration was well-documented.
His death was widely mourned in the USA.
As far as long term harm to the country, the do-nothing Harding was not bad for the country.
If Clinton is to be compared to Harding, it would be to view Clinton as a "new" Harding
who now believes she is well qualified to be President, wants to do much foreign military involvement,
perhaps resulting in war, who is now trusting of her sycopathic friends to give her good advice,
and who is personally involved in selling government favors (via the Clinton foundation)
Clinton is probably well coached by well paid advisors in her oratory.
Probably Harding wrote his own..
I would prefer Clinton to be like the old Harding, and the country would muddle through.
All it would take would be for a couple of strategically placed EMPs over the north american
continent ..
and poof . nothing functions anymore . while we get to stand and watch our 'supreme' military
launch their roman candles .
When it comes to war & nukes, I believe that HRC is the more dangerous of the two.
Before I explain, I would like to invite Yves or any female NC reader to consider & give their
POV on what I'm about say.
HRC is more dangerous because she is the 1st woman to become a serious contender for a
position that has traditionally been considered a "man's job". Therefore she believes she must
not, in any way, be perceived as "soft" or lacking "toughness" or aggressiveness. She feels compelled
to "out-macho" the macho guys.
Obviously this could have serious implications in any situation involving escalating tensions.
Negotiation or compromise would be off the table if she thought it could be perceived as soft
or weak (and she contemplates being a 2 term pres.)
What say you NC readers? Is this a justified concern or am I letting male bias color my view?
The only bright spot in the prospect of a Hellary Klinton presidency is the probability
that she may not survive long enough to start a war with Russia. I wonder how the training for
the Mark I body double is coming?
On the other hand, why should anyone think that a bubble-headed blowhard like Trumpet has
the intelligence or gumption to have any effect upon the operations of the Warfare State? When
the opinion makers of his own party and the neoliberal leaders of Klinton's party are all riding
on the Military-Industrial gravy train looking for the next enemy to keep business booming?
And how can anyone with a functioning brain cell think that anything a politician says
or promises during an election has any connection to how they will act once elected? Remember
Obama, Mr. "Audacity of Hope?"
"... The potential threats both candidates pose are real. Those advocating Hillary as the better, safer choice cannot offer any reliable assurances that she will be able, or willing, to pursue policies that increase the well-being and security of any but the already affluent and secure. ..."
"... Hillary's long and unhappy history of war-mongering has not, imho, received anything like the media scrutiny it deserves, and won't until she's correctly identified in the minds of most as an advocate of 'liberal interventionism'/violent regime change and on an equal footing of imbecility and irresponsibility in the minds of the public as Bush, Cheney, and Blair. ..."
"... When the busts of Hillary, Bush, Blair, and Cheney form a Mt. Rushmore of savage stupidity for all to see and all school children studying the early 21st-century American-UK wars recognize the monument as such, that task of 'highlighting' her role in this enormously costly and damaging humanitarian and political disaster will be at least part way done. ..."
"... Obama, as Stevenjohnson notes, has not entirely surrendered his dream of forcing 'democracy' on Syria. There is abundant evidence, however, the US and a number of other nations have been arming Syrian rebels (ISIL and Al Quaida) since 2011, at least. ..."
"... The result of Obama and Hillary's love of violent regime change has been an increase in the suffering of millions in North Africa and the Middle East, the collapse of basic services such as fresh water and hospitals, and a new flood of refugees seeking to escape the beneficence of Hillary Clinton and her boss. ..."
"... If you are supporting Hillary you are supporting violent regime change in the Middle East and the love of violence of Bush and Cheney, not too mention drone strikes, the surveillance state. That's who you are. ..."
"... Dealing first with Libya and Syria, Hillary Clinton served as the US Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013, which makes her at least one of the prime architects of US foreign policy, and certainly the most important administration official after Obama responsible for foreign policy. Facts which place the burden of proof regarding her involvement in US foreign policy formation and execution squarely on you. ..."
"... HRC's involvement in Iraq is less well-understood, and that's likely no accident either, given the mileage democrats have generated out of pinning the entire bi-partisan debacle on Bush and Cheney. From the linked dialogue above featuring Robert Wright and Max Abrahms (Northeastern) http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/43967?in=01:10&out=12:21 ..."
"... The chaotic civil war in Syria and Iraq seems like another example where the U.S. is having a hard time "thinking" things thru realistically. ..."
"... One interpretation is she's stupid and vicious as a badge of class honor, blissfully consistent with the bloodthirsty record of Madeleine Albright and Henry Kissinger. Unfortunately, that might be true, though I think if it is true, it is more likely a product of being caught up in the amoral bubble of political and media process that has enveloped the whole foreign policy establishment than any personal psychopathy. ..."
@ 278 There's nothing quite so amusing as advocates of free speech 'commanding' the comments section
of somebody else's blog and then issuing permissions to comment, or instructions to how and what
to post. (fn, rich, colin, TM in one form, or another)
Merian is quite right that in the artificially and arbitrarily limited universe of a one-time
choice between just two options, everything written can be seen as pro/con against one or the
other if everything that is written has only one meaning and will be read and understood
by all as having the same meaning.
The fact is that a great many people inside the US and outside the US may well lack any/much
understanding of the decision-making processes that led up to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria,
not to mention America's long history with Iran, and America's support of Evil Axis bad guy number
1 Saddam Hussein. The dynamics are complex even for those familiar with the basic topography.
The rhetorical parallels leading up to the Iraq invasions and the presidential elections are
striking and easy to identify. Facts don't matter, the urgency and severity of the threat demands
uniform action, and the enemy is a once in an eon threat of epic proportion to the physical and
moral existence of the known universe.
The potential threats both candidates pose are real. Those advocating Hillary as the better,
safer choice cannot offer any reliable assurances that she will be able, or willing, to pursue
policies that increase the well-being and security of any but the already affluent and secure.
Hillary's long and unhappy history of war-mongering has not, imho, received anything like
the media scrutiny it deserves, and won't until she's correctly identified in the minds of most
as an advocate of 'liberal interventionism'/violent regime change and on an equal footing of imbecility
and irresponsibility in the minds of the public as Bush, Cheney, and Blair.
When the busts of Hillary, Bush, Blair, and Cheney form a Mt. Rushmore of savage stupidity
for all to see and all school children studying the early 21st-century American-UK wars recognize
the monument as such, that task of 'highlighting' her role in this enormously costly and damaging
humanitarian and political disaster will be at least part way done.
For Merian and others: a timely post from Matt Welch at Reason on Gary Johnson via the o'l perfessor
who sees the coverage of Hillary and Trump as you.
28 September 2015 "Obama tells the UN Assad must go."
18 August 2011 "Assad Must Go Obama Says" (Wapo) (no links to follow to avoid moderation)
1 August 2012 "Obama Authorizes Secret US Support for Syrian Rebels" (Reuters)
Obama, as Stevenjohnson notes, has not entirely surrendered his dream of forcing 'democracy'
on Syria. There is abundant evidence, however, the US and a number of other nations have been
arming Syrian rebels (ISIL and Al Quaida) since 2011, at least.
The result of Obama and Hillary's love of violent regime change has been an increase
in the suffering of millions in North Africa and the Middle East, the collapse of basic services
such as fresh water and hospitals, and a new flood of refugees seeking to escape the beneficence
of Hillary Clinton and her boss.
All this after the 'lessons' of Iraq and Afghanistan.
If you are supporting Hillary you are supporting violent regime change in the Middle East
and the love of violence of Bush and Cheney, not too mention drone strikes, the surveillance state.
That's who you are.
kidneystones 10.02.16 at 3:58 am
ZM@ 303. The linked dialogue above explores the role Hillary and Obama, in particular, played
in providing the arms and support to a rebellion that Assad, like Gaddafi, could have ended years
ago.
Like Gaddafi, Assad is not being attacked by moderate democrats keen to legalize gay marriage,
but rather Sunni militias deeply sympathetic to ISIL and Al Quaida, or those forces operating
in Syria and western Iraq.
You're right to point out that the only result of US support of ISIL related Sunnis has been
the prolonging of the civil war and the promulgation of the delusion that violent-regime change
brings peace and security. Yes, five years of US arms, threats, and intimidation has destroyed
Syria, in much the same was as the Hillary promoted war in Libya destroyed that regime.
The pro-Hillary-Obama media is extremely reluctant in the run-up to the election to point out
explicitly what a spectacular FP failure the US has created for itself right now, with Russian
jets flying over Aleppo and Assad about to finally humiliate the insurgents and all those like
Hillary and Obama who encouraged the bloodshed.
The Obama-Hillary policy has been a five-year bloodbath and there's no sign Hillary wants to
do anything but press for a no-fly zone over Syria in order for the US to continue to funnel more
death and destruction into the already devastated moonscape.
It ain't like anyone she knows is dying over there. Syrians can't vote in November.
The attitude of her supporters seems be: fuck it – Syria is on the other side of the world,
so what's the big deal?
Mitt Romney tied the family dog to the roof of his car. What about that ?
kidneystones 10.02.16 at 4:05 am
@ 305 Hi Merian.
Go tell your students that you're supporting the candidate who voted for the Iraq invasion
(biggest mistake in modern US history), persuaded plenty of other Democrats and ordinary Americans
to suspend their judgment and do the same. And who also played an instrumental role in destroying
Libya, promotes violent regime-change in Syria and enjoys the support of all the same neocon warmongers
who've made the US into a pariah state. Play the 'We came, we saw, he died – ha-ha-ha" Hillary
CBS video for them.
Then explain to them that Hillary is the better candidate.
See what happens.
Omega Centauri 10.02.16 at 4:40 am 314
I don't see HRC as a prime mover in either Iraq or Libya. In the first case Iraq was a neocon/Bush
project, and they were threatening to extract a terrible price from anyone who used their position
to block their ambitions. Libya was primarily a Arab-league cum French-British project. Not supporting
it could have potentially damaged our relationship with key allies France and Britain. Of course
Libya was a slippery slope, once started it soon became obvious there was no solution where Qaddafi
survived and the Libyan people wouldn't end up paying dearly. Not that her acquiescence in either
case demonstrated either good long term judgement or courage, but it also doesn't demonstrate
that she was a principle architect of either project.
314@ "I don't see HRC as a prime mover in either Iraq, or Libya."
That's probably a great comfort to the grifters keen to see her elected. The facts, however,
suggest otherwise. Dealing first with Libya and Syria, Hillary Clinton served as the US Secretary
of State from 2009 to 2013, which makes her at least one of the prime architects of US foreign
policy, and certainly the most important administration official after Obama responsible for foreign
policy. Facts which place the burden of proof regarding her involvement in US foreign policy formation
and execution squarely on you.
HRC's involvement in Iraq is less well-understood, and that's likely no accident either,
given the mileage democrats have generated out of pinning the entire bi-partisan debacle on Bush
and Cheney. From the linked dialogue above featuring Robert Wright and Max Abrahms (Northeastern)
http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/43967?in=01:10&out=12:21
bruce wilder 10.02.16 at 7:49 pm
Anarcissie @ 239: We basically have a whole class of people, at the top of the social order,
who seem devoid of a moral sense - a problem which the upcoming election isn't going to touch,
much less solve. I don't blame Clinton for this . . .
JimV @ 317: I am sorry if I mischaracterized BW as implying that HRC is evil, . . .
Peter T @ 320: Whatever the merits of their individual stances, there is no reason to suppose
that either Obama or Hillary can exert more than loose control over this mess [the multi-sided
regional civil war engulfing Syria and northern Iraq]
stevenjohnson @ 324: The recent leak that Clinton is against nuclear armed cruise missiles
and isn't committed to Obama's trillion dollar nuclear weapons upgrade appears to suggest she's
not quite on board with plans for general war.
LFC @ 330: I disagree w the notion that the pt of nuclear 'modernization' is to make plausible
the threat of "imminent general nuclear war." If U.S. military planners took hallucinogenic drugs
and went nuts, they could "plausibly" threaten "imminent general nuclear war" right now with the
US nuclear arsenal as currently configured. They don't need to upgrade the weapons to do that.
The program is prob more the result of rigid, unimaginative thinking at top levels of Pentagon
and influence of outside companies (e.g. Boeing etc) that work on the upgrades.
I don't know if that seems like a somewhat random collection of precursors to assemble as preface
to a comment. I was thinking of picking out a few upthread references to climate change and the
response to it (or inadequacy thereof) as well.
I am a little disturbed by the idea of leaving the impression that I think Hillary Clinton
is "evil". What I think is that American politics in general is not generating realistic, adaptive
governance.
I am using that bloodless phrase, "realistic, adaptive governance", deliberately, to emphasize
wanting to step outside the passions of the Presidential election. I think the Manichean narrative
where Trump is The Most Horrible Candidate Evah and Everyone Must Line Up Behind Clinton as an
Ethical Imperative of a High Order is part of the process of propaganda and manipulation that
distorts popular discussion and understanding and helps to create a politics that cannot govern
realistically and adaptively. This is not about me thinking Trump is anything but a horrible mess
of a candidate who ought to be kept far from power.
I see Clinton as someone who is trapped inside the dynamics of this seriously deranged politics
qua political process. I don't see her as entirely blameless. Politicians like Obama and either
Clinton, at the top of the political order, are masters (keeping in mind that there are many masters
working to some extent in opposition to one another as rivals, allies, enemies and so on) of the
process and create the process by the exercise of their mastery, as much as they are mastered
by it. I see them as trapped by the process they have helped (more than a little opportunistically)
to create, but trapped as Dr Frankenstein is by his Creature.
Clinton must struggle with the ethical contradictions of governance at the highest levels of
leadership: she must, in the exercise of power in office and out, practice the political art of
the possible in relation to crafting policy that will be "good" in the sense of passably effective
and efficient - this may involve a high degree of foresightful wonkery or a lethally ruthless
statesmanship, depending upon circumstances. Beside this business of making the great machinery
of the state lumber forward, she must strive to appear "good", like Machiavelli's Prince, even
while playing an amoral game of real politick, gathering and shepherding a complex coalition of
allies, supporters, donors and cooperative enemies.
Machiavelli, when he was considering the Princely business of appearing "good", was contending
with the hypocrisies and impossible idealism of authoritarian Catholic morality. He barely connected
with anything that we would recognize as democratic Public Opinion and could scarcely conceive
of what Ivy Lee or Edward Bernays, let alone Fox News, Vox and the world wide web might do to
politics.
We are trapped, just as Clinton is trapped, in the vast communication nightmare of surrealistic
news and opinion washing in upon us in a tide that never ebbs. We are trapped by the politics
of media "gotchas" and Kinsley Gaffes (A Kinsley gaffe occurs when a political gaffe reveals some
truth that a politician did not intend to admit.)
I don't think Clinton lacks a moral sense. What I think is that Clinton's moral sense is exhausted
calculating what to say or do within the parameters of media-synthesized conventional wisdom policed
by people who are themselves exhausted trying to manage it. Matt Lauer's interview with Clinton
was notorious for the relentless and clueless questioning about the email server, although I,
personally, was shocked when he asked her a question that seemed premised on the idea that veterans
should be offended by admitting the Iraq War was a mistake.
I would think it is easy to see that the media circus is out of control, especially when a
clown like Trump graduates from The Apprentice to the Republican nomination. YMMV, but
I think this is a serious problem that goes beyond vividly imagined sepia-toned parodies of Trump's
candidacy as the second coming of Mussolini.
While we're getting ourselves agitated over Trump's racism or threats to bar Muslims from entry,
apparently the Military-Industrial Complex, left on autopilot, is re-designing the nation's nuclear
arsenal to make the outbreak of nuclear war far more likely. And, the closest Clinton gets to
a comment, campaign commitment or public discussion, let alone an exercise of power, is a PR "leak"!!!
The chaotic civil war in Syria and Iraq seems like another example where the U.S. is having
a hard time "thinking" things thru realistically. Clinton offered up a sound-bite last year,
saying that she favored imposing a "no-fly" zone, which was exposed as kind of crazy idea, given
that the Russians as well as Assad's government are the ones flying, not to mention the recent
experience with a no-fly zone in Libya. One interpretation is she's stupid and vicious as
a badge of class honor, blissfully consistent with the bloodthirsty record of Madeleine Albright
and Henry Kissinger. Unfortunately, that might be true, though I think if it is true, it is more
likely a product of being caught up in the amoral bubble of political and media process that has
enveloped the whole foreign policy establishment than any personal psychopathy. What's most
alarming to me is that we cannot count on personal character to put the brakes on that process,
which is now the process of governance. I am writing now of the process of governance by public
relations that was has been exposed a bit in profiles of the Deputy National Security Advisor
for Strategic Communications, Ben Rhodes.
In Syria, it has become almost comical, if you can overlook the bodies piling up, as the U.S.
has sought a the mythical unicorn of Syrian Moderate Democrats whom the Pentagon or the CIA can
advise, train and arm. This is foreign policy by PR narrative and it is insanely unrealistic.
But, our politics is trapped in it, and, worse, policy is trapped in it. Layer after layer of
b.s. have piled up obscuring U.S. interests and practical options. Recently, U.S. forces supporting
the Turks have come dangerously close to blowing up U.S. forces supporting the Kurds. When you
find yourself on opposing sides of a civil war like Charles I you may be in the process of losing
your head. Some of the worst elements opposing Assad have been engaged in a transparent re-branding
exercise aimed at garnering U.S. aid. And, U.S. diplomats and media face the high challenge of
explaining why the U.S. supports Saudi Arabia in Yemen.
But, hey, Clinton will get Robert Kagan's vote and a better tomorrow is only a Friedman unit
away, so it is all good.
kidneystones 10.02.16 at 9:24 pm
@328 stevenjohnson and Peter T cover the details. As an outsider supportive of negotiated settlements
in all cases, rather than unilateral military action and violent regime change, I'm interested
principally in ensuring that partisan political preferences do not obscure the historical record.
Bluntly put, dictators routinely abuse bomb their own civilians as the 'need' arises. Nor is the
US the only state actor keen to profit in the broadest sense of the term from political division.
The UN was formed, in large part, to provide a forum/mechanism for peaceful conflict resolution.
Each time state actors such as Russia, China, the US, France, and the UK either bypass the UN,
or use the UN to sanction attacks by larger states on smaller states, the entire edifice becomes
a little weaker.
Hillary is not the only individual with Libyan and Syrian blood on her hands. She's simply
the only individual directly involved in Iraq, Libya, and Syria running to the 45th president
of the US.
bruce wilder 10.02.16 at 9:54 pm
Rich Puchalsky @ 334
People are in information overload most of the time, and where politics are concerned, they
really just want to know who to root for. They ask, "who is the good guy? who is the bad guy?"
"Whose right?" "What should be done?" And, people like the opinions they have, whatever those
opinions may be; they use their political opinions to feed their sense of self-esteem and social
belonging, for better and for worse.
I have some friends, who are really into a particular sport as fans, not participants. One
guy knows everything about baseball. It is fun to watch a game with him, because he knows when
someone is about to try to steal a base and stuff like that and he can explain the manager's strategy
and has gossip about the players careers and personal lives. And, apparently, he has an encyclopedic
knowledge of baseball history - appears to, anyway: what dramatic thing happened in game 3 of
the 1967 World Series and so on and exactly why everyone hated Ty Cobb.
No one like that shows up at CT to talk politics. Maybe it is just as well. Sports guys can
wield that knowledge and remain affable, but political guys tend to be arrogant and off-putting.
But, I do think we could use more of that spirit sometimes.
I was thinking about what a brilliant innovation the Clinton Foundation is, how well it is
designed to solve the problems of Machiavelli's Prince. But, we would struggle to discuss it in
those terms; the partisan contest means that the CF is either horribly corrupt or prosaically
innocent. The pressure to evaluate it is so high, that seeing the functional details is hard.
I've seen some articles that attempt to understand the CF as a means to the political ambitions
of the Clintons, but they seldom grasp the awesome accomplishment it is in ways that also fully
understand why enemies of the Clintons are keen to attack it and why it so reliably produces the
neoliberal pablum that Thomas Franks despises. If we could imagine a Marx tackling the CF as a
vehicle of class interest, that would be pretty interesting.
"... "Clinton is an insider in an outsider year. It's as simple as that. Trying to blame everything and everyone but her is really tiresome and not helping her actually win." ..."
"... Thank you. How can such very serious people ignore the Bernie Sanders phenomenon and dismiss that so easily? People want reform, they want change. And the two party system keeps serving up more of the same rotten, ineffective corruption. ..."
"... Hillary is a candidate of "status quo" and as such is in bad position. As you correctly noted "People want reform, they want change." And her health, abhorrent warmongering and emailgate make her political position only worse. Please note that calling her "a staunch warmonger" is just a politically correct definition of the type of politician she represents. If we take the standards of Nuremberg trials, she might well be considered a war criminal ..."
"... the charter defined three categories of crimes: crimes against peace (including planning, preparing, starting or waging wars of aggression or wars in violation of international agreements), war crimes (including violations of customs or laws of war, including improper treatment of civilians and prisoners of war) and crimes against humanity (including murder, enslavement or deportation of civilians or persecution on political, religious or racial grounds). ..."
"... It was determined that civilian officials as well as military officers could be accused of war crimes. ..."
"... today's Democrats have become the Party of War: a home for arms merchants, mercenaries, academic war planners, lobbyists for every foreign intervention, promoters of color revolutions, failed generals, exploiters of the natural resources of corrupt governments. We have American military bases in 80 countries, and there are now American military personnel on the ground in about 130 countries, a remarkable achievement since there are only 192 recognized countries. Generals and admirals announce our national policies. Theater commanders are our principal ambassadors. Our first answer to trouble or opposition of any kind seems always to be a military movement or action. ..."
"... Re "first past the post": You are absolutely correct and this is the main obstacle to the rise of third parties. The Green Party has as one of the main campaign items the need for ranked choice. ..."
"... I think changing this is perhaps the single most urgent reform item in our politics, and can be accomplished at the local and state level without running afoul of federal or constitutional constraints. ..."
"... the occupied [nations officials] are the only candidate for war crime trials...... Lemay, Harris, everyone in 8 nations that own them involved in nuclear weapons in any way would be hanged if their targets got their way ..."
"... dnc insider [is] definition of crooked! ..."
"... There's a pendulum, which sometimes swings the wrong way. Go figure. Bush Jr was the outsider. Gore was the insider. Likewise Trump and Hillary Clinton? ..."
"... The race baiting has to stop. Krugman should travel to Camden, Rochester, East St. Louis or any of the thousands of towns and cities that were stripped of their wealth thanks to free trade policies he championed. ..."
"... It is close because Trump offers hope. People remember that times were much, much better when their cities had factories before the so-called globalization hurricane just "naturally" swept everything away. Twenty years of protectionism and an undervalued currency will turn the US into a star trek land like Singapore. 10 more years on our current free trade trajectory and we'll be Haiti, another free trade paradise. ..."
"Clinton is an insider in an outsider year. It's as simple as that. Trying to blame everything and
everyone but her is really tiresome and not helping her actually win."
Thank you. How can such very serious people ignore the Bernie Sanders phenomenon and dismiss that
so easily? People want reform, they want change. And the two party system keeps serving up more of
the same rotten, ineffective corruption.
Disencruft Macro -> to Jesse...
insider in an outsider year. It's as simple as that. Trying to blame everything and everyone but
her is really tiresome and not helping her actually win.
She needs to either regain some outsider cred (impossible, her entire candidacy is based on her
being the "most accomplished candidate ever" which necessarily implies having experience on the inside)
Or tar Trump with insider status. That should be doable but it's proving a hard sell. People seem
to be excusing Trump's links and ties with insiders. It seem people will excuse what he has done
because he was just playing the game by the rules that already existed. On the other hand, Clinton
is seen (wrongly in my opinion) as being one of the rule makers and then breaking the rules to her
benefit.
That might be the crucial distinction. Trump had no part in making the rules so breaking them
is understandable. But if Clinton was part of the people who made the rules it is hypocritical for
her to break the rules she made for other people to abide by.
I don't think Clinton is especially bad and I'm definitely voting for her. I'm only positing a
theory as to why Trump's proven malfeasance doesn't seem to impact his standing with the voters while
Clinton's implied, but not proven, malfeasance is a big issue.
"And the two party system keeps serving up more of the same rotten, ineffective corruption."
That's by design. "First past the post" system is perfect for maintaining status quo. It is essentially
an ingenious modification of a one party rule, disguised as two party "equilibrium". It is not that
different from the USSR system of elections -- a predefined by the elite candidate eventually wins
in all cases. The only difference is that in this case there two such predefined, preapproved candidates
and associated exciting political theater, instead of boring (but more economical and honest ;-)
single one.
I think the Communists would only increase their legitimacy (and might prolong the life of the
USSR) by switching to this system. The essence -- communist nomenclatura rule in case of the USSR,
neoliberal elite (financial oligarchy) in case of the USA are the same.
In this system any new movement (think Sanders) can be immaculated and integrated into existing
neoliberal framework by one of two semi-identical parties of "hard" and "soft" neoliberalism. And
that "self-stabilizing" function of crushing any political insurrection "by integration" while it
is in its infancy works fine until the total crash of the system.
In this regard, the appearance of Trump on the scene as a candidate from Repugs is a surprise
and might be viewed as a revolutionary moment as it shows that the republican elite lost control
over peons. The Dem elite managed to crush the insurrection, as expected.
Trump is a sign of a mounting backlash against neoliberal globalization, of political destabilization
due to rejection of neoliberal dogma by the majority of population. At this point neoliberal brainwashing
stops working, much like happened in the USSR with communist propaganda.
Hillary is a candidate of "status quo" and as such is in bad position. As you correctly noted
"People want reform, they want change." And her health, abhorrent warmongering and emailgate make
her political position only worse. Please note that calling her "a staunch warmonger" is just a politically
correct definition of the type of politician she represents. If we take the standards of Nuremberg
trials, she might well be considered a war criminal :
The Allies eventually established the laws and procedures for the Nuremberg trials with the
London Charter of the International Military Tribunal (IMT), issued on August 8, 1945. Among other
things, the charter defined three categories of crimes: crimes against peace (including planning,
preparing, starting or waging wars of aggression or wars in violation of international agreements),
war crimes (including violations of customs or laws of war, including improper treatment of civilians
and prisoners of war) and crimes against humanity (including murder, enslavement or deportation
of civilians or persecution on political, religious or racial grounds).
It was determined that civilian officials as well as military officers could be accused
of war crimes.
John and Robert Kennedy devoted their greatest commitments and energies to the prevention of
war and the preservation of peace. To them that was not an abstract formula but the necessary
foundation of human life. But today's Democrats have become the Party of War: a home for arms
merchants, mercenaries, academic war planners, lobbyists for every foreign intervention, promoters
of color revolutions, failed generals, exploiters of the natural resources of corrupt governments.
We have American military bases in 80 countries, and there are now American military personnel
on the ground in about 130 countries, a remarkable achievement since there are only 192 recognized
countries. Generals and admirals announce our national policies. Theater commanders are our principal
ambassadors. Our first answer to trouble or opposition of any kind seems always to be a military
movement or action.
Re "first past the post": You are absolutely correct and this is the main obstacle to the rise of
third parties. The Green Party has as one of the main campaign items the need for ranked choice.
I think changing this is perhaps the single most urgent reform item in our politics, and can be
accomplished at the local and state level without running afoul of federal or constitutional constraints.
the occupied [nations officials] are
the only candidate for war crime trials...... Lemay, Harris, everyone in 8 nations that own them involved in nuclear weapons in any way would
be hanged if their targets got their way
Pinkybum -> efcdons...
"Clinton is an insider in an outsider year."
Having voted for Bernie this is not the choice we are faced with.
"She needs to either regain some outsider cred"
Having ran as an insider and won she needs to do no such thing...
lsm -> Pinkybum...
dnc insider [is]
definition of crooked! no conviction...
Fred C. Dobbs said...
There's a pendulum, which
sometimes swings the wrong way. Go figure. Bush Jr was the outsider. Gore was the insider. Likewise Trump and Hillary Clinton?
This pendulum has (almost) magical effects. As for me, and many here, I hope its effect is not
felt this time.
The race
baiting has to stop. Krugman should travel to Camden, Rochester, East St. Louis or any of the thousands
of towns and cities that were stripped of their wealth thanks to free trade policies he championed.
It is close because Trump offers hope. People remember that times were much, much better when
their cities had factories before the so-called globalization hurricane just "naturally" swept everything
away. Twenty years of protectionism and an undervalued currency will turn the US into a star trek
land like Singapore. 10 more years on our current free trade trajectory and we'll be Haiti, another
free trade paradise.
If civilians can sue sovereign states it should be obvious to everybody that the drone maniacal
US would be on top of the list of targets for such suits. Our government and soldiers would be the
most vulnerable in the whole world.
If our courts were to begin collections of judgments from sovereign states the results would be
that no foreign government would want to hold assets in this country.
I certainly sympathize with the 9/11 victim families, although they have been compensated for
their loss with way more money than any of the foreign collateral damage victims of our military
actions.
The families may not understand this, but they will never collect a dime. On the other hand, this
legislation to "help" them will do a lot of damage to the country and its soldiers.
How did sympathy for these families let our congress members trap themselves in such a stupendous
blunder. I guess election season is a time for that kind of stuff.
It is this sort of legislation that has made the US so hated around the world. The US just can't
seem to internalize that being sovereign doesn't imply sovereignty over the rest of the world,
that that sovereignty ends at the border.
As far as I know, the US is the only country that taxes its non-resident citizens. This alone
is nuts.
The US is also as far as I know the only country that thinks it has the right to kill the citizens
of other countries outside its borders.
And then it seems that many US citizens seem to think they are not bound by the rules of physics,
or logic or arithmetic.
US exceptionalism has gone on long enough. It is about time the US came back to earth and decided
it is just another country on earth.
"As far as I know, the US is the only country that taxes its non-resident citizens. This alone
is nuts."
Why is that nuts? Do non-resident citizens no longer have access to consulate services? Does
the citizenship lapse such that one can't come back to the US whenever they want?
The US keeps going while the citizen is abroad. It's not outrageous to ask them to contribute
something (not much, the credit for overseas taxes paid is pretty high).
DeDude -> efcdons... , -1
We are the only ones that assume people will come back unless they renounce their citizenship.
It is only fair that you get taxed for the government services you receive. Therefore, you
should be taxed in the country where you live. There is no justification for taxing income earned
in a foreign country.
The value of consulate services are so small that it cost more to recover them than deliver
them. So the rest of the world does not use that lame excuse to tax citizens living abroad.
"... "Progress for USA Political Action Committee" ..."
"... "time bomb" ..."
"... "We lost to the losing party, a unique case in history," ..."
"... "tyrant." ..."
"... The arguments presented are as light-weight as the production is heavy-handed. The Clinton side claims that Trump made millions selling Russian rights for Miss Universe. That may be true, but Trump owned the organization for 19 years and sold entitlements in dozens of other countries, holding the actual event in Russia only once during that time. ..."
"... "Russian language promotional video (which) attracted people to buy Condos in Florida." ..."
"... Then Mike Morrell appears and declares that someone who doesn't want to pursue an aggressive military policy toward Russia is an "unwitting agent of the Russian Federation." ..."
Sometimes it is downright stunning to witness American election campaigners creating, and promoting,
websites like " PutinTrump.org ." Paid for by
the pro-Clinton "Progress for USA Political Action Committee" it collates media stories
which connect the Republican candidate and the Russian president. That could be dismissed as merely
slightly odd behavior, until you see the logo, which is drumroll a hammer and sickle!
Yes, that eternally recognizable communist symbol. Reds in the Bed
In case Team Clinton is reading this: it looks like it might be time for a bit of a world history
refresher. Any person even moderately informed about Russian affairs can tell you that Putin's government
is far from communist. Hell, most decently educated school children can tell you the same. The Russian
government has promoted a pro-business agenda for well over a decade and has long maintained a flat
income tax rate of 13 percent.
Indeed, only this year, the Russian president has
denounced socialist hero Vladimir Lenin and his Bolshevik government for their brutal repression
and accused him of having placed a "time bomb" under the state. He also admonished the Bolsheviks
for making Russia suffer defeat at the hands of Germany in the First World War. "We lost to the
losing party, a unique case in history," the President said. Furthermore, Putin is no big fan
of Stalin either. While recognizing his contribution to defeating the Nazis, he also
described him as a "tyrant."
It's just as doubtful that Trump – a man who just boasted about not paying any federal taxes!
– is a fan of Karl Marx's theories. The idea of distributing wealth to labor, from financiers, is
surely alien to a man who has essentially admitted to not paying people he has hired because he wasn't
happy with their work.
Put plainly, these commie associations are absurd. But of course, Team Clinton knows this. That's
the big reveal. The idea is to conflate the fading memory of the 'Red Menace' of Soviet communism
with modern Russia. The purpose of this is pretty obvious too: to instill fear of the 'Big Bad' Putin
in vulnerable American hearts and minds.
The Green Logo Menace
You need to go no further for proof than Clinton campaign's official messaging. Take a look at
this video, where Hillary's team flings Russia slanders like they going out of fashion.
Cue the foreboding music - you could ask why they didn't just license the tunes from 'Jaws' and
have done with it – multiple RT logos and, no joke, Russian mafia references. You know the clichés
that Bond films have dropped for being too crude.
The arguments presented are as light-weight as the production is heavy-handed. The Clinton
side claims that Trump made millions selling Russian rights for Miss Universe. That may be true,
but Trump owned the organization for 19 years and sold entitlements in dozens of other countries,
holding the actual event in Russia only once during that time.
The video also implies that Trump is bad because he produced a "Russian language promotional
video (which) attracted people to buy Condos in Florida." Hold on here, what is so unusual about
that? During the oil boom of the mid-to late 00's, Russians were well known for buying property all
over the world. Indeed, if you walk around hot spots like London, Nice or Dubai, you will still see
Russian language signs outside many high-end estate offices. Probably all homes for the sleeper agents,
huh.
Then Mike Morrell appears and declares that someone who doesn't want to pursue an aggressive
military policy toward Russia is an "unwitting agent of the Russian Federation." And at
this point, we probably reach peak preposterous. Essentially the message is that if you don't want
to saber rattle with Moscow, you are working for it.
"... This means the "default position" of the Clinton campaign and her friendly media is, "if there's something wrong in the world, criticize George W. Bush." ..."
"... "Why not? It worked for Obama. Maybe it will work for her as well," Bolton said. "And I think the fact that the media are aiding and abetting this approach shouldn't surprise anybody. I think no matter who the Republican nominee was this year, the media were going to be – as the Wall Street Journal has so aptly called them – stenographers for the White House and the Clinton campaign. And that's exactly what they're doing." ..."
"... Most people watching 90 minutes of a debate like that don't score it on this debating point, or that debating point. They look at the entire thing. They want to know about the character of the people. And I think the fact that Trump was there for 90 minutes and held his own, or more than, in a format that Hillary Clinton has been familiar with since she was in law school, accomplished what he needed to accomplish. ..."
"I think it's entirely understandable that what Clinton will try to do is avoid criticizing Obama,
because she desperately needs to recreate the Obama coalition on November the 8th," said Bolton.
"She has gone out of her way, including in her 600-page-long tedious memoir about her days at the
State Department, failing to distance herself from Obama."
This means the "default position" of the Clinton campaign and her friendly media is, "if there's
something wrong in the world, criticize George W. Bush."
"Why not? It worked for Obama. Maybe it will work for her as well," Bolton said. "And I think
the fact that the media are aiding and abetting this approach shouldn't surprise anybody. I think
no matter who the Republican nominee was this year, the media were going to be – as the Wall Street
Journal has so aptly called them – stenographers for the White House and the Clinton campaign.
And that's exactly what they're doing."
Bolton thought Trump "did what he needed to do" at the first presidential debate:
Most people watching 90 minutes of a debate like that don't score it on this debating point,
or that debating point. They look at the entire thing. They want to know about the character of
the people. And I think the fact that Trump was there for 90 minutes and held his own, or more
than, in a format that Hillary Clinton has been familiar with since she was in law school, accomplished
what he needed to accomplish.
My critique of his performance would be that he missed opportunities. For example, you mentioned
the foreign policy section, when they were asked about cyber warfare, and the dangers to the United
States of hacking, and that gave Clinton a chance to give a little college-type lecture on Russia
– by the way, omitting China, Iran, North Korea, and others – I thought at that point Trump could
have talked about her email homebrew server for his entire time, and just drilled that point home.
But, you know, people at home aren't sitting there grading on that basis. I think the second
debate, and the third debate, will be very different, and those – particularly in the media –
who now confidently predict the outcome of the election, based on their take of this debate, are
smoking something.
"... Only three references to Comey as a "Treas-Weasel" appear in a Google search. ..."
"... Are there no longer any "deep throats" left at the FBI? Because now would be an excellent opportunity for one of them to start making phone calls – but to who? Greenwald maybe? He seems to be the only investigative journalist left but he doesn't even live in this country .. ..."
"I knew there were going to be all kinds of rocks thrown, but this organization and the people who did this are honest,
independent people."
Well Comey, it is not that we do not trust the agents, we do not trust the leadership. If any of the
underground reports I have seen are indications, the agents were trying and struggling to do their jobs.
Are there no longer any "deep throats" left at the FBI? Because now would be an excellent opportunity for one of them to start
making phone calls – but to who? Greenwald maybe? He seems to be the only investigative journalist left but he doesn't even live
in this country ..
"... GOP lawmakers focused in particular on the Justice Department's decision to give a form of immunity to Clinton lawyers Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson to obtain computers containing emails related to the case. ..."
"... Republicans also questioned why Mills and Samuelson were allowed to attend Clinton's July 2 interview at FBI headquarters as her attorneys, given that they had been interviewed as witnesses in the email probe. ..."
"... "I don't think there's any reasonable prosecutor out there who would have allowed two immunized witnesses central to the prosecution and proving the case against her to sit in the room with the FBI interview of the subject of that investigation," said Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas), a former U.S. attorney. He said those circumstances signaled that the decision not to prosecute Clinton was already made when she sat down for the interview. ..."
"... Ratcliffe said Clinton and the others should have been called to a grand jury, where no one is allowed to accompany the witness. ..."
"You can call us wrong, but don't call us weasels. We are not weasels," Comey declared
Wednesday at a House Judiciary Committee hearing. "We are honest people and whether or not you
agree with the result, this was done the way you want it to be done."
... ... ...
"I would be in big trouble, and I should be in big trouble, if I did something like that,"
said Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.). "There seems to be different strokes for different folks.
I think there's a heavy hand coming from someplace else."
Comey insisted there is no double standard, though he said there would be serious consequences -
short of criminal prosecution - if FBI personnel handled classified information as Clinton and
her aides did.
... ... ...
Republicans suggested there were numerous potential targets of prosecution in the case and
repeatedly questioned prosecutors' decisions to grant forms of immunity to at least five people
in connection with the probe.
"You cleaned the slate before you even knew. You gave immunity to people that you were going to
need to make a case if a case was to be made," said Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas).
GOP lawmakers focused in particular on the Justice Department's decision to give a form of
immunity to Clinton lawyers Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson to obtain computers containing
emails related to the case.
"Laptops don't go to the Bureau of Prisons," Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said. "The immunity was
not for the laptop, it was for Cheryl Mills."
The FBI director repeated an explanation he gave for the first time at a Senate hearing Tuesday,
that the deal to get the laptops was wise because subpoenaing computers from an attorney would be
complex and time consuming.
"Anytime you know you're subpoenaing a laptop from a lawyer that involved a lawyer's practice
of law, you know you're getting into a big megillah," Comey said.
Republicans also questioned why Mills and Samuelson were allowed to attend Clinton's July 2
interview at FBI headquarters as her attorneys, given that they had been interviewed as witnesses
in the email probe.
"I don't think there's any reasonable prosecutor out there who would have allowed two immunized
witnesses central to the prosecution and proving the case against her to sit in the room with the
FBI interview of the subject of that investigation," said Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas), a former
U.S. attorney. He said those circumstances signaled that the decision not to prosecute Clinton
was already made when she sat down for the interview.
"I don't think there's any reasonable prosecutor out there who would have allowed two
immunized witnesses central to the prosecution and proving the case against her to sit in the
room with the FBI interview of the subject of that investigation," said Rep. John Ratcliffe
(R-Texas), a former U.S. attorney. He said those circumstances signaled that the decision not to
prosecute Clinton was already made when she sat down for the interview.
"If colleagues of ours believe I am lying about when I made this decision, please urge them to
contact me privately so we can have a conversation about this," Comey said. "The decision was
made after that because I didn't know what was going to happen during the interview. She would
maybe lie in the interview in a way we could prove."
Comey also said it wasn't the FBI's role to dictate who could or couldn't act as Clinton's
lawyers. "I would also urge you to tell me what tools we have as prosecutors and investigators to
kick out of the interview someone that the subject says is their lawyer," the FBI chief said,
while acknowledging he'd never encountered such a situation before.
Ratcliffe said Clinton and the others should have been called to a grand jury, where no one
is allowed to accompany the witness.
Comey did say there was no chance of charges against Mills or Samuelson by the time of the
Clinton interview.
"... I can give you a list of things that I can't stand about Clinton – a long one – but given the likelihood that my state will be solidly in the tank for Clinton, I won't have to vote for her to save the world from President Trump. But where I am coming to is that, if that's what it came down to, I don't think I could participate in anything that aided his election. ..."
"... Funny, I can think of at few things that make Trump more attractive to me in comparison to Clinton. One being his lack of interest in war with Russia, and his ability to understand that 'regime change' has been a loser for American interests, and the other being that he gets that our current trade policy has been a 'loser'. ..."
"... That said, both are disastrous choices, it may be for different reasons, but both are despicable. Neither one of them should be allowed to enter the White House in a tour group, much less live there. And I for one do not want to participate in anything that elects Hillary Rodham Clinton or Donald Trump to dog catcher, much less President. I'm going to vote my conscience and let the chips fall where they may. I would be doing it no matter where I live. See, there is a point where you figure out that you are going to lose out no matter what. There are no softer landings available. ..."
"... One being his lack of interest in war with Russia ..."
"... In contrast with the (admittedly horrific) Trump, HRC has surrounded herself with anti-Russia, neocon advisors. ..."
"... I recognize that voting for him would be a knee jerk reaction. However, I do understand why I have that knee jerk reaction. For years now, average Americans, like myself, have seen the media collude with the DC insiders and watched as we've seen our standard of living decline. We've watched our children struggle with unaffordable college. We've watched our parents struggle with unaffordable health care. We've watched our neighbors struggle to afford housing. We've watched our work weeks increase to 60 hours to pay for basics and heard them tell us that we need to work from cradle to grave(and let's be clear for lower middle class and middle class 70 is until grave) with little to no respite(we don't even have a mandatory vacation or sick policy in this country.) With that in mind, why should I want their standard bearer of status quo to win? I DON'T. I want Hillary Clinton to lose, not because I like Trump, but because I hate what these people have done and will continue to do to this country if allowed to remain in power. That's his case. ..."
"... I can't think of a single thing that would make Clinton appear more attractive, compared to pretty much anyone. ..."
"... I find it ironic that the HRC supporters are now desperately pleading with third-party supporters to vote Hillary BECAUSE TRUMP. Let's not forget it was Hillary herself who tweeted to all "Vote your conscience". ..."
Yes, the media and the DC insiders are all begging us to drag HRC across the finish line in
an effort to defeat TRUMP. Normally, a candidate might inspire and give voters reasons to go the
polls, but we've been asked to do all the work and heavy lifting this year to prevent TRUMP.
The funny thing is because of WHO is asking, it makes Trump appear more attractive and almost
makes me want to vote for the guy out of spite.
After all, what exactly have the media or the DC insiders done for the American people? Ignored
issues and blatantly supported policies that have harmed Americans? It's rather audacious of them
to even bother asking most of us when most of us don't see the answer to the question of what
has been done for us as a net positive. Most from the left and the right might even go so far
as to say media and DC insiders have lined their pockets on the backs of average Americans' pain.
Beg us to do something for them? They deserve to be kicked in the teeth in the same manner they've
been doing it to average Americans for years.
Yes. As indicated by the telling finish of the quote above:
" We need to think about information policies - including media literacy programs - that can
offer urgently needed counterweights to the echo chambers and conspiracy factories of the internet."
Gutless, hackneyed drivel topped off with an urgent plea to the policy-making class to up their
propaganda game.
I can't think of a single thing that would make Trump appear more attractive, outside of seeing
the back of him slowly disappearing from view – forever. Yes, I get that it's totally galling
to be inundated with begging pleas from the likes of Hillary Clinton and some of her cronies –
I routinely mail back to her every last shred of paper she sends me, in the postage-paid envelope,
so I know that teeth-clenching, migraine-inducing rush of ire that she can induce.
I can give you a list of things that I can't stand about Clinton – a long one – but given
the likelihood that my state will be solidly in the tank for Clinton, I won't have to vote for
her to save the world from President Trump. But where I am coming to is that, if that's what it
came down to, I don't think I could participate in anything that aided his election.
I came away from that debate wanting to stick needles in my eyes. Trump is a thin-skinned,
prevaricating, floridly egotistical, vindictive, bigoted, misogynistic bully whose flaws will
only expand and possibly explode if he is elected.
There is nothing even remotely attractive about Trump – I can't even contemplate just how bad
Clinton would need to be to make him look like the better choice.
Funny, I can think of at few things that make Trump more attractive to me in comparison
to Clinton. One being his lack of interest in war with Russia, and his ability to understand that
'regime change' has been a loser for American interests, and the other being that he gets that
our current trade policy has been a 'loser'.
That said, both are disastrous choices, it may be for different reasons, but both are despicable.
Neither one of them should be allowed to enter the White House in a tour group, much less live
there. And I for one do not want to participate in anything that elects Hillary Rodham Clinton
or Donald Trump to dog catcher, much less President. I'm going to vote my conscience and let the
chips fall where they may. I would be doing it no matter where I live. See, there is a point where
you figure out that you are going to lose out no matter what. There are no softer landings available.
In contrast with the (admittedly horrific) Trump, HRC has surrounded herself with anti-Russia,
neocon advisors.
Needless to say, Putin isn't perfect, but how does further upgrading the conflict and risking
WW3 and global destruction help matters? The NATO exercises on the Russian border and Syrian escalations
are truly scary.
Trump isn't attractive to me either. However, defeating the DC insiders and media that have
brought us to this point in history where my choices are bad and worse is attractive to me
I recognize that voting for him would be a knee jerk reaction. However, I do understand
why I have that knee jerk reaction. For years now, average Americans, like myself, have seen the
media collude with the DC insiders and watched as we've seen our standard of living decline. We've
watched our children struggle with unaffordable college. We've watched our parents struggle with
unaffordable health care. We've watched our neighbors struggle to afford housing. We've watched
our work weeks increase to 60 hours to pay for basics and heard them tell us that we need to work
from cradle to grave(and let's be clear for lower middle class and middle class 70 is until grave)
with little to no respite(we don't even have a mandatory vacation or sick policy in this country.)
With that in mind, why should I want their standard bearer of status quo to win? I DON'T. I want
Hillary Clinton to lose, not because I like Trump, but because I hate what these people have done
and will continue to do to this country if allowed to remain in power. That's his case.
I live in a swing state and I'll be voting for Stein. Screw the pundits and their *begging*.
They deserve this loss.
I can't think of a single thing that would make Clinton appear more attractive, compared
to pretty much anyone. I'll be voting Stein, the only remaining candidate who aligns with
my views and reflects my interests. If she hadn't made it onto the ballot here in Georgia, I would
not be voting in the presidential election for the first time since I became eligible to vote
in 1980. Neither of the two ruling-party sociopaths is at all palatable.
I find it ironic that the HRC supporters are now desperately pleading with third-party
supporters to vote Hillary BECAUSE TRUMP. Let's not forget it was Hillary herself who tweeted
to all "Vote your conscience".
Jill Stein is anti-war, anti-greed, pro-environment. Rather the opposite of HRC.
"... "They have a few pro-Trump voices, but pretty much the CNN as a network is for Clinton – just like Fox is for Trump. They are not really media outlets; they are echo chambers for the respective political campaign," ..."
"... "The debate showed how vapid, how sensationalized, how empty the American political election cycle is – very expensive, but very long, and very empty. Both of them tried to outdo each other to show who had more support from the generals and admirals. It is not a good harbinger of where things are going in terms of American politics," ..."
"... "unwitting agent" ..."
"... "US national security." ..."
"... "The attack on Russia, the attempt to blame Russia for all things, including for the hack of the DNC [Democratic National Committee] files that showed the DNC was violating its own rules and trying to tilt the election for Clinton, which happened on the first day of the Democratic national convention. Russia became a convenient punching bag, so that the Democratic Party could divert attention from its own wrongdoing. But it's manifested itself into something more than just a diversion," ..."
"... "Clinton has the support of all of the neoconservatives: Robert Kagan, husband of Victoria Nuland; a hundred of Republican foreign policy elites. I think they represent the mainstream Washington consensus, which is the consensus of the military industrial complex, which wants to incentivize American public opposition or even hatred toward Russia as a pretext for building up the military armaments business. The expansion or escalation of tension with Russia is very good for the arms business, very good for the military industrial complex. So it is not just electoral politics. I think this is the Hillary Clinton presidency we see in the making. If she is elected, I think this bodes very badly for US- Russian relations," ..."
The debate has shown how sensationalized, vapid and empty the US election cycle is, said Brian Becker,
from the anti-war Answer Coalition, adding that the candidates' attempts to outdo each other on military
support is not a good harbinger for US politics.
A CNN/ORC
poll shows that majority of voters feel Hillary Clinton won Monday night's
debate over Donald Trump.
According to Brian Becker of the anti-war Answer Coalition, one cannot judge who won by CNN polls
as it has been actively campaigning for Clinton.
"They have a few pro-Trump voices, but pretty much the CNN as a network is for Clinton – just
like Fox is for Trump. They are not really media outlets; they are echo chambers for the respective
political campaign," he told RT.
"The debate showed how vapid, how sensationalized, how empty the American political election
cycle is – very expensive, but very long, and very empty. Both of them tried to outdo each other
to show who had more support from the generals and admirals. It is not a good harbinger of where
things are going in terms of American politics," Becker said.
Ahead of the election, Clinton and her supporters have been repeatedly using anti-Russia rhetoric
and accusing Trump of being "unwitting agent" of President Putin and posing a threat to
"US national security." On Monday, Clinton played her Russian card again to attack her opponent.
In Becker's view, it's an attempt to divert public attention from the party's own wrongdoing and,
also, the escalation of tensions with Moscow will only benefit the US military industrial complex
who supports Clinton.
"The attack on Russia, the attempt to blame Russia for all things, including for the hack
of the DNC [Democratic National Committee] files that showed the DNC was violating its own rules
and trying to tilt the election for Clinton, which happened on the first day of the Democratic national
convention. Russia became a convenient punching bag, so that the Democratic Party could divert attention
from its own wrongdoing. But it's manifested itself into something more than just a diversion,"
he said.
"Clinton has the support of all of the neoconservatives: Robert Kagan, husband of Victoria
Nuland; a hundred of Republican foreign policy elites. I think they represent the mainstream Washington
consensus, which is the consensus of the military industrial complex, which wants to incentivize
American public opposition or even hatred toward Russia as a pretext for building up the military
armaments business. The expansion or escalation of tension with Russia is very good for the arms
business, very good for the military industrial complex. So it is not just electoral politics. I
think this is the Hillary Clinton presidency we see in the making. If she is elected, I think this
bodes very badly for US- Russian relations," Becker added.
"... Russia even hacked into the Democratic National Committee, maybe even some state election systems. So, we've got to step up our game. Make sure we are well defended and able to take the fight to those who go after us. As President, I will make it clear, that the United States will treat cyber attacks just like any other attack . We will be ready with serious political, economic and military responses. ..."
"... "We need to respond to evolving threats from states like Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea from networks, criminal and terrorist networks like ISIS. We need a military that is ready and agile so it can meet the full range of threats, and operate on short notice across every domain, not just land, sea, air and space, but also cyberspace". ..."
"... "serious political, economic and military responses" ..."
"... notwithstanding ..."
"... The mainstream The Hill newspaper bannered, "Clinton: Treat cyberattacks 'like any other attack'" , and reported that, "Since many high-profile cyberattacks could be interpreted as traditional intelligence-gathering - something the US itself also engages in - the White House is often in a tricky political position when it comes to its response". That's not critical of her position, but at least it makes note of the crucial fact that if the US were to treat a hacker's attack as being an excuse to invade Russia, it would treat the US itself as being already an invader of Russia - which the US prior to a President Hillary Clinton never actually has been, notwithstanding the routine nature of international cyber espionage (which Clinton has now stated she wants to become a cause of war), which has been, and will continue to be, essential in the present era. ..."
"... The International Business Times, an online-only site, headlined September 1 st , "Clinton: US should use 'military response' to fight cyberattacks from Russia and China" , and reported that a Pentagon official had testified to Congress on July 13 th , that current US policy on this matter is: "When determining whether a cyber incident constitutes an armed attack, the US government considers a broad range of factors, including the nature and extent of injury or death to persons and the destruction of or damage to property. Cyber incidents are reviewed on a case-by-case basis, and the national security leadership and the president will make a determination if it's an armed attack". ..."
"... Hillary's statement on this matter was simply ignored by The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, NPR, Fox, CNN, The Nation, The Atlantic, Harper's, National Review, Common Dreams, Alternet, Truthout, and all the rest of the US standard and 'alternative news' reporting organizations. Perhaps when Americans go to the polls to elect a President on November 8th, almost none of them will have learned about her policy on this incredibly important matter. ..."
"... Hillary's statement was in line with the current Administration's direction of policy, but is farther along in that direction than the Obama Administration's policy yet is. ..."
"... On Tuesday, June 14 th , NATO announced that if a NATO member country becomes the victim of a cyber attack by persons in a non-NATO country such as Russia or China, then NATO's Article V "collective defense" provision requires each NATO member country to join that NATO member country if it decides to strike back against the attacking country. ..."
"... NATO is now alleging that because Russian hackers had copied the emails on Hillary Clinton's home computer , this action of someone in Russia taking advantage of her having privatized her US State Department communications to her unsecured home computer and of such a Russian's then snooping into the US State Department business that was stored on it, might constitute a Russian attack against the United States of America, and would, if the US President declares it to be a Russian invasion of the US, trigger NATO's mutual-defense clause and so require all NATO nations to join with the US government in going to war against Russia, if the US government so decides. ..."
"... And finally, we did talk about cyber-security generally. I'm not going to comment on specific investigations that are still alive and active, but I will tell you that we've had problems with cyber-intrusions from Russia in the past, from other countries in the past, and, look, we're moving into a new era here, where a number of countries have significant capacities, and frankly we've got more capacity than anybody both offensively and defensively, but our goal is not to suddenly in the cyber-arena duplicate a cycle of escalation that we saw when it comes to other arms-races in the past, but rather to start instituting (9:00) some norms so that everybody's acting responsibly. ..."
"... "neoconservative" ..."
"... Hillary is now the neoconservatives' candidate . (And she's also the close friend of many of them, and hired and promoted many of them at her State Department .) If she becomes the next President, then we might end up having the most neoconservative (i.e., military-industrial-complex-run) government ever. This would be terrific for America's weapons-makers, but it very possibly would be horrific for everybody else. That's the worst lobby of all, to run the country . (And, as that link there shows, Clinton has received over five times as much money from it as has her Republican opponent.) ..."
"... George Herbert Walker Bush knows lots that the 'news' media don't report (even when it has already been leaked in one way or another), and the Clinton plan to destroy Russia is part of that. Will the Russian government accept it? Or will it do whatever is required in order to defeat it? This is already a serious nuclear confrontation . ..."
Hillary Clinton, on September 19th, was endorsed for President, by the most historically important,
intelligent, and dangerous, Republican of modern times.
She was endorsed then by the person who in 1990 cunningly engineered the end of the Soviet Union
and of its Warsaw Pact military alliance in such a way as
to continue the West's war against Russia so as to conquer Russia gradually for the owners of
US international corporations. The person, who kept his plan secret even from his closest advisors,
until the night of 24 February 1990, when he told them that what he had previously instructed them
to tell Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev as the West's future military intentions about Russia if
the USSR were to end, was actually a lie.
He also told them that they were henceforth to proceed forward on the basis that the residual
stump of the former Soviet Union, Russia, will instead be treated as if it still is an enemy-nation,
and that the fundamental aim of the Western alliance will then remain: to conquer Russia (notwithstanding
the end of the USSR, of its communism, and of its military alliances) - that the Cold War is to end
only on the Russian side, not at all, really, on the Western side. (All of that is documented from
the historical record, at that linked-to article.)
This person was the former Director of the US CIA, born US aristocrat, and committed champion
of US conquest of the entire world, the President of the United States at the time (1990):
George Herbert Walker Bush .
He informed the daughter of Robert F. Kennedy, Kathleen Hartington Kennedy Townsend - as she posted
it, apparently ecstatically, on September 19th, to her facebook page after personally having just
met with Mr. Bush - "The President told me he's voting for Hillary!!" She then confirmed this to
Politico the same day, which headlined promptly,
"George H.W. Bush to Vote for Hillary" .
G.H.W. Bush is an insider's insider: he would not do this if he felt that Hillary Clinton wouldn't
carry forward his plan (
which has been adhered-to by each of the US Presidents after him ), and if he felt that Donald
Trump - Bush's own successor now as the Republican US candidate for President - would not carry it
forward. (This was his most important and history-shaping decision during his entire Presidency,
and therefore it's understandable now that he would be willing even to cross Party-lines on his Presidential
ballot in order to have it followed-through to its ultimate conclusion.)
What indications exist publicly, that she will carry it forward? Hillary Clinton has already publicly
stated (though tactfully, so that the US press could ignore it) her intention to push things up to
and beyond the nuclear brink, with regard to Russia:
Russia even hacked into the Democratic National Committee, maybe even some state election
systems. So, we've got to step up our game. Make sure we are well defended and able to take the fight
to those who go after us. As President, I will make it clear, that the United States will
treat cyber attacks just like any other attack . We will be ready with serious political,
economic and military responses.
Russia denies that it did any such thing, but
the US even taps the phone conversations of Angela Merkel and other US allies ; and, of course,
the US and Russia routinely hack into each others' email and other communications; so, even if Russia
did what Clinton says, then to call it "like any other attack" against the United States and to threaten
to answer it with "military responses", would itself be historically unprecedented - which is what
Hillary Clinton is promising to do.
Historically unprecedented, like nuclear war itself would be. And she was saying this in the context
of her alleging that Russia had "attacked" the DNC (Democratic National Committee), and she as President
might "attack" back, perhaps even with "military responses". This was not an off-the-cuff remark
from her - it was her prepared text in a speech. She said it though, for example, on 26 October 2013,
Britain's Telegraph had headlined,
"US 'operates 80 listening posts worldwide, 19 in Europe, and snooped on Merkel mobile 2002-2013'
: US intelligence targeted Angela Merkel's phone from 2002 to 2013, according to new eavesdropping
leaks".
But now, this tapping against Merkel would, according to Hillary Clinton's logic (unless she intends
it to apply only by the United States against Russia), constitute reason for Germany (and
34 other nations ) to go to war against the United States.
Clinton also said there: "We need to respond to evolving threats from states like Russia,
China, Iran, and North Korea from networks, criminal and terrorist networks like ISIS. We need a
military that is ready and agile so it can meet the full range of threats, and operate on short notice
across every domain, not just land, sea, air and space, but also cyberspace".
She also said that the sequester agreement between the Congress and the President must end, because
US military spending should not be limited: "I am all for cutting the fat out of the budget and making
sure we stretch our dollars But we cannot impose arbitrary limits on something as important as our
military. That makes no sense at all. The sequester makes our country less secure. Let's end it and
get a budget deal that supports America's military". She wasn't opposing "arbitrary limits" on non-military
spending; she implied that that's not "as important as our military".
She was clear: this is a wartime US, not a peacetime nation; we're already at war, in her view;
and therefore continued unlimited cost-overruns to Lockheed Martin etc. need to be accepted, not
limited (by "arbitrary limits" or otherwise). She favors "cutting the fat out of the budget" for
healthcare, education, subsidies to the poor, environmental protection, etc., but not for war, not
for this war. A more bellicose speech, especially against "threats from states like Russia, China,
Iran, and North Korea from networks, criminal and terrorist networks like ISIS", all equating "states"
such as Russia and China, with "terrorist networks like ISIS", could hardly be imagined - as if Russia
and China are anything like jihadist organizations, and are hostile toward America, as such jihadist
groups are.
However, her threat to respond to an alleged "cyber attack" from Russia by "serious political,
economic and military responses" , is unprecedented, even from her. It was big news when she
said it, though virtually ignored by America's newsmedia.
The only US newsmedia to have picked up on Clinton's shocking threat were Republican-Party-oriented
ones, because the Democratic-Party and nonpartisan 'news' media in the US don't criticize a Democratic
nominee's neoconservatism - they hide it, or else find excuses for it (even after the Republican
neoconservative President George W. Bush's catastrophic and
lie-based neoconservative invasion of Iraq - then headed by the Moscow-friendly Saddam Hussein
- in 2003, which many Democratic office-holders, such as Hillary Clinton backed).
So, everything in today's USA 'news' media is favorable toward neoconservatism - it's now the
"Establishment" foreign policy, established notwithstanding the catastrophic Iraq-invasion,
from which America's 'news' media have evidently learned nothing whatsoever (because they're essentially
unchanged and committed to the same aristocracy as has long controlled them).
However, now that the Republican Party's Presidential nominee, Donald Trump, is openly critical
of Hillary Clinton's and George W. Bush's neoconservatism, any Republican-oriented 'news' media that
support Trump's candidacy allows its 'journalists' to criticize Clinton's neoconservatism; and, so,
there were a few such critiques of this shocking statement from Clinton.
The Republican Party's "Daily Caller" headlined about this more directly than any other US 'news'
medium,
"Clinton Advocates Response To DNC Hack That Would Likely Bring On WWIII" , and reported, on
September 1st, that "Clinton's cavalier attitude toward going to war over cyber attacks seems to
contradict her assertion that she is the responsible voice on foreign policy in the current election".
The Republican Washington Times newspaper headlined
"Hillary Clinton: US will treat cyberattacks 'just like any other attack'" , and reported that
she would consider using the "military to respond to cyberattacks," but that her Republican opponent
had indicated he would instead use only cyber against cyber: "'I am a fan of the future, and cyber
is the future,' he said when asked by Time magazine during the Republican National Convention about
using cyberweapons". However, Trump was not asked there whether he would escalate from a cyber attack
to a physical one. Trump has many times said that having good relations with Russia would be a priority
if he becomes President. That would obviously be impossible if he (like Hillary) were to be seeking
a pretext for war against Russia.
The mainstream The Hill newspaper bannered,
"Clinton: Treat cyberattacks 'like any other attack'" , and reported that, "Since many high-profile
cyberattacks could be interpreted as traditional intelligence-gathering - something the US itself
also engages in - the White House is often in a tricky political position when it comes to its response".
That's not critical of her position, but at least it makes note of the crucial fact that if the US
were to treat a hacker's attack as being an excuse to invade Russia, it would treat the US itself
as being already an invader of Russia - which the US prior to a President Hillary Clinton never actually
has been, notwithstanding the routine nature of international cyber espionage (which Clinton has
now stated she wants to become a cause of war), which has been, and will continue to be, essential
in the present era.
The International Business Times, an online-only site, headlined September 1 st ,
"Clinton: US should use 'military response' to fight cyberattacks from Russia and China" , and
reported that a Pentagon official had
testified to Congress on July 13 th , that current US policy on this matter is: "When
determining whether a cyber incident constitutes an armed attack, the US government considers a broad
range of factors, including the nature and extent of injury or death to persons and the destruction
of or damage to property. Cyber incidents are reviewed on a case-by-case basis, and the national
security leadership and the president will make a determination if it's an armed attack".
Hillary's statement on this matter was simply ignored by The New York Times, Wall Street Journal,
Washington Post, NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, NPR, Fox, CNN, The Nation, The Atlantic, Harper's, National
Review, Common Dreams, Alternet, Truthout, and all the rest of the US standard and 'alternative news'
reporting organizations. Perhaps when Americans go to the polls to elect a President on November
8th, almost none of them will have learned about her policy on this incredibly important matter.
Hillary's statement was in line with the current Administration's direction of policy, but is
farther along in that direction than the Obama Administration's policy yet is.
As
the German Economic News article had noted, but only in passing: "Just a few months ago, US President
Barack Obama had laid the legal basis for this procedure and signed a decree that equates hacker
attacks with military attacks". However, this slightly overstated the degree to which Obama has advanced
"this procedure". On 1 April 2016 - and not as any April Fool's joke - techdirt had headlined
"President Obama Signs Executive Order Saying That Now He's Going To Be Really Mad If He Catches
Someone Cyberattacking Us" and linked to the document, which techdirt noted was "allowing the
White House to issue sanctions on those 'engaging in significant malicious cyber-enabled activities'".
The writer, Mike Masnick, continued, quite accurately: "To make this work, the President officially
declared foreign hacking to be a 'national emergency' (no, really) and basically said that if the
government decides that some foreign person is doing a bit too much hacking, the US government can
basically do all sorts of bad stuff to them, like seize anything they have in the US and block them
from coming to the US". What Hillary Clinton wants to add to this policy is physical, military, invasion,
for practices such as (if Russia becomes declared by the US President to have been behind the hacking
of the DNC) what is actually routine activity of the CIA, NSA, and, of course, of Russia's (and other
countries') intelligence operations.
It wasn't directly Obama's own action that led most powerfully up to Hillary Clinton's policy
on this, but instead NATO's recent action - and NATO has always been an extension of the US President,
it's his military club, and it authorizes him to go to war against any nation that it decides to
have been invaded by some non-member country (especially Russia or China - the Saudis, Qataris, and
other funders behind international jihadist attacks are institutionally prohibited from being considered
for invasion by NATO, because the US keeps those regimes in power, and those regimes are generally
the biggest purchasers of US weapons). I reported on this at The Saker's site, on 15 June 2016, headlining
"NATO Says It Might Now Have Grounds to Attack Russia" . That report opened:
On Tuesday, June 14 th ,
NATO announced that if a NATO member country becomes the victim of a cyber attack by persons
in a non-NATO country such as Russia or China, then NATO's Article V
"collective defense"
provision requires each NATO member country to join that NATO member country if it decides to
strike back against the attacking country.
NATO is now alleging that because
Russian hackers had copied the emails on Hillary Clinton's home computer , this action of someone
in Russia taking advantage of her having privatized her US State Department communications to her
unsecured home computer and of such a Russian's then snooping into the US State Department business
that was stored on it, might constitute a Russian attack against the United States of America, and
would, if the US President declares it to be a Russian invasion of the US, trigger NATO's mutual-defense
clause and so require all NATO nations to join with the US government in going to war against Russia,
if the US government so decides.
So, Obama is using NATO to set the groundwork for Hillary Clinton's policy as (he hopes) America's
next President. Meanwhile, Obama's public rhetoric on the matter is far more modest, and less scary.
It's sane-sounding falsehoods. At the end of the G-20 Summit in Beijing, he held a
press conference September
5th (VIDEO at this link) , in which he was asked specifically (3:15) "Q: On the cyber front,
do you think Russia is trying to influence the US election?" and he went into a lengthy statement,
insulting Putin and saying (until 6:40 on the video) why Obama is superior to Putin on the Syrian
war, and then (until 8:07 in the video) blaming Putin for, what is actually, the refusal of the Ukrainian
parliament or Rada to approve the federalization of Ukraine that's stated in the Minsk agreement
as being a prerequisite to direct talks being held between the Donbass residents and
the Obama-installed regime
in Kiev that's been
trying to exterminate the residents of Donbass . Then (8:07 in the video), Obama got around to
the reporter's question:
And finally, we did talk about cyber-security generally. I'm not going to comment on specific
investigations that are still alive and active, but I will tell you that we've had problems with
cyber-intrusions from Russia in the past, from other countries in the past, and, look, we're moving
into a new era here, where a number of countries have significant capacities, and frankly we've got
more capacity than anybody both offensively and defensively, but our goal is not to suddenly in the
cyber-arena duplicate a cycle of escalation that we saw when it comes to other arms-races in the
past, but rather to start instituting (9:00) some norms so that everybody's acting responsibly.
He is a far more effective deceiver than is his intended successor, but Hillary's goals and his,
have always been the same: achieving what the US aristocracy want. Whereas she operates with a sledgehammer,
he
operates with a scalpel . And he hopes to hand this operation off to her on 20 January 2017.
This is what Hillary's statement that "the United States will treat cyber attacks just like any
other attack" is reflecting: it's reflecting that the US will, if she becomes President, be actively
seeking an excuse to invade Russia. The Obama-mask will then be off.
If this turns out to be the case, then it will be raw control of the US Government by the
military-industrial complex, which includes the arms-makers plus the universities . It's the
owners - the aristocrats - plus their servants; and at least 90% of the military-industrial complex
support Hillary Clinton's candidacy. Like her, they are all demanding that the sequester be ended
and that any future efforts to reduce the US Government's debts must come from cutting expenditures
for healthcare, education, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, environmental protection, and expenditures
on the poor; no cuts (but only increases) for the military. This is based on the conservative theory,
that the last thing to cut in government is the military.
George Herbert Walker Bush knows lots that the 'news' media don't report (even when it has already
been leaked in one way or another), and
the
Clinton plan to destroy Russia is part of that. Will the Russian government accept it? Or will
it do whatever is required in order to defeat it? This is already
a serious nuclear confrontation .
It was a cover up operation. No questions about that. Such instruction by a person under any investigation clearly mean tha attempt
of cover up...
Notable quotes:
"... There was a document dump on Friday, that we learned from the FBI that an IT contractor managing Hillary Clinton's private email server made reference to the "Hillary coverup operation" in a work ticket. He used those words after a senior Clinton aide asked him to automatically delete emails after 60 days. This IT worker certainly sounded like he was covering something up, no? ..."
"... The FBI dumped another 189 pages of documents pertaining to Clinton's use of an unsecured private server during her time as Secretary of State online Friday, with one note about a "coverup" raising eyebrows: ..."
"... After reviewing an email dated December 11, 2014 with the subject line 'RE: 2 items for IT support,' and a December 12, 2014 work ticket referencing email retention changes and archive/email cleanup, [redacted] stated his reference in the email to ' the Hilary [sic] coverup [sic] operation ' was probably due to the requested change to a 60 day email retention policy and the comment was a joke. ..."
"... "The fact an IT staffer maintaining Clinton's secret server called a new retention policy designed to delete emails after 60 days a 'Hillary coverup operation' suggests there was a concerted effort to systematically destroy potentially incriminating information. It's no wonder that at least five individuals tied to the email scandal, including Clinton's top State Department aide and attorney Cheryl Mills, secured immunity deals from the Obama Justice Department to avoid prosecution," said Trump spokesman Jason Miller in a statement on Friday. ..."
"... Comey told the House Oversight Committee on July 7 that the FBI "did not find evidence sufficient to establish that she knew she was sending classified information beyond a reasonable doubt to meet that - the intent standard" while claiming that prosecuting Clinton for gross negligence would perpetuate a "double standard." ..."
CNN anchor Jake Tapper confronted
Hillary Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook Sunday over an IT worker handling her private email server joking in a 2014 email about
a "Hillary coverup operation," with Mook dodging the question and blaming Republicans for "selectively leaking documents."
TAPPER:There was a document dump on Friday, that we learned from the FBI that an IT contractor managing Hillary
Clinton's private email server made reference to the "Hillary coverup operation" in a work ticket. He used those words after a
senior Clinton aide asked him to automatically delete emails after 60 days. This IT worker certainly sounded like he was covering
something up, no?
MOOK: Look, Jake, I'm - first of all I'm glad you asked that question. A lot of this stuff is swirling around in the
ether. It's important to pull back and look at the facts here. The FBI did a comprehensive and deep investigation into this. And
at the conclusion of that, FBI Director Comey came out and said to the world that there was no case here, that they have no evidence
of wrongdoing on Hillary's part.
TAPPER: So what's the "Hillary coverup operation" that the IT worker was referring to?
MOOK: Well, well, but this is - but this is - this is the perfect example of what's going on here. Republicans on the
House side are selectively leaking documents for the purpose of making Hillary look bad. We've asked the FBI to release all information
that they've shared with Republicans so they can get the full picture. But again, I would trust the career professionals at the
FBI and the Justice Department who looked into this matter, concluded that was no case, than I would Republicans who are selectively
leaking information.
The FBI dumped another 189 pages of documents pertaining to Clinton's use of an unsecured private server during her time as Secretary
of State online Friday,
with one
note about a "coverup" raising eyebrows:
After reviewing an email dated December 11, 2014 with the subject line 'RE: 2 items for IT support,' and a December 12,
2014 work ticket referencing email retention changes and archive/email cleanup, [redacted] stated his reference in the email to
' the Hilary [sic] coverup [sic] operation ' was probably due to the requested change to a 60 day email retention policy and the
comment was a joke.
The Trump campaign quickly leapt on the FBI's findings.
"The fact an IT staffer maintaining Clinton's secret server called a new retention policy designed to delete emails after
60 days a 'Hillary coverup operation' suggests there was a concerted effort to systematically destroy potentially incriminating information.
It's no wonder that at least five individuals tied to the email scandal, including Clinton's top State Department aide and attorney
Cheryl Mills, secured immunity deals from the Obama Justice Department to avoid prosecution," said Trump spokesman Jason Miller in
a statement on Friday.
Comey
told the House Oversight Committee on July 7 that the FBI "did not find evidence sufficient to establish that she knew she was
sending classified information beyond a reasonable doubt to meet that - the intent standard" while claiming that prosecuting Clinton
for gross negligence would perpetuate a "double standard."
"... Were I advising Trump I would have him cite the two criminal codes the FBI decided not to pursue..... by title and section. The rest of the questioning is inconsequential in relation to the huge favor the FBI gave Mrs. Clinton. ..."
"... Might be a wrong advice. This would be more directed at Obama, then Hillary. It was Obama who pardoned Hillary by exerting pressure on FBI. ..."
Were I advising Trump I would have him cite the two criminal codes the FBI decided not to pursue..... by title and section.
The rest of the questioning is inconsequential in relation to the huge favor the FBI gave Mrs. Clinton.
likbez -> ilsm... , -1
ilsm,
"...two criminal codes the FBI decided not to pursue....."
Might be a wrong advice. This would be more directed at Obama, then Hillary. It was Obama who pardoned Hillary by exerting
pressure on FBI.
"... Right there Clinton proves that she has absolutely no idea how basic diplomacy or negotiation (what the democrats like to call "compromise") works. You start from your best possible outcome (without treating your partner as a subhuman piece of trash or calling them by 3rd grade slanderous names) and work your way down to an agreement. You don't start from the worst possible outcome and work your way up like some crazy sadist. No wonder her judgement is so terrible. Her "success" measure is set just above " complete and utter failure, destruction". ..."
"... "Get Russia to the table"? Why would Putin want to "get to the table" when he knows very well the menu consists solely of a sh*t sandwich and the dinner host is calling you "Hitler"? ..."
"I'm trying to figure out what leverage we have to get Russia to the table. You know, diplomacy
is not about getting to the perfect solution. It's about how you balance the risks."
Right there Clinton proves that she has absolutely no idea how basic diplomacy or negotiation
(what the democrats like to call "compromise") works. You start from your best possible outcome
(without treating your partner as a subhuman piece of trash or calling them by 3rd grade slanderous
names) and work your way down to an agreement. You don't start from the worst possible outcome
and work your way up like some crazy sadist. No wonder her judgement is so terrible. Her "success"
measure is set just above " complete and utter failure, destruction".
"Get Russia to the table"? Why would Putin want to "get to the table" when he knows very
well the menu consists solely of a sh*t sandwich and the dinner host is calling you "Hitler"?
Zero Hedge
Earlier this week, a twitter user named " Katica " seemingly proved
the "intent" of the Hillary campaign to destroy and/or tamper with federal records by revealing the
Reddit thread of Paul Combetta (aka the "Oh Shit" guy; aka "stonetear"). But
what's most crazy about this story is that "Katica" was able to discover the greatest "bombshell" of the entire Hillary email
scandal with just a couple of internet searches while the FBI, with unlimited access to government records, spent
months "investigating" this case and missed it all . The only question now is whether the FBI "missed" this evidence because
of gross incompetence or because of other motivating factors ?
Now, courtesy of an opinion piece posted on
The Daily Caller
, we know exactly how "Katica" pieced her "bombshell" discovery together... the folks at the FBI may want to take some notes.
Per the twitter discussion below with @RepStevenSmith , "Katica"
discovered Combetta's Reddit thread on September 16th. But while she suspected that Paul Combetta and the Reddit user known
as "stonetear" were, in fact, the same person, she had to prove it...
Infowars reporter Lee Ann McAdoo talks to Rudy Dent, 32 year veteran of NYC fire department and
the NYPD, about his incredible first hand experience of the lies surrounding WTC 7.
Jeanne O'Mara 13 hours ago
This retired fireman feels that it was a a controlled demolition. He has never heard of a high
rise being brought down by a fire. There were other bldgs that were hit by debris from the burning
towers. He was also suspicious that all the evidence from WTC 7 was taken away and sent to china.
The crime scene should have protected but wasn't. He believe as many now do that t was a "false
Flag" operation to get people all riled up so they could get into react. He saw molten LAVA like
pockets of steel which is like what you see when a volcano explodes. It's called pyroclastic flow.
Thermite, a very special explosive was found and it can only be made a very specialized labs like
Los Alamos.
The bush family has a very creepy history. Prescott Bush had holdings in a bank that funded
the Nazis (Union Bank). It was seized by the CONGRESS. The Harrimans were also involved w this
bank.
It's also clear that Bush Sr had a role in JFK's assassination. JFK had asked A. Harriman to
negotiate w Vietnam and Harriman cross out that part. This was treason.
lora savage 1 week ago
That guy knows what he's talking about. It's about time someone came forward with what
may be true according to what he saw and knows.
9/11 is a cover-up and World Trade Center 7 collapse is the smoking gun. Why is that so?? WTC-7
fully collapsed in a manner that resembles a controlled demolition. For 2.25 seconds it collapsed
at freefall and National Institute of Standards and Technology now admits this. In order for it
to freefall for 2.25 seconds you need a uniform gap of approx. 80ft free of any physical impediments
(equivalent of blowing out 7 floors almost instantaneously).
Fire is not magic and cannot do that and only can be precisely done through human intervention.
It takes the prepositioning of demolition components that are finely timed throughout the building
to accomplish this. WTC-7 had GOV agencies as part of its tenant (US Secret Service, CIA, IRS,
DOD...) With tenants like that it is impossible for an outsider to get access to the building
to preposition demolition components. Whoever did had to have their consent!
"... When Samuelson described the sorting process in her FBI interview , she said that her first step was to find all the emails to or from Clinton and the people she regularly worked with in the State Department, and put all of those emails in the "work-related" category. ..."
"... But from the Abedin emails released so far, about 200 are previously unreleased emails between her and Clinton . Anyone who looks at these can see that the vast majority, if not all, of them are work-related. ..."
"... The Abedin emails released so far are only a small percentage of all her emails that are going to be released on a monthly basis well into 2017 . It is likely that Clinton's supposed 31,000 "personal" emails contain thousands of work-related emails to and from Abedin alone. Consider that only about 15% of the 30,000 Clinton emails released so far were between her and Abedin. ..."
"... It is further worth noting that these emails were not handed over with the rest of Clinton's 30,000 work-related emails, despite clearly being work-related, but were somehow uncovered by the State Department inspector general 's office. Those very emails are good examples of the kind of material Clinton may have tried to keep secret by controlling the sorting process. ..."
"... How many more headlines like that would there be if all 31,000 deleted emails became public before the November 2016 presidential election? It's easy to imagine a political motive for Clinton wanting to keep some work-related emails secret. ..."
"... on or around December 2014 or January 2015 , Mills and Samuelson requested that [Platte River Networks (PRN) employee Paul Combetta] remove from their laptops all of the emails from the July and September 2014 exports. [Combetta] used a program called BleachBit to delete the email-related files so they could not be recovered." ..."
"... With the emails of Mills and Samuelson wiped clean, and the old version of the server wiped clean, that left just two known copies of the emails: one on the new server, and one on the back-up Datto SIRIS device connected to the new server. ..."
"... Mills was interviewed by the FBI in April 2016 . She claimed that in December 2014 , Clinton decided she no longer needed access to any of her emails older than 60 days . Note that this came not long after the State Department formally asked Clinton for all of her work-related emails, on October 28, 2014 . Mills told the FBI that she instructed Combetta to modify the email retention policy on Clinton's clintonemail.com email account to reflect this change. Emails older than 60 days would then be overwritten several times, wiping them just as effectively as BleachBit. ..."
"... So although the retention policy change sounds like a mere technicality, in fact, Clinton passed the message through Mills that she wanted all her emails from when she was secretary of state to be permanently wiped. ..."
"... Think about Clinton wanting to delete all her old "personal" emails. As a politician with a wide network of contributors and supporters, the information in them could be highly valuable for her. For instance, if a major donor contacted her, she probably would want to review their past correspondence before responding. She'd preserved these emails for nearly two years, but just when investigators started to demand to see them, she decided she didn't want ANY of them, and all traces of them should be permanently wiped. And yet we're supposed to believe the timing is just a coincidence? ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... According to what Combetta later told the FBI, at some point between these two calls, he had an "Oh shit!" moment and remembered that he'd forgotten to make the requested retention policy change back in December . So, even though he told the FBI that he was aware of the emails from Mills mentioning the Congressional request to preserve all of Clinton's emails, he took action. ..."
"... the Datto backups of the server were also manually deleted during this timeframe ." ..."
"... Already, Combetta's behavior is damning. He didn't just change the data retention policy, as Mills had asked him to do, causing them to be permanently deleted 60 days later. He immediately deleted all of Clinton's emails and then wiped them for good measure, and almost certainly deleted them from the Datto back-up device too. ..."
"... To make matters worse for Combetta, on March 20, 2015 , the House Benghazi Committee sent a letter to Clinton's lawyer Kendall , asking Clinton to turn her server over to a neutral third party so it could be examined to see if any work-related emails were still on it. This was reported in the New York Times ..."
"... However, despite all these clear signs that the emails should be preserved, not only did Combetta confess in an FBI interview that "at the time he made the deletions in March 2015 , he was aware of the existence of the preservation request and the fact that it meant he should not disturb Clinton's email data on the [server]," he said that " he did not receive guidance from other PRN personnel, PRN's legal counsel or others regarding the meaning of the preservation request." So he confessed to obstruction of justice and other possible crimes, all to the apparent benefit of Clinton instead of himself! ..."
"... The FBI interviewed PRN's staff in September 2015. This almost certainly included Combetta and Bill Thornton, because they were the only two PRN employees actively managing Clinton's server. ..."
"... The fact that the FBI falsely claimed Combetta was only interviewed twice grows in importance given a recent New York Times ..."
"... Then, in May 2016 , he completely changed his story. He said that in fact he did make the deletions in late March 2015 after all, plus he'd wiped her emails with BleachBit, as described earlier. He also confessed to being aware of the Mills email with the preservation request. ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... For the FBI to give Combetta an immunity deal and then still not learn if he had been told to delete the emails by anyone working for Clinton due to a completely legally indefensible "attorney-client privilege" excuse is beyond belief. It would make sense, however, if the FBI was actually trying to protect Clinton from prosecution instead of trying to find evidence to prosecute her. ..."
"... In one Reddit post , he asked other server managers: "I may be facing a very interesting situation where I need to strip out a VIP's (VERY VIP) email address from a bunch of archived email that I have both in a live Exchange mailbox, as well as a .pst file. Basically, they don't want the VIP's email address exposed to anyone, and want to be able to either strip out or replace the email address in the to/from fields in all of the emails we want to send out. Does anyone have experience with something like this, and/or suggestions on how this might be accomplished?" ..."
"... Recall how Clinton allegedly claimed she didn't want to keep any of her deleted emails. It looks like that wasn't true after all. It sounds exactly as if Mills or someone else working for Clinton told him to make it look like all the "personal" emails were permanently deleted due to the 60 day policy change, while actually keeping copies of emails they still wanted. ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... First off, it's interesting that he said he did "a bunch" of "email filters and cleanup," because what has been reported by the FBI is that he only made a copy of all of Clinton's email and sent them off to be sorted in late July 2014 . That fits with his July 2014 Reddit post where he was trying to modify somebody's email address. ..."
"... For now, let us turn back to events in the fall of 2015 . In mid-August 2015 , Senator Ron Johnson (R) asked for and got a staff-level briefing from PRN about the management of Clinton's server, as part of Republican Congressional oversight of the FBI's investigation. It seems very likely that Combetta was a part of that briefing, or at least his knowledge heavily informed the briefing, because again only two PRN employees actively managed her server, and he was one of them. ..."
"... The dishonesty or ignorance of PRN in this time period can be clearly seen due to a September 12, 2015 Washington Post ..."
"... Datto expressed a willingness to cooperate. But because Datto had been subcontracted by PRN to help manage Clinton's server, they needed PRN's permission to share any information relating to that account. When PRN was first asked in early October 2015 , they gave permission. But about a week later, they changed their mind , forcing Datto to stay quiet. ..."
"... But more importantly, consider what was mentioned in an NBC News ..."
"... In an August 18, 2015 email, Combetta expressed concern that CESC, the Clinton family company, had directed PRN to reduce the length of time backups, and PRN wanted proof of this so they wouldn't be blamed. But he said in the email, "this was all phone comms [communications]." ..."
"... On September 2, 2016 , the FBI's final report of their Clinton email investigation was released (along with a summary of Clinton's FBI interview). This report revealed the late March 2015 deletions for the first time. Combetta's name was redacted, but his role, as well as his immunity deal, was revealed in the New York Times ..."
"... Chaffetz also wants an explanation from PRN how Combetta could refuse to talk to the FBI about the conference calls if the only lawyers involved in the call were Clinton's. ..."
"... PRN employees Combetta and Thornton were also given subpoenas on September 8 , ordering them to testify at a Congressional hearing on September 13, 2016 . Both of them showed up with their lawyers, but both of them pled the Fifth , leaving many questions unanswered. ..."
"... In a Senate speech on September 12, 2016 , Senator Charles Grassley (R) accused the FBI of manipulating which information about the Clinton email investigation becomes public . He said that although the FBI has taken the unusual step of releasing the FBI's final report, "its summary is misleading or inaccurate in some key details and leaves out other important facts altogether." He pointed in particular to Combetta's deletions, saying: "[T]here is key information related to that issue that is still being kept secret, even though it is unclassified. If I honor the FBI's 'instruction' not to disclose the unclassified information it provided to Congress, I cannot explain why." ..."
"... Regarding the FBI's failure to inform Congressional oversight committees of Combetta's immunity deal, Representative Trey Gowdy (R) recently commented, "If there is a reason to withhold the immunity agreement from Congress-and by extension, the people we represent-I cannot think of what it would be." ..."
"... The behavior of the FBI is even stranger. Comey was a registered Republican most of his life, and it is well known that most FBI agents are politically conservative. Be that as it may, if Comey made a decision beforehand based on some political calculation to avoid indicting Clinton no matter what the actual evidence was, that the FBI's peculiar behavior specifically relating to the Combetta deletions make much more sense. It would be an unprecedented and bold move to recommend indicting someone with Hillary Clinton's power right in the middle of her presidential election campaign. ..."
"... In this scenario, the FBI having Combetta take the fall for the deletions while making a secret immunity deal with him is a particularly clever move to prevent anyone from being indicted. Note that Combetta's confession about making the deletions came in his May 2016 FBI interview, which came after Mills' April 2016 interview in which she claimed she'd never heard of any deletions. Thus, the only way to have Combetta take the fall for the deletions without Mills getting caught clearly lying to the FBI is by dodging the issue of what was said in the March 31, 2015 conference with a nonsensical claim of "attorney-client privilege." ..."
"... I believe that criminal behavior needs to be properly investigated and prosecuted, regardless of political persuasion and regardless of the election calendar. Combetta clearly committed a crime and he even confessed to do so, given what he admitted in his last FBI interview. If he got a limited immunity deal instead of blanket immunity, which is highly likely, it still would be possible to indict and convict him based on evidence outside of his interviews. That would help explain why he recently pled the Fifth, because he's still in legal danger. ..."
"... But more importantly, who else is guilty with him? Logic and the available evidence strongly suggest that Clinton's lawyer Cheryl Mills at least knew about the deletions at the time they happened. Combetta has already confessed to criminal behavior-and yet somehow hasn't even been fired by PRN. If he didn't at least tell Mills and the others in the conference call about the deletions, there would be no logical reason to assert attorney-client privilege in the first place. Only the nonsensical assertion of this privilege is preventing the evidence coming out that should lead to Mills being charged with lying to the FBI at a minimum. And if Mills knew, can anyone seriously believe that Clinton didn't know too? ..."
Fast forward to the middle of 2014 . The
House Benghazi Committee was formed to investigate the US government's actions surrounding the 2012 terrorist
attack in Benghazi, Libya , and
soon a handful of emails were discovered relating to this attack involving Clinton's [email protected]
email address. At this point, nobody outside of Clinton's inner circle of associates knew she had exclusively used that private email
account for all her email communications while she was secretary of state, or that she'd hosted it on her own private email server.
It was decided that over 30,000 emails were work-related, and those were
turned over to the State Department on December 5, 2014 . These have all since been publicly released, though
with redactions. Another over 31,000 emails were
deemed personal , and Clinton kept those. They were later deleted in controversial circumstances that this essay explores in
detail.
It has become increasingly clear in recent months that this sorting process was highly flawed. Clinton has said any emails that
were borderline cases were given to the State Department, just to be on the safe side. But in fact,
the FBI later recovered about 17,500 of Clinton's "personal" emails . It is probable no government agency has yet gone through
all of these to officially determine which ones were work-related and which ones were not, but FBI Director
James Comey has said that "
thousands " were work-related.
We can get a glimpse of just how flawed the sorting process was because hundreds of emails from
Huma Abedin have been released in recent months, as
part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit . Abedin was Clinton's deputy chief of staff and still is one of her closest
aides.
When
Samuelson described the sorting process in her FBI interview , she said that her first step was to find all the emails to or
from Clinton and the people she regularly worked with in the State Department, and put all of those emails in the "work-related"
category.
But from the Abedin emails released so far,
about 200 are previously unreleased emails between her and Clinton . Anyone who looks at these can see that the vast majority,
if not all, of them are work-related. Many involve Abedin's state.gov government address, not her clintonemail.com
private address, so how on Earth did Samuelson's sorting process miss those? It has even come to light recently that a small
number of emails mentioning "Benghazi" have been found in the 17,500 recovered by the FBI, but
Samuelson told the FBI she had specifically searched for all emails using that word.
A sample of an email between Clinton and Abedin using her state.gov address. (Credit: public domain)
The
Abedin emails released so far are only a small percentage of all her emails that are going to be released on a monthly basis
well into 2017 . It is likely that Clinton's supposed 31,000 "personal" emails contain thousands of work-related
emails to and from Abedin alone. Consider that only about 15% of the 30,000 Clinton emails released so far were between her and Abedin.
If the rest of her deleted emails follow the same pattern as the Abedin ones, it is highly likely that the majority, and maybe
even the vast majority, of Clinton's deleted "personal" emails in fact are work-related.
... ... ...
FBI Director Comey has said he trusts that Clinton had made a sincere sorting effort, but the sheer number of
work-related emails that keep getting discovered suggests otherwise. Furthermore, logic and other evidence also suggest otherwise.
For instance,
in home
video footage from a private fundraiser in 2000 , Clinton talked about how she had deliberately avoided using
email so she wouldn't leave a paper trail: "As much as I've been investigated and all of that, you know, why would I? I don't even
want Why would I ever want to do email? Can you imagine?"
Practical considerations forced her to start using email a few years later. But what if her exclusive use of a private email address
on her own private server was not done out of "
convenience " as she claims, but so she could retain control of them, only turning over emails to FOIA requests and later government
investigators that she wanted to?
Note also that in a November 2010 email exchange between Clinton and Abedin, Abedin suggested that Clinton might
want to use a State Department email account due because the department computer system kept flagging emails from her private email
account as spam. Clinton replied that she was open to some kind of change, but "
I don't want any risk of the personal being accessible ." It is further worth noting that these emails were not handed over
with the rest of Clinton's 30,000 work-related emails, despite clearly being work-related, but were somehow uncovered by the
State Department inspector
general 's office. Those very emails are good examples of the kind of material Clinton may have tried to keep secret by controlling
the sorting process.
This essay will explore this possibility more later. But if it is the case that she wanted to keep those 31,000 "personal" emails
out of the public eye, she had obstacles to overcome. In 2014 , PRN had managerial control of both Clinton's new
and old server. Thus,
in July 2014 and
again in September 2014 , PRN employee Combetta had to send copies of all the emails to the laptop of Clinton
lawyer Cheryl Mills, and another copy to the laptop of Clinton lawyer Heather Samuelson, to be used for the sorting process.
With the sorting done, if Clinton didn't want the public to ever see her deleted emails, you would expect all these copies of
those emails to be permanently deleted, and that's exactly what happened. According to a later FBI report, "
on or around December 2014 or January 2015 , Mills and Samuelson requested that [Platte
River Networks (PRN) employee Paul Combetta] remove from their laptops all of the emails from the July and September 2014 exports.
[Combetta] used a program called BleachBit to delete the email-related files so they could not be recovered."
The FBI report explained, "BleachBit is open source software that allows users to 'shred' files, clear Internet history, delete
system and temporary files, and wipe free space on a hard drive. Free space is the area of the hard drive that can contain data that
has been deleted. BleachBit's 'shred files' function claims to securely erase files by overwriting data to make the data unrecoverable."
BleachBit advertises that it can "shred" files so they can never be recovered again.
With the emails of Mills and Samuelson wiped clean, and the old version of the server wiped clean, that left just two known
copies of the emails: one on the new server, and one on the back-up Datto SIRIS device connected to the new server.
Mills was interviewed by the FBI in April 2016 . She claimed that in December 2014 ,
Clinton decided she no longer needed access to any of her emails older than 60 days . Note that this came not long after the
State Department formally asked Clinton for all of her work-related emails,
on October 28, 2014 . Mills told the FBI that she instructed Combetta to modify the email retention policy on
Clinton's clintonemail.com email account to reflect this change. Emails older than 60 days would then be overwritten several times,
wiping them just as effectively as BleachBit.
Clinton essentially said the same thing as Mills
when she was interviewed by the FBI . Clinton also was interviewed by the FBI. According to the FBI summary of the interview,
she claimed that after her staff sent the 30,000 work-related emails to the State Department on December 5, 2014
, "she was asked what she wanted to do with her remaining [31,000] personal emails.
Clinton instructed her staff she no longer needed the emails."
So although the retention policy change sounds like a mere technicality, in fact, Clinton passed the message through Mills
that she wanted all her emails from when she was secretary of state to be permanently wiped.
Think about Clinton wanting to delete all her old "personal" emails. As a politician with a wide network of contributors and
supporters, the information in them could be highly valuable for her. For instance, if a major donor contacted her, she probably
would want to review their past correspondence before responding. She'd preserved these emails for nearly two years, but just when
investigators started to demand to see them, she decided she didn't want ANY of them, and all traces of them should be permanently
wiped. And yet we're supposed to believe the timing is just a coincidence?
But there was a problem with deleting them. Combetta later claimed that he simply forgot to make this change.
Then, on March 2, 2015 ,
the headline on the front page of the New York Times was a story revealing that while Clinton was secretary of state,
she had exclusively used a private email address hosted on her private server, thus keeping all of her email communications secret.
This became THE big story of the month, and the start of a high-profile controversy that continues until today.
Then, a day after that, on March 4, 2015 ,
the committee issued two subpoenas to her . One subpoena ordered her to turn over all emails relating to the Benghazi attack.
The committee had already
received about 300 such emails from the State Department in February 2015 , but after the Times story,
the committee worried that the department might not have some of her relevant emails. (That would later prove to be the case, given
the small number of Benghazi emails eventually recovered by the FBI.) The second subpoena ordered her to turn over documents it requested
in November 2014 but still has not received from the State Department, relating to communications between Clinton
and ten senior department officials.
Cheryl Mills (Credit: Twitter)
If Clinton had already deleted her emails to keep them from future investigators, these requests shouldn't have been a problem.
On March 9, 2015 ,
Mills sent an email to PRN employees , including Combetta, to make sure they were aware of the committee's request that all of
Clinton's emails be preserved. One can see this as a CYA ("cover your ass") move, since Mills would have believed all copies of Clinton's
"personal" emails had been permanently deleted and wiped by this time. The Times story and the requests for copies of Clinton's
emails that followed had seemingly come too late.
But that wasn't actually the case, since Combetta had forgotten to make the deletions!
Combetta deletes everything that is left
Sitting behind Combetta is co-founder of Platte River Brent Allshouse (left) and PRN attorney, Ken Eichner. (Credit: CSpan)
According to a later Combetta FBI interview, he claimed that on March 25, 2015,
there was a conference call between PRN employees , including himself, and some members of Bill Clinton's staff. (Hillary Clinton's
private server hosted the emails of Bill Clinton's staff too, and one unnamed staffer hired PRN back in 2013 .)
There was another conference call between PRN and Clinton staffers on March 31, 2015 , with at least Combetta,
Mills, and Clinton lawyer David Kendall taking part in that later call.
According to what Combetta later told the FBI, at some point between these two calls, he had an "Oh shit!" moment and remembered
that he'd forgotten to make the requested retention policy change back in December . So, even though he told the
FBI that he was aware of the emails from Mills mentioning the Congressional request to preserve all of Clinton's emails, he took
action. Instead of simply making the retention policy change, which would have preserved the emails for another two months,
he immediately deleted all of Clinton's emails from her server. Then he used BleachBit to permanently wipe them.
The Datto SIRIS S2000 was used for back-up services. (Credit: Datto, Inc.)
However, recall that there was a Datto SIRIS back-up device connected to the server and periodically making copies of all the
data on the server. Apparently, Combetta didn't mention this to the FBI, but the FBI found "evidence of these [server] deletions
and determined the Datto backups of the server were
also manually deleted during this timeframe ." The Datto device sent a records log back to the Datto company whenever any
changes were made, and according to a letter from Datto to the FBI that later became public, the deletions on the device were made
around noon on March 31, 2015 , the same date as the second conference call. (Although the server and Datto device
were in New Jersey and Combetta was working remotely from Rhode Island, he could make changes remotely, as he or other PRN employees
did on other occasions.)
A recent Congressional committee letter mentioned that the other deletions were also made on or around March 31, 2015
. So it's probable they were all done at the same time by the same person: Combetta.
Already, Combetta's behavior is damning. He didn't just change the data retention policy, as Mills had asked him to do, causing
them to be permanently deleted 60 days later. He immediately deleted all of Clinton's emails and then wiped them for good measure,
and almost certainly deleted them from the Datto back-up device too.
To make matters worse for Combetta, on March 20, 2015 ,
the House Benghazi Committee sent a letter to Clinton's lawyer Kendall , asking Clinton to turn her server over to a neutral
third party so it could be examined to see if any work-related emails were still on it. This was reported in the New York Times
and other media outlets.
Then, on March 27, 2015 ,
Kendall replied to the committee in a letter that also was reported on by the Times and others that same day. Kendall
wrote, "There is no basis to support the proposed third-party review of the server To avoid prolonging a discussion that would be
academic, I have confirmed with the secretary's IT [information technology] support that no emails for the time period January
21, 2009 through February 1, 2013 reside on the server or on any back-up systems associated with the server."
David Kendall (Credit: Above the Law)
When Kendall mentioned Clinton's IT support, that had to have been a reference to PRN. So what actually happened? Did Kendall
or someone else working for Clinton ask Combetta and/or other PRN employees if there were any emails still on the server in the
March 25, 2015 conference call, just two days before he sent his letter? Did Combetta lie in that
call and say they were already deleted and then rush to delete them afterwards to cover up his mistake? Or did someone working for
Clinton tell or hint that he should delete them now if they hadn't been deleted already? We don't know, because the FBI has revealed
nothing about what was said in that conference call or the one that took place a week later.
However, despite all these clear signs that the emails should be preserved, not only did Combetta confess in an FBI interview
that "at the time he made the deletions in March 2015 , he was aware of the existence of the preservation request
and the fact that it meant he should not disturb Clinton's email data on the [server]," he said that "
he did not receive guidance from other PRN personnel, PRN's legal counsel or others regarding the meaning of the preservation
request." So he confessed to obstruction of justice and other possible crimes, all to the apparent benefit of Clinton instead of
himself!
Investigations and cover-ups
This is perplexing enough already, but it gets stranger still, if we continue to follow the behavior of Combetta and PRN as a
whole.
An inside look at the Equinix facility in Secaucus, NJ. (Credit: Chang W. Lee / New York Time)
By August 2015 , the FBI's Clinton investigation was in full swing, and they began interviewing witnesses and
confiscating equipment for analysis. Because the FBI never empanelled a grand jury, it didn't have subpoena power, so it had to ask
Clinton for permission to seize her server.
She gave that permission on August 11, 2015 , and the server was
picked up from the data center in New Jersey the next day . But remember that there actually were two servers
there, an old one and a new one. All the data had been wiped from the old one and moved to the new one, so the new one was the more
important one to analyze. But the FBI only picked up the old one.
According to the FBI's final report, "At the time of the FBI's acquisition of the [server], Williams & Connolly [the law firm
of Clinton's personal lawyer David Kendall] did not advise the US government of the existence of the additional equipment associated
with the [old server], or that Clinton's clintonemail.com emails had been migrated to the successor [server] remaining at [the] Equinix
[data center]. The FBI's subsequent investigation identified this additional equipment and revealed the email migration." As a result,
the
FBI finally picked up the new server on October 3, 2015 .
A snippet from the invoice published by Complete Colorado on October 19, 2015. (Credit: Todd Shepherd / Complete Colorado) (Used
with express permission from CompleteColorado.com. Do not duplicate or republish.)
It's particularly important to know if Combetta was interviewed at this time. The FBI's final report clearly stated that
he was interviewed twice, in February 2016 and May 2016 , and repeatedly referred to what was
said in his "first interview" and "second interview." However, we luckily know that he was interviewed in September 2015
as well, because of a PRN invoice billed to Clinton Executive Service Corp. (CESC), a Clinton family company, that was made
public later in 2015 . The invoice made clear that Combetta, who was working remotely from Rhode Island, flew to
Colorado on September 14, 2015, and then "federal interviews" took place on September 15 . Combetta's
rental car, hotel, and return airfare costs were itemized as well. As this essay later makes clear, PRN was refusing to cooperate
with anyone else in the US government but the FBI by this time, so "federal interviews" can only mean the FBI.
One other person in the investigation, Bryan Pagliano, was given immunity as well. But his immunity deal was leaked to the media
and
had been widely reported on since March 2016 . By contrast, Combetta's immunity wasn't even mentioned in the
FBI's final report, and members of Congress were upset to first read about it in the Times , because they had never been
told about it either.
The mystery of this situation deepens when one looks at the FBI report regarding what Combetta said in his February 2016
and May 2016 interviews.
In February 2016 , he claimed that he remembered in late March 2015 that he forgot to make
the change to the email retention policy on Clinton's server, but that was it. He claimed he never did make any deletions. He also
claimed that he was unaware of the March 9, 2015 email from Mills warning of the Congressional request to preserve
all of Clinton's emails.
Paul Combetta (Credit: public domain)
Then, in May 2016 , he completely changed his story. He said that in fact he did make the deletions in
late March 2015 after all, plus he'd wiped her emails with BleachBit, as described earlier. He also confessed to
being aware of the Mills email with the preservation request.
It still hasn't been reported when Combetta's immunity deal was made. However, it seems probable that this took place between
his February 2016 and May 2016 interviews, causing the drastic change in his account. Yet, it looks
that he still hasn't been fully honest or forthcoming. Note that he didn't confess to the deletion of data on the Datto back-up device,
even though it took place at the same time as the other deletions. The FBI learned that on their own by analyzing the device.
Attorney-client privilege?!
More crucially, we know that Combetta has not revealed what took place in the second conference call between PRN and Clinton employees.
Here is all the FBI's final report has to say about that: "Investigation identified a PRN work ticket, which referenced a conference
call among PRN, Kendall, and Mills on March 31, 2015. PRN's attorney advised [Combetta] not to comment on the conversation with Kendall,
based upon the assertion of the attorney-client privilege ."
Sitting behind Paul Combetta at the House Oversight Committee hearing on September 13, 2016, is Platte River Networks attorney
Ken Eichner. (Credit: CSpan)
This is extremely bizarre. What "attorney-client privilege"?! That would only apply for communications between Combetta and his
lawyer or lawyers. It's clear that Combetta's lawyer isn't Mills or Kendall. The New York Times article about the immunity
deal made a passing reference to his lawyer, and, when Combetta showed up for a Congressional hearing on September 12
, he was accompanied by a lawyer who photographs from the hearing make clear is Ken Eichner, who has been the legal counsel
for PRN as a whole regarding Clinton's server.
Even if Combetta's lawyer Eichner was participating in the call, there is no way that should protect Combetta from having to tell
what he said to Clinton employees like Mills or Kendall. If that's how the law works, criminals could simply always travel with a
lawyer and then claim anything they do or say with the lawyer present is inadmissible as evidence due to attorney-client privilege.
It's absurd.
For the FBI to give Combetta an immunity deal and then still not learn if he had been told to delete the emails by anyone
working for Clinton due to a completely legally indefensible "attorney-client privilege" excuse is beyond belief. It would make sense,
however, if the FBI was actually trying to protect Clinton from prosecution instead of trying to find evidence to prosecute her.
Combetta's Reddit posts
A photo comparison of Combetta at the House Oversight Committee hearing (left) and a captured shot of Combetta as stonetear (right).
(Credit: CSpan and public domain)
Furthermore, how much can Combetta be trusted, even in an FBI interview? It has recently come to light that he made Reddit posts
under the username "stonetear." There can be no doubt this was him, because the details match perfectly, including him signing a
post "Paul," having another social media account for a Paul Combetta with the username "stonetear," having a combetta.com website
mentioning his "stonetear" alias, and even posting a photo of "stonetear" that matches other known photos of Combetta.
In one Reddit post , he asked other server managers: "I may be facing a very interesting situation where I need to strip
out a VIP's (VERY VIP) email address from a bunch of archived email that I have both in a live Exchange mailbox, as well as a .pst
file. Basically, they don't want the VIP's email address exposed to anyone, and want to be able to either strip out or replace the
email address in the to/from fields in all of the emails we want to send out. Does anyone have experience with something like this,
and/or suggestions on how this might be accomplished?"
The date of the post- July 24, 2014 -is very significant, because that was just one day after
Combetta sent CESE (the Clinton family company) DVDs containing some of Clinton's emails , so Clinton's lawyers could start the
sorting process. Also on July 23, 2014 , an unnamed PRN employee sent Samuelson and Mills the same emails electronically
directly to their laptops.
A response captured in the Reddit chat warning stonetear aka Combetta that what he wants to do could result in major legal issues.
(Credit: Reddit)
Popular software made by companies like Microsoft have tried to make it impossible for people to change email records, so people
facing legal trouble can't tamper with emails after they've been sent. Thus, when Combetta posed his problem at Reddit, other Reddit
users told him that what he wanted to do "could result in major legal issues." But that didn't deter him, and he kept asking for
various ways to get it accomplished anyway.
It isn't clear why Clinton would have wanted her email address removed from all her emails, since her exact address had already
been exposed in the media back in March 2013 by the hacker known as Guccifer. One Gawker reporter even used it to
email Clinton on March 20, 2013 : "[W] ere your emails to and from the [email protected] account archived according
to the provisions of the President Records Act and Freedom of Information Act?" (Clinton never replied, maybe because it's clear
in hindsight that an honest answer would have been "no.") But the fact that Combetta was willing to at least try to do this raises
questions, especially his seeming willingness to do something illegal for his "VIP" customer Hillary Clinton.
Combetta made another important Reddit post a few months later:
"Hello- I have a client who wants to push out a 60 day email retention policy for certain users. However, they also want these
users to have a 'Save Folder' in their Exchange folder list where the users can drop items that they want to hang onto longer than
the 60 day window. All email in any other folder in the mailbox should purge anything older than 60 days (should not apply to calendar
or contact items of course). How would I go about this? Some combination of retention and managed folder policy?"
Another question was captured of 'stonetear' aka Combetta asking Reddit users for technical help. (Credit: Reddit)
A captured shot of Combetta's 'stonetear' Gmail account with picture included. (Credit: public domain)
Recall how Clinton allegedly claimed she didn't want to keep any of her deleted emails. It looks like that wasn't true after
all. It sounds exactly as if Mills or someone else working for Clinton told him to make it look like all the "personal" emails were
permanently deleted due to the 60 day policy change, while actually keeping copies of emails they still wanted.
Looking at Combetta's two Reddit posts detailed above, there are only two possibilities. One is that Combetta failed to disclose
crucial information to the FBI, despite his immunity deal. The second is that he did, but the FBI didn't mention it in its final
report. Either way, it's already clear that the FBI has failed to present the full story of Combetta's actions to the public. And
how much of what Combetta has said can be trusted, even in his most recent and supposedly most forthcoming FBI interview?
David DeCamillis (Credit: Twitter)
Remarkably, there is a hint that Combetta was being dishonest even before his late March 2015 deletions. On
March 3, 2015 , one day after the front-page New York Times story revealing Clinton's use of a private
server, PRN's vice president of sales David DeCamillis sent an email to some or all of the other PRN employees. The email has only
been paraphrased in news reports so far, but he was already
wondering what Clinton emails the company might be asked to turn over .
Combetta replied to the email , "I've done quite a bit already in the last few months related to this. Her [Clinton's] team had
me do a bunch of exports and email filters and cleanup to provide a .pst [personal storage file] of all of HRC's [Hillary Rodham
Clinton's] emails to/from any .gov addresses. I billed probably close to 10 hours in on-call tickets with CESC related to it :)."
First off, it's interesting that he said he did "a bunch" of "email filters and cleanup," because what has been reported by
the FBI is that he only made a copy of all of Clinton's email and sent them off to be sorted in late July 2014 .
That fits with his July 2014 Reddit post where he was trying to modify somebody's email address.
But also, assuming that there aren't important parts to his email that haven't been mentioned by the media, consider what he didn't
say. The topic was possibly turning over Clinton's emails, and yet by this time Combetta had already deleted and wiped all of Clinton's
emails from the laptops of two Clinton lawyers and been asked to change the email retention policy on Clinton's server so that all
her emails would be permanently deleted there too, and yet he didn't bother to mention this to anyone else at PRN. Why?
We can only speculate based on the limited amount of information made public so far. But it seems as if Combetta was covering
up for Clinton and/or the people working for her even BEFORE he made his late March 2015 deletions!
Who knows about the deletions, and how?
Senator Ron Johnson (Credit: John Shinkle / Politico)
For now, let us turn back to events in the fall of 2015 . In mid-August 2015 ,
Senator Ron Johnson (R) asked for and got a staff-level briefing from PRN about the management of Clinton's server, as part of
Republican Congressional oversight of the FBI's investigation. It seems very likely that Combetta was a part of that briefing, or
at least his knowledge heavily informed the briefing, because again only two PRN employees actively managed her server, and he was
one of them.
Regardless of whether he was there or not, it is clear that PRN was not honest in the briefing. Almost nothing is publicly known
about the briefing except that it took place. However, from questions Johnson asked PRN in later letters, one can see that he knew
nothing about the March 2015 deletions by Combetta. In fact, just like the FBI, there is no indication he knew anything
about the transfer of the data from the old server to the new in that time period, which would be a basic fact in any such briefing.
Andy Boian (Credit: public domain)
The dishonesty or ignorance of PRN in this time period can be clearly seen due to a September 12, 2015 Washington Post article. In it, PRN spokesperson Andy Boian said, "
Platte River has no knowledge of the server being wiped ." He added, "All the information we have is that the server wasn't wiped."
We now know that not only was this untrue, but a PRN employee did the wiping!
This leads to two possibilities. One is that Combetta lied to his PRN bosses, so in September 2015 nobody else
in PRN knew about the deletions he'd made. The other is that additional people at PRN knew, but they joined in a cover-up.
At this point, it's impossible to know which of these is true, but one of them must be. PRN employees created work tickets and
other documentary evidence of the work they made, so one would think the company leadership would have quickly learned about the
deletions if they did any examination of their managerial actions to prepare for investigative briefings and interviews.
But either way, PRN as a whole began acting as if there was something to hide. Although the company agreed to the briefing of
Congressional staffers in mid-August 2015 , when
Senator Johnson wanted to follow this up with interviews of individual PRN employees in early September, PRN said no . When Congressional
committees began asking PRN for documents, they also said no, and kept saying no. Recently, as we shall see later, they've even defied
a Congressional subpoena for documents.
Austin McChord, founder and CEO of Datto, Inc. (Credit: Erik Traufmann / Hearst Connecticut Media)
At the same time Congressional committees began asking PRN for documents and interviews, they made those requests to Datto as
well.
Datto expressed a willingness to cooperate. But because Datto had been subcontracted by PRN to help manage Clinton's server,
they needed PRN's permission to share any information relating to that account. When PRN was first asked in early October
2015 , they gave permission.
But about a week later, they changed their mind , forcing Datto to stay quiet.
To make matters worse, in early November 2015 , PRN spokesperson Andy Boian gave a completely bogus public excuse
about this, saying that PRN and Datto had mutually agreed it was more convenient for investigators to deal with just one company.
Datto immediately complained in a letter sent to PRN and Senator Johnson that no such discussion or agreement between PRN and
Datto had ever taken place.
What is PRN hiding?
The Datto cloud mystery
There is another strange twist to Datto's involvement. Back in June 2013 when Datto was first subcontracted to
help with backing up the server data,
the Clinton family company CESC made explicit that they didn't want any of the data to be stored remotely . But due to some snafu
or miscommunication, it turns out that in addition to local back-ups being stored on the Datto device connected to the server, Datto
had been making periodic copies of the server data the whole time in the "cloud!" That means back-up copies of the data were being
transferred over the Internet and stored remotely, probably on other servers controlled by Datto.
Co-founders of PRN are Brent Allshouse (left) and Treve Suazo (right) (Credit: PRN)
PRN only
discovered this in early August 2015 , around the time the roles of PRN and Datto had with the server began
to be made public. PRN contacted Datto, told them to stop doing this, put all the data on a thumb drive, send it to them, and then
permanently wipe their remote copies of the server data.
It is unclear what happened after that. The FBI's final report
mentions a Datto back-up made on June 29, 2013 , just after all the data had been moved from the old server
to the new sever with the back-up, had been useful to investigators and allowed them to find some Clinton emails dating all the way
back to the first two months of her secretary of state tenure. However, it isn't clear if this is due to the local Datto SIRIS device
or the accidental Datto cloud back-up. Congressional committee letters show that they don't know either and have been trying to find
out.
Adding to the mystery, one would think that if Datto was making periodic back-ups either or both ways, the FBI would have been
able to recover all of Clinton's over 31,000 deleted emails and not just 17,000 of them. Consider that when PRN employees sent Clinton's
lawyers all of Clinton's emails to be sorted in July and September 2014 , they simply copied what
was on the server at the time, which presumably was the same amount of emails from years earlier than had been there in June
2013 , and thus backed up by Datto many times.
It's likely there are more twists to the cloud back-up story that have yet to be revealed.
What did Clinton and her aides know about the deletions?
Meanwhile, let's consider what Clinton and her aides may have known and when they knew it. When
Mills was interviewed by the FBI in April 2016 , according to the FBI, "Mills stated she was unaware that [Combetta]
had conducted these deletions and modifications in March 2015 ." Then,
when Clinton was interviewed by the FBI in July 2016 , "Clinton stated she was unaware of the March 2015 email
deletions by PRN."
This is pretty hard to believe. Mills was and still is one of Clinton's lawyers, and even attended Clinton's FBI interview. So
why wouldn't she have mentioned the deletions to Clinton between April and July 2016 , after she learned about them
from the FBI's questions to her? One would think Clinton would have been extremely curious to know anything about the FBI's possible
recovery of her deleted emails.
Clinton making a joking wipe gesture while speaking at a town hall on August 18, 2015, in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Credit: John Locher
/ The Associated Press)
But more importantly, consider what was mentioned in an NBC News report on August 19, 2015 . Clinton's
campaign acknowledged "that
there was an attempt to wipe [Clinton's] server before it was turned over last week to the FBI. But two sources with direct knowledge
of the investigation told NBC News that the [FBI] may be able to recover at least some data."
Is it plausible that people within Clinton's campaign knew this, and yet neither Mills nor Clinton did? How could that be? Note
that just one day before the NBC News report, Clinton had been directly asked if her server had been wiped.
She dodged the question by making the joke , " What-like with a cloth, or something?" Then she said she didn't "know how it works
digitally at all." Despite the controversy at the time about the cloth joke, her spokesperson claimed one month later, "I don't know
what 'wiped' means."
It's highly likely the issue had to have been discussed with Clinton at the time, but there was a conscious effort not to have
her admit to knowing anything, due to the on-going FBI investigation.
But more crucially, how could anyone at all working for Clinton know about the deletions as far back as August 2015
? Recall that this was within days of PRN giving a briefing to Congressional staffers and not telling them, and several
weeks prior to a PRN public comment that there was no evidence the server had been wiped.
Moreover, we have no evidence that the FBI knew about the deletions yet. Datto conducted an analysis of its device that had been
attached to Clinton's new server, and in an October 23, 2015 email,
told the FBI for the first time that deletions had taken place on that device on March 31, 2015 . Keep in mind
that even in his February 2016 FBI interview, Combetta claimed that no deletions had taken place in that time frame.
Does it make sense that he would have said that if he had reason to believe that PRN had been talking to Clinton's staff about it
in the months before? (None of the interviews in the FBI"s investigations were done under oath, but lying to the FBI is a felony
with a maximum five-year prison sentence.)
A sample of the email sent to the FBI by Datto attorney, Steven Cash on October 23, 2015. (Credit: House Science Committee)
So, again, how could Clinton's campaign know about the wiping in August 2015 ? The logical answer is that it
had been discussed in the conference call on March 31, 2015 , that took place within hours of the deletions.
Paul Combetta (Credit: public domain)
Perhaps Mills, Kendall, or someone else working for Clinton told Combetta to make the deletions, possibly during the first conference
call on March 25, 2015 . If that is the case, there should be obstruction of justice charges brought against anyone
involved. Or maybe Combetta did that on his own to cover his earlier mistake and then mentioned what he'd done in the second conference
call. If either scenario is true, Mills should be charged with lying to the FBI for claiming in her FBI interview that she knew nothing
about any of this. Clinton might be charged for the same if it could be proved what she knew and when.
Just as the email retention policy on the Clinton server was changed on the orders of people working for Clinton, so was the retention
policy on the Datto device connected to the server, in the same time period.
In an August 18, 2015 email, Combetta expressed concern that CESC, the Clinton family company, had directed
PRN to reduce the length of time backups, and PRN wanted proof of this so they wouldn't be blamed. But he said in the email, "this
was all phone comms [communications]."
Paul Combetta (left) Bill Thornton (right) (Credit: The Associated Press)
The next day , there was another email,
this one written by Thornton to Combetta and possibly others in PRN . The email has the subject heading "CESC Datto." Thornton
wrote: "Any chance you found an old email with their directive to cut the backup back in Oct-Feb. I know they had you cut it once
in Oct-Nov, then again to 30 days in Feb-ish." (Presumably this refers to October 2014 through February
2015 .)
Thornton continued: "If we had that email, then we're golden. [ ] Wondering how we can sneak an email in now after the fact asking
them when they told us to cut the backups and have them confirm it for our records. Starting to think this whole thing really is
covering up some shady shit. I just think if we have it in writing that they [CESC] told us to cut the backups, and we can go public
with our statement saying we have had backups since day one, then we were told to trim to 30 days, it would make us look a WHOLE
LOT better."
Combetta replied: "I'll look again, but I'm almost positive we don't have anything about the 60 day cut. [ ] It's up to lawyer
crap now, so just sit back and enjoy the silly headlines."
As an aside, it's curious that Combetta made some unsolicited additional comments in that same email that was supportive of Clinton's
position in the email controversy: "It wasn't the law to be required to use government email servers at the State Department, believe
it or not. Colin Powell used an AOL address for communicating with his staff, believe it or not."
If we take this email exchange at face value, then it appears that Clinton employees requested an email retention policy change
that would result in more deletion of data on the Datto back-up device in the October to November 2014 time range.
Keep in mind that the
State Department formally asked Clinton for all of her work-related emails , on October 28, 2014 , after informally
asking starting in July 2014 . Then, around February 2015 , Clinton employees asked for another
change that would have resulted in more deletions. Plus, they did this on the phone, leaving no paper trail. Is it any wonder that
Thornton wrote, "Starting to think this whole thing really is covering up some shady shit?"
News about PRN went quiet for the first half of 2016 . Congressional committees kept asking PRN and Datto for
more information (including another request for interviews in January 2016 ), and PRN kept saying no as well as
not giving Datto permission to respond.
James Comey (Credit: Fox News)
Then, on July 5, 2016 , FBI Director James Comey gave a surprise public speech in which
he announced he wouldn't recommend any criminal charges against Clinton or anyone else in the investigation. In the course of
his speech, he said it was "likely" that some emails may have disappeared forever because Clinton's lawyers "deleted all emails they
did not return to State, and the lawyers cleaned their devices in such a way as to preclude complete forensic recovery." But he said
that after interviews and technical examination, "we believe our investigation has been sufficient to give us reasonable confidence
there was no intentional misconduct in connection with that sorting effort."
Two days later, on July 7, 2016 , Comey had to explain his decision in front of a Congressional committee. During
that hearing, he was asked by Representative Trey Gowdy (R), "Secretary Clinton said neither she nor anyone else deleted work-related
emails from her personal account. Was that true?"
Comey replied: "That's a harder one to answer. We found traces of work-related emails in-on devices or in slack space. Whether
they were deleted or whether when the server was changed out, something happened to them. There's no doubt that the work-related
emails were removed electronically from the email system."
Consider that response. By the time Comey made those comments, the FBI's final report had already been finished, the report that
detailed Combetta's confession of deliberately deleting and then wiping all of Clinton's emails from her server. Comey was explicitly
asked if "anyone" had made such deletions, and yet he said he wasn't sure. Comey should be investigated for lying to Congress! Had
he revealed even the rough outlines of Combetta's late March 2015 deletions in his July 5, 2016
public speech or his Congressional testimony two days later , it would have significantly changed the public perception
of the results of the FBI investigation. That also would have allowed Congressional committees to start focusing on this
two months earlier than they did, enabling them to uncover more in the limited time before the November
presidential election.
The SECNAP Logo (Credit: SECNAP)
Despite the fact that the Combetta deletions were still unknown, Congressional committees began putting increasing pressure on
PRN anyway.
On July 12, 2016 , two committees jointly wrote a letter to PRN , threatening subpoenas if they still refused
to cooperate. The letter listed seven PRN employees they wanted to interview, including Combetta and Thornton. Similar letters went
out to Datto and SECNAP. (SECNAP was subcontracted by PRN to carry out threat monitoring of the network connected to Clinton's server.)
On August 22, 2016 , after all three companies still refused to cooperate, Representative Lamar Smith (R), chair
of the Committee on Science, Space and Technology,
issued subpoenas for PRN, Datto, and SECNAP .
On September 2, 2016 ,
the FBI's final report of their Clinton email investigation was released (along with a summary of Clinton's FBI interview). This
report revealed the late March 2015 deletions for the first time. Combetta's name was redacted, but his role, as
well as his immunity deal, was revealed in the New York Times article published a few days later.
Congressional investigators fight back
Channing Phillips (Credit: public domain)
Since the report has been released, Congressional Republicans have stepped up their efforts to get answers about the Combetta
mystery, using the powers of the committees they control. On September 6, 2016 , Representative Jason Chaffetz (R),
chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee,
wrote a letter to Channing Phillips , the US attorney for the District of Columbia. He asked the Justice Department to "investigate
and determine whether Secretary Clinton or her employees and contractors violated statutes that prohibit destruction of records,
obstruction of congressional inquiries, and concealment or cover up of evidence material to a congressional investigation." Clearly,
this relates to the Combetta deletions.
Representative Jason Chaffetz. (Credit: Cliff Owen / The Associated Press)
On the same day ,
Chaffetz sent a letter to PRN warning that Combetta could face federal charges for deleting and wiping Clinton's emails in
late March 2015 , due to the Congressional request to preserve them earlier in the month that he admitted he was
aware of. Chaffetz also wants an explanation from PRN how Combetta could refuse to talk to the FBI about the conference calls
if the only lawyers involved in the call were Clinton's.
Chaffetz serves the FBI a subpoena during a House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee hearing on September 9, 2016. (Credit:
ABC News)
On September 9 ,
Chaffetz served the FBI a subpoena for all the unredacted interviews from the FBI's Clinton investigation, especially those of
Combetta and the other PRN employees. This came after an FBI official testifying at a hearing remarkably suggested that Chaffetz
should file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to get the documents, just like any private citizen can.
On September 8, 2016 ,
Congressional committees served the subpoenas they'd threatened in August. PRN, Datto, and SECNAP were given until the end of
September 12 to finally turn over the documents the committees had been requesting for year. Datto complied and
turned over the documents in time. However, PRN and SECNAP did not.
Representative Lamar Smith (Credit: public domain)
The next day, September 13 , Representative Lamar Smith (R) said , "just this morning SECNAP's [legal] counsel
confirmed to my staff that the Clinton's private LLC [Clinton Executive Service Corp.] is actively engaged in directing their obstructionist
responses to Congressional subpoenas."
PRN employees Combetta and Thornton were also given subpoenas on September 8 , ordering them to testify at
a Congressional hearing on September 13, 2016 . Both of them showed up with their lawyers, but
both of them pled the Fifth , leaving many questions unanswered.
An FBI cover-up?
In a Senate speech on September 12, 2016 , Senator Charles Grassley (R)
accused the FBI of manipulating which information about the Clinton email investigation becomes public . He said that although
the FBI has taken the unusual step of releasing the FBI's final report, "its summary is misleading or inaccurate in some key details
and leaves out other important facts altogether." He pointed in particular to Combetta's deletions, saying: "[T]here is key information
related to that issue that is still being kept secret, even though it is unclassified. If I honor the FBI's 'instruction' not to
disclose the unclassified information it provided to Congress, I cannot explain why."
Senator Charles Grassley takes to the Senate floor on September 12, 2016. (Credit: CSpan)
He also said there are dozens of completely unclassified witness reports, but even some of his Congressional staffers can't see
them "because the FBI improperly bundled [them] with a small amount of classified information, and told the Senate to treat it all
as if it were classified." The normal procedure is for documents to have the classified portions marked. Then the unclassified portions
can be released. But in defiance of regulations and a clear executive order on how such material should be handled, "the FBI has
'instructed' the Senate office that handles classified information not to separate the unclassified information." As a result, Grassley
claims: "Inaccuracies are spreading because of the FBI's selective release. For example, the FBI's recently released summary memo
may be contradicted by other unclassified interview summaries that are being kept locked away from the public."
He said he has been fighting the FBI on this, but without success so far, as the FBI isn't even replying to his letters.
Thus, it seems that Comey failing to mention anything about the Combetta deletions in the July 7, 2016 Congressional
hearing, even when directly asked about it, was no accident. Having the FBI report claim that Combetta was only interviewed twice
when there is clear evidence of three interviews also fits a pattern of concealment related to the deletions.
James Comey testifies to the House Benghazi Committee on July 7, 2016. (Credit: Jack Gruber / USA Today)
Regarding the FBI's failure to inform Congressional oversight committees of Combetta's immunity deal, Representative Trey
Gowdy (R) recently commented, "If there is a reason to withhold the immunity agreement from Congress-and by extension, the people
we represent-I cannot think of what it would be."
Gowdy, who is a former federal prosecutor, also
said on September 9 that there are two types of immunity Combetta could have received : use and transactional.
"If the FBI and the Department of Justice gave this witness transactional immunity, it is tantamount to giving the triggerman immunity
in a robbery case." He added that he is "stunned" because "It looks like they gave immunity to the very person you would most want
to prosecute."
This is as much as we know so far, but surely the story won't stop there. PRN has been served a new subpoena. It is likely the
requested documents will be seized from them soon if they continue to resist.
Taking the fall and running out the clock
But why does PRN resist so much? Computer companies often resist sharing information with the government so their reputation with
their clients won't be harmed. But defying a subpoena when there clearly are legitimate questions to be answered goes way beyond
what companies normally do and threatens PRN's reputation in a different way. Could it be that PRN-an inexplicable choice to manage
Clinton's server-was chosen precisely because whatever Clinton aide hired them had reason to believe they would be loyal if a problem
like this arose?
David DeCamillis (Credit: public domain)
There is some anecdotal evidence to support this. It has been
reported that PRN has ties to prominent Democrats . For instance, the company's vice president of sales David DeCamillis is said
to be a prominent supporter of Democratic politicians, and once offered to let Senator Joe Biden (D) stay in his house in
2008 , not long before Biden became Obama's vice president. The company also has done work for John Hickenlooper, the Democratic
governor of Colorado. And recall the email in which Combetta brought up points to defend Clinton in her email controversy, even though
the email exchange was on a different topic.
The behavior of the FBI is even stranger. Comey was a registered Republican most of his life, and it is well known that most
FBI agents are politically conservative. Be that as it may, if Comey made a decision beforehand based on some political calculation
to avoid indicting Clinton no matter what the actual evidence was, that the FBI's peculiar behavior specifically relating to the
Combetta deletions make much more sense. It would be an unprecedented and bold move to recommend indicting someone with Hillary Clinton's
power right in the middle of her presidential election campaign.
It's naive to think that political factors don't play a role, on both sides. Consider that virtually every Democratic politician
has been supportive of Clinton in her email controversy, or at least silent about it, while virtually every Republican has been critical
of her about it or silent. Comey was appointed by Obama, and if the odds makers are right and Clinton wins in November
, Comey will continue to be the FBI director under President Clinton. (Comey was appointed to a ten-year term, but Congress
needs to vote to reappoint him after the election.) How could that not affect his thinking?
Comey could be trying to run out the clock, first delaying the revelations of the Combetta's deletions as much as possible, then
releasing only selected facts to diminish the attention on the story.
In this scenario, the FBI having Combetta take the fall for the deletions while making a secret immunity deal with him is
a particularly clever move to prevent anyone from being indicted. Note that Combetta's confession about making the deletions came
in his May 2016 FBI interview, which came after Mills' April 2016 interview in which she claimed
she'd never heard of any deletions. Thus, the only way to have Combetta take the fall for the deletions without Mills getting caught
clearly lying to the FBI is by dodging the issue of what was said in the March 31, 2015 conference with a nonsensical
claim of "attorney-client privilege."
Unfortunately, if that is Comey's plan, it looks like it's working. Since the FBI's final report came out on September
2, 2016 , the mainstream media has largely failed to grasp the significance of Combetta and his deletions, focusing on far
less important matters instead, such as the destruction of a couple of Clinton's BlackBerry devices with hammers-which actually was
better than not destroying them and possibly letting them fall into the wrong hands.
The House Benghazi Committee in session in 2015. (Credit: C-SPAN3)
What happens next appears to largely be in the hands of Congressional Republicans, who no doubt will keep pushing to find out
more, if only to politically hurt Clinton before the election. But it's also in the hands of you, the members of the general public.
If enough people pay attention, then it will be impossible to sweep this controversy under the rug.
I believe that criminal behavior needs to be properly investigated and prosecuted, regardless of political persuasion and
regardless of the election calendar. Combetta clearly committed a crime and he even confessed to do so, given what he admitted in
his last FBI interview. If he got a limited immunity deal instead of blanket immunity, which is highly likely, it still would be
possible to indict and convict him based on evidence outside of his interviews. That would help explain why he recently pled the
Fifth, because he's still in legal danger.
Paul Combetta and Bill Thornton plead the Fifth on September 13, 2016. (Credit: CSpan)
But more importantly, who else is guilty with him? Logic and the available evidence strongly suggest that Clinton's lawyer
Cheryl Mills at least knew about the deletions at the time they happened. Combetta has already confessed to criminal behavior-and
yet somehow hasn't even been fired by PRN. If he didn't at least tell Mills and the others in the conference call about the deletions,
there would be no logical reason to assert attorney-client privilege in the first place. Only the nonsensical assertion of this privilege
is preventing the evidence coming out that should lead to Mills being charged with lying to the FBI at a minimum. And if Mills knew,
can anyone seriously believe that Clinton didn't know too?
As the saying goes, "it's not the crime, it's the cover up." This is an important story, and not just election season mudslinging.
The public needs to know what really happened.
"... I wonder if there is a simpler explanation. US immigration policy has come to be about suppressing wages. The suppressing wages operation has been great for those at the top of the food chain at the cost of overall growth. ..."
"... As long as there exist Western countries to act as "safety valves" there is no incentive for immigrant source countries to correct the deficiencies in their economical / political / social systems or resolve ongoing conflicts. In fact, there is every incentive to maintain the status quo. ..."
"... And when will the Wester polity finally figure out that if you destabilize a metastable regime by force, the result isn't stability but inevitably chaos and a further flood of refugee/immigrants? ..."
"... Now most of the net immigration across the US-Mexican border comes from Central America: countries such as El Salvador and Guatemala destabilized by the Reagan regime in the 1980s. Now they're dominated by violent gangs trained in California prisons and repatriated to Central America. ..."
"... Immigration across the U.S.-Mexican border is driven by Central American refugees fleeing gross instability, crime and violence in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala; not by Mexicans. The U.S. played a deep long-term role in creating the mess that Central America is today. ..."
"... U.S. creates instability (war, coup) in a region. ..."
"... The ensuing instability creates a class of desperate folks, who then seek bodily, economic, and political safety within the borders of the empire. This leads to a class of desperate workers, often undocumented and constantly at risk of deportation, willing to work for far less compensation than the native population. ..."
"... Poorer countries suffer brain drain. They do receive large amount of remittances, but an economy which sends its best and the brightest to benefit the industrial countries and receives industrial products in exchange does not seem like it can develop very easily. ..."
"... Here's a somewhat interesting backgrounder on American immigration. The author's premise is that US immigration policies were always about race (white Europeans welcome to stay, brown Mexicans welcome to do manual labor and leave) but this is undoubtedly a simplification as the discrimination in favor of high skills–talked about in the above post–undoubtedly a factor. ..."
"... most other countries do not offer citizenship unless you have something valuable to offer them. An acquaintance who thought about becoming Canadian found this out. ..."
"... It is dangerous for Trump to demonize undocumented immigrants without holding the corporations that attracted and hired them responsible and the system that allowed it. ..."
"... I would argue that migration has both positive and negative impact on the receiving country. But at some point I believe the 'self' is selfish and not necessarily selfless. In a world of limited resources and opportunities it is normal for the 'self' to be highly selfish hence the contradictory nature of the theory of free market economy under globalization. ..."
"... So the UK National Health system nurtured me through my early years, and the UK education system gave me primary, secondary and degree level education. I have spent most of my working life doing an R&D job in the US. The US has benefited from my work during my working life. If I should choose to retire back to the UK, I will remit my pension income back there, and because of the tax treaty, pay income taxes there, which I claim as a full credit against the US tax return. So I'm "taking money out of the US, to the detriment of social cohesion and economic growth". ..."
"... H1-B visas tap larger, typically Asian populations than the U.S. for their best & brightest. ..."
"... Roughly 50% of the undocumented are from Asia. Yet 90% of the deportations are Hispanic. ..."
"... My experience is that the Asian population is either native or here on student visas. The chinese student population is quite large in Los Angeles. Student visas don't allow foreign students to work off-campus, so many of them are family-funded. So they're not taking jobs, but do impact the housing/rental market. (The California colleges love them for their out-of-state fees and strong study habits.) ..."
Posted on
September 21, 2016 by
Yves Smith Yves here.
I wonder if there is a simpler explanation. US immigration policy has come to be about suppressing
wages. The suppressing wages operation has been great for those at the top of the food chain at the
cost of overall growth.
In
a
recent post , I showed that looking at data since 1950 or so, the percentage of the population
that is foreign born is negatively correlated with job creation in later years. I promised an explanation,
and I will attempt to deliver on that promise in this post.
I can think of a few reasons for the finding, just about all of which would have been amplified
since LBJ's Presidency due to two things: the 1965 Hart-Cellar Act and the launch of the Great Society.
The Hart-Cellar Act may be better known as the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. It phased
out country quotas in existence since the 1920s. As a result of these quotas, about 70% of all immigrants
were coming from England, Germany and Ireland, with most of the remainder coming from elsewhere in
Western Europe and from Latin America. The Great Society, of course, included a number of welfare
programs, many of which (or their descendants) are still in existence.
With that, reasons why the foreign born population is negatively correlated with subsequent job
creation include:
1. Immigrants who are sufficiently similar to the existing population when it comes to language,
culture, skillsets and expectations will integrate more smoothly. Slower and more imperfect integration
necessarily requires more expenditure of resources, resources which otherwise could go toward economic
development.
2. Naturally, skills and values that are more productive and efficient than those of the existing
population are conducive toward growth. Conversely, bringing inferior technology and processes
does not improve the economy. As the source of immigrants shifted away from sources of sources of
high technology like England and Germany and toward the developing and not-developing world, the
likelihood that a randomly selected new immigrant will improve productivity diminishes.
3. Eligibility for welfare can change the incentive structure for existing and potential immigrants.
An immigrant arriving in the US in 1890 certainly had no expectation of being supported by the
state. It may be that most immigrants arriving in the US now also don't have that expectation. However,
it is no secret that welfare exists so some percentage of potential immigrants arrive expecting to
be supported to some degree by the state. In some (many?) cases, the expectation increases post-arrival.
(Like any great economist, Milton Friedman got a lot of things wrong about how the economy works
but he had a point when he said you can have a welfare state or open borders but not both.)
4. Rightly or wrongly, reasons 1 – 3 above may combine to create resentment in the existing
population. Think "my grandparents came to this country with nothing and nobody gave them anything "
Resentment can break down trust and institutions necessary for the economy to function smoothly.
5. Over time, transportation has become cheaper and easier. As a result, the likelihood
that an immigrant has come to the US to stay has diminished. Many immigrants come to the US for several
years and then go back to their country of origin. This in turn leads to four issues that can have
negative impacts on the economy:
5a. Immigrants that expect to leave often send back remittances, taking resources out of the
US economy. For example, in 2010, remittances from workers in the US
amounted to 2.1% of Mexican GDP .
5b. Relative to many non-Western countries, the US taxpayer invests heavily in the creation
of a state that is conducive toward acquiring useful skills and education. Often, the acquisition
of such skills and education is heavily subsidized. When people acquire those tools and then leave
without applying them, the value of the resources could have been better spent elsewhere.
5c. Immigrants who don't expect to stay can have less reason to integrate culturally and economically;
any real estate investor can tell you that all else being equal, a neighborhood made up largely
of homeowners is almost always nicer than a neighborhood made up largely of renters.
5d. Immigrants who arrive with a non-negligible expectation of leaving are, on average, more
likely to take risks which generate private gains and social losses. If the bet goes well, congratulations.
If the bet goes bad, "so long suckers!" The bet may even involve a crime.
6. (This one is more conjecture than the others – I think it is true, but I haven't given it
enough thought, particularly whether it is entirely separate from the previous reasons.) The
non-existence of a lump of labor does not mean there isn't a population to labor multiplier, or that
the multiplier cannot change over time. In an era of relatively slow economic growth, economies of
scale, and outsourcing abroad, the number of new employment opportunities per new customer (i.e.,
job creation per resident) can shrink. We've certainly seen something resembling that since about
2000.
None of this is to say that immigration is good or bad, or even that it should be opposed or encouraged.
In this post I simply tried to explain what I saw in the data. I will have one or more follow-up
posts.
I think one of the best things the US can do re immigration is to develop policies that make
it easier for people to stay in their country of origin which many probably want to do. Our policies
have tended to have the opposite effect such as
and Syria/Libya etc "An estimated 11 million Syrians have fled their homes
since the outbreak of the civil war in March 2011. Now, in the sixth year of war, 13.5 million
are in need of humanitarian assistance within the country. " (
http://syrianrefugees.eu/ )
We are also very much in need of a job guarantee paying a living wage which would put pressure
on major employers such as Walmart and McDonalds and get their executives off of government subsidies.
(they pay a wage so low their workers are forced into food stamps and medicaid) (One of the major
beneficiaries of the nation's food-stamp program is actually a hugely profitable company:
Walmart .) (
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/31/walmart-food-stamps_n_4181862.html )
Another great post, read word-for-word, and I very much look forward your subsequent ones.
You've cogently explored the "yin" of immigration, but what about the "yang"?
As long as there exist Western countries to act as "safety valves" there is no incentive
for immigrant source countries to correct the deficiencies in their economical / political / social
systems or resolve ongoing conflicts. In fact, there is every incentive to maintain the status
quo.
And when will the Wester polity finally figure out that if you destabilize a metastable
regime by force, the result isn't stability but inevitably chaos and a further flood of refugee/immigrants?
'As long as there exist Western countries to act as "safety valves" there is no incentive
for immigrant source countries to correct the deficiencies in their economical / political / social
systems or resolve ongoing conflicts.'
After a mere ten years, NAFTA succeeded in reversing net immigration from Mexico.
Now most of the net immigration across the US-Mexican border comes from Central America:
countries such as El Salvador and Guatemala destabilized by the Reagan regime in the 1980s. Now
they're dominated by violent gangs trained in California prisons and repatriated to Central America.
Increasingly Mexico will focus on its own southern border with Guatemala, as it becomes more
of a destination country rather than simply a transit country, as detailed here:
Immigration across the U.S.-Mexican border is driven by Central American refugees fleeing
gross instability, crime and violence in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala; not by Mexicans.
The U.S. played a deep long-term role in creating the mess that Central America is today.
Yes. It is a pernicious cycle with something like these dimensions. . .
U.S. creates instability (war, coup) in a region.
The ensuing instability creates a class of desperate folks, who then seek bodily, economic,
and political safety within the borders of the empire. This leads to a class of desperate workers,
often undocumented and constantly at risk of deportation, willing to work for far less compensation
than the native population.
Native population sees the contours of its society change with the influx along with a
lessening in quality of living standards, which leads to dangerous, xenophobic mental associations.
Xenophobic politics begin to take root and thrive.
The real solution is for our country to stop doing step 1.
Poorer countries suffer brain drain. They do receive large amount of remittances, but an
economy which sends its best and the brightest to benefit the industrial countries and receives
industrial products in exchange does not seem like it can develop very easily.
Its clear that the emigree benefits, and the receiving country receives a subsidy in the form
of valuable human capital. But how does the originating country develop? Invest in education and
the best leave. Invest in industry and you compete with the products of the developed countries.
And of course, the rich in unstable countries have little reason to care about the long term
consequences of their actions if they can take their loot and run. There is a reason so many rich
Chinese are emigrating.
David Harvey once told a story about how he warned investment bankers that if things keep getting
worse, the US could end up a failed state like Mexico. In typical Wall Street fashion they asked
Harvey if they should buy villas in France.
I think this is the first article I have EVER read that even supposes there might be negative
ECONOMIC effects of immigration.
I would note that if there ever was a jobs program with the explicit goal of reducing unemployment
to 4% (and not pretending the people who have dropped out don't want a job because they CAN'T
get a job) and providing a job to any and all applicants – well, I think the immigration from
South America that has slowed would amp right up again – of course.
You know, I have been reading some of the Davos Man class going on and on about how they didn't
really do enough to ameliorate the negative effects of "free" trade on those who don't benefit
from trade. But NAFTA is going on a quarter of a century – and in every subsequent trade deal
such promises are either never kept or never effectively implemented.
I suspect that to REALLY provide jobs of equal pay and equal benefits is not economically feasible.
Think of it this way – people who worked as landscapers, when displaced by immigrants, may not
have the aptitude, skills, or even desire to change careers – if you work outside, why in the
hell do you want to have to start working indoors???
Go to college and become a computer programmer .H1b .
What are you gonna do keep these people employed – have the same lawn mowed twice every week?
Have the same computer code written twice?????
Again, the whole scenario has struck me as not being ever critically thought through. The benefits
to consumers getting low prices are endlessly pointed out, but the negative effect of fewer jobs
at low pay are glossed over or NOT ACKNOWLEDGED. The whole deal is that less income to workers
and more income to capital – is it REALLY unforseeable that eventually there will be a demand
dearth?? Decades of experience of jobs shipped overseas and not replaced are not acknowledged.
Ever growing inequality. We have been sold a load of bullsh*t because it benefited a very, very
narrow slice at the top only.
Go to college and become a computer programmer .H1b .
Over 100K H-1B Visas issued so far for 2016 alone, over 10% of those were issued in my state
of Massachusetts. The Mathworks Inc. of Natick was given a $3 million dollar state tax subsidy
in return for "creating" 600 new jobs – they created jobs alright, 386 H-1B jobs so far, Americans
need not apply.
The HB-1 Indian workers that have flooded Boston's labor market seem to fit this part because
they get on and off Public transportation enmass at stops with clusters of rental buildings --
"5c. Immigrants who don't expect to stay can have less reason to integrate culturally and economically;
any real estate investor can tell you that all else being equal, a neighborhood made up largely
of homeowners is almost always nicer than a neighborhood made up largely of renters."
As a lifelong blue collar worker for nearly 40 years, I found my ability to remain employed
competing against a never-ending influx of 22 year old immigrants to be a sinking, and finally
sunk quagmire. I lost. I cannot be 22 forever.
Coming up in the 1970's many of my acquaintances and I were skilled laborers, we got up in
the morning and went out everyday to work hard for a living. None of us would even be considered
for any of those entry level positions any more. They all go to immigrants from somewhere else
or another. As a native born white American you don't even get a chance at those jobs anymore,
no employer would even bother talking to you.
The US has all but done away with apprenticeship programs for the skilled trades. We just bring
in exploitable people from all over the world to build our stuff, and then when we're done with
them, they go back to where they came from. I know this is true because I've asked them, I've
worked with them – they have no intention of staying in America longer than it takes to educate
their kids, build up a nest egg, and go back home. A lot of them don't really like it here.
But we Americans don't have those options. We can't go to Guatemala or Germany or the Philippines
to work for 10 or 20 years to return to America with saved money on which we can survive for the
rest of a lifetime.
This deal is a one-way street.
As an American, I challenge you to get a job abroad. I challenge you to get a foreign residency
visa or a work visa. I challenge you to do any of the things that immigrants do in our country.
You can't.
I'm not anti-immigrant. I'm pro- our people first. Us first, and then when we need other folks
they're welcome too. But that's not what has been happening in my work lifetime of the last 40
years.
Here's a somewhat interesting backgrounder on American immigration. The author's premise
is that US immigration policies were always about race (white Europeans welcome to stay, brown
Mexicans welcome to do manual labor and leave) but this is undoubtedly a simplification as the
discrimination in favor of high skills–talked about in the above post–undoubtedly a factor.
For example most other countries do not offer citizenship unless you have something valuable
to offer them. An acquaintance who thought about becoming Canadian found this out.
In any case the below author does talk about how the notion of "illegal" immigrants is a more
recent phenomenon and in earlier periods Mexicans were freely allowed to come across and work.
I think it's also useful to consider private prison labor. This article notes that half this
revenue comes from undocumented immigrants but that means the other half comes from US citizens.
private prisons
""Private prisons bring in about $3 billion in revenue annually, and over half of that comes
from holding facilities for undocumented immigrants. Private operations run between 50% to 55%
of immigrant detainment facilities. The immigration bill battling its way through Washington right
now might also mean good things for private prisons. Some estimate that the crackdown on undocumented
immigrants will lead to 14,000 more inmates annually with 80% of that business going to private
prisons.
The prison industry has also made money by contracting prison labor to private companies. The
companies that have benefited from this cheap labor include Starbucks (SBUX), Boeing (BA), Victoria's
Secret, McDonalds (MCD) and even the U.S. military. Prison laborers cost between 93 cents and
$4 a day and don't need to collect benefits, thus making them cheap employees.""
It is dangerous for Trump to demonize undocumented immigrants without holding the corporations
that attracted and hired them responsible and the system that allowed it.
Now that they are here and have settled with families, it is deplorable to speak of mass deportation.
As has been noted with the Walmart expample, those that massively profit from this abberation
should bear the major cost of public services required for a 'Shadow Workforce'.
And Hillary Clinton and her neocon crowd, whose policies have created chaos resulting in mass
immigration of refugees offers no apology but more of the same. Insanity doing the same thing
over and over for a different result?
I would argue that migration has both positive and negative impact on the receiving country.
But at some point I believe the 'self' is selfish and not necessarily selfless. In a world of
limited resources and opportunities it is normal for the 'self' to be highly selfish hence the
contradictory nature of the theory of free market economy under globalization.
I argue that the theory is self contradictory because it is normal human nature being selfish
hence anti competition. When threatened by the influx of seemingly hard working, creative and
passive immigrants, I tend to gravitate towards conservatism. I start taking necessary steps towards
protecting myself, my immediate family and hence my domestic market. These rules are typically
borrowed from nature. How to balance the impulsive theory of free market economics vs the reality
of limited resources and opportunities is a unique challenge to governments, policy and decision
makers worldwide hence globalization in the short run presents unique challenges (conflicts) sometimes.
Johnson supports private, for-profit prisons. As Governor of New Mexico he dealt with overcrowded
prisons (and approximately seven hundred prisoners held out-of-state due to a lack of available
space) by opening two private prisons, later arguing that "building two private prisons in
New Mexico solved some very serious problems – and saved the taxpayers a lot of money."
He could have saved the taxpayers even more money by releasing non-violent prisoners convicted
of minor crimes. But that would have offended some of his campaign donors.
Bernie's goal is to ban private prisons. Hillary has a similar goal, but takes money from
prison lobbyists. Does this make sense to you?
According to Lee Fang of The Intercept, Private Prison Lobbyists Are Raising Cash for Hillary
Clinton.
After pressure from civil rights groups, Vice News explains Hillary Clinton Shuns Private
Prison Cash, Activists Want Others to Follow Suit.
The Huffington Post writes "Lobbying firms that work for two major private prison giants,
GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America, gave $133,246 to the Ready for Hillary PAC,
according to Vice."
Do you trust Clinton?
I guess this means that we should vote for Sanders in the primary. Oh gosh, there's a minor
problem. The primaries are over, and Clinton is the nominee.
"I do think we can do a lot of privatizations, and private prisons it seems to work a lot
better," said Trump when asked how he planned to reform the country's prison system.
For more research on the topic – I found the following very readable, gave me a lot of insight
into the factors influencing whether or when immigration is good or bad from which point of view:
So the UK National Health system nurtured me through my early years, and the UK education
system gave me primary, secondary and degree level education. I have spent most of my working
life doing an R&D job in the US. The US has benefited from my work during my working life. If
I should choose to retire back to the UK, I will remit my pension income back there, and because
of the tax treaty, pay income taxes there, which I claim as a full credit against the US tax return.
So I'm "taking money out of the US, to the detriment of social cohesion and economic growth".
Question is, how much of the pension and/or social security and/or investment gains do I owe
to the US, and how much to the UK? I think I owe more there than I do here. Particularly in light
of the fact that the UK paid for my college education, but my nephews and nieces have to pay for
their own, so I have hitherto been a drain on the UKs social investment strategy.
I see it as much a moral question as an economic one that I should help support my family's
education directly, and the UK social system through future taxes paid from pension. I have after
all supported the US social and military-industrial systems through work done and taxes paid during
my working life.
1. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for welfare they can barely get emergency room
care.
2. H1-B visas tap larger, typically Asian populations than the U.S. for their best & brightest.
Could India actually make use of its intelligent people? Is it moral for the U.S. to, in effect,
bribe them to leave their native country? (A point made by Ralph Nader in answering a libertarian
at his Google talk )
3. Roughly 50% of the undocumented are from Asia. Yet 90% of the deportations are Hispanic.
Got a link on this? My experience is that the Asian population is either native or here
on student visas. The chinese student population is quite large in Los Angeles. Student visas
don't allow foreign students to work off-campus, so many of them are family-funded. So they're
not taking jobs, but do impact the housing/rental market. (The California colleges love them for
their out-of-state fees and strong study habits.)
I can only speak for Texas, but the nail salons, massage parlors, dry cleaners, restaurants,
fishing boats and electronics refurbishing can't ALL be H1-B visas. And that isn't even counting
all the people from India I see. Most of them are too old to be students.
Trump's statement that he will issue an executive order forcing employers to use E-Verify for
all new employees is a good start. While that program has a few flaws, the net effect would be
massive for favoring citizens over illegals.
To be fair, employers should still have the option of using illegals, however, they should
put their money where their mouths and labor savings are, by not being able to deduct the non
E-Verifiable wages from their income for taxation purposes.
In a minute, we'll be joined by former third-party presidential candidate
Ralph Nader. But first, this is
George Farah, the founder and executive director of Open Debates, speaking
on Democracy Now! about how the Democrats and Republicans took control of the
debate process.
GEORGE FARAH:
GEORGE FARAH: The League
of Women Voters ran the presidential debate process from 1976 until 1984,
and they were a very courageous and genuinely independent, nonpartisan sponsor.
And whenever the candidates attempted to manipulate the presidential debates
behind closed doors, either to exclude a viable independent candidate or
to sanitize the formats, the league had the courage to challenge the Republican
and Democratic nominees and, if necessary, go public.
In 1980, independent candidate John B. Anderson was polling about 12
percent in the polls. The league insisted that Anderson be allowed to participate,
because the vast majority of the American people wanted to see him, but
Jimmy Carter, President Jimmy Carter, refused to debate him. The league
went forward anyway and held a presidential debate with an empty chair,
showing that Jimmy Carter wasn't going to show up.
Four years later, when the Republican and Democratic nominees tried to
get rid of difficult questions by vetoing 80 of the moderators that they
had proposed to host the debates, the league said, "This is unacceptable."
They held a press conference and attacked the campaigns for trying to get
rid of difficult questions.
And lastly, in 1988, was the first attempt by the Republican and Democratic
campaigns to negotiate a detailed contract. It was tame by comparison, a
mere 12 pages. It talked about who could be in the audience and how the
format would be structured, but the league found that kind of lack of transparency
and that kind of candidate control to be fundamentally outrageous and antithetical
to our democratic process. They released the contract and stated they refuse
to be an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American people and refuse
to implement it.
And today, what do we have? We have a private corporation that was created
by the Republican and Democratic parties called the Commission on Presidential
Debates. It seized control of the presidential debates precisely because
the league was independent, precisely because this women's organization
had the guts to stand up to the candidates that the major-party candidates
had nominated.
"... Because many members of Congress do not believe that the FBI acted free of political interference, they demanded to see the full FBI files in the case, not just the selected portions of the files that the FBI had released. In the case of the House, the FBI declined to surrender its files, and the agent it sent to testify about them declined to reveal their contents. This led to a dramatic service of a subpoena by the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on that FBI agent while he was testifying - all captured on live nationally broadcast television. ..."
"... According to Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the FBI violated federal law by commingling classified and unclassified materials in the safe room, thereby making it unlawful for senators to discuss publicly the unclassified material. ..."
"... Imposing such a burden of silence on U.S. senators about unclassified materials is unlawful and unconstitutional. What does the FBI have to hide? Whence comes the authority of the FBI to bar senators from commenting on unclassified materials? ..."
"... What is going on here? The FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton has not served the rule of law. The rule of law - a pillar of American constitutional freedom since the end of the Civil War - mandates that the laws are to be enforced equally. No one is beneath their protection, and no one is above ..."
It is hard to believe that the FBI was free to do its work, and it is probably true that the FBI was restrained by the White House
early on. There were numerous aberrations in the investigation. There was no grand jury; no subpoenas were issued; no search warrants
were served. Two people claimed to have received immunity, yet the statutory prerequisite for immunity - giving testimony before
a grand or trial jury - was never present.
Because many members of Congress do not believe that the FBI acted free of political interference, they demanded to see the full
FBI files in the case, not just the selected portions of the files that the FBI had released. In the case of the House, the FBI declined
to surrender its files, and the agent it sent to testify about them declined to reveal their contents. This led to a dramatic service
of a subpoena by the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on that FBI agent while he was testifying -
all captured on live nationally broadcast television.
Now the FBI, which usually serves subpoenas and executes search warrants, is left with the alternative of complying with this
unwanted subpoena by producing its entire file or arguing to a federal judge why it should not be compelled to do so.
On the Senate side, matters are even more out of hand. There, in response to a request from the Senate Judiciary Committee, the
FBI sent both classified and unclassified materials to the Senate safe room. The Senate safe room is a secure location that is available
only to senators and their senior staff, all of whom must surrender their mobile devices and writing materials and swear in writing
not to reveal whatever they see while in the room before they are permitted to enter.
According to Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the FBI violated federal law by commingling classified
and unclassified materials in the safe room, thereby making it unlawful for senators to discuss publicly the unclassified material.
Imposing such a burden of silence on U.S. senators about unclassified materials is unlawful and unconstitutional. What does the
FBI have to hide? Whence comes the authority of the FBI to bar senators from commenting on unclassified materials?
Who cares about this? Everyone who believes that the government works for us should care because we have a right to know what
the government - here the FBI - has done in our names. Sen. Grassley has opined that if he could reveal what he has seen in the FBI
unclassified records, it would be of profound interest to American voters.
What is going on here? The FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton has not served the rule of law. The rule of law - a pillar of
American constitutional freedom since the end of the Civil War - mandates that the laws are to be enforced equally. No one is beneath
their protection, and no one is above
Short Squeeze •Sep 16, 2016 12:12 PM
My theory is that when Comey stated "no reasonable prosecutor would prosecute", he already knew of her health issues. Would
a prosecutor go after someone with 6 months to live?
saloonsf •Sep 16, 2016 12:03 PM
That's not FBI's responsibilities-exposing the elites cupabilities. The FBI primary objective is to protect the elites and
the system that benefit them.
Atomizer •Sep 16, 2016 12:10 PM
The wagons are circling around the Clinton Foundation. Chelsea's husband is going to get nicked.
withglee •Sep 16, 2016 12:25 PM
Sen. Grassley has opined that if he could reveal what he has seen in the FBI unclassified records, it would be of
profound interest to American voters.
So what's keeping Grassley from asking that those unclassified documents be taken from the room and laid on his desk. He is
not allowed to talk about what he saw in the room. But for sure he is allowed to talk about unclassified documents laid upon his
desk ... even if they were once in the room. If that wasn't the case, the government would just run every document through the
room ... to give it official immunity from inspection and exposure.
"... The State Deptartment had been using Blackberries since 2006, and diplomats overseas had been using them for just as long. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton didn't need to use a fancy NSA-approved smartphone to access classified data. Whenever she went overseas, she had a team of IT specialists who was able to provide her with ClassNet access, and they're able to do so without any technical support from a US Embassy. ..."
"... The Exchange and BES software were likely purchased by Hillary '08, and properly licensed for that usage. But as far as after that.... ..."
"... In a country where a standing governer running as VP could be found explicitly and intentionally using Yahoo email for the express purpose of avoiding FOIA on relevant government business, and there be no investigation whatsoever well. Let's just say there's an exceedingly strong whiff of double standards in the air. ..."
"... Most interesting to me was confirmation that the server was breached. Unknown parties accessed it from TOR multiple times. From your link, an individual email account on the server was breached. ..."
"... This happens all the time, for varying reasons, mostly due to a phishing compromise of the account, and occasionally due to password re-use and related vectors of compromise. While it's bad for the individual account's contents, it's absolutely irrelevant beyond that. ..."
"... If that's the worst they can find then personally I'm actually impressed. I was expecting that the server(s) had been root/fully compromised at least once, given how they get perennially described. If that turns out to not be the case, then they've actually been run better and more securely than the State Department's [at least non-classified] servers, from all reports. ..."
"... A 'breach' of an account is not a breach of the server. The account being access via TOR implies the user credentials were acquired through some means. Was this 'breached' account a classified account? ..."
"... "multiple times" is 3 times in this case, and it wasn't the server that was breached, it was 1 person's email. ..."
Hillary Clinton didn't need to use her own Blackberry. The State
Deptartment had been using Blackberries since 2006, and diplomats overseas
had been using them for just as long.
Hillary Clinton didn't need to use a fancy NSA-approved smartphone
to access classified data. Whenever she went overseas, she had a team of
IT specialists who was able to provide her with ClassNet access, and they're
able to do so without any technical support from a US Embassy.
Quote: First, the Clintons had requested, according to a
PRN employee interviewed by the FBI, that the contents of the server be
encrypted so that only mail recipients could read the content. This was
not done, largely so that PRN technicians could "troubleshoot problems occurring
within user accounts," the FBI memo reports.
Also, while the Clintons had requested only local backups, the Datto
appliance initially also used Datto's secure cloud backup service until
August of 2015. \
Sounds like some of the problem was the contractor not following the
procedures established by the client.
Just to clarify, the move to a hosted solution - with requested encryption
- was initiated after Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State (January 21,
2009 – February 1, 2013) was completed in February, 2013, and FOIA requests
were no longer applicable as she was no longer a government employee.
I think that would depend on the scope of the migration. Did they migrate
all of the history over to the hosted solution? i.e. Did they migrate the
OS, Exchange and BES servers into PRN's datacenter? Or, did they start from
scratch with a clean slate, fresh install and no data migration. If it's
the former and not the latter, I'd be pretty damned certain it'd still be
subject to FOIA requests.
In a country where a standing governer running as VP could be
found explicitly and intentionally using Yahoo email for the express
purpose of avoiding FOIA on relevant government business, and there
be no investigation whatsoever well. Let's just say there's an exceedingly
strong whiff of double standards in the air.
I'm not fond of this private server crap. I think it's bullshit and
it never should have been allowed in the first place. She should have
simply been told that it's not permissible, whatsoever. But I also think
the classified email issues are red herrings in the context of the use
of private servers, as they would have been just as much an issue on
State Department non classified servers.
And I think that it's been made abundantly clear that the tools to
do business over email and modern mobile computing were extremely lacking,
outside of a solution like this, and what tools were available were
purposefully withheld over what sounds like ridiculous political fighting
under the guise of bureaucracy.
None of this means what she did was ok, but it's also hard to not
look askance at the relentless witchhunting when it's placed in that
broader context.
Personally I've reached a point where I'm done caring on the topic.
There doesn't seem to be any kind of smoking gun, just a lot of hemming
and hawing. Normally I would care about this, but honestly I'm a bit
inured at this point. Where is the show of her using these specifically
to avoid FOIA on work material actually relevant to FOIA?
That's really the only true relevant question when it comes to moving
to private servers. Classified material isn't supposed to be on unclassified
government servers either, so the attempt to focus on that (mostly with
retroactive or improperly labeled material and a few other issues) really
seems awkward when we're supposed to care about the private servers
as if they're damning.
Most interesting to me was confirmation that the
server was breached. Unknown parties accessed it from TOR multiple times.
From your link, an individual email account on the server was breached.
This happens all the time, for varying reasons, mostly due to a phishing
compromise of the account, and occasionally due to password re-use and related
vectors of compromise. While it's bad for the individual account's contents,
it's absolutely irrelevant beyond that.
If that's the worst they can find then personally I'm actually impressed.
I was expecting that the server(s) had been root/fully compromised at least
once, given how they get perennially described. If that turns out to not
be the case, then they've actually been run better and more securely than
the State Department's [at least non-classified] servers, from all reports.
Look, getting all up in arms over crap like that link is why people like
me are no longer convinced there's anything here worth paying attention
to. I'm actually willing to listen if there's some kind of smoking gun,
but that's some petty bullshit right there.
Not sure why you are being down voted on newly revealed information that
seems to confirm that one of the servers email accounts was breached.
If you're down voting him, perhaps an explanation as to why?
Do you say that "google's servers got breached" every time an individual
email account on them is compromised?
What he said is factually incorrect. The server was not breached. An
individual email account was accessed. They're not the same thing. Not even
an OS user level account. An email account.
Rommel102 wrote: Most interesting to me was confirmation that the
server was breached. Unknown parties accessed it from TOR multiple
times.
"multiple times" is 3 times in this case, and it wasn't the server that
was breached, it was 1 person's email.
Even if this person was clinton herself, we already know there was not
much damaging information stored on this server. And considering this seems
more like someone used a weak password or was phished, this is a vulnerability
no matter what email provider you're using.
Not sure why you are being down voted on newly revealed information that
seems to confirm that one of the servers email accounts was breached.
If you're down voting him, perhaps an explanation as to why?
Probably because we know DOJ email servers have also been breached. He's
implying that her servers were less secure and somehow put information in
harms way. History seems to show us that it wasn't at any more risk.
I didn't imply that at all. Here we have fairly solid evidence that a
breach of Hillary's server happened. That seems to contradict the FBI's
stance, Comey's statement and testimony, and is a first as far as I know.
And in comparison, the DOJs non-classified email systems were hacked.
There is no evidence that the classified system ever was.
A 'breach' of an account is not a breach of the server. The account
being access via TOR implies the user credentials were acquired through
some means. Was this 'breached' account a classified account?
I could be wrong, but I think that all classified emails from DoD and
State have to go through SIPRNet.
If this was strictly respected, then Clinton's server should contain
no classified information. In real-life, we saw that a few classified things
went through her personal email system, so it wasn't fully respected, or
some of the info was not yet classified.
Story Author Popular
omniron wrote:
Rommel102 wrote: Most interesting to me was confirmation that the
server was breached. Unknown parties accessed it from TOR multiple times.
"multiple times" is 3 times in this case, and it wasn't the server
that was breached, it was 1 person's email.
Even if this person was clinton herself, we already know there was not
much damaging information stored on this server. And considering this seems
more like someone used a weak password or was phished, this is a vulnerability
no matter what email provider you're using.
We're going to get into this in a story I'm currently writing (probably
for next week, so it's not a Friday newsdumpster move). But it's worth noting
THE ENTIRETY OF THE STATE DEPARTMENT'S UNCLAS EMAIL SYSTEM WAS PWNED FOR
OVER A YEAR. I'm sorry, did I type that in all-caps? Also, between Chelsea
Manning/ Wikileaks and the repeated hacks of State, the White House, etc
between 2009 and 2014, it is highly likely that everything short of the
TS/SAP stuff (and even some of that) that Clinton touched was already breached.
This does not excuse Clinton and her staff's-I'm looking at you, Jake
Sullivan-for the extreme error of passing Top Secret/ Special Access Program
classified data back and forth over Blackberries and a non-governmental
e-mail system. I would expect that Sullivan, at a minimum, will have his
clearance revoked and he will not be getting a job as a national security
adviser if Clinton wins the election. Or at least, I think that's a reasonable
expectation.
LordDaMan Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
reply
Sep 2, 2016 7:24 PM
arcite wrote: She wanted to use her Blackberry, and she wanted all her
accounts in one easy to access place. The solution was sloppy, but there
was no ill-intent.
Except she used multiple devices. She also ignored the repeated comments
towards her to not to have a private server. The server was deliberately
wiped violating the various laws about data retention. She used an alias
to send e-mails to her daughter. She, despite being first lady. many years
in congress, and sec. of state somehow didn't understand what classified
material is or how even without marking some info is "born" classified.
She lied multiple times under oath about all of this.
In an enterprise environment? 50/50. For some "side work" from an IT
guy in the government? Id almost guarantee either CALs were missing, or
the entire thing was running on images Pagliano "got" from his day job.
Doubly so when the client is buying used servers and networking gear.
Ok so that will be $2,900 for hardware, and it looks like it will be
right around 9,000 for software licenses.
Pfff, here is 3,000, just make it work and keep the change for yourself
Not sure why you are being down voted on newly revealed information that
seems to confirm that one of the servers email accounts was breached.
If you're down voting him, perhaps an explanation as to why?
Probably because we know DOJ email servers have also been breached. He's
implying that her servers were less secure and somehow put information in
harms way. History seems to show us that it wasn't at any more risk.
Yeah, but the FBI is saying there was no evidence that the server was
hacked.
And then we find out that one of the email accounts was accessed over the
TOR network and the user of the email account had never heard of TOR much
less used it to access email.
That seems like yet another skewing of the finding to put them in the
best possible light. (EDIT: not saying she was or was not, but I would say
that there was indicators that it was possibly compromised)
DOJ, OPM, Pentagon, doesnt have any relevance on if she was irresponsible
for having this whole set up. That same article states they werent even
able to confirm if TLS was ever enabled. And Why? Because Clinton/IT took
steps to make sure it couldnt be found out before turning over the equipment.
You know, this level of twisting is why you and Rommel are not credible
on the topic. You just come off sounding like a conspiracy nut when you
can go from the article linked to "her servers got hacked."
Let's be clear: if there had been a full breach, there would have been
no need to be accessing an individual account over Exchange via TOR. You
could just grab the whole thing directly, instead. This is, if anything,
evidence of a lack of a full breach, at least by whatever actor was accessing
the particular account in question.
But, you know, why don't you two just keep shooting yourselves in the
kneecaps over this. It's not like your hyperbolic approach to this is hurting
your credibility at all. We can either assume you're both excessively biased
or incompetent on the topic from how you're running with that story.
Not that I'm calling you technically incompetent, mind. Unless you actually
believe there's not a distinction between an email account being individually
compromised and a "server being hacked." I expect you're just intentionally
twisting what you're saying. But hey, maybe you don't actually know better?
The way you two are trying to play this is why you have so many people
turning away in disgust-not at Hillary, but at the ongoing digging for gold
and related hyperbole and even outright lies in what is more and more clearly
a dustbowl, with the only apparent motivation being a smear campaign rather
than anything to do with actual justice or a real care about security.
A perfectly valid reason for accessing Exchange via Tor is exactly to
prevent the intrusion from being detected. Create yourself a valid account,
access it as any other normal user would and your hack will look like normal
user traffic.
'grabbing the whole thing directly' has only a fleeting value; taking
exchange offline to copy the mailboxes as you describe will certainly alert
someone to your presence and encourage them to mediate the intrusion.
Now, lets pretend you are Russia, and you have persistent access to her
and other email systems.
.
Now when you need to claim some new land in Georgia or Ukraine.. we get
reliable information about what the world police will actually do about
it. Not merely what they say they will do.
Sep 2, 2016 10:11 PM Popular
Rommel102 wrote: if one random person was able to get into the server
via TOR, that implies that the server was known to the hacking community.
You're making it sound much more dramatic than reality.
The one random person didn't "get into the server" in any meaningful
way. They accessed an email account.
As for the server being "known to the hacking community", DNS records
are public, so in reality the server was "known" to the entire world. As
are billions of others.
For practical purposes, every device on the internet is "known" to everybody.
Either DNS records point to it, or you can just scan IP address ranges to
find it.
RAH Seniorius Lurkius
reply
Sep 2, 2016 10:18 PM New Poster Popular A missing piece of this whole
conversation is what IT would be in place for the Secretary of State instead
of personal email servers. Government servers that have been known to be
all too easily hacked? And, just which department has the responsibility
for government security? As with all bureaucracies, the responsibility is
spread among many departments, including the FBI.
It is NSA's responsibility to provide communications for the heads of
departments, including the Secretary of State. Clinton supposedly asked
for a secure Blackberry like Obama's, but the NSA refused, siting cost.
The NSA seems to think the Secretary of State only needs the security found
within the SCIF in the State Department offices, and not portable security.
Really? No one travels more than the Secretary of State.
John Kerry's mobile systems (now that they finally have them) were updated
just weeks ago, and if you look at what he now has, you will find that those
systems are five years behind the times.
I am much more concerned about IT security within all departments of
the federal government than I am what Clinton did or did not do.
The question is whether there was any intention to skirt the legal requirements
for security and confidentiality. I don't believe Hillary had the technical
savvy to even begin to think about that.
Also, despite Comey's caustic remarks to Congress about recklessness,
etc., let's remember that he's not exactly credible, either, when it comes
to technology. I mean, he's the same guy who thinks the government should
have a backdoor into what would otherwise be secure private systems.
Red Foreman Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
reply
Sep 3, 2016 12:32 AM
RAH wrote: ...It is NSA's responsibility to provide communications for
the heads of departments, including the Secretary of State. Clinton supposedly
asked for a secure Blackberry like Obama's, but the NSA refused, siting
cost. The NSA seems to think the Secretary of State only needs the security
found within the SCIF in the State Department offices, and not portable
security. Really? No one travels more than the Secretary of State...
BREAKING NEWS: NSA Rejected Hillary Clinton's request for a Blackberry
That's the headline I keep reading. And it looks like you've read it
too. What they don't tell us is that instead they wanted her to use a General
Dynamics Sectéra Edge. Which while NSA approved for mobile SCIF classified
communication, it wasn't cool enough for Hillary.
It's a breach of protocol. She mishandled classified information she
otherwise had clearance to see. It's about equivalent to discussing state
secrets over an unsecured phone line in a seedy motel, or leaving top secret
information lying out on your kitchen table while you have your friends
over for a BBQ. It was incredibly stupid of her, and she's lucky there's
only theoretical evidence of a possibility of a leak, but it's not criminal.
I agree with Comey's conclusion on the matter. It's something any "regular"
person would've been fired over, probably blackballed from any sensitive
government position for life, though it's nothing anyone would go to jail
over.
Last edited by
Renzatic on Sat Sep 03, 2016 12:01 am
symphony3 Ars Centurion
reply
Sep 3, 2016 3:18 AM
RAH wrote: A missing piece of this whole conversation is what IT would
be in place for the Secretary of State instead of personal email servers.
Government servers that have been known to be all too easily hacked? And,
just which department has the responsibility for government security? As
with all bureaucracies, the responsibility is spread among many departments,
including the FBI.
It is NSA's responsibility to provide communications for the heads of
departments, including the Secretary of State. Clinton supposedly asked
for a secure Blackberry like Obama's, but the NSA refused, siting cost.
The NSA seems to think the Secretary of State only needs the security found
within the SCIF in the State Department offices, and not portable security.
Really? No one travels more than the Secretary of State.
John Kerry's mobile systems (now that they finally have them) were updated
just weeks ago, and if you look at what he now has, you will find that those
systems are five years behind the times.
I am much more concerned about IT security within all departments of
the federal government than I am what Clinton did or did not do.
I'm concerned about IT security, which makes me very concerned about
finally funding IT so it can succeed. Every government organization I've
worked with, even with top level universities, fund their landscaping better
than their IT. And that means the buck stops with whatever boss determines
funding.
Please don't tell me this is about the taxpayer deciding funding for
IT, because we know that Social Security was better prepared for Y2K than
almost any other government department. If the unknown director of Social
Security could wrangle a decent IT budget (past tense on that), then it
can still be done by much bigger names & departments. (Not singling out
one department, too many hacks to choose from)
None of this means what she did was ok, but it's also hard to not look
askance at the relentless witchhunting when it's placed in that broader
context.
...
My personal evolution on this issue has gone from "having a privately
controlled email server sounds really really bad, and was probably done
to avoid monitoring! I'm really upset about this!" to "wow, these allegations
sound extremely serious!" to "oh, those allegations were not really true
at all" to "yikes, this again? how much more whining and knashing of the
the teeth am I going to have to put up with?" If this had been any other
politican, like, literally any other politician would we have heard more
than a week or two about it? Would we have the FBI releasing their investigation
documents to the public? Would all of Clinton's emails been open to the
public like this? The amount of transparency, the lack of smoking guns,
and the irrationally emotional anger have made me completely turn around
on this issue.
The reason it keeps coming back is that each new revelation seems to
reveal more lies and more proof of lies by Hillary Clinton. You suggest
if it was any other politician it would be instantly forgotten. Not exactly.
Not if they stood a very good chance of being the next president of the
United States. And certainly not if they had the same background of corruption,
lying, and disastrous job performance as Clinton does (getting Americans
killed in Benghazi and then lying to their families about it, her lies about
being under sniper attack on the tarmac in the Balkans years ago, etc etc).
Nixon was forced to resign for far less dishonesty than this woman has been
caught in. So yes, it is a big deal, and it should be. Not only did she
take the classified workflow outside of the secure state department infrastructure,
she did it to avoid accountability and just exactly the kind of scandal
that would ensue if it was ever found out, which it obviously was. She put
national security at risk for her own political gain, and then lied about
it repeatedly on many occasions and in all kinds of settings. Not only did
she commit crimes and SHOULD have been charged by DOJ (her hubby's little
illicit chit-chat w/ Lynch on the Phoenix tarmac notwithstanding), but she
demonstrated by all she has done she doesn't have the one thing a real president
needs: good judgement. Plenty of other things as well, honesty, etc, should
also be requirements, but generally aren't, lately. But having better judgement
than a 2 year old is crucial, and she's proven she hasn't got that.
A recap ( Comey's testimony) of just some of the lies told by Clinton,
to both the public, Congress, and the FBI, about her emails, server, etc
:
ArchieG Smack-Fu Master, in training
reply
Sep 3, 2016 6:37 AM Quote: The reason it keeps coming back is
that each new revelation seems to reveal more lies and more proof of lies
by Hillary Clinton. You suggest if it was any other politician it would
be instantly forgotten. Not exactly. Not if they stood a very good chance
of being the next president of the United States. And certainly not if they
had the same background of corruption, lying, and disastrous job performance
as Clinton does (getting Americans killed in Benghazi and then lying to
their families about it, her lies about being under sniper attack on the
tarmac in the Balkans years ago, etc etc). Nixon was forced to resign for
far less dishonesty than this woman has been caught in. So yes, it is a
big deal, and it should be. Not only did she take the classified workflow
outside of the secure state department infrastructure, she did it to avoid
accountability and just exactly the kind of scandal that would ensue if
it was ever found out, which it obviously was. She put national security
at risk for her own political gain, and then lied about it repeatedly on
many occasions and in all kinds of settings. Not only did she commit crimes
and SHOULD have been charged by DOJ (her hubby's little illicit chit-chat
w/ Lynch on the Phoenix tarmac notwithstanding), but she demonstrated by
all she has done she doesn't have the one thing a real president needs:
good judgement. Plenty of other things as well, honesty, etc, should also
be requirements, but generally aren't, lately. But having better judgement
than a 2 year old is crucial, and she's proven she hasn't got that.
Could you at least break your thoughts into paragraphs? Also, back up
your whining with actual facts. Yeah, that would be nice.
bthylafh Ars Praefectus
reply
Sep 3, 2016 8:54 AM
mat735 wrote: Wow. Not only is this article misleading and poorly composed,
it is factually incorrect (pic being one example). At the time this happened
was it uncommon for a company to manage their own email servers/hardware?
What were BlackBerry recommendations on hosting? Who actually ordered the
hardware? Who is PRN and what other clients do they represent?
This is the point anyone who cares about the country should be making,
and I really wish Hillary had raised it early on. Federal IT is bad not
because of the usual right-wing tropes about government workers but because
there are too many barriers enshrined in federal law and policy. Things
like procurement, hiring, and even the simple ability to deploy an application
have slow, expensive processes full of counter-productive incentives. The
pay-scale for federal staff tops out well below the private sector, there's
been a couple decades of Congress trying to encourage outsourcing (I'm sure
it's just a coincidence that large contracting companies can make campaign
donations), and a lot of senior management and policy have tried to treat
IT as a purchase rather than a skill to be developed, all of which means
that the federal workforce is aging and the best people are routinely asking
themselves whether they believe in their agency's mission enough to keep
turning down a hefty pay raise. GitHub's Ben Balter, a former Presidential
Innovation Fellow, has written a lot about this – see
What's next for federal IT policy, IMHO ,
Three things you learn going from the most bureaucratic organization in
the world to the least ,
Want to innovate government? Focus on culture , etc.
This has already been a big deal during the Obama administration and
I think it's going to become critical for the next president as both our
dependencies on IT continue to increase – remember that due to decades of
budget cuts, many agencies are still relatively early in the migration to
fully electronic processes – and the demands increase, both for general
worker productivity and especially for across-the-board security improvements
as the sophistication of attacks has gone up. Security is one of the hardest
parts of IT because it's not a commodity which you can purchase, requires
broader skills and constant adjustment, and the field is full of hucksters
peddling purchases or bureaucratic process as easy solutions. The low federal
pay-scale is especially bad since there's so much private sector demand,
which means that it's hard to keep skilled practitioners on staff and that
reduces the pool of qualified people getting hired into management.
This is the kind of thing people should be asking the candidates to talk
about but due to the prolonged bad-faith attempts to trump up scandals from
things like these emails it's really hard to see any sort of honest policy
discussion breaking out. Every citizen should care about changing that dynamic
since in addition to the areas where the failures are themselves major crises
everywhere else they're behind the scenes making projects more expensive
and less successful across the board.
Sep 3, 2016 11:01 AM
roman wrote:
mat735 wrote: Wow. Not only is this article misleading and poorly composed,
it is factually incorrect (pic being one example). At the time this happened
was it uncommon for a company to manage their own email servers/hardware?
What were BlackBerry recommendations on hosting? Who actually ordered the
hardware? Who is PRN and what other clients do they represent?
During the "growing" age of the Internet but before cloud computing (I'd
say early 1990's to mid 2000's) it was very easy/common to run your own
servers. All you needed was a constant internet connection and a static
IP addr.
This was especially common among non-IT centric businesses in my experience
– doctors, lawyers, non-profits, etc. would pay a consultant to set something
up and give their front-office staff instructions about changing backup
tapes, etc. but they didn't want to have to deal with the complexity and
expense of a real data center operation, hiring staff, etc. You probably
wanted a business cable/DSL connection anyway, buy a copy of
Windows Small business Server or
OS X
Server depending on your tastes and you have everything "done" for a
fixed up-front cost. A lot of consultants made good livings doing the same
setup for a bunch of clients which weren't quite big enough to have IT staffing
or balked at paying someone above desktop-support level.
The biggest things which killed that market were security and disaster
recovery, as maintaining an email server became a full-time job and stories
about someone losing everything in a hack / fire / flood / etc. became fairly
common, coupled with the availability of high-quality services (
Google Apps for Your Domain launched in 2006 ) at prices which were
much less than you could match for things like spam filtering, user interface
quality, and performance at a scale of less than hundreds of users. Things
like PCI or HIPAA accelerated that process by telling entire fields it was
no longer a good area to skimp.
By now it's assumed most small operations will use a cloud provider but
it took years to establish that the service quality and pricing would stick.
By the time Hillary took office, however, that was still in transition.
It doesn't surprise me at all that someone – especially someone mid-career
or older – would go back to what was familiar when their boss asked them
to get something done in a hurry. It's the same process you can find all
over the business world where someone has a "mission critical" Access database,
Excel file, PHP app on a shared host, etc. because they were told to get
it done ASAP and didn't have time to learn something new, especially if
this wasn't a core part of their job. It'll just be a temporary fix until
we do things the right way
gbjbaanb Ars Scholae Palatinae
reply
Sep 3, 2016 2:11 PM Well it does get a little more interesting every
day. Today the news is of a missing laptop and thumbdrive containing an
archive of emails that were not handed over to the FBI (apparently they
were forgotten).
Quote: In early 2014, Hanley located the laptop at her home and
tried to transfer the email archive to an IT company, apparently without
success. It appears the emails were then transferred to an unnamed person's
personal Gmail account and there were problems around Apple software not
being compatible with that of Microsoft.
"Neither Hanley nor [redacted] could identify the current whereabouts
of the archive laptop or thumb drive containing the archive, and the FBI
does not have either item in its possession."
One thing, regardless of the political affiliation of the commenters
and voters here, this is all sloppy IT work that should never be allowed
to go unchallenged. If you're going to do this kind of thing, at least get
someone who knows what they're doing to do it properly. As an IT professional,
this kind of lackadaisical attitude to IT administration offends me.
That doesn't make it OK and he should be under investigation as well.
haven't you heard the law doesn't apply to republicans.
They were no laws broken by clinton than we can tell, it's just a weird
thing. Powell clearly used private email to skirt records requests (and
IIRC the Bush admin lost millions of emails). But Clinton seemed aware information
is public record no matter how it's sent.
And if we compare the number of times this server was breached to government
breaches, i don't know if this makes the idea of using your own server look
like a bad idea. most intrusions are via social engineering, and there's
probably a lot more weak points in the staff of gov email than this private
one.
What i find strange is that Clinton was secretary of state, and was probably
handling classified information constantly. How is it after the FBI has
reviewed 45,000 of the 60,0000 emails there are so few classified emails
being sent around (only 1 was sent BY clinton). Does the government just
not send classified information through email at all? I'm more interested,
from a technological perspective, in how this is handled.
She violated quite a few laws the press is willfully ignoring
As someone who has gone through the hassle of trying to get a Security Clearance
AND clearance to work on classified networks we were clearly told of the
laws and penalties to be incurred for misuse of the resources
Hillary went above and beyond to try and keep knowingly and marked classified
documents out of the "secure" White House network, there is the violations
of the laws. You notice how they handled the acquisition of the hardware?
She and her minions KNEW what they were doing and purposely used Bills staff
to hide it and keep the supplier in the dark to keep their illegal behavior
as secret as possible
But no, she didn't do anything wrong and definitely didn't violate a
dozen or so laws, nope, just another "right wing conspiracy" she swears
is always going on
And it's the Democratic party, not the Democrat party.
And she's not the Commander-in-Chief so I don't even know how you got
the notion that she's responsible for American citizens getting killed.
If we put government officials in jail according to how many people died
under their watch, George W Bush would be in prison for hundreds and hundreds
of years for all the dead in the 911 attack, the thousands of military service
personnel that died in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the millions of
innocent civilian lives that were lost because of his stupidity, not to
mention all the lies that were told to justify the war in the first place.
Take your partisan bullshit somewhere else.
Lol....she violated the espionage act! And she had every intent in doing
so. If that's not illegal then I don't know what is.
And yes, she may well be responsible for getting Americans killed. If
her server was hacked then no doubt she put American lives at risk.
Clearly, Crooked Hillary was more concerned about protecting her own
secrets and the Clinton Foundation's secrets more than she was about protecting
America's secrets.
She's not fit for any government job, let alone president.
JaxMac Smack-Fu Master, in training
et Subscriptor
reply
Sep 3, 2016 7:45 PM New Poster The Power Mac G4 was sold prior to the
release of OS X. Thus it's operating system was the Classical Mac OS. The
Classical Mac OS had no command line, thus it was practically unhackable
remotely. I believe that this was also true of the Power Mac G5.
If the Clinton email had been maintained on either of these two Macs
there would be no questions about infiltration by anyone.
Andrew Norton Ars Scholae Palatinae
reply
Sep 3, 2016 11:42 PM
davecadron wrote: Did everyone miss the part where hillary decided to
wipe the server after foia requests were made and after records were subpoenaed
by Congress?
Obstruction of justice is a felony.
Everything you say may be true.
However the first paragraph has absolutely zero relevance to the last (separate)
line.
The stuff up top might get you 'contempt of congress', or violation of
a court order that doesn't actually exist.
Obstruction of justice is a whole 'nother matter and has nothing to do
with FOIA's or congressional subpoenas.
Obstruction of justice is a felony.
Everything you say may be true.
However the first paragraph has absolutely zero relevance to the last (separate)
line.
The stuff up top might get you 'contempt of congress', or violation of
a court order that doesn't actually exist.
Obstruction of justice is a whole 'nother matter and has nothing to do
with FOIA's or congressional subpoenas.
As always seems to be the case the coverup is worse then the crime, certainly
so with the Clintons given their history. If any the obstruction of justice
hasn't been their attempting to conceal their public records from being
properly archived, as required by law and thus being open to being disclosed
under FOIA.
Rather it's their efforts after the fact. And that would be potentially
lying under oath to investigators and or destruction of/concealing of evidence,
in an attempt to explain away the email scandal, and of course try to publicly
cast it in the light of just another illegitimate "vast right-wing conspiracy"
to get them. Because that's what the Clintons always do when they're backed
into a corner.
Red Foreman Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
reply
Sep 4, 2016 10:07 PM
Renzatic wrote:
Red Foreman wrote: The Clinton email saga with it's oh-so-typical Clinton-esque
coverup that's far worse then the original fuck-up isn't a non-story. And
it has nothing to do with Donald Trump.
I've said this elsewhere, but I feel it bears repeating here.
For roughly 30 years now, Hillary Clinton has been dogged by a party
made up primarily of lawyers, judges, DAs, and others in the legal profession,
with millions of dollars and all the institutions of government at their
fingertips.
In all this time, with all this knowledge, power and influence at their
disposal, what have they discovered? That the Clintons tend to bend the
rules if it benefits them, and like to scratch the backs of people who can
and will scratch theirs. For all their efforts, they haven't discovered
evidence of anything truly heinous or illegal. Rather, they've merely uncovered
the fact they're a little seedy.
...so how are they any different than any other politician in Washington?
How is it any different? This one it running for President of the United
States at the moment. As such scrutinizing her dealings is fair game. After
all, as you said the Clintons are a little seedy, tend to bend the rules
if it benefits themselves, and like to scratch the backs of people who can
and will scratch theirs.
Speaking of which...
Bill, Hillary, Loretta Lynch, James Comey and the emails
Corruption in plain sight
Tuesday, June 28: Former President Bill Clinton suddenly appears to Attorney
General Loretta Lynch in the cabin of her airplane parked on the tarmac
in Phoenix, Arizona. Secret Service agents deny access to news photos and
videos of the visit. They visit for 30 minutes.
Thursday, June 29: Lynch denies that any discussion with Bill Clinton
of the FBI's investigation of Hillary Clinton's email scandal took place,
and states that she expects to accept the recommendation of the FBI as to
further actions in the Clinton case. She does not, however, recuse herself
or appoint a Special Prosecutor. The FBI also announces that the Clinton
interview will take place on this coming Saturday, during the holiday weekend.
Friday, June 30: Hillary Clinton campaign leaks that Loretta Lynch may
be retained in her present job under a Hillary Clinton administration.
Saturday, July 1: Hillary Clinton's long-delayed interview with the FBI
takes place. It lasts 3 1/2 hours. Clinton not under oath. FBI Director
Comey does not attend, will not reveal who was in attendance.
Tuesday, July 5: FBI Director Comey conducts a press conference without
questions. Details a long list of Clinton's violations, but concludes that
he met with prosecutors and decided not to make a criminal referral for
either convening a Grand Jury or an indictment because she didn't mean to
do anything bad. He cited "reasonable prosecutors" (presumably the ones
he consulted) who would not want to prosecute the case.
Tuesday, July 5: While Comey was making his announcement, President Barack
Obama, in a previously scheduled appearance, was campaigning in North Carolina
with Hillary Clinton.
Wednesday, July 6: Attorney General Lynch announces that she accepts
the recommendation of Comey and will not review the evidence herself.
What really happened appears to be that Bill Clinton successfully conveyed
to Loretta Lynch that she would keep her job if Hillary is elected. Lynch
then successfully conveyed to Comey that she expected a clean referral from
the FBI. Finally, Comey undertook a nearly unprecedented step by publicly
announcing all the reasons for a criminal referral, then refusing to follow
his own logic. In the meantime, Obama, boss of Lynch and Comey, obviously
knew well in advance what the outcome of this charade would be and scheduled
accordingly."
"... Mexican workers were in rural areas over thirty years ago doing the farm labor that was formerly done by blacks. Often they lived in barracks together on the farms they worked. The ownership class of those hose lily white conservatives were the first to use them to displace native born workers and drive down wages. This was being done in California all the way back to 1910. ..."
"... Part time immigrants displace resident workers at wages no family could survive on in the US. These workers either stay in barracks on the farm or they crowd into cheap rental dwellings meant for a fraction of the number of occupants that they group in. ..."
"... As to H1B types, meme chose as off-shoring; as well as a missed opportunity to increase the skills of native-borns. http://angrybearblog.com/2006/12/disappearing-americans-and-illegal.html ..."
"... "Caesar Chavez understood the effects the effects of illegal immigation". That he did. Governor Pete Wilson promoted this to keep wages down for this agribusiness buddies. But then Wilson flip flopped in a draconian way with Prop 197. Every Republican in California came to realize this destroyed their chances with not only the Hispanic vote but also the votes are non-racist Californians. ..."
"... I grew up in a beautiful beach town called San Juan Capistrano. That's a Spanish name, and there was a Spanish mission where the swallows fly back to. Los Angeles, San Francisco. Spanish names. In my school days I had many Mexican American friends. At university I had a Guatamalan and then a Chinese American room mate. You heard the term wetback sometimes, but to me they were just friends, and Americans. You spend 5 minutes with em and you can't think anything else. We are all, save Native Americans, immigrants. ..."
"... Attacking immigrants is not new. But America has managed to be above that for the most part. ..."
"... "If immigration isn't the problem, then what is? The real problems faced by workers are globalization, technological change, and lack of bargaining power in wage negotiations, problems for which Donald Trump has no effective solutions. Reducing international trade through tariffs and the trade wars that come with them will make us worse off in the long-run – we will end up with fewer jobs, not more, and there's no reason to think the average job will be any better. Trump has nothing to offer in the way of providing more support for workers who lose their jobs due to the adoption of digital, robotic, and other technology or to help workers gain a stronger hand when wages are negotiated." ..."
"... I disagree. The heart of the matter is that so long as economists and corporate enablers ensure that protecting against globalisation is off the table, the problems will never be solved. Free trade is their snake oil. And if your "free trade" partner happens to be an autocracy, which will use the $Trillions they siphon out of you to build up their military, use that military to alter the lines on the map, intimidate their neighbors, and ultimately maybe even destroy you, well, those events never show up in their glorious equations, so they must not exist. ..."
"... The paradigm is that the white working class has not been able to form a majority by itself since the pre-Civil War Jacksonian era. They must either make a coalition with other minorities (the New Deal) or with Wall Street and corporate power (the GOP's Southern Strategy). In the 1970s with racial quotas and increasing taxation they felt abandoned by the Democrats, and now that they realize that the GOP corporate paradise is killing them, they are adrift. They once again can either make an alliance with the minorities who live in the next poorer neighborhood who they fear will rob them of their wallets, or with Wall Street who will rob them of everything they own over a much longer period of time, and live in fabulous palaces far far away. ..."
Trump's Taco Truck Fear Campaign Diverts Attention From the Real Issues : Donald Trump would
like you to believe that immigration is largely responsible for the difficult economic conditions
the working class has experienced in recent decades. But immigration is not the problem. The real
culprits are globalization, technological change, and labor's dwindling bargaining power in wage
negotiations.
Mexican workers were in rural areas over thirty years ago doing the farm labor that was formerly
done by blacks. Often they lived in barracks together on the farms they worked. The ownership
class of those hose lily white conservatives were the first to use them to displace native born
workers and drive down wages. This was being done in California all the way back to 1910.
Lettuce Wars: Ten Years of Work and Struggle in the Fields of California
In 1971, Bruce Neuburger-young, out of work, and radicalized by the 60s counterculture in Berkeley-took
a job as a farmworker on a whim. He could have hardly anticipated that he would spend the next
decade laboring up and down the agricultural valleys of California, alongside the anonymous and
largely immigrant workforce that feeds the nation. This account of his journey begins at a remarkable
moment, after the birth of the United Farm Workers union and the ensuing uptick in worker militancy.
As a participant in organizing efforts, strikes, and boycotts, Neuburger saw first-hand the struggles
of farmworkers for better wages and working conditions, and the lengths the growers would go to
suppress worker unity...
Mexican migrants were in Ohio 60+ years ago, making the vegetable circuit. (The biggest Campbells
Soup plant is in Napoleon Ohio. The region has some of the best top soil on the planet). Some
of them settled and are on the third generation. They even hang out with the white working class,
who are their neighbors and co-workers. Some of them even marry Germans and Swedes.
Yeah, guest workers go way back at least 100 years in the US. And sure many stayed and, in that
case, I am totally fine with actual immigration when they become citizens and pay taxes and buy
or rent homes here as permanent residents. Green card workers and illegals are doing a lot of
the farm work in VA on the Northern Neck and Eastern Shore and have been for thirty years.
Part time immigrants displace resident workers at wages no family could survive on in the US.
These workers either stay in barracks on the farm or they crowd into cheap rental dwellings meant
for a fraction of the number of occupants that they group in.
I understand the effect of illegal immigration, Caesar Chavez understood the effects the effects
of illegal immigation, ...., in fact almost all working class Americans understand the effects
of illegal immigration.
"Caesar Chavez understood the effects the effects of illegal immigation". That he did. Governor
Pete Wilson promoted this to keep wages down for this agribusiness buddies. But then Wilson flip
flopped in a draconian way with Prop 197. Every Republican in California came to realize this
destroyed their chances with not only the Hispanic vote but also the votes are non-racist Californians.
Mark Thoma is suggesting a humane alternative to Wilson's two extremes.
If there was a basic income with a substantial residency requirement for immigrants - this would
be a non-issue, since qualified residents could live better than immigrants on the same wages.
I grew up in a beautiful beach town called San Juan Capistrano. That's a Spanish name, and
there was a Spanish mission where the swallows fly back to. Los Angeles, San Francisco. Spanish
names. In my school days I had many Mexican American friends. At university I had a Guatamalan
and then a Chinese American room mate. You heard the term wetback sometimes, but to me they were
just friends, and Americans. You spend 5 minutes with em and you can't think anything else. We
are all, save Native Americans, immigrants.
I remember those old World War 2 movies where the squad is made up of diverse immigrants. You
got the Italian, the Jew, the Irsh guy, etc. And they formed a team. E pluribus unim. Attacking
immigrants is not new. But America has managed to be above that for the most part. E
"Attacking immigrants is not new. But America has managed to be above that for the most"
Conservatives have been attacking immigrants for years. They hated JFK and Catholics. Being
a Catholic Jew is not new to me, but Cons hated Catholics and then they used us Jews for their
political gains. It never worked on us. Most Jews are too intelligent for conservatism. Take care.
Our excellent host gets to the heart of the matter:
"If immigration isn't the problem, then what is? The real problems faced by workers are
globalization, technological change, and lack of bargaining power in wage negotiations, problems
for which Donald Trump has no effective solutions. Reducing international trade through tariffs
and the trade wars that come with them will make us worse off in the long-run – we will end up
with fewer jobs, not more, and there's no reason to think the average job will be any better.
Trump has nothing to offer in the way of providing more support for workers who lose their jobs
due to the adoption of digital, robotic, and other technology or to help workers gain a stronger
hand when wages are negotiated."
Trump has nothing to offer except hate. Besides - who could object to more tacos. Oh wait -
I need to do a long run before eating Mexican food tonight.
I disagree. The heart of the matter is that so long as economists and corporate enablers ensure
that protecting against globalisation is off the table, the problems will never be solved. Free
trade is their snake oil. And if your "free trade" partner happens to be an autocracy, which will
use the $Trillions they siphon out of you to build up their military, use that military to alter
the lines on the map, intimidate their neighbors, and ultimately maybe even destroy you, well,
those events never show up in their glorious equations, so they must not exist.
The paradigm is that the white working class has not been able to form a majority by itself
since the pre-Civil War Jacksonian era. They must either make a coalition with other minorities
(the New Deal) or with Wall Street and corporate power (the GOP's Southern Strategy). In the 1970s
with racial quotas and increasing taxation they felt abandoned by the Democrats, and now that
they realize that the GOP corporate paradise is killing them, they are adrift. They once again
can either make an alliance with the minorities who live in the next poorer neighborhood who they
fear will rob them of their wallets, or with Wall Street who will rob them of everything they
own over a much longer period of time, and live in fabulous palaces far far away.
And if your "free trade" partner happens to be an autocracy, which will use the $Trillions they
siphon out of you to build up their military, use that military to alter the lines on the map,
intimidate their neighbors, and ultimately maybe even destroy you, well, those events never show
up in their glorious equations, so they must not exist....
[ Perfectly paraphrased from Dr. Strangelove. We are being siphoned, OMG. ]
Washington Post Presents an Overly Simplistic View of Trade
It is unfortunate that it now acceptable in polite circles to connect a view with Donald Trump
and then dismiss it. The result is that many fallacious arguments can now be accepted without
being seriously questioned. (Hey folks, I hear Donald Trump believes in evolution.)
The Post plays this game * in noting that the U.S. trade deficit with Germany is now larger
than its deficit with Mexico, putting Germany second only to China. It then asks why people aren't
upset about the trade deficit with Germany.
It partly answers this story itself. Germany's huge trade surplus stems in large part from
the fact that it is in the euro zone. The euro might be properly valued against the dollar, but
because Germany is the most competitive country in the euro zone, it effectively has an under-valued
currency relative to the dollar.
The answer to this problem would be to get Germany to have more inflationary policies to allow
other countries to regain competitiveness -- just as the other euro zone countries were generous
enough to run inflationary policies in the first half of the last decade to allow Germany to regain
competitiveness. However, the Germans refuse to return this favor because their great great great
great grandparents lived through the hyper-inflation in Weimar Germany. (Yes, they say this.)
Anyhow, this issue has actually gotten considerable attention from economists and other policy
types. Unfortunately it is very difficult to force a country in the euro zone -- especially the
largest country -- to run more expansionary countries. As a result, Germany is forcing depression
conditions on the countries of southern Europe and running a large trade surplus with the United
States.
The other part of the difference between Germany and China and Mexico is that Germany is a
rich country, while China and Mexico are developing countries. Folks that took intro econ courses
know that rich countries are expected to run trade surpluses.
The story is that rich countries are slow growing with a large amount of capital. By contrast,
developing countries are supposed to fast growing (okay, that doesn't apply to post-NAFTA Mexico),
with relatively little capital. Capital then flows from where it is relatively plentiful and getting
a low return to developing countries where it is scarce and can get a high return.
The outflow of capital from rich countries implies a trade surplus with developing countries.
Developing countries are in turn supposed to be borrowing capital to finance trade deficits. These
trade deficits allow them to build up their capital stocks even as they maintain the consumption
standards of their populations.
In the case of the large trade surpluses run by China and other developing countries, we are
seeing the opposite of the textbook story. We are seeing fast growing developing countries with
outflows of capital. This largely because they have had a policy of deliberately depressing the
value of their currencies by buying up large amounts of foreign reserves (mostly dollars.)
So the economics textbooks explain clearly why we should see the trade deficits that the U.S.
runs with China and Mexico as being different than the one it runs with Germany. And that happens
to be true regardless of what Donald Trump may or may not say.
By the way, this piece also asserts that "Germany on average has lower wages than Belgium or
Ireland." This is not true according to our friends at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
China is building its military at a huge rate. Double digit growth per yer over almost 20 years.
They are at $150 billion a year(if you believe their figures).
You have a point with China at $150B a year going to real engineering and not inept Lockheed
you need to worry. Those PLA re-education camps might make you another McCain.
US' Pentagon welfare trough: $500B "core" per year even with the sequestration.
Paying for DoD part of drones delivering collateral damage justified by its military utility*:
$80B in FY 16 (was $150B in FY 12).
CIA contracted drones and contractor (See the guys killed in Benghazi) run wars we can know
nothing about $XXB a year.
*If Germany had won WW II Bomber Harris would have been hanged.
Rusty - your usual confusion. Economists only advise. Lawyers make these decisions. And most lawyers
either do not listen to economists or if they do they get really confused. But will a lawyer ever
admit they are confused or not listening?
I don't see your call to take America back to the 60s and tube radios and TVs because they are
cheaper than semiconductor manufacturing because all the tube electronic factories already exist.
Nor do I see you extolling the virtue of $8 gasoline and heating oil thanks to the total ban
on fossil fuel imports.
I'd love someone to ask Trump if he would ban imports of oil and iPhones and Samsung electronics
in his first 100 days as president.
If he says yes and doesn't lose popularity, I'll make sure to buy all the electronics I'll
want for a few years. I've already sworn off gasoline.
Surely fuller then full employment
and a largest possible share of net income
going to primary producers isn't precluded by external trade restrictions
Economies of scale ?
Adequate competition between producing units ?
North America is plenty big for most optimal "plant sizes "
And at least three firms for each product
See Stiglitz on the second best real market firm structure
See Stiglitz on the second best real market firm structure
[ Of course, that will take reading through the last 30 years or so of work by Joseph Stiglitz
since I am not going to give a reader a clue as to how to find such a reference. No problem though,
just start reading. ]
There will be no relief until we "euthanize the rentiers". Raise top marginal rates to confiscatory
levels on income over $1 million, treat all income the same, prohibit corporations from deducting
executive compensate over $1 million, eliminate all tax breaks for individuals that do not widely
apply to those in the bottom half of the income distribution and all corporate tax subsidies.
Not even close, just a return to the 1950s, when the economy boomed. The idea that the wealthy
and large corporations will physically move to countries with more favorable tax regimes, most
of which are in the third world, is pure fantasy, which is why most of the super rich live in
New York, California, and other high tax states.
I understand the differences, but was merely addressing Rusty's nonsense implying this was somehow
outrageous and unprecedented. In addition to the trade advantages the US had, the emergence of
new industries in electronics, aviation, and petrochemicals, which all needed a lot of highly
skilled workers and paid very well, was vital as well. Nonetheless, the policies I mentioned would
go a long way to addressing our current problems, including reducing the incentives to offshore
production (contrary to Rusty).
You don't understand the point of tax dodges, do you? The tax dodges are rewards for paying workers
to build capital assets. But they need high marginal rates to justify paying workers.
Capital gains needs to return to the hold for five years or more to get the incentive. It isn't
really "capital" if not held because it's productive.
However, if inflation in the price of productive capital that barely retains its value is taxed
as income, you punish building productive capital. Asset basis price can be inflation adjusted
reasonably well these days thanks to computer technology making detailed calculations simple for
humans.
I'd have loved to pay workers to install solar and batteries to dodge 50-70% marginal tax rates
in the 90s. Much better than the best case 30% tax credit for paying workers these days. Of course,
given the penalty for paying workers due to low tax rates, I have no high wage income to be taxed
at high rates.
As Milton Friedman pointed out in the 60s and then later in the 80s as I recall, the 50-70-90%
tax rates never raised much revenue because the tax dodges rewarded paying worker to do wasteful
things, in his opinion, like production too much cheap energy, producing too much innovation which
ended up in too many new consumer products the wastefully overpaid workers bought.
This is an irrelevant aside. Friday was a minor bloodbath for investors inequities and bonds.
Thing is, I was like okay, I lost paper money, why.? I could not find a reason the market was
tanking other than Fed fears. Now I realize equities markets can behave like crack addicts or
lemmings. But 2.45 percent based on Fed fears of a rate hike?
Usually when the market is down I go to Calculated risk to see what must be some bad data.
Friday is a profit taking day. But as a small investor that was a really bad day.
Also, Los Lobos version of Hotel California via the Big Libowski is essential.
Final trading session before the 15th anniversary of 9-11 disaster! Would you guess that lot of
folks hedged with ultra-short-ETF earlier in the week? Lot of folks took profits before labour
day?
A day like that is why there needs to be a micro tax on trades. I get it if people sell based
on fundamentals. Everyone hedges, too, that's why you diversify. But the ultimate purpose of investing
is to provide companies with the capital to make productive investment.
A good part of the market is just short term bets. How is that socially useful. And the funny
thing, a lot of these guys don't make money for their clients, they just make money on the commission.
Like a casino owner. Like the con man running for prez.
Technological change is definitely not an issue. Productivity growth is slower now than in 1945-1973
when we had a large middle class. Cross nationally the arguments that robots are taking jobs doesn't
make any sense. If you traveled in both the non-industrial world (Africa, Haiti etc) and East
Asia, you will be aware of this. In the non-industrial world formal sector employment is only
10-20% of the labor force; 80% of the pop. is involved in "gig" jobs selling candy on the street
etc. In East Asia you have virtually no unemployment, but these are the places with by far the
largest deployment of robots, much, much higher than the US. The robots argument is convenient
politically, but doesn't make any sense to anyone whose traveled the world or knows anything about
economic history.
Before, auto plants hired 5,500 @ and produced X vehicles; after, they hired 1,200 @ and produced
1.4 vehicles. You don't get to have your own reality.
I bet that tamales truck is run by a Mexican. I hope so as it would likely mean you are enjoying
awesome tamales. Trump has no idea what good Mexican food is as it does not exist in Manhattan.
I think we need to change the compound growth capitalism we've had since forever. It will not
be sustainable much longer. We need 'de-globalization' not more globalization, in my opinion.
The efficiency bookkeeping model that promotes globalization is deeply flawed. What about the
pollution issues involved in global distribution of products that can easily be made at home?
Again, Keynes said it best. "The decadent international but individualistic capitalism, in the
hands of which we found ourselves after the war, is not a success. It is not intelligent, it is
not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous--and it doesn't deliver the goods. In short,
we dislike it, and we are beginning to despise it. But when we wonder what to put in its place,
we are extremely perplexed."
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/interwar/keynes.htm
After the Berlin Wall fell, and defense budgets got cut, the SoCal economy changed as income
and jobs drained out. Blacks occupied the lower end of support jobs and got underbid by Hispanics,
so they moved away from LA. The same trend impacted lower income whites, who largely moved out
of state. Middle and upper income whites adapted as the local economy transitioned to absorb the
laid-off engineering talent, often through new business ventures along the 101 corridor and in
the multi-media areas in Santa Monica and the south bay. What took a few decades in Pittsburgh
and other cities impacted by major industry changes took about a decade in LA.
In southern California overall, the combination of illegal immigration and a higher total fertility
rate among Hispanics has brought about significant population and employment changes, particularly
over the last 25 years. As well-documented by demographers, blacks suffered significantly through
those changes and were displaced from low end jobs by the burgeoning Hispanic population.
For example, south central LA has transitioned from majority black to majority Hispanic as
a result of job changes and influx. Blacks moved to San Bernardino, Victorville and other areas
where cheaper housing and potential employment were available.
Now the taco trucks are supplemented by grilled cheese trucks, crepe trucks, Korean taco trucks
and other variations designed to serve a more diverse population.
That is actually a decent description of LA. And the diversity of food is why some sing "I Love
LA". It has its issues but I do miss southern CAL .. especially during these harsh NYC winters.
Urbanites like Trump probably see
'taco trucks' frequently as their
limos whiz by. They appreciate
their visibility to likely
Trumpy supporters.
(Limos & trucks both?)
'Doing something about pesky
immigrants should garner a few votes!'
Except The Donald didn't start the tweet storm.
'Taco Trucks on Every Corner': Trump Supporter's
Anti-Immigration Warning http://nyti.ms/2bIeFyw
NYT - NIRAJ CHOKSHI - SEPT. 2, 2016
"My culture is a very dominant culture, and it's imposing and it's causing problems. If you
don't do something about it, you're going to have taco trucks on every corner."
That was Marco Gutierrez, founder of the group Latinos for Trump, issuing a dire warning to
the United States in an interview with Joy Reid on MSNBC on Thursday night.
Trump campaign manager repeatedly grilled about
candidate's false proclamations on Iraq War
position http://read.bi/2bZ6iyG
via @BusinessInsider - Sep 9
Donald Trump's campaign manager was repeatedly pressed Friday as she attempted to explain inconsistencies
in the Republican presidential nominee's statements on the Iraq War.
On two separate morning shows, Kellyanne Conway said Trump's declaration of support for the
war during a 2002 interview with radio host Howard Stern was not a reliable indication of how
he felt at the time.
On CNN, anchor Chris Cuomo pressed Conway on Trump's Iraq War flip-flops.
"He doesn't want to own that he wasn't against it before it started," Cuomo said. "Why not?
Why not just own it? And as you like to say, he was a private citizen."
Conway insisted that despite Trump responding "yeah, I guess so" when Stern asked if he supported
the invasion of Iraq, his statement wasn't equal to then Sen. Hillary Clinton's vote in favor
of the war. ...
(At least, 'Trump has acknowledged that
Clinton's vote (for the war - *) was a mistake.')
... "The point is, as you know, he constantly says 'I was always against the war,'" host Charlie
Rose said to Conway. "Here he says 'I guess' I would support it. That's a contradiction."
Conway pushed back, offering a similar defense to the one she gave CNN.
"Not really, Charlie," she said. "And here is why: He is giving - he is on a radio show. Hillary
Clinton went into the well of the United States Senate representing this state of New York and
case a vote in favor of the Iraq War."
Rose said that "this is not about Hillary Clinton."
"She has acknowledged that vote and acknowledged it was a mistake," Rose said. "He has not,
and he wants to have it both ways."
Conway said that Trump has acknowledged that Clinton's vote was a mistake, to which Rose replied,
"No, but he has not acknowledged that at one point he said he was for the war.
"Why can't he simply say that?" Rose asked. "'At one point I was, and then I changed my mind."
...
(When Trump criticized the Iraq War in 2004,
it was because we hadn't seized their oil
assets as spoils, ostensibly.)
*- Iraq Resolution (formally the Authorization
for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002)
"Kellyanne Conway said Trump's declaration of support for the war during a 2002 interview with
radio host Howard Stern was not a reliable indication of how he felt at the time."
Of course Kellyanne Conway lies even more than her client.
Hillary Clinton Calls Many Trump Backers 'Deplorables' ... http://nyti.ms/2c1UlbC
NYT - AMY CHOZICK - SEPT. 10
... Mrs. Clinton's comments Friday night, which were a variation of a sentiment she has expressed
in other settings recently, came at a fund-raiser in Manhattan.
"You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what
I call the basket of deplorables. Right?" she said to applause and laughter. "The racist, sexist,
homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic - you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that.
And he has lifted them up."
By Saturday morning, #BasketofDeplorables was trending on Twitter as Mr. Trump's campaign demanded
an apology. His supporters hoped to use the remark as as evidence that Mrs. Clinton cannot connect
to the voters she hopes to represent as president.
"Wow, Hillary Clinton was SO INSULTING to my supporters, millions of amazing, hard working
people. I think it will cost her at the polls!" Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. ...
Immigration PLUS the "demobilization" of labor unions (the discontinuance of collective bargaining
with the concomitant dismemberment of middle class political punch) EQUALS the impoverishment
of low skilled workers ...
... equates to reducing what should be $800 jobs to $400 jobs ...
... which is the alpha and the omega of today's income inequality -- at least lowest income
inequality; the folks who work fast food and supermarkets (the wrong end of two-tier supermarket
contracts, gradually going low tier all the way). I'm not especially concerned that more low skilled
jobs add more higher skilled employment.
********************************
Why are 100,000 out of something like 200,000 Chicago gang-age, minority males in street gangs?
Where are the American raised taxi drivers? Could be $600 fast food jobs imm-sourced to Mexico
and India -- could be $800 taxi jobs imm-sourced to the whole world? $1000 construction jobs imm-sourced
to Eastern Europe and Mexico?
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/gang-wars-at-the-root-of-chicagos-high-murder-rate/
The way it works is COLLECTIVE BARGAINING SETS THE PRICE OF LABOR BY THE MOST THE CONSUMER
WILL TOLERATE -- RACE TO THE BOTTOM WAGES ARE SET BY THE LEAST THE EMPLOYEE WILL TOLERATE.
*****************************
Even zero immigration would only (as in merely) keep American labor from hitting rock bottom --
or at least hoping to find non-criminal employment w/o collective bargaining.
Current union busting penalties carry about as much weight as the "FBI warning" you get when
you start a DVD. More actually: if you actually enter a movie theater to copy a new movie before
it goes to DVD you face a couple of years mandatory federal hospitality.
OTH if you fire an organizer the most you face is hiring the organizer back and maybe a little
back pay while she's waiting to fired again for "something else." The labor market is the only
market where you can break the law and face zero penalties at all.
New idea: an NLRB finding of illegally blocking union organization should be able to lead to
a mandate that a certification election must be taken. This may only be implementable at the federal
level.
Beyond that union busting should be a felony at state and federal levels -- backed by RICO
for persistent violators to keep employers from playing at the edges. Our most progressive/pro
labor states (WA, OR, CA, NV, IL, MN, NY, MD?) could do that right now if someone would just raise
the issue.
IF SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE WOULD JUST RAISE THE ISSUE!!!!!!!!!!
Wanna stop the shoot-em-ups in Chicago and elsewhere? To paraphrase a line from Superfly: It's
the American dream dog: flush toilet down the hall, AM radio, electric light in every room.
Let's call that $200/wk job level -- in today's money. And the year is ...
... 1916 ...
.. and today's gang members, not to mention my American raised taxi driver "gang" would be
willing to put in a hard week's work for it ...
... in 1916.
But today's "gangs" are not going to work for $400, 100 years later. Hell, about 50 years later
...
... 1968 ...
... the federal minimum wage was $440 in today's money -- at half today's per capita income!
I read James Julius Wilson's book When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor and
Sudhir Venkatesh's book American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto, at the same time
-- and the projects only descended into gang infested hell as the bottom dropped out of the minimum
wage.
Beautiful thing about collective bargaining is: you know you have squeezed the most practicable
out (of your fellow consumers -- not the boss) of the economy and technology of your era.
Just don't forget Centralized bargaining so the Walmarts of the world can't squeeze better
contracts elsewhere. Walmart closed 88 big boxes in Germany which has centralized bargaining.
Wal-Mart's "advantage" is not in low labor cost, but logistics and market dominance allowing it
to boss around suppliers.
German labor laws may have contributed to its "problems", but the primary issues were its US-centric
logistics operation and having to compete against local incumbents who were at least its equals,
and had the home turf advantage. And competition as well as labor relations in German retail are
at least as cutthroat as in the US. Most recent (few years ago) scandals involving treatment of
workers and systematic intimidation were in large chain retailers.
There were also stories about how they were trying to sell US bedware sizes which are different
from the German sizes, and similar market research goofs, which seems to indicate a certain arrogance,
and that they probably underestimated the effort and sunk cost that had to be invested to become
successful.
Some of these stories also had a background of a general anti-US sentiment as neoliberal safety
net "reforms" and (labor) market "flexibilization" were prominently justified with US comparisons
(by officials). But I doubt this had much practical impact on the decision to cut the experiment.
"A staggering 96 per cent of America's net job growth since 1990 has come from sectors known
to have low productivity (construction, retail, bars, restaurants, and other low-paying services
were responsible for 46 percentage points of total growth) and sectors where low productivity
is merely suspected in the absence of competition and proper measurement techniques (healthcare,
education, government, and finance explain the remaining 50 percentage points)".
So we are expanding jobs that produce services. With increased robotics and productivity, a
smaller and smaller % of the workforce will be needed to produce all the food and merchandise
people need (or can consume). So the future growth of the job market will have to be in producing
services. The challenge will be to make sure that those jobs are paying sufficiently high salaries
to ensure continuous robust growth in demand. Otherwise we will be entering a permanent period
of low growth in the economy.
ensure that workers have more bargaining power so that the growth in output is shared rather than
"
~~MT~
Workers need to get a handle on bargaining power, need to realize that uncontrolled reproduction
will inevitably bid down the price of labour. Look!
American family should find it cheaper to reduce child bearing to one child per female. The
one child can then inherit the entire estate of the couple with no expense for legal battles with
rival siblings. The one child will have more quality time with parents, grand parents, and aunts
for mentor-ing and help with school work, be on the fast track of career path that requires quality
education. Some jobs here require local folks with better language skills. Such jobs do not adapt
easily to recent immigrants. Reduction in our birth rate cannot be completely de-fang-ed by immigration.
Our birth control will remain a windfall to our workers in aggregate sprint as well as in separate
family's economics.
One child per 2 parents would be an economic disaster. Unless productivity per worker exploded
we would find that the total GDP would shrink rather than increase. The national debt per worker
would also increase even if we somehow managed to stop adding to it. The current problem of a
much smaller number of workers to help pay retirement and medical cost for the old people would
become extremely hard to solve (without exploding tax rates). Growing the population either by
birth or by allowing immigrants to come here is part of why US is doing better than Europe.
national debt per worker would also increase even if we somehow managed to stop adding to it.
The current problem of a much smaller number of workers to help pay retirement and medical cost
for the old people would become extremely hard to solve (without exploding tax rates). Growing
the population
"
Believe it! I just crunched approximate numbers to find that each child with only $2 in pocket
owes $57,000 to public debt, each retired pensioner, each billionaire and each millionaire owe
same thing, 57 K. But!
But 33% of Americans couldn't come up with $555 to handle an emergency. The answer to national
debt?
Endless exponential population expansion until natural resources run dry, no air to breath,
no water to drink, fug-get about food.
Population expansion is a social Ponzi scheme. Eventually it collapses -- we starve.
The remarkable instance of population control started when Deng Xiaoping crunched the numbers
and decided to opt for a draconian return to a rational World. The one child tradition began with
the most dramatic success at making folks rich enough to enjoy life and produce things for people
around the World to enjoy. Let the good times roll and thrill your soul. Got soul?
From my point of view as an employer, the Mexican and Caribbean immigrants have been good hires.
They are generally reliable and good cooperators. Other employers seem to think so as well, judging
by what I see when I go to the doctor or the dentist or the mechanic shop or just about anywhere
else that low to intermediate skill personnel are essential to running the shop.
I would not say that immigrants' effect on wages is trivial except in the macro sense. The
union tradesmen in our area are suffering badly due to having their wages undercut by low wage
immigrants. The wage-rate cuts are on the order of 50%, $32/hr down to $16/hr. Unlike the doctors,
where immigrant doctors don't seem to depress wages much, the scarcity value of trained tradesmen
is substantially reduced by an influx of immigrants with similar skills. Auto mechanics, auto
body men, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, etc are badly hurt by the competition. Perhaps because
their skills are more easily acquired than those of the doctors. We have a large number of asian
scientific and technical people in the area and they are also high wage folks and native born
scientists and technical personnel do not seem to have been adversely affected. There is next
to no mechanism for the doctors and scientists and engineers, who arguably have been helped by
immigration, to help out the tradesmen who have been hurt.
Higher taxes may not be the only answer. Private and religious efforts are underway, mostly
religious in my locale. There is a Cristo Rey school that has received a lot of support from businesses
in the area, particularly the science and technology-based businesses. The Catholics organized
it and run it, but it is open to all. The kids get a better education than they can get in the
corruptly run, disorganized, deteriorating public high schools nearby. They are matched with a
team of 4 and each kid works one day per week at his or her sponsoring business and the earnings
pay for the schooling. The kids meet and work with business and professional people they would
not otherwise meet.
Higher tax rates may take too long to occur to make a difference in the lives of today's young
people struggling to get some security or a future worth living out. Supporting and participating
in religious and community-based efforts is something we can all do today.
Back when, before the onslaught, when I was a young man; a young man out of high school could
work construction, learn how to do a day's work, get paid enough to get a car, court a girl, go
to college, ... join the union, maybe get married, buy a home, start a family; it was a path upward
for so many. These days, those jobs are held by $10-15/hr illegals working as contract labor while
our own young men out of high school have never held a job, don't how to do a day's work, ...
may be on heroin or meth. This is not win win, this is not working. Time to stop pretending.
Re: " The union tradesmen in our area are suffering badly due to having their wages undercut by
low wage immigrants. The wage-rate cuts are on the order of 50%, $32/hr down to $16/hr. "
The way it works is COLLECTIVE BARGAINING SETS THE PRICE OF LABOR BY THE MOST THE CONSUMER WILL
TOLERATE -- RACE TO THE BOTTOM WAGES (as you describe here) ARE SET BY THE LEAST THE EMPLOYEE
WILL TOLERATE.
What you describe would never happen with sufficient (high!) union density. See Germany.
******************
What to do:
Current union busting penalties carry about as much weight as the "FBI warning" you get when
you start a DVD. More actually: if you actually enter a movie theater to copy a new movie before
it goes to DVD you face a couple of years mandatory federal hospitality.
OTH if you fire an organizer the most you face is hiring the organizer back and maybe a little
back pay while she's waiting to fired again for "something else." The labor market is the only
market where you can break the law and face zero penalties at all.
New idea: an NLRB finding of illegally blocking union organization should be able to lead to
a mandate that a certification election must be taken. This may only be implementable at the federal
level.
Beyond that union busting should be a felony at state and federal levels -- backed by RICO
for persistent violators to keep employers from playing at the edges. Our most progressive/pro
labor states (WA, OR, CA, NV, IL, MN, NY, MD?) could do that right now if someone would just raise
the issue.
Like any other collective action, collective bargaining relies on cohesion among the collective.
The objective of any collective, whether a trade group or union, is collective action on behalf
of its members. Cohesion among the group members is absolutely necessary to successful collective
action. Weakness of union bargaining is due to the inability of the collective to maintain cohesion.
Your own cabdrivers' union has been undercut by Uber. My friends among the local tradesmen are
being undercut by men with comparable skills who are not eligible for union membership under current
rules, but are willing to do comparable work for half the union scale. My friends in industrial
unions have been undercut by foreign competitors. Technological advances have played a large role
in assisting circumstances to undercut cabbies, carpenters, and machinists all.
"We have a large number of asian scientific and technical people in the area and they are also
high wage folks and native born scientists and technical personnel do not seem to have been adversely
affected."
A significant part of age discrimination complaints in tech is actually about preferring young
*foreign* or foreign-origin labor to locals who started their careers in the 80's and 90's, and
who are now around 40-60 years old.
There has been the related observation that EE/CS and other tech-related majors have been majority
foreign-populated as the share of locals has declined due to lower job prospects and escalating
tuition and ancillary costs.
Almost all entry-level hiring in "established" industries has been either abroad, or bringing
in visa workes, which after temporary labor crunches in the Y2K/dotcom booms led to an oversupply
of experienced but older workers who would be hired at more senior levels as long as they had
related recent work credentials, or not quite senior levels but expected to have age-appropriate
experience and work contribution.
But that works only for a few years. Once you are out of the industry for a while or stuck
at level because there is no need for advancement, prospects decline a lot.
In parallel there has been a widely bemoaned innovation stagnation, and that goes together
with more people being needed for maintenance-type jobs and only few for advanced R&D (and even
advanced R&D has a lot of mundane legwork - consider Edison's quip "invention is 1% inspiration
and 99% perspiration").
That relatively few people were hired at the entry level "here" since about 2000 has also contributed
to perceived "talent shortages" - as companies got used to the idea you can just poach talent
or hire from the market, as some point the supply of *young* local workers dried up as the pipeline
wasn't refilled.
If nobody has hired and trained freshers locally let's say for 5-10 years, how can anybody
expect to find people in that range of experience (who haven't "peaked" yet and can still be motivated
for a while with promises of career advancement, or still have headroom for actual advancement)?
That's actually what age discrimination is about.
Be careful who you call a racist. BTW racists are deplorable and some polls indicate that 60%
of Trump's supporters are racists. So "half" could be seen as an underestimate.
"none of the Trump campaign pushback to Clinton's "basket of deplorables" comments have said
anything about the people Clinton was talking about not being racist, not being misogynist or
by whatever definition not being 'haters.' It's not referenced once. Check out the statements
after the jump."
They cannot refute what Clinton said because Trump's supporters are racists. Rusty may be uncomfortable
with this reality but it is true.
Sanders style welfare proposals are misplaced. Continuing to subsidize people to live in areas
that are not sustainable does not fix the problem. Money is taken from urban areas that is needed
for renewal and investments in urban residents in sustainable areas and used to subsidize unsustainable
middle class lifestyles in exurban and rural areas. A more permanent solution is some combination
of transformation & relocation. Sanders tossed out the same 50 year old SWP nonsense without much
thought to whether it would work in today's economy. He made vague proposals that people were
free to interpret as matching their own. It was never in any sense a plan.
The world is urbanizing. The future is urban. The sooner we start planning and building for
the future, the less problems we will have with these unsustainable areas and lifestyles. An integrated
urban planning sustainable approach is needed.
Bernie's solution were those of the 70s, like the broken clock, he stood and waited, then yelled
I have the answer when he hadn't a clue what was happening. Hillary's are of the 90s and shall
prove worthless going forward, though she's not quite as clueless; the question is: Is she smart
enough to change her mind?
P T Trump, like his predecessors in such times, is offering snake oil remedies. His advantage,
his medium is the media (the man can see and admire himself when he's performing on stage and
camera), and enough suckers have already been born.. . America's love of snake oil has been the
subject of writers like Twain, movies, theater, ... is world renowned.
Supporting and participating in religious and community-based efforts is something we can all
do today.
"
Try it! You'll love it! Look!
Our rulers are in business for themselves, their votes, their re-election, and their own t-bonds
but not our jobs and families. We got to support our own community. Our pioneers learned that
from the Indians and passed it on to us. It starts with a block party on 4th of July and grows
in all directions -- looking
The US has a trade deficit of 2-3 billion dollars a year. Our exports to Asia are mostly transfer
pricing attempts to avoid foreign taxes and smuggle profits back to the US. Trump is the first
presidential candidate in forty years to make correcting the trade deficit a centerpiece of his
campaign.
There is no country today, and never has been, nor will there be one that has no industry and
is also wealthy. The US was once a protectionist manufacturing heavy country. DJT wants to take
us back to pre-1970 protectionism; this is our only hope.
$2-3 billion a day. Imagine if we manufactured cellphones, computers, socks, etc. etc. the Delta,
Appalachia, and Michigan, New Haven CT etc. wouldn't be quickly becoming hell holes.
BenIsNotYoda : , -1
Thanks to Mark Thoma for highlighting some good effects of legal immigration. From the article:
Immigrants also own a larger share of small businesses than natives, are no more likely to
be unemployed, are no less likely to assimilate than in the past (no matter their country of origin),
and they have contributed greatly to technological development in the US. One study estimates
that "25.3 percent of the technology and engineering businesses launched in the United States
between 1995 to 2005 had a foreign-born founder. In California, this percentage was 38.8 percent.
In Silicon Valley, the center of the high-tech industry, 52.4 percent of the new tech start-ups
had a foreign-born owner."
Now only if the extreme liberals would stop bad mouthing H-1B program that brings in these
very people. To those who oppose H-1B: some abuse of the program to shut down the program is like
shutting down Medicare because there was a little fraud in Medicare. Obviously it is not a good
enough argument. Therefore I have to conclude it is pure discrimination disguised as something
else.
Clinton is neither well-liked nor trusted. She is just a marionette promoted
by neocon cabal. Sanders team has a point that Clinton is like the job candidate
wit the impressive resume who sounds great on paper, but then when you meet her
in person, you realize she's not he right person for the job.
Notable quotes:
"... She has never acknowledged, maybe even to herself, that routing diplomatic emails with classified information through a homebrew server was an outrageous, reckless and foolish thing to do, and disloyal to Obama, whose administration put in place rules for record-keeping that she flouted. ..."
"... And Hillary did not merely fail the ask the right questions. The questions were asked and the answers were given. Joe Biden, Robert Gates and much of the military and intelligence communities advised against the Libya intervention. Hillary just chose to ignore the advice, because she is a radical neoconservative at heart. ..."
"... She volunteered that that the United States should continue to "look for missions" that NATO will support ..."
"... She vows to go around looking for new military adventures. ..."
"... Maureen is right that Hillary has huge character problems. Sure, she can't admit mistakes and compulsively blames others when things go wrong. That's a given. But it's not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that she will take our country down the wrong path, both in terms of domestic and foreign policy. ..."
"... She has had 40-some years to develop this kind of judgment, imagination and long term reflection, and she has proudly, aggressively, mean-spiritedly run the opposite direction every time and viciously attacked anyone who called her on it. It's time to stop this game of "wondering" whether she can change, wondering whether all of these terrible moments were "the real Hillary" or not. They were. Voting someone in as President on the hope that they will be a completely different person once in office then they have been in 40 years is the definition of insanity. ..."
"... it's about her paranoia about secrecy that made her think she could get away with a private email server in one of the nation's most high-profile jobs, or taking huge sums of money for Wall Street speeches she now refuses to release, or doubling-down on her ill-considered, if not ill-informed (as you note), hawkish regime change views by advocating for it again in Libya that has, as a result, turned into an ISIS outpost. ..."
"... Clinton did herself no favors in the debate, drawing even more attention to her dependence on that money and the impossibility of being completely free to make policy without repaying debts. ..."
"... They don't, but it is telling that Bill said that. His chosen exaggeration displays who he sees as Hillary's side in this. When he says, "they are coming for us" he means Wall Street. ..."
"... "Clinton, who talked Obama into it" on Libya and claimed credit, but when it went poorly, she blamed Obama for listening to her, "On Libya, she noted that "the decision was the president's."" That is her claim to experience, and not something we ought to vote to experience again. ..."
"... Hillary is a self-serving, power hungry politician. She is only ever sorry if she fails to get what she wants, or is forced to explain her actions. She feels she is above "the masses." As for her qualifications, job titles alone don't cut it. What did she actually accomplish as a Senator or SecState? Any major laws? Treaties? No. She failed with Russia, Syria and Libya to name just a few. She is not qualified to be president based on qualifications and personality. ..."
... Clinton sowed suspicion again, refusing to cough up her Wall Street speech
transcripts.
... ... ...
Hillary alternately tried to blame and hug the men in her life, divvying
up credit in a self-serving way.
After showing some remorse for the 1994 crime bill, saying it had had "unintended"
consequences, she stressed that her husband "was the president who actually
signed it." On Libya, she noted that "the decision was the president's." And
on her desire to train and arm Syrian rebels, she recalled, "The president said
no."
But she wrapped herself in President Obama's record on climate change and,
when criticized on her "super PACs," said, well, Obama did it, too.
Sanders accused her of pandering to Israel after she said that "if Yasir
Arafat had agreed with my husband at Camp David," there would have been a Palestinian
state for 15 years.
Bernie is right that Hillary's judgment has often been faulty.
She has shown an unwillingness to be introspective and learn from her mistakes.
From health care to Iraq to the email server, she only apologizes at the point
of a gun. And even then, she leaves the impression that she is merely sorry
to be facing criticism, not that she miscalculated in the first place.
... ... ...
She has never acknowledged, maybe even to herself, that routing diplomatic
emails with classified information through a homebrew server was an outrageous,
reckless and foolish thing to do, and disloyal to Obama, whose administration
put in place rules for record-keeping that she flouted.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story Wouldn't it be a relief to
people if Hillary just acknowledged some mistakes?
... ... ...
Clinton accused Sanders of not doing his homework on how he would break up
the banks. And she is the queen of homework, always impressively well versed
in meetings. But that is what makes her failure to read the National Intelligence
Estimate that raised doubts about whether Iraq posed a threat to the U.S. so
egregious.
P. Greenberg El Cerrito, CA
Maureen Dowd fundamentally misunderstands Hillary Clinton's foreign policy
failings. When it comes to Libya, Clinton does not merely need to apologize
for getting distracted by other global issues and "taking her eye off the
ball". The decision to go in was wrong, not the failure to follow through.
And Hillary did not merely fail the ask the right questions. The
questions were asked and the answers were given. Joe Biden, Robert Gates
and much of the military and intelligence communities advised against the
Libya intervention. Hillary just chose to ignore the advice, because she
is a radical neoconservative at heart.
Clinton continues to adhere to the neoconservative approach to foreign
policy. Her choice of words during the Brooklyn debate were significant.
She volunteered that that the United States should continue to "look
for missions" that NATO will support. That says it all. She vows
to go around looking for new military adventures.
Maureen is right that Hillary has huge character problems. Sure,
she can't admit mistakes and compulsively blames others when things go wrong.
That's a given. But it's not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is
that she will take our country down the wrong path, both in terms of domestic
and foreign policy.
And please Maureen, stop denigrating Bernie Sanders with pejorative adjectives
and vague accusations. He has held elective office for 35 years, showing
leadership and good judgment and good values.
Brett Morris California,
She has had 40-some years to develop this kind of judgment, imagination
and long term reflection, and she has proudly, aggressively, mean-spiritedly
run the opposite direction every time and viciously attacked anyone who
called her on it. It's time to stop this game of "wondering" whether she
can change, wondering whether all of these terrible moments were "the real
Hillary" or not. They were. Voting someone in as President on the hope that
they will be a completely different person once in office then they have
been in 40 years is the definition of insanity.
That said, of course she is better than the republicans. But she is the
worst possible candidate for the Democratic Party, especially in this era
where we have a serious opportunity to turn away from Reagan's Overton Window.
And right now we actually have a candidate available who represents our
best ideas. Can't we just ditch her while we have the chance? If she gets
elected, more war is absolutely guaranteed. A one-term Presidency is also
highly likely, because nobody will be on her side. She loses trust and support
the more she exposes herself, every time.
Paul Long island
I agree when you say of Hillary Clinton, "She has shown an unwillingness
to be introspective and learn from her mistakes." That is only part of her
problem because her judgment seems always wrong, despite all the "listening
tours," whether it's about her paranoia about secrecy that made her
think she could get away with a private email server in one of the nation's
most high-profile jobs, or taking huge sums of money for Wall Street speeches
she now refuses to release, or doubling-down on her ill-considered, if not
ill-informed (as you note), hawkish regime change views by advocating for
it again in Libya that has, as a result, turned into an ISIS outpost.
To say she's "sorry" would only confirm her consistently bad judgment since
she has so much to be sorry about. So, what we have instead is a very "sorry"
candidate who, despite her resume and establishment backing, is having immense
trouble overcoming "a choleric 74-year-old democratic socialist" and will
have an even harder time if she's the Democratic nominee in November.
Rima Regas is a trusted commenter Mission Viejo, CA
Hillary isn't sorry. Bill is definitely not sorry. Bernie Sanders isn't
a senator with few accomplishments.
Hillary isn't sorry about anything. She hasn't apologized for the superpredator
comment. Saying she wouldn't say it now is hardly an apology and during
Thursday's debate, she talked about her husband apologizing for it instead
of talking about herself (since that was what she was being asked to do),
when Bill has yet to apologize. (Clips here: http://wp.me/p2KJ3H-2bw) If
anything, he doubled down on defending her and himself. When it comes to
mass-incarceration, they both exhibit a kind of moral absenteeism. http://wp.me/p2KJ3H-2b7
On money in politics, Clinton did herself no favors in the debate,
drawing even more attention to her dependence on that money and the impossibility
of being completely free to make policy without repaying debts. Debbie
Wasserman Schultz was no help to her this week when in an answer, she included
big money in the "Big Tent" that the democratic party is supposed to be.
http://wp.me/p2KJ3H-2bO
During his entire tenure in both houses of Congress, Sanders has distinguished
himself as one who can work with the other side, propose legislation gets
things done through amendments. There is a yuuuge difference in approach
between Clinton and Sanders and the willingness to trust Sanders over Clinton.
When the choice in front of Americans becomes Trump versus Clinton or Sanders,
Sanders wins by a wider margin. Sanders will take more from Trump.
Mark Thomason is a trusted commenter Clawson, Mich
So Bill claimed Bernie supporters think, "Just shoot every third person
on Wall Street and everything will be fine."
They don't, but it is telling that Bill said that. His chosen exaggeration
displays who he sees as Hillary's side in this. When he says, "they are
coming for us" he means Wall Street.
"Clinton, who talked Obama into it" on Libya and claimed credit,
but when it went poorly, she blamed Obama for listening to her, "On Libya,
she noted that "the decision was the president's.""
That is her claim to experience, and not something we ought to vote to
experience again.
That is important, because she still wants to sink us deeper into it.
Her own adviser on this says, Hillary "does not see the Libya intervention
as a failure, but as a work in progress."
"Like other decisions, it was put through a political filter and a paranoid
mind-set." That is the essence of what makes Hillary so dangerous in a responsible
office. From Iraq in the beginning to Libya now, the homework lady did all
her work and then saw the wrong things and got it wrong.
Joe Pike Gotham City
Hillary is a self-serving, power hungry politician. She is only ever
sorry if she fails to get what she wants, or is forced to explain her actions.
She feels she is above "the masses." As for her qualifications, job titles
alone don't cut it. What did she actually accomplish as a Senator or SecState?
Any major laws? Treaties? No. She failed with Russia, Syria and Libya to
name just a few. She is not qualified to be president based on qualifications
and personality.
"What do these insurgents have in common? All have called into question
the interventionist consensus in foreign policy."
But today we have this:
Trump pledges big US military expansion . Trump doesn't appear to have
any coherent policy, he just says whatever seems to be useful at that particular
moment.
"... This phenomenon has been termed the "resource curse." It consists of multiple elements, all bad. ..."
"... The curse is mostly the result of having powerful and rapacious neighbors with no compunction but to use whatever means necessary to install a 'friendly' government willing to repress its own people in order to allow the theft of their 'resources'. ..."
"... As for Chile's governing elite, they wore the comfortable version of the "copper collar', the one made of money as opposed to chains, and so paid-off, lived in wealth and comfort so long as they kept their countrymen from doing anything that Anaconda copper didn't like. ..."
"... Superb stuff, especially "monopolistic control of commodity markets", supply and demand pressures on wheat and oil and copper have mostly faded to insignificance with hyper-leveraged commodities markets and supine (complicit) regulators. ..."
"... See: oil going to $140 not so many years ago despite building supply and weak demand. Goldman famously decided commodities were an "asset class" in 2003 and completely f*cked up these critical price signals for the world economy. ..."
"... Oh, right, our precious middlemen call it "sequestration" and "arbitrage". There's a million pounds of aluminum in the Mexican desert that calls bullshit on your claim. Any more self-absorbed theology you would like to discuss this fine Monday? ..."
"... The terrible legacy of the Pinochet years were also done by the "Chicago boys" who were hired to run the government. In their hate of the people and the embrace of neoliberal capitalism, they did something much worse: they changed the Constitution of the country so that undoing all their hateful legislation would be near impossible to override. When you hear of Student Protests in Chile – they are still fighting to undo the terrible legacy. ..."
"... What was Allende's Socialist party's policies, were they Nordic-style Social Democracy? I still am not sure if there is a meaningful ideological difference between Nordic Social Democracy, & Latin American "Socialism of the 21st Century" in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia. ..."
"... Perhaps the Nordics have a special secret deal with Murica & the US Imperial MIC: go along with the US Imperial foreign policy, & don't loudly promote your Social Democratic system, to anyone but especially not to nonwhite nations; & in turn we won't falsely slander you as Commie Dictators as we do any other nation attempting Social Democracy. ..."
The story of Chile's popular, and democratic rejection of government by oligarchs is today's must-read, and provides unsettling
similarities to current events, most strikingly in my estimation, recently in Venezuela.
The Popular Unity government enjoyed promising successes during its first year in power. Domestic production spiked in 1971,
leading to a GDP growth rate of almost 9 percent. Unemployment fell from 7 percent to below 3 percent, and wages increased dramatically,
particularly for the lowest earners. Allende's land reform program - along with intensified popular attacks on large, unproductive
landholdings - led to near record harvests and a new abundance of food for the poor.
Of course no good deed goes unpunished by oligarchs.
On the other hand, Chilean elites also pursued a more top-down strategy in their effort to bring the economy to its knees.
Objecting to government-mandated price controls and export restrictions, powerful business interests took to hoarding consumer
essentials, secretly warehousing enormous quantities of basic goods only to let them spoil as avoidable food shortages rocked
the nation.
And of course there's the USA's never-ending efforts to spread peace and democracy.
Meanwhile, in Washington, President Nixon was making good on his promise to "make Chile's economy scream." He called for an
end to all US assistance to the Allende government, and instructed US officials to use their "predominant position in international
financial institutions to dry up the flow" of international credit to Chile.
And finally a sobering reminder, that in the end, if they can't beat you at the polls, they are not above putting and end to you
altogether.
Deeply committed to maintaining the legality of the revolutionary process, the UP government sought to slow the pace of radical
democratic reforms at the grassroots in a misguided effort to avoid a putsch, or the outbreak of open civil war. In the end, this
error proved fatal - an armed popular base, exercising direct control over its communities and workplaces, could have been an
invaluable line of defense for the Allende administration, as well as for its broader goal of total societal transformation.
When Henry Kissinger began secretly taping all of his phone conversations in 1969, little did he know that he was giving history
the gift that keeps on giving. Now, on the 35th anniversary of the September 11, 1973, CIA-backed military coup in Chile, phone
transcripts that Kissinger made of his talks with President Nixon and the CIA chief among other top government officials reveal
in the most candid of language the imperial mindset of the Nixon administration as it began plotting to overthrow President Salvador
Allende, the world's first democratically elected Socialist. "We will not let Chile go down the drain," Kissinger told CIA director
Richard Helms in a phone call following Allende's narrow election on September 4, 1970, according to a recently declassified transcript.
"I am with you," Helms responded.
The comparison with Venezuela is hugely important, especially with regard to the suppliers boycot, where the Venezuelan opposition
seem to be directly copying the Chilean playbook. Even so, there is another aspect that should be of greater concern. Chile stands
out for its reliance on mining, especially copper. By failing in his bid to diversify the Chilean economy, Allende left his country
vulnerable to the fluctuations of the global economy and the whims of first world importers.
If memory serves, in 1973 mining represented around ~25% of the Chilean economy. Venezuela, by contrast, now has 45% of its
GDP tied up in oil exports. The only fact that should be surprising, then, is that the Bolivarian governments have lasted as long
as they have; perhaps a testament to the sweeping social improvements that have won them a mass-supported bulwark against constant
right wing assaults. Even so, with the economy undiversified, that bulwark will only hold out for so long.
This phenomenon has been termed the "resource curse." It consists of multiple elements, all bad.
For one, the ability to produce a commodity at the world's lowest price reduces the incentive to diversify one's economy. In
an extreme case like Saudi Arabia, even the workers hired to produce the oil are mostly foreign, leaving domestic workers unskilled
and idle.
Second, contrary to the belief early in the industrial revolution that commodity prices would be driven up by scarcity, in
fact technological improvement has more than counterbalanced scarcity to keep commodity prices flat to down in real terms.
Finally, as every commodity trader knows, the stylized secular chart pattern of any commodity is a sharp spike owing to a shortage,
followed by a long (as in decades) bowl produced by excessive capacity brought online in the wake of the shortage.
Governments, not adept at realizing that commodity price spikes are not sustainable, accumulate fixed costs during the boom
years and then get crunched in the subsequent price crash.
Is this suppose to explain what happened in Chile in 1973? Catallactics, ushered in AND imposed via a brutal military dictatorship,
yet fail to recognize the contradiction in the so-called "effects of violent intervention with the market"
This phenomenon has been termed the "resource curse." It consists of multiple elements, all bad.
The curse is mostly the result of having powerful and rapacious neighbors with no compunction but to use whatever means
necessary to install a 'friendly' government willing to repress its own people in order to allow the theft of their 'resources'.
For one, the ability to produce a commodity at the world's lowest price reduces the incentive to diversify one's economy.
It was not the people of Chile, who profited by the "ability to produce a commodity at the world's lowest price" and so cannot
be blamed for the inability to diversify their economy.
As for Chile's governing elite, they wore the comfortable version of the "copper collar', the one made of money as opposed
to chains, and so paid-off, lived in wealth and comfort so long as they kept their countrymen from doing anything that Anaconda
copper didn't like.
In an extreme case like Saudi Arabia, even the workers hired to produce the oil are mostly foreign, leaving domestic
workers unskilled and idle.
The extreme case of Saudi Arabia is a direct result of the hegemonic tactics just described, install a government 'friendly'
to American 'interests' in this case the House of Saud, and make them so fabulously wealthy that there is no questioning their
loyalty, until it becomes questionable
Second, contrary to the belief early in the industrial revolution that commodity prices would be driven up by scarcity,
in fact technological improvement has more than counterbalanced scarcity to keep commodity prices flat to down in real terms.
Finally, as every commodity trader knows, the stylized secular chart pattern of any commodity is a sharp spike owing
to a shortage, followed by a long (as in decades) bowl produced by excessive capacity brought online in the wake of the shortage.
Until finally, after the inevitable effect of monopolistic control of commodity 'markets' and the corrupting influence of corporate
power destroy the working man's earning potential, and by extension his purchasing power, and so extinguishes 'demand'.
Governments, not adept at realizing that commodity price spikes are not sustainable, accumulate fixed costs during the
boom years and then get crunched in the subsequent price crash.
It was not the Chilean government who concerned themselves with sustainability, as they were paid not to, and the corporations
who made all the money didn't give a damn either.
It should be easy to understand the logic, and necessity of voting out the ruling elite who were very good at lining their
own pockets, but not so good at planning for their people's well-being.
The Chilean people grew tired of rule by greedy people bought-off by American corporations, and elected a socialist government
in an effort to remedy the situation.
For their troubles, they were treated to a violent coup with thousands killed, tortured and disappeared.
And finally, it appears that you think this is all the 'natural' operation of 'markets'?
Superb stuff, especially "monopolistic control of commodity markets", supply and demand pressures on wheat and oil and
copper have mostly faded to insignificance with hyper-leveraged commodities markets and supine (complicit) regulators.
See: oil going to $140 not so many years ago despite building supply and weak demand. Goldman famously decided commodities
were an "asset class" in 2003 and completely f*cked up these critical price signals for the world economy.
" . an armed popular base, exercising direct control over its communities and workplaces, could have been an invaluable
line of defense for the Allende administration, as well as for its broader goal of total societal transformation."
"Those who do not learn history" are condemned to being exploited and controlled by those who do.
'Objecting to government-mandated price controls and export restrictions, powerful business interests took to hoarding
consumer essentials.'
Businesses don't exist for the purpose of "hoarding." But if mandated prices are set below cost, of course goods will
not be sold at a loss. Blaming the victims instead of the price controllers is like blaming a murder victim for "getting in the
way of my bullet."
Goods perhaps, but not labor. If mandated prices (for labor) are set below cost, serfs will still sell their labor. For example,
any soldier who never came back from Iraq obviously under-priced his labor.
Businesses don't exist for the purpose of "hoarding."
Oh, right, our precious middlemen call it "sequestration" and "arbitrage". There's a million pounds of aluminum in the
Mexican desert that calls bullshit on your claim. Any more self-absorbed theology you would like to discuss this fine Monday?
The terrible legacy of the Pinochet years were also done by the "Chicago boys" who were hired to run the government. In
their hate of the people and the embrace of neoliberal capitalism, they did something much worse: they changed the Constitution
of the country so that undoing all their hateful legislation would be near impossible to override. When you hear of Student Protests
in Chile – they are still fighting to undo the terrible legacy.
Sidenote: US has one of the Chicago Boys, entrenched at the Cato Institute.
yeah the chicago austerity mongers, and kissinger. guess who takes advice from kissinger, and pushes neoliberal economic policies.
the democrats used to be opposed to that sort of thing, at least in public.
What was Allende's Socialist party's policies, were they Nordic-style Social Democracy? I still am not sure if there is
a meaningful ideological difference between Nordic Social Democracy, & Latin American "Socialism of the 21st Century" in Venezuela,
Ecuador, Bolivia.
Norway & Venezuela both have a state-owned oil company, the profits of which are actually used to help their citizens, specifically
in education & health funding. Yet the likes of 0bama/Bush43 praise Norway & slam Venezuela.
Allende was even a full White Guy TM like the Nordics, albeit not blond-hair blue eyes like some Nordics. I suspected this
was perhaps an important reason the likes of 0bama/Bush43 praises the Nordic nations while labeling the part-Native American &/or
Black Venezuelan/Ecuador/Bolivian Presidents as being "Commie" "Dictators".
Perhaps the Nordics have a special secret deal with Murica & the US Imperial MIC: go along with the US Imperial foreign
policy, & don't loudly promote your Social Democratic system, to anyone but especially not to nonwhite nations; & in turn we won't
falsely slander you as Commie Dictators as we do any other nation attempting Social Democracy.
The article is from July 2015. It is interesting to compare views expressed a year ago with the
current situation. Who would predict the her health bacome No.1 issue in September 2016?
Now we start to see dirty MSM games and tricks with election polls. It is well known that the key
idea of polls is to influence electorate. Desirable result that conditions those who did not yet decided
to vote "for the winner" can be achieved in a very subtle way. For example if electorate of one candidate
is younger, you can run poll using landline phones. Gaius Publius provide a good analysis of now MSM
sell establishment candidate to lemmings in his July 10, 2015 post in Naked capitalism blog (The
Clinton Campaign Notices the Sanders Campaign, or How to Read the Media)
.
"...I don't think the Clinton herders care who actually votes, only who funds."
.
"...HRC is the biggest threat to the Democrats winning the White House. She is so far to the right
on almost every issue, she is the most unelectable of them all. I basically view her campaign as a front
for Jeb!"
.
"...I will take at face value the statement that Sanders' personal views are a threat to the capitalists
who control both major parties. But his strategy is not. In spite of his best intentions, he will end
up being the sheepdog that makes sure the progressive movement stays in the Democratic Party (for the
term "sheepdog" and supporting analysis see http://www.blackagendareport.com/bernie-sanders-sheepdog-4-hillary)."
Notable quotes:
"... A second example involves Wall Street banks, in particular, a policy of breaking them up, reinstating Glass-Steagall, and prosecuting Wall Street fraud. Can you imagine any announced candidate doing any of these things, save Bernie Sanders? ..."
"... If a 25 year old woman in 2008 didn't vote for Hillary, what has Hillary done to change her mind or attract the 17 year old from 2008? ..."
"... I don't think the Clinton herders care who actually votes, only who funds. ..."
"... If Hillary feels she can control primary voters through local Democratic party machines, that might explain her standpoint. ..."
"... Now organized money has too much economic power ..."
"... HRC is the biggest threat to the Democrats winning the White House. She is so far to the right on almost every issue, she is the most unelectable of them all. I basically view her campaign as a front for Jeb! ..."
"... I will take at face value the statement that Sanders' personal views are a threat to the capitalists who control both major parties. But his strategy is not. In spite of his best intentions, he will end up being the sheepdog that makes sure the progressive movement stays in the Democratic Party (for the term "sheepdog" and supporting analysis see http://www.blackagendareport.com/bernie-sanders-sheepdog-4-hillary). ..."
"... They also need enduring organizations, which are called political parties. ..."
The most important thing to consider when thinking about the Sanders campaign is this. Everyone
else who's running, on both sides, is an insider playing within - and supporting - the "insider game,"
the one that keeps insiders wealthy and outsiders struggling, the one where the wealthy and their
retainers operate government for their benefit only. What sets Sanders apart is his determination
to dismantle that game, to take it apart and send its players home (back to the private sector) or
to jail.
Two examples should make this clear. One is Fast Track and the "trade" agreements being forced
upon us. The pressure to pass these agreements is coming equally from mainstream Democrats like Barack
Obama, a "liberal," and from mainstream Republicans, supposed "conservatives." They may differ on
"rights" policy, like abortion rights, but not on money matters. Trade agreements are wealth-serving
policies promoted by people in both parties who serve wealth, which means most of them. People like
Sanders, Warren and others, by contrast, would neuter these agreement as job-killing profit protection
schemes and turn them into something else.
A second example involves Wall Street banks, in particular, a policy of breaking them up,
reinstating Glass-Steagall, and prosecuting Wall Street fraud. Can you imagine any announced candidate
doing any of these things, save Bernie Sanders?
In both of these cases, Sanders would aggressively challenge the insider profit-protection racket,
not just give lip service to challenging it. Which tells you why he is so popular. Many of us in
the bleachers have noticed the insider game - after all, it's been happening in front of us for decades-
and most of us are done with it. Ask any Tea Party Republican voter, for example, what she thinks
of the bank bailout of 2008-09. She'll tell you she hated it, whether she explains it in our terms
or not.
And that's why Sanders, like Warren before him, draws such enthusiastic crowds. The pendulum has
swung so far in the direction of wealth that the nation may well change permanently, and people know
it. People are ready, just as they were in 2008, prior to eight years of betrayal. People have been
discouraged about the chance for change lately, but they're ready for the real thing if they see
it.
The Clinton Campaign Notices Sanders
There's been an attempt to downplay the Sanders candidacy since the beginning, to sink his campaign
beneath a
wave of silence. That ended a bit ago, and the press has begun to take notice, if
snippily. Now the Clinton campaign is noticing, if the New York Times is to be believed.
I found the following fascinating, for a number of reasons.
The
piece first along with some news, then a little exegesis (my emphasis):
Hillary Clinton's Team Is Wary as Bernie Sanders Finds Footing in Iowa
The ample crowds and unexpectedly strong showing by Senator Bernie Sanders are setting off
worry among advisers and allies of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who believe the Vermont senator
could overtake her in Iowa polls by the fall and even defeat her in the nation's first nominating
contest there.
The enthusiasm that Mr. Sanders has generated - including a rally attended by 2,500 people
in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on Friday - has called into question Mrs. Clinton's early strategy of
focusing on a listening tour of small group gatherings and wooing big donors in private settings.
In May, Mrs. Clinton led with 60 percent support to Mr. Sanders' 15 percent in a Quinnipiac
poll. Last week the same poll showed Mrs. Clinton at 52 percent to Mr. Sanders's 33 percent.
"We are worried about him, sure. He will be a serious force for the campaign, and I don't think
that will diminish," Jennifer Palmieri, the Clinton campaign's communications director, said Monday
in an interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
Some of Mrs. Clinton's advisers acknowledged that they were surprised by Mr. Sanders' momentum
and said there were enough liberal voters in Iowa, including many who supported Barack Obama or
John Edwards in 2008, to create problems for her there.
"I think we underestimated that Sanders would quickly attract so many Democrats in Iowa who
weren't likely to support Hillary," said one Clinton adviser, who like several others spoke on
the condition of anonymity to candidly share views about the race. "It's too early to change strategy
because no one knows if Sanders will be able to hold on to these voters in the months ahead. We're
working hard to win them over, but yeah, it's a real competition there."
I don't want to quote the whole thing (well, I do, but I can't). So I encourage you to
read it. There's much there worth noticing.
What to Look at When the Times Reports on Clinton
Now, some exegesis, meta-reading of the media, especially corporate media like the Times.
My three main points are bulleted below.
First, when you expose yourself to any of the "liberal" U.S. outlets (as opposed to, say,
The Guardian) be aware that because they are owned by establishment corporations they're
already pro-Clinton. Subtly, not blatantly, but certainly.
That sounds like prejudice, so let me explain. For one thing, neither the outlets nor their
owning corporation can afford not to prepare their seat at the Clinton White House table. It's
just a fact. Media want access and corporations want government to smile on their profit schemes.
At this point, currying favor with Sanders is on no one's mind, and the Clintons are known to
"have long memories they punish their enemies and help their friends" (quoted
here). The incentives are all aligned.
But also, mainstream insider corporations are completely aligned with the insider game for
the obvious reason - they're part of it. No one inside the game wants to see it damaged. Hayes
and Maddow, as people, may or may not prefer Sanders over Clinton, but MSNBC has a clear favorite
and if you listen carefully and consistently, it shows. Their owners, and all of the other big
media owners, can't afford (literally afford, as in, there's major money at stake) to play this
one straight. You may find some unskewed reporting, but not a lot of it.
In the present instance, for example, I read the story above (click through for
all of it) as being pro-Clinton, and in fact, most stories like these will be painted that
way, with a light brush or a heavy one, for some time to come. If you don't spot this bias where
present, you're not reading the story as written.
In the same way that every New York Times story I read in the last two months, literally
every one, used the inaccurate and propagandistic phrase "pro-trade Democrats" to describe Ron
Wyden, Earl Blumenauer and the small handful of other Dems who defied their voters to support
the White House and the wealthy - in that same way you'll have a hard time finding mainstream
Sanders or Clinton coverage that doesn't in some way sell Clinton. If that's not a fact, I'll
be eager to be proven wrong.
Second, be aware that much so-called reporting is the result of "placement," a term
from advertising. Ad placement is when you buy space in a publication or media program into which
you can put your message. Campaigns, among other entities, frequently do the same with reporters.
The reporter offers space, a container, into which the campaign can put its message. (The reward
is usually "access.")
It's certainly true that many reporters and writers openly advocate; I'm often one of
them and I'm not alone. But no one suspects open advocates of trickery. It's much more subtle,
and dangerous for readers, when the advocacy is hidden, as it is in supposed "straight news" articles.
In cases like these - certainly not all cases of reporting, but far too many - the reporter
doesn't "get" the news. The news "gets" the reporter. A campaign's messenger comes to the reporter,
offers the message, and the reporter builds a genuine and frequently interesting news story around
it, including research from other sources, but always starting with the seed provided by the campaign
or public official.
In the present instance, the article above, you should therefore ask:
Is it really true that the Clinton campaign just now discovered Sanders' popularity and
that he may be a threat?
Or could the following be true? That the Clinton campaign always knew a Warren-like opponent
could gain ground but were publicly ignoring it; now, however, it's time to appear to be noticing,
so they approached a reporter with their take on the Sanders surge.
In other words, is the bolded part of the first sentence of the article its seed? Who approached
whom? That first sentence again:
The ample crowds and unexpectedly strong showing by Senator Bernie Sanders are setting off
worry among advisers and allies of Hillary Rodham Clinton
I don't have an answer to the bulleted questions above. Either could be correct. I'm a little
suspicious though. First, by the obvious but subtle bias in the story - similar to the constant
bias in all of the Times Fast Track reporting. Second, by the plurals above: "among
advisers and allies of Hillary Rodham Clinton." This isn't one person speaking, but
a coordinated effort by staffers and surrogates ("allies") to say a coordinated single thing to
the Times reporters.
Third, I'm made suspicious by this, a little further down:
"I think we underestimated that Sanders would quickly attract so many Democrats in Iowa
who weren't likely to support Hillary," said one Clinton adviser, who like several others
spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly share views about the race. "It's too early
to change strategy because no one knows if Sanders will be able to hold on to these voters
in the months ahead. We're working hard to win them over, but yeah, it's a real competition
there."
There's obvious messaging, especially in the last part of the paragraph. But look at the bolded
part. Of those in the campaign, the only ones quoted in the article by name are Clinton herself
and Jennifer Palmieri, who spoke, not to the reporters, but to "Morning Joe." Everyone else is
off the record, speaking to these reporters "on the condition of anonymity to candidly
share views about the race."
"Candidly" implies leaking, not messaging or spin, and here's where the deception seems more
clear. Have these reporters really found a minor army of leakers? If these are truly leakers,
expect them to be fired soon.
So, scenario one: Sanders is surging, the Clinton campaign is caught by surprise, and
two Times reporters find a bunch of anonymous campaign leakers who say (paraphrasing),
"Sure, Sanders caught us by surprise. We're aiming for one type of Democrat and he's getting the
other type. It's too early to change strategy - the man could trip and fall - but yes, there's
now competition."
(Did you notice that part about two kinds of Democrat? The actual quote says: "We underestimated
that Sanders would quickly attract so many Democrats in Iowa who weren't likely to support Hillary."
I think the campaign knows exactly what kind of Democrat they were ignoring, and if you think
about it carefully, you will too.)
Or, scenario two: The Clinton campaign is ignoring the Warren wing, giving them nothing
but platitudes and (as in the case of Fast Track) avoidance. Now the "Sanders surge" is in the
news and the campaign has to respond. They get their message together - "Yes, we're surprised,
and we have to admit that out loud. But it's early days, and if we keep getting reporters to say
'socialist' and 'anathema,' we won't have to counter his specifics with our specifics. So let's
round up some reporters and get 'Morning Joe' on the phone."
Did the reference to "socialist" and "anathema" surprise you? Read on.
Finally, because of the two points above, you'll find that in many cases the story supports
the campaign, while justifying itself as "reporting." Both bolded pieces are important.
Let's look at each element above. First, "the story supports the campaign":
Those who see Mrs. Clinton as being at risk in Iowa say she is still far better positioned
to win the nomination than Mr. Sanders, who lags by double digits in Iowa polling. He also
has far less money than she does, and his socialist leanings are anathema to many
Americans.
In the first sentence the campaign is being subtly and indirectly quoted. But the bolded phrases
above are pretty strong language in a sentence that isn't necessarily an indirect quote, and echoes
open Clinton surrogates like Claire McCaskill. Even "leanings" lends an unsavory color, since
it echoes the phrase "communist leanings."
(The alternative to the last sentence above, by the way, and much more honestly sourced, would
be something like this: "The anonymous campaign adviser also said, 'Frankly, we think if we just
keep saying 'socialist' whenever we can, we won't have to change our strategy of being vague on
the economic issues. At least we're sticking with that for now.'" I would buy that as excellent
honest reporting.)
Second, "justifying itself as reporting": Once you present the core message as provided by
the messengers, the reporter can then call around for other, non-Clinton-sourced comment. Thus
the quotes, much further down from Joe Trippi, Carter Eskew and the Sanders campaign.
Add in a little of the reporters' own analysis, much of it good:
"The enthusiasm that Mr. Sanders has generated - including a rally attended by 2,500 people
in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on Friday - has called into question Mrs. Clinton's early strategy
of focusing on a listening tour of small group gatherings and wooing big donors in private
settings."
and you have the makings of a news story friendly to Clinton built around a news hook and potentially
"placed" elements. The hook, the "placed" elements (if they were placed), and some original analysis
go at the top, and the rest of the story is built to follow that.
Bottom Line
If you like this exercise in reading behind the media, please read
the article again with the above thoughts in mind. Is this original reporting (i.e., reporters
starting a conversation), or did the campaign make the first approach? Does the article carry Clinton
water, subtly support the campaign? Are any opposing viewpoints featured at the top, or are they
buried below the point where most people stop reading?
This Times story may be a completely honest exercise in independent journalism. There certainly
is a Sanders phenomenon, and it's detailed honestly and factually, so there's value in reading it.
But there's an obvious bias toward Clinton messaging in the reporters' own prose, so I'm suspicious,
and you should be as well.
I'll also say that most stories about campaigns operate this way, as do many other news stories
involving public figures. What will make reporting the Sanders campaign different is what I wrote
above - Sanders wants to take apart the insider game. What major media outlet will help Sanders do
that, will shut the door to corporate favors, media access and other prizes from a future Clinton
administration, in order to be even-handed?
My guess is few or none.
Reader note: Gaius asked for me to allow comments on this post, so please have at it!
AJ, July 10, 2015 at 8:14 am
I was that Sanders rally in Council Bluffs. I follow politics especially on the left very closely
so I didn't really come home with any thing new (besides some extra Bernie stickers). However,
the crowd was huge and engaged. It almost had the feel of a big tent revival.
One issue that I've been thinking about lately that I haven't seen publicly addressed (except
for in the comments on the 538 article Lambert posted yesterday) is how reliable do we think sine
of these polling numbers are? Given that Sanders support definitely skews younger, would these
people even be captured in telephone polls? I tend to think this is why the Greek vote was as
big of a surprise as it was. I think there is a large going progressive part of the population
(both on the US and abroad) that doesn't get picked up in the polling. If true, Sanders could
be a lot closer to Clinton than these numbers suggest.
NotTimothyGeithner, July 10, 2015 at 9:06 am
Pollsters know this, but there are three kinds: the national subscription polls who just want
to be relevant, paid polls, and the local reputation polls. Because of the distance to the election,
there won't be good responses, and cell phone users have grown reliant on texting and are less
likely to respond. The pollsters know this. Needless to say, the Quinnipiac poll should be disconcerting
for the Clinton camp and the Democrats who thought Hillary would shower them with cash and appearances.
That result means they see enough to make this claim even though they aren't quite on the ground
the way a Roanoke College poll is in Virginia. The local reputation poll has a sense of the electorate
because they've polled every local election while CNN was trying to interview Nessie.
There is dissatisfaction within Team Blue that Hillary Clinton can't bridge. There is a myth
about Bill's magical campaign touch Democrats have internalized despite a lack of evidence, and
I think Team Blue elites feel Obama failed them and want to bring Hillary in as a savior. Obviously,
they weren't around in '94.
pat b, July 10, 2015 at 8:15 pm
Bill and Al ran a magical campaign in 92, but that was a long time ago, and they spent two
decades
triangulating against the Base. Bill signed NAFTA and HRC spent 23 years defending it.
In 92 the clinton's were selling the dream of the 90's. Now, they are selling Windows 98.
Nick, July 10, 2015 at 10:26 am
Too bad young people have a horrible track record actually voting. Clinton knows the game well
enough.
NotTimothyGeithner, July 10, 2015 at 11:11 am
Hillary is 8 years older, so are her core nostalgia supporters. Without a message for the now
under 45 crowd, Hillary has lost 8 years worth of supporters to relative infirmity or death.
She didn't rally the crowds for Grimes, Landrieu, or Hagan. Shaheen was the incumbent she saved,
but she was running against an unremarkable Massachusetts carpet bagger. I'm not certain the Democrats
have ever left the Spring of '94.
vidimi, July 10, 2015 at 11:33 am
don't underestimate the number of young, white females voting clinton. it will be somewhere
near all of them.
mn, July 10, 2015 at 11:43 am
What about college debt and the fact that there are no jobs. Gender seems to be a selling point,
like race the last time. Not all younger females will be that stupid again.
NotTimothyGeithner, July 10, 2015 at 12:50 pm
Actually, Obama won younger females. Credit where credit is due. Gender may have affected older
voters who come from an obviously more repressive era, but I suspect brand loyalty and legitimacy
(it's her turn messaging), racism, and nostalgia played a hand in Clinton's 2008 support more
than gender. If a 25 year old woman in 2008 didn't vote for Hillary, what has Hillary done
to change her mind or attract the 17 year old from 2008? In many ways, Hillary has to replace
8 years of death to her base.
mn, July 10, 2015 at 1:01 pm
At that time people were saying to vote for Hillary because she would prop up destroyed 401ks
(to me the mindless young voter). I fell for the hope and change b.s., I won't do that again.
Long time Bernie fan.
As for my friends they are voting for Hillary because they don't think Bernie can win, others
that hate her are sitting out. Yes, many females really do not like her. Love Ann Richards! RIP.
pat b, July 10, 2015 at 8:34 pm
The Silent Generation anchored Reagan and was much more conservative and risk averse then the
Boomers of which Hillary is one. However, the issue isn't Hillary vs the GOP's aging angry silent
generation types, it's more Hillary's aging Boomer female base vs the millenials who think the
Boomers shafted them. It was the Boomers who benefited from cheap college tuition then voted in
Reagan to cut taxes and dump these costs onto Gen X, GenY and the Millenials.
Paul Tioxon, July 10, 2015 at 11:14 pm
My point is that of the passing of an era. And not only in terms of voters,the army of the
silent majority which saw the blue collar conservatives, the hard hats, the cops, leave the democrats
en mass and the democrats having little to replace them. The defection of the dixiecrats from
the dems to the republicans, as witnessed in the complete turnover of Texas to the republicans
amalgamated what was a coalition into a choke hold from 1968 until 2008, with only 12 years dems
in the WH only 2 dem presidents over 40 years. And of course, Clinton may as well have been George
Bush for all that it mattered for domestic policies.
So Hillary and the dems do not have the army of voters against them that they used to have
plus what ever momentarily disaffected Millenials seeking payback or another group to reinforce
numbers making the republicans a majority party. They are not.
The point is that as your opposition declines in numbers as far as the ballot box goes, and your
likely supporters increase, the odds favor your party as a majority.
Millenials, according to Pew Polls, the 18-33 year olds, are 51% democrat/ leaning democrat
vs 35% republican/leaning republican. Even though independent is now the largest of the 3 categories,
leaning is the place to go when there is no alternative choice, apparently.
I am not sure the younger group is following the republican strategist wedge issue that the
old people are stealing from the young with college debt, social security, Medicare being blamed
for the diminished prosperity of the young. Trying to turn their grandparents who are retired
after a lifetime of hard work into the new welfare queens is not getting the traction you would
think. Apparently holding onto ritual Thanksgiving Day dinners and baking cookies around the holidays
is more of a social bond than fabricated grievances by political consultants can even rend asunder.
And of course, blood is thicker than water. Don't expect granny and pop pop to pushed off on an
iceberg anytime soon because of college debt.
Praedor, July 10, 2015 at 11:07 am
What I see in this is the potential for a low turnout election. POTENTIAL. Those enthusiastic
young voters, or the previously disgusted sideline sitters who have come out anew for Sanders
(or previously for Warren) are NOT likely to shrug their shoulders and vote for Hillary if she
ends up pulling in the pre-anointed crown. It's hard to get all fired up and enthusiastic about
candidate A only to be stuck with candidate B who you weren't interested in before. This has the
potential to really change things or gut the process of any participants except the true believer
core of the Democrats.
Uahsenaa, July 10, 2015 at 8:51 am
I found this sentence to be rather curious: "Mrs. Clinton's advisers, meanwhile, have deep
experience pulling off upsets and comeback political victories, and Mrs. Clinton often performs
best when she is under pressure from rivals." The first part is unsubstantiated vaguery, but the
second part is demonstrably untrue. Or, if not "untrue," then it implies that Sec. Clinton's "best"
is still "loses." Also there's the earlier bit about Sanders being "untested" nationally, yet,
when you parse that, you realize Ms. Clinton's "testedness" amounts to "lost to an insurgent candidate
who had been in national politics for all of a few minutes."
Since I'm still somewhat skeptical of what a Sanders candidacy means, I am quite happy to see
how, along with Bernie, others in various facets of government seem to be emboldened to fight
back. TPA may have been a loss in the short term, but the administration was clearly taken aback
by having to fight resistance at all. My hope is the Sanders campaign, at a bare minimum, will
demonstrate how popular fighting back really is and stiffen the spines of those in government
who want to do something but fear genuine reprisal.
Did you see the date? This article could be about 2014. There is a dangerous myth about the
Clinton touch.
Uahsenaa, July 10, 2015 at 9:53 am
It's been surprising to me how willing Sec. Clinton has been to alienate core constituencies
of the Democratic party. When O'Malley and Sanders came to Iowa City, they both reached out to
local unions for support/attendance/whatever, but when Clinton came here on Tuesday, I found out
about it when I showed up with my daughter for reading time at the library.
I hear again and again about the Clintons' political savvy, yet in practice I just don't see
it.
They may be ruthless, but ruthless only gets you so far. She cannot take Democratic stalwarts
for granted this election cycle, especially when the AFL-CIO went into open war with the administration
over TPA.
Who does she think shows up for the polls in primary elections?
redleg, July 10, 2015 at 10:16 am
Hubris. I don't think the Clinton herders care who actually votes, only who funds.
DolleyMadison, July 10, 2015 at 11:22 am
EXACTLY.
flora, July 10, 2015 at 2:33 pm
Bill and Hill's speaking fees give a whole new meaning to "the Clinton touch."
TheCatSaid, July 10, 2015 at 2:09 pm
"Who does she think shows up for the polls in primary elections?"
This seems like the key question.
It's one thing to motivate people to vote for a presidential election, but motivating people
to turnout for a primary might be different entirely. For example, do as many young voters and
minority voters turn out for a primary? If not, what would it take to change this?
If Hillary feels she can control primary voters through local Democratic party machines,
that might explain her standpoint.
Lambert Strether, July 10, 2015 at 2:24 pm
I wonder how effective the local Democratic party machines are, or whether Obama's reverse
Midas touch destroyed them. (Certainly my own local machine is ineffectual, and the state party
is corrupt (landfills)).
I wonder if there's a comparison to be made between ObamaCare signups and GOTV (I mean a literal
one, in that the same apparatchiks would get walking around money for both, and the data might
even be/have been dual-purposed). My first impulse is to say, if so, "Good luck, and let me know
how that works out!" but I don't know how directly the metrics translate.
Jeremy Grimm, July 10, 2015 at 9:22 pm
For the last few years I have been a lowly member of the local Democratic Party machine, a
volunteer co-precinct leader (though hardly similar to what a precinct leader used to be). The
local party leadership and membership is old, late boomer, steadfast and immobile. Republican
party opposition in this area is virtually non-existent so I have no idea how effective our local
organization is as opposed to how skewed the demographics of my area. With little or no efforts,
we consistently turn out a substantial Democratic vote. I believe the corruption of politics in
my state, New Jersey, is justly famous. I have no idea what corruption might exist in my local
township, though I am starting to wonder. As for President Obama's reverse Midas touch I live
near the headquarters of several big pharmaceutical corporations. I am sure they have wide-open
purses for both parties.
As of late last year, our organization has had few meetings and poor attendance at the one
meeting I showed up for. I learned at that meeting, about a month ago, that several of the other
precinct leads have resigned, though I don't know why. I am moving away and will also resign as
of the end of this month.
I suspect our local organization will come out strongly in favor of Hillary Clinton though
provide little in the way of support. When I raised concern about the TPA and TPP at the last
meeting I attended and urged the other members of this supposedly political organization to call
or write to our Representative few of the members knew what I was talking about. The chair tried
to rule my concern out of order though all other business was done and our Democratic Mayor, who
is a member of the organization, suggested we should each hear views from both sides before deciding
our individual stance on the TPA or TPP since there were arguments for both sides (even though
the TPA was coming up for a vote in a few days). I should add a little context this meeting
consisted of the eleven or so people who showed up. In my experience this close watch over all
dissent from local, state or national party line typified our organization. All questions other
than very specific procedural questions and discussions were NOT welcome.
I can only speak of my own alienation from the Democratic Party, local, state and national.
I voted for Obama with enthusiasm in 2008 but with disgust in 2012. I have been a Democrat since
Adlai Stevenson II (though I was too young to vote for him). I will continue to register as a
Democrat but I doubt many Democrats will receive my vote and certainly no Republicans. I have
no plans to further participate in Party politics. I will vote for candidates I like but never
again vote for the "lesser of two evils." I cannot gauge the extent to which my alienation typifies
other Democrats since political discussions are generally considered impolite except among close
friends.
Pissed Younger baby boomer, July 11, 2015 at 2:59 am
I am too disillusioned with the democratic party .where i live in Oregon ,my congressman is
a blue dog dem. i called his a least five times to voice my opposition to TPP. A few months ago
I signed up for phone town hall meeting .i never received an e-mail invitation .YES talking about
suppressing dissent.i am considering switch to the greens or a socialist party. My fear i hope
we do not become fascist country and three out of four congressmen vote for TPA and senator Wyden
voted for it too.I also lost faith in the phony liberal media.
NotTimothyGeithner, July 11, 2015 at 9:33 am
The GOP organizes through churches and other outfits. Ted aren't as noticeable wherever one
is, but the GOP isn't interested in turnout as much as making sure their people vote. They have
minders who phish for potential voters. Why do women ever vote Republican? Because they have a
club that demands it. Your area may be skewed but half of Dean's 50 state strategy was lifted
from GOP election approaches.
Uahsenaa, July 10, 2015 at 4:30 pm
With the exception of Illinois, because Chicago, the state democratic parties in most midwestern
states are in shambles, so the likelihood of the "machine" squeaking out a win is quite low. In
the absence of that, what you have left are the institutions traditionally loyal to the D party
who have been thrown under the bus so many times over the past 8 years, it's bewildering. I mentioned
the AFL-CIO break with the administration over "trade," (scare quotes don't quite seem big enough)
precisely because it seems to indicate a willingness to break from tradition, if an opportunity
presents itself.
Now, I have no idea what things are like in the South, and those states plus NY/IL/CA might
be enough to push Hillary through to the nomination. However, if she continues the way she has
so far, the apparatus in a large number of states is not going to be enough to buttress her against
popular grumbling.
John Zelnicker, July 10, 2015 at 8:45 pm
In Alabama the Democratic Party apparatus is a total mess and completely ineffectual. The party
"leaders" spend most of their time protecting their little fiefdoms and fighting efforts to expand
and diversify the membership of the statewide committees and local affiliates. In fact, it has
gotten so bad that some activists are trying to set up independent Party committees to recruit
candidates for local and state elections and run GOTV efforts.
C. dentata, July 10, 2015 at 10:49 am
I think it may not be pro-Clinton as much as anti-Sanders bias. The corporate media are certainly
happy to ridiculously hype any of the nonstories about Hillary that Trey Gowdy feeds them.
anonymous123, July 10, 2015 at 11:07 am
It was really nice to see someone deconstruct this article. When I read it the other day I
had the same thoughts go through my head about the overt messaging going on.
vidimi, July 10, 2015 at 11:29 am
pro-trade reminds me of pro-russian rebels. seems very likely that the chamber of commerce
or state department or somesuch approached all editors and ordered them to use these two terms
for their respective designees. classic propaganda tactic.
Vatch, July 10, 2015 at 12:14 pm
I expect to vote for Sanders in the primary, and for an as yet unknown third party candidate
in the election. Obama and Bill Clinton have taught me that main stream Democratic politicians
only differ from Republican politicians on a few social issues; on everything else they are the
same. I refuse to knowingly vote for a voluntary agent of the oligarchs, which is what Hillary
Clinton is.
flora , July 10, 2015 at 2:31 pm
Yes. Both the GOP and the DLC Dems agree on all major economic issues. The electioneering so
far has been personality oriented. Jeb!, The Donald, Hillary!, etc.
Except for Sanders, who isn't running a personality campaign. He's talking about important
economic issues in a way the others won't.
In the late '70s conventional wisdom solidified around the idea that economic stagnation was
due to organized labor having too much economic power (true or not, my point isn't to re-argue
that case). The 'Reagan revolution' promised to re-balance and right the economy by reining in
organized labor.
Now organized money has too much economic power. It's harming the whole economy. Bernie
is talking about reining in organized money. How do the other candidates deal with this without
bursting their ideological bubble for the audience? The NYTimes article is a case in point.
Cano Doncha Know, July 11, 2015 at 5:31 am
HRC is the biggest threat to the Democrats winning the White House. She is so far to the
right on almost every issue, she is the most unelectable of them all. I basically view her campaign
as a front for Jeb!
cm, July 10, 2015 at 12:38 pm
Some laughable NY Times articles about their inability to write articles without relying on anonymous
sources, despite their own (ignored) policies:
If Sanders wins a few primaries, I would expect a moderate-bot to be trundled in. The Webb, for
instance, has already been turned on and is humming, ready to go. (The O'Malley seems to have
already burned through its batteries.)
NotTimothyGeithner, July 10, 2015 at 2:00 pm
The Webb? No, no, no, no, no. As a Webb primary voter, I can assure you the man has 0 personality
and isn't a big campaigner. If the young Hillary supporters in NYC found Hillary uninspiring,
they might collapse into a blob and just stop after listening to Webb. I just assumed he is running
because he likes Iowa.
O'Malley has already attacked Sanders and doesn't pick up the Hillary experience narrative
as well as having to roll out during the Baltimore protests.
Bob Richard, July 10, 2015 at 5:55 pm
Nothing GP is says about the Times article or reporting in general is wrong. But the MSM, including
the Times reporter, is completely missing the real story of the Sanders campaign.
I will take at face value the statement that Sanders' personal views are a threat to the
capitalists who control both major parties. But his strategy is not. In spite of his best intentions,
he will end up being the sheepdog that makes sure the progressive movement stays in the Democratic
Party (for the term "sheepdog" and supporting analysis see http://www.blackagendareport.com/bernie-sanders-sheepdog-4-hillary).
Like Ralph Nader before him, Sanders has a completely wrong approach to political parties.
Nader understood that he needed to work outside the major party framework but did not understand
that social movements don't just need popular candidates. They also need enduring organizations,
which are called political parties. For most of his career, Sanders has been able work both
sides of this fence, helping to create a state-level organization (the Progressive Party) in Vermont
but also running with Democratic Party endorsements. This spring was a moment of truth for him.
He has (or until now had) the stature to create a new political party, perhaps from scratch or
perhaps by joining and helping build the Green Party. He chose to turn his back on the left.
The left needs a political party. Yes, I know, we have a two party system. But that is the
problem. Believing that the two party system is an immutable law of nature is not part of any
solution.
RPY, July 10, 2015 at 6:06 pm
Bernie I believe because of his message, is attracting people from both sides of the aisle.
Everyday people who are tired of partisan politics and are just glad to hear someone willing to
speak the truth of how screwed things are. From the corruption of wall street to the corruption
of Washington, DC politics.
Lambert Strether, July 10, 2015 at 7:50 pm
Some of us on the left would rather deal with a straightforward reactionary who's honest about
their intentions than backstabbing "Join the conversation" Democrats. I wonder if there's a similar
dynamic on the right: They'd rather deal with an honest-to-gawd Socialist than McConnnell and
Boehner (Exhibit A: TPP).
RPY, July 10, 2015 at 6:06 pm
Bernie I believe because of his message, is attracting people from both sides of the aisle.
Everyday people who are tired of partisan politics and are just glad to hear someone willing to
speak the truth of how screwed things are. From the corruption of wall street to the corruption
of Washington, DC politics.
Lambert Strether, July 10, 2015 at 7:50 pm
Some of us on the left would rather deal with a straightforward reactionary who's honest about
their intentions than backstabbing "Join the conversation" Democrats. I wonder if there's a similar
dynamic on the right: They'd rather deal with an honest-to-gawd Socialist than McConnnell and
Boehner (Exhibit A: TPP).
oho, July 11, 2015 at 2:36 pm
*** First, when you expose yourself to any of the "liberal" U.S. outlets (as opposed to, say,
The Guardian) be aware that because they are owned by establishment corporations they're already
pro-Clinton. ***
While the Guardian is nominally independent, it ain't much better at being "liberal" that the
NYT.
Guardian editors like access to Westminster, their fellow Oxbridge alums and invites to cocktail
parties in Kensington too.
"... It's unclear how a jetliner is [more] powerful than an earthquake, and how, if such requirements failed to save the WTC towers, preparing for even more powerful earthquakes is going to prevent a recurrence of the same. ..."
"... The heavy, black smoke emanating from the structures belies your premise. ..."
No offense is meant but fewer articles from Ms. Scofield, please, with transparent, dubious,
questionable, or propagandistic angles. The article 'How building design changed after 9/11' has
been written annually for fifteen years.
"In fact, for years building codes from the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American
Institute of Steel Construction and the American Concrete Institute have required structural supports
to be designed with high enough ductility to withstand a major earthquake so rare its probability
of happening is once every 2,000 years. "
It's unclear how a jetliner is [more] powerful than an earthquake, and how, if such requirements
failed to save the WTC towers, preparing for even more powerful earthquakes is going to prevent
a recurrence of the same.
This would also go for any articles entitled 'How the US Can Win the War in Syria' in which
no objectives are articulated, non-evidential articles entitled 'U.S. Could Pay a High Price for
Suing the Saudis,' any more New Yorker articles, the motives of which are transparently political
and actually create disinformation around veritable realities, about 'Trump and the Truth', e.g.
'The Unemployment Rate Hoax,' etc. I'm sure posting links is largely a thankless job, but if I
wanted to I could turn on CNN and 'learn' these very things.
"In fact, for years building codes from the American Society of Civil Engineers, the
American Institute of Steel Construction and the American Concrete Institute have required
structural supports to be designed with high enough ductility to withstand a major earthquake
so rare its probability of happening is once every 2,000 years."
Hate to break it to you, but earthquake forces - seismic events - are considerably different
than thermal events. Granted, fire often erupt as a result of severed gas and electric lines caused
by an earthquake, but an earthquake is a brief, violent, hard shaking or rolling. A high-rise
fire of sustained intensity sits in one place and does its work within a confined setting. In
the case of the multiple floors damaged by the impact of the planes in 9-11, that confined setting
bore a striking resemblance to a combination blast furnace and chimney. (People tend to forget
that skyscrapers tend to create their own wind patterns, in this case well over 500 feet high.
Just like air being pumped into a fire by a bellows.
The second order partial differentiation equation* governing structure responding during a
dynamic event like an earthquakes shows that the force on the structure is related to its mass.
The heavier a structure, the bigger force it is subjected to, going through the same quake.
The force of an impacting plane is same regardless of the building size, all else being equal.
*(mass x acceleration) + (damping coefficient x velocity) + (stiffness modulus x displacement)
= zero.
"... Nevertheless, the ludicrous Washington Post, beloved rag of the neocons who have now flocked to Clinton's campaign, have seen fit to run the story above, which has even less evidential backing than the typical Enquirer or Prison Planet piece. ..."
"... I don't care about Clinton's swoon and its various medical causes. ..."
"... What I do care about is that the Washington Post is publishing crackpot paranoid conspiracy theories with potentially dangerous foreign policy consequences. ..."
Yesterday, I sardonically commented here that I was surprised the Putin-paranoid Clintonites had
not tried blaming Putin for Hillary Clinton's pneumonia.
Little did I know that Putimonia theory
was already out there!
The sad, sad, sad continuing decline of the American mind.
Dan Kervick said in reply to pgl...
It was 80 degrees. There have been many far hotter days here in the northeast this summer.
Clinton didn't pass out because it was hot and humid. She passed out because she has pneumonia.
It happens; people get sick.
Nevertheless, the ludicrous Washington Post, beloved rag of the neocons who have now flocked
to Clinton's campaign, have seen fit to run the story above, which has even less evidential backing
than the typical Enquirer or Prison Planet piece.
America has jumped the shark. You fools will have to launch WW III on the strength of your
own votes, since you won't have mine.
Dan Kervick -> DeDude...
I don't care about Clinton's swoon and its various medical causes.
What I do care about is that the Washington Post is publishing crackpot paranoid conspiracy
theories with potentially dangerous foreign policy consequences.
Hmmmmm - are we a little overheated this morning? May I suggest sitting down and drinking some
gatorade.
Dan Kervick said in reply to DeDude...
It is indeed dangerous when one of the most prominent newspapers in America floats a cuckoo
conspiracy theory - without even a tiny shred of evidence - to the effect that a prominent foreign
leader might have poisoned a presidential candidate.
Democrats are now plunging en masse down these various rabbit holes because they see a short-term
political edge in them, and because their anxiety.
Partisanship is a terrible mental illness. It makes previously sane people lose their bearings.
DeDude said in reply to Dan Kervick...
Omalu was previously sane???? Must have been before my time. Seriously Dan - Gatorade!!!
Dan Kervick said in reply to DeDude...
I'm talking about you people. Also, the editors of the Washington Post.
If you think that Omalu is not sane then don't you agree it is irresponsible to publish his
ravings?
According to a front-page
story in the Washington Post , U.S. agencies are investigating what they perceive as
"a broad covert Russian operation in the United States to sow public distrust in the upcoming presidential
election and in U.S. political institutions". The story is vague and short on details.
... ... ...
One of several unfortunate truths regarding the weakening integrity of American democracy involves
the destruction of campaign finance laws and making electoral outcomes reflect the wallets of a few
at least as much as the minds of many. Another unattractive and undemocratic element is the extensive
gerrymandering in which both major parties indulge, thereby subordinating popular will to the crude
power of incumbency. Even more of an affront to democracy in the last few years has been the blatant
use of legislative power at the state level by members of one party to impede the ability of followers
of the other party to exercise their right to vote, with the rationale for this power play being
prevention of a form of voter fraud that has been so rare as to be almost nonexistent. American democracy
is looking less and less distinct from the rickety versions of democracy in much of the less developed
world, in which the bending of rules by incumbents to frustrate challenges to their rule is common.
Most recently we have the presidential nominee of one major party, Donald Trump, declaring preemptively
that if he loses it will be because the process was rigged. This also sounds a lot like many of those
unstable political systems that purport to be democracies, and in which non-acceptance of electoral
results is common. (See Gabon for
a recent example .)
American democracy is less of a shining, distinctive exemplar of political fairness and popular
sovereignty than it once was...
Meanwhile, Norman Birnbaum has good advice for Hillary Clinton in urging her "to shelve her devotion
to extending democracy to the rest of the world to concentrate on rescuing it for ourselves."
"... In fact, HRC may be a better prospect for neocons, because they can distract the Dem base with how cool it is for a "strong woman" to send men into battle. Anyone opposed must be a misogynist/sexist pig. By contrast Jeb would be too obvious. ..."
"... "There is no prospect of a non-interventionist president." ..."
"... Exactly. Obama has certainly proved this to be true, for those who might've thought otherwise. And since it is true, if one is going to vote anyway, then the decision won't be made on the basis of not "wanting more wars with terrible outcomes." There will have to be another, different, deciding factor, since that factor would rule out Ms. Clinton AND every other candidate. ..."
"... Yes, I have to second Lysander's view. People - both in and outside the US - must first disabuse themselves of ANY notion that the US is a democratic state, that "changes" in leadership will actually bring about ANY difference in foreign/domestic policy and that the American war criminal ship can be righted by the people utilizing the "democratic" mechanisms at their disposal. ..."
"... Furthermore, after the Obama debacle and his utter betrayal etc of his supporters if anyone thinks someone in the American Establishment is looking out for their peon asses why then they probably also believe that the US was "surprised/caught off guard" - yet again - by ISIS et al in Iraq. ..."
"... I wish Rand Paul had his fathers balls, but he doesnt. Ron was a Libertarian pretending to be a Republican, while Rand is a Republican pretending to be a Libertarian... Rand would be no different than any other Republican or Democratic establishment schmuck. ..."
"... I never did like Ron Pauls economic policy, being left leaning, and I'm doubtful whether he would have actually accomplished anything useful as President, but his NonInterventionism was admirable and I was happy to put his name in in the Rethug primary in 2012 for that reason alone. ..."
"... Mr. Kristol said he, too, sensed "more willingness to rethink" neoconservatism, which he called "vindicated to some degree" by the fruits of Mr. Obama's detached approach to Syria and Eastern Europe. Mr. Kagan, he said, gives historical heft to arguments "that are very consistent with the arguments I made, and he made, 20 years ago, 10 years ago." ..."
"... After all the slaughter these people feel like crowing. They are clearly, as JSorrentine often reminds us, pyschopath butchers. ..."
"... Incidentally, where is the outrage from Samantha Powers about the ISIS massacre in Tikrit? ..."
"... Well, I guess the world just can't talk about how the amazingly rapid rise of ISIS/L and fall of Iraq completely continues the plans of the apartheid genocidal state of Israel's - and their traitorous Zionist partners in the American Establishment - as set out in the Yinon Plan and Clean Break strategies because - HOW FORTUITOUS...I mean, terribly sad and unexpected, sorry - some unlucky Israeli teenagers just happened to be "kidnapped" by "Hamas" just as the ISIS show was kicking off or so that's what the apartheid genocidal state of Israel is telling the world. ..."
"... Shrillary wouldn't be where she is today if she wasn't criminally insane. I want her to become President. She'll redefine the meaning of Eerily Inept (a label coined by Gore Vidal and attached to G Dubya Bush). Her greatest moment was when Lavrov called her out on her RESET button and pointed out, with a chuckle, "You got it wrong. It doesn't say RESET it says SHORT CIRCUIT." ..."
"... Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who argued in favor of arming Syrian rebels, said last week at an event in New York hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations, "this is not just a Syrian problem anymore. I never thought it was just a Syrian problem. I thought it was a regional problem. ..."
"... Why, even HILLARY is just SOOOO SURPRISED about people trying to erase boundaries, huh? Funny, she should have read further into yesterday's times where it seems that the Zionist mouthpiece of record was desperately trying to get "out in front" of anyone mentioning that the fracturing of Iraq and the ME was all part of long-time Israeli strategy: ..."
"... In 2006, it was Ralph Peters, the retired lieutenant colonel turned columnist, who sketched a map that subdivided Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and envisioned Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite republics emerging from a no-longer-united Iraq. Two years later, The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg imagined similar partings-of-the-ways, with new microstates -- an Alawite Republic, an Islamic Emirate of Gaza -- taking shape and Afghanistan splitting up as well. Last year, it was Robin Wright's turn in this newspaper, in a map that (keeping up with events) subdivided Libya as well. ..."
"... As president she's da bomb! ..."
"... Hillary is a loathsome war mongering bitch. She almost had a public orgasm when Libyan leader Quadaffi was tortured and murdered by US supported Libyan rebels. The muder of Chris Stevens was a case of what goes around comes around. ..."
"... A point which nobody else has made as far as I know. To wit there is a big overlap between the banking and Israel lobbies since wealthy Jews account for a hugely disproportionate number of top financial movers and shakers. Anything that helps the financial industry also helps the war mongering Israel and neo con lobbies. The heavily Jewish Fed is another enabler of all that is wrong with America today. ..."
"... I, also agree, with the possible exception of replacing the word "Zionist", with the word "Corporatist", although both can be rightly used. We'll still get the person the 1%ers want us to have. Ain't Oligarchies grand? ..."
"... Hillary's election depends on two things still unknown: her health and whether the Republicans can manage to choose someone sufficiently batshit crazy to make her the best of abysmal alternatives. ..."
"... HRH is a Neo Liberal of Arianne 'Sniff Sniff' Huffington's type, the 'Third Way Up Your Ass' of Globalist NAFTA/TPP Free Trade Neonazi destruction of labor and environmental protections, and in your face with NOOOOO apologies. ..."
"... And Victoria Nuland indicates that she agrees with her husband Robert Kagan's criticism of Obama's foreign policy. ..."
"... Would it be safe to say Hillary's White Trash ? ..."
"... There are some really nice photographs of Hillary being very friendly with bearded famous Libyan Islamists (Gaddafi was still alive then). In combination with Benghazi - I think you probably can connect the people greeting Hillary with what happened there (and today's Iraq) I would not think she has a chance to convince with foreign policy. ..."
"... 'You have a schism between Sunni and Shia throughout the region that is profound. Some of it is directed or abetted by states who are in contests for power there.'" Now, if only he had mentioned the states included and featured the (United) States and Israel. Obama...usually a day late and a dollar short and leading or retreating from behind. ..."
"... I would rank Obama as the most cynical one. He is doing the dark colonial art. You can berate Bush for bombing Iraq (Obama did that with Libya, just as bad), but he did sink American manpower and treasure for all this futile nation building stuff, ie he tried to repair it. ..."
"... Obama tried to double down on the nation building stuff in Afghanistan, even copying the "surge". He is still not out of Afghanistan. ..."
"... He then tried to continue Bush's policy on the cheap, scrapping the nation building stuff and concentrating on shock and awe in Libya. When Russia put a stop to that in Syria he doubled down on the subversion supporting guerilla groups. He is now back in Iraq with allies supporting a "Sunni" insurrection by proxy. After a "color revolution" in Ukraine. ..."
"... It is not "US foreign policy" but the policy of the british empire. If he was running a US foreign policy, he would at least sometimes do something positive for Americans, by accident if nothing more. ..."
"... Economic policy to vote on? Are you joking? Whichever party we elect we get Neoliberalism anyway. ..."
"... "That smile and her gloating about his death made me feel she was some sort of sociopath." Massinissa, you meant psychopath, didn't you? ..."
Here is the reason why Hillary Clinton should never ever become President
of the United States.
A (sympathetic) New York Times profile of neocon Robert Kagan has
this on Clinton II:
But Exhibit A for what Robert Kagan describes as his "mainstream" view of
American force is his relationship with former Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton, who remains the vessel into which many interventionists
are pouring their hopes. Mr. Kagan pointed out that he had recently
attended a dinner of foreign-policy experts at which Mrs. Clinton was the
guest of honor, and that he had served on her bipartisan group of foreign-policy
heavy hitters at the State Department, where his wife worked as her spokeswoman.
"I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy," Mr. Kagan said,
adding that the next step after Mr. Obama's more realist approach "could
theoretically be whatever Hillary brings to the table" if elected president.
"If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue," he added,
"it's something that might have been called neocon, but clearly
her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it
something else."
Want more wars with terrible outcomes and no winner at all? Vote the neocon's
vessel, Hillary Clinton.
Clinton, by the way, is also
a coward,
unprincipled and
greedy. Her achievements as Secretary of State were about zero. Why would
anyone vote for her?
Posted by b on June 16, 2014 at 09:09 AM |
Permalink
I'm afraid you focus too much on elections that have no meaning. It seems
we may be cornered into choosing between HR Clinton and Jeb Bush. The latter,
I'm sure, would earn equal praise from the Kagan clan. There is no prospect
of a non-interventionist president. There is no prospect of a president
that is not a Zionist stooge.
In fact, HRC may be a better prospect for neocons, because they can
distract the Dem base with how cool it is for a "strong woman" to send men
into battle. Anyone opposed must be a misogynist/sexist pig. By contrast
Jeb would be too obvious.
Personally, I don't think she is anyone to worry about gaining the office.
Too much hatred of her by most Americans, from her serial lying to her terrible
foreign policy, to her standing by bent dick, in her lust for power. She
will be backed by feminazis,homonazis and zionazis(Kagan).
Not enough devil worshippers in America,at least not yet,and I believe
Americans,from current events that our traitor MSM will be unable to counter
with their usual BS,that we are down the rabbit hole of idiotic intervention,and
we will end this nonsense,and return to worrying about America,not foreign
malevolent monsters like Israel.
Well,I can at least hope,it springs eternal.
"There is no prospect of a non-interventionist president."
Exactly. Obama has certainly proved this to be true, for those who
might've thought otherwise. And since it is true, if one is going to vote
anyway, then the decision won't be made on the basis of not "wanting more
wars with terrible outcomes." There will have to be another, different,
deciding factor, since that factor would rule out Ms. Clinton AND every
other candidate.
Yes, I have to second Lysander's view. People - both in and outside
the US - must first disabuse themselves of ANY notion that the US is a democratic
state, that "changes" in leadership will actually bring about ANY difference
in foreign/domestic policy and that the American war criminal ship can be
righted by the people utilizing the "democratic" mechanisms at their disposal.
I understand that some speak to how corrupt our institutions are but
there always seems to be a "feel-goodiness" - i.e., we can still fix it
all, boys and girls, if you all just clap your hands LOUDER!! - implicit
in their analyses/prescriptions when there should be nothing but anger,
fear and revulsion towards the fascist war criminal state that we live within.
Furthermore, after the Obama debacle and his utter betrayal etc of
his supporters if anyone thinks someone in the American Establishment is
looking out for their peon asses why then they probably also believe that
the US was "surprised/caught off guard" - yet again - by ISIS et al in Iraq.
"There is no chance of a non-interventionist president"
I wish Rand Paul had his fathers balls, but he doesnt. Ron was a
Libertarian pretending to be a Republican, while Rand is a Republican pretending
to be a Libertarian... Rand would be no different than any other Republican
or Democratic establishment schmuck.
I never did like Ron Pauls economic policy, being left leaning, and
I'm doubtful whether he would have actually accomplished anything useful
as President, but his NonInterventionism was admirable and I was happy to
put his name in in the Rethug primary in 2012 for that reason alone.
Great post, b. I saw the article and felt the same thing. While commentators
are right to say that the foreign policy of the U.S. remains largely untouched
regardless of which candidate or party wins the White House (which the NYT
piece does a fine job illustrating), I do think Hillary is the worst the
Democrats have to offer.
What I found amazing about the story is how neocons are now preening
about as if they have been vindicated:
Mr. Kristol said he, too, sensed "more willingness to rethink" neoconservatism,
which he called "vindicated to some degree" by the fruits of Mr. Obama's
detached approach to Syria and Eastern Europe. Mr. Kagan, he said, gives
historical heft to arguments "that are very consistent with the arguments
I made, and he made, 20 years ago, 10 years ago."
After all the slaughter these people feel like crowing. They are clearly,
as JSorrentine often reminds us, pyschopath butchers.
Incidentally,
where is the outrage from Samantha Powers about the ISIS massacre in Tikrit?
Well, I guess the world just can't talk about how the amazingly rapid
rise of ISIS/L and fall of Iraq completely continues the plans of the apartheid
genocidal state of Israel's - and their traitorous Zionist partners in the
American Establishment - as set out in the
Yinon Plan and Clean Break strategies because - HOW FORTUITOUS...I mean,
terribly sad and unexpected, sorry - some unlucky Israeli teenagers just
happened to be "kidnapped" by "Hamas" just as the ISIS show was kicking
off or so that's what the apartheid genocidal state of Israel is telling
the world.
Yeah, I bet the apartheid genocidal state of Israel probably has just
NO IDEA about what's going on in Iraq what with their harrowing search -
read: collective punishment for the residents of the
illegally occupied territories - for the 3 missing boys who haven't
been ransomed or claimed to have been taken by anyone.
Wait a second...what if it was ISIS/L and NOT Hamas that "kidnapped"
the boys!!!Holy tie-in, Bat-Man!!!!
Then there would be NO WAY that what we're witnessing is the furthering
of the Yinon Plan because the apartheid genocidal Israelis would never instigate
false flag terror to further/distract from their own ends/agenda, would
they?
Nah.
A Qaeda-inspired group calling itself the Islamic State in Iraq and
Syria - Palestine, West Bank claimed responsibility for the kidnappings,
saying it wanted to avenge Israel's killing of three of its group in
the Hebron area late last year and to try to free prisoners from Israeli
jails. The credibility of the claim was not immediately clear.
But clear enough for the Zionist mouthpiece of the NYT to print it, right?
Shrillary wouldn't be where she is today if she wasn't criminally
insane. I want her to become President. She'll redefine the meaning of Eerily
Inept (a label coined by Gore Vidal and attached to G Dubya Bush). Her greatest
moment was when Lavrov called her out on her RESET button and pointed out,
with a chuckle, "You got it wrong. It doesn't say RESET it says SHORT CIRCUIT."
Then he laughed. At her, not with her. She's a sick, intellectually lazy,
dumb, joke. America deserves her.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who argued in
favor of arming Syrian rebels, said last week at an event in New York
hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations, "this is not just a Syrian
problem anymore. I never thought it was just a Syrian problem. I thought
it was a regional problem. I could not have predicted, however,
the extent to which ISIS could be effective in seizing cities in Iraq
and trying to erase boundaries to create an Islamic state."
Why, even HILLARY is just SOOOO SURPRISED about people trying to
erase boundaries, huh? Funny, she should have read further into yesterday's
times where it seems that the Zionist mouthpiece of record was desperately
trying to get "out in front" of anyone mentioning that the fracturing of
Iraq and the ME was all part of long-time Israeli strategy:
In 2006, it was Ralph Peters, the retired lieutenant colonel turned
columnist, who sketched a map that subdivided Saudi Arabia and Pakistan
and envisioned Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite republics emerging from a no-longer-united
Iraq. Two years later, The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg imagined similar
partings-of-the-ways, with new microstates -- an Alawite Republic, an
Islamic Emirate of Gaza -- taking shape and Afghanistan splitting up
as well. Last year, it was Robin Wright's turn in this newspaper, in
a map that (keeping up with events) subdivided Libya as well.
Peters's map, which ran in Armed Forces Journal, inspired conspiracy
theories about how this was America's real plan for remaking the Middle
East. But the reality is entirely different: One reason these maps have
remained strictly hypothetical, even amid regional turmoil, is that
the United States has a powerful interest in preserving the Sykes-Picot
status quo.
This is not because the existing borders are in any way ideal. Indeed,
there's a very good chance that a Middle East that was more politically
segregated by ethnicity and faith might become a more stable and harmonious
region in the long run.
My favorite part of the above column is that it references a previous
column from the Zionist NYT from last year in which a war criminal even
drew up the
new map of the ME!!
Oh, but that war criminal thought SYRIA was going to be the trigger that
allowed for the culmination of the Yinon Plan. Oops!
And then ALSO YESTERDAY in the
NYT everyone's favorite little war Establishment mouthpiece Nicholas
Kristoff had this to say:
The crucial step, and the one we should apply diplomatic pressure to
try to achieve, is for Maliki to step back and share power with Sunnis
while accepting decentralization of government.
If Maliki does all that, it may still be possible to save Iraq. Without
that, airstrikes would be a further waste in a land in which we've already
squandered far, far too much.
DECENTRALIZATION, huh? Why, Nicky, that sounds like what Putin has suggested
for Ukraine, huh? Shhhhhhhh
And of course Mr. Fuckhead Tom Friedman weighs in ALSO YESTERDAY in the
NYT with this:
THE disintegration of Iraq and Syria is upending an order that has defined
the Middle East for a century. It is a huge event, and we as a country
need to think very carefully about how to respond. Having just returned
from Iraq two weeks ago, my own thinking is guided by five principles,
and the first is that, in Iraq today, my enemy's enemy is my enemy.
Other than the Kurds, we have no friends in this fight. Neither Sunni
nor Shiite leaders spearheading the war in Iraq today share our values.
The ME is going to be split up inevitably: check
The US/Israel are JUST NOWHERE to be found: check
Thanks, Tom, you fucking war criminal scum!!!
To review:
Everyone in the Establishment - fake left, right, center, dove, hawk,
blah blah - says that it's just inevitable now that Iraq and the ME will
probably be broken up.
Everyone in the Establishment also agrees that NO ONE could see this
whole ISIS etc shitpile coming, right?
Anyone else get the feeling that this is a coordinated continuation of
the Zionist Plan for the Middle East?
Naahh. Nothing to see here, fuckers!!! Move along!!!!
She ties right in with the whole pink power agenda. She is the woMAN
version and can also be useful for the women=victims, but, no way for the
women/whore
women/victim/whore is quintessentially Pussy Riot
And if you criticize HC you are just a woman hater!
(you know like antisemitic)
Same as Obama- criticize him, you are just a racist
Shuts the complaints right off!
Hillary is a loathsome war mongering bitch. She almost had a public
orgasm when Libyan leader Quadaffi was tortured and murdered by US supported
Libyan rebels. The muder of Chris Stevens was a case of what goes around
comes around.
A point which nobody else has made as far as I know. To wit there
is a big overlap between the banking and Israel lobbies since wealthy Jews
account for a hugely disproportionate number of top financial movers and
shakers. Anything that helps the financial industry also helps the war mongering
Israel and neo con lobbies. The heavily Jewish Fed is another enabler of
all that is wrong with America today.
lysander @ 4: "There is no prospect of a president that is not a Zionist
stooge."
I, also agree, with the possible exception of replacing the word
"Zionist", with the word "Corporatist", although both can be rightly used.
We'll still get the person the 1%ers want us to have. Ain't Oligarchies
grand?
Hillary's election depends on two things still unknown: her health
and whether the Republicans can manage to choose someone sufficiently batshit
crazy to make her the best of abysmal alternatives. I think her health
is the critical variable, as the PTB are going to make sure that the Republican
candidate will come out strongly for privatization of social security and
reversing the 19th amendment. Vote-rigging and gerrymandering will maintain
a sufficiently close election to preserve the simulacrum of a free election.
HRH is a Neo Liberal of Arianne 'Sniff Sniff' Huffington's type,
the 'Third Way Up Your
Ass' of Globalist NAFTA/TPP Free Trade Neonazi destruction of labor and
environmental
protections, and in your face with NOOOOO apologies.
That she is a totally-disjointed Royal is clear in her 'dead broke' claim.
That she is a famous Hectorian, constantly checking which way public opinion
is flowing, then crafting
her confabulated dialogue as screed to her real intents, is well known.
Der Prevaricator.
What should be equally well known, if news got around, Hillary (and UKs
Milliband) grifted
Hamid Karzai $5 BILLION of Americans' last life savings, stolen from US
Humanitarian Aid
to Afghanistan, then made five trips to Kabul for no apparent purpose, before
announcing
that her $-35 MILLION 'dead broke' presidential campaign had been paid off
by 'anonymous
donors'. This is all public record; in the 2009 International Conference
on Afghanistan in
London, right in the conference speeches, framed as 'Karzai's demand', but
in fact, that
speech of Karzai's was written by US State Department. I read the drafts.
'Bicycling'.
Hillary soon had to fly back one more time and grift Karzai an emergency
$3.5 BILLION
theft, after he lost Americans' $5 BILLION while speculating in Dubai R/E
by looting
his Bank of Kabul. Her 'injection of capital' saved the bank from being
audited, and
no doubt saved all the Kaganites from an embarrassing and public episiotomy.
In the end, Hillary retired with a fortune of $50 MILLION, again announced
publicly, which
together with the $-35 MILLION campaign payoff in violation of all US election
regulations,
is exactly 1% of the $8.5 BILLION she grifted to Karzai. She's in the 'One
Percent Club'.
"It's a Great Big Club, ...and you ain't in it!" George 'The Man' Carlin
But who cares? I'll tell you. The Russian know about this grift, certainly
the Israelis
know about this grift, the Millibandits know, the London Karzais know, and
if G-d forbid,
Hillary became HRHOTUS, Americans will be blackmailed down to their underdrawers.
There are some really nice photographs of Hillary being very friendly
with bearded famous Libyan Islamists (Gaddafi was still alive then). In
combination with Benghazi - I think you probably can connect the people
greeting Hillary with what happened there (and today's Iraq) I would not
think she has a chance to convince with foreign policy.
"Well at the risk of being a smartass her achievements were negative,
the American hegemony is in worse condition because of her."
Because of her and it.
Dubhaltach gets it right, and as applied to events inclusive of and after
9-11-2001. The purported masterful seamless garment of conspiracy,
yet it weakened the US and helped get Israel whacked good by Hezbollah.
As for the unmentioned Saudi, it is of course impossible that Saudi could
outplay longterm both the US and Israel longterm.
Just as it was impossible Chalabi could outplay the neocons and help
win Iran the Iraq War. Who is playing catch up and who is
playing masterfully cohesive and unbeatable conspiracy?
Dubhaltach gets it right, the US will be pushed out of the Mideast and
Israel is longterm DOOMED.
Here is Obama in the very recent Remnick interview
"Obama said:
'You have a schism between Sunni and Shia throughout the region
that is profound. Some of it is directed or abetted by states who are in
contests for power there.'" Now, if only he had mentioned the states
included and featured the (United) States and Israel. Obama...usually a
day late and a dollar short and leading or retreating from behind.
I would rank Obama as the most cynical one. He is doing the dark
colonial art. You can berate Bush for bombing Iraq (Obama did that with
Libya, just as bad), but he did sink American manpower and treasure for
all this futile nation building stuff, ie he tried to repair it.
Obama tried to double down on the nation building stuff in Afghanistan,
even copying the "surge". He is still not out of Afghanistan.
He then tried to continue Bush's policy on the cheap, scrapping the
nation building stuff and concentrating on shock and awe in Libya. When
Russia put a stop to that in Syria he doubled down on the subversion supporting
guerilla groups. He is now back in Iraq with allies supporting a "Sunni"
insurrection by proxy. After a "color revolution" in Ukraine.
He just "sold" US foreign policy in a different target group, Hillary
will sell it to her target group, Jeb Bush to his.
It is not "US foreign policy" but the policy of the british empire.
If he was running a US foreign policy, he would at least sometimes do something
positive for Americans, by accident if nothing more.
"That smile and her gloating about his death made me feel she was
some sort of sociopath." Massinissa, you meant psychopath, didn't you?
the following is an excerpt from essay written by James at Winter Patriot:
"... Psychopaths are people without a conscience; without compassion
for others; without a sense of shame or guilt. The majority of people carry
within them the concern for others that evolution has instilled in us to
allow us to survive as groups. This is the evolutionary basis of the quality
of compassion. Compassion is not just a matter of virtue; it is a matter
of survival. Psychopaths do not have this concern for others and so are
a danger to the survival of the rest of us.
Psychopaths, as a homogeneous group, would not survive one or two generations
by themselves. They are motivated only by self interest and would exploit
each other till they ended up killing each other. Which gives one pause
for thought! They are parasites and need the rest of us to survive. In doing
so they compromise the survival of the whole species.
Psychopaths represent approximately between 1% and 20% of the population
in western countries depending on whose research you go by and also depending
on how broad a definition of the condition you adopt. It is generally held,
though, that there is a hard core of between 4-6% or so and maybe another
10 -15% of the population that is functionally psychopathic in that they
will exploit their fellow human being without hesitation.
The hard core are untreatable. They see nothing wrong with who or what
they are. The other 10-15% group may be persuaded to act differently in
a different environment or a different society. The second group act out
of a misguided strategy of survival. I'll concentrate on the hard core 5%
and the singular fact that must be borne in mind with them is that they
are incapable of change for the better. They cannot reform or be reformed.
And you can take that to the bank in every case! They must never be trusted.
Documented liars like those that populate the current Kiev regime
can be confidently assumed to be psychopaths from their behaviour and so
will never negotiate in good faith and will always renege on any deals they
make. The same can be said for the governments of the US and UK who back
them. Historically, they have never made a treaty that they did not subsequently
break."
James' essay is extremely informative wrt group psychopathy... some of
you may want to give it a read:
psychopath: a person suffering from chronic mental disorder with abnormal
or violent social behavior.
an unstable and aggressive person. "schoolyard psychopaths will gather around
a fight to encourage the combatants"
Mina, now that I've looked up these links for you, I am confused myself!
Since a sociopath is less of a danger to the rest of us, I prefer to call
TPTB and their puppets psychopaths. Not your bad at all, apparently the
two are so similar as to there being difficulty telling them apart.
btw, I always enjoy your posts ~ not only do I get new info, but often
new sources... which is great. Thanks!
"... Hillary Clinton's National Security Advisers Are a "Who's Who" of the Warfare State ..."
"... The list of key advisers - which includes the general who executed the troop surge in Iraq and a former Bush homeland security chief turned terror profiteer - is a strong indicator that Clinton's national security policy will not threaten the post-9/11 national-security status quo that includes active use of military power abroad and heightened security measures at home. ..."
Hillary Clinton's National Security Advisers Are a "Who's Who" of the
Warfare State By Zaid Jilani, Alex Emmons, and Naomi LaChance
HILLARY CLINTON IS meeting with a new national security "working group"
that is filled with an elite "who's who" of the military-industrial complex
and the security deep state.
The list of key advisers - which includes the general who executed the
troop surge in Iraq and a former Bush homeland security chief turned terror
profiteer - is a strong indicator that Clinton's national security policy
will not threaten the post-9/11 national-security status quo that includes
active use of military power abroad and heightened security measures at
home.
It's a story we've seen before in President Obama's early appointments.
In retrospect, analysts have pointed to the continuity in national security
and intelligence advisers as an early sign that despite his campaign rhetoric
Obama would end up building on - rather than tearing down - the often-extralegal,
Bush-Cheney counterterror regime. For instance, while Obama promised in
2008 to reform the NSA, its director was kept on and its reach continued
to grow.
Obama's most fateful decision may have been choosing former National
Counterterrorism Center Director John Brennan to be national security adviser,
despite Brennan's support of Bush's torture program. Brennan would go on
to run the president's drone program, lead the CIA, fight the Senate's torture
investigation, and then lie about searching Senate computers.
That backdrop is what makes Clinton's new list of advisers so significant.
It includes Gen. David Petraeus, the major architect of the 2007 Iraq
War troop surge, which brought 30,000 more troops to Iraq. Picking him indicates
at partiality to combative ideology. It also represents a return to good
standing for the general after he pled guilty to leaking notebooks full
of classified information to his lover, Paula Broadwell, and got off with
two years of probation and a fine. Petraeus currently works at the investment
firm KKR & Co.
Another notable member of Clinton's group is Michael Chertoff, a hardliner
who served as President George W. Bush's last secretary of the Department
of Homeland Security, and who since leaving government in 2009 has helmed
a corporate consulting firm called the Chertoff Group that promotes security-industry
priorities. For example, in 2010, he gave dozens of media interviews touting
full-body scanners at airports while his firm was employed by a company
that produced body scanning machines. His firmalso employs a number of other
ex-security state officials, such as former CIA and NSA Director Michael
Hayden. It does not disclose a complete list of its clients - all of whom
now have a line of access to Clinton.
Many others on the list are open advocates of military escalation overseas.
Mike Morell, the former acting director of the CIA, endorsed Clinton last
month in a New York Times opinion piece that accused Trump of being an "unwitting
agent of the Russian Federation." The Times was criticized for not disclosing
his current employment by Beacon Global Strategies, a politically powerful
national-security consulting firm with strong links to Clinton. Three days
later, Morell told Charlie Rose in a PBS interview that the CIA should actively
assassinate Russians and Iranians in Syria.
During his time at the CIA, Morell was connected to some of the worst
scandals and intelligence failures of the Bush administration. In his book,
he apologizes for giving flawed intelligence to Colin Powell about Iraq's
supposed weapons of mass destruction, but defends the CIA torture program
as legal and ethical.
Jim Stavridis, a former NATO supreme allied commander Europe on Clinton's
advisory group, told Fox News Radio in July, when he was being vetted by
Clinton as a possible vice presidential nominee, that "we have got to get
more aggressive going into Syria and Iraq and go after [ISIS] because if
we don't they're going to come to us. It's a pretty simple equation." He
said he would "encourage the president to take a more aggressive stance
against Iran, to increase our military forces in Iraq and Syria, and to
confront Vladmir Putin" over his moves in Crimea.
The New York Times reported in 2011 that Michael Vickers, a former Pentagon
official on Clinton's new list, led the use of drone strikes. He would grin
and tell his colleagues at meetings, "I just want to kill those guys."
Others on the list played a role in the targeted killing policies of
the Obama administration, including Chris Fussell, a top aide to Gen. Stanley
McChrystal, and now a partner with him at his lucrative consulting firm,
the McChrystal Group....
"... Yemen is another war the US is involved in thanks to the "peace" Pres. Obama. He has tried to keep this war hidden from the public. His few mentions of this war have been limited to shallow statements about his concern of the civilian casualty. ..."
"... Moreover, by selling the Saudis cluster bombs and other arms being used on civilians, Obama has enabled the Saudis in the last 8 moths to kill and destruct in Yemen more than WW2, as evidence shows. According to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the US is complicit in international war crimes in Yemen. ..."
"... After Obama's election, he went to Cairo to make a peace speech to the Arab world aiming to diffuse the deep hatred towards the US created during the Bush era. Yet since then, Obama's foolish alliances with despotic Arab rulers infesting ISIS and Al-Qaeda in the region, his drone warfare, and warped war policies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen, have only expanded and strengthened ISIS and Al-Qaeda, and increased Arab citizens anger and hatred towards the US. This is Obama's legacy! ..."
"... I always think there are similarities in Clinton and Obama s upbringing that created the anormic sociopathic shape shifting personalities they demonstrate. ..."
"... amiable even charismatic enough to sell it to a stupid audience. ..."
"... Why do we maintain the myth that the Obama brand is in anyway his personal contribution. Anymore than Bush or Clinton. The only difference is the republicans are ideologues where's as the puppets offered by the democrats are just psychotic shape shifters. In either way on a clear day you can see the strings hanging from their wrists like ribbons. ..."
"... The US is Allied with Saudi Arabia and Israel, that makes Saudi Arabia's and Israel's enemies US enemies. ..."
"... The notion that Obama makes his own decisions is laughable except it aint funny.. ..."
"... There is no 'Obama legacy' in the ME. It is a US legacy of blown attempts to control unwilling countries and populations by coercion, and by military and economic warfare. ..."
"... With all due respects to M. Obama, this is another clear indication that the US President is just a figure head. He is a front for the corporations that run the US behind the scene - the so-called US military-industrial complex. ..."
"... Perhaps you intentionally miss out the fact that it is the west that has Israel and the Saudis as their best allies, considering their actions ( one with the largest/longest time concentration camp in history, the other the exporter of the horror show of ISIL , both an abomination of their respective religions . The west attempt to seek the moral high ground is more than a farce ... all the world can see and know the game being played, but the mass media wishes to assume everyone has half a brain... they are allergic to the truth , like the vampires to the light. ..."
"... The stick I'm talking about is the total capacity of the US, military and economic, to have things its way or make the opposition very unhappy. ..."
"... What has it gotten us? Nothing good. What has it gotten the top 1 percent? All the money we don't have. ..."
"... Obama is being an absolute idiot in sending special forces to fight with rebels who are fighting the legitimate government of Syria. This is stupidity of the highest order. What will he do when any of these special forces operatives are captured by IS or killed by Russian or Syrian airstrikes? ..."
"... That is a valid point: Syria is a sovereign nation recognized by the U.N., and any foreign troops within without permission would be considered invaders. Of course, the U.S. ignores international law all the time. ..."
"... Anyway, foreign troops in Syria who are there without an invitation by Syrian government or authorisation by UNSC are there illegally and can be tried for war crimes if captured. Why is Obama putting his soldiers in this situation? ..."
"... The U.S. strategy in Syria is in tatters as Obama lamely tries to patch it up. The U.S. was determined to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria in service of the Saudis, Turkey, and Israel, while pretending to go after ISIS, who the Saudis and Turks were covertly funding. The U.S. were arming jihadists to oust Assad. That game is up, thanks to the Russians. Putin decided he wasn't going to stand by while the U.S. and its proxies created another Libya jihadist disaster in Syria. The forceful Russian intervention in going after ISIS showed the U.S. to be a faker, and caused a sea-change in U.S. policy. Now the U.S. can't pretend to go after ISIS while really trying to oust Assad. The Emporer has no clothes. ..."
"... Israel is an ally of KSA who is funding IS, Al Nusra, Al-Qaida and Al-Shabab. They are also partners with KSA in trying to prevent Iran's reintegration into global society following the nuclear deal, and the lifting of sanctions. ..."
"... I suspect that Israel wants to annex the Syrian Golan Heights permanently, and to extend their illegal settlements into the area. That can only happen if Assad is defeated. ..."
"... Wow, you make a lot of sense. I always thought the US military heavy foreign policy became insane because of Reagan. Maybe it was the loss of the USSR? ..."
"... Everyone here grew up being taught that the US is the champion of all that is good (sounds corny today). When the USSR dissolved, everyone imagined huge military cuts with the savings being invested in social benefits. If someone had predicted that, instead, we would grow our military, throw our civil rights away, embrace empire, assasinate US citizens without a trial, create total surveillance, create secret one sided star-chamber FISA courts that control a third of our economy, and choose a Dept. name heard previously only in Nazi movies (Homeland Security) --- we'd have laughed and dismissed the warning as delusion. ..."
"... You are correct. Obama is breaking UN international law, the US has no right to invade Syria. Russia, though, has been asked by the Syrian government for help, a government fully recognized by the UN. Russia has full UN sanctioned rights to help Syria. US news media will never explain this to the public, sadly. ..."
"... Obama's presidency lost its credibility a long time ago. He made so many rash promises and statements which one by one he has broken, that no free thinking person believes anything he says anymore. ..."
"... There's a world of difference between Russia taking steps to protect its immediate geographic and political interests (which were largely the wishes of the resident populations - something critics tend to overlook) and the USA invading Iraq (2003) in a blatant act of war, based on bullshit and then aiding and abetting mercenary terrorists in Syria in defiance of any declaration of war, UN resolution or invitation from the Syrian government to intervene. ..."
"... You might have also noticed that Syria is a long, long way from the USA. Rhetorically, WTF is the US doing in the Middle East? Propping up Saudi or Israel? Or both? ..."
"... ISIS == Mercenaries sponsored by the US, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. Does a strategy against our own mercenaries make sense??? ..."
"... Think about, when's the last time Saudi Arabia did anything progressive or humane in its foreign policy? Now remember this very same country is on the same side as the Americans. This is the country that invaded Bahrain and Yemen and labelled the civil rights movements in those countries as 'Iranian interference.' The Saudis who have been seeking to turn civil rights movements with rather nationalistic demands into religious and sectarian conflicts by playing different groups against each other are allied with the U.S. and sitting at the table in Vienna talking about peace in Syria. Nonsense upon stilts! ..."
"... ISIS poses no threat to the Americans and vice versa. The Americans therefore do not have an interest in making sure that ISIS is wiped out. On the contrary they want regional foes to suffer. ..."
"... The American attempt at negotiating peace in Syria without Syrian representation is nothing short of ridiculous and best illustrates the convoluted state of American foreign policy. America lost any claim to 'leadership' by now. ..."
"... Unfortunately American policy and that eu have at time added fuel to the fire. ..."
"... Russian Iranian and hezbollah boots are invited boots by the legitimate government according to the UN Charter they are all acting legally and according to the Geneva Conventions etc. ..."
"... The US led coalition in bombing Syria were not, and the admitted introduction of troops into Syria is a an ACT OF WAR by the USA, and it is the AGRESSOR here, not doubt about it. It's a War Crime by every standard ..."
"... See the NATO creep into Eastern Europe against all agreements made with USSR. ..."
"... But their real agenda is to carve up Syria. In the deep recesses of their, the Corporate corrupt White House's, mind ISIS is not their immediate problem. ISIS is a means to an end - carve up Syria a sovereign country. ..."
"... Remember, only months ago, Kerry and Tory William Hague, was handing out cash to Syrian rebels who later turned out to be ISIS rebels. We must never forget, Syria, right or wrong, is a sovereign country. ..."
"... Look at the mess they made in, Ukraine, with their friends a bunch of, Kiev, murdering neo-Nazi's. ..."
"... Just out of curiosity...how will the US keep the DoD and CIA from duking it out at the opposite fronts on the Syrian soil? ..."
"... Washington has clearly chosen to break International Law. ..."
"... Westphalian sovereignty is the principle of international law that each nation state has sovereignty over its territory and domestic affairs, to the exclusion of all external powers, on the principle of non-interference in another country's domestic affairs, and that each state (no matter how large or small) is equal in international law ..."
"... As the administration in Washington is firmly in the grasp of special interest groups such as Big Pharma, The Banksters, Big Agrobusiness, Big oil, the MIC and Israel there is no chance of getting good policy decisions out of there until there is a regime change. ..."
"... You might think that having criticized Assad for shooting demonstrators who demonstrated against the corruption and inefficiency of his regime, and having said that as a result his regime had lost its legitimacy, they would apply the same yardstick to President Poroshenko when he shot up two provinces of his country for asking for federation, killing thousands in the process, but on the contrary they sent "advisers" to train his military and his Fascist helpers to use their weapons better, to shoot them up more effectively. ..."
"... However, one cannot really expect people who are exceptional to behave like ordinary (unexceptional) human beings. ..."
"... What is the official US line on the legality of these deployments in terms of international law? ..."
NATO and its allies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Syria .... they make a desert and call
it peace.
ID7582903 1 Nov 2015 06:19
"Credibility"? Beware and be aware folks. This isn't a monopoly game being played here; it's
for real.
2015 Valdai conference is Societies Between War and Peace: Overcoming the Logic of Conflict
in Tomorrow's World. In the period between October 19 and 22, experts from 30 countries have been
considering various aspects of the perception of war and peace both in the public consciousness
and in international relations, religion and economic interaction between states. Videos w live
translations and english transcripts (a keeper imho)
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/50548
30 Oct, 2015 - The day US announces Ground troops into Syria, and the day before the downing/crash
of the Russian Airbus 321 in the Sinai, this happened:
Russia has conducted a major test of its strategic missile forces, firing numerous ballistic and
cruise missiles from various training areas across the country, videos
uploaded by the Ministry of Defense have shown.
A routine exercise, possibly the largest of its kind this year, was intended to test the command
system of transmitting orders among departments and involved launches
from military ranges on the ground, at sea and in the air, the ministry said Friday.
30.10.2015
Since the beginning of its operation in Syria on September 30, Russian Aerospace Forces have carried
out 1,391 sorties in Syria, destroying a total of 1,623 terrorist targets, the Russian General
Staff said Friday.
In particular, Russian warplanes destroyed 249 Islamic State command posts, 51 training camps,
and 131 depots, Andrey Kartapolov, head of the Russian General Staff Main Operations Directorate
said.
"In Hanshih, a suburb of Damascus, 17 militants of the Al-Ghuraba group were executed in public
after they tried to leave the combat area and flee to Jordan," he specified. "The whole scene
was filmed in order to disseminate the footage among the other groups operating in the vicinity
of Damascus and other areas", the General Staff spokesman said. In the central regions of the
country, the Syrian Army managed to liberate 12 cities in the Hama province, Kartapolov said.
"The Syrian armed forces continue their advance to the north," the general added.
Yemen is another war the US is involved in thanks to the "peace" Pres. Obama. He has tried
to keep this war hidden from the public. His few mentions of this war have been limited to shallow
statements about his concern of the civilian casualty. What an insult to our intelligence! We
are well aware that the US provides the logistical and technical support, and refuelling of warplanes
to the Saudi coalition illegal war in Yemen. Moreover, by selling the Saudis cluster bombs and
other arms being used on civilians, Obama has enabled the Saudis in the last 8 moths to kill and
destruct in Yemen more than WW2, as evidence shows. According to Amnesty International and Human
Rights Watch, the US is complicit in international war crimes in Yemen.
After Obama's election, he went to Cairo to make a peace speech to the Arab world aiming to
diffuse the deep hatred towards the US created during the Bush era. Yet since then, Obama's foolish
alliances with despotic Arab rulers infesting ISIS and Al-Qaeda in the region, his drone warfare,
and warped war policies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen, have only expanded and strengthened
ISIS and Al-Qaeda, and increased Arab citizens anger and hatred towards the US. This is Obama's
legacy!
Barmaidfromhell -> WSCrips 1 Nov 2015 03:52
Well said.
I always think there are similarities in Clinton and Obama s upbringing that created the
anormic sociopathic shape shifting personalities they demonstrate. Obviously carefully selected
to follow any line given them and amiable even charismatic enough to sell it to a stupid audience.
Why do we maintain the myth that the Obama brand is in anyway his personal contribution.
Anymore than Bush or Clinton. The only difference is the republicans are ideologues where's as
the puppets offered by the democrats are just psychotic shape shifters. In either way on a clear
day you can see the strings hanging from their wrists like ribbons.
Michael Imanual Christos -> Pete Piper 1 Nov 2015 00:28
Pete Piper
In brief;
The US is Allied with Saudi Arabia and Israel, that makes Saudi Arabia's and Israel's enemies
US enemies.
... ... ...
midnightschild10 31 Oct 2015 21:35
When Obama denounced Russia's actions in Syria, and blamed them for massive loss of civilian
lives, Russia responded by asking them to show their proof. The Administration spokesperson said
they got their information from social media. No one in the Administration seems to realize how
utterly stupid that sounds. Marie Harf is happily developing the Administration's foreign policy
via Twitter. As the CIA and NSA read Facebook for their daily planning, Obama reads the comments
section of newspapers to prepare for his speech to the American public in regard to putting boots
on the ground in Syria, and adding to the boots in Iraq. If it didn't result in putting soldiers
lives in jeopardy, it would be considered silly. Putin makes his move and watches as the Obama
Administration makes the only move they know, after minimal success in bombing, Obama does send
in the troops. Putin is the one running the game. Obama's response is so predictable. No wonder
the Russians are laughing. In his quest to outdo Cheyney, Obama has added to the number of wars
the US is currently involved in. His original claim to fame was to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
which then resulted in starting Iraq and Afghanistan Wars 2.0. Since helping to depose the existing
governments in the Middle East, leading not only to the resurgence of AlQuaeda, and giving birth
to ISIS, and leaving chaos and destruction in his wake, he decided to take down the last standing
ruler, hoping that if he does the same thing over and over, he will get a different result. Obama's
foreign policy legacy had been considered impotent at best, now its considered ridiculous.
SomersetApples 31 Oct 2015 20:03
We bombed them, we sent armies of terrorist in to kill them, we destroyed their hospitals and
power plants and cities, we put sanctions on them and we did everything in our power to cut off
their trading with the outside world, and yet they are still standing.
The only thing left to do, lets send in some special military operatives.
This is so out of character, or our perceived character of Obama. It must be that deranged
idiot John McCain pulling the strings.
Rafiqac01 31 Oct 2015 16:58
The notion that Obama makes his own decisions is laughable except it aint funny....having
just watched CNNs Long Road to Hell in Iraq....and the idiots advising Bush and Blair you have
to wonder the extent to which these are almighty balls ups or very sophisticated planning followed
up by post disaster rationalisation....
whatever the conclusion it proves that the intervention or non interventions prove their is
little the USA has done that has added any good value to the situation...indeed it is an unmitigated
disaster strewn around the world! Trump is the next generation frothing at the mouth ready to
show what a big John Wayne he is!!
DavidFCanada 31 Oct 2015 13:56
There is no 'Obama legacy' in the ME. It is a US legacy of blown attempts to control unwilling
countries and populations by coercion, and by military and economic warfare. That US legacy
will forever remain, burnt into skins and bodies of the living and dead, together with a virtually
unanimous recognition in the ME of the laughable US pretexts of supporting democracy, the rule
of law, religious freedom and, best of all, peace. Obama is merely the chief functionary of a
nation of lies.
Informed17 -> WSCrips 31 Oct 2015 13:47
Are you saying that there was no illegal invasion of Iraq? No vial of laundry detergent was
presented at the UN as "proof" that Iraq has WMDs? No hue and cry from "independent" media supported
that deception campaign? Were you in a deep coma at the time?
Informed17 -> somethingbrite 31 Oct 2015 13:36
No. But the US trampled on the international law for quite a while now, starting with totally
illegal interference in Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
WSCrips 31 Oct 2015 13:18
Hey Guardian Editors.....and all those who worshipped Obama....In America, there were folks
from the older generation that warned us that this Community Organizer was not ready for the Job
of President of the United States....it had nothing to do with his color, he just was not ready.....he
was a young, inexperienced Senator, who never, ever had a real job, never had a street fight growing
up pampered in Hawaii, was given a pass to great universities because his parents had money, and
was the dream Affirmative Action poster boy for the liberal left. Obama has not disappointed anyone
who tried to warn us......and now we will reap what he has sowed:
1. 8 Trillion to our debt
2. Nightmare in the Middleast (how is that Arab Spring)
3. Polarized America....Dems and Republicans hate each other....hate each other like the Irish
and English...10 x over.
4. War on Cops
5. War with China
6. Invasion from Central America
I see a great depression and World War IV on the horizon....and I am being positive!
SaveRMiddle 31 Oct 2015 12:47
Nothing Obama says has any value. We've watched the man lie with a grin and a chuckle.
Forever Gone is all trust.
His continued abuse of Red Line threats spoke volumes about the lawyer who Reactively micromanages
that which required and deserved an expert Proactive plan.
Let History reflect the horrific death CIA meddling Regime Change/Divide and Conquer creates.
HeadInSand2013 31 Oct 2015 12:45
Liberal activists were in little doubt that Obama has failed to live up to his commitment
to avoid getting dragged directly into the war.
With all due respects to M. Obama, this is another clear indication that the US President
is just a figure head. He is a front for the corporations that run the US behind the scene - the
so-called US military-industrial complex.
Liberal activists are stupid enough to think that M. Obama is actually in charge of the US
military or the US foreign policy. Just go back and count how many times during the last 6 years
M. Obama has made a declaration and then - sometimes the next day - US military has over-ruled
him.
Mediaking 31 Oct 2015 10:00
Perhaps you intentionally miss out the fact that it is the west that has Israel and the
Saudis as their best allies, considering their actions ( one with the largest/longest time concentration
camp in history, the other the exporter of the horror show of ISIL , both an abomination of their
respective religions . The west attempt to seek the moral high ground is more than a farce ...
all the world can see and know the game being played, but the mass media wishes to assume everyone
has half a brain... they are allergic to the truth , like the vampires to the light.
USA forces coming to the aid of their 5 individuals... yes 1,2,3,4,5 ( stated by US command-
there are only that amount of FSA fighters left - the rest have gone over to ISIL with their equipment -- ) the local population all speak of ISIL/Daesh being American/Israeli ,they say if this is a
civil war how come all the opposition are foreigners -- I think perhaps it's like the Ukraine affair...
a bunch of CIA paid Nazi thugs instigating a coup ... or like Venezuela agents on roof tops shooting
at both sides in demonstrations to get things going. The usual business of CIA/Mossad stuff in
tune with the mass media with their engineered narratives -- Followed by the trolls on cyber space...
no doubt we shall see them here too.
All note that an Intervention in Syria would be "ILLEGAL" by Int. law and sooner than later
will be sued in billions for it...on top of the billions spent on having a 5 person strong force
of FSA...spent from the American tax payers money . Syria has a government and is considered a
state at the UN . Iran and Russia are there at the request and permission of Syria .
Russia and Iran have been methodically wiping out Washington's mercenaries on the ground while
recapturing large swathes of land that had been lost to the terrorists. Now that the terrorists
are getting wiped out the west and the Saudis are are screaming blue murder !
I for one would have Assad stay , as he himself suggests , till his country is completely free
of terrorists, then have free elections . I would add , to have the Saudis and the ones in the
west/Turkey/Jordan charged for crimes against humanity for supplying and creating Daesh/ISIS .
This element cannot be ignored . Also Kurdistan can form their new country in the regions they
occupy as of this moment and Mosul to come. Iran,Russia,Iraq, Syria and the new Kurdistan will
sign up to this deal . Millions of Syrian refugees can then come back home and rebuild their broken
lives with Iranian help and cash damages from the mentioned instigators $400 billion . The cash
must be paid into the Syrian central bank before any elections take place ... Solved...
My consultancy fee - 200ml pounds sterling... I know ... you wish I ruled the world (who knows
!) - no scams please or else -- ( the else would be an Apocalypse upon the western equity markets
via the Illuminati i.e a 49% crash )... a week to pay , no worries since better to pay for a just
solution than to have million descend upon EU as refugees . It is either this or God's revenge
with no mercy .
amacd2 31 Oct 2015 09:52
Obama, being more honest but also more dangerous than Flip Wilson says, "The Empire made me
do it",
Bernie, having "reservations" about what Obama has done, says nothing against Empire, but continues
to pretend, against all evidence, that this is a democracy.
Hillary, delighting in more war, says "We came, we bombed, they all died, but the Empire won."
Talk about 'The Issue' to debate for the candidates in 2016?
"What's your position on the Empire?"
"Oh, what Empire, you ask?"
"The friggin Empire that you are auditioning to pose as the president of --- you lying tools
of both the neocon 'R' Vichy party and you smoother lying neoliberal-cons of the 'D' Vichy party!"
lightstroke -> Pete Piper 31 Oct 2015 09:41
Nukes are not on the table. Mutually Assured Destruction.
The stick I'm talking about is the total capacity of the US, military and economic, to
have things its way or make the opposition very unhappy.
It's not necessary to win wars to exercise that power. All they have to do is start them and
keep them going until the arms industry makes as much dough from them as possible. That's the
only win they care about.
What has it gotten us? Nothing good. What has it gotten the top 1 percent? All the money
we don't have.
Taku2 31 Oct 2015 09:26
Obama is being an absolute idiot in sending special forces to fight with rebels who are
fighting the legitimate government of Syria. This is stupidity of the highest order. What will
he do when any of these special forces operatives are captured by IS or killed by Russian or Syrian
airstrikes?
How stupid can a President get?
Obama does need to pull back on this one, even though it will make his stupid and erroneous
policy towards the Syrian tragedy seem completely headless. If this stupid and brainless policy
is meant to be symbolic, its potential for future catastrophic consequences is immeasurable.
phillharmonic -> nishville 31 Oct 2015 08:56
That is a valid point: Syria is a sovereign nation recognized by the U.N., and any foreign
troops within without permission would be considered invaders. Of course, the U.S. ignores international
law all the time.
nishville 31 Oct 2015 08:35
Syrian rebels fighting the Islamic State
And who are those then? Do they exist, do we have any reliable source confirming they are really
simultaneously fighting IS and Syrian Army or is it yet another US fairy tale?
Anyway, foreign troops in Syria who are there without an invitation by Syrian government
or authorisation by UNSC are there illegally and can be tried for war crimes if captured. Why
is Obama putting his soldiers in this situation?
phillharmonic 31 Oct 2015 08:33
The U.S. strategy in Syria is in tatters as Obama lamely tries to patch it up. The U.S.
was determined to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria in service of the Saudis, Turkey, and Israel,
while pretending to go after ISIS, who the Saudis and Turks were covertly funding. The U.S. were
arming jihadists to oust Assad. That game is up, thanks to the Russians. Putin decided he wasn't
going to stand by while the U.S. and its proxies created another Libya jihadist disaster in Syria.
The forceful Russian intervention in going after ISIS showed the U.S. to be a faker, and caused
a sea-change in U.S. policy. Now the U.S. can't pretend to go after ISIS while really trying to
oust Assad. The Emporer has no clothes.
amacd2 -> Woody Treasure 31 Oct 2015 08:31
Woody, did you mean "Obama is a foil (for the Disguised Global Crony-Capitalist Empire--- which
he certainly is), or did you mean to say "fool" (which he certainly is not, both because he is
a well paid puppet/poodle for this Global Empire merely HQed in, and 'posing' as, America ---
as Blair and Camron are for the same singular Global Empire --- and because Obama didn't end his
role as Faux/Emperor-president like JFK), eh?
Nena Cassol -> TonyBlunt 31 Oct 2015 06:48
Assad's father seized power with a military coup and ruled the country for 30 years, before
dying he appointed his son, who immediately established marshal law, prompting discontent even
among his father's die-hard loyalists ...this is plain history, is this what you call a legitimate
leader?
Cycles 31 Oct 2015 06:41
Forced to go in otherwise the Russians and Iranians get full control. Welcome to the divided
Syria a la Germany after WW2.
TonyBlunt -> Nena Cassol 31 Oct 2015 06:36
"It does not take much research to find out that Assad is not legitimate at all"
Please share your source with us Nena. But remember Langley Publications don't count.
TonyBlunt -> oldholbornian 31 Oct 2015 06:29
The Americans do not recognise international law. They do not sign up to any of it and proclaim
the right to break it with their "exceptionalism".
Katrin3 -> herrmaya 31 Oct 2015 05:27
The Russians, US, Iran etc are all meeting right now in Vienna. The Russians and the US military
do communicate with each other, to avoid attacking each other by mistake.
The Russians are in the West and N.West of Syria. The US is going into the N. East, near IS
headquarters in Raqqa, to support the Kurdish YPG, who are only a few kilometers from the city.
Katrin3 -> ID6693806 31 Oct 2015 05:15
Israel is an ally of KSA who is funding IS, Al Nusra, Al-Qaida and Al-Shabab. They are
also partners with KSA in trying to prevent Iran's reintegration into global society following
the nuclear deal, and the lifting of sanctions.
I suspect that Israel wants to annex the Syrian Golan Heights permanently, and to extend
their illegal settlements into the area. That can only happen if Assad is defeated.
centerline ChristineH 31 Oct 2015 04:48
The Kurds are the fabled moderate opposition who are willing to negotiate, and who have also
fought with the Syrian government against US backed ISIS and al Nusra so called moderate opposition.
Pete Piper -> Verbum 31 Oct 2015 04:47
@Verbum Wow, you make a lot of sense. I always thought the US military heavy foreign policy became
insane because of Reagan. Maybe it was the loss of the USSR?
Everyone here grew up being taught that the US is the champion of all that is good (sounds
corny today). When the USSR dissolved, everyone imagined huge military cuts with the savings being
invested in social benefits. If someone had predicted that, instead, we would grow our military,
throw our civil rights away, embrace empire, assasinate US citizens without a trial, create total
surveillance, create secret one sided star-chamber FISA courts that control a third of our economy,
and choose a Dept. name heard previously only in Nazi movies (Homeland Security) --- we'd have
laughed and dismissed the warning as delusion.
gabriel90 -> confettifoot 31 Oct 2015 04:46
ISiS is destroying Syria thanks to the US and Saudi Arabia; its an instrument to spread chaos
in the Middle East and attack Iran and Russia...
ChristineH 31 Oct 2015 04:21
So, on the day peace talks open, the US unilaterally announces advice boots on the ground to
support one of the many sides in the Syrian War, who will undoubtedly want self determination,
right on Turkey's border, as they always have, and as has always been opposed by the majority
of the Syrian population. What part of that isn't completely mad?
Great sympathy for the situation of the Kurds in Syria under Assad, but their nationalism issue
and inability to work together with the Sunni rebels, was a major factor in the non formation
of a functioning opposition in Syria, and will be a block to peace, not its cause. It's also part
of a larger plan to have parts of Turkey and Iraq under Kurdish control to create a contingent
kingdom. Whatever the merits of that, the US deciding to support them at this stage is completely
irrational, and with Russia and Iran supporting Assad will lengthen the war, not shorten it.
MissSarajevo 31 Oct 2015 04:21
Just a couple of things here. How does the US know who the moderates are?!? Is this another
occasion that the US is going to use International law as toilet paper? The US will enter (as
if they weren't already there, illegally. They were not invited in by the legitimate leader of
Syria.
gabriel90 31 Oct 2015 04:19
Warbama is just trying to save his saudi/qatari/turk/emirati dogs of war... they will be wiped
out by Russia and the axis of resistance...
Pete Piper -> Michael Imanual Christos 31 Oct 2015 04:08
Does anyone see anything rational in US foreign policy? When I hear attempts to explain, they
vary around .. "it's about oil". But no one ever shows evidence continuous wars produced more
oil for anyone. So, are we deliberately creating chaos and misery? Why? To make new enemies we
can use to justify more war? We've now classified the number of countries we are bombing. Why?
The countries being bombed surely know.
Pete Piper -> oldholbornian 31 Oct 2015 03:50
You are correct. Obama is breaking UN international law, the US has no right to invade
Syria. Russia, though, has been asked by the Syrian government for help, a government fully recognized
by the UN. Russia has full UN sanctioned rights to help Syria. US news media will never explain
this to the public, sadly.
Only the US routinely violates other nations' sovergnity. Since Korea, the only nation that
has ever used military force against a nation not on its border is the US.
Can anyone find rationality in US foreign policy? We are supposed to be fighting ISIL, but
Saudi Arabia and Israel appear to be helping ISIL to force Syrian regime change. And the US is
supplying weapons to Saudi Arabia that are routed to ISIL. Supposedly because eliminating President
Asad is more important than fighting ISIL? The US public is being misled into thinking we are
NOW fighting ISIL. After Asad is killed, then we will genuinely fight ISIL? Russia, Iran, and
more(?) will fight to keep Asad in power and then fight ISIL? THIS IS OBVIOUS BS, AND ALSO FUBAR.
By all means, get everyone together for some diplomacy.
oldholbornian -> lesmandalasdeniki 31 Oct 2015 03:36
Well lets look at Germany the centre of christian culture and the EU
reminds me of emporer franz josef in europe about 100 years ago .. meant well but led to ruination
..i dont think that there has been an american president involved in more wars than obama
obama by his cairo speech kicked of the arab spring ..shows that words can kill
however.. the experience he now has gained may lead to an avoidance of a greater sunni shia
war in syria if the present vienna talks can offer something tangible and preserve honour to the
sunnis .. in the mid east honour and macho are key elements in negotiations
iran however is a shia caliphate based regime and unless it has learnt the lesson from yemen
on the limitations of force may push for further success via army and diplomacy and control in
syria and iraq
oldholbornian 31 Oct 2015 02:42
But Obama's latest broken promise to avoid an "open-ended action" in Syria could lead to a
full-blown war with Russia considering that Russian military has been operating in Syria for weeks.
" For the first time ever, the American strategists have developed an illusion that they
may defeat a nuclear power in a non-nuclear war," Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin
told AP. "It's nonsense, and it will never happen."
Any US / terrorist engagement with the Syrian security forces will include engaging with its
allies Russia
Once the firing starts Russia will include the US as terrorists with no rights to be in Syrian
and under the UN RULES have the right to defend themselves against the US
HollyOldDog -> foolisholdman 31 Oct 2015 02:32
Hmm Foreign snipers on rooftops ( not in the control of the government) how many times is this
scenario going to be played out before the 'press' twigs it than something is not making sense.
HollyOldDog -> foolisholdman 31 Oct 2015 02:29
Though in one demonstration there was snipers on rooftops shooting both deconstratirs and the
police - far more police were killed than demonstrators - what does this reming you of? Was these
actions seemingly out of the control of the government a preliminary to what happened in Kiev
during the maidan - practices get the technics right I suppose. - outside forces were obviously
at work ' stirring the pot.
Anna Eriksson 31 Oct 2015 02:24
Let's hope that the US will help out with taking in some refugees as well! In Germany, and
Sweden locals are becoming so frustrated and angry that they set refugee shelters on fire. This
is a trend in both Sweden and Germany, as shown in the maps in the links. There have almost been
90 arsons in Germany so far this year, almost 30 in Sweden.
Nobody tells the American people and nobody else really cares, but these 40-something guys
being sent to Syria are possibly there as:
cannon fodder: to deter the Russians from bombing and Iranians from attacking on the ground
the American friendly anti-Assad militant groups;
to collect and report more accurate intel from the front line (again about the Russian/Iranian
troops deployment/movement).
The Russian and Iranian troops on the ground will soon engage and sweep anti-Assad forces in
key regions in Western Syria. This will be slightly impeded if Americans are among them. But accidents
do happen, hence the term "cannon fodder".
The Russians and Iranians will likely take a step back militarily though for the duration of
talks, so the American plan to protect Saudi backed fighters is likely to work.
I never involved or mentioned ISIS because this is NOT about fighting ISIS. It's about counteracting
the Russian/Irania sweep in the area, and ultimately keeping the Americans in the game (sorry,
war).
petervietnam 31 Oct 2015 01:13
The world's policeman or the world's trouble maker?
Austin Young -> Will D 31 Oct 2015 00:34
But he's the "change we can believe in" guy! Oh right... Dem or republican, they spew anything
and everything their voters want to hear but when it comes time to walk the walk the only voice
in their head is Cash Money.
lesmandalasdeniki -> Bardhyl Cenolli 30 Oct 2015 23:34
It frustrates me, anyone who will be the problem-solver will be labeled as dangerous by the
Western political and business leaders if the said person or group of people can not be totally
controlled for their agenda.
This will be the first time I will be speaking about the Indonesian forest fires that started
from June this year until now. During the period I was not on-line, I watched the local news and
all channels were featuring the same problem every day during the last two-weeks.
US is also silent about it during Obama - Jokowi meeting, even praising Jokowi being on the
right track. After Jokowi came back, his PR spin is in the force again, he went directly to Palembang,
he held office and trying to put up an image of a President that cared for his people. He couldn't
solve the Indonesian forest fires from June - October, is it probably because Jusuf Kalla has
investment in it?
My point is, US and the Feds, World Bank and IMF are appointing their puppets on each country
they have put up an investment on terms of sovereign debt and corporate debt/bonds.
And Obama is their puppet.
Will D 30 Oct 2015 23:30
Obama's presidency lost its credibility a long time ago. He made so many rash promises
and statements which one by one he has broken, that no free thinking person believes anything
he says anymore.
He has turned out to be a massive disappointment to all those who had such high hopes that
he really would make the world a better place. His failure and his abysmal track record will cause
him to be remembered as the Nobel Peace prize wining president who did exactly the opposite of
what he promised, and failed to further the cause of peace.
Greg_Samsa -> Greenacres2002 30 Oct 2015 23:07
Consistency is at the heart of logic, all mathematics, and hard sciences.
Even the legal systems strive to be free of contradictions.
I'd rather live in world with consistency of thought and action as represented by the Russian
Federation, then be mired in shit created by the US who have shed all the hobgoblins pestering
the consistency of their thoughts and actions.
Never truly understood the value of this stupid quote really...
Phil Atkinson -> PaulF77 30 Oct 2015 22:28
There's a world of difference between Russia taking steps to protect its immediate geographic
and political interests (which were largely the wishes of the resident populations - something
critics tend to overlook) and the USA invading Iraq (2003) in a blatant act of war, based on bullshit
and then aiding and abetting mercenary terrorists in Syria in defiance of any declaration of war,
UN resolution or invitation from the Syrian government to intervene.
You might have also noticed that Syria is a long, long way from the USA. Rhetorically,
WTF is the US doing in the Middle East? Propping up Saudi or Israel? Or both?
MainstreamMedia Propaganda 30 Oct 2015 22:03
ISIS == Mercenaries sponsored by the US, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. Does a strategy against
our own mercenaries make sense???
I think blatant policy changes like this show just how ineffectual the US president actually
is. The hand over between Bush and Obama has been seamless. Gitmo still going, patriot act renewed,
Libya a smoldering ruin (4 years down the line), no progress on gun control, troops in Afganistan
and Iraq... it goes on...
HowSicklySeemAll 30 Oct 2015 21:58
"It's really hard to see how this tiny number of troops embedded on the ground is going
to turn the tide in any way."
Or the U.S. could carry out air strikes against Hezbollah which has been fighting ISIS for
a while now. They could also supply weapons to ISIS (who are dubbed 'moderates') to counter Russian
airstrikes and Iranian man power.
Think about, when's the last time Saudi Arabia did anything progressive or humane in its
foreign policy? Now remember this very same country is on the same side as the Americans. This
is the country that invaded Bahrain and Yemen and labelled the civil rights movements in those
countries as 'Iranian interference.' The Saudis who have been seeking to turn civil rights movements
with rather nationalistic demands into religious and sectarian conflicts by playing different
groups against each other are allied with the U.S. and sitting at the table in Vienna talking
about peace in Syria. Nonsense upon stilts!
Phil Atkinson -> Harry Bhai 30 Oct 2015 21:57
Fuck the al-Sauds and their oil. If the US wants their oil (and there's plenty of other oil
sellers in the world) then just take it. Why not be consistent?
templeforjerusalem 30 Oct 2015 21:51
IS has shown itself to be deeply hateful of anything that conflicts with their narrow religious
interpretations. Destroying Palmyra, murdering indiscriminately, without any clear international
agenda other than the formation of a new Sunni Sharia State, makes them essentially enemies of
everybody. Although I do agree that belligerent secular Netanyahu's Israel sets a bad example
in the area, Israel does not tend to murder over the same primitive values that IS uses, although
there's not much difference in reality.
IS uses extermination tactics, Israel used forced land clearance and concentration camp bombing
(Gaza et al), while the US in Iraq used brutal force. None of this is good but nothing justifies
the shear barbarism of IS. Is there hope in any of this? No. Is Russian and US involvement a major
escalation? Yes.
Ultimately, this is about religious identities refusing to share and demand peace. Sunni vs
Shia, Judeo/Catholic/Protestant West vs Russian Orthodox, secular vs orthodox Israel. No wonder
people are saying Armageddon.
HowSicklySeemAll 30 Oct 2015 21:50
ISIS poses no threat to the Americans and vice versa. The Americans therefore do not have
an interest in making sure that ISIS is wiped out. On the contrary they want regional foes to
suffer. The only countries and groups that have been successfully fighting ISIS - Assad's
forces, Iranians, Hezbollah, Russians, and Kurds are in fact enemies of either the U.S., Saudis,
Israelis, or Turks. Isn't that strange? The countries and peoples that have suffered the most
and that have actually fought against ISIS effectively are seen as the enemy. Do the powers that
be really want to wipe out ISIS at all costs? No, especially if it involves the Iranians and Russians.
How are Russian boots on the ground - of which there have been many for some time - ok
and American boots bad?
The difference is that of a poison and the antidotum. The American/NATO meddling in Iraq, Libya
and Syria created a truly sick situation which needs to be fixed. That's what the Russians are
doing. Obviously, they have their own objectives and motives for that and are protecting their
own interests, but nevertheless this is the surest way to re-establish semblance of stability
in the Middle East, rebuilt Syria and Iraq, stop the exodus of the refugees, and mend relations
in the region.
The American attempt at negotiating peace in Syria without Syrian representation is nothing
short of ridiculous and best illustrates the convoluted state of American foreign policy. America
lost any claim to 'leadership' by now.
I feel sorry for Mr Obama, and indeed America, because he is a decent person, yet most of us
are unaware what forces he has to reckon with behind the scenes. It is clear by now that interests
of corporations and rich individuals, as well as a couple of seemingly insignificant foreign states,
beat the national interest of America all time, anytime. It is astonishing how a powerful, hard
working and talented nation can become beholden to such forces, to its own detriment.
In the end, I do not think the situation is uniquely American. Russia or China given a chance
of total hegemony would behave the same. That's why we need a field of powers/superpowers to keep
one another in check and negotiate rather than enforce solutions.
ID9309755 -> pegasusrose2011 30 Oct 2015 21:02
Unfortunately American policy and that eu have at time added fuel to the fire. Yes,
the me has its own problems, including rival versions of Islam and fundamentalism as well as truly
megalomaniac leaders. But in instances (Libya for example) they did truly contribute to the country's
destruction (and I am not excusing Gaddafi, but for the people there sometimes having these leaders
and waiting for generational transformations may be a better solution than instant democracy pills.)
ID7582903 -> pegasusrose2011 30 Oct 2015 21:00
Russian Iranian and hezbollah boots are invited boots by the legitimate government according
to the UN Charter they are all acting legally and according to the Geneva Conventions etc.
The US led coalition in bombing Syria were not, and the admitted introduction of troops
into Syria is a an ACT OF WAR by the USA, and it is the AGRESSOR here, not doubt about it. It's
a War Crime by every standard
Obama and the "regime" that rules the United Snakes of America have all gone over the edge
into insanity writ large.
ID9309755 -> pegasusrose2011 30 Oct 2015 20:55
To clarify, I meant that all these groups are funded by these Arabic sheikhdoms and it increasingly
appears that th us of a is not as serious in eradicating all of them in the illusion that the
so called softer ones will over through Assad and then it will be democracy, the much misused
and fetishised term. Meanwhile we can carve up the country, Turkey gets a bite and our naughty
bloated allies in Arabia will be happy with their influence. Only if it happened that way...
There is much more than this short and simplified scenario, and yes Russia played its hand
rather well taking the west off guard. And I am not trying to portray Putin as some liberation
prophet either. So perhaps you could say that yes, maybe I have looked into it deep...
BlooperMario -> RedEyedOverlord 30 Oct 2015 20:52
China and Russia are only responding to NY World Bank and IMF cheats and also standing up to
an evil empire that has ruined the middle east.
Time you had a rethink old chap and stopped worshipping Blair; Bush; Rumsfeld etc as your heros.
See the NATO creep into Eastern Europe against all agreements made with USSR.
Silly Sailors provoking Chinese Lighthouse keepers.
RoyRoger 30 Oct 2015 19:30
Their Plan B is fucked !!
But their real agenda is to carve up Syria. In the deep recesses of their, the Corporate
corrupt White House's, mind ISIS is not their immediate problem. ISIS is a means to an end - carve
up Syria a sovereign country.
Remember, only months ago, Kerry and Tory William Hague, was handing out cash to Syrian
rebels who later turned out to be ISIS rebels. We must never forget, Syria, right or wrong, is
a sovereign country.
The real battle/plan for the Corporate corrupt White House is to try and get a foothold in
Syria and establish a military dictator after a coup d'etat'. As we know it's what they, the West,
do best.
Look at the mess they made in, Ukraine, with their friends a bunch of, Kiev, murdering
neo-Nazi's.
In the interest of right is right; Good Luck Mr Putin !! I'm with you all the way.
weematt 30 Oct 2015 19:25
War (and poverty too) a consequence, concomitant, of competing for markets, raw materials and
trade routes or areas of geo-political dominance, come to be seen as 'natural' outcomes of society,
but are merely concomitants of a changeable social system.
... ... ...
Greg_Samsa 30 Oct 2015 19:21
Just out of curiosity...how will the US keep the DoD and CIA from duking it out at the
opposite fronts on the Syrian soil?
This gives a whole new dimension to the term 'blue-on-blue'.
Kevin Donegan 30 Oct 2015 18:59
Washington has clearly chosen to break International Law.
"Westphalian sovereignty is the principle of international law that each nation state has sovereignty
over its territory and domestic affairs, to the exclusion of all external powers, on the principle
of non-interference in another country's domestic affairs, and that each state (no matter how
large or small) is equal in international law. The doctrine is named after the Peace of Westphalia,
signed in 1648, which ended the Thirty Years' War, in which the major continental European states
– the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, France, Sweden and the Dutch Republic – agreed to respect one
another's territorial integrity. As European influence spread across the globe, the Westphalian
principles, especially the concept of sovereign states, became central to international law and
to the prevailing world order.[1]"
foolisholdman 30 Oct 2015 18:41
As the administration in Washington is firmly in the grasp of special interest groups such
as Big Pharma, The Banksters, Big Agrobusiness, Big oil, the MIC and Israel there is no chance
of getting good policy decisions out of there until there is a regime change.
If ever there was a government hat had lost its legitimacy the present US government is it.
foolisholdman -> Johnny Kent 30 Oct 2015 18:31
Johnny Kent
The slight question of legality in placing troops in a sovereign country without permission
or UN approval is obviously of no importance to the US...and yet they criticise Russia for
'annexing Crimea...
Yes, but you see: the two cases are not comparable because the USA is exceptional.
You might think that having criticized Assad for shooting
demonstrators who demonstrated
against the corruption and inefficiency of his regime, and having said that as a result his regime
had lost its legitimacy, they would apply the same yardstick to President Poroshenko when he shot
up two provinces of his country for asking for federation, killing thousands in the process, but
on the contrary they sent "advisers" to train his military and his Fascist helpers to use their
weapons better, to shoot them up more effectively.
However, one cannot really expect people who are exceptional to behave like ordinary (unexceptional)
human beings.
WalterCronkiteBot 30 Oct 2015 17:11
What is the official US line on the legality of these deployments in terms of international
law?
Noone seems to even raise it as an issue, its all about congressional approval. Just like the
UK drone strikes.
"... Rile the masses up against the Commie Threat, as it worked so well in the 50's - 60's. Save us the expense of rewriting the playbook. Sure. Duck and cover. ..."
"... But the first place I would look is inside the DNC, if I were in charge. Russian intel releasing to wikileaks? Not much profit in that. ..."
"... By the way, whatever became of dearest FBI frontman Comey? ..."
"It might have well been an insider who copied the material and handed them to Wikileaks for publication"
Why this idea gets no traction, obviously -- without an admission of authenticity from DNC,
they have it both ways, the ability to ascribe guilt to Russia, and plausible deniability vis
a vis Sanders. Let's not rule out a purposeful leak as a gloating advertisement for DNC sponsors/donors,
or just as likely as a forgery using wikileaks as conduit for disinformation by anti-DNC ops.
The Guccifer blip is just as believable valid as any of these theories, upo.
Rile the masses up against the Commie Threat, as it worked so well in the 50's - 60's.
Save us the expense of rewriting the playbook. Sure. Duck and cover.
But the first place I would look is inside the DNC, if I were in charge. Russian intel
releasing to wikileaks? Not much profit in that.
By the way, whatever became of dearest FBI frontman Comey?
"... Look over there! Putin is all over the place these days, he is doing Brexit, supporting Trump, and Corbyn I think, he is hacking Hillary, wow. ..."
Look over there! Putin is all over the place these days, he is doing Brexit, supporting Trump,
and Corbyn I think, he is hacking Hillary, wow. And he still has time to ride horses and
play with tigers and invade Europe. I see why he is popular.
But it's nice to be Russian, I like Russia, it's a beautiful country. Until now the Bernie
people were all sexists, racists, privileged homeless idiots who lived in basements, but now we
are Russians. Much better. See that's the Hillary outreach to the bros.
"... I think Trump is afraid the imperial global order presided by the US is about to crash and thinks he will be able to steer the country into a soft landing by accepting that other world powers have interests, by disengaging from costly and humiliating military interventions, by re-negotiating trade deals, and by stopping the mass immigration of poor people. Plus a few well-placed bombs ..."
"... Much has been written about the internet revolution, about the impact of people having access to much more information than before. The elite does not recognize this and is still organizing political and media campaigns as if it were 1990, relying on elder statesmen like Blair, Bush, Mitterrand, Clinton, and Obama to influence public opinion. They are failing miserably, to the point of being counterproductive. ..."
"... I don't think something as parochial as racism is sustaining Trump, but rather the fear of the loss of empire by a population with several orders of magnitude more information and communication than in 2008, even 2012. ..."
"... No one has literally argued that people should be glad to lose employment: that part was hyperbole. But the basic argument is often made quite seriously. See e.g. outsource Brad DeLong . ..."
"... The same thing has happened in Mexico with neoliberal government after neoliberal government being elected. There are many democratically elected neoliberal governments around the world. ..."
"... In the case of Mexico, because Peña Nieto's wife is a telenovela star. How cool is that? It places Mexico in the same league as 1st world countries, such as France, with Carla Bruni. ..."
"... To the guy who asked- poor white people keep voting Republican even though it screws them because they genuinely believe that the country is best off when it encourages a culture of "by the bootstraps" self improvement, hard work, and personal responsibility. They view taxing people in order to give the money to the supposedly less fortunate as the anti thesis of this, because it gives people an easy out that let's them avoid having to engage in the hard work needed to live independently. ..."
"... The extent to which "poor white people" vote against their alleged economic interests is overblown. To a large extent, they do not vote at all nor is anyone or anything on the ballot to represent their interests. And, yes, they are misinformed systematically by elites out to screw them and they know this, but cannot do much to either clear up their own confusion or fight back. ..."
"... The mirror image problem - of elites manipulating the system to screw the poor and merely middle-class - is daily in the news. Both Presidential candidates have been implicated. So, who do you recommend they vote for? ..."
"... I think you're missing Patrick's point. These voters are switching from one Republican to another. They've jettisoned Bush et. al. for Trump. These guys despise Bush. ..."
"... They've figured out that the mainstream party is basically 30 years of affinity fraud. ..."
"... My understanding is trumps support disproportionately comes from the small business owning classes, Ie a demographic similar to the petite bourgeoisie who have often been heavily involved in reactionary movements. This gets oversold as "working class" when class is defined by education level rather than income. ..."
"... Layman - Why are these voters switching from Bush et al to Trump? Once again, Corey's whole point is that there is very little difference between the racism of Trump and the mainstream party since Nixon. Is Trump just more racist? Or are the policies of Trump resonating differently than Bush for reasons other than race? ..."
"... Eric Berne, in The Structures and Dynamics of Organizations and Groups, proposed that among the defining characteristics of a coherent group is an explicit boundary which determines whether an individual is a member of the group or not. (If there is no boundary, nothing binds the assemblage together; it is a crowd.) The boundary helps provide social cohesion and is so important that groups will create one if necessary. Clearly, boundaries exclude as well as include, and someone must play the role of outsider. ..."
"... For a time, the balkanization of American political communities by race, religion and ethnicity was an effective means to the dominance of an tiny elite with ties to an hegemonic community, but it backfired. Dismantling that balkanization has left the country with a very low level of social affiliation and thus a low capacity to organize resistance to elite depredations. ..."
I think Trump is afraid the imperial global order presided by the US is about to crash
and thinks he will be able to steer the country into a soft landing by accepting that other world
powers have interests, by disengaging from costly and humiliating military interventions, by re-negotiating
trade deals, and by stopping the mass immigration of poor people. Plus a few well-placed bombs
.
Much has been written about the internet revolution, about the impact of people having
access to much more information than before. The elite does not recognize this and is still organizing
political and media campaigns as if it were 1990, relying on elder statesmen like Blair, Bush,
Mitterrand, Clinton, and Obama to influence public opinion. They are failing miserably, to the
point of being counterproductive.
I don't think something as parochial as racism is sustaining Trump, but rather the fear
of the loss of empire by a population with several orders of magnitude more information and communication
than in 2008, even 2012.
Layman 08.04.16 at 11:59 am
Rich P: "Neoliberals often argue that people should be glad to lose employment at 50 so
that people from other countries can have higher incomes "
I doubt this most sincerely. While this may be the effect of some neoliberal policies, I can't
recall any particular instance where someone made this argument.
Rich Puchalsky 08.04.16 at 12:03 pm
"I can't recall any particular instance where someone made this argument."
No one has literally argued that people should be glad to lose employment: that part was
hyperbole. But the basic argument is often made quite seriously. See e.g.
outsource
Brad DeLong .
engels 08.04.16 at 12:25 pm
While this may be the effect of some neoliberal policies, I can't recall any particular instance
where someone made this argument
Maybe this kind of thing rom Henry Farrell? (There may well be better examples.)
Is some dilution of the traditional European welfare state acceptable, if it substantially
increases the wellbeing of current outsiders (i.e. for example, by bringing Turkey into the club).
My answer is yes, if European leftwingers are to stick to their core principles on justice, fairness,
egalitarianism etc
Large numbers of low-income white southern Americans consistently vote against their
own economic interests. They vote to award tax breaks to wealthy people and corporations, to
cut unemployment benefits, to bust unions, to reward companies for outsourcing jobs, to resist
wage increases, to cut funding for health care for the poor, to cut Social Security and Medicare,
etc.
The same thing has happened in Mexico with neoliberal government after neoliberal government
being elected. There are many democratically elected neoliberal governments around the world.
Why might this be?
In the case of Mexico, because Peña Nieto's wife is a telenovela star. How cool is that?
It places Mexico in the same league as 1st world countries, such as France, with Carla Bruni.
Patrick 08.04.16 at 4:32 pm
To the guy who asked- poor white people keep voting Republican even though it screws them
because they genuinely believe that the country is best off when it encourages a culture of "by
the bootstraps" self improvement, hard work, and personal responsibility. They view taxing people
in order to give the money to the supposedly less fortunate as the anti thesis of this, because
it gives people an easy out that let's them avoid having to engage in the hard work needed to
live independently.
They see it as little different from letting your kid move back on after college and smoke
weed in your basement. They don't generally mind people being on unemployment transitionally,
but they're supposed to be a little embarrassed about it and get it over with as soon as possible.
They not only worry that increased government social spending will incentivize bad behavior, they
worry it will destroy the cultural values they see as vital to Americas past prosperity. They
tend to view claims about historic or systemic injustice necessitating collective remedy because
they view the world as one in which the vagaries of fate decree that some are born rich or poor,
and that success is in improving ones station relative to where one starts. Attempts at repairing
historical racial inequity read as cheating in that paradigm, and even as hostile since they can
easily observe white people who are just as poor or poorer than those who racial politics focuses
upon. Left wing insistence on borrowing the nastiest rhetoric of libertarians ("this guy is poor
because his ancestors couldn't get ahead because of historical racial injustice so we must help
him; your family couldn't get ahead either but that must have been your fault so you deserve it")
comes across as both antithetical to their values and as downright hostile within the values they
see around them.
All of this can be easily learned by just talking to them.
It's not a great world view. It fails to explain quite a lot. For example, they have literally
no way of explaining increased unemployment without positing either that everyone is getting too
lazy to work, or that the government screwed up the system somehow, possibly by making it too
expensive to do business in the US relative to other countries. and given their faith in the power
of hard work, they don't even blame sweatshops- they blame taxes and foreign subsidies.
I don't know exactly how to reach out to them, except that I can point to some things people
do that repulse them and say "stop doing that."
bruce wilder 08.04.16 at 5:50 pm
The extent to which "poor white people" vote against their alleged economic interests is
overblown. To a large extent, they do not vote at all nor is anyone or anything on the ballot
to represent their interests. And, yes, they are misinformed systematically by elites out to screw
them and they know this, but cannot do much to either clear up their own confusion or fight back.
The mirror image problem - of elites manipulating the system to screw the poor and merely
middle-class - is daily in the news. Both Presidential candidates have been implicated. So, who
do you recommend they vote for?
There is serious deficit of both trust and information among the poor. Poor whites hardly have
a monopoly; black misleadership is epidemic in our era of Cory Booker socialism.
bruce wilder 08.04.16 at 7:05 pm
Politics is founded on the complex social psychology of humans as social animals. We elevate
it from its irrational base in emotion to rationalized calculation or philosophy at our peril.
T 08.04.16 at 9:17 pm
@Layman
I think you're missing Patrick's point. These voters are switching from one Republican
to another. They've jettisoned Bush et. al. for Trump. These guys despise Bush.
They've figured out that the mainstream party is basically 30 years of affinity fraud.
So, is your argument is that Trump even more racist? That kind of goes against the whole point
of the OP. Not saying that race doesn't matter. Of course it does. But Trump has a 34% advantage
in non-college educated white men. It just isn't the South. Why does it have to be just race or
just class?
Ronan(rf) 08.04.16 at 10:35 pm
"I generally don't give a shit about polls so I have no "data" to evidence this claim, but
my guess is the majority of Trump's support comes from this broad middle"
My understanding is trumps support disproportionately comes from the small business owning
classes, Ie a demographic similar to the petite bourgeoisie who have often been heavily involved
in reactionary movements. This gets oversold as "working class" when class is defined by education
level rather than income.
This would make some sense as they are generally in economically unstable jobs, they tend to
be hostile to both big govt (regulations, freeloaders) and big business (unfair competition),
and while they (rhetorically at least) tend to value personal autonomy and self sufficiency ,
they generally sell into smaller, local markets, and so are particularly affected by local demographic
and cultural change , and decline. That's my speculation anyway.
T 08.05.16 at 3:12 pm
@patrick @layman
Patrick, you're right about the Trump demographic. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-working-class-support/
Layman - Why are these voters switching from Bush et al to Trump? Once again, Corey's whole
point is that there is very little difference between the racism of Trump and the mainstream party
since Nixon. Is Trump just more racist? Or are the policies of Trump resonating differently than
Bush for reasons other than race?
Are the folks that voted for the other candidates in the primary less racist so Trump supporters
are just the most racist among Republicans? Cruz less racist? You have to explain the shift within
the Republican party because that's what happened.
Anarcissie 08.06.16 at 3:00 pm
Faustusnotes 08.06.16 at 1:50 pm @ 270 -
Eric Berne, in The Structures and Dynamics of Organizations and Groups, proposed that among
the defining characteristics of a coherent group is an explicit boundary which determines whether
an individual is a member of the group or not. (If there is no boundary, nothing binds the assemblage
together; it is a crowd.) The boundary helps provide social cohesion and is so important that
groups will create one if necessary. Clearly, boundaries exclude as well as include, and someone
must play the role of outsider. While Berne's theories are a bit too nifty for me to love
them, I have observed a lot of the behaviors he predicts. If one wanted to be sociobiological,
it is not hard to hypothesize evolutionary pressures which could lead to this sort of behavior
being genetically programmed. If a group of humans, a notably combative primate, does not have
strong social cohesion, the war of all against all ensues and everybody dies. Common affections
alone do not seem to provide enough cohesion.
In an earlier but related theory, in the United States, immigrants from diverse European communities
which fought each other for centuries in Europe arrived and managed to now get along because they
had a major Other, the Negro, against whom to define themselves (as the White Race) and thus to
cohere sufficiently to get on with business. The Negro had the additional advantage of being at
first a powerless slave and later, although theoretically freed, was legally, politically, and
economically disabled - an outsider who could not fight back very effectively, nor run away. Even
so, the US almost split apart and there continue to be important class, ethnic, religious, and
regional conflicts. You can see how these two theories resonate.
It may be that we can't have communities without this dark side, although we might be able
to mitigate some of its destructive effects.
bruce wilde r 08.06.16 at 4:28 pm
I am somewhat suspicious of leaving dominating elites out of these stories of racism as an
organizing principle for political economy or (cultural) community.
Racism served the purposes of a slaveholding elite that organized political communities to
serve their own interests. (Or, vis a vis the Indians a land-grab or genocide.)
Racism serves as an organizing principle. Politically, in an oppressive and stultifying hierarchy
like the plantation South, racism not incidentally buys the loyalty of subalterns with ersatz
status. The ugly prejudices and resentful arrogance of working class whites is thus a component
of how racism works to organize a political community to serve a hegemonic master class. The business
end of racism, though, is the autarkic poverty imposed on the working communities: slaves, sharecroppers,
poor blacks, poor whites - bad schools, bad roads, politically disabled communities, predatory
institutions and authoritarian governments.
For a time, the balkanization of American political communities by race, religion and ethnicity
was an effective means to the dominance of an tiny elite with ties to an hegemonic community,
but it backfired. Dismantling that balkanization has left the country with a very low level of
social affiliation and thus a low capacity to organize resistance to elite depredations.
engels 08.07.16 at 1:02 am
But how did that slavery happen
Possible short answer: the level of technological development made slavery an efficient way
of exploiting labour. At a certain point those conditions changed and slavery became a drag on
further development and it was abolished, along with much of the racist ideology that legitimated
it.
Lupita 08.07.16 at 3:40 am
But how did that slavery happen
In Mesoamerica, all the natives were enslaved because they were conquered by the Spaniards.
Then, Fray Bartolomé de las Casas successfully argued before the Crown that the natives had souls
and, therefore, should be Christianized rather than enslaved. As Bruce Wilder states, this did
not serve the interests of the slaveholding elite, so the African slave trade began and there
was no Fray Bartolomé to argue their case.
It is interesting that while natives were enslaved, the Aztec aristocracy was shipped to Spain
to be presented in court and study Latin. This would not have happened if the Mesoamericans were
considered inferior (soulless) as a race. Furthermore, the Spaniards needed the local elite to
help them out with their empire and the Aztecs were used to slavery and worse. This whole story
can be understood without recurring to racism. The logic of empire suffices.
"... On the morning following the Austrian presidential election, when it became certain that the neo-nationalist candidate had not won the Austrian presidency (thanks to a few thousand overseas votes, mostly belonging to the middle class), there was a great sigh of relief from the Transnational Elite, (TE), i.e. the network of economic and political elites running the New World Order of Neoliberal Globalization (NWO), mainly based in the G7 countries. ..."
"... The elites are not used to "no" votes, and whenever the European peoples did not vote the 'correct' way in their plebiscites they were forced to vote again until they did so, or they were simply smashed – as was the case with the Greek plebiscite a year ago. ..."
"... In other words, the peoples' need for self-determination, in the NWO, had no other outlet but the nation-state, as, up to a few years ago, the world was dominated by nation–states, within which communities with a common culture, language, customs etc. could express themselves. ..."
"... The nation-state became again a means of self-determination, as it used to be in the 20th century for peoples under colonial rule struggling for their national liberation. The national culture is of course in clear contradiction with a globalist culture like the one imposed now 'from above' by the Transnational and national elites. ..."
"... In fact, the Transnational Elite launched several criminal wars in the last thirty years or so to "protect" human rights (Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and indirectly Syria) leading to millions of deaths and dislocations of populations. ..."
"... Nationalism's emphasis was on the nation-state (or the aspiration for one), whereas neo-nationalism's emphasis is not so much on the nation but rather on sovereignty at the economic but also at the political and cultural levels, which has been phased out in the globalization process; ..."
"... Unlike old nationalism, neo-nationalism raises also demands that in the past were an essential part of the Left agenda, such as the demand for greater equality (within the nation-state and between nation-states), the demand to minimize the power of the elites, even anti-war demands. ..."
"... The neo-nationalist movement had already created strong roots all over the EU, from its Western part (France, UK) up to its Eastern part (Hungary, Poland) and now Austria. Even in the USA itself Donald Trump, who has called on Americans to resist "the false song of globalism", expresses to a significant extent neo-nationalist trends and may be tomorrow the next President of the "Free World". ..."
"... by the strong informal patriotic movement in Russia, which encompasses all those opposing the integration of the country into the NWO ––from neo-nationalists to communists and from orthodox Christians to secularists, while the leadership under Putin is trying to accommodate the very powerful globalist part of the elite (oligarchs, mass media, social media etc.) with this patriotic movement. ..."
"... it is mainly Le Pen's National Front party, more than any other neo-nationalist party in the West, that realized that globalization and membership in the NWΟ's institutions are incompatible with national sovereignty. ..."
"... "Globalization is a barbarity, it is the country which should limit its abuses and regulate it [globalization]." Today the world is in the hands of multinational corporations and large international finance" Immigration "weighs down on wages," while the minimum wage is now becoming the maximum wage" ..."
"... It is therefore obvious that the globalization process has already had devastating economic and social consequences on the majority of the world population. At the same time, the same process has also resulted in tremendous changes at the political and the cultural levels, in the past three decades or so. Last, but not least, it has led to a series of major wars by the Transnational Elite in its attempt to integrate any country resisting integration into the New World Order (NWO) defined by neoliberal globalization (Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria) ..."
"... The neo-nationalist movement is embraced by most of the victims of globalization all over Europe, particularly the working class that used to support the Left ..."
"... the only kind of 'fascism' still possible today is the one directly or indirectly supported by the TE (what we may call 'Euro-fascism'), which is therefore a kind of pseudo-fascism––although in terms of the bestial practices it uses, it may be even more genuine than the 'real thing' of the inter-war period. This is, for instance, the case of the Ukrainian Euro-fascists who are the closest thing to historical Nazism available today, not only in terms of their practices but also in terms of their history. ..."
"... The neo-nationalist parties are embraced by most of the victims of globalization all over Europe, particularly the working class which used to support the Left,[xxvii] whilst the latter has effectively embraced all aspects of globalization (economic, political, ideological and cultural) and has been fully integrated into the NWO––a defining moment in its present intellectual and political bankruptcy. ..."
On the morning following the Austrian presidential election, when it became certain that the
neo-nationalist candidate had not won the Austrian presidency (thanks to a few thousand overseas
votes, mostly belonging to the middle class), there was a great sigh of relief from the Transnational
Elite, (TE), i.e. the network of economic and political elites running the New World Order of Neoliberal
Globalization (NWO), mainly based in the G7 countries.
The huge expansion of the anti-globalization movement over the past few years was under control,
for the time being, and the EU elites would not have to resort to sanctions against a country at
the core of the Union – such as those which may soon be imposed against Poland.
In fact, the only reason they have not as yet been imposed is, presumably, the fear of Brexit,
but as soon as the British people finally submit to the huge campaign of intimidation ("Project Fear")
launched against them by the entire transnational elite, Poland's – and later Hungary's – turn will
come in earnest.
The elites are not used to "no" votes, and whenever the European peoples did not vote the
'correct' way in their plebiscites they were forced to vote again until they did so, or they were
simply smashed – as was the case with the Greek plebiscite a year ago. The interesting thing,
however, is that in the Greek case it was the so-called "NewLeft" represented by SYRIZA, which not
only accepted the worst package of measures imposed on Greece (and perhaps any other country) ever,[ii]
but which is also currently busy conducting a huge propaganda campaign (using the state media, which
it absolutely controls, as its main propaganda tool) to deceive the exhausted Greek people that the
government has even achieved some sort of victory in the negotiations! At the same time, the working
class – the traditional supporters of the Left – are deserting the Left en masse and heading towards
the neo-nationalist parties: from Britain and France to Austria. So how can we explain these seemingly
inexplicable phenomena?
Nationalism vs. neo-nationalism
As I tried to show in the past,[iii] the emergence of the modern nation-state in the 17th-18th
centuries played an important role in the development of the system of the market economy and vice
versa. However, whereas the 'nationalization' of the market was necessary for the development of
the 'market system' out of the markets of the past, once capital was internationalized and therefore
the market system itself was internationalized, the nation state became an impediment to further
'progress' of the market system. This is how the NWO emerged, which involved a radical restructuring
not only of the economy, with the rise of Transnational Corporations, but also of polity, with the
present phasing out of nation-states and national sovereignty.
Inevitably, the phasing out of the nation-state and national sovereignty led to the flourishing
of neo-nationalism, as a movement for self-determination. Yet, this development became inevitable
only because the alternative form of social organization, confederalism, which was alive even up
to the time of the Paris Commune had in the meantime disappeared.
In other words, the peoples' need for self-determination, in the NWO, had no other outlet
but the nation-state, as, up to a few years ago, the world was dominated by nation–states, within
which communities with a common culture, language, customs etc. could express themselves.
The nation-state became again a means of self-determination, as it used to be in the 20th
century for peoples under colonial rule struggling for their national liberation. The national culture
is of course in clear contradiction with a globalist culture like the one imposed now 'from above'
by the Transnational and national elites.
This globalist culture is based on the globalization ideology of multiculturalism, protection
of human rights etc., which in fact is an extension of the classical liberal ideology to the NWO.
In fact, the Transnational Elite launched several criminal wars in the last thirty years or so
to "protect" human rights (Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and indirectly Syria) leading to
millions of deaths and dislocations of populations. It is not therefore accidental that globalist
ideologists characterize the present flourishing of what I called neo-nationalism, as the rise of
'illiberalism'.'[iv] It is therefore clear that we have to distinguish between old (or classical)
nationalism and the new phenomenon of neo-nationalism. To my mind, the main differences between them
are as follows:
a) Nationalism developed in the era of nation-states as a movement for uniting
communities with a common history, culture and usually language under the common roof of nation-states
that were emerging at the time but also even in the 20th century when national liberation movements
against colonialist empires were fighting for their own nation states. On the other hand, neo-nationalism
developed in the era of globalization with the aim of protecting the national sovereignty of nations
which was under extinction because of the integration of their states into the NWO;
b) Nationalism's emphasis was on the nation-state (or the aspiration for
one), whereas neo-nationalism's emphasis is not so much on the nation but rather on sovereignty at
the economic but also at the political and cultural levels, which has been phased out in the globalization
process;
c) Unlike old nationalism, neo-nationalism raises also demands that in the
past were an essential part of the Left agenda, such as the demand for greater equality (within the
nation-state and between nation-states), the demand to minimize the power of the elites, even anti-war
demands.
Naturally, given the origin of many neo-nationalist parties and their supporters, elements of
the old nationalist ideology may penetrate them, such as the Islamophobic and anti-immigration trends,
which provide the excuse to the elites to dismiss all these movements as 'far right'. However, such
demands are by no means the main reasons why such movements expand. Particularly so, as it can easily
be shown that the refugee problem is also part and parcel of globalization and the '4 freedoms' (capital,
labor, goods and services) its ideology preaches.
The rise of the neo-nationalist movement
Therefore, neo-nationalism is basically a movement that arose out of the effects of globalization,
particularly as far as the continuous squeezing of employees' real incomes is concerned––as a result
of liberalizing labor markets, so that labor could become more competitive. The present 'job miracle',
for instance, in Britain, (which is characterized as "the job creation capital of the western economies"),
hides the fact that, as an analyst pointed out, "unemployment is low, largely because British workers
have been willing to stomach the biggest real-terms pay cut since the Victorian era".[v]
The neo-nationalist movement had already created strong roots all over the EU, from its Western
part (France, UK) up to its Eastern part (Hungary, Poland) and now Austria. Even in the USA itself
Donald Trump, who has called on Americans to resist "the false song of globalism", expresses to a
significant extent neo-nationalist trends and may be tomorrow the next President of the "Free World".Of course, given the political and economic power that the elites have concentrated against these
neo-nationalist movements, it is possible that neither Brexit nor any of these movements may take
over, but this will not stop of course social dissent against the phasing out of national sovereignty.
The same process is repeated almost everywhere in Europe today, inevitably leading many people
(and particularly working class people) to turn to the rising neo-nationalist Right. This is not
of course because they suddenly became "nationalists" let alone "fascists", as the globalist "NewLeft"
(that is the kind of Left which is fully integrated into the NWO and does not question its institutions,
e.g. the EU) accuses them in order to ostracize them. It is simply because the present globalist
"NewLeft" does not wish to lead the struggle against globalization, while, at the same time, the
popular strata have realized that national and economic sovereignty is incompatible with globalization.
This is a fact fully realized, for example, by the strong informal patriotic movement in Russia,
which encompasses all those opposing the integration of the country into the NWO ––from neo-nationalists
to communists and from orthodox Christians to secularists, while the leadership under Putin is trying
to accommodate the very powerful globalist part of the elite (oligarchs, mass media, social media
etc.) with this patriotic movement.
But, it is mainly Le Pen's National Front party, more than any other neo-nationalist party
in the West, that realized that globalization and membership in the NWΟ's institutions are incompatible
with national sovereignty. As Le Pen stressed, (in a way that the "NewLeft" has abandoned long
ago!):
"Globalization is a barbarity, it is the country which should limit its abuses and regulate
it [globalization]." Today the world is in the hands of multinational corporations and large international
finance" Immigration "weighs down on wages," while the minimum wage is now becoming the maximum
wage".[vi]
In fact, the French National Front is the most important neo-nationalist party in Europe and may
well be in power following the next Presidential elections in 2017, unless of course a united front
of all globalist parties (including the "NewLeft" and the Greens), supported by the entire TE and
particularly the Euro-elites and the mass media controlled by them, prevents it from doing so (exactly
as it happens at present in Britain with respect to Brexit). This is how Florian Philippot the FN's
vice-president and chief strategist aptly put its case in a FT interview:
"The people who always voted for the left, who believed in the left and who thought that it
represented an improvement in salaries and pensions, social and economic progress, industrial
policies . these people have realized that they were misled."[vii]
As the same FT report points out, to some observers of French politics, the FN's economic policies,
which include exiting the euro and throwing up trade barriers to protect industry, read like something
copied from a 1930s political manifesto, while Christian Saint-Étienne, an economist for Le Figaro
newspaper, recently described this vision as "Peronist Marxism".[viii] In fact, in a more recent
FT interview, Marine Le Pen, the FN president went a step further in the same direction and she called,
apart from exiting from the Euro––that she expects to lead to the collapse of the Euro, if not of
the EU itself, (which she-rightly–welcomes)––for the nationalization of banks. At the same time she
championed public services and presented herself as the protector of workers and farmers in the face
of "wild and anarchic globalization which has brought more pain than happiness ".[ix]
For comparison, it never even occurred to SYRIZA (and Varoufakis who now wears his "radical" hat)
to use such slogans before the elections (let alone after them!) Needless to add that her foreign
policy is also very different from that of the French establishment, as she wants a radical overhaul
of French foreign policy in which relations with the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad would
be restored and those with the likes of Qatar and Turkey, which she alleges support terrorism, reviewed.
At the same time, Le Pen sees the US as a purveyor of dangerous policies and Russia as a more suitable
friend.
Furthermore, as it was also stressed in the same FT report, "the FN is not the only supposedly
rightwing European populist party seeking to draw support from disaffected voters on the left. Nigel
Farage, the leader of the UK Independence party has adopted a similar approach and has been discussing
plans "to ring-fence the National Health Service budget and lower taxes for low earners, among a
host of measures geared to economically vulnerable voters who would typically support Labor".[x]
Similar trends are noticed in other European countries like Finland, where the anti-NATO and pro-independence
from the EU parties had effectively won the last elections,[xi] as well as in Hungary, where neo-nationalist
forces are continuously rising,[xii] and Orban's government has done more than any other EU leader
in protecting his country's sovereignty, being as a result, in constant conflict with the Euro-elites.
Finally, the rise of a neo-nationalist party in Poland enraged Martin Schulz, the loudmouthed gatekeeper
of the TE in the European Parliament, who accused the new government as attempting a "dangerous 'Putinization'
of European politics."[xiii]
However, what Eurocrats like Martin Schulz "forget" is that since Poland joined the EU
in 2004, at least two million Poles have emigrated, many of them to the UK. The victory of the Law
and Justice Party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc, PiS) in October 2015 was due not just to a backlash by
traditional Polish voters to the bulldozing of their values by the ideology of globalization but
also to the fact, as Cédric Gouverneur pointed out, that "the nationalist, pro-religion, protectionist,
xenophobic PiS has attracted these disappointed people with an ambitious welfare programme: a family
allowance of 500 zloty ($130) a month per child, funded through a tax on banks and big business;
a minimum wage; and a return to a retirement age of 60 for women and 65 for men (PO had planned to
raise it to 67 for both).[xiv] In fact, PiS used to be a conservative pro-EU party when they were
in power between 2005 and 2007, following faithfully the neoliberal program, and since then they
have become increasingly populist and Eurosceptic. As a result, in the last elections they won the
parliamentary elections in both the lower house (Sejm) and the Senate, with 37.6% of the vote, against
24.1% for the neoliberals and 8.8% for the populist Kukiz while the "progressive" camp failed to
clear the threshold (5% for parties, 8% for coalitions) and have no parliamentary representation
at all!
The bankruptcy of the Left
It is therefore obvious that the globalization process has already had devastating economic
and social consequences on the majority of the world population. At the same time, the same process
has also resulted in tremendous changes at the political and the cultural levels, in the past three
decades or so. Last, but not least, it has led to a series of major wars by the Transnational Elite
in its attempt to integrate any country resisting integration into the New World Order (NWO) defined
by neoliberal globalization (Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria).
Furthermore, there is little doubt anymore that it was the intellectual failure of the Left to
grasp the real significance of a new systemic phenomenon, (i.e. the rise of the Transnational Corporation
that has led to the emergence of the globalization era) and its consequent political bankruptcy,
which were the ultimate causes of the rise of a neo-nationalist movement in Europe. This movement
is embraced by most of the victims of globalization all over Europe, particularly the working class
that used to support the Left, whilst the latter has effectively embraced not just economic globalization
but also political, ideological and cultural globalization and has therefore been fully integrated
into the New World Order. In fact, today, following the successful emasculation of the antisystemic
movement against globalization, thanks mainly to the activities of the globalist Left, it was left
to the neo-nationalist movement to fight against globalization in general and against the EU in particular.
Almost inevitably, in view of the campaigns of the TE against Muslim countries (Iraq, Afghanistan,
Libya, Syria), worrying Islamophobic trends have developed within several of these neo-nationalist
movements, some of them turning their old anti-Semitism to Islamophobia, supported on this by Zionists
themselves![xv] Even Marine Le Pen did not avoid the temptation to lie about Islamophobia and anti-Semitism,
stressing that "there is no Islamophobia in France but there is a rise in anti-Semitism".
Yet, she is well aware of the fact that Islamophobia was growing in France well before Charlie
Hebdo,[xvi] with racial attacks against Islamic immigrants, (most of whom live under squalid conditions
in virtual ghettos) being very frequent. At the same time, it is well known that the Jewish community
is mostly well off and shares a very disproportionate part of political and economic power in the
country to its actual size, as it happens of course also––and to an even larger extent–– in UK and
USA. This is one more reason why Popular Fronts for National and Social Liberation have to be built
in every country of the world to fight not only Eurofascism and the NWO-which is of course the main
enemy––but also any racist trends developing within these new anti-globalization movements, which
today take the form of neo-nationalism. This would also prevent the elites from using the historically
well-tested 'divide and rule' practice to divide the victims of globalization.
Similarly, the point implicitly raised by the stand of the British "NewLeft" in general on the
issue of Brexit cannot just be discussed in terms of the free trade vs. protectionism debate, as
the liberal (or globalist) "NewLeft" does (see for instance Jean Bricmont[xvii] and Larry Elliott[xviii]
of the Guardian). Yet, the point is whether it is globalization itself, which has led to the present
mass economic violence against the vast majority of the world population and the accompanying it
military violence. In other words, what all these "NewLeft" trends hide is that globalization is
a class issue. But, this is the essence of the bankruptcy of the "NewLeft" , which is reflected in
the fact that, today, it is the neo-nationalist Right which has replaced the Left in its role of
representing the victims of the system in its globalized form , while the Left mainly
represents those in the middle class or the petty bourgeoisie who benefit from globalization. Needless
to add that today's bankrupt "NewLeft" promptly characterized the rising neo-nationalist parties
as racist, if not fascist and neo-Nazis, fully siding with the EU's black propaganda campaign against
the rising movement for national sovereignty.
This is obviously another nail in the coffin of this kind of "NewLeft" , as the millions of European
voters who turn their back towards this degraded "NewLeft" are far from racists or fascists but simply
want to control their way of life rather than letting it to be determined by the free movement of
capital, labor and commodities, as the various Soroses of this world demand!
The neo-nationalist movement is embraced by most of the victims of globalization all over
Europe, particularly the working class that used to support the Left,[xix] whilst the latter
has effectively embraced not just economic globalization but also political, ideological and cultural
globalization and has therefore been fully integrated into the New World Order––a defining moment
in its present intellectual and political bankruptcy. In the Austrian elections, it became once more
clear that the Left expresses now the middle class, while the neo-nationalists the working class.
As the super-globalist BBC presented the results:
Support for Mr Hofer was exceptionally strong among manual workers – nearly 90%. The vote for
Mr Van der Bellen was much stronger among people with a university degree or other higher education
qualifications. In nine out of Austria's 10 main cities Mr Van der Bellen came top, whereas Mr Hofer
dominated the rural areas, the Austrian broadcaster ORF reported (in German).[xx]
The process of the NewLeft's bankruptcy has been further enhanced by the fact that, faced with
political collapse in the May 2014 Euro-parliamentary elections, it allied itself with the elites
in condemning the neo-nationalist parties as fascist and neo-Nazi. However, today, following the
successful emasculation of the antisystemic movement against globalization (mainly through the World
Social Forum, thanks to the activities of the globalist "NewLeft" ),[xxi] it is up to the neo-nationalist
movement to fight globalization in general and the EU in particular. It is therefore clear that the
neo-nationalist parties which are, in fact, all under attack by the TE, constitute cases of movements
that have simply filled the huge gap created by the globalist "NewLeft" . Thus, this "NewLeft" ,
Instead of placing itself in the front line among all those peoples fighting globalization and the
phasing out of their economic and national sovereignty, it has indirectly promoted globalization,
using arguments based on an anachronistic internationalism, supposedly founded on Marxism.
On the other side, as one might expect, most members of the Globalist "NewLeft" have joined the
new 'movement' by Varoufakis to democratize Europe, "forgetting" in the process that 'Democracy'
was also the West's propaganda excuse for destroying Iraq, Libya and now Syria. Today, it seems that
the Soros circus is aiming to use exactly the same excuse to destroy Europe, in the sense of securing
the perpetuation of the EU elites' domination of the European peoples and therefore the continuation
of the consequent economic violence involved. The most prominent members of the globalist "NewLeft"
who have already joined this new DIEM 'movement' range from Noam Chomsky and Julian Assange to Suzan
George and Toni Negri, and from Hillary Wainwright of Red Pepper to CounterPunch and
other globalist "NewLeft" newspapers and journals all over the world. In this context, it is particularly
interesting to refer to Slavoj Žižek's commentary on the 'Manifesto' that was presented at the inaugural
meeting of Varoufakis's new movement in Berlin on February 2016.[xxii]
Neo-nationalism and immigration
So, the unifying element of neo-nationalists is their struggle for national sovereignty, which
they (rightly), see as disappearing in the era of globalization. Even when their main immediate motive
is the fight against immigration, indirectly their fight is against globalization, as they realize
that it is the opening of all markets, including the labor markets, particularly within economic
unions like the EU, which is the direct cause of their own unemployment or low-wage employment, as
well as of the deterioration of the welfare state, given that the elites are not prepared to expand
social expenditure to accommodate the influx of immigrants. Yet, this is not a racist movement but
a purely economic movement, although the TE and the Zionist elites, with the help of the globalist
"NewLeft" , try hard to convert it into an Islamophobic movement––as the Charlie Hebdo case
clearly showed[xxiii]–––so that they could use it in any way they see fit in the support of the NWO.
But, what is the relationship of both neo-nationalists and Euro-fascists to historical fascism
and Nazism? As I tried to show elsewhere,[xxiv] fascism, as well as National Socialism, presuppose
a nation-state, therefore this kind of phenomenon is impossible to develop in any country fully integrated
into the NWO, which, by definition, cannot have any significant degree of national sovereignty. The
only kind of sovereignty available in the NWO of neoliberal globalization is transnational sovereignty,
which, in fact, is exclusively shared by members of the TE. In other words, fascism and Nazism were
historical phenomena of the era of nation-state before the ascent of the NWO of neoliberal globalization,
when states still had a significant degree of national and economic sovereignty.
However, in the globalization era, it is exactly this sovereignty that is being phased out for
any country fully integrated into the NWO. Therefore, the only kind of 'fascism' still possible
today is the one directly or indirectly supported by the TE (what we may call 'Euro-fascism'), which
is therefore a kind of pseudo-fascism––although in terms of the bestial practices it uses, it may
be even more genuine than the 'real thing' of the inter-war period. This is, for instance, the case
of the Ukrainian Euro-fascists who are the closest thing to historical Nazism available today, not
only in terms of their practices but also in terms of their history. However, as there is overwhelming
evidence of the full support they have enjoyed by the Transnational Elite and (paradoxically?) even
by the Zionist elite,[xxv] they should more accurately be called Euro-fascists.
It is therefore clear that the neo-nationalist parties, which are all under attack by the TE,
constitute cases of movements that simply filled the huge gap left by the globalist Left, which,
instead of placing itself in the front line of all those peoples fighting globalization and the phasing
out of their economic and national sovereignty,[xxvi] indirectly promoted globalization, using arguments
based on an anachronistic internationalism, developed a hundred years ago or so. The neo-nationalist
parties are embraced by most of the victims of globalization all over Europe, particularly the working
class which used to support the Left,[xxvii] whilst the latter has effectively embraced all aspects
of globalization (economic, political, ideological and cultural) and has been fully integrated into
the NWO––a defining moment in its present intellectual and political bankruptcy.
National and Social Liberation Fronts everywhere!
So, at this crucial historical juncture that will determine whether we shall all become subservient
to neoliberal globalization and the transnational elite (as the DIEM25 Manifesto implies through
our subordination to the EU) or not, it is imperative that we create a Popular Front in each country
which will include all the victims of globalization among the popular strata, regardless of their
current political affiliations.
In Europe, in particular, where the popular strata are facing economic disaster, what is urgently
needed is not an "antifascist" Front within the EU, as proposed by the 'parliamentary juntas' in
power and the Euro-elites, also supported by the globalist "NewLeft" (such as Diem25, Plan B in Europe,
Die Linke, the Socialist Workers' Party in the UK, SYRIZA in Greece and so on), which would, in fact,
unite aggressors and victims. An 'antifascist' front would simply disorient the masses and make them
incapable of facing the real fascism being imposed on them[xxviii] by the political and economic
elites, which constitute the transnational and local elites. Instead, what is needed is a Popular
Front for National and Social Liberation, which that could attract the vast majority of the people
who would fight for immediate unilateral withdrawal from the EU – which is managed by the European
part of the transnational elite – as well as for economic self- reliance, thus breaking with globalization.
To my mind, it is only the creation of broad Popular Fronts that could effect each country's exit
from the EU, NAFTA and similar economic unions, with the aim of achieving economic self-reliance.
Re-development based on self-reliance is the only way in which peoples breaking away from globalization
and its institutions (like the EU) could rebuild their productive structures, which have been dismantled
by globalization. This could also, objectively, lay the ground for future systemic change, decided
upon democratically by the peoples themselves. Therefore, the fundamental aim of the social struggle
today should be a complete break with the present NWO and the building of a new global democratic
community, in which economic and national sovereignty have been restored, so that peoples could then
fight for the ideal society, as they see it.
Takis Fotopoulos is a political philosopher, editor of Society & Nature/
Democracy and Nature/The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy. He has also been a columnist
for the Athens Daily Eleftherotypia since 1990. Between 1969 and 1989 he was Senior Lecturer in Economics
at the University of North London (formerly Polytechnic of North London). He is the author of over
25 books and over 1,500 articles, many of which have been translated into various languages.
This article is based on Ch. 4 of the book to be published next month by Progressive Press,
The New World Order in Action, vol. 1: The NWO, the Left and Neo-Nationalism. This is a major three-volume
project aiming to cover all aspects of the New World Order (NWO) of neoliberal globalization
http://www.progressivepress.com/book-listing/new-world-order-action
Notes:
Bruno Waterfield, "Juncker vows to use new powers to block the far-right", [i]The Times,
24/5/2016
[xviii] see for instance Larry Elliott, "How free trade became the hot topic vexing voters
and politicians in Europe and the US" , The Guardian , 28/3/2016
[xix] Francis Elliott et al. 'Working class prefers Ukip to Labour", The Times , 25/11/2014
"... Not only are "[v]ulnerable Senate Republicans are starting to side with Donald Trump (and Democrats) by opposing President Obama's signature trade deal," as the Washington Post ..."
As the White House prepares for its final "
all-out push " to pass the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) during the upcoming
lame-duck session of Congress, lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle
are being made vulnerable due to growing opposition to the controversial, corporate-friendly
trade deal.
"[I]n 2016," the Guardian
reported on Saturday, "America's faltering faith in free trade has become
the most sensitive controversy in D.C."
Yet President Barack Obama "has refused to give up," wrote Guardian
journalists Dan Roberts and Ryan Felton, despite the fact that the 12-nation
TPP "suddenly faces a wall of political opposition among lawmakers who had,
not long ago, nearly set the giant deal in stone."
... ... ...
Not only are "[v]ulnerable Senate Republicans are starting to side with
Donald Trump (and Democrats) by opposing President Obama's signature trade deal,"
as the Washington Post
reported Thursday, but once-supportive Dems are also poised to jump ship.
To that end, in a column this week, Campaign for America's Future blogger
Dave Johnson
listed for readers "28 House Democrat targets...who-in spite of opposition
from most Democrats and hundreds of labor, consumer, LGBT, health, human rights,
faith, democracy and other civil organizations-voted for the 'fast-track' trade
promotion authority (TPA) bill that 'greased the skids' for the TPP by setting
up rigged rules that will help TPP pass."
Of the list that includes Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.), Jared Polis
(Colo.), and Ron Kind (Wis.), Johnson wrote: "Let's get them on the record before
the election about whether they will vote for TPP after the election."
All candidates with the possible exception of Trump, are either neocons or neocon stooges: "Most revealing are their policies concerning
war and peace. Despite minor differences, all three (and those to come) want more military spending.
Each thinks the United States can and should manage stability in the Middle East, on Russia's border,
etc. All three demonize Russia and Iran, countries that do not threaten us. Thus they would risk war,
which would bolster government power while harming the American people and others."
Notable quotes:
"... "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence-it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant, and a fearful master." ..."
"... "The state - or, to make matters more concrete, the government - consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get, and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time it is made good by looting 'A' to satisfy 'B'. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advanced auction on stolen goods." ..."
"... Do the four declared candidates really fit this picture? You can judge for yourself. Hillary Clinton, the sole Democrat so far, is long associated with activist government across the range of issues domestic and foreign. Her newfound rhetorical populism can't obscure her association with elitist social engineering. ..."
"... What about Republicans Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio? Are they "men of system"? Despite their talk about reining in government, I think the answer is yes. ..."
"... Most revealing are their policies concerning war and peace. Despite minor differences, all three (and those to come) want more military spending. Each thinks the United States can and should manage stability in the Middle East, on Russia's border, etc. All three demonize Russia and Iran, countries that do not threaten us. Thus they would risk war, which would bolster government power while harming the American people and others. ..."
Posted to Politics
As you may have heard, the 2016 presidential campaign is underway. Let's not miss the forest for
the trees. While the candidates will make promises to help the middle class or this or that subgroup,
remember this: each aspirant wants to govern, that is, rule, you – even those whose rhetoric
might suggest otherwise.
George Washington supposedly said:
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence-it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous
servant, and a fearful master."
Although no evidence links the quotation to the first president, its truth is indisputable. Like
it or not, government's distinguishing feature, beginning with its power to tax, is its legal authority
to use force against even peaceful individuals minding their own business. Ultimately, that's what
rule means, even in a democratic republic, where each adult gets a vote in choosing who
will rule.
As that keen observer of the American political scene, H. L. Mencken, put it years ago,
"The state - or, to make matters more concrete, the government - consists of a gang of
men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business
of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device
to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get, and to promise
to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time it is
made good by looting 'A' to satisfy 'B'. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and
every election is a sort of advanced auction on stolen goods."
If you keep that perspective during the coming campaign, you'll be in a much better position to
judge the candidates than if you take their solemn pronouncements at face value.
Do the four declared candidates really fit this picture? You can judge for yourself. Hillary Clinton,
the sole Democrat so far, is long associated with activist government across the range of issues
domestic and foreign. Her newfound rhetorical populism can't obscure her association with elitist
social engineering.
In The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Adam Smith described such a politician as
"the man of system [who] seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great
society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does
not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that
which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every
single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature
might choose to impress upon it."
Has Clinton ever considered that we're not chess pieces in her grand schemes? We might like to
make our own decisions.
What about Republicans Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio? Are they "men of system"? Despite
their talk about reining in government, I think the answer is yes. At best they propose only
to tinker with the welfare-regulatory-warfare state without challenging the institutional privileges
that enrich the well-connected or the institutional barriers that impede the marginalized in improving
their lives.
One can see their obeisance toward government power in their support for the "war on drugs," the
presumption that government should monitor what we ingest and punish us for violating its prohibitions.
Another sign is the candidates' views on immigration. If people have natural rights, why do they
need the government's permission to live and work here? A third indicator is their position on world
trade. Can you imagine any of them advocating a laissez-faire trade policy with no role for government?
Most revealing are their policies concerning war and peace. Despite minor differences, all three
(and those to come) want more military spending. Each thinks the United States can and should manage
stability in the Middle East, on Russia's border, etc. All three demonize Russia and Iran, countries
that do not threaten us. Thus they would risk war, which would bolster government power while harming
the American people and others.
Appearances can deceive: they're persons of system all.
"... In January, the New York Times finally reported on a secret 2013 Presidential order to the CIA to arm Syrian rebels. As the account explained, Saudi Arabia provides substantial financing of the armaments, while the CIA, under Obama's orders, provides organizational support and training. ..."
"... What kinds of arms are the US, Saudis, Turks, Qataris, and others supplying to the Syrian rebels? Which groups are receiving the arms? What is the role of US troops, air cover, and other personnel in the war? The US government isn't answering these questions, and mainstream media aren't pursuing them, either. ..."
"... Through occasional leaks, investigative reports, statements by other governments, and rare statements by US officials, we know that America is engaged in an active, ongoing, CIA-coordinated war both to overthrow Assad and to fight ISIS. America's allies in the anti-Assad effort include Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and other countries in the region. The US has spent billions of dollars on arms, training, special operations forces, air strikes, and logistical support for the rebel forces, including international mercenaries. American allies have spent billions of dollars more. The precise sums are not reported. ..."
"... To those at the center of the US military-industrial complex, this secrecy is as it should be. Their position is that a vote by Congress 15 years ago authorizing the use of armed force against those culpable for the 9/11 attack gives the president and military carte blanche to fight secret wars in the Middle East and Africa. Why should the US explain publicly what it is doing? That would only jeopardize the operations and strengthen the enemy. The public does not need to know. ..."
"... I subscribe to a different view: wars should be a last resort and should be constrained by democratic scrutiny. This view holds that America's secret war in Syria is illegal both under the US Constitution (which gives Congress the sole power to declare war) and under the United Nations Charter, and that America's two-sided war in Syria is a cynical and reckless gamble. The US-led efforts to topple Assad are not aimed at protecting the Syrian people, as Obama and Clinton have suggested from time to time, but are a US proxy war against Iran and Russia, in which Syria happens to be the battleground. ..."
"... The stakes of this war are much higher and much more dangerous than America's proxy warriors imagine. As the US has prosecuted its war against Assad, Russia has stepped up its military support to his government. In the US mainstream media, Russia's behavior is an affront: how dare the Kremlin block the US from overthrowing the Syrian government? The result is a widening diplomatic clash with Russia, one that could escalate and lead – perhaps inadvertently – to the point of military conflict. ..."
"... This is the main reason why the US security state refuses to tell the truth. The American people would call for peace rather than perpetual war. Obama has a few months left in office to repair his broken legacy. He should start by leveling with the American people. ..."
Syria's civil war is the most dangerous and destructive crisis on the planet. Since early 2011,
hundreds of thousands have died; around ten million Syrians have been displaced; Europe has been
convulsed with Islamic State (ISIS) terror and the political fallout of refugees; and the United
States and its NATO allies have more than once come perilously close to direct confrontation with
Russia.
Unfortunately, President Barack Obama has greatly compounded the dangers by hiding the US role
in Syria from the American people and from world opinion. An end to the Syrian war requires an honest
accounting by the US of its ongoing, often secretive role in the Syrian conflict since 2011, including
who is funding, arming, training, and abetting the various sides. Such exposure would help bring
to an end many countries' reckless actions.
A widespread – and false – perception is that Obama has kept the US out of the Syrian war. Indeed,
the US right wing routinely criticizes him for having drawn a line in the sand for Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad over chemical weapons, and then backing off when Assad allegedly crossed it (the
issue remains murky and disputed, like so much else in Syria). A leading columnist for the Financial
Times, repeating the erroneous idea that the US has remained on the sidelines,
recently implied that Obama had rejected the advice of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
to arm the Syrian rebels fighting Assad.
Yet the curtain gets lifted from time to time. In January, the New York Times
finally reported on a secret 2013 Presidential order to the CIA to arm Syrian rebels. As the
account explained, Saudi Arabia provides substantial financing of the armaments, while the CIA, under
Obama's orders, provides organizational support and training.
Unfortunately, the story came and went without further elaboration by the US government or follow
up by the New York Times. The public was left in the dark: How big are the ongoing CIA-Saudi
operations? How much is the US spending on Syria per year? What kinds of arms are the US, Saudis,
Turks, Qataris, and others supplying to the Syrian rebels? Which groups are receiving the arms? What
is the role of US troops, air cover, and other personnel in the war? The US government isn't answering
these questions, and mainstream media aren't pursuing them, either.
On
more than a dozen occasions, Obama has told the American people that there would be "no US boots
on the ground." Yet every few months, the public is also notified in a brief government statement
that US special operations forces are being deployed to Syria. The Pentagon
routinely denies that they are in the front lines. But when Russia and the Assad government recently
carried out bombing runs and artillery fire against rebel strongholds in northern Syria, the US notified
the Kremlin that the attacks were threatening American troops on the ground. The public has been
given no explanation about their mission, its costs, or counterparties in Syria.
Through occasional leaks, investigative reports, statements by other governments, and rare
statements by US officials, we know that America is engaged in an active, ongoing, CIA-coordinated
war both to overthrow Assad and to fight ISIS. America's allies in the anti-Assad effort include
Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and other countries in the region. The US has spent billions of dollars
on arms, training, special operations forces, air strikes, and logistical support for the rebel forces,
including international mercenaries. American allies have spent billions of dollars more. The precise
sums are not reported.
The US public has had no say in these decisions. There has been no authorizing vote or budget
approval by the US Congress. The CIA's role has never been explained or justified. The domestic and
international legality of US actions has never been defended to the American people or the world.
To those at the center of the US military-industrial complex, this secrecy is as it should
be. Their position is that a vote by Congress 15 years ago authorizing the use of armed force against
those culpable for the 9/11 attack gives the president and military carte blanche to fight secret
wars in the Middle East and Africa. Why should the US explain publicly what it is doing? That would
only jeopardize the operations and strengthen the enemy. The public does not need to know.
I subscribe to a different view: wars should be a last resort and should be constrained by
democratic scrutiny. This view holds that America's secret war in Syria is illegal both under the
US Constitution (which gives Congress the sole power to declare war) and under the United Nations
Charter, and that America's two-sided war in Syria is a cynical and reckless gamble. The US-led efforts
to topple Assad are not aimed at protecting the Syrian people, as Obama and Clinton have suggested
from time to time, but are a US proxy war against Iran and Russia, in which Syria happens to be the
battleground.
The stakes of this war are much higher and much more dangerous than America's proxy warriors
imagine. As the US has prosecuted its war against Assad, Russia has stepped up its military support
to his government. In the US mainstream media, Russia's behavior is an affront: how dare the Kremlin
block the US from overthrowing the Syrian government? The result is a widening diplomatic clash with
Russia, one that could escalate and lead – perhaps inadvertently – to the point of military conflict.
These are issues that should be subject to legal scrutiny and democratic control. I am confident
that the American people would respond with a resounding "no" to the ongoing US-led war of regime
change in Syria. The American people want security – including the defeat of ISIS – but they also
recognize the long and disastrous history of US-led regime-change efforts, including in Afghanistan,
Iraq, Libya, Syria, Central America, Africa, and Southeast Asia.
This is the main reason why the US security state refuses to tell the truth. The American
people would call for peace rather than perpetual war. Obama has a few months left in office to repair
his broken legacy. He should start by leveling with the American people.
"... the Benghazi attack, for all its shock and tragedy, is but one detail in a panorama of misadventure, an in many ways unsurprising consequence of the hubris of liberal interventionism's false conviction that the American military can casually pop in and out of the whole world's problems without suffering cost or consequence ..."
"... as Tim Carney rightly argues at The Washington Examiner , and the "useful lesson from Benghazi isn't about a White House lying (shocking!), but about the inherent messiness of regime change and the impossibility of a quick, clean war." ..."
"... And the foreign policy establishment on the other side of the aisle must not be left without its due share of blame should that possibility come to pass. Though Benghazi committee chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) was right to attempt to widen the report's focus past Clinton specifically, neoconservatives' all-too-convenient attention to the errors of Benghazi make it all easy for them to gloss over the bigger issue at hand: that none of this would have happened had America stuck to a foreign policy of realism and restraint, minding our own business and defending our own interests instead of gallivanting off to play revolutionary in one more country with no vital connection to our own. ..."
"... Benghazi is a symptom-a serious one, at that-but the disease is interventionism. ..."
And the Benghazi attack, for all its shock and tragedy, is but one detail
in a panorama of misadventure, an in many ways unsurprising consequence of the
hubris of liberal interventionism's false conviction that the American military
can casually pop in and out of the whole world's problems without suffering
cost or consequence.
Indeed, the "2012 attack that killed four Americans was a consequence of
the disorder and violence the administration left in the wake of its drive-by
war," as Tim Carney
rightly argues at The Washington Examiner, and the "useful lesson
from Benghazi isn't about a White House lying (shocking!), but about the inherent
messiness of regime change and the impossibility of a quick, clean war."
Unfortunately, that is a lesson too few in Washington are willing to learn.
Clinton herself maintains in the face of overwhelming evidence that
her handiwork in Libya is an
example of "smart power at its best"-a phrase whose
blatant inaccuracy should haunt her for the rest of her political career.
With arguments in favor of Libya, round two already
swirling and Clinton's poll numbers holding strong, it is not difficult
to imagine a Clinton White House dragging America back to fiddle with a country
it was
never particularly interested in fixing by this time next year.
And the foreign policy establishment on the other side of the aisle must
not be left without its due share of blame should that possibility come to pass.
Though Benghazi committee chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) was right
to attempt to widen the report's focus past Clinton specifically, neoconservatives'
all-too-convenient attention to the errors of Benghazi make it all
easy for them to gloss over the bigger issue at hand: that none of this would
have happened had America stuck to a foreign policy of realism and restraint,
minding our own business and defending our own interests instead of gallivanting
off to play revolutionary in one more country with no vital connection to our
own.
Benghazi is a symptom-a serious one, at that-but the disease is interventionism.
That's the real story here, and it's a bipartisan failure of judgment which
shows all the signs of running on repeat.
"... Cybersecurity company FireEye first discovered APT 29 in 2014 and was quick to point out a clear Kremlin connection. "We suspect the Russian government sponsors the group because of the organizations it targets and the data it steals. because of evidence from FireEye." ..."
"... FireEye is also interesting as it, along with the US Department of Defense, funds the CEPA (publishers of Ed Lucas's and Pomerantsev's screed on fighting Kremlin influence): ..."
"... I recall the FireEye story well – they used the exact same logic; the code was written on Cyrillic-keyboard machines and during Moscow working hours. Their conclusion was "It just looks so much like something the Russians would do that it must be them". No allowance for the possibility that someone else did it who wanted the USA to arrive at exactly that conclusion. Someone who has done it before, lots of times, and who makes a science out of picking fights on Uncle Sam's behalf. ..."
"... Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear? Is there proof that they actually exist? I mean real proof, not WADA proof. ..."
"... They are just code names given by a particular security outfit. Different outfits will use different names for the same entities, much in the same way that a given virus/trojan/etc will be given different names by different AV corporations. The names reflect observable characteristics such as threat type, coding style, code structure, distribution network, similar earlier threats, etc rather than a specific single person. ..."
"On June 14, cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, under contract with the DNC, announced in a
blog post that two separate Russian intelligence groups had gained access to the DNC network.
One group, FANCY BEAR or APT 28, gained access in April. The other, COZY BEAR, (also called Cozy
Duke and APT 29) first breached the network in the summer of 2015. Cybersecurity company FireEye
first discovered APT 29 in 2014 and was quick to point out a clear Kremlin connection. "We suspect
the Russian government sponsors the group because of the organizations it targets and the data
it steals. because of evidence from FireEye."
Crowdstrike – their Co-Founder, Alperovitch, is an Atlantic Council fellow. The other firm,
FireEye, has the CIA as a stakeholder:
Should give pause to thought that the intelligence services are interfering in US democracy?
No?
FireEye is also interesting as it, along with the US Department of Defense, funds the CEPA
(publishers of Ed Lucas's and Pomerantsev's screed on fighting Kremlin influence):
I recall the FireEye story well – they used the exact same logic; the code was written on
Cyrillic-keyboard machines and during Moscow working hours. Their conclusion was "It just looks
so much like something the Russians would do that it must be them". No allowance for the possibility
that someone else did it who wanted the USA to arrive at exactly that conclusion. Someone who
has done it before, lots of times, and who makes a science out of picking fights on Uncle Sam's
behalf.
In the case of both FireEye and Crowdstrike, they would stop looking as soon as they arrived
upon a conclusion which suited them anyway.
They are just code names given by a particular security outfit. Different outfits will use
different names for the same entities, much in the same way that a given virus/trojan/etc will
be given different names by different AV corporations. The names reflect observable characteristics
such as threat type, coding style, code structure, distribution network, similar earlier threats,
etc rather than a specific single person.
Everything, absolutely everything demonstrates really terrifying level of incompetence: the transfer of emails to Apple laptop,
to Gmail account, then transfer back to window system, handing of USB drive. Amazing level of incompetence. This is really devastating
level of incompetence for the organization that took over a lot of CIA functions. Essentially Hillary kept the position which is close
to the role of the director of CIA What a tragedy for the country...
Notable quotes:
"... It is painfully clear that she traded access and favors for money and reciprocal favors. It is painfully clear that she made little distinction between working for the State Department, the Clinton foundation and her family and tried to keep the records of what was going on inaccessible. The more honest defense would be, all politicians do it, and you have to suck it up because Trump is worse. Which is true. But trying to downplay this and explain it away is offensive, not all of the public are complete idiots. ..."
"... Her brazen air of arrogance and entitlement is about to fade as she comes to realise, that albeit Comey having been got at, he has still succeeded in striking a severe blow against her, and in addition, at the not-so-tin-hat conspiracy of inappropriate, and increasingly overt, institutional support. ..."
"... All this in the face of documented lies, in your face hypocrisy, and unbridled corruption, oozing from every orifice of a maverick administration. ..."
"... Clinton is the one waging war in the middle east. She is the one being bullish and provocative with Russia. Trump has only been conciliatory with these issues, he has been against the war on Iraq ..."
"... HRC is still likely to be the next President, but this scandal does have legs. She put herself in a corner by claiming lack of recall due to a medical condition (i.e., the concussion). This leaves two possibilities, neither of which is helpful to her cause, to wit: either she was being dishonest or she was (and could still be) cognitively impaired. ..."
"... Reagan was certainly not someone I admired but at least he tried to reduce the chance of nuclear war. Clinton is an out and out Hawke with the blood of many innocent people on her hands in both Syria and Libya. She is hiding her communications because she does not want to be exposed for the role she played in The destruction of Libya and the gun running of weapons to terrorists in Syria. That is to Al Qaeda and ISIS. World War 3 is more likely under Clinton than any other world leader. Even Trump. ..."
"... Not forgetting that she was key in making sure the US didn't side with Assad. Had the US done at the beginning, instead of being at the behest of the Saudis and the petrodollar, then the whole thing would have been over in 6 months and IS would never have got more than a dusty district of northern Iraq. ..."
"... So the applicant to the US presidency does not know what (c) stands for in her emails, archives high security data on a laptop and then losses it for years, uploads same emails on Google's gmail account and then losses devices again. She does not recall many things, not even the training she received on handling the confidential and secure communication. She couldn't recall the procces of drone strikes. (Will she be killing people at a whim, without an accountable protocol?) She is either demented or dangerously reckless or lying. All of these conditions disbar her form her candidacy. ..."
"... If she could only manage a couple of hours a day because of concussion and a blood clot she should have temporarily stood down until she recovered fully, and had a senior official take over her duties until she was well. You can't have a brain-damaged person in charge of the US's affairs - even though there is a long history of nutters the State Dept. ( ie the Military Industrial Complex HQ). ..."
"... the clinton foundation does not pay taxes..and dont forget that slick willie has been on the paedophile plane more times than the pilot ..."
"... She failed to keep up with recordkeeping she agreed to, then when asked to turn over records, somebody destroyed them, but Clinton did not order destruction, or does not remember having done so. Turned over all records-oops I thought WE did! She either lied or has alzheimers ..."
"... Political baggage is a bitch. If this election cycle has demonstrated anything it is that the leadership of both parties is totally out of touch with the voters and really has no interest except supporting the Neoliberal tenet of fiscal nonintervention. This laissez-faire attitude toward corporate interests is paralysing the American government. ..."
"... I cannot believe Clinton has got this far in the election, I believe Obama wants her in to hide many of his embarrassing warmongering mistakes. ..."
"... Today of all days Hillary Clinton puts out a tweet with the following: 'America needs leadership in the White House, not a liability' -- As we have to assume she's not referring to herself it confirms people's suspicion that the person who writes Hillary's tweets is a hostile to her campaign. The tweets are often completely off the mark. ..."
"... Either Comey is on their payroll, or they have threatened his family. Either way it is business as usual. The NWO decided a long time ago that Hillary was their next puppet PONTUS. ..."
"... I was a low-level officer at US Embassies and Consulates in various foreign countries. Clinton's claim that she didn't know what (C) was, or that she "she did not pay attention to the difference between top secret, secret and confidential" and "could not recall any briefing or training by state related to the retention of federal records or handling of classified information." Are beyond ridiculous. Any fool knows enough to be aware of different levels of classified info, and the obvious fact that you don't get sloppy with classified info. ..."
"... to paraphrase Leona Helmsley's comment about paying taxes, "security is for little people." So in that respect Hillary is no different from the rest of them. ..."
"... You'd better hope she's lying, because if the incompetence is genuine she shouldn't be allowed near any confidential information ever again. I hate to admit it but Trump is right on this one. Jesus wept. ..."
"... The fact that the Sec State could have an email server built at her home and operate with such laughable gross negligence when it comes to national security is surreal and appalling. ..."
"... If the FBI were not themselves co-conspirators and hopelessly corrupt, they would indict some of the lower level actors and offer them immunity. They could start with the imbecile who put that laptop in the mail and couldn't remember if it was UPS or USPS. ..."
"... Caddell has voiced an interesting concern that others are beginning to share: that the news media has crawled so far in bed with Hillary Clinton they won't be able to get back out. That the news media in America has lost its soul. Even Jake Tapper started asking this question several weeks ago in the middle of his own show. ..."
"... The pyramid scheme of created debt has destroyed capitalism and democracy within 40 years of full operation. Captured Govt has bailed out incompetence and failure at every turn, and in so doing, inverted the yield curve and destroyed the future. It is for this reason alone I cannot respect these financial paedophiles or support anything they do. In this contest for the White House, Clinton is the manifestation of the establishment. ..."
"... "The documents provided a number of new details about Mrs. Clinton's private server, including what appeared to be a frantic effort by a computer specialist to delete an archive of her emails even after a congressional committee had requested they be preserved." -NY Times ..."
"... Hillary's treatment of top-secret US documents was willful and uncorrected. If she had done the same thing with medical records, the individuals whose medical records had been mishandled could have filed charges and Hillary would have been personally liable for up to $50,000 fine per incident. ..."
"... Clinton is an absolute liability. Apart from this scandal she's a status quo candidate for a status quo that no longer exists. She stands for neo-liberalism, US hegemony and capitalist globalization all of which are deader than the dodo. That makes her very dangerous in terms of world peace and of course she will do absolutely nothing for the millions of Americans facing joblessness, hunger, bankruptcy and homelessness except make things worse ..."
"... The entire corrupt establishment want Clinton at all cost, so that they can continue fleecing the future and enslaving the entire world in created debt. All right minded individuals should this as a flashing red light to turn round and vote the other way. ..."
A Clinton Foundation laptop and a thumb drive used to archive
Hillary
Clinton's emails from her time as secretary of state are missing, according to FBI notes released on Friday.
The phrase "Clinton could not recall" litters the summary of the FBI's investigation, which concluded in July
that
she should not face charges. Amid fierce Republican criticism of the Democratic presidential candidate, the party's nominee,
Donald Trump released a statement which said "Hillary Clinton's answers to the FBI about her private email server defy belief" and
added that he did not "understand how she was able to get away from prosecution".
he FBI documents describe how Monica Hanley, a former Clinton aide, received assistance in spring 2013 from Justin Cooper, a former
aide to Bill Clinton, in creating an archive of Hillary Clinton's emails. Cooper provided Hanley with an Apple MacBook laptop from
the Clinton Foundation – the family organisation currently
embroiled in controversy – and talked her through the process of transferring emails from Clinton's private server to the laptop
and a thumb drive.
"Hanley completed this task from her personal residence," the notes record. The devices were intended to be stored at Clinton's
homes in New York and Washington. However, Hanley "forgot" to provide the archive laptop and thumb drive to Clinton's staff.
In early 2014, Hanley located the laptop at her home and tried to transfer the email archive to an IT company, apparently without
success. It appears the emails were then transferred to an unnamed person's personal Gmail account and there were problems around
Apple software not being compatible with that of Microsoft.
The unnamed person "told the FBI that, after the transfer was complete, he deleted the emails from the archive laptop but did
not wipe the laptop. The laptop was then put in the mail, only to go missing. [Redacted] told the FBI that she never received the
laptop from [redacted]; however, she advised that Clinton's staff was moving offices at the time, and it would have been easy for
the package to get lost during the transition period.
"Neither Hanley nor [redacted] could identify the current whereabouts of the archive laptop or thumb drive containing the archive,
and the FBI does not have either item in its possession."
... ... ...
The FBI identified a total of 13 mobile devices associated with Clinton's two known phone numbers that potentially were used to
send emails using clintonemail.com addresses.
The 58 pages of notes released on Friday, several of which were redacted, also related that Hanley often purchased replacement
BlackBerry devices for Clinton during Clinton's time at the state department. Hanley recalled buying most of them at AT&T stores
in the Washington area. Cooper was usually responsible for setting them up and synching them to the server.
Clinton's closest aide, Huma Abedin, and Hanley "indicated the whereabouts of Clinton's devices would frequently become unknown
once she transitioned to a new device", the documents state. "Cooper did recall two instances where he destroyed Clinton's old mobile
devices by breaking them in half or hitting them with a hammer."
The notes also contain a string of admissions by Clinton about points she did not know or could not recall: "When asked about
the email chain containing '(C)' portion markings that state determined to currently contain CONFIDENTIAL information, Clinton stated
that she did not know what the '(C)' meant at the beginning of the paragraphs and speculated it was referencing paragraphs marked
in alphabetical order."
Clinton said she did not pay attention to the difference between top secret, secret and confidential but "took all classified
information seriously". She did not recall receiving any emails she thought should not have been on an unclassified system. She also
stated she received no particular guidance as to how she should use the president's email address.
In addition, the notes say: "Clinton could not recall when she first received her security clearance and if she carried it with
her to state via reciprocity from her time in the Senate. Clinton could not recall any briefing or training by state related to the
retention of federal records or handling of classified information."
Clinton was aware she was an original classification authority at the state department, but again "could not recall how often
she used this authority or any training or guidance provided by state. Clinton could not give an example of how classification of
a document was determined."
... ... ...
The House speaker, Paul Ryan, said: "These documents demonstrate Hillary Clinton's reckless and downright dangerous handling of
classified information during her tenure as secretary of state. They also cast further doubt on the justice department's decision
to avoid prosecuting what is a clear violation of the law. This is exactly why I have called for her to be denied access to classified
information."
Reince Priebus, chair of the Republican National Committee, said: "The FBI's summary of their interview with Hillary Clinton is
a devastating indictment of her judgment, honesty and basic competency. Clinton's answers either show she is completely incompetent
or blatantly lied to the FBI or the public.
"Either way it's clear that, through her own actions, she has disqualified herself from the presidency."
The Clinton campaign insisted that it was pleased the notes had been made public. Spokesman Brian Fallon said: "While her use
of a single email account was clearly a mistake and she has taken responsibility for it, these materials make clear why the justice
department believed there was no basis to move forward with this case."
Terrence James 3h ago
This is the equivalent of the dog ate my homework. This woman could not utter an honest sentence if her life depended on it.
She is a corrupt and evil person, I cannot stand Trump but I think I hate her more. Trump is just crazy and cannot help himself
but she is calculatingly evil. We are doomed either way, but he would be more darkly entertaining.
Smallworld5 3h ago
Has any of Clinton's state department employees purposely built their own server in their basement on which to conduct official
government business, in gross violation of department policy, protocols, and regulations, they would have been summarily fired
at a minimum and, yes, quite possibly prosecuted. That's a fact.
The issue at hand is why Clinton sycophants are so agreeable to the Clinton Double Standard.
The presumptive next president of the U.S. being held to a lower standard than the average U.S. civil servant. Sickening.
Laurence Johnson 8h ago
Hillary's use of gender has no place in politics. When it comes to the top job, the people need the best person for the job,
not someone who is given a GO because they represent a group that are encouraged to feel discriminated against.
foggy2 9h ago
For the FBI's (or Comey's) this is also a devastating indictment of their or his judgment, honesty and basic competency.
YANKSOPINION 10h ago
Perhaps she has early onset of Alzheimers and should not be considered for the job of POTUS. Or maybe she is just a liar.
AlexLeo 10h ago
It is painfully clear that she traded access and favors for money and reciprocal favors. It is painfully clear that she
made little distinction between working for the State Department, the Clinton foundation and her family and tried to keep the
records of what was going on inaccessible. The more honest defense would be, all politicians do it, and you have to suck it up
because Trump is worse. Which is true. But trying to downplay this and explain it away is offensive, not all of the public are
complete idiots.
KaleidoscopeWars
Actually, after you get over all of the baffooning around Trump has done, he actually would make an ideal president. He loves
his country, he delegates jobs well to people who show the best results, he's good at building stuff and he wants to do a good
job. I'm sure after he purges the terribly corrupted system that he'll be given, he'll have the very best advisors around him
to make good decisions for the American people. I'm sure Theresa May and her cabinet will be quick to welcome him and re-solidify
the relationship that has affected British politics so much in the past decade. Boris Johnson is perfect for our relations with
America under a Trump administration. Shame on you Barack and Hillary. Hopefully Trump will say ''I came, I saw, they died!''
Ullu001 12h ago
Ah, The Clintons. They have done it all: destruction of evidence, witness tampering, fraud, lying under oath, murder, witness
disappearance. Did I leave anything? Yet, they go unpunished. Too clever, I guess too clever for their own good!
samwoods77 12h ago
Hillary wants to be the most powerful person on earth yet claims she doesn't understand the classification system that even
the most most junior secretary can....deeply troubling.
Mistaron 13h ago
The 'masters' in the shadows are about to throw the harridan under the bus. Her brazen air of arrogance and entitlement
is about to fade as she comes to realise, that albeit Comey having been got at, he has still succeeded in striking a severe blow
against her, and in addition, at the not-so-tin-hat conspiracy of inappropriate, and increasingly overt, institutional support.
All this in the face of documented lies, in your face hypocrisy, and unbridled corruption, oozing from every orifice of
a maverick administration.
The seeds have been planted for a defense of diminished responsibility. Don't fall for it! Hillary, (and her illustrious spouse),
deserve not a smidgen of pity.
''We came, we saw, he died'', she enthusiastically and unempathically cackled.
Just about sums her up.
wtfbollos 14h ago
hiliary clinton beheaded libya and created a hell on earth. here is the proof:
Again, total misunderstanding about what is going on. Clinton is the one waging war in the middle east. She is the one
being bullish and provocative with Russia. Trump has only been conciliatory with these issues, he has been against the war on
Iraq. So far all evidences point to the fact that the Clintons want another big war and all evidence points to the fact that
Trump wants co operation. This has totally escape your analysis. It is a choice between the Plague and the Cholera, I agree, but
FGS try to be a little less biased.
ungruntled 15h ago
The best case for HC looks pretty grim.
She has no recollection of......??
Laptops and Thumb drives laying about unattended
Total lack of understanding about even the most basic of Data Securit arrangements
All of these things giver her the benefit of the doubt....That she wasnt a liar and a corrupted politician manipulating events
and people to suit her own ends.
So, with the benefit of the doubt given, ask yourself if this level of incompetance and unreliabilty makes a suitable candidate
for office?
In both cases, with and without BOTD, she shouldnt be allowed anywhere near the corridors of power, let alone the White House.
IAtheist 17h ago
Mrs Clinton is deeply divisive. Bought out since her husbands presidency by vested interests in Wall Street and the HMO's (private
healthcare insurance management businesses) and having shown lamentable judgement, Benghazi, private Email server used for classified
documents and material.
She has failed to motivate the Democrats white and blue collar working voters male and female. These are the voting demographic
who have turned to Trump is significant numbers as he does address their concerns, iniquitous tax rules meaning multi millionaires
pay less tax on capital gains and share dividends than employees do on their basic wages, immigration and high levels of drug
and gun crime in working class communities Black, White and Hispanic, funding illegal immigrants and failed American youth living
on a black economy in the absence of affordable healthcare or a basic welfare system.
Trump may very well win and is likely to be better for the US than Hilary Clinton.
digamey 18h ago
I sympathize with the American electorate - they have to choose between the Devil and the deep blue sea. Given their situation,
however, I would definitely choose the Devil I know over the Devil I don't! And that Devil is - - - ?
MoneyCircus -> digamey 10h ago
That willful ignorance is your choice! A public businessman can be examined more closely than most.
Besides, there is a long history of "placemen" presidents whose performance is determined by those they appoint to do the work.
Just look in the White House right now.
As for the Clinton record (they come, incontrovertibly, as a package) from Mena, Arkansas, to her husband's deregulation of
the banks which heralded the financial crash that devastated millions of lives... the same banks that are currently HRC's most
enthusiastic funders... is something that any genuine Democrat should not be able to stomach...
ID9761679 19h ago
My feeling is that she had more to worry about than the location of a thumb drive (I can't recall how many of those I've lost)
or even a laptop. When a Secretary of State moves around, I doubt that look after their own appliances. Has anyone asked her where
the fan is?
Karega ID9761679 18h ago
Problem is she handled top secret and classified information which would endanger her country's security and strategic interests.
She was then US Secretary of State. That is why how she handled her thumb drive, laptop nd desktops matter. And there lies the
difference between your numerous lost thumb drives and hers. I thought this was obvious?
EightEyedSpy 23h ago
HRC is still likely to be the next President, but this scandal does have legs. She put herself in a corner by claiming
lack of recall due to a medical condition (i.e., the concussion). This leaves two possibilities, neither of which is helpful to
her cause, to wit: either she was being dishonest or she was (and could still be) cognitively impaired.
1iJack -> EightEyedSpy 22h ago
either she was being dishonest or she was (and could still be) cognitively impaired.
Its entirely possible its both.
Dick York 24h ago
California survived Arnold Schwarzenegger, the U.S. survived Ronald Reagan, Minnesota survived Jesse "The Body" Ventura and
I believe that we will survive Donald Trump. He's only one more celebrity on the road.
providenciales -> Dick York 23h ago
You forgot Al Franken.
antipodes -> Dick York 21h ago
Reagan was certainly not someone I admired but at least he tried to reduce the chance of nuclear war. Clinton is an out
and out Hawke with the blood of many innocent people on her hands in both Syria and Libya. She is hiding her communications because
she does not want to be exposed for the role she played in The destruction of Libya and the gun running of weapons to terrorists
in Syria. That is to Al Qaeda and ISIS. World War 3 is more likely under Clinton than any other world leader. Even Trump.
The Democrats must disendorse her because the details of her criminality are now becoming available and unless she can stop it
Trump will win. Get rid of her Democrats and bring back Bernie Sanders.
Sam3456 1d ago
We cannot afford a lying, neo-liberal who is more than willing to make her role in government a for profit endeavor.
Four years of anyone else is preferable to someone who is more than willing for the right contribution to her foundation, sell
out the American worker and middle class.
MakeBeerNotWar 1d ago
I'm more interested $250k a pop speeches HRC gave to the unindicted Wall St bankster felon scum who nearly took down their
country and the global economy yet received a taxpayer bailout and their bonuses paid for being greedy incompetent crooks. How
soon we forget....
Its seems there is just one scandal after another with this women but she seems to be bullet proof mainly because the msm media
will not go after her for reasons best known to themselves this is causing them to lose credibility and readers who are deserting
them for alternative media .
bashh1 1d ago
Finally today in an article in The NY Times we learn where Clinton has been for a good part of the summer. In the Hamptons
and elsewhere at receptions for celebrities and her biggest donors like Calvin Klein and Harvey Weinstein, raking in the millions
for her campaign. Trump on the other hand has appeared in towns in Pennsylvania like Scranton, Erie and Altoona where job are
disappearing and times can be tough. Coronations cost money I guess.
chiefwiley -> bashh1 1d ago
She is doing what she does best --- raise money.
ksenak 1d ago
Not forgetting that she was key in making sure the US didn't side with Assad. Had the US done at the beginning, instead
of being at the behest of the Saudis and the petrodollar, then the whole thing would have been over in 6 months and IS would never
have got more than a dusty district of northern Iraq.
ksenak 1d ago
Hillary is humiliated woman. Humiliated to the core by her cheating hubby she would rather kill than let him go. She is paying
her evil revenge to the whole world. As a president of USA Hillary Clinton would destabilise the world and lead it to conflicts
that threaten to be very heavy.
As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was part of the "Arab Spring" (also part of the "Jasmine Revolution), which overthrew
leaders such as Gaddafi to Mubarak. Before Gaddafi was overthrown he told the US that without him IS will take over Libya. They
did.
-Benghazi Scandal which ended up killing a US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and other Americans.
The Arab Spring destabilized the Middle East, contributed to the Syrian civil war, the rise of ISIS and the exodus of Middle Eastern
Muslims.
Sam3456 OXIOXI20 1d ago
Meh. Obama characterized ISIS as the "JV Team" and refused to acknowledge the threat. I assume he was acting on information
provided by his Secretary of State, Clinton.
Michael109 1d ago
It's quite possible that Clinton, because she had a fall in 2012 and bonked her head, believes she is telling the truth when
she is lying, except that it is not lying when you believe you are telling the truth even though you are lying.
She said she did not recall 30 times in her interviews with the FBI. She could be suffering from some sort of early degeneration
disease. Either way, between her health and the lying and corruption she should be withdrawn as the Dem frontrunner.
1iJack -> LakumbaDaGreat 1d ago
She's going to blow it.
I think she already did. Its like all the shit in her life is coming back on her at once.
Early on, when it was announced she would run again, I remember one Democrat pundit in particular that didn't think she could
survive the existence of the Internet in the general election (I can't remember who it was, though). But it has turned out to
be a pretty astute prediction.
When asked what he meant by that remark, he went on to say "the staying power of the Internet will overwhelm Clinton with her
dirty laundry once she gets to the general election. The Clintons were made for the 24 hour news cycles of the past and not the
permanent unmanaged exposure of the digital world. Everything is new again on the internet. Its Groundhog Day forever on the Internet."
That's my best paraphrase of his thoughts. He felt Clinton was the last of the "old school" politicians bringing too much baggage
to an election. That with digital "bread crumbs" of some kind or another (email, microphones and cameras in phones, etc) the new
generation of politicians will be a cleaner lot, not through virtue, but out of necessity.
I've often thought back to his remarks while watching Hillary head into the general.
ImperialAhmed 1d ago
So the applicant to the US presidency does not know what (c) stands for in her emails, archives high security data on a
laptop and then losses it for years, uploads same emails on Google's gmail account and then losses devices again.
She does not recall many things, not even the training she received on handling the confidential and secure communication.
She couldn't recall the procces of drone strikes. (Will she be killing people at a whim, without an accountable protocol?)
She is either demented or dangerously reckless or lying. All of these conditions disbar her form her candidacy.
AudieTer 1d ago
If she could only manage a couple of hours a day because of concussion and a blood clot she should have temporarily stood
down until she recovered fully, and had a senior official take over her duties until she was well. You can't have a brain-damaged
person in charge of the US's affairs - even though there is a long history of nutters the State Dept. ( ie the Military Industrial
Complex HQ). And in the White House for that matter ...Nurse -- nurse -- Dubya needs his meds!
thedingo8 -> Lenthelurker 1d ago
the clinton foundation does not pay taxes..and dont forget that slick willie has been on the paedophile plane more times
than the pilot
Littlefella 1d ago
She destroyed devices and emails after they were told that all evidence had to be preserved. There are then two issues and
the FBI and DOJ have not taken any action on either.
It's no longer just about the emails, it's the corruption.
DaveG123 1d ago
Clinton's closest aide, Huma Abedin, and Hanley "indicated the whereabouts of Clinton's devices would frequently become unknown
once she transitioned to a new device"
-------------
Probably in the hands of a foreign government. Pretty careless behaviour. Incompetent. Part of a pattern of incompetance that
includes bad foreign policy decisions (Libya) and disrespect for rules surrounding conflict of interest (Clinton Foundation).
YANKSOPINION -> HansB09 1d ago
She failed to keep up with recordkeeping she agreed to, then when asked to turn over records, somebody destroyed them,
but Clinton did not order destruction, or does not remember having done so. Turned over all records-oops I thought WE did! She
either lied or has alzheimers
Andy White 1d ago
In addition, the notes say:
"Clinton could not recall when she first received her security clearance and if she carried it with her to state via reciprocity
from her time in the Senate. Clinton could not recall any briefing or training by state related to the retention of federal
records or handling of classified information."
Clinton was aware she was an original classification authority at the state department, but again "could not recall how often
she used this authority or any training or guidance provided by state. Clinton could not give an example of how classification
of a document was determined." ...................secretary of state and could not recall basic security protocols???
....and people complain about trump....this basic security was mentioned in the bloody west wing series for god's sake.....in
comparison even trump is a f'ing genius.......love him or hate him trump has to win over clinton,there is something very,very
wrong with her....she should NEVER be in charge of a till at asda......and she is a clinton so we all know a very practised liar
but this beggers belief,i can see why trump is angry if that was him he would have been publicly burnt at the stake.....this clinton
crap just stink's of the political elite....a total joke cover up and a terrible obvious one to....clinton is just a liar and
mentally i think she is very unstable....makes the DON look like hawking lol.....
namora 1d ago
Political baggage is a bitch. If this election cycle has demonstrated anything it is that the leadership of both parties
is totally out of touch with the voters and really has no interest except supporting the Neoliberal tenet of fiscal nonintervention.
This laissez-faire attitude toward corporate interests is paralysing the American government.
duncandunnit 1d ago
I cannot believe Clinton has got this far in the election, I believe Obama wants her in to hide many of his embarrassing
warmongering mistakes.
fedback 1d ago
Today of all days Hillary Clinton puts out a tweet with the following: 'America needs leadership in the White House, not
a liability' -- As we have to assume she's not referring to herself it confirms people's suspicion that the person who writes
Hillary's tweets is a hostile to her campaign. The tweets are often completely off the mark.
Hercolubus 1d ago
Either Comey is on their payroll, or they have threatened his family. Either way it is business as usual. The NWO decided
a long time ago that Hillary was their next puppet PONTUS.
BG Davis 2d ago
Clinton has always been a devious weasel, but this reveals a new low. I was a low-level officer at US Embassies and Consulates
in various foreign countries. Clinton's claim that she didn't know what (C) was, or that she "she did not pay attention to the
difference between top secret, secret and confidential" and "could not recall any briefing or training by state related to the
retention of federal records or handling of classified information." Are beyond ridiculous. Any fool knows enough to be aware
of different levels of classified info, and the obvious fact that you don't get sloppy with classified info.
That said, over the past few years the entire handling of classified info has become beyond sloppy - laptops left in taxis,
General Petraeus was sharing classified info with his mistress, etc. I guess nowadays, to paraphrase Leona Helmsley's comment
about paying taxes, "security is for little people." So in that respect Hillary is no different from the rest of them.
Scaff1 2d ago
You'd better hope she's lying, because if the incompetence is genuine she shouldn't be allowed near any confidential information
ever again. I hate to admit it but Trump is right on this one. Jesus wept. I said it before: Clinton is the only candidate
who could possibly make a tyrant like Trump electable.
charlieblue -> gizadog 2d ago
Where are you getting "looses 13 devices"? (Try loses, nobody is accusing Sec.Clinton of making things loose) I actually read
the article, so my information might not be as exciting as yours, but this article states that from the 13 devices that had access
to the Clinton server, two (a laptop and a thumb drive) used by one of her aids, are missing. This article doesn't specify whether
any "classified" information was on either of them. The FBI doesn't know, because, well... they are missing.
What the fuck is it with you people and your loose relationship with actual facts? Do you realize that just making shit up
undermines whatever point you imagine you are trying to make?
gizadog 2d ago
Also: Clinton told FBI she thought classified markings were alphabetical paragraphs
"When asked what the parenthetical 'C' meant before a paragraph ... Clinton stated she did not know and could only speculate
it was referencing paragraphs marked in alphabetical order," the FBI wrote in notes from its interview with her."
Wow...and there are people that want her to be president.
Casey13 2d ago
In my job as a government contractor we are extremely vigilant about not connecting removable devices to work computers, no
work email access outside of work, software algorithms that scan our work mails for any sensitive information, and regular required
training on information security. The fact that the Sec State could have an email server built at her home and operate with
such laughable gross negligence when it comes to national security is surreal and appalling. I could never vote for her and
neither could I vote for Trump.
MonotonousLanguor 2d ago
>>> A Clinton Foundation laptop and a thumb drive used to archive Hillary Clinton's emails from her time as secretary of state
are missing, according to FBI notes released on Friday.<<<
Oh golly gee, what a surprise. Should we offer a reward??? Maybe Amelia Earhart has the laptop and thumb drive. Were these
missing items taken by the Great Right Wing Conspiracy???
Dani Jenkins 2d ago
Wtf, from the sublime to the ridiculous, springs to mind..
Time to get a grip of the gravity involved, here at the Guardian.. This is a total whitewash of the absurd kind.. That leaves
people laughing in pure unadultered astonishment..
SHE lost not just a MacBook & thumb drive with such BS..
So Trump it is then , like many of us have stated ALL ALONG. Sanders was the only serious contender.. A complete mockery of
democracy & the so called Democrats have made the way for Trump to cruise all the way to the Whitewash House..
Well done Debbie , did the Don pay you?
chiefwiley -> Lenthelurker 2d ago
Because the revelations are essentially contradicting all of Hillary's defenses regarding her handling of highly classified
information. None of the requirements of the State Department mattered to her or her personal staff. It won't go away --- it will
get worse as information trickles out.
Casey13 2d ago
Being President of the USA used to be about communicating a vision and inspiring Americans to get behind that dream . Think
Lincoln abolishing slavery or JFK setting a goal to put man on the moon. Hillary is boring,has no charisma,and no vision for her
Presidency beyond using corruption and intimidation to secure greater power for her and her cronies . Nobody wants to listen to
her speeches because she is boring, uninspiring, and has no wit beyond tired cliches. Trump has a vision but that vision is a
nightmare for many Americans.
imperfetto 2d ago
Clinton is a dangerous warmonger. She is a danger to us Europeans, as she might drag us into a conflict with Russia. We must
get rid of her, politically, and re-educate the Americas to respect other nations, and give up exporting their corrupting values.
"After reading these documents, I really don't understand how she was able to get away from prosecution."
If the FBI were not themselves co-conspirators and hopelessly corrupt, they would indict some of the lower level actors
and offer them immunity. They could start with the imbecile who put that laptop in the mail and couldn't remember if it was UPS
or USPS. Or did he actually send it to the Ecuadorian embassy in the UK by accident?
1iJack 2d ago
"The job of the media historically, in terms of the First Amendment – what I call the unspoken compact in the First Amendment
– is that the free press, without restraint, without checks and balances, is there in order to protect the people from power.
Its job is to be a check on government, and those who rule the country, and not to be their lapdogs, and their support system.
That's what we're seeing in this election.
There is an argument to make that the major news media in this country, the mainstream media, is essentially serving against
the people's interest. They have made themselves an open ally of protecting a political order that the American people are
rejecting, by three quarters or more of the American people. That makes them a legitimate issue, in a sense they never have
been before, if Trump takes advantage of it."
Pat Caddell, 2 Sept 2016
Caddell has voiced an interesting concern that others are beginning to share: that the news media has crawled so far in
bed with Hillary Clinton they won't be able to get back out. That the news media in America has lost its soul. Even Jake Tapper
started asking this question several weeks ago in the middle of his own show.
Will the American press ever have credibility with Americans again? Even Democrats see it and will remember this the next time
the press turns against them. There was a new and overt power grab in this election that is still being processed by the American
people: the American press "saving" America from Donald Trump. They may never recover from this.
It even scares my Democrat friends.
ConBrio 2d ago
"An unknown individual using the encrypted privacy tool Tor to hide their tracks accessed an email account on a Clinton family
server, the FBI revealed Friday.
"The incident appears to be the first confirmed intrusion into a piece of hardware associated with Hillary Clinton's private
email system, which originated with a server established for her husband, former President Bill Clinton.
The FBI disclosed the event in its newly released report on the former secretary of state's handling of classified information.
Clinton is a very dodgy character and cannot be trusted.
Boris Johnson, UK Foreign Secretary on Clinton: "She's got dyed blonde hair and pouty lips, and a steely blue stare, like a
sadistic nurse in a mental hospital"
CleanPool330 2d ago
The collective mind of the establishment is mentally ill and spinning out of control. In all rites they should be removed but
their arrogance, corruption and self-entitlement mean they are incapable of admitting guilt. They have corrupted the weak minds
of the majority and will take everybody down with them.
The pyramid scheme of created debt has destroyed capitalism and democracy within 40 years of full operation. Captured Govt
has bailed out incompetence and failure at every turn, and in so doing, inverted the yield curve and destroyed the future. It
is for this reason alone I cannot respect these financial paedophiles or support anything they do. In this contest for the White
House, Clinton is the manifestation of the establishment.
unusedusername 2d ago
If I understand this correctly a laptop and a flashdrive full of classified emails was put in a jiffy bag and stuck in the
post and now they're missing and this is, apparently, just one of those things? Amazing!
Blair Hess 2d ago
I'm in the military. Not a high rank mind you. It defies all common logic that HRC has never had a briefing, training, or just
side conversation about classified information handling when i have about 50 trainings a year on it and i barely handle it. Sheeple
wake up and stop drinking the kool aid
Ullu001 2d ago
The Clintons have always operated on the edge of the law: extremely clever and dangerous lawyers they are.
USADanny -> Ullu001
Hillary may be criminally clever but legally: not so much. You do know that she failed the Washington DC bar exam and all of
her legal "success" after that was a result of being very spouse of a powerful politician.
calderonparalapaz 2d ago
"The documents provided a number of new details about Mrs. Clinton's private server, including what appeared to be a frantic
effort by a computer specialist to delete an archive of her emails even after a congressional committee had requested they be
preserved." -NY Times
Virtually every American healthcare worker has to take annual HIPAA training, pass a multiple-choice test and signed a document
attesting that they have taken the training and are fully aware of the serious consequences of inadvertent and willful violations
of HIPAA. Oh the irony – HIPAA is a Clinton era law.
Hillary's treatment of top-secret US documents was willful and uncorrected. If she had done the same thing with medical
records, the individuals whose medical records had been mishandled could have filed charges and Hillary would have been personally
liable for up to $50,000 fine per incident.
Other than Hillary negligently handling top-secret documents, having a head injury that by her own admission has impaired her
memory and using her relationship with the Clinton foundation when she was Secretary of State to extort hundreds of millions of
dollars, she is an excellent candidate for the president.
oeparty 2d ago
Clinton is an absolute liability. Apart from this scandal she's a status quo candidate for a status quo that no longer
exists. She stands for neo-liberalism, US hegemony and capitalist globalization all of which are deader than the dodo. That makes
her very dangerous in terms of world peace and of course she will do absolutely nothing for the millions of Americans facing joblessness,
hunger, bankruptcy and homelessness except make things worse.
And yet, and yet, we must vote Clinton simply to Stop Trump. He is a proto-fascist determined to smash resistance to the 1%
in America and abroad via military means. He is a realist who realises capitalism is over and only the purest and most overwhelming
violence can save the super rich and the elites now. Certainly their economy gives them nothing any more. The American Dream is
toast. The Green Stein will simply draw a few votes from Clinton and give Trump the victory and it is not like she is a genuinely
progressive candidate herself being something of a Putin fan just like Trump. No, vote Clinton to Stop Trump but only so that
we can use the next four years to build the revolutionary socialist alternative. To build the future.
dongerdo 2d ago
The Americans are screwed anyways because both easily are the most despicable and awful front runners I can think of in any
election of a western democracy in decades (and that is quite an achievement in itself to be honest), the only thing left to hope
for is a winner not outright horrible for the rest of the world on which front Clinton loses big time: electing her equals pouring
gasoline over half the world, she is up for finishing the disastrous job in the Middle East and North Africa started by her as
Secretary of State. Her stance on relations with Russia and China are utterly horrific, listening to her makes even the die-hard
GOP neo-cons faction sound like peace corps ambassadors.
If the choice is between that and some isolationist dimwit busy with making America great again I truly hope for the latter.
Who would have thought that one day world peace would depend on the vote of the American redneck.....
Michael109 2d ago
Clinton's "dog ate my server", I can't (30 times) remember, didn't know what C meant on top of emails - why it means Coventry
City, M'amm - excuses are the Dems trying to stagger over the line, everyone holding their noses. But even if she is elected,
which is doubtful, this is not going away and she could be arrested as USA President.
The FBI will rue the day they did not recommend charges against her when they had the chance. She's make Tony Soprano look
like the Dalia Lama.
CleanPool330 2d ago
The entire corrupt establishment want Clinton at all cost, so that they can continue fleecing the future and enslaving
the entire world in created debt. All right minded individuals should this as a flashing red light to turn round and vote the
other way.
"You're living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58% of your youth is unemployed.
What the hell do you have to lose" by voting for Trump? the candidate asked. "At the end of four
years, I guarantee I will get over 95% of the African American vote."
The statement – highly unlikely given how poorly Republicans fare among black voters – continues
a theme the GOP presidential nominee has pounded this week as he courted African American voters.
He said Democrats take black voters for granted and have ignored their needs while governing cities
with large African American populations.
"America must reject the bigotry of Hillary Clinton, who sees communities of color only as votes,
not as human beings worthy of a better future," he said of his Democratic opponent.
... ... ...
Trump argued that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's policies on issues such as
immigration and refugee resettlement harm African Americans.
=== quote ===
It has recently become commonplace to argue that globalization can leave people behind, and that
this can have severe political consequences. Since 23 June, this has even become conventional
wisdom. While I welcome this belated acceptance of the blindingly obvious, I can't but help feeling
a little frustrated, since this has been self-evident for many years now. What we are seeing,
in part, is what happens to conventional wisdom when, all of a sudden, it finds that it can no
longer dismiss as irrelevant something that had been staring it in the face for a long time.
=== end of quote ==
This is not about "conventional wisdom". This is about the power of neoliberal propaganda,
the power of brainwashing and indoctrination of population via MSM, schools and universities.
And "all of a sudden, it finds that it can no longer dismiss as irrelevant something that had
been staring it in the face for a long time." also has nothing to do with conventional wisdom.
This is about the crisis of neoliberal ideology and especially Trotskyism part of it (neoliberalism
can be viewed as Trotskyism for the rich). The following integral elements of this ideology no
longer work well and are starting to cause the backlash:
1. High level of inequality as the explicit, desirable goal (which raises the productivity).
"Greed is good" or "Trickle down economics" -- redistribution of wealth up will create (via higher
productivity) enough scrapes for the lower classes, lifting all boats.
2. "Neoliberal rationality" when everything is a commodity that should be traded at specific
market. Human beings also are viewed as market actors with every field of activity seen as a specialized
market. Every entity (public or private, person, business, state) should be governed as a firm.
"Neoliberalism construes even non-wealth generating spheres-such as learning, dating, or exercising-in
market terms, submits them to market metrics, and governs them with market techniques and practices."
People are just " human capital" who must constantly tend to their own present and future market
value.
3. Extreme financialization or converting the economy into "casino capitalism" (under neoliberalism
everything is a marketable good, that is traded on explicit or implicit exchanges.
4. The idea of the global, USA dominated neoliberal empire and related "Permanent war for permanent
peace" -- wars for enlarging global neoliberal empire via crushing non-compliant regimes either
via color revolutions or via open military intervention.
5. Downgrading ordinary people to the role of commodity and creating three classes of citizens
(moochers, or Untermensch, "creative class" and top 0.1%), with the upper class (0.1% or "Masters
of the Universe") being above the law like the top level of "nomenklatura" was in the USSR.
6. "Downsizing" sovereignty of nations via international treaties like TPP, and making transnational
corporations the key political players, "the deciders" as W aptly said. Who decide about level
of immigration flows, minimal wages, tariffs, and other matters that previously were prerogative
of the state.
So after 36 (or more) years of dominance (which started with triumphal march of neoliberalism
in early 90th) the ideology entered "zombie state". That does not make it less dangerous but its
power over minds of the population started to evaporate. Far right ideologies now are filling
the vacuum, as with the discreditation of socialist ideology and decimation of "enlightened corporatism"
of the New Deal in the USA there is no other viable alternatives.
The same happened in late 1960th with the Communist ideology. It took 20 years for the USSR
to crash after that with the resulting splash of nationalism (which was the force that blow up
the USSR) and far right ideologies.
It remains to be seen whether the neoliberal US elite will fare better then Soviet nomenklatura
as challenges facing the USA are now far greater then challenges which the USSR faced at the time.
Among them is oil depletion which might be the final nail into the coffin of neoliberalism and,
specifically, the neoliberal globalization.
FBI officials failed to aggressively question Hillary Clinton about her intentions in setting up a private email system, Rep.
Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) claimed this week, exposing a potential key vulnerability in the bureau's investigation.
"I didn't see that many questions on that issue," Gowdy told Fox News's "The Kelly File" on Wednesday evening.
The detail could be crucial for Republican critics of the FBI's decision not to recommend charges be filed against the former
secretary of State for mishandling classified information.
... ... ...
"I looked to see what witnesses were questioned on the issue of intent, including her," he said on Fox News. "I didn't see that
many questions on that issue."
House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz(R-Utah) has called for the FBI to create unclassified versions of the Clinton
case file that it gave to Congress, so that the material can be released publicly. Gowdy reiterated the call on Fox News.
"There's no reason in the world you could not and should not be able to look at the same witness interviews that I had to go to
Washington and look at in a classified setting," he said.
"... So "Carthago delenda est" is the official policy. With heavy brainwashing from MSM to justify such a course as well as the demonization of Putin. ..."
"... The USA actions in Ukraine speak for themselves. Any reasonable researcher after this "color revolution" should print his/her anti-Russian comments, shred them and eat with borsch. Because the fingerprints of the USA neoliberal imperial policy were everywhere and can't be ignored. And Victoria Nuland was Hillary Clinton appointee. Not that Russia in this case was flawless, but just the fact that opposition decided not to wait till the elections was the direct result of the orders from Washington. ..."
All this anti-Russian warmongering from esteemed commenters here is suspect. And should be
taken with a grain of salt.
The USA neoliberal elite considers Russia to be an obstacle in the creation of the USA led
global neoliberal empire (with EU and Japan as major vassals),
So "Carthago delenda est" is the official policy. With heavy brainwashing from MSM to justify
such a course as well as the demonization of Putin.
The USA actions in Ukraine speak for themselves. Any reasonable researcher after this "color
revolution" should print his/her anti-Russian comments, shred them and eat with borsch. Because
the fingerprints of the USA neoliberal imperial policy were everywhere and can't be ignored. And
Victoria Nuland was Hillary Clinton appointee. Not that Russia in this case was flawless, but
just the fact that opposition decided not to wait till the elections was the direct result of
the orders from Washington.
That means that as bad as Trump is, he is a safer bet than Hillary, because the latter is a
neocon warmonger, which can get us in the hot war with Russia. And this is the most principal,
cardinal issue of the November elections.
All other issues like climate change record (although nuclear winter will definitely reverse
global warming), Supreme Court appointments, etc. are of secondary importance.
As John Kenneth Galbraith said, "Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and
the unpalatable."
It is amazing how partisan and brainwashed commenters are. Reminds me "letter of workers and peasants
to Pravda" type of mails.
Notable quotes:
"... "There's no need to distract the public's attention from the essence of the problem by raising some minor issues connected with the search for who did it," Putin said in an interview with Bloomberg . ..."
"... The DNC is desperate to put the focus on who hacked their email rather than on the email's content. The story is in what the Democrats really think and how it's different then their public persona. ..."
"... I hate to admit it but .... Putin Dropped The Truth Bomb! ..Look at the content ..."
"... Who cares where the TRUTH comes from? as long as it is the truth! The real SHAME is that our own press has been out to lunch on finding the truth. Putin , Assage, Snowden...I'll take truth from them over HRC lies any day! ..."
"... It doesn't matter either way. There's no law anyone's willing to prosecute and no law enforcement agency who will investigate. This is all for nothing more than archival purposes. But it won't change anything. Hillary could be caught trading Cartel drugs for sex slaves in order to generate cash to give to Iran to pay the US government secretly to procure an atomic weapon and it would make no difference. ..."
"... The US politicos always need a bogeyman to blame. Today, it's Russia. ..."
"... It was Russia yesterday too. ..."
"... Yea, we are familiar with using Russia. It's an old playbook. ..."
"... To quote the democratic nominee ... 'what difference, at this point, does it make?" ..."
Russian leader Vladimir Putin denied that his country had any involvement in the email hacks and
WikiLeaks releases that led to the resignations of several Democratic Party officials.
"There's no need to distract the public's attention from the essence of the problem by raising
some minor issues connected with the search for who did it," Putin said in an interview with
Bloomberg.
"But I want to tell you again, I don't know anything about it, and on a state level Russia has
never done this."
Addison Jacobs
The DNC is desperate to put the focus on who hacked their email rather than on the email's
content. The story is in what the Democrats really think and how it's different then their public
persona.
Hard Little Machine • a day ago
Perfect retort to Hillary's Retards.
only1j > Hard Little Machine • a day ago
I hate to admit it but .... Putin Dropped The Truth Bomb! ..Look at the content
lostinnm > Hard Little Machine • a day ago
Who cares where the TRUTH comes from? as long as it is the truth! The real SHAME is that our
own press has been out to lunch on finding the truth. Putin , Assage, Snowden...I'll take truth
from them over HRC lies any day!
Hard Little Machine > lostinnm • a day ago
It doesn't matter either way. There's no law anyone's willing to prosecute and no law enforcement
agency who will investigate. This is all for nothing more than archival purposes. But it won't
change anything. Hillary could be caught trading Cartel drugs for sex slaves in order to generate
cash to give to Iran to pay the US government secretly to procure an atomic weapon and it would
make no difference.
Depending on how old you are - this is not the country or A country
you're familiar with. That one was shot in the head and buried in a shallow grave.
KhadijahMuhammad • a day ago
The US politicos always need a bogeyman to blame. Today, it's Russia.
BecauseReasons > KhadijahMuhammad • a day ago
It was Russia yesterday too.
KhadijahMuhammad > BecauseReasons • a day ago
Yea, we are familiar with using Russia. It's an old playbook.
Rich Dudley
To quote the democratic nominee ... 'what difference, at this point, does it make?"
The bizarre thing is that any elected politician dumb enough to take
Kissenger's advice has not prospered. Nixon was impeached, Ford defeated, and
when Carter was dumb enough to take Kissenger's advice about letting the Shah
of Iran into the US, his presidency went into meltdown. Why would anyone listen
to him? putting aside the question that he is a war criminal.
Yes, since we know that for Clinton, his war criminal credentials fall
into the "feature not a bug" category, the question is why the smartest,
most qualified candidate
evuh
would not see pattern of failure
attendant on those who tie their wagon to his star.
Like so many Clinton failures (from both), it wasn't the fault of the
advisor, but those taking the advice didn't do it exactly the way Henry K
told them to do it. Think Welfare Reform, Libya, etc. All the fault of
those putting the plans into operation.
Smartest people in the room, gravitating toward each other understand
how their brilliance can be misunderstood.
"Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign raised an eye-popping $143 million
in August for her candidacy and the Democratic Party, the best showing of her
campaign, her team said Thursday"
And yet my spam folder yesterday contained 46 (count 'em) pleas for
donations from HillaryClinton.com, sent over the last ten days, including the
one I read that said "Just send us a dollar."
And yes, since there was absolutely NO "unsubscribe" link on the emails I
initially received from the Clinton Cult, I did consign all further
communication to spam, thank you very much.
I'm sure they were just trying to make sure that 'eye-popping' amount
isn't from the fewest donors in history. By about the fourth one of those I
finally determined they really didn't need me to donate money they just
needed to be able to count me as a donor
Following right after that link is the withdrawal of $$$ for airtime from
Ted Strickland's campaign. Not some House race, not even a unlikely Senate
attempt, but they don't have enough money to hammer on somebody who not only
is chasing a big prize but actually already
won
the damn race once
already.
And you can convince me that it is 100% likely Strickland will lose. But
if you don't support him, you don't allow an alternative view to be
developed and used to hammer the winner during his term. Isn't that how you
play politics? You don't just show up around election, play nice, and if
polls – yeech, polls – don't go your way you just go home.
But the Democrats don't even want those kinds of victories. They want
1) The Executive Branch
2) No other branch of government so they can
blame what they don't (or worse, do) do – haha, if you read that right you
get "dodo" – on the other side.
Ms Clinton has an insane amount of money. And what she spends it on
(herself) and what she doesn't (anybody else) is what tells you what you
need to know.
The article on the difficulty of taking over the Democratic Party hits the
nail on the head, but it misses the Michels-ian problem: organizations have a
tendency (but not this is a tendency, not a rule or fate) towards increasing
oligarchy over time, and organizational members are socialized to trust and
obey party leadership. Factional dissidents within the Dems have to contend not
only with the party oligarchy and its formidable resources, the decentralized
and sprawling nature of the organization, but with a membership that barely
participates but, when it does, turns out when and how the leadership wants.
The Militant Labour tendency example isn't perfect – entryism into a
Parliamentary party is easier than our party system – but it speaks volumes. To
get a hearing from the party membership you can only criticize so much of the
organization itself; if you and a faction entered and created a "Destroy the
Dems" faction you'd be ignored or hunted out of the party, especially if you
pointedly attacked the Dems oligarchy and were openly hostile to their
officials, platform and the president – though I would argue you'd need exactly
a "Destroy the Dems" faction to succeed in smashing the party oligarchy and
changing the culture.
Keep in mind I do say this as a Green and a person who did his PhD on
inner-party democracy (or lack thereof). Lack of democracy is a persistent
theme in studies of parties for the last century.
It would make more sense to really unite the left around electoral reform in
the long run and push for proportional representation at the state/local level
for legislatures and city councils. While it would probably be preferable for
democracy's sake to have one big district elected with an open-list vote, in
the US context we'd probably go the German route of mixed-member proportional
that combines geographical single-member districts with proportional voting.
Speculating very freely: Could there be a flow of goods we don't know
about? Like containers full of opioids? Or is there a capital flow that
shouldn't exist, but does? Money laundering from those same opioids? Money
laundering generally? The Bezzle? Readers?
There's an enormous amount of people in the USA who are working on some kind
of black market. You don't have ten million unemployed men who are simply
sitting idle all the time.
Those people will never report that they are making money on the black
market.
For instance, there's going to be an enormous amount of weed leaving
Colorado and Washington and transported to other states. Whatever used to be
traveling over the border, we can now produce domestically. Which is great,
don't get me wrong, but until it's legalized in all fifty states, it doesn't
show up on the books. Doing this is as easy as staying in CO for a few weeks,
buying your maximum each day, then going a few states over and selling.
If you are implying that Hillary Clinton supports the center left, you
have clearly not been paying attention her entire career, or to the careers
of those with whom she has surrounded herself. Even with today's
ridiculously shifted Overton window, there is nothing "left" about being an
oligarch or a war criminal.
Can't speak for NC as a whole, but in my opinion, NC writers are
criticizing the person likely to win the election. These issues of
corruption need to be hashed out and handled well before inauguration.
Perhaps NC is providing a bit of balance, given the rest of the MSM has
about 11 anti-Trump pieces for every 2 anti-HRC ones?
And having browsed through the FBI interview notes with Clinton, her
defence against serious wrongdoing is that she is a mixture of forgetful and
incompetent. Is this really the best the Dems can do?
Good question, this NC reader is just pretty fed up with the status quo
(maybe others want to chime in):
– Unlimited immunity from prosecution
for banking executive criminals
– More shiny new undeclared
"nation-building" and "RTP" wars
– Globalist trade deals that enshrine
unaccountable corporate tribunals over national sovereignty, environmental
and worker protection, and self-determination
– America's national
business conducted in secrecy at the behest of corporate donors to
tax-exempt foundations
– Paid-for quid-pro-quo media manipulation of
candidate and election coverage
– Health care system reform designed to
benefit entrenched insurance providers over providing access to
reasonable-cost basic care.
Based on the above I'd say the 11:2 ratio
looks about right.
In reality we have a center leans extreme right Democratic candidate and
a left, right and center Republican candidate. One has a clear record of
supporting and increasing conservative policies in American and the other
has given speeches that have been all over the spectrum.
But hey, you keep trying to shame people who don't give a fig about
useless and false labels but are vastly interested in the normalization of
corruption.
I personally would like to see the reform/ takeover the Democratic party
squad concede that third parties don't have a level playing field(which may
indeed be why they consistently fail) and then help work to fix the problem.
A starting point would be opening every single primary to every voting age
individual or forcing the private parties to pay for their own darn soiree.
It's the democratic way to settle the debate on whether or not it will be
easier to reform the DNC or use a third party to enact progressive policy.
(Sigh ."Exhibit "A" for "why I'm not a Republican" anymore .)
A law mandating that AG workers get paid overtime just like about everyone
else is not a "tax".
The excuses they come up with for justifying the status quo are also a
treat:
-No O/T pay because it's "Seasonal Work", and farmers can't spread their
harvest labor over the whole year? (But nothing said about the months when the
labor is making zero bucks, when the seasonal workers aren't on the payroll)
– Can't find additional help because of "labor shortages"? Easy enough to
fix. PAY MORE MONEY. Why don't "free market" principles ever apply to labor?
-A "regressive tax on poor people"? Maybe they wouldn't be so poor, if they
were paid for their O/T.
-Encouraging automation because "labor costs too much". Au contraire. It's
the other way around. Development of automation (and the skills/jobs needed to
design build and support these machines) is slowed, because labor is too cheap.
And finally, "a $1Billion tax" ..assuming their calculations are correct (a
big if, figures don't lie but liars figure):
.a billion dollar nationwide tax amounts to ( ..one billion divvied by
300 million, carry the one .) .about four bucks a year per person. OMG, I
might have to skip that McNuggets Value Meal (that will also be made by robots
instead of "overpaid" labor) once a year.
People like this are so full of s##t, their eyes are brown.
I'm actually thankful to the folks running ZH some months ago they made
a (likely mobile-driven) change to their site layout, with result that it no
longer renders readably in my default browser, a legacy FF version, dating
from just before the Mozilla weenies decided to remove the 'image display'
toggle from the user preferences menu (disabling bandwidth-hogging image
rendering is really useful in a shared-WiFi context and when you want to
focus on textual content). So now I'm not even tempted to quick-scan the
site's inane alarmist headlines for yuks.
Whether Clinton's strategy of trying to peel off a small percentage of Republicans to win the
presidency will actually work remains to be seen. There seems to be scant evidence in the polls that
a significant amount of Republicans will support her; Clinton's advantage mostly stems from the fact
that black and Hispanic Americans understandably oppose Trump in historic numbers. But if the strategy
hinders Democrats from retaking Congress, the damage is going to be seen for years.
Just as we predicted on a sleepy Friday afternoon ahead of a long weekend, The FBI has released a detailed report on its
investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, as well as a
summary of her interview with agents, providing, what The Washington Post says is the most thorough look yet at
the probe that has dogged the campaign of the Democratic presidential nominee.
Today the FBI is releasing a summary of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's July 2, 2016 interview with the
FBI concerning allegations that classified information was improperly stored or transmitted on a personal e-mail server she used
during her tenure .
We also are releasing a factual summary of the FBI's investigation into this matter. We are making these materials
available to the public in the interest of transparency and in response to numerous Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
Appropriate redactions have been made for classified information or other material exempt from disclosure under FOIA.
Additional information related to this investigation that the FBI releases in the future will be placed on The Vault,
the FBI's electronic FOIA library.
As The Washington Post adds, the documents released total 58 pages, though large portions and sometimes entire pages are
redacted.
FBI Director James B. Comey announced in July that his agency would not recommend criminal charges against Clinton for her
use of a private email server. Comey said that Clinton and her staffers were "extremely careless" in how they treated
classified information, but investigators did not find they intended to mishandle such material. Nor did investigators
uncover exacerbating factors - like efforts to obstruct justice - that often lead to charges in similar cases, Comey said.
The FBI turned over to several Congressional committees documents related to the probe and required they only be viewed
by those with appropriate security clearances, even though not all of the material was classified, legislators and their staffers
have said.
Those documents included an investigative report and summaries of interviews with more than a dozen senior Clinton staffers,
other State Department officials, former secretary of state Colin Powell and at least one other person. The documents released
Friday appear to be but a fraction of those.
...
Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon has said turning over the documents was "an extraordinarily rare step that
was sought solely by Republicans for the purposes of further second-guessing the career professionals at the FBI."
But he has said if the material were going to be shared outside the Justice Department, "they should be released widely
so that the public can see them for themselves, rather than allow Republicans to mischaracterize them through selective, partisan
leaks."
Though Fallon seems to have gotten his wish, the public release of the documents will undoubtedly draw more attention
to a topic that seems to have fueled negative perceptions of Clinton . A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found 41
percent of Americans had a favorable impression of Clinton, while 56 percent had an unfavorable one.
Key Excerpts...
*CLINTON DENIED USING PRIVATE EMAIL TO AVOID FEDERAL RECORDS ACT
*CLINTON KNEW SHE HAD DUTY TO PRESERVE FEDERAL RECORDS: FBI
*COLIN POWELL WARNED CLINTON PRIVATE E-MAILS COULD BE PUBLIC:FBI
*FBI SAYS CLINTON LAWYERS UNABLE TO LOCATE ANY OF 13 DEVICES
*AT LEAST 100 STATE DEPT. WORKERS HAD CLINTON'S E-MAIL ADDRESS
CLINTON SAID SHE NEVER DELETED, NOR INSTRUCTED ANYONE TO DELETE, HER EMAIL TO AVOID COMPLYING WITH FEDERAL RECORDS LAWS OR FBI
OR STATE REQUESTS FOR INFORMATION
CLINTON AIDES SAID SHE FREQUENTLY REPLACED HER BLACKBERRY PHONE AND THE WHEREABOUTS OF THE OLD DEVICE WOULD "FREQUENTLY
BECOME UNKOWN"
CLINTON CONTACTED POWELL IN JANUARY 2009 TO INQUIRE ABOUT HIS USE OF A BLACKBERRY WHILE IN OFFICE; POWELL ADVISED CLINTON
TO 'BE VERY CAREFUL
Hillary Clinton used 13 mobile devices and 5 iPads to access clintonemail.com. The FBI only had access to 2 of
the iPads and The FBI found no evidence of hacking on those 2...
And here is the email from Colin Powell telling her that emails would need to be part of the "government records"
...
And here is Clinton denying that she used a private server to "avoid [the] Federal Records Act" as she just assumed
that "based on her practice of emailing staff on their state.gov accounts, [that] communications were captured by State systems."
Yes, well what about the "official" communications had with people outside of the State Department? Did retention
of those emails ever cross Hillary's mind? * * * Full Report below...
Agreeing with the 50 former Republican security officials who have called Trump "dangerous," Wolfowitz
ultimately admitted that he has no choice but to vote for Clinton.
"I wish there were somebody I could be comfortable voting for," he continued. "I might have to
vote for Hillary Clinton, even though I have big reservations about her."
Wolfowitz served as deputy secretary leading up to and during the Iraq war, a regime Trump has
been highly critical of since it began. Clinton, on the other hand. voted for the war, a point that
has been widely criticized by her opponents
What is amazing is that such column was published is such a sycophantic for Hillary and openly anti-Trump
rag as NYT. In foreign policy Hillary is the second incarnation of Cheney... Neocons rules NYT coverage
of Presidential race and, of course, they all favor Hillary. Of course chances that some on neocons
who so enthusiastically support her, crossing Party lines are drafted, get M16 and send to kill brown
people for Wall Street interests now is close to zero. Everything is outsourced now. But still, it is
simply amazing that even a lonely voice against neocon campaign of demonization of Trump got published
in NYT ...
MSM shilling for Hillary is simply overwhelming, so why this was in NYT is a mystery to me. But
this article of Maureen Dowd in on spot. Simply amazing how she manage to publish it !!!
Notable quotes:
"... Hillary will keep the establishment safe. Who is more of an establishment figure, after all? Her husband was president, and he repealed Glass-Steagall, signed the Defense of Marriage Act and got rid of those pesky welfare queens. ..."
"... Hillary often seems more Republican than the Gotham bling king, who used to be a Democrat and donor to Democratic candidates before he jumped the turnstile. ..."
"... Hillary is a reliable creature of Wall Street. Her tax return showed the Clintons made $10.6 million last year, and like other superrich families, they incorporated with the Clinton Executive Services Corporation (which was billed for the infamous server). Trump has started holding up goofy charts at rallies showing Hillary has gotten $48,500,000 in contributions from hedge funders, compared to his $19,000. ..."
"... Unlike Trump, she hasn't been trashing leading Republicans. You know that her pals John McCain and Lindsey Graham are secretly rooting for her. There is a cascade of prominent Republicans endorsing Hillary, donating to Hillary, appearing in Hillary ads, talking up Hillary's charms. ..."
"... Robert Kagan, a former Reagan State Department aide, adviser to the McCain and Mitt Romney campaigns and Iraq war booster, headlined a Hillary fund-raiser this summer. Another neocon, James Kirchick, keened in The Daily Beast , "Hillary Clinton is the one person standing between America and the abyss." ..."
"... The Democratic nominee put out an ad featuring Trump-bashing Michael Hayden, an N.S.A. and CIA chief under W. who was deemed "incongruent" by the Senate when he testified about torture methods. And she earned an endorsement from John Negroponte, a Reagan hand linked to American-trained death squads in Latin America. ..."
"... Politico reports that the Clinton team sent out feelers to see if Kissinger, the Voldemort of Vietnam, and Condi Rice, the conjurer of Saddam's apocalyptic mushroom cloud, would back Hillary. ..."
"... The Hillary team seems giddy over its windfall of Republicans and neocons running from the Trump sharknado. But as David Weigel wrote in The Washington Post, the specter of Kissinger, the man who advised Nixon to prolong the Vietnam War to help with his re-election, fed a perception that "the Democratic nominee has returned to her old, hawkish ways and is again taking progressives for granted." ..."
"... Hillary is a safer bet in many ways for conservatives. Trump likes to say he is flexible. What if he returns to his liberal New York positions on gun control and abortion rights? ..."
"... Trump is far too incendiary in his manner of speaking, throwing around dangerous and self-destructive taunts about "Second Amendment people" taking out Hillary, or President Obama and Hillary being the founders of ISIS ..."
"... Hillary, on the other hand, understands her way around political language and Washington rituals. Of course you do favors for wealthy donors. And if you want to do something incredibly damaging to the country, like enabling George W. Bush to make the worst foreign policy blunder in U.S. history, don't shout inflammatory and fabricated taunts from a microphone. ..."
"... You must walk up to the microphone calmly, as Hillary did on the Senate floor the day of the Iraq war vote, and accuse Saddam of giving "aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda," repeating the Bush administration's phony case for war. If you want to carry the GOP banner, your fabrications have to be more sneaky. ..."
"... "You must walk up to the microphone calmly, as Hillary did on the Senate floor the day of the Iraq war vote, and accuse Saddam of giving "aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda," repeating the Bush administration's phony case for war." ..."
"... Anyone who believes Bill Clinton didn't know exactly what was going on is just kidding themselves. One clue, for example. They moved the WMD 'intelligence" investigation to the DOD under Paul Wolfowitz. LOL! ..."
"... Thomas Frank, the author of "What's the Matter with Kansas?" and "Listen Liberal: Or What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?" echoes Ms. Dowd's sentiments. In a recent column Frank says that with Trump certain to lose, you can forget about a progressive Clinton. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/13/trump-clinton-elec... ..."
"... "America's two-party system itself has temporarily become a one-party system. And within that one party, the political process bears a striking resemblance to dynastic succession. Come November, Clinton will have won her great victory – not as a champion of working people's concerns, but as the greatest moderate of them all." ..."
"... We've also managed to select one of biggest dissemblers, enablers, war hawks, fungible flip-floppers, pay for play con artists, scandal mongerers candidates since Tricky Dicky. Congratulations America! We did it. As Alexis de Tocqueville said, "Wet get the government we deserve." ..."
"... The reaction by many to Ms Dowd's column clearly shows that the "save the world" "lesser evil" argument only works is one is willing to suspend belief on the demonstrated evil of Hillary Clinton. ..."
"... Clinton could well take us to war against Russia. In Syria, Clinton is spoiling to give Russia a punch in the nose, on the theory that Russia will back down and the US will have a free hand there. She advocates a a no-fly zone for Russian jets in Syria. The idea there is to create a confrontation, shoot down a couple of Russian jets and teach them a lesson. There is also the CIA and Pentagon "Plan B" for the Syrian negotiations. ..."
"... It's always wonderful to see when the truth comes out in the end: Hillary is the perfect Repulican candidate and this is also prove of the fact that on finance and economic issues Democrats and old mainstream Republicans have been in in the same pocket...even under Obama. ..."
"... One night after the election on the Carson show Goldwater quipped that he didn't know how unpopular a president he would have been until Johnson adopted his policies... ..."
"... All the things you say about Hillary are true. She is an establishment favorite. She did indeed vote to support Bush and his insane desire to invade Iraq. ..."
"... Did we all forget the millions who went for Bernie and his direct and aggressive confrontation of Hillary's Wall Street/corporate ties? That was a contest between what used to be the Dem party of the people and the corporate friendly Dem party of today. We understood then that Hillary represented the Right; why the surprise now? (The right pointing arrow on the "H" logo is so appropriate.) ..."
"... There are reasons Hillary is disliked and distrusted by nearly a majority of us. My reasons are she is of and for the oligarchs and deceitful enough to run as a populist. ..."
"... America tried to liberalize in the 1960's and the response was swift and violent as three of the greatest liberal lions and voices the country has ever known - JFK, MLK and RFK - were gunned down. ..."
"... While one can endlessly argue the specific details of those ghastly assassinations of America's liberal superstars, in my view, all three of those murders rest on the violent, nefarious right-wing shoulders and fumes of moneyed American 'conservatism' that couldn't stand to share the profits of their economic parasitism with society. ..."
"... I truly believe that Congressional Republicans in the House are already drafting articles of impeachment should Hillary become President. Dowd may claim that Republicans are in lock step with her, but don't be surprised when the talk of impeachment starts soon after Jan 20, 2017. ..."
"... We need a multi party system. With 2 parties dominating the politics, its like having a monopoly of liberalism or conservatism which just does not represent the width and depth of views our citizens resonate with. Having voted democrat all my life, to me Hillary does not represent my choice (Bernie does). ..."
"... This annoys me..."like enabling George W. Bush to make the worst foreign policy blunder in U.S. history" Maureen is talking about Hillary, but she might as well be talking about her own newspaper. Hillary got it wrong, but so did the New York Times editorial board. ..."
"... The Bush Administration hinted that the anti-war people were traitors and terrorist sympathizers and everybody got steamrolled. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/22/opinion/culture-war-with-b-2-s.html ..."
"... HRC couldn't have asked for a better opponent if she'd constructed him out of a six-foot pile of mildewed straw. By running against Trump, the whole Trump and nothing but the Trump, and openly courting neocon war criminals and "establishment" Republicans, she's outrageously giving CPR to what should have been a rotting corpse of a political party by now. ..."
"... By giving new life to the pathocrats who made Trump possible, Clinton is only making her own party weaker and more right-wing, only making it easier for down-ticket Republicans to slither their way back into power.... the better to triangulate with during the Clinton restoration. Grand Bargain, here we come. TPP, (just waiting for that fig leaf of meager aid for displaced American workers) here we come. Bombs away. ..."
"... She'll have to stop hoarding her campaign cash and share it with the down-ticket Democrats running against the same well-heeled GOPers she is now courting with such naked abandon. ..."
"... The Empress needs some new clothes to hide that inner Goldwater Girl. ..."
All these woebegone Republicans whining that they can't rally behind their flawed candidate is
crazy. The G.O.P. angst, the gnashing and wailing and searching for last-minute substitutes and exit
strategies, is getting old. They already have a 1-percenter who will be totally fine in the Oval
Office, someone they can trust to help Wall Street, boost the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, cuddle with
hedge funds, secure the trade deals beloved by corporate America, seek guidance from Henry Kissinger
and hawk it up - unleashing hell on Syria and heaven knows where else.
The Republicans have their candidate: It's Hillary. They can't go with Donald Trump. He's too
volatile and unhinged. The erstwhile Goldwater Girl and Goldman Sachs busker can be counted on to
do the normal political things, not the abnormal haywire things. Trump's propounding could drag us
into war, plunge us into a recession and shatter Washington into a thousand tiny bits.
Hillary will keep the establishment safe. Who is more of an establishment figure, after all?
Her husband was president, and he repealed Glass-Steagall, signed the Defense of Marriage Act and
got rid of those pesky welfare queens.
Pushing her Midwestern Methodist roots, taking advantage of primogeniture, Hillary often seems
more Republican than the Gotham bling king, who used to be a Democrat and donor to Democratic candidates
before he jumped the turnstile.
Hillary is a reliable creature of Wall Street. Her tax return showed the Clintons made $10.6
million last year, and like other superrich families, they incorporated with the Clinton Executive
Services Corporation (which was billed for the infamous server). Trump has started holding up goofy
charts at rallies showing Hillary has gotten $48,500,000 in contributions from hedge funders, compared
to his $19,000.
Unlike Trump, she hasn't been trashing leading Republicans. You know that her pals John McCain
and Lindsey Graham are secretly rooting for her. There is a cascade of prominent Republicans endorsing
Hillary, donating to Hillary, appearing in Hillary ads, talking up Hillary's charms.
Robert Kagan, a former Reagan State Department aide, adviser to the McCain and Mitt Romney
campaigns and Iraq war booster, headlined a Hillary fund-raiser this summer. Another neocon, James
Kirchick,
keened in The Daily Beast , "Hillary Clinton is the one person standing between America and the
abyss."
She has finally stirred up some emotion in women, even if it is just moderate suburban Republican
women palpitating to leave their own nominee, who has the retro air of a guy who just left the dim
recesses of a Playboy bunny club.
The Democratic nominee put out an ad featuring Trump-bashing Michael Hayden, an N.S.A. and
CIA chief under W. who was deemed "incongruent" by the Senate when he testified about torture
methods. And she earned an endorsement from John Negroponte, a Reagan hand linked to American-trained
death squads in Latin America.
Politico reports that the Clinton team sent out feelers to see if Kissinger, the Voldemort
of Vietnam, and Condi Rice, the conjurer of Saddam's apocalyptic mushroom cloud, would back Hillary.
Hillary has written that Kissinger is an "idealistic" friend whose counsel she valued as secretary
of state, drawing a rebuke from Bernie Sanders during the primaries: "I'm proud to say Henry Kissinger
is not my friend."
The Hillary team seems giddy over its windfall of Republicans and neocons running from the
Trump sharknado. But as
David Weigel wrote in The Washington Post, the specter of Kissinger, the man who advised Nixon
to prolong the Vietnam War to help with his re-election, fed a perception that "the Democratic nominee
has returned to her old, hawkish ways and is again taking progressives for granted."
And
Isaac Chotiner wrote in Slate, "The prospect of Kissinger having influence in a Clinton White
House is downright scary."
Hillary is a safer bet in many ways for conservatives. Trump likes to say he is flexible.
What if he returns to his liberal New York positions on gun control and abortion rights?
Trump is far too incendiary in his manner of speaking, throwing around dangerous and self-destructive
taunts about "Second Amendment people" taking out Hillary, or President Obama and Hillary being the
founders of ISIS. And he still blindly follows his ego, failing to understand the fundamentals
of a campaign. "I don't know that we need to get out the vote," he told Fox News Thursday. "I think
people that really wanna vote are gonna get out and they're gonna vote for Trump."
Hillary, on the other hand, understands her way around political language and Washington rituals.
Of course you do favors for wealthy donors. And if you want to do something incredibly damaging to
the country, like enabling George W. Bush to make the worst foreign policy blunder in U.S. history,
don't shout inflammatory and fabricated taunts from a microphone.
You must walk up to the microphone calmly, as Hillary did on the Senate floor the day of the
Iraq war vote, and accuse Saddam of giving "aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al
Qaeda," repeating the Bush administration's phony case for war. If you want to carry the GOP banner,
your fabrications have to be more sneaky.
As
Republican strategist Steve Schmidt noted on MSNBC, "the candidate in the race most like George
W. Bush and Dick Cheney from a foreign policy perspective is in fact Hillary Clinton, not the Republican
nominee."
And that's how Republicans prefer their crazy - not like Trump, but like Cheney.
JohnNJ, New jersey August 14, 2016
For me, this is her strongest point:
"You must walk up to the microphone calmly, as Hillary did on the Senate floor the day
of the Iraq war vote, and accuse Saddam of giving "aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists, including
Al Qaeda," repeating the Bush administration's phony case for war."
There are still people who believe her excuse that she only voted for authorization, blah,
blah, blah.
Anyone who believes Bill Clinton didn't know exactly what was going on is just kidding
themselves. One clue, for example. They moved the WMD 'intelligence" investigation to the DOD
under Paul Wolfowitz. LOL!
Red_Dog , Denver CO August 14, 2016
Thomas Frank, the author of "What's the Matter with Kansas?" and "Listen Liberal: Or What
Ever Happened to the Party of the People?" echoes Ms. Dowd's sentiments. In a recent column Frank
says that with Trump certain to lose, you can forget about a progressive Clinton.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/13/trump-clinton-elec...
"America's two-party system itself has temporarily become a one-party system. And within
that one party, the political process bears a striking resemblance to dynastic succession. Come
November, Clinton will have won her great victory – not as a champion of working people's concerns,
but as the greatest moderate of them all."
And great populist uprising of our times will be gone --- probably for many years.
FDR Liberal , Sparks, NV August 14, 2016
Spot on column Ms. Dowd.
As Americans we are to blame that these two major party candidates are the only viable ones
seeking the presidency. Yes, fellow citizens we are to blame because in the end we are the ones
that voted for them in various primaries and caucuses. And if you didn't attend a caucus or vote
in a primary, you are also part of problem.
In short, it is not the media's fault, nor is it the top .1%, 1% or 10% fault, nor your kids'
fault, nor your parents' fault, nor your neighbors' fault, etc.
It is our fault because we did this together. Yes, we managed y to select a narcissist, xenophobe,
anti-Muslim, racist, misogynist, and dare I say buffoon to the GOP ticket.
We've also managed to select one of biggest dissemblers, enablers, war hawks, fungible
flip-floppers, pay for play con artists, scandal mongerers candidates since Tricky Dicky. Congratulations
America! We did it. As Alexis de Tocqueville said, "Wet get the government we deserve."
Martin Brod, NYC August 14, 2016
The reaction by many to Ms Dowd's column clearly shows that the "save the world" "lesser
evil" argument only works is one is willing to suspend belief on the demonstrated evil of Hillary
Clinton.
The Green Party and Libertarian parties provide sane alternatives to the two most distrusted
candidates of the major parties. As debate participants they
would offer an alternative to evil at a time when the planets count-down clock is racing to mid-night.
pathenry, berkeley August 14, 2016
Clinton could well take us to war against Russia. In Syria, Clinton is spoiling to give
Russia a punch in the nose, on the theory that Russia will back down and the US will have a free
hand there. She advocates a a no-fly zone for Russian jets in Syria. The idea there is to create
a confrontation, shoot down a couple of Russian jets and teach them a lesson. There is also the
CIA and Pentagon "Plan B" for the Syrian negotiations.
If the negotiations fail, give stingers to our "vetted allies". Who will those stingers be
used against? Russia. At least the ones not smuggled to Brussels. And then there is the plan being
bandied about by our best and brightest to organize, arm and lead our "vetted allies" in attacks
on Russian bases in Syria. A Bay of Pigs in the desert. A dime to a dollar, Clinton is supportive
of these plans.
All of this is dangerous brinksmanship which is how you go to war.
Mike A. , East Providence, RI August 14, 2016
The second Pulitzer quality piece from the NYT op-ed columnists in less than a month (see Charles
Blow's "Incandescent With Rage" for the first).
heinrich zwahlen , brooklyn August 14, 2016
It's always wonderful to see when the truth comes out in the end: Hillary is the perfect
Repulican candidate and this is also prove of the fact that on finance and economic issues Democrats
and old mainstream Republicans have been in in the same pocket...even under Obama.
For real progressives it's useless to vote for her and high time to start a new party. Cultural
issues are not the main issues that pain America, it's all about the money stupid.
JohnD, New York August 14, 2016
... One night after the election on the Carson show Goldwater quipped that he didn't know
how unpopular a president he would have been until Johnson adopted his policies...
Lee Elliott , Rochester August 14, 2016
You've written the most depressing column I've read lately. All the things you say about
Hillary are true. She is an establishment favorite. She did indeed vote to support Bush and his
insane desire to invade Iraq. But it was that vote kept her from being president in 2008.
Perhaps that will convince her to keep the establishment a little more at arm's length. When there
is no other behind for them to kiss, then you can afford to be a little hard to get.
As for Trump, he is proving to be too much like Ross Perot. He looks great at first but begins
to fade when his underlying lunacy begins to bubble to the surface.
Speaking of Perot, I find it an interesting coincidence that Bill Clinton and now Hillary Clinton
will depend on the ravings of an apparent lunatic in order to get elected.
citizen vox, San Francisco August 14, 2016
Why the vitriol against Dowd? Did we all forget the millions who went for Bernie and his
direct and aggressive confrontation of Hillary's Wall Street/corporate ties? That was a contest
between what used to be the Dem party of the people and the corporate friendly Dem party of today.
We understood then that Hillary represented the Right; why the surprise now? (The right pointing
arrow on the "H" logo is so appropriate.)
Last week's article on how Hillary came to love money was horrifying; because Bill lost a Governor's
race, Hillary felt so insecure she called all her wealthy friends for donations. Huh?! Two Harvard
trained lawyers asking for financial help?! And never getting enough money to feel secure?! GIVE
ME A BREAK (to coin a phrase).
There are reasons Hillary is disliked and distrusted by nearly a majority of us. My reasons
are she is of and for the oligarchs and deceitful enough to run as a populist.
If readers bemoan anything, let it be that the populist movement of the Dem party was put down
by the Dem establishment. We have a choice between a crazy candidate of no particular persuasion
and a cold, calculating Republican. How discouraging.
Thanks, Maureen Dowd.
Chris, Louisville August 14, 2016
Maureen please don't ever give up on Hillary bashing. It needs to be done before someone accidentally
elects her as President. She is most like Angela Merkel of Germany. Take a look what's happening
there. That is enough never to vote for Hillary.
Susan e, AZ August 14, 2016
I recall the outrage I, a peace loving liberal who despised W and Cheney, felt while watching
the made for TV "shock and awe" invasion of Iraq. I recall how the"liberal Democrats" who supported
that disaster with a vote for the IRW could never quite bring themselves to admit their mistake
- and I realized that many, like Hillary, didn't feel it was a mistake. Not really. It was necessary
for their political careers.
For me, its not a vote for Hillary, its a vote for a candidate that sees killing innocent people
in Syria (or Libya, or Gaza, etc.) as the only way to be viewed as a serious candidate for CIC.
I'm old enough to remember another endless war, as the old Vietnam anti-war ballad went: "I ain't
gonna vote for war no more."
John, Switzerland August 14, 2016
Maureen Dowd is not being nasty, but rather accurate. It is nasty to support and start wars
throughout the ME. It is nasty to say (on mic) "We came, we saw, he died" referring to the gruesome
torture-murder of Qaddafi.
Will Hillary start a war against Syria? Yes or no? That is the the "six trillion dollar" question.
Socrates , is a trusted commenter Downtown Verona, NJ August 13, 2016
It's hard to a find a good liberal in these United States, not because there's anything wrong
with liberalism or progressivism, but because Americans have been taught, hypnotized and beaten
by a powerfully insidious and filthy rich right-wing to think that liberalism, progressivism and
socialism is a form of fatal cancer.
America tried to liberalize in the 1960's and the response was swift and violent as three
of the greatest liberal lions and voices the country has ever known - JFK, MLK and RFK - were
gunned down.
While one can endlessly argue the specific details of those ghastly assassinations of America's
liberal superstars, in my view, all three of those murders rest on the violent, nefarious right-wing
shoulders and fumes of moneyed American 'conservatism' that couldn't stand to share the profits
of their economic parasitism with society.
The end result is that political liberals are forced to triangulate for their survival in right-wing
America, and you wind up with Presidents like Bill Clinton and (soon) Hillary Clinton who know
how to survive in a pool of right-wing knives, assassins and psychopaths lurking everywhere representing
Grand Old Profit.
... ... ...
Dotconnector, New York August 14, 2016
The trickery deep within the dark art of Clintonism is triangulation. By breeding a nominal
Democratic donkey with a de facto Republican elephant, what you get is a corporatist chameleon.
There's precious little solace in knowing that this cynical political hybrid is only slightly
less risky than Trumpenstein.
And the fact that Henry Kissinger still has a seat at the table ought to chill the spine of
anyone who considers human lives -- those of U.S. service members and foreign noncombatants alike
-- to have greater value than pawns in a global chess game.
Bj, is a trusted commenter Washington,dc August 13, 2016
I truly believe that Congressional Republicans in the House are already drafting articles
of impeachment should Hillary become President. Dowd may claim that Republicans are in lock step
with her, but don't be surprised when the talk of impeachment starts soon after Jan 20, 2017.
They didn't succeed with Bill. And they were chomping at the bit to try to impeach Obama
over his use of executive orders and his decision not to defend an early same sex marriage case.
They are just waiting for inauguration to start this process all over again - another circus and
waste of taxpayer money.
petey tonei, Massachusetts August 14, 2016
Two party system is not enough for a country this big, with such a wide spectrum of political
beliefs. We need a multi party system. With 2 parties dominating the politics, its like having
a monopoly of liberalism or conservatism which just does not represent the width and depth of
views our citizens resonate with. Having voted democrat all my life, to me Hillary does not represent
my choice (Bernie does). Heard on NPR just today from on the ground reporters in Terre Haute,
Indiana, the bellwether of presidential elections, the 2 names that were most heard were Trump
and Bernie Sanders, not Hillary. Sadly, Bernie is not even the nominee but he truly represents
the guts, soul of mid America
Schrodinger, is a trusted commenter Northern California August 14, 2016
This annoys me..."like enabling George W. Bush to make the worst foreign policy blunder
in U.S. history" Maureen is talking about Hillary, but she might as well be talking about her
own newspaper. Hillary got it wrong, but so did the New York Times editorial board.
What about Ms Dowd herself? Of the four columns she wrote before the vote on October 11th,
2002, only two mentioned the war vote, and one of those was mostly about Hillary. Dowd said of
Hillary that, "Whatever doubts she may have privately about the war, she is not articulating her
angst as loudly as some of her Democratic colleagues. She knows that any woman who hopes to be
elected president cannot have love beads in her jewelry case."
In her column 'Culture war with B-2's', Dowd comes out as mildly anti-war. "Don't feel bad
if you have the uneasy feeling that you're being steamrolled", Dowd writes, "You are not alone."
Fourteen years later that column still looks good, and I link to it at the bottom. However, Dowd
could and should have done a lot more. I don't think that anybody who draws a paycheck from the
New York Times has a right to get on their high horse and lecture Hillary about her vote. They
ignored the antiwar protests just like they ignored Bernie Sanders' large crowds.
Karen Garcia , is a trusted commenter New Paltz, NY August 13, 2016
HRC couldn't have asked for a better opponent if she'd constructed him out of a six-foot
pile of mildewed straw. By running against Trump, the whole Trump and nothing but the Trump, and
openly courting neocon war criminals and "establishment" Republicans, she's outrageously giving
CPR to what should have been a rotting corpse of a political party by now.
By giving new life to the pathocrats who made Trump possible, Clinton is only making her
own party weaker and more right-wing, only making it easier for down-ticket Republicans to slither
their way back into power.... the better to triangulate with during the Clinton restoration. Grand
Bargain, here we come. TPP, (just waiting for that fig leaf of meager aid for displaced American
workers) here we come. Bombs away.
With three months to go before this grotesque circus ends, Trump is giving every indication
that he wants out, getting more reckless by the day. And that's a good thing, because with her
rise in the polls, Hillary will now have to do more on the stump than inform us she is not Trump.
She'll have to ditch the fear factor. She'll have to start sending emails and Tweets with something
other than "OMG! Did you hear what Trump just said?!?" on them to convince voters.
She'll have to stop hoarding her campaign cash and share it with the down-ticket Democrats
running against the same well-heeled GOPers she is now courting with such naked abandon.
The Empress needs some new clothes to hide that inner Goldwater Girl.
"... With polling data being quantized and plugged into sophisticated computer models allowing Clinton
to tailor her message for each region and for each venue. ..."
"... As I said before, this is likely something that is being fed to her by her no doubt well paid
consultants. ..."
"... Still, I have made an interesting observation that I wonder if you noticed. You presented two
charts, one with holding corporations accountable placed at the top, and the other placing decline in
manufacturing jobs at the top in the same position. ..."
"... They are the same network; point by point. I even compared them using paint and found them
to be a perfect match. The only difference is that one is negative and the other is positive. ..."
"... This completely misunderstand Clinton's approach to the Vulgar people of the United States,
which is: Insectionality, not intersectionality, that is the Vulgar People are treated as Insects. ..."
"... The only Intersection understood by Hilarity Clinton is the one between herself, money and
power. All else is irrelevant. ..."
"... Hillary is an intersectional feminist? ..."
"... As another untrained clown in intersectional feminism, I'm skeptical about Clinton, especially
reading Thomas Frank's description of the International Women's Day event at the Clinton Foundation
one year ago: ..."
"... Microlending is a perfect expression of Clintonism, since it brings together wealthy financial
interests with rhetoric that sounds outrageously idealistic. Microlending permits all manner of networking,
posturing, and profit taking among the lenders while doing nothing to change actual power relations-the
ultimate win-win." ..."
"... Wait a minute that tangle of buzz phrases connected helter-skelter by lines is a REAL post
from the Clinton campaign? Until I read the whole piece I thought it was well done satire. I guess The
Onion being bought out doesn't really matter much. In modern American politics satire now seems roughly
as difficult a task as exceeding the speed of light in a vacuum or measuring the position and velocity
of an electron simultaneously. ..."
DFA = Democracy for America. This was Howard Dean's organization and part of his 50 state strategies.
During non-campaign seasons, he sent campaign organizers touring the country giving short classes
on how to organize and manage a political campaign. They came to Wichita and it was something
to see, a lot of local Democratic office holders, some even in the State House had signed up.
One guy had held his house seat for 8 years and much of the information they were bringing was
completely new to him. Yes, a state level Democrat had won 4 election cycles without even knowing
the basics. This was the state of the Democratic Party back then – and is largely that way now.
Now I am going from memory here, but Clinton's "intersectional" was covered in these classes,
with at least the basic idea. The idea was to consider how different elements within your campaign
plank are connected. And where those connections are poor, to build up a rhetorical foundation
on how to address the contradictions. As I said, the idea is not to build connections between
different parts of the planks, but how to present separate planks to the voter as being relevant.
It's a good exercise, a way of organizing your issues and thinking how they all might fit together.
Now Clintion's hairball – good word by the way – likely takes it to the absurd degree.
With polling data being quantized and plugged into sophisticated computer models allowing Clinton
to tailor her message for each region and for each venue.
–KACHING- As I said before, this is likely something that is being fed to her by her no
doubt well paid consultants.
Still, I have made an interesting observation that I wonder if you noticed. You presented
two charts, one with holding corporations accountable placed at the top, and the other placing
decline in manufacturing jobs at the top in the same position.
They are the same network; point by point. I even compared them using paint and found them
to be a perfect match. The only difference is that one is negative and the other is positive.
This completely misunderstand Clinton's approach to the Vulgar people of the United States,
which is: Insectionality, not intersectionality, that is the Vulgar People are treated as Insects.
The only Intersection understood by Hilarity Clinton is the one between herself, money
and power. All else is irrelevant.
As another untrained clown in intersectional feminism, I'm skeptical about Clinton, especially
reading Thomas Frank's description of the International Women's Day event at the Clinton Foundation
one year ago:
"What this lineup suggested is that there is a kind of naturally occurring solidarity between
the millions of women at the bottom of the world's pyramid and the tiny handful of women at its
very top The mystic bond between high-achieving American professionals and the planet's most victimized
people is a recurring theme in [Hillary Clinton's] life and work What the spectacle had to offer
ordinary working American women was another story.
She enshrined a version of feminism in which liberation is, in part, a matter of taking out
loans from banks in order to become an entrepreneur the theology of microfinance Merely by providing
impoverished individuals with a tiny loan of fifty or a hundred dollars, it was thought, you could
put them on the road to entrepreneurial self-sufficiency, you could make entire countries prosper,
you could bring about economic development itself What was most attractive about microlending
was what it was not, what it made unnecessary: any sort of collective action by poor people coming
together in governments or unions The key to development was not doing something to limit the
grasp of Western banks, in other words; it was extending Western banking methods to encompass
every last individual on earth.
Microlending is a perfect expression of Clintonism, since it brings together wealthy financial
interests with rhetoric that sounds outrageously idealistic. Microlending permits all manner of
networking, posturing, and profit taking among the lenders while doing nothing to change actual
power relations-the ultimate win-win."
I'm too confused with all of this, but it sounds to me like a concept called "interlocking
systems of oppression" and your figure two seems to provide useful diagrammatic example.
The diagram offers no understanding of the intersectional dynamics of oppression, carefully
cropping out the oppressors - most of whom are Hillary backers - along with the oppressed, who
are all affected differently in their lived experiences by their particular relationship
to oppressive conditions.
Lumping these focus-tested ill conditions together with a rat's nest of undistinguished connections
misleadingly equates the interests of persons with their set of group memberships (Fascism is
Italian for bundle-ism) and sets the stage for those conditions to be traded off and weighed against
each other on net in the future. I believe this is the essence of what is called "triangulation".
Wait a minute that tangle of buzz phrases connected helter-skelter by lines is a REAL post
from the Clinton campaign? Until I read the whole piece I thought it was well done satire. I guess
The Onion being bought out doesn't really matter much. In modern American politics satire now
seems roughly as difficult a task as exceeding the speed of light in a vacuum or measuring the
position and velocity of an electron simultaneously.
I prefer /dev/random and three passes, if I have any intention of using the drive later. If
I were involved in anything seriously malfeasant where using the drive later were not a consideration,
I'd be following the
established procedures of the masters of the art. (NSA)
The Senate minority leader,
Harry Reid of Nevada, asked the
F.B.I. on Monday to investigate evidence suggesting that Russia may try to manipulate voting
results in November.
In a letter to the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey Jr., Mr. Reid wrote that the threat of Russian
interference "is more extensive than is widely known and may include the intent to falsify official
election results." Recent classified briefings from senior intelligence officials, Mr. Reid said
in an interview, have left him fearful that President Vladimir V. Putin's "goal is tampering with
this election."
News reports on Monday said the F.B.I. warned state election officials several weeks ago that
foreign hackers had exported voter registration data from computer systems in at least one state,
and had pierced the systems of a second one.
The bureau did not name the states, but
Yahoo News , which first reported the confidential F.B.I. warning, said they were Arizona and
Illinois. Matt Roberts, a spokesman for Arizona's secretary of state, said the F.B.I. had told state
officials that Russians were behind the Arizona attack.
After the F.B.I. warning, Arizona took its voter registration database offline from June 28 to
July 8 to allow for a forensic exam of its systems, Mr. Roberts said.
The F.B.I., in its notice to states, said the voter information had been "exfiltrated," which
means that it was shipped out of the state systems to another computer. But it does not mean that
the data itself was tampered with.
It is unclear whether the hackers intended to affect the election or pursued the data for other
purposes, like gaining personal identifying information about voters. The F.B.I. warning referred
to "targeting activity" against state boards of elections, but did not discuss the intent of the
hackers.
On August 5th, Michael Morell, a former acting Director of the CIA, pilloried GOP presidential
candidate Donald Trump, concluding that he was an "unwitting agent of Russia." Morell, who entitled
his New York Times op-ed "I Ran the CIA and now I'm endorsing Hillary Clinton," described the
process whereby Trump had been so corrupted. According to Morell, Putin, it seems, as a wily ex-career
intelligence officer, is "trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit
them. That is exactly what he did early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump's vulnerabilities
In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting
agent of the Russian Federation."
So who is guilty of putting the interests of a foreign government ahead of those of the United
States? I know there are advocates for any number of foreign states running around loose in Washington
but the friends of Israel in government and the media come immediately to mind largely because
there are so many of them, they are very much in-your-face and they are both extremely well-funded
and very successful. Now deceased former Congressman Tom Lantos and Senator Frank Lautenberg were,
respectively, often referred to as the congressman and senator from Israel. And there are many
more: Chuck Schumer, Chuck Grassley, Ben Cardin, Bob Menendez, Tom Cotton, Mark Kirk, Nita Lowey,
Ted Deutch, Brad Sherman, Ileana-Ros Lehtinen and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to name only a few
in the Congress. All are
major recipients
of Israel related PAC money and all are reliable defenders of Israel no matter
what Benjamin Netanyahu does and no matter how it effects the United States.
And then there are the Clintons.
One only has to go back to Bill's
one-sided pro-Israeli
diplomacy
at Camp David in 2000 to discern how the game was played. And then there was the
widely condemned January 2001
last minute pardon
of
Mossad agent Marc Rich, whose wife Denise was a major contributor to the Clintons, to realize
that there was always a deference to Israeli interests particularly when money was involved. The
only problem is that the Clintons, relying on Morell's formulation, might more reasonably be described
as witting agents of Israel rather than unwitting as they have certainly known what they have
been doing and have been actively supporting Israeli policies even when damaging to U.S. interests
since they first emerged from the primordial political swamps in Arkansas. If one were completely
cynical it might be possible to suggest that they understood from the beginning that pandering
to Israel and gaining access to Jewish power and money would be a major component in their rise
to political prominence. It certainly has worked out that way.
=====
So who is guilty of putting the interests of a foreign government ahead of those of the United
States? I know there are advocates for any number of foreign states running around loose in Washington
but the friends of Israel in government and the media come immediately to mind largely because
there are so many of them, they are very much in-your-face and they are both extremely well-funded
and very successful. Now deceased former Congressman Tom Lantos and Senator Frank Lautenberg were,
respectively, often referred to as the congressman and senator from Israel. And there are many
more: Chuck Schumer, Chuck Grassley, Ben Cardin, Bob Menendez, Tom Cotton, Mark Kirk, Nita Lowey,
Ted Deutch, Brad Sherman, Ileana-Ros Lehtinen and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to name only a few
in the Congress. All are
major recipients
of Israel related PAC money and all are reliable defenders of Israel no matter
what Benjamin Netanyahu does and no matter how it effects the United States.
And then there are the Clintons. One only has to go back to Bill's
one-sided pro-Israeli
diplomacy
at Camp David in 2000 to discern how the game was played. And then there was the
widely condemned January 2001
last minute pardon
of
Mossad agent Marc Rich, whose wife Denise was a major contributor to the Clintons, to realize
that there was always a deference to Israeli interests particularly when money was involved. The
only problem is that the Clintons, relying on Morell's formulation, might more reasonably be described
as witting agents of Israel rather than unwitting as they have certainly known what they have
been doing and have been actively supporting Israeli policies even when damaging to U.S. interests
since they first emerged from the primordial political swamps in Arkansas. If one were completely
cynical it might be possible to suggest that they understood from the beginning that pandering
to Israel and gaining access to Jewish power and money would be a major component in their rise
to political prominence. It certainly has worked out that way.
"... Clinton bigotry against working with inconvenient facts. Read applicable US code one for security, one for federal records, Clinton gets away with calling law that protect security as 'spin'. ..."
The burgeoning neolib dog whistle "alt-right" is short for "a$$hole who thinks Clinton should
go to jail for 1000 times the misconduct that would get that a$$hole 10 years hard time".
Neoliberals use the term "alt-right" as shorthand for those who don't drink the Clinton neocon
Kool-Aid.
The bigotry of warmongering neoliberals against anyone who disagrees. There isn't enough fascism
going around?
Clinton bigotry against working with inconvenient facts. Read applicable US code one for security,
one for federal records, Clinton gets away with calling law that protect security as 'spin'.
ilsm -> Paine... , -1
The 'soft bigotry of GLBT and war for fascist allies' types criticizing racists' morals.
ilsm -> anne... , -1
In the same category as Brooks and Friedman. I regard Dowd better!
Neocons will support Hillary breaking the ranks of Republican Party, as she is one of them:
"The only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton," Kagan warned. "The party cannot be saved, but
the country still can be."
Notable quotes:
"... Donald Trump calls the Iraq War a lie-fueled fiasco, admires Vladimir Putin and says he would be a "neutral" arbiter between Israel and the Palestinians. When it comes to America's global role he asks, "Why are we always at the forefront of everything?" ..."
"... Even more than his economic positions, Trump's foreign policy views challenge GOP orthodoxy in fundamental ways. But while parts of the party establishment are resigning themselves or even backing Trump's runaway train, one group is bitterly digging in against him: the hawkish foreign policy elites known as neoconservatives. ..."
"... In interviews with POLITICO, leading neocons - people who promoted the Iraq War, detest Putin and consider Israel's security non-negotiable - said Trump would be a disaster for U.S. foreign policy and vowed never to support him. So deep is their revulsion that several even say they could vote for Hillary Clinton over Trump in November. ..."
"... "Hillary is the lesser evil, by a large margin," said Eliot Cohen, a former top State Department official under George W. Bush and a strategic theorist who argues for a muscular U.S. role abroad. Trump's election would be "an unmitigated disaster for American foreign policy," Cohen said, adding that "he has already damaged it considerably." ..."
"... In a March 1 interview with Vox, Max Boot, a military historian at the Council on Foreign Relations who backed the Iraq War and often advocates a hawkish foreign policy, said that he, too, would vote for Clinton over Trump. "I'm literally losing sleep over Donald Trump," he said. "She would be vastly preferable to Trump." ..."
"... The letter was signed by dozens of Republican foreign policy experts, including Boot; Peter Feaver, a former senior national security aide in George W. Bush's White House; Robert Zoellick, a former deputy to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; and Dov Zakheim, a former Bush Pentagon official; and Kori Schake, a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and a former Bush State Department official. ..."
"... Kristol and Abrams have advised Florida senator Marco Rubio, the preferred choice of several neoconservatives, who admire his call for "moral clarity" in foreign policy and strong emphasis on human rights and democracy. ..."
"... Alarm brewing for months in GOP foreign policy circles burst into public view last week, when Robert Kagan, a key backer of the Iraq War and American global might, wrote in the Washington Post that a Trump nomination would force him to cross party lines. ..."
"... "The only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton," Kagan warned. "The party cannot be saved, but the country still can be." ..."
Donald Trump calls the Iraq War a lie-fueled fiasco, admires Vladimir Putin and says he would
be a "neutral" arbiter between Israel and the Palestinians. When it comes to America's global role
he asks, "Why are we always at the forefront of everything?"
Even more than his economic
positions, Trump's foreign policy views challenge GOP orthodoxy in fundamental ways. But while parts
of the party establishment are resigning themselves or even backing Trump's runaway train, one group
is bitterly digging in against him: the hawkish foreign policy elites known as neoconservatives.
In interviews with POLITICO, leading neocons - people who promoted the Iraq War, detest Putin
and consider Israel's security non-negotiable - said Trump would be a disaster for U.S. foreign policy
and vowed never to support him. So deep is their revulsion that several even say they could vote
for Hillary Clinton over Trump in November.
"Hillary is the lesser evil, by a large margin," said Eliot Cohen, a former top State Department
official under George W. Bush and a strategic theorist who argues for a muscular U.S. role abroad.
Trump's election would be "an unmitigated disaster for American foreign policy," Cohen said, adding
that "he has already damaged it considerably."
Cohen, an Iraq war backer who is often called a neoconservative but said he does not identify
himself that way, said he would "strongly prefer a third party candidate" to Trump, but added: "Probably
if absolutely no alternative: Hillary."
In a March 1
interview with Vox, Max Boot, a military historian at the Council on Foreign Relations who backed
the Iraq War and often advocates a hawkish foreign policy, said that he, too, would vote for Clinton
over Trump. "I'm literally losing sleep over Donald Trump," he said. "She would be vastly preferable
to Trump."
Cohen helped to organize an open letter signed by several dozen GOP foreign policy insiders -
many of whom are not considered neocons - that
was published Wednesday night by the military blog War on the Rocks. "[W]e are unable to support
a Party ticket with Mr. Trump at its head," the letter declared. It cited everything from Trump's
"admiration for foreign dictators" to his "inexcusable" support for "the expansive use of torture."
The letter was signed by dozens of Republican foreign policy experts, including Boot; Peter
Feaver, a former senior national security aide in George W. Bush's White House; Robert Zoellick,
a former deputy to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; and Dov Zakheim, a former Bush Pentagon official;
and Kori Schake, a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and a former Bush State Department
official.
Several other neocons said they find themselves in an impossible position, constitutionally incapable
of voting for Clinton but repelled by a Republican whose foreign policy views they consider somewhere
between nonexistent and dangerous - and disconnected from their views about American power and values
abroad.
"1972 was the first time I was old enough to vote for president, and I did not vote. Couldn't
vote for McGovern for foreign policy reasons, nor for Nixon because of Watergate," said Elliott Abrams,
a former national security council aide to George W. Bush who specializes in democracy and the Middle
East. "I may be in the same boat in 2016, unable to vote for Trump or Clinton."
Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol, something of a dean of Washington neoconservatives,
said he would seek out a third option before choosing between Trump and Clinton.
"If it's Trump-Clinton, I'd work with others to recruit a strong conservative third party candidate,
and do my best to help him win (which by the way would be more possible than people think, especially
when people - finally - realize Trump shouldn't be president and Hillary is indicted)," Kristol wrote
in an email.
Kristol and Abrams have advised Florida senator Marco Rubio, the preferred choice of several
neoconservatives, who admire his call for "moral clarity" in foreign policy and strong emphasis on
human rights and democracy.
Alarm brewing for months in GOP foreign policy circles burst into public view last week, when
Robert Kagan, a key backer of the Iraq War and American global might,
wrote in the Washington Post that a Trump nomination would force him to cross party lines.
"The only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton," Kagan warned. "The party cannot be
saved, but the country still can be."
In an interview, Kagan said his opposition to Trump "has nothing to do with foreign policy."
"... russia sees this bs crap about 'moderate' for what it is... just another shell game to play hide and seek, switch flags, etc, etc... until the 'moderate' opposition drop their military arms, it ain't 'moderate'... would 'moderate' opposition to the usa leadership be allowed to use weapons? that's the answer to that bs... ..."
OT GENEVA - The United States and Russia say they have resolved a number of issues standing in the
way of restoring a nationwide truce to Syria and opening up aid deliveries, but were unable once
again to forge a comprehensive agreement on stepping up cooperation to end the brutal war that
has killed hundreds of thousands.
After meeting off-and-on for nearly 10 hours in Geneva on Friday, U.S. Secretary of State John
Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov could point to only incremental progress in filling
in details of a broad understanding to boost joint efforts that was reached last month in Moscow.
Their failure to reach an overall deal highlighted the increasingly complex situation on the
ground in Syria - including new Russian-backed Syrian government attacks on opposition forces,
the intermingling of some of those opposition forces with an al-Qaida affiliate not covered by
the truce and the surrender of a rebel-held suburb of Damascus - as well as deep divisions and
mistrust dividing Washington and Moscow.
The complexities have also grown with the increasing internationalization of what has largely
become a proxy war between regional and world powers, highlighted by a move by Turkish troops
across the Syrian border against Islamic State fighters this week.
Kerry said he and Lavrov had agreed on the "vast majority" of technical discussions on steps
to reinstate a cease-fire and improve humanitarian access. But critical sticking points remain
unresolved and experts will remain in Geneva with an eye toward finalizing those in the coming
days, he said. ``` Lavrov echoed that, saying "we still need to finalize a few issues" and pointed to the need to
separate fighters from the al-Nusra Front, which has ties to al-Qaida, from U.S.-backed fighters
who hold parts of northwest Syria.
"We have continued our efforts to reduce the areas where we lack understanding and trust, which
is an achievement," Lavrov said. "The mutual trust is growing with every meeting."
Yet, it was clear that neither side believes an overall agreement is imminent or even achievable
after numerous previous disappointments shattered a brief period of relative calm earlier this
year.
The inability to wrest an agreement between Russia and the U.S. - as the major sponsors of
the opposing sides in the stalled Syria peace talks - all but spells another missed deadline for
the U.N. Syria envoy to get the Syrian government and "moderate" opposition back to the table.
``` In a nod to previous failed attempts to resurrect the cessation of hostilities, Kerry stressed
the importance of keeping the details secret. ``` And, underscoring deep differences over developments on the ground, Kerry noted that Russia disputes
the U.S. "narrative" of recent attacks on heavily populated areas being conducted by Syrian forces,
Russia itself and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia. Russia maintains the attacks it has been
involved in have targeted legitimate terrorist targets, while the U.S. says they have hit moderate
opposition forces. ~~~ At the same time, the Obama administration is not of one mind regarding the Russians. The Pentagon
has publicly complained about getting drawn into greater cooperation with Russia even though it
has been forced recently to expand communication with Moscow. Last week, the U.S. had to call
for Russian help when Syrian warplanes struck an area not far from where U.S. troops were operating.
U.S. officials say it is imperative that Russia use its influence with Syrian President Bashar
Assad to halt all attacks on moderate opposition forces, open humanitarian aid corridors, and
concentrate any offensive action on the Islamic State group and other extremists not covered by
what has become a largely ignored truce.
For their part, U.S. officials say they are willing to press rebels groups they support harder
on separating themselves from the Islamic State and al-Nusra, which despite a recent name change
is still viewed as al-Qaida's affiliate in Syria.
Those goals are not new, but recent developments have made achieving them even more urgent
and important, according to U.S. officials. Recent developments include military operations around
the city of Aleppo, the entry of Turkey into the ground war, Turkish hostility toward U.S.-backed
Kurdish rebel groups and the presence of American military advisers in widening conflict zones.
Meanwhile, in a blow to the opposition, rebel forces and civilians in the besieged Damascus
suburb of Daraya were to be evacuated on Friday after agreeing to surrender the town late Thursday
after four years of grueling bombardment and a crippling siege that left the sprawling area in
ruins.
The surrender of Daraya, which became an early symbol of the nascent uprising against Assad,
marks a success for his government, removing a persistent threat only a few miles from his seat
of power.
Posted by: okie farmer | Aug 27, 2016 8:23:27 AM | 80
Re: Geneva negotiations...
Love the goto clause:
"In a nod to previous failed attempts to resurrect the cessation of hostilities, Kerry stressed
the importance of keeping the details secret."
Yeah, keeping the details secret so that next time the Yankees backstab Russia, observers won't
immediately realise that they were, in fact, just shooting themselves in the foot. Again.
russia sees this bs crap about 'moderate' for what it is... just another shell game to play
hide and seek, switch flags, etc, etc... until the 'moderate' opposition drop their military arms,
it ain't 'moderate'... would 'moderate' opposition to the usa leadership be allowed to use weapons?
that's the answer to that bs...
as for turkey, clearly the apk has a 'get rid of the kurds' agenda.. works well in their alliance
with isis up to a point.. as for turkish/usa alliance and a no fly zone - if russia goes along
with this, they better get a hell of a trade off out of it.. i can't see it, although i see the
usa continuing on in their support of saudi arabia etc, using their mercenary isis army and saudi
arabia to continue to funnel arms sales and weaponry... it is what they do best, bullshite artists
that they are...
Wait a minute! They ID'd the hacker and it's a business in Israel? And it forced Apple to an
emergency software upgrade. But I thought all the evil hackers were Russians working for the government.
"... A letter from Clintons' top advisor Sidney Blumenthal to Hillary Clinton in 2011, proves that the West was losing control of the situation in Libya, very fast, already since 2011. Dangerous weapons were going to wrong hands through the black market. ..."
"... (Source Comment: According to very sensitive sources, the Libyan rebels are concerned that AQIM may also obtain SPIGOTT wire-guided anti-tank missiles and an unspecified number of Russian anti-tank mines made of plastic and undetectable by anti-mine equipment. This equipment again was coming through Niger and Mali, and was intended for the rebels in Libya. They note that AQIM is very strong in this region of Northwest Africa.) ..."
"... Yet, despite the absolute mess, the Western vultures are racing above the Libyan corpse to take as much as they can. ..."
"... Their primary goal was probably to overthrow the Chinese economic influence and prevent Russia to expand its sphere of influence. Apparently, preventing the destruction of a whole country is not a top priority issue for them. ..."
On March 16, 2016 WikiLeaks launched a searchable archive for 30,322 emails & email attachments
sent to and from Hillary Clinton's private email server while she was Secretary of State. The 50,547
pages of documents span from 30 June 2010 to 12 August 2014. 7,570 of the documents were sent by
Hillary Clinton.
The emails were made available in the form of thousands of PDFs by the US State Department as
a result of a Freedom of Information Act request. The final PDFs were made available on February
29, 2016.
A letter from
Clintons' top advisor Sidney Blumenthal to Hillary Clinton in 2011, proves that the West was
losing control of the situation in Libya, very fast, already since 2011. Dangerous weapons were going
to wrong hands through the black market.
The Western clowns have failed, one more time, to bring stability and led another country to absolute
chaos and destruction. Waves of desperate people are now trying to reach European shores to save
themselves from the hell in Libya, as it happens in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere.
Key parts:
During the early morning of May 2, 2011 sources with access to the leadership of the Libyan
rebellion's ruling Transitional National Council (TNC) stated in confidence that they are concerned
that the death of al Qa'ida leader Osama Bin Laden will inspire al Qa'ida in the Islamic Maghreb
(AQIM) to use weapons they have obtained, which were originally intended for the rebels in Libya,
to retaliate against the United States and its allies for this attack in Pakistan. These individuals
fear that the use of the weapons in this manner will complicate the TNC's relationship with NATO
and the United States, whose support is vital to them in their struggle with the forces of Muammar
al Qaddafi.
These individuals note that the TNC officials are reacting to reports received during the
week of April 25 from their own sources of information, the French General Directorate for External
Security (DGSE), and British external intelligence service (MI-6), stating that AQIM has acquired
about 10 SAM 7- Grail/Streela man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS or MPADS) from illegal
weapons markets in Western Niger and Northern Mali. These weapons were originally intended for
sale to the rebel forces in Libya, but AQIM operatives were able to meet secretly with these arms
dealers and purchase the equipment. The acquisition of these sophisticated weapons creates a serious
threat to air traffic in Southern Morocco, Algeria, Northern Mali, Western Niger, and Eastern
Mauritania.
(Source Comment: According to very sensitive sources, the Libyan rebels are concerned
that AQIM may also obtain SPIGOTT wire-guided anti-tank missiles and an unspecified number of
Russian anti-tank mines made of plastic and undetectable by anti-mine equipment. This equipment
again was coming through Niger and Mali, and was intended for the rebels in Libya. They note that
AQIM is very strong in this region of Northwest Africa.)
... Libyan rebel commanders are also concerned that the death of Bin Laden comes at a time
when sensitive information indicates that the leaders of AQIM are planning to launch attacks across
North Africa and Europe in an effort to reassert their relevance during the ongoing upheavals
in Libya, as well as the rest of North Africa and the Middle East. They believe the first step
in this campaign was the April 30 bombing of a café in Marrakesh, Morocco that is frequented by
Western tourists.
Their primary goal was probably to overthrow the Chinese economic influence and prevent Russia
to expand its sphere of influence. Apparently, preventing the destruction of a whole country is not
a top priority issue for them.
Hillary election means new wars and death of the US servicemen/servicewomen. So Khan gambit is
much more dangerous that it looks as it implicitly promoted militarism and endless "permanent war
for permanent peace".
Notable quotes:
"... Information warfare uses disinformation and propaganda to condition a population to hate a foreign nation or population with the intent to foment a war, which is the routine "business" of the best known U.S. think tanks. ..."
"... There are two levels to this information war. The first level is by the primary provocateur, such as the Rand Corporation, the American Enterprise Institute and the smaller war instigators found wherever a Kagan family member lurks. They use psychological "suggestiveness" to create a false narrative of danger from some foreign entity with the objective being to create paranoia within the U.S. population that it is under imminent threat of attack or takeover. ..."
"... Once that fear and paranoia is instilled in much of the population, it can then be manipulated to foment a readiness or eagerness for war, in the manner that Joseph Goebbels understood well. ..."
"... Nevertheless, showing the success that our primary war provocateurs have had in fomenting hostility and possibly war is that less militaristic and bellicose Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), ostensibly working for "peace," have adopted this false propaganda theme uncritically. ..."
"... The Carnegie Moscow Center Foundation, which includes Russians on its staff, is a prime example. Lately, it has routinely echoed the more provocative and facially false accusations made against Russia by the outright militaristic and war instigating U.S. think tanks. An example is in a recent article of Carnegie, entitled: " Russia and NATO Must Communicate Better. " ..."
"... So fanatics like the U.S. Generals whom we've seen at the recent political conventions and even worse, General Breedlove, are encouraged to be ever more threatening to the world's populations. ..."
"... Recognizing that must then be coupled with recognition of a U.S. law passed in 2012 providing for military detention of journalists and social activists as the Justice Department conceded in Hedges v. Obama. Add to that what the ACLU recently compelled the U.S. government to reveal in the "Presidential Policy Guidance" and it is plain to see which nation has become most "authoritarian, nationalistic, and assertive." It is the United States. ..."
"... As this was when the Politburo was allegedly at its height in subverting and subjugating foreign countries as foreign policy, it should be exactly on point in describing current U.S. foreign policy. ..."
"... That U.S. think tanks, such as Rand and the American Enterprise Institute, put so much effort into promoting war should not come as a surprise when it is considered their funding is provided by the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) which President Eisenhower warned us about. ..."
U.S. "think tanks" rile up the American public against an ever-shifting roster of foreign "enemies"
to justify wars which line the pockets of military contractors who kick back some profits to the
"think tanks," explains retired JAG Major Todd E. Pierce.
The New York Times took notice recently of the role that so-called "think tanks" play in corrupting
U.S. government policy. Their review of think tanks "identified dozens of examples of scholars
conducting research at think tanks while corporations were paying them to help shape government policy."
Unfortunately, and perhaps predictably, while the Times investigation demonstrates well that the
U.S. is even more corrupt – albeit the corruption is better disguised – than the many foreign countries
which we routinely accuse of corruption, the Times failed to identify the most egregious form of
corruption in our system. That is, those think tanks are constantly engaged in the sort of activities
which the Defense Department identifies as "Information War" when conducted by foreign countries
that are designated by the U.S. as an enemy at any given moment.
Information warfare uses disinformation and propaganda to condition a population to hate a foreign
nation or population with the intent to foment a war, which is the routine "business" of the best
known U.S. think tanks.
There are two levels to this information war. The first level is by the primary provocateur, such
as the Rand Corporation, the American Enterprise Institute and the smaller war instigators found
wherever a Kagan family member lurks. They use psychological "suggestiveness" to create a false
narrative of danger from some foreign entity with the objective being to create paranoia within the
U.S. population that it is under imminent threat of attack or takeover.
Once that fear and paranoia is instilled in much of the population, it can then be manipulated
to foment a readiness or eagerness for war, in the manner that Joseph Goebbels understood well.
The measure of success from such a disinformation and propaganda effort can be seen when the narrative
is adopted by secondary communicators who are perhaps the most important target audience. That is
because they are "key communicators" in PsyOp terms, who in turn become provocateurs in propagating
the false narrative even more broadly and to its own audiences, and becoming "combat multipliers"
in military terms.
It is readily apparent now that Russia has taken its place as the primary target within U.S. sights.
One doesn't have to see the U.S. military buildup on Russia's borders to understand that but only
see the propaganda themes of our "think tanks."
The Role of Rand
A prime example of an act of waging information war to incite actual military attack is the Rand
Corporation, which, incidentally, published a guide to information war and the need to condition
the U.S. population for war back in the 1990s.
A
scene from "Dr. Strangelove," in which the bomber pilot (played by actor Slim Pickens) rides a
nuclear bomb to its target in the Soviet Union.
Rand was founded by, among others, the war enthusiast, Air Force General Curtis LeMay, who was
the model for the character of Gen. Buck Turgidson in the movie "Dr. Strangelove." LeMay once stated
that he would not be afraid to start a nuclear war with Russia and that spirit would seem to be alive
and well at Rand today as they project on to Vladimir Putin our own eagerness for inciting a war.
The particular act of information warfare by Rand is shown in a recent Rand article: "How to
Counter Putin's Subversive War on the West." The title suggests by its presupposition that Putin
is acting in the offensive form of war rather than the defensive form of war. But it is plain to
see he is in the defensive form of war when one looks at the numerous provocations and acts of aggression
carried out by American officials, such as Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and General
Philip Breedlove, and the U.S. and NATO military buildup on Russia's borders.
Within this Rand article however can be found no better example of psychological projection than
this propagandistic pablum that too many commentators, some witless, some not, will predictably repeat:
"Moscow's provocative active measures cause foreign investors and international lenders to see
higher risks in doing business with Russia. Iran is learning a similar, painful lesson as it persists
with harsh anti-Western policies even as nuclear-related sanctions fade. Russia will decide its own
priorities. But it should not be surprised if disregard for others' interests diminishes the international
regard it seeks as an influential great power."
In fact, an objective, dispassionate observation of U.S./Russian policies would show it has been
the U.S. carrying out these "provocative active measures" as the instigator, not Russia.
Nevertheless, showing the success that our primary war provocateurs have had in fomenting hostility
and possibly war is that less militaristic and bellicose Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), ostensibly
working for "peace," have adopted this false propaganda theme uncritically.
The Carnegie Moscow Center Foundation, which includes Russians on its staff, is a prime example.
Lately, it has routinely echoed the more provocative and facially false accusations made against
Russia by the outright militaristic and war instigating U.S. think tanks. An example is in a recent
article of Carnegie, entitled: "Russia and NATO Must Communicate Better."
It begins: "The risk of outright conflict in Europe is higher than it has been for years and the
confrontation between Russia and the West shows no sign of ending. To prevent misunderstandings and
dangerous incidents, the two sides must improve their methods of communication."
Unfortunately, that is now true. But the article's author suggests throughout that each party,
Russia and the U.S./NATO, had an equal hand in the deterioration of relations. He wrote: "The West
needs to acknowledge that the standoff with Russia is not merely the result of Russia turning authoritarian,
nationalistic, and assertive," as if Western officials don't already know that that accusation was
only a propaganda theme for their own populations to cover up the West's aggressiveness.
Blaming Russia
So Americans, such as myself, must acknowledge and confront that the standoff with Russia is not
only not "merely the result of Russia turning authoritarian, nationalistic, and assertive,"
but it is rather, that the U.S. is "turning authoritarian, nationalistic," and even more "assertive,"
i.e., aggressive, toward the world.
Suz Tzu wrote that a "sovereign" must know oneself and the enemy. In the case of the U.S. sovereign,
the people and their elected, so-called representatives, there is probably no "sovereign" in human
history more lacking in self-awareness of their own nation's behavior toward other nations.
So fanatics like the U.S. Generals whom we've seen at the recent political conventions and even
worse, General Breedlove, are encouraged to be ever more threatening to the world's populations.
When that then generates a response from some nation with a tin-pot military relative to our own,
with ours paid for by the privileged financial position we've put ourselves into post-WWII, our politicians
urgently call for even more military spending from the American people to support even more aggression,
all in the guise of "national defense."
Recognizing that must then be coupled with recognition of a U.S. law passed in 2012 providing
for military detention of journalists and social activists as the Justice Department conceded in
Hedges v. Obama. Add to that what the ACLU recently compelled the U.S. government to reveal in the
"Presidential Policy Guidance" and it is plain to see which nation has become most "authoritarian,
nationalistic, and assertive." It is the United States.
The Presidential Policy Guidance "establishes the standard operating procedures for when the United
States takes direct action, which refers to lethal and non-lethal uses of force, including capture
operations against terrorist targets outside the United States and areas of active hostilities."
What other nation, besides Israel probably, has a governmental "Regulation" providing for assassinations
outside "areas of active hostilities?"
It should readily be evident that it is the U.S. now carrying out the vast majority of provocative
active measures and has the disregard for others complained of here. At least for the moment, however,
the U.S. can still hide much of its aggression using the vast financial resources provided by the
American people to the Defense Department to produce sophisticated propaganda and to bribe foreign
officials with foreign aid to look the other way from U.S. provocations.
It is ironic that today, one can learn more about the U.S. military and foreign policy from the
Rand Corporation only by reading at least one of its historical documents, "The Operational Code
of the Politburo." This is described as "part of a major effort at RAND to provide insight into
the political leadership and foreign policy in the Soviet Union and other communist states; the development
of Soviet military strategy and doctrine."
As this was when the Politburo was allegedly at its height in subverting and subjugating foreign
countries as foreign policy, it should be exactly on point in describing current U.S. foreign policy.
That U.S. think tanks, such as Rand and the American Enterprise Institute, put so much effort
into promoting war should not come as a surprise when it is considered their funding is provided
by the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) which President Eisenhower warned us about. That this U.S.
MIC would turn against its own people, the American public, by waging perpetual information war against
this domestic target just to enrich their investors, might have been even more than Eisenhower could
imagine however.
Todd E. Pierce retired as a Major in the US Army Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps in
November 2012. His most recent assignment was defense counsel in the Office of Chief Defense Counsel,
Office of Military Commissions. [This article first appeared at
http://original.antiwar.com/Todd_Pierce/2016/08/14/inciting-wars-american-way/]
"... an article loaded with innuendo has appeared on the front page of a major U.S. newspaper, located in Washington, DC, stating that Russia is engaged in widespread subversion in Europe and is trying to do the same on behalf of Donald Trump in the United States. But the evidence presented in the story does not support what is being suggested, and spreading tales about foreign-government misbehavior can have unintended consequences. It is particularly shortsighted and even dangerous in this case, as a stable relationship with a nuclear-armed and militarily very capable Moscow should rightly be regarded as critical. ..."
"... It is almost as if some journalists believe that deliberately damaging relations with Russia is a price worth paying to embarrass and defeat Trump. If that is so, they are delusional. ..."
But there is a certain danger inherent in the media's slanting its coverage to such an extent
as to be making the news rather than just reporting it. And when it comes to Russia, the way the
stories are reported becomes critically important, as there is a real risk that
media hostility toward Putin, even if deployed as a way to get at Trump, could produce a conflict
no one actually wants-just as the Hearst and Pulitzer newspapers' yellow journalism,
rife with "melodrama,
romance, and hyperbole," more or less brought about the Spanish-American War.
... ... ...
So an article loaded with innuendo has appeared on the front page of a major U.S. newspaper, located
in Washington, DC, stating that Russia is engaged in widespread subversion in Europe and is trying
to do the same on behalf of Donald Trump in the United States. But the evidence presented in the
story does not support what is being suggested, and spreading tales about foreign-government misbehavior
can have unintended consequences. It is particularly shortsighted and even dangerous in this case,
as a stable relationship with a nuclear-armed and militarily very capable Moscow should rightly be
regarded as critical.
It is almost as if some journalists believe that deliberately damaging relations with Russia is
a price worth paying to embarrass and defeat Trump. If that is so, they are delusional.
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National
Interest.
"... And Mankiw was the economic adviser to Mitt Romney, the elitist Nazi who said 47% of the American people were his enemies and who was in favour of economic policies that would stripmine the country to put all its wealth in the offshore bank accounts of the kleptocrats. ..."
"... Which btw makes you wonder how anyone can call Mankiw an "economist". The guy's a Republican buttboy and that's all he is. ..."
"... Mankiw didn't enable the Republicans alone. Every two-bit intro macro prof who teaches from Mankiw has aided him. ..."
"... Real Time whatever at wsj are looking for reasons to keep the GOPster/free trade type progress going! A reason to oppose Trump and vote for Hillary? ..."
"... Trump is a very controversial figure, but he can be viewed as a disruptive politician and might put some pressure on neoliberal, and especially neocons, before they coopt him. Think of him as a proponent of Brexit II. Making the elections essentially a referendum on neoliberal globalization. ..."
"who has broken with many of the GOP's traditional positions on economic policy"
Not seeing much to like in "the GOP's traditional positions" where does this leave me? The
truth is all 45 surviving former members of the CEA can be wrong without making Trump right.
Indeed, see how far the US has "progressed" with these guys' advising since Nixon!
Decision Overload
When the deeply established insider "advisers" are against him, you can bet that he is an angry
outsider same as the rest of us. Look!
The most inefficient thing in our taxation system is the taxing of poor folks. Do you recognize
what that accomplishes? Poor folk taxation takes money away from the poor person's landlord, his
power company, his telephone company and more much more -- just slows down the economy plus administrative
overhead that is the cost of slamming on the brakes.
The Donald has proposed a $25,000 standard deduction which will protect the low-rollers who
have no deductions from tax-shelters. $50,000 for married couples! What a savings! What a relief
from the churning that has evolved from smoke and mirror politics.
"Harvard University economist Gregory Mankiw, who chaired the council under George W. Bush and
has been mentioned as a possible future Fed chairman, said recently on his blog that he would
not support Mr. Trump.
"I have Republican friends who think that things couldn't be worse than doubling down on Obama
policies under Hillary Clinton. And, like them, I am no fan of the left's agenda of large government
and high taxes," Mr. Mankiw wrote. "But they are wrong: Things could be worse. And I fear they
would be under Mr. Trump.""
Mankiw and Krugman mini-me Pro Growth Liberal agree on something.
And Mankiw was the economic adviser to Mitt Romney, the elitist Nazi who said 47% of the American
people were his enemies and who was in favour of economic policies that would stripmine the country
to put all its wealth in the offshore bank accounts of the kleptocrats.
Which btw makes you wonder how anyone can call Mankiw an "economist". The guy's a Republican
buttboy and that's all he is.
Mankiw didn't enable the Republicans alone. Every two-bit intro macro prof who teaches from
Mankiw has aided him.
I laugh when I imagine undergrad econ ten years from now: the textbooks will be full of Murray
Rothbard and Ayn Rand, and undergrad sessional lecturers will be drowning in cognitive dissonance
as they try to remain straight-faced while lecturing on the benefits of the gold standard and
eliminating the Federal Reserve.
pgl :
Stiglitz supports Clinton over Trump. No surprise but this is:
"I have known personally every Republican president since Richard Nixon," said Harvard University
economist Martin Feldstein, who chaired the council under President Ronald Reagan. "They all
showed a real understanding of economics and international affairs".
OK - Reagan did get a degree in economics but Krugman - who worked for Feldstein a the CEA
- tells a different story about this White House when it comes to macroeconomics, the role of
monetary policy, and in particular what was happening with the international aspects of our economy
during Reagan's first term. Volcker - once he was done with his damaging tight monetary policy
- tried to make a deal where he would lower interest rates in exchange for a reversal of that
1981 tax cut. The Reagan White House had no clue what the FED chair was even proposing even though
it would have been a very good idea.
ilsm :
Real Time whatever at wsj are looking for reasons to keep the GOPster/free trade type progress
going! A reason to oppose Trump and vote for Hillary?
Dowd is right! The best thuglican is a democrat.
likbez :
Hillary Clinton is dyed-in-wool neoliberal. So all she can do is to kick the can down the road.
All her elections promises are not worth the cost of the electrical energy that is used to depict
them on our screens.
Trump is a very controversial figure, but he can be viewed as a disruptive politician and
might put some pressure on neoliberal, and especially neocons, before they coopt him. Think of
him as a proponent of Brexit II. Making the elections essentially a referendum on neoliberal globalization.
If he wins, a lot of Washington neocon parasites might lose jobs (the cash for the neocons
comes mostly from defense contractors), that's why they crossed the party lines and that's why
neoliberal propaganda campaign against him is so vicious. Khan gambit was a nasty attempt to speedboat
him. It failed.
While Hillary gets a free pass from neoliberal press (ABC, CBS and NBC). Neoliberal presstitutes
(like George Stephanopoulos ) are especially vicious, behave like rabid dogs. Just listen to his
interview of Trump about Khan gambit at Democratic convention.
There is another view on Trump that deserves attention:
=== quote ===
Lupita 08.04.16 at 4:23 am 167
I think Trump is afraid the imperial global order presided by the US is about to crash
and thinks he will be able to steer the country into a soft landing by accepting that other
world powers have interests, by disengaging from costly and humiliating military interventions,
by re-negotiating trade deals, and by stopping the mass immigration of poor people. Plus
a few well-placed bombs .
Much has been written about the internet revolution, about the impact of people having
access to much more information than before. The elite does not recognize this and is still
organizing political and media campaigns as if it were 1990, relying on elder statesmen
like Blair, Bush, Mitterrand, Clinton, and Obama to influence public opinion. They are failing
miserably, to the point of being counterproductive.
I don't think something as parochial as racism is sustaining Trump, but rather the fear
of the loss of empire by a population with several orders of magnitude more information
and communication than in 2008, even 2012.
=== end of quote ===
But it is the deep state that dictates the course of the US, both in foreign policy and domestically,
probably from 1963, so the president now is more of a ceremonial figure that adds legitimacy to
the actual rule of deep state.
In any case discussion Hillary vs. Trump and questions of economics (neoliberalism vs. some
retrenchment in the direction of the New Deal) we should not miss the key, defining this election
fact that Hillary is a war criminal (crimes against peace are war crimes). See
http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/nuremberg-trials
From this point of view voting for Hillary is highly undesirable as this is an implicit cooperation
with the war criminal. That does not mean that people should vote for Trump. Who has his own set
of warts.
It has been suggested the appropriators owned by the war profiteers won't allocate money to fuel
the transports that take America's Soldiers and Marines home.
The lesser evil killed no one with a vote believing in fake WMD's. The lesser evil is not experienced
in keeping the neocons happy.
The lesser evil may decide body bags forever is not strategy.
Trump is the lesser evil.
Imagine what happens if the commander in chief says: stand down and steam for Pearl Harbor,
San Diego and Alameda.
What would all those US retirees do if the commander in chief shuttered those brigades in Germany?
If the crooked DNC cared about families of US' slain.....
The Khan con angered 5990 Gold Star families who are not Muslim and whose star are the result
of Hillary voting for AUMF righteously and acting out since 2003.
As well as veterans!
Gold star families why not pick 1/5999 rather than 1/14 Muslims?
The latest ad from Hillary Clinton's campaign suggests that, if elected,
Donald Trump might launch nuclear weapons because he lacks the experience and
temperament to be president.
"In times of crisis, America depends
on steady leadership, clear thinking, and calm judgement," the narrator says.
"Because all it takes is one wrong move."
... ... ...
The strategy from the Clinton campaign is familiar. During the 2008 Democratic
primary fight with President Obama, Clinton released an ad questioning whether
the young senator would have the experience necessary to keep the country safe
when the
phone rang at 3 a.m.
"... links to Russia were one of the most consistent messages of the 'Remain' campaign's 'Project Fear' strategy to keep Britain in the European Union. Even the Prime Minister at the time, David Cameron, invoked the threat of Russia to try and convince Britons to stay in. ..."
"... The Clinton campaign's briefings on how Donald Trump is " Helping Putin Consolidate Control of Ukraine ", and how Russia is " meddling in U.S. election " (there's that word again) are Project Fear 101. The journalists willfully writing up these stories are ignoring critical points; such as how Secretary of State Clinton's connections with the Kremlin and Russian oligarchs helped Russia buy up U.S. uranium interests . The New York Times reported in April 2015: ..."
Aug 23, 2016 | www.breitbart.com
The Clinton campaign alongside the establishment media have begun blowing the Vladimir Putin
dog-whistle, just as their European counterparts did during the United Kingdom's referendum on its
membership of the European Union (EU).
Almost as if on cue, news outlets have begun parroting the same old lines used by Britain's political
establishment before June of this year, when they accused anti-establishment 'Leave' campaigners
of doing the bidding for, if not being directly linked to, the Russian president and the Kremlin.
From questioning
the marriage of one of the key donors to the Leave campaign , to using
Britain's public broadcaster
to float conspiracy theories about Russian influence, the Cold War-esque scare tactics of 'Reds
Under the Bed' not only reveals the lack of originality in the Clinton camp, it reveals hypocrisy,
foreign policy flippancy , and perhaps even a serious misestimation of where the
public stands on the issue.
In the run up to the Brexit referendum, U.S. outlets even went as far as to call Mr. Putin's (lack
of) interventions "
meddling ". The same charge was never levelled by the media at U.S. President Barack Obama when
he flew to the United Kingdom and lectured Britons on how they should vote. In fact,
he
threatened the country's economy and
trade position in the world if they refused to follow his advice. But this was deemed appropriate.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin and Mr. Putin were broadly absent from the debate, possibly because they
knew full well the 'Remain' camp would use any public pronouncements against the Leave camp, but
also because they are unlikely to have had a clear-cut position on the issue. Mr Putin is a grand
strategist and could have dealt with either outcome. The U.S. establishment, however, has all of
its eggs in the globalism basket.
In March a Kremlin spokesman
said
: "Russia is being dragged into the domestic debate on Brexit. Why is the wicked Russia thesis
used to explain a Government policy?"
"We'd like the British people to know that those pronouncements have nothing to do with Russia's
policy," the embassy said. "As a matter of fact, our Government doesn't have an opinion on Britain's
place in the EU."
Despite this far less "meddling" tactic, links to Russia were one of the most consistent messages
of the 'Remain' campaign's 'Project Fear' strategy to keep Britain in the European Union. Even the
Prime Minister at the time, David Cameron, invoked the threat of Russia to try and convince Britons
to stay in.
"At the heart of the tale are several men, leaders of the Canadian mining industry, who have
been major donors to the charitable endeavors of former President
Bill Clinton and his family. Members of that group built, financed and eventually sold off
to the Russians a company that would become known as Uranium One."
This is barely scratching the surface, as Clinton
Cash author Peter Schweizer
wrote in the Wall Street Journal in July:
"In May 2010, the State Department
facilitated a Moscow visit by 22 of the biggest names in U.S. venture capital-and weeks later
the first memorandums of understanding were signed by Skolkovo and American companies.
"By 2012 the vice president of the Skolkovo Foundation, Conor Lenihan-who had
previously partnered with the Clinton Foundation-recorded that Skolkovo had assembled 28 Russian,
American and European
"Key Partners." Of the 28 "partners," 17, or 60%, have made financial commitments to the Clinton
Foundation, totaling tens of millions of dollars, or sponsored speeches by Bill Clinton."
Nevertheless, you will likely find more references to Putin and Trump in the past week alone than
you will to these dubious affairs in their totality.
Indeed arch-establishment mouthpiece, Legatum Institute
leader, and all-round George Soros activist Anne Applebaum went so far as to declare Donald Trump
"a Russian oligarch" in the Washington Post
this week.
And perhaps far worse than her connections to the Kremlin – a relationship which has evidently
soured in recent months – are her connections to the fascist, authoritarian, pseudo-monarchical,
Islamist dictatorship in Saudi Arabia. In 2015 the WSJ
reported :
" the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, has given between $10 million and $25 million since the foundation
was created in 1999. Part of that came in 2014, although the database doesn't specify how much."
But few column inches or broadcast air minutes are used to discuss these matters.
FOREIGN POLICY FLIPPANCY
In drafting in Russia as a talking point, Mrs. Clinton makes it very difficult for her to deal
with President Putin and the Kremlin should she find herself in the Oval Office in 2017.
Her campaign's claims that Mr. Trump is somehow untrustworthy because he wants to work with Mr.
Putin, not against him, is difficult to take seriously given her lauding of Russia as "an ally" in
2012:
She said, in an attempt to mock then-GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who called the country
America's greatest geopolitical foe:
"Russia has been an ally. They're in the P-5+1 talks with us, they have worked with us in Afghanistan
and have been very helpful in the Northern Distribution Network and in other ways. So I think
it's somewhat dated to be looking backwards instead of being realistic about where we agree, where
we don't agree, but looking for ways to bridge the disagreements and then to maximize the cooperation".
In March 2010 she said:
"One of the fears that I hear from Russia is that somehow the United States wants Russia to
be weak. That could not be farther from the truth. Our goal is to help strengthen Russia."
Even in Ukraine the picture is less clear than U.S. journalists would have you think. Pew (2015)
showed :
"Western Ukrainians are much more likely to say Russia is the sole culprit (56%), while those
in the east see the problem as more complicated. A third of Ukrainians in the east think Russia
is primarily to blame, but 36% fault more than one of the groups.
"Roughly half of Ukrainians (47%) believe Russia is a major military threat to other neighboring
countries. Another 34% say the former Cold War power is a minor threat. Western Ukrainians are
much more concerned about Russia's territorial ambitions (61% major threat) than those in the
east (30%)."
This is a drastically different scenario from the one portrayed in the U.S. media, which usually
comes down to "Russia bad. Everywhere else good". But even the American people are growing weary
of this slant.
Pew (2016)
demonstrated that while U.S. public opinion towards Russia slumped in 2014 around the time of
the Crimea annexation, those numbers have now halved. People don't view Russia as an outright adversary,
though they are perhaps rightly wary of its status as a geopolitical competitor.
Most of anti-russian hysteria is directed toward instilling fear and increasing solidarity, with
neoliberals trying to scare low-information dumb voters away from Trump
Notable quotes:
"... The FBI is investigating whether Russian hackers have carried out a series of cyber attacks on the New York Times, officials have told US media. ..."
"... New York Times was whinging that Chinese hackers had breached and infiltrated their servers a few years ago. NYT is always bitching about something. ..."
"... Isn't it cute, the way the Americans have lost their minds, and they don't even notice? Here's the Washington Post , blatting about how Putin's meddling in the American elections has backfired on him . Just as if that were actually happening. It's a good thing they have focused on another actual country which is part of this planet, I guess, rather than aliens from another world, because then we would have to lock them up. ..."
"... Some of it is just agitating for Hillary, trying to scare low-information dumb voters away from Trump. But there is a definite tendency to blame even routine American problems on Russia. They don't seem to get how crazy it makes them look, it's like actual national mental illness. The whole election process should be frozen right here until the country comes to its senses. ..."
Yes, the Chinese in chinked-out China would be very likely to want to tap into a newspaper that
doesn't report anything which is true except for the Catholic Bean Supper at St. Patrick's. China
can hear US government propaganda along with everyone else, while it is valuable to have advance
notice of news only if what is being reported is actually true.
Isn't it cute, the way the Americans have lost their minds, and they don't even notice? Here's
the Washington Post , blatting about how
Putin's meddling in the American elections has backfired on him . Just as if that were actually
happening. It's a good thing they have focused on another actual country which is part of this
planet, I guess, rather than aliens from another world, because then we would have to lock them
up.
Not even during the coldest depths of the Cold War did the United States so crazily blame all
of its problems on the Russians. If America can't have global war against Russia, it is going
to be so disappointed.
Some of it is just agitating for Hillary, trying to scare low-information dumb voters away
from Trump. But there is a definite tendency to blame even routine American problems on Russia.
They don't seem to get how crazy it makes them look, it's like actual national mental illness.
The whole election process should be frozen right here until the country comes to its senses.
I think to the extent Israel elite interests are congruent with interests of the US neocons Clinton
is pro-Israel. If they stray, she can change. The key here are interests of global corporations and
neoliberal globalization. As such Israel is just a pawn in a big game.
Notable quotes:
"... So who is guilty of putting the interests of a foreign government ahead of those of the United States? I know there are advocates for any number of foreign states running around loose in Washington but the friends of Israel in government and the media come immediately to mind largely because there are so many of them, they are very much in-your-face and they are both extremely well-funded and very successful. Now deceased former Congressman Tom Lantos and Senator Frank Lautenberg were, respectively, often referred to as the congressman and senator from Israel. And there are many more: Chuck Schumer, Chuck Grassley, Ben Cardin, Bob Menendez, Tom Cotton, Mark Kirk, Nita Lowey, Ted Deutch, Brad Sherman, Ileana-Ros Lehtinen and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to name only a few in the Congress. All are major recipients of Israel related PAC money and all are reliable defenders of Israel no matter what Benjamin Netanyahu does and no matter how it effects the United States. ..."
"... And then there are the Clintons. One only has to go back to Bill's one-sided pro-Israeli diplomacy at Camp David in 2000 to discern how the game was played. And then there was the widely condemned January 2001 last minute pardon of Mossad agent Marc Rich, whose wife Denise was a major contributor to the Clintons, to realize that there was always a deference to Israeli interests particularly when money was involved ..."
"... Trump's crime, per Morell, is that he is disloyal to the United States because he is not sufficiently hostile to the evil Vladimir Putin, which somehow means that he is being manipulated by the clever Russian. Trump has indeed called for a positive working relationship with Putin to accomplish, among other objectives, the crushing of ISIS. And he is otherwise in favor of leaving Bashar al-Assad of Syria alone while also being disinclined to get involved in any additional military interventions in the Middle East or elsewhere, which pretty much makes him the antithesis of the Clintonian foreign policy promoted by Morell. ..."
"... The leading individual foreign donor to the Clinton Foundation between 1999 and 2014 was Ukrainian Viktor Pinchuk, who "directed between $10 and $25 million" to its Global Initiative, has let the Clintons use his private jet, attended Bill's Hollywood 65 th birthday celebration and hosted daughter Chelsea and her husband on a trip to Ukraine. Pinchuk is a Jewish oligarch married to the daughter of notoriously corrupt former Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma. He is very closely tied to Israel, a supporter of regime change in his country, who was simultaneously donating money and also lobbying in Washington while Hillary was Secretary of State and promoting a similar agenda as part of her $5 billion program to "democratize" Ukraine. Clinton arranged a dozen meetings with substantive State Department officers for Pinchuk. ..."
"... Clinton supported Israel's actions in the 2014 Gaza War, which killed more than 500 children, describing them as an appropriate response to a situation that was provoked by Hamas. On the campaign trail recently husband Bill disingenuously defended Hillary's position on Gaza, saying that "Hamas is really smart. When they decide to rocket Israel they insinuate themselves in the hospitals, in the schools " placing all the blame for the large number of civilian casualties on the Palestinians, not on the Israelis. When the media began to report on the plight of the civilians trapped in Gaza Hillary dismissed the impending humanitarian catastrophe, saying "They're trapped by their leadership, unfortunately." ..."
"... Earlier, as a Senator from New York, Hillary supported Israel's building of the separation barrier on Palestinian land and cheer-led a crowd at a pro-Israel rally that praised Israel's 2006 devastation of Lebanon and Gaza. She nonsensically characterized and justified the bombing campaign as "efforts to send messages to Hamas, Hezbollah, to the Syrians, to the Iranians – to all who seek death and domination instead of life and freedom " More than nine hundred civilians died in the onslaught and when a vote came up subsequently in Congress to stop the supply of cluster bombs to countries that use them on civilians Hillary voted against the bill together with 69 other pro-Israel senators. ..."
"... Hillary enjoys a particularly close relationship with Netanyahu, writing in November , "I would also invite the Israeli prime minister to the White House in my first month in office." She has worked diligently to "reaffirm the unbreakable bond with Israel – and Benjamin Netanyahu." She has boasted of her being one of the promoters of annual increases in aid to Israel while she was in the Senate and Secretary of State and takes credit for repeatedly using America's Security Council veto to defend it in the United Nations. ..."
"... o you know how Prince Bandar was coaching G.W. Bush to circumvent the enmity of neocons towards his father? ..."
"... It looks very much like the US public is starting to mirror the Eastern European public under Communism by automatically disregarding government media + there's the added feature of the internet as a new kind of high-powered Samizdat, that clearly worries the Establishment. ..."
On August 5th, Michael Morell, a former acting Director of the CIA, pilloried GOP presidential
candidate Donald Trump, concluding that he was an "unwitting agent of Russia." Morell, who entitled
his New York Times
op-ed "I Ran the CIA and now I'm endorsing Hillary Clinton," described the process whereby Trump
had been so corrupted. According to Morell, Putin, it seems, as a wily ex-career intelligence officer,
is "trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them. That is exactly what
he did early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump's vulnerabilities In the intelligence
business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian
Federation."
I have previously
observed
how incomprehensible the designation of "unwitting agent" used in a sentence together with "recruited"
is, but perhaps I should add something more about Morell that might not be clear to the casual reader.
Morell was an Agency analyst, not a spy, who spent nearly his entire career in and around Washington.
The high point of his CIA experience consisted of briefing George W. Bush on the President's Daily
Brief (PDB).
Morell was not trained in the arduous CIA operational tradecraft course which agent recruiters
and handlers go through. This means that his understanding of intelligence operations and agents
is, to put it politely, derivative. If he had gone through the course he would understand that when
you recruit an agent you control him and tell him what to do. The agent might not know whom exactly
he is really answering to as in a false flag operation, but he cannot be unwitting.
Morell appears to have a tendency to make promises that others will have to deliver on, but perhaps
that's what delegation by senior U.S. government officials is all about. He was also not trained
in CIA paramilitary operations, which perhaps should be considered when he drops comments about the
desirability of "covertly" killing Russians and Iranians to make a point that they should not oppose
U.S. policies in Syria, as he did in a
softball interview with Charlie Rose on August 6th.
Morell appears to be oblivious to the possibility that going around assassinating foreigners might
be regarded as state sponsored terrorism and could well ignite World War 3. And, as is characteristic
of chickenhawks, it is highly unlikely that he was intending that either he or his immediate family
should go out and cut the throats or blow the heads off of those foreign devils who seek to derail
the Pax Americana. Nor would he expect to be in the firing line when the relatives of those victims
seek revenge. Someone else with the proper training would be found to do all that messy stuff and
take the consequences.
Be that as it may, Morell was a very senior officer and perhaps we should accept that he might
know something that the rest of us have missed, so let's just assume that he kind of misspoke and
give him a pass on the "recruited unwitting agent" expression. Instead let's look for other American
political figures who just might be either deliberately or inadvertently serving the interests of
a foreign government, which is presumably actually what Michael Morell meant to convey regarding
Trump. To be sure a well-run McCarthy-esque ferreting out of individuals who just might be disloyal
provides an excellent opportunity to undertake a purge of those who either by thought, word or deed
might be guilty of unacceptable levels of coziness with foreign interests.
So who is guilty of putting the interests of a foreign government ahead of those of the United
States? I know there are advocates for any number of foreign states running around loose in Washington
but the friends of Israel in government and the media come immediately to mind largely because there
are so many of them, they are very much in-your-face and they are both extremely well-funded and
very successful. Now deceased former Congressman Tom Lantos and Senator Frank Lautenberg were, respectively,
often referred to as the congressman and senator from Israel. And there are many more: Chuck Schumer,
Chuck Grassley, Ben Cardin, Bob Menendez, Tom Cotton, Mark Kirk, Nita Lowey, Ted Deutch, Brad Sherman,
Ileana-Ros Lehtinen and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to name only a few in the Congress. All are
major recipients of Israel related PAC money and all are reliable defenders of Israel no matter
what Benjamin Netanyahu does and no matter how it effects the United States.
And then there are the Clintons. One only has to go back to Bill's
one-sided pro-Israeli
diplomacy at Camp David in 2000 to discern how the game was played. And then there was the widely
condemned January 2001 last minute
pardon of Mossad agent Marc Rich, whose wife Denise was a major contributor to the Clintons,
to realize that there was always a deference to Israeli interests particularly when money was involved.
The only problem is that the Clintons, relying on Morell's formulation, might more reasonably be
described as witting agents of Israel rather than unwitting as they have certainly known what they
have been doing and have been actively supporting Israeli policies even when damaging to U.S. interests
since they first emerged from the primordial political swamps in Arkansas. If one were completely
cynical it might be possible to suggest that they understood from the beginning that pandering to
Israel and gaining access to Jewish power and money would be a major component in their rise to political
prominence. It certainly has worked out that way.
Trump's crime, per Morell, is that he is disloyal to the United States because he is not sufficiently
hostile to the evil Vladimir Putin, which somehow means that he is being manipulated by the clever
Russian. Trump has indeed called for a positive working relationship with Putin to accomplish, among
other objectives, the crushing of ISIS. And he is otherwise in favor of leaving Bashar al-Assad of
Syria alone while also being disinclined to get involved in any additional military interventions
in the Middle East or elsewhere, which pretty much makes him the antithesis of the Clintonian foreign
policy promoted by Morell.
In comparison with the deeply and profoundly corrupt Clintons, Trump's alleged foreign policy
perfidy makes him appear to be pretty much a boy scout. To understand the Clintons one might consider
the hundreds of millions of dollars, much of it from foreign sources, that have flowed into the Clinton
Foundation while Hillary was Secretary of State. And there is the clear
email evidence that Hillary exploited her government position to favor both foreign and domestic
financial supporters.
The leading
individual foreign donor to the Clinton Foundation between 1999 and 2014 was Ukrainian Viktor
Pinchuk,
who "directed between $10 and $25 million" to its Global Initiative, has let the Clintons use
his private jet, attended Bill's Hollywood 65th birthday celebration and hosted daughter
Chelsea and her husband on a trip to Ukraine. Pinchuk is a Jewish oligarch married to the daughter
of notoriously corrupt former Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma. He is very closely tied to Israel,
a supporter of regime change in his country, who was simultaneously
donating money and also lobbying in Washington while Hillary was Secretary of State and promoting
a similar agenda as part of her $5 billion program to "democratize" Ukraine. Clinton arranged a dozen
meetings with substantive State Department officers for Pinchuk.
Hillary and Bill's predilection for all things Israeli and her promise to do even more in the
future is a matter of public record. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz asserted
that of all the political candidates in the primaries "Clinton had the longest public record of engagement
with Israel, and has spent decades diligently defending the Jewish state." In a speech to AIPAC in
March
she promised to take the "U.S.-Israel alliance to the next level." Hillary's current principal
financial supporter in her presidential run is Haim Saban, an Israeli who has described himself as
a "one issue" guy and that issue is Israel.
Hillary Clinton boasts of having "stood with Israel my entire career." Her website
promises to maintain "Israel's qualitative military edge to ensure the IDF is equipped to deter
and defeat aggression from the full spectrum of threats," "stand up against the boycott, divestment
and sanctions movement (BDS)," and "cut off efforts to unilaterally recognize Palestinian statehood
outside of the context of negotiations with Israel." In a letter to Haim Saban, Hillary
declared that "we need to make countering BDS a priority," which means she is prepared to support
laws limiting First Amendment rights in the U.S. in defense of perceived Israeli interests.
As part of the Obama Administration Hillary Clinton at first supported his attempts to pressure
Israel over its illegal settlements but has now backed off from that position, only rarely criticizing
them as a "problem" but never advocating any steps to persuade Netanyahu to reverse his policy. Notably,
she has repeatedly decried terroristic attacks on Israelis but has never acknowledged the brutality
of the Israeli occupation of much of the West Bank in spite of the fact that ten Palestinians are
killed for each Jewish victim of the ongoing violence.
Clinton supported Israel's actions in the 2014 Gaza War, which killed more than 500 children,
describing them as an appropriate response to a situation that was provoked by Hamas. On the campaign
trail recently husband Bill disingenuously
defended Hillary's position on Gaza, saying that "Hamas is really smart. When they decide to
rocket Israel they insinuate themselves in the hospitals, in the schools " placing all the blame
for the large number of civilian casualties on the Palestinians, not on the Israelis. When the media
began to report on the plight of the civilians trapped in Gaza Hillary dismissed the impending humanitarian
catastrophe, saying "They're trapped by their leadership, unfortunately."
Earlier, as a Senator from New York, Hillary supported Israel's building of the separation
barrier on Palestinian land and cheer-led a crowd at a pro-Israel rally that praised Israel's 2006
devastation of Lebanon and Gaza. She nonsensically
characterized and justified the bombing campaign as "efforts to send messages to Hamas, Hezbollah,
to the Syrians, to the Iranians – to all who seek death and domination instead of life and freedom "
More than nine hundred civilians died in the onslaught and when a vote came up subsequently in Congress
to stop the supply of cluster bombs to countries that use them on civilians Hillary voted against
the bill together with 69 other pro-Israel senators.
Hillary enjoys a particularly close relationship with Netanyahu,
writing in November, "I would also invite the Israeli prime minister to the White House in my
first month in office." She has worked diligently to "reaffirm the unbreakable bond with Israel –
and Benjamin Netanyahu." She has boasted of her being one of the promoters of annual increases in
aid to Israel while she was in the Senate and Secretary of State and takes credit for repeatedly
using America's Security Council veto to defend it in the United Nations.
So I think it is pretty clear who is the presidential candidate promoting the interests of a foreign
country and it ain't Trump. Hillary would no doubt argue that Israel is a friend and Russia is not,
an interesting point of view as Israel is not in fact an ally and has spied on us and copied our
military technology
to re-export to countries like China. Indeed, the most damaging spy in U.S. history Jonathan
Pollard worked for Israel. In spite of all that Israel continues to tap our treasury for billions
of dollars a year while still ignoring Washington when requests are made to moderate policies that
damage American interests. Against that, what exactly has Moscow done to harm us since the Cold War
ended? And who is advocating even more pressure on Russia and increasing the rewards for Israel,
presumably in the completely illogical belief that to do so will somehow bring some benefit to the
American people? Hillary Clinton.
utu, August 23, 2016 at 4:29 am GMT • 100 Words
Find the true reason why G.H. Bush was not allowed to get the 2nd term. Do you remember his
attempt to reign in Yitzhak Shamir when GHB was riding high popularity wave after the Desert Storm?
Do you remember anti-Bush Safire and Friedman columns in NYT week after week? Why Ross Perrot
was called in? Don't you see similarity with Teddy Rosevelt's run to prevent Taft's reelection
and securing Wilson's win? Do you know how Prince Bandar was coaching G.W. Bush to circumvent
the enmity of neocons towards his father? Answer these questions and you will know for whom
Bill Clinton worked. One more thing, Clinton did not touch Palestinian issue until last several
months of his presidency. He did not make G.H. Bush's mistake.
Miro23, August 23, 2016 at 5:45 am GMT • 100 Words
This a straightforward factual article about the Clinton sellout to Israel. So the question
may come down to the effectiveness of MSM propaganda.
It looks very much like the US public is starting to mirror the Eastern European public
under Communism by automatically disregarding government media + there's the added feature of
the internet as a new kind of high-powered Samizdat, that clearly worries the Establishment.
If the script follows through, then there's a good likelihood that the Establishment and their
façade players (Clintons, Bush, Romney, McCain etc) are reaching the end of the line, since like
in E.Europe, there's a background problem of economic failure and extreme élite/public inequality
that can no longer be hidden.
Philip Giraldi, August 23, 2016 at 10:32 am GMT • 100 Words
@hbm
hbm – the FBI concluded that someone working in the White House was MEGA but they decided that
they did not necessarily have enough evidence to convince a jury. He is still around and appears
in the media. As I would prefer not to get sued I will not name him but he is not a Clinton (though
he worked for them as well as for the two Bushes).
What a bunch of neoliberal piranha, devouring the poorest country in Europe, where pernneers exist
on $1 a day or less, with the help of installed by Washington corrupt oligarchs (Yanukovich was installed
with Washington blessing and was controlled by Washington, who was fully aware about the level of corruption
of its government; especially his big friend vice-president Biden).
Notable quotes:
"... Mr. Kalyuzhny was also a founding board member of a Brussels-based nongovernmental organization, the European Center for a Modern Ukraine, that hired the Podesta Group, a Washington lobbying firm that received $1.02 million to promote an agenda generally aligned with the Party of Regions. ..."
"... Because the payment was made through a nongovernmental organization, the Podesta Group did not register as a lobbyist for a foreign entity. A co-founder of the Podesta Group, John D. Podesta, is chairman of Hillary Clinton's campaign, and his brother, Tony Podesta, runs the firm now. ..."
"... The Podesta Group, in a statement, said its in-house counsel determined the company had no obligation to register as a representative of a foreign entity in part because the nonprofit offered assurances it was not "directly or indirectly supervised, directed, controlled, financed or subsidized in whole or in part by a government of a foreign country or a foreign political party." ..."
"... On Monday, Mr. Manafort issued a heated statement in response to an article in The New York Times that first disclosed that the ledgers - a document described by Ukrainian investigators as an under-the-table payment system for the Party of Regions - referenced a total of $12.7 million in cash payments to him over a five-year period. ..."
"... In that statement, Mr. Manafort, who was removed from day-to-day management of the Trump campaign on Wednesday though he retained his title, denied that he had personally received any off-the-books cash payments. "The suggestion that I accepted cash payments is unfounded, silly and nonsensical," he said. ..."
MOSCOW - The Ukrainian authorities, under pressure to bolster their assertion that once-secret
accounting documents show cash payments from a pro-Russian political party earmarked for Donald J.
Trump's campaign chairman, on Thursday released line-item entries, some for millions of dollars.
The revelations also point to an outsize role for a former senior member of the pro-Russian political
party, the Party of Regions, in directing money to both Republican and Democratic advisers and lobbyists
from the United States as the party tried to burnish its image in Washington.
The former party member, Vitaly A. Kalyuzhny, for a time chairman of the Ukraine Parliament's
International Relations Committee, had signed nine times for receipt of payments designated for the
Trump campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, according to Serhiy A. Leshchenko, a member of Parliament
who has studied the documents. The ledger covered payments from 2007 to 2012, when Mr. Manafort worked
for the party and its leader, Viktor F. Yanukovych, Ukraine's former president who was deposed.
Mr. Kalyuzhny was also a founding board member of a Brussels-based nongovernmental organization,
the European Center for a Modern Ukraine, that hired the Podesta Group, a Washington lobbying firm
that received $1.02 million to promote an agenda generally aligned with the Party of Regions.
Because the payment was made through a nongovernmental organization, the Podesta Group did
not register as a lobbyist for a foreign entity. A co-founder of the Podesta Group, John D. Podesta,
is chairman of Hillary Clinton's campaign, and his brother, Tony Podesta, runs the firm now.
The role of Mr. Kalyuzhny, a onetime computer programmer from the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk,
in directing funds to the companies of the chairmen of both presidential campaigns, had not previously
been reported. Mr. Kalyuzhny was one of three Party of Regions members of Parliament who founded
the nonprofit.
The Associated Press, citing emails it had obtained, also reported Thursday that Mr. Manafort's
work for Ukraine included a secret lobbying effort in Washington that he operated with an associate,
Rick Gates, and that was aimed at influencing American news organizations and government officials.
Mr. Gates noted in the emails that he conducted the work through two lobbying firms, including
the Podesta Group, because Ukraine's foreign minister did not want the country's embassy involved.
The A.P. said one of Mr. Gates's campaigns sought to turn public opinion in the West against Yulia
Tymoshenko, a former Ukrainian prime minister who was imprisoned during Mr. Yanukovych's administration.
The Podesta Group, in a statement, said its in-house counsel determined the company had no
obligation to register as a representative of a foreign entity in part because the nonprofit offered
assurances it was not "directly or indirectly supervised, directed, controlled, financed or subsidized
in whole or in part by a government of a foreign country or a foreign political party."
Reached by phone on Thursday, a former aide to Mr. Kalyuzhny said he had lost contact with the
politician and was unsure whether he remained in Kiev or had returned to Donetsk, now the capital
of a Russian-backed separatist enclave.
Ukrainian officials emphasized that they did not know as yet if the cash payments reflected in
the ledgers were actually made. In all 22 instances, people other than Mr. Manafort appear to have
signed for the money. But the ledger entries are highly specific with funds earmarked for services
such as exit polling, equipment and other services.
On Monday, Mr. Manafort issued a heated statement in response to an article in The New York
Times that first disclosed that the ledgers - a document described by Ukrainian investigators as
an under-the-table payment system for the Party of Regions - referenced a total of $12.7 million
in cash payments to him over a five-year period.
In that statement, Mr. Manafort, who was removed from day-to-day management of the Trump campaign
on Wednesday though he retained his title, denied that he had personally received any off-the-books
cash payments. "The suggestion that I accepted cash payments is unfounded, silly and nonsensical,"
he said.
Mr. Manafort's statement, however, left open the possibility that cash payments had been made
to his firm or associates. And details from the ledgers released Thursday by anticorruption investigators
suggest that may have occurred. Three separate payments, for example, totaling nearly $5.7 million
are earmarked for Mr. Manafort's "contract."
Another, from October 2012, suggests a payment to Mr. Manafort of $400,000 for exit polling, a
legitimate campaign outlay.
Two smaller entries, for $4,632 and $854, show payments for seven personal computers and a computer
server.
The payments do not appear to have been reported by the Party of Regions in campaign finance disclosures
in Ukraine. The party's 2012 filing indicates outlays for expenses other than advertising of just
under $2 million, at the exchange rate at the time. This is less than a single payment in the black
ledger designated for "Paul Manafort contract" in June of that year for $3.4 million.
Ukrainian investigators say they consider any under-the-table payments illegal, and that the ledger
also describes disbursements to members of the central election committee, the group that counts
votes.
Correction: August 20, 2016
Because of an editing error, an article on Friday about the political activities in Ukraine of
Donald J. Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, misidentified the office once held by
Yulia V. Tymoshenko, a rival of Mr. Manafort's client, the former president Viktor F. Yanukovych.
Ms. Tymoshenko served as prime minister of Ukraine, not its president.
"... "People, who argue Trump might start a nuclear war out of personal pique because he insults people on teevee might want to examine Clinton's bellicose foreign policy record and positions on, say, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, NATO expansion or the South China Sea." ..."
"... Or, as Ian Welsh points out, her position on Syria. She seems to have advocated for a no-fly zone in Syria after Russia came in, which would presumably put us in the position of shooting down Russian warplanes or having a good chance of doing so. Maybe if she does take on Kissinger as an advisor he'll tell her that superpower conflicts have to be done through proxies or they're too dangerous. ..."
"... Gen. Wesley Clark standing off against Russians at Belgrade and the missile attack on the Chinese embassy and the bombing of Bulgaria. ..."
"... Under Obama, support for fascists in Ukraine, near war over chemical weapons in Syria, gunboat diplomacy in South China Sea, shift to preemptive war plans against North Korea, ground troops in Libya and other parts of Africa, and last but not least, blind support for the psychotic Saudi attack on Yemen. ..."
"... Democrat or Republican, it is the US system of government which is militarist and adventurist. It will not change if either Clinton or Trump is elected, the delusions of Putin et al. notwithstanding. It wouldn't change if Bernie or the rational libertarian of the month was elected either because they do not, didn't and never will stand for real change. Criticizing Clinton and Trump from the right will make sure there is not even a chance of political realignment. At this point, the question is whether that's the point? ..."
BW: "People, who argue Trump might start a nuclear war out of personal
pique because he insults people on teevee might want to examine Clinton's
bellicose foreign policy record and positions on, say, Israel, Iran, Ukraine,
NATO expansion or the South China Sea."
Or, as Ian Welsh points out, her position on Syria. She seems to
have advocated for a no-fly zone in Syria after Russia came in, which would
presumably put us in the position of shooting down Russian warplanes or
having a good chance of doing so. Maybe if she does take on Kissinger as
an advisor he'll tell her that superpower conflicts have to be done through
proxies or they're too dangerous.
For the larger question of whether these comment threads are a good place
to campaign or advocate, I sort of come down in a different place than you
do. If these comment threads were about good-faith argument, then sure this
kind of advocacy might be bad, but I don't think that most people here are
capable of good-faith argument even if they were attempting it (most of
the time they aren't attempting it). In that case the comment threads serve
an alternate purpose of seeing what kinds of beliefs are out there, at least
among the limited group of people likely to comment on CT threads. Of course
people can be kicked out if they habitually make the threads too difficult
to moderate (or really, for whatever other reason an OP decides on), but
the well has long since been poisoned and one more drop isn't really going
to do much more damage.
Gen. Wesley Clark standing off against Russians at Belgrade and the
missile attack on the Chinese embassy and the bombing of Bulgaria.
Under Obama, support for fascists in Ukraine, near war over chemical
weapons in Syria, gunboat diplomacy in South China Sea, shift to preemptive
war plans against North Korea, ground troops in Libya and other parts of
Africa, and last but not least, blind support for the psychotic Saudi attack
on Yemen.
None of which was unilaterally determined by Clinton who was nothing
but Secretary of State, who does not determine foreign policy anyhow, or
took place after her tenure. Renovation of the nuclear weapons stockpile
isn't her doing either.
Democrat or Republican, it is the US system of government which is
militarist and adventurist. It will not change if either Clinton or Trump
is elected, the delusions of Putin et al. notwithstanding. It wouldn't change
if Bernie or the rational libertarian of the month was elected either because
they do not, didn't and never will stand for real change. Criticizing Clinton
and Trump from the right will make sure there is not even a chance of political
realignment. At this point, the question is whether that's the point?
"... Former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul penned a scathing piece in the Washington Post accusing the Kremlin of intervening in the American election, based solely on the evidence of a harsh article regarding Clinton published by Sputnik News. Boy, was he wrong! ..."
"... On Wednesday night, Michael McFaul took to the Washington Post to opine that the article was part of a Kremlin-led conspiracy to subvert the American election, referring to the person running the Sputnik Twitter account (that particular day being me) as a "Russian official," before warning (threatening) that we "might want to think about what we plan to do" if Clinton becomes president. ..."
"... Pursuant to 18 US Code Chapter 115, I'd be writing this article to you from prison, if not awaiting a death sentence, if I were writing content ordered down to me by the Kremlin with a view towards subverting the American election. I am instead writing this piece from my favorite coffeeshop in downtown DC. I am not a Russian official. Our staff members are not Russian officials. We are not Kremlin controlled. We do not speak with Vladimir Putin over our morning coffee. ..."
"... In fact, the Atlantic Council's Ben Nimmo leveled a completely different view on Friday morning, calling our coverage "uncharacteristically balanced," but arguing that, because we report generally negative stories on both candidates, our real target is American democracy itself. ..."
"... It may surprise Mr. McFaul and Mr. Nimmo to learn that, in my previous work on political campaigns, I actually helped fundraise for Hillary Clinton - the candidate whose inner circle is now labelling my colleagues and I as foreign saboteurs. It is neither my fault nor Sputnik's fault that Secretary Clinton's campaign has devolved into one predicated upon fear and conspiracy, where the two primary lines are "the Russians did it" and that she is not Trump. ..."
"... The fact that more than 50% of the country dislikes both presidential candidates is not a Kremlin conspiracy. Would it be appropriate for us to present to our readers an alternate universe a la MSNBC, which defended Clinton's trustworthiness by saying she only perjured herself three times? ..."
"... Returning to the substance of the article to which Mr. McFaul took exception. This piece was written because it was newsworthy - it informed our readers and forced them to think. The provocative headline of the story was based on a statement by Trump that is a bit of a stretch (notice the air quotes on the title), but which highlights a major policy decision made by this administration that has not been properly scrutinized by the mainstream media. In the article, for those who actually read it, I refer to the 2012 DNI report that correctly calculated that Obama's policy in Syria would lead to the development of a Salafist entity controlling territory and that this outcome was "wanted." Hence, the title. ..."
"... Today, the Obama Administration grapples with a similar debate over whether to continue to support the "moderate rebels" in Syria, despite the fact that they have now melded with al-Nusra (an al-Qaeda affiliate until they rebranded), under the banner of the Army of Conquest in Syria. ..."
Former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul penned a scathing piece in the Washington Post
accusing the Kremlin of intervening in the American election, based solely on the evidence of a harsh
article regarding Clinton published by Sputnik News. Boy, was he wrong!
My name is Bill Moran. A native Arizonan, I have worked on dozens of Democratic Party campaigns,
and am more recently a proud writer for Sputnik's Washington, DC bureau.
It also seems, as of Thursday morning, that I am the source of controversy between the United
States and Russia - something I never quite could have imagined - for writing an article that was
critical of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with a stinging headline and a harsh hashtag.
So, what is this controversy all about? This weekend I published a piece with the headline, "Secret
File Confirms Trump Claim: Obama, Hillary 'Founded ISIS' to Oust Assad." I also tweeted out this
story from our platform with the hashtag #CrookedHillary. Guilty as charged.
On Wednesday night,
Michael McFaul took to the Washington Post to opine that the article was part of a Kremlin-led
conspiracy to subvert the American election, referring to the person running the Sputnik Twitter
account (that particular day being me) as a "Russian official," before warning (threatening) that
we "might want to think about what we plan to do" if Clinton becomes president.
I feel it is necessary to pause, here, before having a substantive argument about the article's
merits and purpose within the public discourse, to address the severity of the accusation leveled
against me and Sputnik's staff (not by name until now), and its disturbing implications on freedom
of speech, dissent, and American democracy - implications that I hope Mr. McFaul, other public proponents
of the Hillary campaign, and the cadre of Russian critics consider.
Pursuant to 18 US Code Chapter 115, I'd be writing this article to you from prison, if not
awaiting a death sentence, if I were writing content ordered down to me by the Kremlin with a view
towards subverting the American election. I am instead writing this piece from my favorite coffeeshop
in downtown DC. I am not a Russian official. Our staff members are not Russian officials. We are
not Kremlin controlled. We do not speak with Vladimir Putin over our morning coffee.
Mr. McFaul worked side-by-side with the former Secretary of State in the Obama Administration, and
his routine accusations that Trump supporters are siding with Putin leaves me to imagine that he
is a Clinton insider if not a direct campaign surrogate. That such a public official would suggest
reprisals against those with differing viewpoints in the event that she wins is disturbing.
Our
outlet does not endorse or support any particular US presidential candidate, but rather reports news
and views for the day in as diligent a manner as we possibly can. This is evident in our very harsh
headlines on Trump, which Mr. McFaul failed to review before making his attack.
In fact, the Atlantic Council's Ben Nimmo leveled a completely different view on Friday morning,
calling our coverage "uncharacteristically balanced," but arguing that, because we report generally
negative stories on both candidates, our real target is American democracy itself.
It may surprise Mr. McFaul and Mr. Nimmo to learn that, in my previous work on political campaigns,
I actually helped fundraise for Hillary Clinton - the candidate whose inner circle is now labelling
my colleagues and I as foreign saboteurs. It is neither my fault nor Sputnik's fault that Secretary
Clinton's campaign has devolved into one predicated upon fear and conspiracy, where the two primary
lines are "the Russians did it" and that she is not Trump.
Donald Trump has the lowest approval rating since presidential polling began. Until recently,
Clinton had the second lowest approval rating since presidential polling began. Their numbers are
worse than even Barry Goldwater and George Wallace, in fact.
The fact that more than 50% of the country dislikes both presidential candidates is not a
Kremlin conspiracy. Would it be appropriate for us to present to our readers an alternate universe
a la MSNBC, which defended Clinton's trustworthiness by saying she only perjured herself three times?
There is a reason why both presidential candidates have received less than fawning coverage from
our outlet: they have not done anything to warrant positive coverage. My colleagues, also Americans,
like so many others in this country, wish they would.
Returning to the substance of the article to which Mr. McFaul took exception. This piece was
written because it was newsworthy - it informed our readers and forced them to think.
The provocative headline of the story was based on a statement by Trump that is a bit of a stretch
(notice the air quotes on the title), but which highlights a major policy decision made by this administration
that has not been properly scrutinized by the mainstream media.
In the article, for those who actually read it, I refer to the 2012 DNI report that correctly calculated
that Obama's policy in Syria would lead to the development of a Salafist entity controlling territory
and that this outcome was "wanted." Hence, the title.
Today, the Obama Administration
grapples with a similar debate over whether to continue to support the "moderate rebels" in Syria,
despite the fact that they have now melded with al-Nusra (an al-Qaeda affiliate until they rebranded),
under the banner of the Army of Conquest in Syria.
We do not pretend that these decisions exist in a vacuum with a clear right and wrong answer upon
which no two intelligent people differ, but this is a matter worthy of public discourse.
And what about that hashtag? Why would I use #CrookedHillary? I mean, I could have put #Imwithher,
but I wasn't trying to be ironic. When a hashtag is featured at the end of a sentence, its purpose
is for cataloging. Some people, usually non-millennials, use hashtags as text to convey a particular
opinion. I was not doing that. I also used #NeverTrump in a separate article.
But Mr. McFaul lazily cherry-picked, and then labeled (maybe unwittingly) Sputnik's American writers
traitors to this country.
"... "Trump is a racist and his followers are racist and that's all you need to know" is a narrative thesis, like the narrative thesis that Trump is Putin's stooge, very convenient to Clinton's candidacy, but ultimately corrosive to American politics and political discourse. ..."
"... The Clinton campaign has whipped up a high dudgeon about racism and Putin and how unsuited Trump is, to be President. I don't disagree about the core conclusion: Trump does not seem to me to be suited to be President. That's hardly a difficult judgment: an impulsive, self-promoting reality teevee star with no experience of public office - hmmm, let me think about that for two seconds. But, the high dudgeon serves other purposes, to which I object strongly. ..."
"... People, who argue Trump might start a nuclear war out of personal pique because he insults people on teevee might want to examine Clinton's bellicose foreign policy record and positions on, say, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, NATO expansion or the South China Sea. ..."
"... Everything should not be about electing Clinton. ..."
"... Pundits like Josh Marshall of TPM or Ezra Klein of Vox are betraying their public trust by carrying Clinton's water so slavishly. ..."
"... People, who argue Trump might start a nuclear war out of personal pique because he insults people on teevee might want to examine Clinton's bellicose foreign policy record and positions on, say, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, NATO expansion or the South China Sea ..."
"... Or, as Ian Welsh points out, her position on Syria. She seems to have advocated for a no-fly zone in Syria after Russia came in, which would presumably put us in the position of shooting down Russian warplanes or having a good chance of doing so. Maybe if she does take on Kissinger as an advisor he'll tell her that superpower conflicts have to be done through proxies or they're too dangerous. ..."
"... This is what 40 years of two-party neoliberalism gives us: an unhinged demagogue or the point person for Democratic policies that have systematically gutted the middle class, screwed the poor, increase inequality, slowed productivity, caused multiple wars, and made them personally rich. ..."
"... The moral righteousness of identity politics adds in an element that goes way beyond the lazy failure to hold politicians accountable or the tendency to explain away their more Machiavellian maneuvers. There's both an actual blindness to the reactionary conservatism of equal opportunity exploitation and a peremptory challenge to any other claim or analysis. If police practices and procedures are trending in an authoritarian direction, they can only be challenged on grounds of racist effect or intent. The authoritarianism cannot be challenged on its own merit, so the building of the authoritarian state goes on unimpeded, since the principle that is challenged is not authoritarianism, but a particular claim of racism or sexism. ..."
"... As for LFC, he finished up his not a counter with "Assad and Putin are authoritarians (plus in Assad's case especially being a murderous thug), but I don't recall b.w. being too exercised about their authoritarianism." That's perfectly familiar [line] too: I well remember it from the GWB Iraq War days. Do you oppose the Iraq War? Well I never heard of you being very exercised about Saddam Hussein being a murderous thug. You must really support Saddam, or not really care about authoritarianism. The people who liked to say this were called the "Decents", a word like many other political words that was perfect because it meant exactly the opposite of what it sounded like. ..."
"... What's being critiqued is the idea that nothing but racism matters. What's being critiqued is the idea that it's useful or even correct to do mind-reading and to confidently pronounce that people who disagree with you do so because they're stupid and evil – excuse me, because they're racists. What I find illuminating here is the graphic evidence of why this approach is so toxic. People get furious and hostile when you call them bigots. It's an insult, not an invitation to dialog – because it doubles as a character judgment and as a personal attack. ..."
"... I am also saying, worry that the charge of racism may be all we have left that is capable of getting reforms. And, worry that charges of racism, without useful nuance, may not get the political reaction and reform one ought to desire. ..."
"... Police misconduct is not a problem solely and originally about race and racism ..."
I think all you've really shown is that blue-collar, less-educated people tend
to not know much about politics and to have the political attitudes of authoritarian followers
and Trump is willing to be demagogic enough to attract their attention as an alternative to the
status quo candidacy of Hillary Clinton.
"Trump is a racist and his followers are racist and that's all you need to know" is a narrative
thesis, like the narrative thesis that Trump is Putin's stooge, very convenient to Clinton's candidacy,
but ultimately corrosive to American politics and political discourse. It isn't a question
of whether statistics suggest racism is an efficient instrumental variable. It is a question of
whether this politics of invective and distraction is going anywhere good, could go anywhere good.
No one in these comment threads has been defending Trump or the political ignorance and resentments
of his supporters. Some of us have questioned the wisdom of a political tactic of treating them
as pariahs and dismissing their concerns and economic distress as fake or illegitimate.
The Clinton campaign has whipped up a high dudgeon about racism and Putin and how unsuited
Trump is, to be President. I don't disagree about the core conclusion: Trump does not seem to
me to be suited to be President. That's hardly a difficult judgment: an impulsive, self-promoting
reality teevee star with no experience of public office - hmmm, let me think about that for two
seconds. But, the high dudgeon serves other purposes, to which I object strongly.
Even though, and especially because Clinton is very likely to become President, her suitability
ought to be scrutinized. Not just boxed away as, "well, she is obviously better than Trump
so let's not even trouble our beautiful minds", when by the way it is not so obvious as
all that, as several commenters have tried to point out. People, who argue Trump might start
a nuclear war out of personal pique because he insults people on teevee might want to examine
Clinton's bellicose foreign policy record and positions on, say, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, NATO expansion
or the South China Sea.
Everything should not be about electing Clinton. Clinton's election is pretty much
assured, despite her deep flaws as a candidate of the center-left (to wit, her war-mongering and
epic corruption and economic conservatism). Pundits like Josh Marshall of TPM or Ezra Klein
of Vox are betraying their public trust by carrying Clinton's water so slavishly. Ezra may
be gaining all important access to the Clinton White House comparable to what he had in Obama's
White House, but he spent his credibility with his readers to get it. And, he's deprived his readers
of the opportunity to learn about issues of vital importance, like the TPP and corporate business
power, or NATO expansion and the relationship with Russia, or the swirling vortex forming in the
Middle East where American Empire is going down the drain of failed invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan
and ill-conceived "alliances" with fundamentally hostile powers like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
I don't think these comment threads are a good place to campaign or advocate on the behalf
of any candidate. A modicum of advocacy might be welcome for the fodder it provides for reflective
rumination, but mirroring the Clinton campaign's themes seems to require systematic misreadings
of counter-argument and that has become disruptive. (RNB's volume and habitual tendentiousness
puts RNB into a special category in this regard.)
There ought to be room in this discussions to move the conversation to more of a meta-level,
where we consider trends and dynamics without the partisan's hyper-narrow focus.
BW: "People, who argue Trump might start a nuclear war out of personal pique because he
insults people on teevee might want to examine Clinton's bellicose foreign policy record and
positions on, say, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, NATO expansion or the South China Sea."
Or, as Ian Welsh points out, her position on Syria. She seems to have advocated for a no-fly
zone in Syria after Russia came in, which would presumably put us in the position of shooting
down Russian warplanes or having a good chance of doing so. Maybe if she does take on Kissinger
as an advisor he'll tell her that superpower conflicts have to be done through proxies or they're
too dangerous.
For the larger question of whether these comment threads are a good place to campaign or advocate,
I sort of come down in a different place than you do. If these comment threads were about good-faith
argument, then sure this kind of advocacy might be bad, but I don't think that most people here
are capable of good-faith argument even if they were attempting it (most of the time they aren't
attempting it). In that case the comment threads serve an alternate purpose of seeing what kinds
of beliefs are out there, at least among the limited group of people likely to comment on CT threads.
Of course people can be kicked out if they habitually make the threads too difficult to moderate
(or really, for whatever other reason an OP decides on), but the well has long since been poisoned
and one more drop isn't really going to do much more damage.
There's a reason the electorate hates both Trump and Clinton. This is what 40 years of
two-party neoliberalism gives us: an unhinged demagogue or the point person for Democratic policies
that have systematically gutted the middle class, screwed the poor, increase inequality, slowed
productivity, caused multiple wars, and made them personally rich.
Let's not forget the Clintons were the Democratic Party point people in causing the vast incarceration
of black men while simultaneously gutting welfare for black mothers and their children. (Yay 3rd
Way!) They were the point people for letting 300 million Chinese workers compete with American
workers. They deregulated the banks. And was there a war she didn't like?
So Layman finds that the 80% of the Evangelicals that support Trump are racist. And so are
the white voters in manufacturing regions. (Excuse me. "Principally" racist.) And Layman's exact
counterpart on some unnamed right-wing site thinks all the blacks voting for HRC are in it for
the welfare and affirmative action. (Yes, your exact counterpart. Oh, and they, like you, would
say blacks are "principally" scammers cause, you know, there are other minor reasons to vote HRC.)
I take a different view. I think most voters are going to have the taste of vomit in the their
mouths when they pull the lever.
If there's a populist politics in our future, it will have to have a
much sharper edge. It can talk about growth, but it has to mean smashing the rich and taking their
stuff. There's very rapidly going to come a point where there's no other option, other than just
accepting cramdown by the authoritarian surveillance state built by the neoliberals. that's a
much taller order than Sanders or Trump have been offering.
Fit for inscription (keeps me smashingly awake after hundreds of comments :-))
The moral righteousness of identity politics adds in an element that goes way beyond
the lazy failure to hold politicians accountable or the tendency to explain away their more
Machiavellian maneuvers. There's both an actual blindness to the reactionary conservatism of
equal opportunity exploitation and a peremptory challenge to any other claim or analysis. If
police practices and procedures are trending in an authoritarian direction, they can only be
challenged on grounds of racist effect or intent. The authoritarianism cannot be challenged
on its own merit, so the building of the authoritarian state goes on unimpeded, since the principle
that is challenged is not authoritarianism, but a particular claim of racism or sexism.
So in the same week that the Justice Department report on the Baltimore police force comes
out, showing systematic police discrimination - e.g. lots of people stopped in black neighborhoods,
esp. two in particular, for petty reasons or no reason, versus very few people stopped in other
neighborhoods - bruce wilder informs us that identity politics somehow prevents us from criticizing
police behavior on grounds of authoritarianism, that it can only be criticized on grounds of racism
(or subconscious racial bias) - of course, that wd appear to be a main problem w police behavior
in Baltimore and some other places.
"Rich where is the evidence people can no longer criticize police for broad authoritarianism?"
The last time I talked about this with faustusnotes, he told me that it was entirely understandable
and indeed good that Obama and the Democratic Party were passing laws to make non-violent protestors
even more likely to be arrested, because Obama was black and there was a scary white protestor
holding an assault rifle at a town meeting somewhere.
As for LFC, he finished up his not a counter with "Assad and Putin are authoritarians (plus
in Assad's case especially being a murderous thug), but I don't recall b.w. being too exercised
about their authoritarianism." That's perfectly familiar [line] too: I well remember it from the
GWB Iraq War days. Do you oppose the Iraq War? Well I never heard of you being very exercised
about Saddam Hussein being a murderous thug. You must really support Saddam, or not really care
about authoritarianism. The people who liked to say this were called the "Decents", a word like
many other political words that was perfect because it meant exactly the opposite of what it sounded
like.
Marc 08.14.16 at 2:09 am
What's being critiqued is the idea that nothing but racism matters. What's being critiqued
is the idea that it's useful or even correct to do mind-reading and to confidently pronounce that
people who disagree with you do so because they're stupid and evil – excuse me, because they're
racists.
What I find illuminating here is the graphic evidence of why this approach is so toxic. People
get furious and hostile when you call them bigots. It's an insult, not an invitation to dialog
– because it doubles as a character judgment and as a personal attack.
Now, when someone actually says something bigoted that's one thing. But that's not what's going
on, and that's why the pushback is so serious.
And – faustnotes – you're minimizing the real suffering of people by claiming that the mortality
rise in lower income US whites isn't real, and it certainly isn't important to you. I'm getting
zero sense of empathy from you towards the plight of these people – the real important thing is
to tell them why they're racist scum.
I think that the left has a moral obligation to try and build a decent society even for people
that don't like the left much. I think that working class voters across the Western world are
susceptible to racial appeals not because they're scum, but because they've been screwed by the
system and the left has nothing to offer them but moral lectures. And that's a failure that we
can address, and it starts with listening to people with respect. You can stand for your principles
without assuming bad faith, without mind-reading, and without the stereotyping.
For me at least, those are the grounds of debate, and they're very different in kind from pretending
that there is no such thing as racism.
I am aware that the claim of racism is potent and where it can be made to effect reform,
I am all in favor. Take what you can get, I say.
I am also saying, worry that the charge of racism may be all we have left that is capable
of getting reforms. And, worry that charges of racism, without useful nuance, may not get the
political reaction and reform one ought to desire.
Police misconduct is not a problem solely and originally about race and racism. I
hope Baltimore gets useful and effective reform.
This is a very important article and I strongly recommend to read it in full to understand how neoliberal
propaganda works.
This is nice example of how difficult is for ordinary person to cut threw media lies and get to
the truth. So some level of brainwashing is inevitable unless you use only alternative media. Neoliberal
MSM are disgusting and are lying all the time, but unless you use WWW and foreign sources (like people
in the in the USSR did -- substitute radio for WWW, as it did not existed yet) that is not much else.
Notable quotes:
"... Donald Trump did something downright shocking for a debate a few days before an important Republican primary. He went after the country's last Republican president, George W. Bush. Hard. He went after the Republican Party's general foreign policy approach. Hard. ..."
"... Obviously, the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake. All right? The war in Iraq, we spent $2 trillion, thousands of lives, we don't even have it. Iran has taken over Iraq with the second-largest oil reserves in the world. Obviously, it was a mistake. George Bush made a mistake. We can make mistakes. But that one was a beauty. We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East. I want to tell you. They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction, there were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction. ..."
"... Trump said, "The World Trade Center came down during your brother's reign, remember that That's not keeping us safe." ..."
"... Compare that little vignette with this week, when Donald Trump repeatedly said that President Obama and Hillary Clinton were founders/co-founders/MVPs of ISIS. ..."
"... Washington Examiner ..."
"... DT: I don't care. He was the founder. His, the way he got out of Iraq was that that was the founding of ISIS, okay? ..."
Back in February, candidates for the Republican nomination for president debated each other in
South Carolina. The Saturday evening discussion was raucous. Donald Trump did something downright
shocking for a debate a few days before an important Republican primary. He went after the country's
last Republican president, George W. Bush. Hard. He went after the Republican Party's general foreign
policy approach. Hard.
Moderator John Dickerson asked him about his 2008 comments in favor of impeaching George W. Bush.
He had said that year that Bush had "lied" to get the United States into a war in Iraq.
Trump said to Dickerson:
Obviously, the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake. All right? The war in Iraq, we spent
$2 trillion, thousands of lives, we don't even have it. Iran has taken over Iraq with the second-largest
oil reserves in the world. Obviously, it was a mistake. George Bush made a mistake. We can make
mistakes. But that one was a beauty. We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the
Middle East. I want to tell you. They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction,
there were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction.
Jeb Bush attempted to defend his brother's honor, saying, "And while Donald Trump was building
a reality TV show, my brother was building a security apparatus to keep us safe. And I'm proud of
what he did."
Trump said, "The World Trade Center came down during your brother's reign, remember that
That's not keeping us safe."
And on it went. Yes, many in the crowd booed. Yes, many Republicans opposed his conspiracy theories
about George W. Bush. The media were able to report Trump's challenges to Republican foreign policy
without weighing in on the veracity of his claims. The most interesting thing of all? Trump
easily won the
South Carolina primary a week later with 33 percent of the vote.
Compare that little vignette with this week, when Donald Trump repeatedly said that President
Obama and Hillary Clinton were founders/co-founders/MVPs of ISIS. Even though the media had
more than shot their outrage wad for the week, the media doubled, tripled, even quadrupled down on
their outrage for the Wednesday night-Thursday news cycle. Here are six problems with the media's
complete meltdown over the remarks.
Why Did This Become an Issue Now and Not 7 Months Ago?
Republicans who oppose Trump
claim the media encouraged Trump when he was setting fire to Republican opponents but have fought
him tooth and nail in the general. Ammunition for that claim includes the distinct ways the media
have reacted to his long-standing claim that Obama and Clinton founded ISIS.
As the Washington
Examiner notes, Trump said this three times in January alone:
'They've created ISIS. Hillary Clinton created ISIS with Obama,' he said during a campaign
rally in Mississippi.
Trump restated the claim in an interview on CBS in July. 'Hillary Clinton invented ISIS
with her stupid policies,' he said. 'She is responsible for ISIS.'
He said it again during a rally in Florida one month later. 'It was Hillary Clinton – she
should take an award from them as the founder of ISIS.'
Needless to say, the media response to these comments was more bemused enabling than the abject
horror they reserved for this week. The full media meltdown over something Trump has been saying
all year long is at best odd and unbecoming. At worst, it suggests deep media corruption.
Hyperliteralism
Listen, Trump might be an effective communicator with his core audience,
but others have trouble understanding him. His speaking style couldn't be more removed from the
anodyne and cautious political rhetoric of our era. This can be a challenge for political journalists
in particular. His sentences run on into paragraphs. He avoids specificity or contradicts himself
when he doesn't. His sentences trail into other sentences before they finish. He doesn't play
the usual games that the media are used to. It's frustrating.
So the media immediately decided Trump was claiming that Obama had literally incorporated ISIS
a few years back. And they treated this literal claim as a fact that needed to be debunked.
Politifact gave the claim one of their vaunted "pants on fire" rulings: ... ... ...
The "fact" "check" admits that both President Barack Obama's leadership in Iraq and Hillary
Clinton's push to change regimes in Libya led to the explosion of ISIS but says that since Trump
said he really, totally, no-joke meant Obama and Clinton were co-founders, that they must give
him a Pants On Fire rating.
As for the CNN chyron which appears to be deployed never in the case of Hillary Clinton's many
serious troubles with truth-telling, or when Joe Biden told black voters that Republicans were
going to "put y'all back in chains," but repeatedly in the case of Donald Trump speaking hyperbolically,
this tweet is worth considering:
Failure to Do Due Diligence
On Thursday morning, Trump did a radio interview with
Hugh Hewitt. The media clipped one part of his answer and used it to push a narrative that Donald
Trump was super serial
about Obama literally going to Baghdad, attending organizational meetings, and holding bake sales
to launch his new organization ISIS.
Kapur's tweet went viral but so did about eleventy billion other reporter tweets making the
same point. The Guardian headline was "Trump reiterates he literally believes Barack Obama is
the 'founder of Isis'."
You really need to listen to the interview to get the full flavor of how unjournalistic this
narrative is.
Yes, Trump does reiterate over and over that Obama is the founder of ISIS. And yes, he says
he really meant to say Obama founded ISIS. But that's definitely not all. How hard is it to listen
for an additional minute or read an additional few words? The relevant portion of the interview
is from 15:25 to 16:53. So this is not a huge investment of your time.
First off, let's note for our hyperliteral media that Trump says "I'm a person that doesn't
like insulting people" a few seconds before Hewitt asks about the ISIS comments. (Fact check:
Pants on fire, amiright?) In this minute and a half, Trump says "I meant he's the founder of ISIS.
I do. He was the most valuable player. I give him the most valuable player award. I give her,
too, by the way, Hillary Clinton." Hewitt pushes back, saying that Obama is trying to kill ISIS.
Trump says:
DT: I don't care. He was the founder. His, the way he got out of Iraq was that that
was the founding of ISIS, okay?
Here, journalists and pundits, is your first slap across the face that maybe, just maybe, Trump
is not talking about articles of incorporation but, rather, something else entirely.
Hewitt says, yeah, but the way you're saying it is opening you up to criticism. Was it a mistake?
Trump says not at all. Obama is ISIS's most valuable player. Then Trump asks Hewitt if he doesn't
like the way he's phrasing all this! And here's where journalists might want to put on their thinking
caps and pay attention. Hewitt says he'd say that Obama and Hillary lost the peace and created
a vacuum for ISIS, but he wouldn't say they created it:
HH: I don't. I think I would say they created, they lost the peace. They created the Libyan
vacuum, they created the vacuum into which ISIS came, but they didn't create ISIS. That's what
I would say.
DT: Well, I disagree.
HH: All right, that's okay.
DT: I mean, with his bad policies, that's why ISIS came about.
HH: That's
DT: If he would have done things properly, you wouldn't have had ISIS.
HH: That's true.
DT: Therefore, he was the founder of ISIS.
HH: And that's, I'd just use different language to communicate it, but let me close with
this, because I know I'm keeping you long, and Hope's going to kill me.
DT: But they wouldn't talk about your language, and they do talk about my language, right?
Now, this is undoubtedly true. When people critique Obama's policies as Hewitt did, the media
either call the critic racist or ignore him. When Trump critiques Obama's policies, they do talk
about the way he does it. Maybe this means the message gets through to people.
No matter what, though, the media should have stuck through all 90 seconds of the discussion
to avoid the idiotic claim that Trump was saying Obama was literally on the ground in Iraq running
ISIS' operations. He flat-out admits he's speaking hyperbolically to force the media to cover
it.
Pretending This Rhetoric Is Abnormal
People accuse their political opponents of being
responsible for bad things all the time.
Clinton accused Trump of being ISIS' top recruiter. Bush's CIA and NSA chief said Trump was
a "recruiting
sergeant" for ISIS. Former NYC mayor Rudy Guiliani said Hillary Clinton could be considered
a
founding member of ISIS. Here was Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, just a few weeks ago, making
a completely false claim of Republican's literal ties to ISIS:
Carly Fiorina and Rick Santorum placed blame for ISIS on Obama and Clinton. Sen. John McCain
said Obama was "directly responsible" for the Orlando ISIS attack due to his failure to deal with
the terror group. President Obama said
he couldn't think of a more potent recruiting tool for ISIS than Republican rhetoric in support
of prioritizing help for Christians who had been targeted by the group. Last year, Vanity Fair
published a piece blaming George W. Bush for ISIS. Heck,
so did President
Obama. There are many other examples. This type of rhetoric may not be exemplary, but we shouldn't
pretend it's unique to Trump.
Missing Actual Problems with His Comments
Huge kudos to BuzzFeed's Andrew Kaczynski
for avoiding the feigned outrage/fainting couch in favor of an important critique of Trump's comments.
He didn't pretend to be confused by what Trump was saying. By avoiding that silliness, he noticed
something much more problematic with Trump's comments.
Trump has cited the conservative critique of President Obama's Iraq policy - that the withdrawal
of troops in 2011 led to a power vacuum that allowed ISIS to flourish - in making the claim.
'He was the founder of ISIS, absolutely,' Trump said on CNBC on Thursday. 'The way he removed
our troops - you shouldn't have gone in. I was against the war in Iraq. Totally against it.'
(Trump was not against the war as he has repeatedly claimed.) 'The way he got out of Iraq was
that that was the founding of ISIS, OK?' Trump later said.
But lost in Trump's immediate comments is that, for years, he pushed passionately and forcefully
for the same immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq. In interview after interview in the later
2000s, Trump said American forces should be removed from Iraq.
Read the whole (brief) thing. One of the Trump quotes in the piece specifically has him acknowledging
the civil unrest in Iraq that led to ISIS flourishing. It's a devastating critique and a far smarter
one than the silly hysteria on display elsewhere.
We're Still Not Talking about Widespread Dissatisfaction with Our Foreign Policy
Let's think back to the opening vignette. Trump went into the South in the middle of the Republican
primary and ostentatiously micturated over George W. Bush's Iraq policy. The voters of South Carolina
rewarded him with a victory.
Here's the real scandal in this outrage-du-jour: by pretending to think that Trump was claiming
Obama had operational control over ISIS' day-to-day decision making, the media failed to cover
widespread dissatisfaction with this country's foreign policy, whether it's coming from George
W. Bush or Barack Obama.
Many Americans are rather sick of this country's way of fighting wars, where enemies receive
decades of nation-building instead of crushing defeats, and where threats are pooh-poohed or poorly
managed instead of actually dealt with.
Trump may be an uneven and erratic communicator who is unable to force that discussion in a
way that a more traditional candidate might, but the media shouldn't have to be forced into it.
Crowds are cheering Trump's hard statements about Obama and Clinton's policies in the Middle East
because they are sick and tired of losing men, women, treasure and time with impotent, misguided,
aimless efforts there.
The vast majority of Americans supported invading Iraq, even if
many of them deny they supported it now. Americans have lost confidence in both Republican
and Democratic foreign policy approaches. No amount of media hysteria will hide that reality.
Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is a senior editor at The Federalist. Follow her on Twitter at @mzhemingway
"... We here in CT comments lead a quiet, parochial life. In the larger world, the disclosure of the DNC emails required a preposterous story of Russian hacking, followed by a gotcha accusing Trump of asking Putin to become a latter day Watergate burglar. ..."
We here in CT comments lead a quiet, parochial life. In the larger world, the disclosure
of the DNC emails required a preposterous story of Russian hacking, followed by a gotcha accusing
Trump of asking Putin to become a latter day Watergate burglar.
I have no sympathy for Trump, who made his bones as birther-in-chief. Live by the sword, die
by the sword.
But, I do have some sympathy for the rest of us, who are the objects of these manipulations.
The email discussing whether they can push the atheist hot-button or the Jew hot-button and get
a predictable response from voters disturbs me because it seems that the propaganda has drowned
out everything else.
It is one thing when they're wearing out the gay hot-button or the xenophobia hot-button or
trying to get the anti-semite hot-button to work again, but I get the idea that there's only hot-buttons,
only manipulation. There's no considered, deliberate purpose behind any of it. Hillary Clinton
is so pre-occupied affirming support for Israel and condemning Iran or ISIS or Russia, that there's
no room left for formulating reality-based policy or explaining such a policy to the American
people.
Moreover story about the Russkies carrying out a plot to influence the US election is so much juicier
than a real story about Clinton's minions doing the humdrum work of influencing US elections by unethical
means. It is somewhat similar to "Romney dog" story.
Notable quotes:
"... It is a story offered without proof for the purposes of creating a distraction, since it becomes an excuse for pundits engaging in groundless speculation and poses of outrage. Because a far-fetched story about the Russkies carrying out an 11-dimensional plot to influence the U.S. election is so much juicier than a pedestrian story about Clinton's minions doing the humdrum work of . . . influencing U.S. elections by unethical means. ..."
"... The convoluted and imaginative stories about Guccifer and so on are just that, stories. The U.S. has an enormous and expensive surveillance state apparatus in place. So proof is, presumably, readily available if someone in authority wants to offer it. In the meantime, we have self-styled consultants blowing smoke ..."
Lanny Davis, longtime Clinton ally and DNC hack, explaining in great detail ( on Fox no less)
why the Romney dog story makes the Republican candidate (is a Mormon the same as an atheist, Debbie?)
unfit for the office of the President.
awy @ 389: why is russian hacking of the dnc a preposterous story?
It is a story offered without proof for the purposes of creating a distraction, since it
becomes an excuse for pundits engaging in groundless speculation and poses of outrage.
Because a far-fetched story about the Russkies carrying out an 11-dimensional plot to influence
the U.S. election is so much juicier than a pedestrian story about Clinton's minions doing the
humdrum work of . . . influencing U.S. elections by unethical means.
The convoluted and imaginative stories about Guccifer and so on are just that, stories.
The U.S. has an enormous and expensive surveillance state apparatus in place. So proof is, presumably,
readily available if someone in authority wants to offer it. In the meantime, we have self-styled
consultants blowing smoke.
But, hey, the Democrat's Platform promises: "Democrats will protect our industry, infrastructure,
and government from cyberattacks." Hillary is going to get on that real soon now.
"... "Trump is a racist and his followers are racist and that's all you need to know" is a narrative thesis, like the narrative thesis that Trump is Putin's stooge, very convenient to Clinton's candidacy, but ultimately corrosive to American politics and political discourse. ..."
"... Not just boxed away as, "well, she is obviously better than Trump so let's not even trouble our beautiful minds", when by the way it is not so obvious as all that, as several commenters have tried to point out. People, who argue Trump might start a nuclear war out of personal pique because he insults people on teevee might want to examine Clinton's bellicose foreign policy record and positions on, say, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, NATO expansion or the South China Sea. ..."
"... Everything should not be about electing Clinton. Clinton's election is pretty much assured, despite her deep flaws as a candidate of the center-left (to wit, her war-mongering and epic corruption and economic conservatism). Pundits like Josh Marshall of TPM or Ezra Klein of Vox are betraying their public trust by carrying Clinton's water so slavishly. ..."
"... People, who argue Trump might start a nuclear war out of personal pique because he insults people on teevee might want to examine Clinton's bellicose foreign policy record and positions on, say, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, NATO expansion or the South China Sea ..."
"... Let's not forget the Clintons were the Democratic Party point people in causing the vast incarceration of black men while simultaneously gutting welfare for black mothers and their children. (Yay 3rd Way!) They were the point people for letting 300 million Chinese workers compete with American workers. They deregulated the banks. And was there a war she didn't like? ..."
"... If there's a populist politics in our future, it will have to have a much sharper edge. It can talk about growth, but it has to mean smashing the rich and taking their stuff. There's very rapidly going to come a point where there's no other option, other than just accepting cramdown by the authoritarian surveillance state built by the neoliberals. that's a much taller order than Sanders or Trump have been offering. ..."
I think all you've really shown is that blue-collar, less-educated people tend
to not know much about politics and to have the political attitudes of authoritarian followers
and Trump is willing to be demagogic enough to attract their attention as an alternative to the
status quo candidacy of Hillary Clinton.
"Trump is a racist and his followers are racist and that's all you need to know" is a narrative
thesis, like the narrative thesis that Trump is Putin's stooge, very convenient to Clinton's candidacy,
but ultimately corrosive to American politics and political discourse. It isn't a question
of whether statistics suggest racism is an efficient instrumental variable. It is a question of
whether this politics of invective and distraction is going anywhere good, could go anywhere good.
No one in these comment threads has been defending Trump or the political ignorance and resentments
of his supporters. Some of us have questioned the wisdom of a political tactic of treating them
as pariahs and dismissing their concerns and economic distress as fake or illegitimate.
The Clinton campaign has whipped up a high dudgeon about racism and Putin and how unsuited
Trump is, to be President. I don't disagree about the core conclusion: Trump does not seem to
me to be suited to be President. That's hardly a difficult judgment: an impulsive, self-promoting
reality teevee star with no experience of public office - hmmm, let me think about that for two
seconds. But, the high dudgeon serves other purposes, to which I object strongly.
Even though, and especially because Clinton is very likely to become President, her suitability
ought to be scrutinized. Not just boxed away as, "well, she is obviously better than
Trump so let's not even trouble our beautiful minds", when by the way it is not so obvious
as all that, as several commenters have tried to point out. People, who argue Trump might start
a nuclear war out of personal pique because he insults people on teevee might want to examine
Clinton's bellicose foreign policy record and positions on, say, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, NATO expansion
or the South China Sea.
Everything should not be about electing Clinton. Clinton's election is pretty much assured,
despite her deep flaws as a candidate of the center-left (to wit, her war-mongering and epic corruption
and economic conservatism). Pundits like Josh Marshall of TPM or Ezra Klein of Vox are betraying
their public trust by carrying Clinton's water so slavishly. Ezra may be gaining all important
access to the Clinton White House comparable to what he had in Obama's White House, but he spent
his credibility with his readers to get it. And, he's deprived his readers of the opportunity
to learn about issues of vital importance, like the TPP and corporate business power, or NATO
expansion and the relationship with Russia, or the swirling vortex forming in the Middle East
where American Empire is going down the drain of failed invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and
ill-conceived "alliances" with fundamentally hostile powers like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
I don't think these comment threads are a good place to campaign or advocate on the behalf
of any candidate. A modicum of advocacy might be welcome for the fodder it provides for reflective
rumination, but mirroring the Clinton campaign's themes seems to require systematic misreadings
of counter-argument and that has become disruptive. (RNB's volume and habitual tendentiousness
puts RNB into a special category in this regard.) There ought to be room in this discussions to
move the conversation to more of a meta-level, where we consider trends and dynamics without the
partisan's hyper-narrow focus.
@ 793 Hi Rich, that's a fair question. If memory serves, there were several very close calls under
Nixon more from errors in the 'fail safe' system. Nixon is a complicated amoral actor fairly obviously
guilty of some extremely serious crimes. He was not the only nasty actor at the time, however.
In the specific case you're describing, I don't think any president would have handled things
much differently. Russian missiles 90 miles from US soil during the cold war was unacceptable.
Many of our students have absolutely no idea of what life was like during the 20th century.
It's literally another world. The one we share today seems infinitely safer and more tolerant.
Cheers.
BW: "People, who argue Trump might start a nuclear war out of personal pique because he insults
people on teevee might want to examine Clinton's bellicose foreign policy record and positions
on, say, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, NATO expansion or the South China Sea."
Or, as Ian Welsh
points out, her position on Syria. She seems to have advocated for a no-fly zone in Syria after
Russia came in, which would presumably put us in the position of shooting down Russian warplanes
or having a good chance of doing so. Maybe if she does take on Kissinger as an advisor he'll tell
her that superpower conflicts have to be done through proxies or they're too dangerous.
For the larger question of whether these comment threads are a good place to campaign or advocate,
I sort of come down in a different place than you do. If these comment threads were about good-faith
argument, then sure this kind of advocacy might be bad, but I don't think that most people here
are capable of good-faith argument even if they were attempting it (most of the time they aren't
attempting it). In that case the comment threads serve an alternate purpose of seeing what kinds
of beliefs are out there, at least among the limited group of people likely to comment on CT threads.
Of course people can be kicked out if they habitually make the threads too difficult to moderate
(or really, for whatever other reason an OP decides on), but the well has long since been poisoned
and one more drop isn't really going to do much more damage.
T 08.13.16 at 9:13 pm
BW@798
Amen.
There's a reason the electorate hates both Trump and Clinton. This is what 40 years of two-party
neoliberism gives us: an unhinged demagogue or the point person for Democratic policies that have
systematically gutted the middle class, screwed the poor, increase inequality, slowed productivity,
caused multiple wars, and made them personally rich.
Let's not forget the Clintons were the Democratic Party point people in causing the vast
incarceration of black men while simultaneously gutting welfare for black mothers and their children.
(Yay 3rd Way!) They were the point people for letting 300 million Chinese workers compete with
American workers. They deregulated the banks. And was there a war she didn't like?
So Layman finds that the 80% of the Evangelicals that support Trump are racist. And so are
the white voters in manufacturing regions. (Excuse me. "Principally" racist.) And Layman's exact
counterpart on some unnamed right-wing site thinks all the blacks voting for HRC are in it for
the welfare and affirmative action. (Yes, your exact counterpart. Oh, and they, like you, would
say blacks are "principally" scammers cause, you know, there are other minor reasons to vote HRC.)
I take a different view. I think most voters are going to have the taste of vomit in the their
mouths when they pull the lever.
If there's a populist politics in our future, it will have to have a much sharper edge.
It can talk about growth, but it has to mean smashing the rich and taking their stuff. There's
very rapidly going to come a point where there's no other option, other than just accepting cramdown
by the authoritarian surveillance state built by the neoliberals. that's a much taller order than
Sanders or Trump have been offering.
Fit for inscription (keeps me smashingly awake after hundreds of comments :-))
The moral righteousness of identity politics adds in an element that goes
way beyond the lazy failure to hold politicians accountable or the tendency to explain away their
more Machiavellian maneuvers. There's both an actual blindness to the reactionary conservatism
of equal opportunity exploitation and a peremptory challenge to any other claim or analysis. If
police practices and procedures are trending in an authoritarian direction, they can only be challenged
on grounds of racist effect or intent. The authoritarianism cannot be challenged on its own merit,
so the building of the authoritarian state goes on unimpeded, since the principle that is challenged
is not authoritarianism, but a particular claim of racism or sexism.
So in the same week that the Justice Department report on the Baltimore police force comes
out, showing systematic police discrimination - e.g. lots of people stopped in black neighborhoods,
esp. two in particular, for petty reasons or no reason, versus very few people stopped in other
neighborhoods - bruce wilder informs us that identity politics somehow prevents us from criticizing
police behavior on grounds of authoritarianism, that it can only be criticized on grounds of racism
(or subconscious racial bias) - of course, that wd appear to be a main problem w police behavior
in Baltimore and some other places.
"... People don't yet understand that this is just how neoliberals are. The two fundamental loyalties in a state party system have nothing to do with solidarity: they're loyalty up, and loyalty down. Neoliberals are happy to accept whatever loyalty up they are given by fools and suckers: they have no loyalty down at all and will never do the elementary political operations of repaying their base ..."
"... On solidarity: solidarity isn't about the (hierarchy of) relationships among politicians or political operatives. Solidarity is about membership, not leadership. ..."
"... Solidarity is the means to great common, coordinated efforts, that is to trust in leadership and that great solvent of political stalemate: sacrifice to the common good. ..."
"... Solidarity is a powerful force, sometimes historically an eruptive force, and though not by itself intelligent, not necessarily hostile to intelligent direction, but it calls on the individual's narcissism and anger not rational understanding or calculation. It is present as a flash in riots and a fire in insurrections and a great raging furnace in national wars of total mobilization. Elites can fear it or be enveloped by it or manipulate it cynically or with cruel callousness. Though it is a means to common effort and common sacrifice, it demands wages for its efforts and must be fed prodigious resources if it is long at work. ..."
"... What we've got here is a distorted or atrophied sense of the relationship between solidarity and the consent of the governed, between democracy and legitimacy, or more generally, between the individual and the collective ..."
"... If so, maybe we ought to try being a little more honest about what we're willing to pay as individuals for what we get as members of a group. Otherwise, it's hard to see how we can come to terms with our confusion, or survive the malignancies that being confused has introduced into all our group dynamics, not just the overtly political ones. ..."
CR: "that strategy actually runs the risk of harming down-ballot Democrats
running for office in Congress and state legislatures. It may help Clinton,
but it's not good for the party."
It's Obama redux. Remember how he wanted
to work with his friends across the aisle in a Grand Bargain that would
bring moderation and centrist agreement to all things? He validated budget-balance
mania during austerity and would have bargained away Social Security if
he could have. He predictably lost the Congress in the first mid-term election
and did nothing to build the party back up.
People don't yet understand that this is just how neoliberals are.
The two fundamental loyalties in a state party system have nothing to do
with solidarity: they're loyalty up, and loyalty down. Neoliberals are happy
to accept whatever loyalty up they are given by fools and suckers: they
have no loyalty down at all and will never do the elementary political operations
of repaying their base or creating a party that will work for anyone
else. This goes beyond ordinary political selfishness to the fact that they
don't really want a populist party: that would push them to harm the interests
of their real base.
And people don't react to this, fundamentally, because they don't really
do politics outside of 4-year scareathons. Look at LFC's description above
about how people should march if candidates don't follow through on their
promises. Why aren't they marching now: why haven't they in the Obama years?
I am with you on your main thesis, but I thought
I would offer this sidenote.
On solidarity: solidarity isn't about the (hierarchy of) relationships
among politicians or political operatives. Solidarity is about membership,
not leadership.
Solidarity can feel good. "We are all in this together, united."
Or, it can feel constricting, as it demands conformity and senseless uniformity,
obeisance to unnecessary authority. Resentments are its solvent and
its boundary-keepers. Social affiliation and common rituals are its nurturers
in its fallow times, which can be historically frequent and long. Solidarity
is the means to great common, coordinated efforts, that is to trust in leadership
and that great solvent of political stalemate: sacrifice to the common good.
Solidarity is a powerful force, sometimes historically an eruptive
force, and though not by itself intelligent, not necessarily hostile to
intelligent direction, but it calls on the individual's narcissism and anger
not rational understanding or calculation. It is present as a flash in riots
and a fire in insurrections and a great raging furnace in national wars
of total mobilization. Elites can fear it or be enveloped by it or manipulate
it cynically or with cruel callousness. Though it is a means to common effort
and common sacrifice, it demands wages for its efforts and must be fed prodigious
resources if it is long at work.
As American Party politics have degenerated, solidarity has come to have
a fraught relationship with identity politics. In both Parties.
I don't see anything in the conceptual logic driving things forward.
I see this state of affairs as the playing out of historical processes,
one step after another. But, this year's "scareathon" puts identity politics
squarely against the economic claims of class or even national solidarity.
The identity politics frame of equal opportunity exploitation has Paul Krugman
talking up "horizontal inequality". Memes float about suggesting that free
trade is aiding global equality even if it is at the expense of increasing
domestic inequality. Or, suggesting that labor unions were the implacable
enemy of racial equality back in the day or that FDR's New Deal was only
for white people. Hillary Clinton's stump speech, for a while, had her asking,
"If we broke up the big banks tomorrow, . . . would that end racism? would
that end sexism?"
It is convenient politics in several ways. First, no one can hold Clinton
responsible for not ending racism and sexism any more than GWB could be
held responsible for not winning the war on terrorism. These are perpetual
struggles by definition.
Second, it combines the display of righteous do-good ism with a promise
of social progress that might actually benefit directly the most ambitious,
even if it leaves most people without support. People who have done well
in the system, or who might expect to, can feel good about themselves. And,
ignore the system or rationalize away the system's manifest shortcomings.
The people who are complaining are racists! BernieBros! It is all about
the loss of status being experienced by white men, and they shouldn't be
heard anyway.
The moral righteousness of identity politics adds in an element that
goes way beyond the lazy failure to hold politicians accountable or the
tendency to explain away their more Machiavellian maneuvers. There's both
an actual blindness to the reactionary conservatism of equal opportunity
exploitation and a peremptory challenge to any other claim or analysis.
If police practices and procedures are trending in an authoritarian direction,
they can only be challenged on grounds of racist effect or intent. The authoritarianism
cannot be challenged on its own merit, so the building of the authoritarian
state goes on unimpeded, since the principle that is challenged is not authoritarianism,
but a particular claim of racism or sexism.
What we've got here is a distorted or atrophied sense of the relationship
between solidarity and the consent of the governed, between democracy and
legitimacy, or more generally, between the individual and the collective.
I suppose you could argue that we've evolved beyond what we were when we
first came to understand these relationships in the abstract (in the 18th
century?), and that, accordingly, they can no longer be understood in the
way we once thought we understood them.
If so, maybe we ought to try
being a little more honest about what we're willing to pay as individuals
for what we get as members of a group. Otherwise, it's hard to see how we
can come to terms with our confusion, or survive the malignancies that being
confused has introduced into all our group dynamics, not just the overtly
political ones.
"For Michael Morell, as with many other CIA careerists, his strongest suit seemed to be pleasing
his boss and not antagonizing the White House" His loyalty is to qhoewver occupies White House, not
necessarily to the truth. "Morell [was] at the center of two key fiascoes: he "coordinated the
CIA review" of Secretary of State Colin Powell's infamous Feb. 5, 2003 address to the United Nations
and he served as the regular CIA briefer to President George W. Bush. Putting Access Before Honesty"
Rise of Another CIA Yes Man – Consortiumnews
Notable quotes:
"... Let the bizarreness of that claim sink in, since it is professionally impossible to recruit an agent who is unwitting of being an agent, since an agent is someone who follows instructions from a control officer. ..."
"... However, since Morell apparently has no evidence that Trump was "recruited," which would make the Republican presidential nominee essentially a traitor, he throws in the caveat "unwitting." Such an ugly charge is on par with Trump's recent hyperbolic claim that President Obama was the "founder" of ISIS. ..."
"... Looking back at Morell's record, it was not hard to see all this coming, as Morell rose higher and higher in a system that rewards deserving sycophants. I addressed this five years ago in an article titled "Rise of Another CIA Yes Man." That piece elicited many interesting comments from senior intelligence officers who knew Morell personally; some of those comments are tucked into the end of the article. ..."
As for Morell's claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin is somehow controlling Donald Trump,
well, even Charlie Rose had stomach problems with that and with Morell's "explanation." In the Times
op-ed, Morell wrote: "In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr.
Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation."
Let the bizarreness of that claim sink in, since it is professionally impossible to recruit an
agent who is unwitting of being an agent, since an agent is someone who follows instructions from
a control officer.
However, since Morell apparently has no evidence that Trump was "recruited," which would make
the Republican presidential nominee essentially a traitor, he throws in the caveat "unwitting." Such
an ugly charge is on par with Trump's recent hyperbolic claim that President Obama was the "founder"
of ISIS.
Looking back at Morell's record, it was not hard to see all this coming, as Morell rose higher
and higher in a system that rewards deserving sycophants. I addressed this five years ago in
an article
titled "Rise of Another CIA Yes Man." That piece elicited many interesting comments from senior intelligence
officers who knew Morell personally; some of those comments are tucked into the end of the article.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour
in inner-city Washington. He is a 30-year veteran of the CIA and Army intelligence and co-founder
of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). McGovern served for considerable periods
in all four of CIA's main directorates.
"... "She is the one that caused all this problem with her stupid policies," Trump said, referring to Hillary Clinton. "You look at what she did with Libya, what she did with Syria. Look at Egypt, what happened with Egypt, a total mess. She was truly - if not the - one of the worst secretaries of state in the history of the country. She talks about me being dangerous. She's killed hundreds of thousands of people with her stupidity." ..."
"... Trump is absolutely right. Hillary voted for the invasion of Iraq, which killed a million people. As I've pointed out , it wasn't just an immoral decision - it was a stupid one ..."
"... As secretary of state, Clinton never met a war she didn't love. Under her watch and following her counsel, the United States armed radical jihadis who are now terrorists , helped topple Moammar Gaddafi , expanded a civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of Libyans and reduced one of the most advanced nations in Africa into a failed state . Then she turned around and did the same exact thing to Syria. ..."
"... Psychology Today ..."
"... Ted Rall , syndicated writer and the cartoonist for ANewDomain.net ..."
"... is the author of the book " Snowden ," the biography of the NSA whistleblower. ..."
There is, on the other hand, something wonderfully refreshing about Donald Trump's gleeful deployment
of the S-word.
"She is the one that caused all this problem with her stupid policies," Trump said,
referring
to Hillary Clinton. "You look at what she did with Libya, what she did with Syria. Look at Egypt,
what happened with Egypt, a total mess. She was truly - if not the - one of the worst secretaries
of state in the history of the country. She talks about me being dangerous. She's killed hundreds
of thousands of people with her stupidity."
Trump is absolutely right. Hillary voted for the invasion of Iraq, which killed a million
people. As I've pointed out,
it wasn't just an immoral decision - it was a stupid one, since anyone with a half a brain could
see at the time that Saddam probably didn't have WMDs, and that Bush's war would be a disaster.
Let Hillary's supporters take offense. How is unfair, wrong or intemperate to call out a foreign
policy record that fits the dictionary definition of "stupid" - doing the same thing over and over,
even though it never works? Stupid is as stupid
does. Hillary is stupid, especially on foreign policy, and Trump is right to say so.
Winner or loser, Trump has done political debate in America a huge favor by freeing "stupid" from
the rhetorical prison of words and phrases polite people aren't allowed to use.
Interestingly, stupid people aren't all losers and losers aren't always stupid in Trumpworld.
Hillary Clinton has one hell of a resume, which she has parlayed into a
big pile of cash. She is, by Trump standards, a winner (albeit a stupid one). If I met Trump,
I'd ask him if a smart person can be a loser (possible example: he
called the obviously smart Russell Brand a loser, but also a "dummy").
Pre-Trump, American politics and culture suffered from a lack of stupid-calling. I am serious.
"There has been a long tradition of anti-intellectualism in America, unlike most other Western
countries," Ray Williams
wrote last year in Psychology Today. Insults reflect a society's values. Americans value
macho masculinity, good looks and youth, so our top slurs accuse their victims of being effeminate,
weak, ugly, fat, old and outdated. In France, where the life of the mind is prized so much that one
of the nation's
top-rated
TV shows featured philosophers and auteurs discussing politics and culture over cigarettes, there
are few things worse than being called stupid and having it stick. A society that ranks "stupid"
as of its worst insults lets it be known that being smart is at least as important as being tough
or hot or buff.
So, Donald Trump, thanks for dropping those S-bombs.
Ted Rall, syndicated writer and the cartoonist for
ANewDomain.net, is the author of the book "Snowden,"
the biography of the NSA whistleblower.
After disappearing for a couple of weeks, the hacker "Guccifer 2.0" returned late this afternoon to provide a new headache
for Democrats.
In a post to his WordPress blog, the vandal–who previously provided nearly 20,000 Democratic National Committee e-mails
to Wikileaks–uploaded an Excel file that includes the cell phone numbers and private e-mail addresses of nearly every Democratic
member of the House of Representatives.
The Excel file also includes similar contact information for hundreds of congressional staff members (chiefs of staff, press
secretaries, legislative directors, schedulers) and campaign personnel.
In announcing the leak of the document, "Guccifer 2.0" reported that the spreadsheet was stolen during a hack of the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee. " As you see I wasn't wasting my time! It was even easier than in the case of the DNC breach,"
the hacker wrote.
"... Neo McCarthyism witch hunt against Trump instead of debate of a proper national policy is a sign of corrupted neoliberal media. They want the preservation and expantion of thier global empire at any cost for american people. ..."
"... Reckless branding of Trump as Russian agent is coming from Clinton campaign and it needs to stop ..."
Neo McCarthyism witch hunt against Trump instead of debate of a proper national policy is a sign
of corrupted neoliberal media. They want the preservation and expantion of thier global empire at
any cost for american people.
Reckless branding of Trump as Russian agent is coming from Clinton campaign and it needs to stop
"... What struck me in the article was a conflict between attributing the DNC hack and a possible Clinton hack that the authors didn't even attempt to address. They claim analysts are very confident that Russian hackers, working for the government, hacked the DNC. But as to the possibility that anyone hacked Clinton's private server; well, if they did, they would have been way to savvy to leave any traces that they'd done so. A DNC hack; those sloppy Russian government hackers did it. A personal server; a real pro job. ..."
What struck me in the article was a conflict between attributing the DNC hack and a possible
Clinton hack that the authors didn't even attempt to address. They claim analysts are very confident
that Russian hackers, working for the government, hacked the DNC. But as to the possibility that
anyone hacked Clinton's private server; well, if they did, they would have been way to savvy to
leave any traces that they'd done so. A DNC hack; those sloppy Russian government hackers did
it. A personal server; a real pro job.
IhaveLittleToAdd | Aug 11, 2016 12:00:03 PM | 2
I actually find it possible, namely that the firewall in DNC was sloppy, and paranoid Hillary
had best computer security consultants she could find. Moreover, hers was a small operation and
easier to keep secure, unlike DNC with many employees and many interactive activities. I speculate
here, but this is plausible.
========
More importantly, was there a public opprobrium, "How did they dare!" about the putative Russian
hack? This is actually an interesting angle. Sometimes public suspects that the government is
doing illegal stuff in other countries, it is thinly denied (or "our policy is no to comment"),
and most of the citizens are glad that our leaders are so resourceful. But the side effect is
that this type of activity becomes "normal", and detecting or convincingly suspecting it exits
yawning response.
For example, there were two assassination or "near assassination" attempts on Israeli diplomatic
personal and Iran was suspected. "Sure, didn't they have a string of assassination of nuclear
assassinations in Tehran? By the way, what is the weather this weekend?" If I recall, Tehran assassinations
stopped.
Similarly, after American cyber-successes, cyber attacks became a new normal.
"... "From Claudia Kash: I know why Seth Rich had to die. There were 2 sets of polling places this primary season -- one set for most of the voters, who went on state websites to find their polling locations -- a second set for Hillary Clinton supporters who looked on Hillary Clinton's website to find their polling location. The Secretary of State for each state had one set of locations on >the record; the other set of locations, the ones listed on Hillary's website, were not on the state record. I know this because I looked on her website to find where a friend should vote -- then double-checked the state >website, which showed a different address. I thought there must be a mistake -- I kept checking, right up to election day. ..."
"... But until they killed Seth Rich, I couldn't figure out why there would be two different polling places. This is how I think the scam worked: While most voters look up their location on their state website, voters who were signed up as Hillary Clinton supporters would be directed to her site to find their polling place. It was set up the same as any other DNC polling place -- with DNC volunteers, regular voting machines, etc. -- and a duplicate voter roster, the same as the roster at the other polling place. Voters would be checked off on the roster, same as at the other polling place... and after the polls closed, the DNC supervisor would pick up the roster and the ballots. ..."
"... Seems a straight Machiavellian operation. Murder the young insider, Seth Rich, that leaked the emails to Assange's Wikileaks and then blame it on an enemy that none can fact check on. DNC= Deep National Control ..."
The media reporting on keeps making the statement from the police 'that nothing was missing from his body or belongings'. The
guy was walking around at 4 AM, and apparently no one but his killers actually saw him. So, I guess he couldn't be carrying anything
outside of his pockets? In has hands?
"From Claudia Kash: I know why Seth Rich had to die. There were 2 sets of polling places this primary season -- one set
for most of the voters, who went on state websites to find their polling locations -- a second set for Hillary Clinton supporters
who looked on Hillary Clinton's website to find their polling location. The Secretary of State for each state had one set of locations
on >the record; the other set of locations, the ones listed on Hillary's website, were not on the state record. I know this because
I looked on her website to find where a friend should vote -- then double-checked the state >website, which showed a different
address. I thought there must be a mistake -- I kept checking, right up to election day.
But until they killed Seth Rich, I couldn't figure out why there would be two different polling places. This is how I think
the scam worked: While most voters look up their location on their state website, voters who were signed up as Hillary Clinton
supporters would be directed to her site to find their polling place. It was set up the same as any other DNC polling place --
with DNC volunteers, regular voting machines, etc. -- and a duplicate voter roster, the same as the roster at the other polling
place. Voters would be checked off on the roster, same as at the other polling place... and after the polls closed, the DNC supervisor
would pick up the roster and the ballots.
The supervisor would then pick up the roster at the legitimate polling place and the ballots there. He(or she) >would
then replace a number of Bernie Sanders ballots with an equal number of the ballots from the Hillary >Clinton voting location.
Then the duplicate roster from the HRC would be shredded and thrown away, along >with all the Bernie Sanders ballots that had
been replaced. That way the number of people who voted (on the >remaining roster) still matches the number of ballots. This is
why so many states reported a "lower than expected voter turnout".
Seth Rich, who was responsible for the app that helped voters find their polling places, did not realize that there were two
sets of polling places until he himself went to vote. He lived in Washington DC, which voted at the end of the primary season,
a week after Clinton had already been declared the winner. I believe he discovered it then, and had started asking questions about
why the polling places on Hillary's website didn't match the ones on the DC website.
But even if he didn't say a word to anybody, it would have been dangerous to let him live. He would have >figured it out sooner
or later -- and he would have reported it when he did."
Seems a straight Machiavellian operation. Murder the young insider, Seth Rich, that leaked the emails to Assange's Wikileaks
and then blame it on an enemy that none can fact check on. DNC= Deep National Control.
"... "The larger conclusion from the data is that the Trump campaign - both through the support Trump generates among working-class whites and the opposition he generates among better educated, more affluent voters - has accelerated the ongoing transformation of the Democratic Party. ..."
"... Once a class-based coalition, the party has become an alliance between upscale well-educated whites and, importantly, ethnic and racial minorities, many of them low income" ..."
"Democrats' Tactic of Accusing Critics of Kremlin Allegiance Has Long, Ugly History in U.S." [The
Intercept].
The party left me
"The larger conclusion from the data is that the Trump campaign - both through the support
Trump generates among working-class whites and the opposition he generates among better educated,
more affluent voters - has accelerated the ongoing transformation of the Democratic Party.
Once a
class-based coalition, the party has become an alliance between upscale well-educated whites and,
importantly, ethnic and racial minorities, many of them low income"
It's hard to overstate the amount of caution we should all display with this story, but it's too newsworthy to ignore.
It starts
with this interview with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange where he brings up
murdered DNC staffer,
Seth Rich, unprompted.
Here's the juicy part:
ASSANGE: Our whistleblowers go to significant efforts to get us material and often very significant risks. There's a 27 year
old that works for the DNC, he was shot in the back. Murdered, uh just a few weeks ago, uh, for unknown reasons as he was walking
down the street in Washington. So...
INTERVIEWER: That was, that was just a robbery I believe. Wasn't it?
ASSANGE: No. There's no finding. So...
INTERVIEWER: What are you suggesting? What are you suggesting?
ASSANGE: I'm suggesting our sources take risks and they uh, become concerned, uh to see things occurring, like that.
INTERVIEWER: Was he one of your sources then? I mean...
ASSANGE: We don't comment on who our sources are.
INTERVIEWER: Then why make the suggestion about a young guy being shot in the streets of Washington?
ASSANGE: Because we have to understand how high the stakes are in the United States. And our sources are ... you know... our
sources face serious risks. That's why they come to us, so we can protect their anonymity.
Then comes the news that Wikileaks is offering a $25,000 reward for any information leading to the capture of Rich's murderer.
"... I know a bit about Russian people and one thing I know is this; the U.S. is ignorant of their culture, values and intelligence; a gross miscalculation of an adversary. ..."
"... The neo-cons are crazy (like rabid dogs) but not overtly suicidal, I think (not sure actually). ..."
Stephen Cohen got it. He got shut down. And the talking head at CNN made a note never to have
this guy on again. CNN's just had all the conversation - and then some - that they ever want to
have with this guy. We'll never see Stephen Cohen on TNC TV again.
Yes, both. I'm well aware of the long and somewhat "bumpy" history going back decades (many)
and see this as a mutual joust against a common enemy/hegemon. Russia is well aware of it's vast
area and consequent resources making it a prize like no other on the planet.
It's Russia's curse and wealth at the same time. It's there's to lose if they play badly.
I know a bit about Russian people and one thing I know is this; the U.S. is ignorant of their
culture, values and intelligence; a gross miscalculation of an adversary.
Together they (PRC and Russia) are the perfect foil to the U.S. aggression.
The neo-cons are crazy (like rabid dogs) but not overtly suicidal, I think (not sure actually).
Financial oligarchy now is really afraid of losing power... They have weak neocon stooge Hillary
-- an old woman with frail health, blood clots in the brain and probably other unknown to public
ailments. And will fight back tooth and nail to preserve
it. Like trump said -- expect the elections to be rigged.
In "How
American Politics Went Insane," Brookings Institute Fellow Jonathan Rauch spends
many thousands of words arguing for the reinvigoration of political machines, as a means
of keeping the ape-citizen further from power.
He portrays the public as a gang of
nihilistic loonies determined to play mailbox baseball with the gears of state.
"Neurotic hatred of the political class is the country's last universally acceptable
form of bigotry," he writes, before concluding:
"Our most pressing political problem today is that the country abandoned the
establishment, not the other way around."
Rauch's audacious piece, much like Andrew Sullivan's clarion call for a
less-democratic future in New York magazine ("Democracies
end when they are too democratic"), is not merely a warning about the threat posed
to civilization by demagogues like Donald Trump.
It's a piece that praises Boss Tweed's Tammany Hall (it was good for the
Irish!), the smoke-filled room (good for "brokering complex compromises"), and
pork (it helps "glue Congress together" by giving members "a kind of currency
to trade").
Rauch even chokes multiple times on the word "corruption,"
seeming reluctant to even mention the concept without shrouding it in flurries
of caveats. When he talks about the "ever-present potential for corruption"
that political middlemen pose, he's quick to note the converse also applies
(emphasis mine):
"Overreacting to the threat of corruption is just as harmful. Political
contributions, for example, look unseemly, but they play a vital role as
political bonding agents."
The basic thrust is that
shadowy back-room mechanisms, which Rauch absurdly describes as being relics of a lost
era, have a positive role and must be brought back.
He argues back-room relationships and payoffs at least committed the actors involved to
action. Meanwhile, all the transparency and sunshine and access the public is always
begging for leads mainly to gridlock and frustration.
In one passage, Rauch blames gridlock on the gerrymandering that renders most
congressional elections meaningless. In a scandal that should get more media play,
Democrats and Republicans have divvied up territory to make most House districts "safe"
for one party or another. Only about 10 to 20 percent of races are really contested in
any given year (one estimate in 2014 described an incredible 408 of the 435 races as
"noncompetitive").
As Rauch notes, meaningless general elections make primaries the main battlegrounds.
This puts pressure on party candidates to drift to extremes...
... ... ...
But it's all bull.
Voters in America not only aren't over-empowered, they've for decades now been almost
totally disenfranchised, subjects of one of the more brilliant change-suppressing
systems ever invented.
We have periodic elections, which leave citizens with the
feeling of self-rule. But in reality people are only allowed to choose between
candidates carefully screened by wealthy donors. Nobody without a billion dollars and
the approval of a half-dozen giant media companies has any chance at high office.
People have no other source of influence. Unions have been crushed. Nobody has any job
security. Main Street institutions that once allowed people to walk down the road to
sort things out with other human beings have been phased out. In their place now rest
distant, unfeeling global bureaucracies.
Has a health insurance company wrongly denied your sick child coverage? Good luck even
getting someone on the phone to talk it over, much less get it sorted out. Your
neighborhood bank, once a relatively autonomous mechanism for stimulating the local
economy, is now a glorified ATM machine with limited ability to respond to a community's
most basic financial concerns.
One of the underpublicized revelations of the financial crisis, for instance,
was that millions of Americans found themselves unable to get answers to a
simple questions like, "Who
holds the note to my house?"
People want more power over their own lives.
They want to feel some connection to society. Most particularly, they don't
want to be dictated to by distant bureaucrats who don't seem to care what
they're going through, and think they know what's best for everyone.
These are legitimate concerns. Unfortunately, they came out in this past
year in the campaign of Donald Trump, who'd exposed a tiny flaw in the system.
People are still free to vote, and some peculiarities in the structure of
the commercial media, combined with mountains of public anger, conspired to put
one of the two parties in the hands of a coverage-devouring billionaire running
on a "Purge the Scum" platform.
Donald Trump is dangerous because as president, he'd likely have little respect for
law. But a gang of people whose metaphor for society is "We are the white cells, voters
are the disease" is comparably scary in its own banal, less click-generating way.
These self-congratulating cognoscenti could have looked at the events of the last
year and wondered why people were so angry with them, and what they could do to make
government work better for the population.
Instead, their first instinct is to dismiss voter concerns as baseless, neurotic bigotry
and to assume that the solution is to give Washington bureaucrats even more leeway to
blow off the public. In the absurdist comedy that is American political life, this is
the ultimate anti-solution to the unrest of the last year, the mathematically perfect
wrong ending.
Trump is going to lose this election, then live on as the reason for an emboldened, even
less-responsive oligarchy. And you thought this election season couldn't get any worse.
"... they make the point that Hillary Clinton is a deeply flawed candidate, notably so in matters related to national security. Clinton is surely correct that allowing Trump to make decisions related to war and peace would be the height of folly . Yet her record in that regard does not exactly inspire confidence. ..."
"... When it comes to foreign policy, Trump's preference for off-the-cuff utterances finds him committing astonishing gaffes with metronomic regularity. ..."
"... By comparison, the carefully scripted Clinton commits few missteps, as she recites with practiced ease the pabulum that passes for right thinking in establishment circles. But fluency does not necessarily connote soundness. Clinton, after all, adheres resolutely to the highly militarized "Washington playbook" that President Obama himself has disparaged - a faith-based belief in American global primacy to be pursued regardless of how the world may be changing and heedless of costs. ..."
"... First, and most important, the evil effects of money: ..."
"... Republic Lost, Version 2.0 ..."
"... Second, the perverse impact of identity politics on policy ..."
"... Third, the substitution of "reality" for reality ..."
"... The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America ..."
"... According to Boorstin, more than five decades ago the American people were already living in a "thicket of unreality." By relentlessly indulging in ever more "extravagant expectations," they were forfeiting their capacity to distinguish between what was real and what was illusory. Indeed, Boorstin wrote, "We have become so accustomed to our illusions that we mistake them for reality." ..."
"... While ad agencies and PR firms had indeed vigorously promoted a world of illusions, Americans themselves had become willing accomplices in the process. ..."
"... "The American citizen lives in a world where fantasy is more real than reality, where the image has more dignity than its original. We hardly dare to face our bewilderment, because our ambiguous experience is so pleasantly iridescent, and the solace of belief in contrived reality is so thoroughly real. We have become eager accessories to the great hoaxes of the age. These are the hoaxes we play on ourselves." ..."
"... Real Housewives of ..."
"... Game of Thrones ..."
"... The Apprentice ..."
"... "The making of the illusions which flood our experience has become the business of America," wrote Boorstin. It's also become the essence of American politics, long since transformed into theater, or rather into some sort of (un)reality show. ..."
"... This emphasis on spectacle has drained national politics of whatever substance it still had back when Ike and Adlai commanded the scene. It hardly need be said that Donald Trump has demonstrated an extraordinary knack - a sort of post-modern genius - for turning this phenomenon to his advantage. ..."
"... The thicket of unreality that is American politics has now become all-enveloping. The problem is not Trump and Clinton, per se. It's an identifiable set of arrangements - laws, habits, cultural predispositions - that have evolved over time and promoted the rot that now pervades American politics. As a direct consequence, the very concept of self-government is increasingly a fantasy, even if surprisingly few Americans seem to mind. ..."
"... I know Clinton is one of this gang. And I am sure that given his personality, Trump will succumb to this madness almost at once. Give a narcissistic jerk that much power and good luck to all of us (of course, give that much power to a rabid insider like Clinton and good luck to all of us). Of course, their partisans will say, "Trump will just ignore the entire vast apparatus of the permanent government and the security state and do whatever he likes" or "Nixon went to China, and Clinton can metaphorically do the same when she realizes she's no longer a cheerleader at State and the buck stops at her desk", but I don't believe either of those assertions. ..."
"... Thanks james, to the annoying chest thumpers the image of dems chanting USA USA to drown out No More Wars really signals an alternate reality. I think AB went way too easy on clinton, ..."
"... It's depressing to see Andrew Bacevich, one of our country's most astute observers of the national security scene and a retired military officer, come down on the side of Hilary Clinton as the lesser evil candidate. He can only do so by totally ignoring her central role in the ignition of Cold War 2.0 in his litany of her liabilities. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton offers more of the same bad news, only worse. Trump scares everybody from the MIC, which includes Bacevich, who after all draws a hefty monthly pension from the Defense Dept., because he indicates he actually wants to be the boss, to call the shots, to shake things up, to rattle some cages. The last prez who actually tried to boss around the MIC was JFK, and he had his brain tissue splattered onto the Dallas street in broad daylight. Trump was kind of a stealth candidate in the primaries, in that the bigwigs were unable to take him seriously, even after he won some primaries. By the time they marshaled enough opposition to stop him, it was too late. ..."
"... The people, in the eyes of miscreants like Obama, are mere pawns to be manipulated, stolen from, etc. He's implying the GOP should have had a superdelegate fix, like the dems, to overcome any spurt of independent thinking from the electorate. ..."
"... Clinton may be a non-introspective narcissist who has an poor understanding of the historical results of policy and current affairs, who never admits mistakes/grievous wrongs ("Libya needs more time") and whose most significant personal decision was to recognize that, after failing the bar exam in Washington DC, it was time to go to Arkansas and hitch her wagon to Bill Clinton's career. ..."
"... Trump is a novice at government, yes, but he has experienced dealing with foreign countries as a businessman. HRC is much scarier-she is capable of rattling off the neocon doctrine as it pertains to a lot of countries. Great. I'd much prefer the novice. I would love to have the neocons and neolibs destroyed. ..."
"... Hillary is scary because I think she and Victory Nuland are going to push us into a war with Putin – Trump is an idiot, but we already know that Hillary has a taste for blood. Libya and Iraq are two prime examples. ..."
Even by Washington standards, Secretary Clinton exudes a striking sense of entitlement combined
with a nearly complete absence of accountability. She shrugs off her
misguided vote in support of invading Iraq back in 2003, while serving as senator from New York.
She neither explains nor apologizes for pressing to depose Libya's Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, her most
notable "
accomplishment " as secretary of state. "We came, we saw, he died," she
bragged back then, somewhat prematurely given that Libya has since fallen into anarchy and become
a haven for ISIS.
She clings to the demonstrably false claim that her use of a private server for State Department
business compromised
no classified information . Now opposed to the Trans Pacific Partnership (TTP) that she
once described as the "gold standard in trade agreements," Clinton rejects charges of political
opportunism. That her change of heart occurred when attacking the TPP was helping Bernie Sanders
win one Democratic primary after another is merely coincidental. Oh, and the big money accepted from
banks and
Wall Street as well as the
tech sector for minimal work and
the bigger money still from leading figures in the Israel lobby? Rest assured that her acceptance
of such largesse won't reduce by one iota her support for "working class families" or her commitment
to a just peace settlement in the Middle East.
Let me be clear: none of these offer the slightest reason to vote for Donald Trump. Yet together
they make the point that Hillary Clinton is a deeply flawed candidate, notably so in matters
related to national security. Clinton is surely correct that allowing Trump to make decisions related
to war and peace would be the
height of folly . Yet her record in that regard does not exactly inspire confidence.
When it comes to foreign policy, Trump's preference for off-the-cuff utterances finds him
committing astonishing gaffes with metronomic regularity. Spontaneity serves chiefly to expose
his staggering ignorance.
By comparison, the carefully scripted Clinton commits few missteps, as she recites with practiced
ease the pabulum that passes for right thinking in establishment circles. But fluency does not necessarily
connote soundness. Clinton, after all, adheres resolutely to the highly militarized "Washington playbook"
that President Obama himself has
disparaged - a faith-based belief in American global primacy to be pursued regardless of how
the world may be changing and heedless of costs.
On the latter point, note that Clinton's acceptance speech in Philadelphia included not a
single mention of Afghanistan. By Election Day, the war there will have passed its 15th anniversary.
One might think that a prospective commander-in-chief would have something to say about the longest
conflict in American history, one that continues with no end in sight. Yet, with the Washington playbook
offering few answers, Mrs. Clinton chooses to remain silent on the subject.
So while a Trump presidency holds the prospect of the United States driving off a cliff, a Clinton
presidency promises to be the equivalent of banging one's head against a brick wall without evident
effect, wondering all the while why it hurts so much.
Pseudo-Politics for an Ersatz Era
But let's not just blame the candidates. Trump and Clinton are also the product of circumstances
that neither created. As candidates, they are merely exploiting a situation - one relying on intuition
and vast stores of brashness, the other putting to work skills gained during a life spent studying
how to acquire and employ power. The success both have achieved in securing the nominations of their
parties is evidence of far more fundamental forces at work.
In the pairing of Trump and Clinton, we confront symptoms of something pathological. Unless Americans
identify the sources of this disease, it will inevitably worsen, with dire consequences in the realm
of national security. After all, back in Eisenhower's day, the IEDs planted thanks to reckless presidential
decisions tended to blow up only years - or even decades - later. For example, between the 1953 U.S.-engineered
coup that restored the Shah to his throne and the 1979 revolution that converted Iran overnight from
ally to adversary, more than a quarter of a century elapsed. In our own day, however, detonation
occurs so much more quickly - witness the almost instantaneous and explosively unhappy consequences
of Washington's post-9/11 military interventions in the Greater Middle East.
So here's a matter worth pondering: How is it that all the months of intensive fundraising, the
debates and speeches, the caucuses and primaries, the avalanche of TV ads and annoying robocalls
have produced two presidential candidates who tend to elicit from a surprisingly large number of
rank-and-file citizens disdain, indifference, or at best hold-your-nose-and-pull-the-lever acquiescence?
Here, then, is a preliminary diagnosis of three of the factors contributing to the erosion of
American politics, offered from the conviction that, for Americans to have better
choices next time around, fundamental change must occur - and soon.
First, and most important, the evil effects of money: Need chapter and verse? For a tutorial,
see this essential 2015 book by Professor Lawrence Lessig of Harvard:
Republic
Lost, Version 2.0 . Those with no time for books might spare 18 minutes for Lessig's brilliant
and deeply disturbing
TED talk . Professor Lessig argues persuasively that unless the United States radically changes
the way it finances political campaigns, we're pretty much doomed to see our democracy wither and
die.
Needless to say, moneyed interests and incumbents who benefit from existing arrangements take
a different view and collaborate to maintain the status quo. As a result, political life has increasingly
become a pursuit reserved for those like Trump who possess vast personal wealth or for those like
Clinton who display an aptitude for persuading the well to do to open their purses, with all that
implies by way of compromise, accommodation, and the subsequent repayment of favors.
Second, the perverse impact of identity politics on policy : Observers make much of the
fact that, in capturing the presidential nomination of a major party, Hillary Clinton has shattered
yet another glass ceiling. They are right to do so. Yet the novelty of her candidacy starts and ends
with gender. When it comes to fresh thinking, Donald Trump has far more to offer than Clinton - even
if his version of "fresh" tends to be synonymous with wacky, off-the-wall, ridiculous, or altogether
hair-raising.
The essential point here is that, in the realm of national security, Hillary Clinton is utterly
conventional. She subscribes to a worldview (and view of America's role in the world) that originated
during the Cold War, reached its zenith in the 1990s when the United States proclaimed itself the
planet's "sole superpower," and persists today remarkably unaffected by actual events.
On the campaign trail, Clinton attests to her bona fides by routinely reaffirming her belief in American
exceptionalism , paying fervent tribute to "
the world's greatest military ," swearing that she'll be "listening to our generals and admirals,"
and vowing to get tough on America's adversaries. These are, of course, the mandatory rituals of
the contemporary Washington stump speech, amplified if anything by the perceived need for the first
female candidate for president to emphasize her pugnacity.
A Clinton presidency, therefore, offers the prospect of more of the same - muscle-flexing and
armed intervention to demonstrate American global leadership - albeit marketed with a garnish of
diversity. Instead of different policies, Clinton will offer an administration that has a different
look, touting this as evidence of positive change.
Yet while diversity may be a good thing, we should not confuse it with effectiveness. A national
security team that "looks like America" (to use the phrase originally coined by Bill Clinton) does
not necessarily govern more effectively than one that looks like President Eisenhower's. What matters
is getting the job done.
Since the 1990s women have found plentiful opportunities to fill positions in the upper echelons
of the national security apparatus. Although we have not yet had a female commander-in-chief, three
women have served as secretary of state and two as national security adviser. Several have filled
Adlai Stevenson's old post at the United Nations. Undersecretaries, deputy undersecretaries, and
assistant secretaries of like gender abound, along with a passel of female admirals and generals.
So the question needs be asked: Has the quality of national security policy improved compared
to the bad old days when men exclusively called the shots? Using as criteria the promotion of stability
and the avoidance of armed conflict (along with the successful prosecution of wars deemed unavoidable),
the answer would, of course, have to be no. Although Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice, Susan
Rice, Samantha Power, and Clinton herself might entertain a different view, actually existing conditions
in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, and other countries across the Greater
Middle East and significant parts of Africa tell a different story.
The abysmal record of American statecraft in recent years is not remotely the
fault of women; yet neither have women made a perceptibly positive difference. It turns out that
identity does not necessarily signify wisdom or assure insight. Allocating positions of influence
in the State Department or the Pentagon based on gender, race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation -
as Clinton will assuredly do - may well gratify previously disenfranchised groups. Little evidence
exists to suggest that doing so will produce more enlightened approaches to statecraft, at least
not so long as adherence to the Washington playbook figures as a precondition to employment. (Should
Clinton win in November, don't expect the redoubtable ladies of
Code Pink to be tapped for
jobs at the Pentagon and State Department.)
In the end, it's not identity that matters but ideas and their implementation. To contemplate
the ideas that might guide a President Trump along with those he will recruit to act on them - Ivanka
as national security adviser? - is enough to elicit shudders from any sane person. Yet the prospect
of Madam President surrounding herself with an impeccably diverse team of advisers who share her
own outmoded views is hardly cause for celebration.
Putting a woman in charge of national security policy will not in itself amend the defects exhibited
in recent years. For that, the obsolete principles with which Clinton along with the rest of Washington
remains enamored will have to be jettisoned. In his own bizarre way (albeit without a clue as to
a plausible alternative), Donald Trump seems to get that; Hillary Clinton does not.
Third, the substitution of "reality" for reality : Back in 1962, a young historian by
the name of Daniel Boorstin published
The
Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America . In an age in which Donald Trump and
Hillary Clinton vie to determine the nation's destiny, it should be mandatory reading. The Image
remains, as when it first appeared, a fire bell ringing in the night.
According to Boorstin, more than five decades ago the American people were already living in a
"thicket of unreality." By relentlessly indulging in ever more "extravagant expectations," they were
forfeiting their capacity to distinguish between what was real and what was illusory. Indeed, Boorstin
wrote, "We have become so accustomed to our illusions that we mistake them for reality."
While ad agencies and PR firms had indeed vigorously promoted a world of illusions, Americans
themselves had become willing accomplices in the process.
"The American citizen lives in a world where fantasy is more real than reality, where the image
has more dignity than its original. We hardly dare to face our bewilderment, because our ambiguous
experience is so pleasantly iridescent, and the solace of belief in contrived reality is so thoroughly
real. We have become eager accessories to the great hoaxes of the age. These are the hoaxes we play
on ourselves."
This, of course, was decades before the nation succumbed to the iridescent allure of Facebook,
Google, fantasy football, " Real Housewives of _________," selfies, smartphone apps,
Game of Thrones , Pokémon GO - and, yes, the vehicle that vaulted Donald Trump to stardom,
The Apprentice .
"The making of the illusions which flood our experience has become the business of America," wrote
Boorstin. It's also become the essence of American politics, long since transformed into theater,
or rather into some sort of (un)reality show.
Presidential campaigns today are themselves, to use Boorstin's famous term, "pseudo-events" that
stretch from months into years. By now, most Americans know better than to take at face value anything
candidates say or promise along the way. We're in on the joke - or at least we think we are. Reinforcing
that perception on a daily basis are media outlets that have abandoned mere reporting in favor of
enhancing the spectacle of the moment. This is especially true of the cable news networks, where
talking heads serve up a snide and cynical complement to the smarmy fakery that is the office-seeker's
stock in trade. And we lap it up. It matters little that we know it's all staged and contrived, as
long as - a preening Megyn Kelly getting under Trump's skin, Trump himself denouncing "lyin' Ted"
Cruz, etc., etc. - it's entertaining.
This emphasis on spectacle has drained national politics of whatever substance it still had back
when Ike and Adlai commanded the scene. It hardly need be said that Donald Trump has demonstrated
an extraordinary knack - a sort of post-modern genius - for turning this phenomenon to his advantage.
Yet in her own way Clinton plays the same game. How else to explain a national convention organized
around the idea of "
reintroducing to the American people" someone who served eight years as First Lady, was elected
to the Senate, failed in a previous high-profile run for the presidency, and completed a term as
secretary of state? The just-ended conclave in Philadelphia was, like the Republican one that preceded
it, a pseudo-event par excellence, the object of the exercise being to fashion a new "image" for
the Democratic candidate.
The thicket of unreality that is American politics has now become all-enveloping. The problem
is not Trump and Clinton, per se. It's an identifiable set of arrangements - laws, habits, cultural
predispositions - that have evolved over time and promoted the rot that now pervades American politics.
As a direct consequence, the very concept of self-government is increasingly a fantasy, even if surprisingly
few Americans seem to mind.
At an earlier juncture back in 1956, out of a population of 168 million, we got Ike and Adlai.
Today, with almost double the population, we get - well, we get what we've got. This does not represent
progress. And don't kid yourself that things really can't get much worse. Unless Americans rouse
themselves to act, count on it, they will.
Americans are annoying chest-thumpers but the average Jane or Joe has no power in their own
lives. In contrast, the Washington foreign policy elite has power, the power of life and death,
over billions across the globe, and they exercise it regularly. This power has utterly corrupted
the elite and gone to their heads. That is why any defiance is met with such rage. They are used
to getting their own way, and woe to the country that acts or even thinks otherwise.
I know Clinton is one of this gang. And I am sure that given his personality, Trump will succumb
to this madness almost at once. Give a narcissistic jerk that much power and good luck to all
of us (of course, give that much power to a rabid insider like Clinton and good luck to all of
us). Of course, their partisans will say, "Trump will just ignore the entire vast apparatus of
the permanent government and the security state and do whatever he likes" or "Nixon went to China,
and Clinton can metaphorically do the same when she realizes she's no longer a cheerleader at
State and the buck stops at her desk", but I don't believe either of those assertions.
Thanks james, to the annoying chest thumpers the image of dems chanting USA USA to drown out
No More Wars really signals an alternate reality. I think AB went way too easy on clinton, and
the misogyny claim was one cheap shot (True, antipathy directed toward Hillary Clinton draws some
of its energy from incorrigible sexists along with the "vast right wing conspiracy" whose members
thoroughly loathe both Clintons. Yet the antipathy is not without basis in fact.) but I think
he retakes that ground when he labels her "utterly conventional", On balance a good article but
as with many prominent figures he can make a laundry list of her downsides and still come out
sounding like a supporter of hers. I share your conclusion, good luck
It's depressing to see Andrew Bacevich, one of our country's most astute observers of the national
security scene and a retired military officer, come down on the side of Hilary Clinton as the
lesser evil candidate. He can only do so by totally ignoring her central role in the ignition
of Cold War 2.0 in his litany of her liabilities.
Hillary Clinton offers more of the same bad news, only worse. Trump scares everybody from the
MIC, which includes Bacevich, who after all draws a hefty monthly pension from the Defense Dept.,
because he indicates he actually wants to be the boss, to call the shots, to shake things up,
to rattle some cages. The last prez who actually tried to boss around the MIC was JFK, and he
had his brain tissue splattered onto the Dallas street in broad daylight. Trump was kind of a
stealth candidate in the primaries, in that the bigwigs were unable to take him seriously, even
after he won some primaries. By the time they marshaled enough opposition to stop him, it was
too late.
Obama, for his part, has indicated the republican party was negligent in its duties
by letting the people vote this guy into the nomination. The people, in the eyes of miscreants
like Obama, are mere pawns to be manipulated, stolen from, etc. He's implying the GOP should have
had a superdelegate fix, like the dems, to overcome any spurt of independent thinking from the
electorate.
Clinton may be a non-introspective narcissist who has an poor understanding of the historical
results of policy and current affairs, who never admits mistakes/grievous wrongs ("Libya needs
more time") and whose most significant personal decision was to recognize that, after failing
the bar exam in Washington DC, it was time to go to Arkansas and hitch her wagon to Bill Clinton's
career.
Trump is a novice at government, yes, but he has experienced dealing with foreign countries
as a businessman. HRC is much scarier-she is capable of rattling off the neocon doctrine as it
pertains to a lot of countries. Great. I'd much prefer the novice. I would love to have the neocons
and neolibs destroyed.
As Bacevich says, Ike was not a bad president, and he had no gov't experience before he was elected.
My dad was a democrat, I guess, but the one thing I remember hearing him utter regarding politics
was praise of Ike: " Things were good in the 50's-we had General Motors, General Electric, and
General Eisenhower!"
Hillary is scary because I think she and Victory Nuland are going to push us into a war with
Putin – Trump is an idiot, but we already know that Hillary has a taste for blood.
Libya and Iraq are two prime examples.
"... Russia is aware of the United States' plans for nuclear hegemony ..."
"... The Russian president also highlighted the fact that although the United States missile system is referred to as an "anti-missile defense system," the systems are just as offensive as they are defensive: ..."
"... Putin further explained the implications of this missile defense system's implementation without any response from Russia. The ability of the missile defense system to render Russia's nuclear capabilities useless would cause an upset in what Putin refers to as the "strategic balance" of the world. Without this balance of power, the U.S. would be free to pursue their policies throughout the world without any tangible threat from Russia. Therefore, this "strategic balance," according to Putin, is what has kept the world safe from large-scale wars and military conflicts. ..."
(ANTIMEDIA)
As the United States continues to
develop and upgrade their nuclear weapons capabilities at an alarming rate,
America's ruling class refuses to heed warnings from President Vladimir Putin
that Russia will respond as necessary.
In his most
recent
attempt to warn his Western counterparts about the impending danger of a
new nuclear arms race, Putin told the heads of large foreign companies and business
associations that Russia is aware of the United States' plans for nuclear
hegemony. He was speaking at the 20th St. Petersburg International Economic
Forum.
"We know year by year what will happen, and they know that we know,"
he said.
Putin argued that the rationale the U.S. previously gave for maintaining
and developing its nuclear weapons system is directed at the so-called "Iranian
threat." But that threat has been drastically reduced since the U.S. proved
instrumental in reaching an
agreement with Iran that should
put to rest any possible Iranian nuclear potential.
The Russian president also highlighted the fact that although the United
States missile system is referred to as an "anti-missile defense system," the
systems are just as offensive as they are defensive:
"They say [the missile systems] are part of their defense capability,
and are not offensive, that these systems are aimed at protecting them from
aggression. It's not true the strategic ballistic missile defense is part
of an offensive strategic capability, [and] functions in conjunction with
an aggressive missile strike system."
This missile system has been launched throughout Europe, and despite
American promises at the end of the Cold War that NATO's expansion would
not move "as much as a thumb's width further to the East," the missile system
has been implemented in many of Russia's neighboring countries, most recently
in Romania.
Russia views this as a direct attack on their security.
"How do we know what's inside those launchers? All one needs to do
is reprogram [the system], which is an absolutely inconspicuous task,"
Putin stated.
Putin further explained the implications of this missile defense system's
implementation without any response from Russia. The ability of the missile
defense system to render Russia's nuclear capabilities useless would cause an
upset in what Putin refers to as the "strategic balance" of the world. Without
this balance of power, the U.S. would be free to pursue their policies throughout
the world without any tangible threat from Russia. Therefore, this "strategic
balance," according to Putin, is what has kept the world safe from large-scale
wars and military conflicts.
Following
George W. Bush's 2001 decision to unilaterally withdraw the U.S. from the
1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, Russia was, according to Putin, left with
no choice but to upgrade their capabilities in response.
Putin warned:
"Today Russia has reached significant achievements in this field.
We have modernized our missile systems and successfully developed new generations.
Not to mention missile defense systems We must provide security not only
for ourselves. It's important to provide strategic balance in the world,
which guarantees peace on the planet.
Neutralizing Russia's nuclear potential will undo, according to Putin,
"the mutual threat that has provided [mankind] with global security for decades."
It should, therefore, come as no surprise that NASA scientists want to
colonize the moon by 2022 - we may have to if we don't drastically alter
the path we are on. As Albert Einstein
famously stated:
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World
War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
"... Whatever the character of America's involvement in the Middle East before 1980, when Bacevich's account begins, it was not a war, at least not in terms of American casualties. "From the end of World War II to 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in that region," he notes. "Within a decade," however, "a great shift occurred. Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed in action anywhere except in the Greater Middle East." ..."
"... The sequence of events, lucidly related by Bacevich, would be a dark absurdist comedy if it weren't tragically real. To check Iran, the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War of 1980–88, whose final phase, the so-called "Tanker War," involved direct U.S. military engagement with Iranian naval forces. (Bacevich calls this the real first Persian Gulf War.) ..."
"... Finally, George W. Bush decided to risk what his father had dared not: invading Iraq with the objective of "regime change," he launched a third Gulf War in 2003. The notion his neoconservative advisers put into Bush's head was that, with only a little help from American occupation and reconstruction, the void left by Saddam Hussein's removal would be filled by a model democracy. ..."
"... Yet the first Bush had been right: Iran, as well as ISIS, reaped the rewards of regime change in Baghdad. And so America is now being drawn into a fourth Gulf War, reintroducing troops-styled as advisors-into Iraq to counter the effects of the previous Gulf War, which was itself an answer to the unfinished business of the wars of 1991 and the late 1980s. Our military interventions in the Persian Gulf have been a self-perpetuating chain reaction for over three decades. ..."
"... "Wolfowitz adhered to an expansive definition of the Persian Gulf," notes Bacevich, which in that young defense intellectual's words extended from "the region between Pakistan and Iran in the northeast to the Yemens in the southwest." Wolfowitz identified two prospective menaces to U.S. interests in the region: the Soviet Union-this was still the Cold War era, after all-and "the emerging Iraqi threat"; to counter these Wolfowitz called for "advisors and counterinsurgency specialists, token combat forces, or a major commitment" of U.S. forces to the Middle East. ..."
"... The military bureaucracy took advantage of the removal of one enemy from the map-Soviet Communism-to redirect resources toward a new region and new threats. As Bacevich observes, "What some at the time were calling a 'peace dividend' offered CENTCOM a way of expanding its portfolio of assets." Operation Desert Storm, and all that came afterward, became possible. ..."
"... The final lesson of this one is simple: "Perpetuating the War for the Greater Middle East is not enhancing American freedom, abundance, and security. If anything, it is having the opposite effect." ..."
Bacevich's latest book, America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History,
is a bookend of sorts to American Empire. The earlier work was heavy on theory and institutional
development, the groundwork for the wars of the early 21st century. The new book covers the history
itself-and argues persuasively that the Afghanistan, Iraq, and other, smaller wars since 9/11 are
parts of a larger conflict that began much earlier, back in the Carter administration.
Whatever the character of America's involvement in the Middle East before 1980, when Bacevich's
account begins, it was not a war, at least not in terms of American casualties. "From the end of
World War II to 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in that
region," he notes. "Within a decade," however, "a great shift occurred. Since 1990, virtually no
American soldiers have been killed in action anywhere except in the Greater Middle East."
Operation Eagle Claw, Carter's ill-fated mission to rescue Americans held hostage in Iran, was
the first combat engagement in the war. Iran would continue to tempt Washington to military action
throughout the next 36 years-though paradoxically, attempts to contain Iran more often brought the
U.S. into war with the Islamic Republic's hostile neighbor, Iraq.
The sequence of events, lucidly related by Bacevich, would be a dark absurdist comedy if it
weren't tragically real. To check Iran, the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the Iran-Iraq
War of 1980–88, whose final phase, the so-called "Tanker War," involved direct U.S. military engagement
with Iranian naval forces. (Bacevich calls this the real first Persian Gulf War.)
Weakened and indebted by that war, and thinking the U.S. tolerant of his ambitions, Saddam then
invaded Kuwait, leading to full-scale U.S. military intervention against him: Operation Desert Storm
in 1991. (By Bacevich's count, the second Gulf War.) President George H.W. Bush stopped American
forces from pushing on to Baghdad after liberating Kuwait, however, because-among other things-toppling
Saddam would have created a dangerous vacuum that Iran might fill.
A decade of sanctions, no-fly zones, and intermittent bombing then ensued, as Washington, under
Bush and Clinton, would neither depose Saddam Hussein nor permit him to reassert himself. Finally,
George W. Bush decided to risk what his father had dared not: invading Iraq with the objective of
"regime change," he launched a third Gulf War in 2003. The notion his neoconservative advisers put
into Bush's head was that, with only a little help from American occupation and reconstruction, the
void left by Saddam Hussein's removal would be filled by a model democracy. This would set a
precedent for America to democratize every trouble-making state in the region, including Iran.
Yet the first Bush had been right: Iran, as well as ISIS, reaped the rewards of regime change
in Baghdad. And so America is now being drawn into a fourth Gulf War, reintroducing troops-styled
as advisors-into Iraq to counter the effects of the previous Gulf War, which was itself an answer
to the unfinished business of the wars of 1991 and the late 1980s. Our military interventions in
the Persian Gulf have been a self-perpetuating chain reaction for over three decades.
Iran released its American hostages the day Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president: January 20,
1981. So what accounts for another 35 years of conflict with Iran and Iraq? The answer begins with
oil.
Bacevich takes us back to the Carter years. "By June 1979, a just-completed study by a then-obscure
Defense Department official named Paul Wolfowitz was attracting notice throughout the national security
bureaucracy." This "Limited Contingency Study" described America's "vital and growing stake in the
Persian Gulf," arising from "our need for Persian-Gulf oil and because events in the Persian Gulf
affect the Arab-Israeli conflict."
"Wolfowitz adhered to an expansive definition of the Persian Gulf," notes Bacevich, which
in that young defense intellectual's words extended from "the region between Pakistan and Iran in
the northeast to the Yemens in the southwest." Wolfowitz identified two prospective menaces to U.S.
interests in the region: the Soviet Union-this was still the Cold War era, after all-and "the emerging
Iraqi threat"; to counter these Wolfowitz called for "advisors and counterinsurgency specialists,
token combat forces, or a major commitment" of U.S. forces to the Middle East.
(Bacevich is fair to Wolfowitz, acknowledging that Saddam Hussein was indeed an expansionist,
as the Iraqi dictator would demonstrate by invading Iran in 1980 and seizing Kuwait a decade later.
Whether this meant that Iraq was ever a threat to U.S. interests is, of course, a different question-as
is whether the Soviet Union could really have cut America off from Gulf oil.)
Wolfowitz was not alone in calling for the U.S. to become the guarantor of Middle East security-and
Saudi Arabia's security in particular-and President Carter heeded the advice. In March 1980 he created
the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (RDJTF), predecessor to what we now know as the U.S. Central
Command (CENTCOM), which has military oversight for the region. The RDJTF's second head, Lt. Gen.
Robert Kingston, described its mission, in admirably frank language, as simply "to ensure the unimpeded
flow of oil from the Arabian Gulf."
Iraq and Iran both posed dangers to the flow of oil and its control by Saudi Arabia and other
Arab allies-to use the term loosely-of the United States. And just as the U.S. was drawn into wars
with Iran and Iraq when it tried to play one against the other, America's defense of Saudi Arabia
would have grave unintended consequences-such as the creation of al-Qaeda. Osama bin Laden was outraged
when, in 1990, Saudi Arabia's King Fahd declined his offer to wage holy war against Saddam Hussein
and instead turned to American protection, even permitting the stationing of American military personnel
in Islam's sacred lands. "To liberate Kuwait," writes Bacevich, bin Laden had "offered to raise an
army of mujahedin. Rejecting his offer and his protest, Saudi authorities sought to silence the impertinent
bin Laden. Not long thereafter, he fled into exile, determined to lead a holy war that would overthrow
the corrupt Saudi royals." The instrument bin Laden forged to accomplish that task, al-Qaeda, would
target Americans as well, seeking to push the U.S. out of Muslim lands.
Bin Laden had reason to hope for success: in the 1980s he had helped mujahedin defeat another
superpower, the Soviet Union, in Afghanistan. That struggle, of course, was supported by the U.S.,
through the CIA's "Operation Cyclone," which funneled arms and money to the Soviets' Muslim opponents.
Bacevich offers a verdict on this program:
Operation Cyclone illustrates one of the central ironies of America's War for the Greater Middle
East-the unwitting tendency, while intently focusing on solving one problem, to exacerbate a second
and plant the seeds of a third. In Afghanistan, this meant fostering the rise of Islamic radicalism
and underwriting Pakistan's transformation into a nuclear-armed quasi-rogue state while attempting
to subvert the Soviet Union.
America's support for the mujahedin succeeded in inflicting defeat on the USSR-but left Afghanistan
a haven and magnet for Islamist radicals, including bin Laden.
Another irony of Bacevich's tale is the way in which the end of the Cold War made escalation of
the War for the Greater Middle East possible. The Carter and Reagan administrations never considered
the Middle East the centerpiece of their foreign policy: Western Europe and the Cold War took precedence.
Carter and Reagan were unsystematic about their engagement with the Middle East and, even as they
expanded America's military presence, remained wary of strategic overcommitment. Operation Eagle
Claw, Reagan's deployment of troops to Lebanon in 1983 and bombing of Libya in 1986, and even the
meddling in Iran and Iraq were all small-scale projects compared to what would be unleashed after
the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The military bureaucracy took advantage of the removal of one enemy from the map-Soviet Communism-to
redirect resources toward a new region and new threats. As Bacevich observes, "What some at the time
were calling a 'peace dividend' offered CENTCOM a way of expanding its portfolio of assets." Operation
Desert Storm, and all that came afterward, became possible.
The
Greater Middle East of Bacevich's title centers strategically, if not geographically, upon Saudi
Arabia, Iraq, and Iran. But its strategic implications and cultural reach are wide, encompassing
Libya, Somalia, and other African states with significant Muslim populations; Afghanistan and Pakistan
(or "AfPak," in the Obama administration's parlance); and even, on the periphery, the Balkans, where
the U.S. intervened militarily in support of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s. That Clinton-era
intervention is examined in detail by Bacevich: "Today, years after NATO came to their rescue," he
writes, "a steady stream of Bosnians and Kosovars leave their homeland and head off toward Syria
and Iraq, where they enlist as fighters in the ongoing anti-American, anti-Western jihad."
Much as George W. Bush believed that liberal democracy would spring up in Saddam Hussein's wake,
the humanitarian interventionists who demanded that Bill Clinton send peacekeepers to Bosnia and
bomb Serbia on behalf of the Kosovars thought that they were making the world safe for their own
liberal, multicultural values. But as Bacevich notes, the Balkan Muslims joining ISIS today are "waging
war on behalf of an entirely different set of universal values."
Bacevich's many books confront readers with painful but necessary truths. The final lesson
of this one is simple: "Perpetuating the War for the Greater Middle East is not enhancing American
freedom, abundance, and security. If anything, it is having the opposite effect."
Daniel McCarthy is the editor of The American Conservative.
"... "In its struggle against terrorism, the West wages war on one, but shakes hands with the other," Daoud continued. "This is a mechanism of denial, and denial has a price: preserving the famous strategic alliance with Saudi Arabia at the risk of forgetting that the kingdom also relies on an alliance with a religious clergy that produces, legitimizes, spreads, preaches and defends Wahhabism, the ultra-puritanical form of Islam that Daesh feeds on." ..."
"... In the past few decades, the Saudi regime has spent an estimated $100 billion exporting its extremist interpretation of Islam worldwide. It infuses its fundamentalist ideology in the ostensible charity work it performs, often targeting poor Muslim communities in countries like Pakistan or places like refugee camps, where uneducated, indigent, oppressed people are more susceptible to it. ..."
"... What is not contested, on the other hand, is that Saudi elites in the business community and even segments of the royal family support extremist groups like al-Qaida. U.S. government cables leaked by WikiLeaks admit "donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide." ..."
"... Sen. Graham has nevertheless insisted that the possibility that elements of the Saudi royal family supported the 9/11 attackers should not be ruled out. In his 2004 book "Intelligence Matters: The CIA, the FBI, Saudi Arabia, and the Failure of America's War on Terror," Graham further argued these points, from his background within the U.S. government. ..."
"... The independent, non-partisan Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania has detailed the allegations and possible evidence - or lack thereof - of Saudi ties to the 9/11 attacks on its website FactCheck.org. ..."
"... Yet despite its brutality and support for extremism, the U.S. considers the Saudi monarchy a "close ally." The State Department calls Saudi Arabia "a strong partner in regional security and counterterrorism efforts, providing military, diplomatic, and financial cooperation." It stated in September 2015 it "welcomed" the appointment of Saudi Arabia to the head of a U.N. human rights panel. "We're close allies," the State Department remarked. ..."
"... During the Cold War - and particularly during the Soviet war in Afghanistan throughout the 1980s - the U.S., hand-in-hand with Saudi Arabia, actively encouraged religious extremism. They stressed that socialist and communist movements were often atheistic, and pitted far-right religious fundamentalists against the secular leftists. The remnants of this policy are the extremist movements we see throughout the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia today. ..."
"... In order to decimate the left in the Cold War, the U.S. emboldened, armed and trained the extreme-right. The Frankenstein's monsters it created in the pursuit of this policy are the al-Qaedas and ISISes of the world. ..."
"... Saudi Arabia is truly a country that was created through Western imperialism. Before Roosevelt met with King Ibn Saud, Saudi Arabia was a relatively weak country with little global political influence. It was Western, and principally U.S., patronage that turned Saudi Arabia into what it is today. ..."
"... Women are essentially second-class citizens in Saudi Arabia. They are given nowhere near equal rights with men - who basically own their wives and daughters - and cannot travel without men accompanying them. Unemployment rates are skyrocketing among women, even though many are educated, and they were only just granted the right to vote in December 2015 - although they do not have any actual effectual politicians to vote for under an absolute monarchy. ..."
"... The U.S. will realize that there really is an easy way to stop terrorism: It will stop participating in it, and end its alliance with Saudi Arabia. ..."
"... "There was no 'overthrow.'" ..."
"... I've seen for myself the investments that Saudi Arabia has made in Kyrgyzstan to turn their Muslim majority into a destabilizing force. They pay for brand new Mosques with gleaming spires, and these are the locations where the local Muslims become radicalized and where guns, ammunition and explosives are held. ..."
"... one reason the usa government loves saudi is that the government activities enrich the officers of state. dubya not only promoted a war, he enriched his family with munitions contracts. look at the 'carlyle group.' ..."
"... It's no wonder the average Middle Easterner thinks the US is behind ISIS. ..."
"Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating
in it." So advised world-renowned public intellectual Noam Chomsky, one of the most cited thinkers
in human history.
The counsel may sound simple and intuitive - that's because it is. But when it comes to Saudi
Arabia, the U.S. ignores it.
Saudi Arabia is the world's leading sponsor of Islamic extremism. It is also a close U.S. ally.
... ... ...
Saudi Arabia is a theocratic absolute monarchy that governs based on an extreme interpretation of
Sharia (Islamic law). It is so extreme, it has been widely compared to ISIS. Algerian journalist
Kamel Daoud characterized Saudi Arabia in an
op-ed in The New York Times as "an ISIS that has made it."
"Black Daesh, white Daesh," Daoud
wrote, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS. "The former slits throats, kills, stones, cuts off hands,
destroys humanity's common heritage and despises archaeology, women and non-Muslims. The latter is
better dressed and neater but does the same things. The Islamic State; Saudi Arabia."
"In its struggle against terrorism, the West wages war on one, but shakes hands with the other,"
Daoud continued. "This is a mechanism of denial, and denial has a price: preserving the famous strategic
alliance with Saudi Arabia at the risk of forgetting that the kingdom also relies on an alliance
with a religious clergy that produces, legitimizes, spreads, preaches and defends Wahhabism, the
ultra-puritanical form of Islam that Daesh feeds on."
In the past few decades, the Saudi regime has
spent an estimated $100 billion exporting its extremist interpretation of Islam worldwide. It
infuses its fundamentalist ideology in the ostensible charity work it performs, often targeting poor
Muslim communities in countries like Pakistan or places like refugee camps, where uneducated, indigent,
oppressed people are more susceptible to it.
Whether elements within Saudi Arabia support ISIS is contested. Even if Saudi Arabia does not
directly support or fund ISIS, however, Saudi Arabia gives legitimacy to the extremist ideology ISIS
preaches.
What is not contested, on the other hand, is that Saudi elites in the business community and
even segments of the royal family support extremist groups like al-Qaida. U.S. government
cables leaked by WikiLeaks admit "donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source
of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide."
Supporters of the Saudi monarchy resist comparisons to ISIS. The regime itself
threatened
to sue social media users who compared it to ISIS. Apologists point out that ISIS and Saudi Arabia
are enemies. This is indeed true. But this is not necessarily because they are ideologically different
(they are similar) but rather because they threaten each other's power.
There can only be one autocrat in an autocratic system; ISIS' self-proclaimed Caliph Abu Bakr
al-Baghdadi refuses to kowtow to present Saudi King Salman, and vice-versa. After all, the Saudi
absolute monarch partially justifies his rule through claiming that it has been blessed and ordained
by God, and if ISIS' caliph insists the same, they can't both be right.
Some American politicians have criticized the U.S.-Saudi relationship for these very reasons.
Former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham has been perhaps the most outspoken critic. Graham has called extremist
groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda "a product of Saudi ideals, Saudi money and Saudi organizational support."
... ... ...
Sen. Graham has nevertheless insisted that the possibility that elements of the Saudi royal family
supported the 9/11 attackers should not be ruled out. In his 2004 book "Intelligence Matters: The
CIA, the FBI, Saudi Arabia, and the Failure of America's War on Terror," Graham further argued these
points, from his background within the U.S. government.
The independent, non-partisan Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania
has detailed the allegations and possible evidence - or lack thereof - of Saudi ties to the 9/11
attacks on its website FactCheck.org.
Whatever its role, what is clear is that Saudi Arabia's support for violent extremist groups is
well documented. Such support continues to this very day. In Syria, the Saudi monarchy has backed
al-Nusra, al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate. The U.S. government has bombed al-Nusra, but its ally Saudi
Arabia is funding it.
Yet despite its brutality and support for extremism, the U.S. considers the Saudi monarchy a "close
ally." The State Department calls Saudi Arabia "a strong partner in regional security and counterterrorism
efforts, providing military, diplomatic, and financial cooperation." It stated in September 2015
it "welcomed" the appointment of Saudi Arabia to the head of a U.N. human rights panel. "We're close
allies," the State Department remarked.
... ... ...
During the Cold War - and particularly during the Soviet war in Afghanistan throughout the
1980s - the U.S., hand-in-hand with Saudi Arabia, actively encouraged religious extremism. They stressed
that socialist and communist movements were often atheistic, and pitted far-right religious fundamentalists
against the secular leftists. The remnants of this policy are the extremist movements we see throughout
the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia today.
In order to decimate the left in the Cold War, the U.S. emboldened, armed and trained the
extreme-right. The Frankenstein's monsters it created in the pursuit of this policy are the al-Qaedas
and ISISes of the world.
... ... ...
Saudi Arabia is truly a country that was created through Western imperialism. Before Roosevelt
met with King Ibn Saud, Saudi Arabia was a relatively weak country with little global political influence.
It was Western, and principally U.S., patronage that turned Saudi Arabia into what it is today.
The Saudi monarchy presents itself as modernized, yet it is still feudal in essence. There is
almost no developed civil society in Saudi Arabia, because the regime has made all independent institutionalized
forms of dissent illegal.
Women are essentially second-class citizens in Saudi Arabia. They are given nowhere near equal
rights with men - who basically own their wives and daughters - and cannot travel without men accompanying
them. Unemployment rates are skyrocketing among women, even though many are educated, and they were
only just granted the right to vote in December 2015 - although they do not have any actual effectual
politicians to vote for under an absolute monarchy.
... ... ...
If it is truly interested in stopping terrorism, then, the U.S. and the rest of the West will
heed Chomsky's advice. The U.S. will realize that there really is an easy way to stop terrorism:
It will stop participating in it, and end its alliance with Saudi Arabia.
Ben Norton is a politics staff writer at Salon. You can find him on Twitter at @BenjaminNorton.
Declassified documents describe in detail how US – with British help – engineered coup against
Mohammad Mosaddeq
Monday 19 August 2013
The CIA has publicly admitted for the first time that it was behind the notorious 1953 coup
against Iran's democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, in documents that also
show how the British government tried to block the release of information about its own involvement
in his overthrow.
On the 60th anniversary of an event often invoked by Iranians as evidence of western meddling,
the US national security archive at George Washington University published a series of declassified
CIA documents.
"The military coup that overthrew Mosaddeq and his National Front cabinet
was carried out under CIA direction as an act of US foreign policy, conceived and approved at
the highest levels of government," reads a previously excised section of an internal CIA history
titled The Battle for Iran.
The documents, published on the archive's website under freedom of information laws, describe
in detail how the US – with British help – engineered the coup, codenamed TPAJAX by the CIA and
Operation Boot by Britain's MI6...
Mosaddeq's overthrow, still given as a reason for the Iranian mistrust of British and American
politicians, consolidated the Shah's rule for the next 26 years until the 1979 Islamic revolution.
It was aimed at making sure the Iranian monarchy would safeguard the west's oil interests in the
country.
The archived CIA documents include a draft internal history of the coup titled "Campaign to
install a pro-western government in Iran", which defines the objective of the campaign as "through
legal, or quasi-legal, methods to effect the fall of the Mosaddeq government; and to replace it
with a pro-western government under the Shah's leadership with Zahedi as its prime minister".
{The Nixon administration created a "Twin
Pillars" Middle East policy, in which the U.S.-backed monarchies in Saudi Arabia and Iran
were considered pillars of stability. In 1953, the CIA backed a coup that overthrew Iran's first
and only democratically elected head of state, Mohammad Mosaddegh}
That is a rather odd correlation -- Mr. Nixon was inaugurated in 1973 -- 20 yrs after the CIA/MI6
(Mossad was likely lurking, too) toppled Mr. Mosaddegh.
The Nixon effect stems from Mr. Kissinger's amorous connection -- he made love to Saudi Arabia,
and they had a child named Petro-$. It was the birth of the greatest financial con in Human history.
If one has a grasp of the nature of the Supreme Power behind that curtain, the events unfolding
in the world right now, make much sense.
I've seen for myself the investments that Saudi Arabia has made in Kyrgyzstan to turn their
Muslim majority into a destabilizing force. They pay for brand new Mosques with gleaming spires,
and these are the locations where the local Muslims become radicalized and where guns, ammunition
and explosives are held.
They were successful in starting an armed revolution against of the Kyrgis government in 2010
in this otherwise peaceful country where Muslims and non-Muslims had coexisted for years in peace
and harmony. (During my visit, I even had a Muslim business owner thank George Bush during my
visit for our USAID support - I was shocked. Muslims are not the enemy. Extremists and authoritarian
governments like SA are. They don't want the two cultures to mix.)
Saudi Arabia is by far the biggest opponent to peace in the Middle East.
one reason the usa government loves saudi is that the government activities enrich the
officers of state. dubya not only promoted a war, he enriched his family with munitions contracts.
look at the 'carlyle group.'
Until the problem of Saudi Arabia is solved, the problems in the Middle East will not be solved.
We thought we could go in the back door by changing Iraq, but we only made things worse. Take
away the oil and we would have invaded after 9/11.
The royal family is basically paying off the radicals to leave them, and their wealth, alone.
Americans have to accept that fact that the U.S. and other western governments prefer fundamentalism
- which sells us oil - to democracy, socialism or Arab nationalism. It loves a good theocracy.
These really are feudal regimes.
In Palestine, in Afghanistan, in Libya, in Iraq and now Syria, the U.S. and its allies have
DIRECTLY funded Al Quada and its offshoots. Much of the weaponry sent from Libya to Syria for
'secular freedom fighters' ended up in the hands of Daesh. The U.S. has worked to crush partially
secular regimes over and over again, even using the early Islamic Hamas fundamentalists in Palestine
against the PLO, DFLP, PFLP etc. Before that they undermined Nasser, Mossedegh, and ANY left nationalists
in sight.
All for oil. It is still the oil barons and the militarists that back the Saudis and this will
not change until the US. government is undermined itself.
"... I think that we should be looking to create an umbrella of deterrence that goes much further than just Israel. Of course I would make it clear to the Iranians that an attack on Israel would incur massive retaliation from the United States, but I would do the same with other countries in the region. ..."
"... Because it does mean that they have to look very carefully at their society, because whatever stage of development they might be in their nuclear weapons program in the next 10 years during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them. ..."
"... The warmongering neocon woman gets a little careless in the second part of her statement, forgetting "nuclear" and reverting to the 2008 declaration. Worse, she says that even if they don't have nukes quite yet, an attack on Holy Israel means it's "glow-in-the-dark" time in Iran. ..."
"... It really is a tragic thing to be talking about. That's the way the Madeleine Albright ***** – the one who has declared that any woman who doesn't vote for Hillary will go to hell – put it when speaking of 500,000 dead Iraqi kids. Darned shame, but it had to be done. ..."
"... Don't even think about a possibility why Hillary might be so devoted to Israel. When she was in the Senate the woman went to a prayer breakfast with some of the most repulsive of the Conservative Republicans. Nobody at all is talking about Hillary's religion. If she is one of the Rapture types, her access to nukes would mean an End-Timer finally has a chance to force God to get off the pot and start with the Second Coming. ..."
"... Just think of it – the First and the Last woman president. ..."
"... You are right. She is a huge danger. Not only due to her frail health, age and history of blood clots. As Huma Abedin noted in her deposition, she often is "confused". Which means that she does not have "normal" level of situational awareness. ..."
"... After the dissolution of the USSR and the "triumphal march" of neoliberalism, the US elite by-and-large lost the sense of self-preservation. ..."
"... Like sociopaths she has no self-control, no sense of self-preservation, no boundaries. ..."
Hillary 2008: "George Stephanopoulos: "Senator Clinton, would you [extend
our deterrent to Israel]?"
Hillary Clinton: "Well, in fact I think that we should be looking
to create an umbrella of deterrence that goes much further than just Israel.
Of course I would make it clear to the Iranians that an attack on Israel
would incur massive retaliation from the United States, but I would do the
same with other countries in the region."
Massive Retaliation has always had the meaning of a 'massive' nuclear
attack.
Hillary 2016: "MR. CUOMO: Iran: some language recently. You said if Iran
were to strike Israel, there would be a massive retaliation. Scary words.
Does massive retaliation mean you'd go into Iran? You would bomb Iran? Is
that what that's supposed to suggest?
SEN. CLINTON: Well, the question was if Iran were to launch a nuclear
attack on Israel, what would our response be? And I want the Iranians to
know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran. And I want them to
understand that.
Because it does mean that they have to look very carefully at their
society, because whatever stage of development they might be in their nuclear
weapons program in the next 10 years during which they might foolishly consider
launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.
That's a terrible thing to say, but those people who run Iran need to
understand that, because that perhaps will deter them from doing something
that would be reckless, foolish, and tragic."
The warmongering neocon woman gets a little careless in the second
part of her statement, forgetting "nuclear" and reverting to the 2008 declaration.
Worse, she says that even if they don't have nukes quite yet, an attack
on Holy Israel means it's "glow-in-the-dark" time in Iran.
It really is a tragic thing to be talking about. That's the way the
Madeleine Albright ***** – the one who has declared that any woman who doesn't
vote for Hillary will go to hell – put it when speaking of 500,000 dead
Iraqi kids. Darned shame, but it had to be done.
But move on – it's the insane Trump who can't be trusted with nukes.
Don't even think about a possibility why Hillary might be so devoted
to Israel. When she was in the Senate the woman went to a prayer breakfast
with some of the most repulsive of the Conservative Republicans. Nobody
at all is talking about Hillary's religion. If she is one of the Rapture
types, her access to nukes would mean an End-Timer finally has a chance
to force God to get off the pot and start with the Second Coming.
Just think of it – the First and the Last woman president.
likbez , August 5, 2016 11:29 pm
Hi Zachary,
> Just think of it – the First and the Last woman president.
You are right. She is a huge danger. Not only due to her frail health,
age and history of blood clots. As Huma Abedin noted in her deposition,
she often is "confused". Which means that she does not have "normal" level
of situational awareness.
For some specialties like airplane pilots this is a death sentence. Unfortunately,
if elected, she can take the country with her.
While the USSR existed, as bad as it was for people within its borders,
it was a blessing for the people of the USA, as it kept the elite in check
and frightful to behave in "natural, greedy and delusional "Masters of the
Universe" way".
After the dissolution of the USSR and the "triumphal march" of neoliberalism,
the US elite by-and-large lost the sense of self-preservation.
If you read what Hillary utters like "no fly zone" in Syria and other
similar staff, to me this looks like a sign of madness, plain and simple.
No reasonable politician should go of the cliff like that, if stakes are
not extremely high.
And MSM try to sell her as a more reasonable politician then Trump. In
reality she is like Kelvin absolute zero. You just can't go lower. The only
hope is that she is a puppet and it does not matter what she utters.
But if we take her statements about Syria and Russia at face value, she
is either dangerously ignorant or (more probably) is a female sociopath.
Like sociopaths she has no self-control, no sense of self-preservation,
no boundaries.
So her arrogant and reckless behavior as for "getting rich quick" and
with the private "bathroom" email server is a sign of more general and more
dangerous tendency.
Neocons are still way too powerful. They dominate MSM and essentially
dictate the agenda.
"... Anti-Russian hysteria in America reached its apogee this week as Democrats tried to divert attention from embarrassing revelations about how the Democratic Party apparatus had rigged the primaries against Bernie Sanders by claiming Vlad Putin and his KGB had hacked and exposed the Dem's emails. ..."
"... Unnamed US 'intelligence officials' claimed they had 'high confidence' that the Russian KGB or GRU (military intelligence) had hacked the Dem's emails. These were likely the same officials who had 'high confidence' that Iraq had nuclear weapons. ..."
"... And what a joy for the war party that those dastardly Ruskis are now back as Enemy Number One. Much more fun than scruffy Arabs. The word is out: more stealth bombers, more warships, more missiles, more troops for Europe. The wicked Red Chinese will have to wait their turn until Uncle Sam can deal with them. ..."
"... I always find conventions depressing affairs. Rather than the cradle of democracy, they remind me of clownish Shriners Conventions. Or as the witty Democratic advisor Paul Begala said, `Hollywood for ugly people.' What, I kept wondering, is the rest of the world thinking as it watching this tawdry spectacle? ..."
"... One thing that that amazed me was the Convention's lack of attention to America's longest ever war that still rages in the mountains of Afghanistan. For the past thirteen years, America, the world's greatest military and economic power, has been trying to crush the life out of Afghan Pashtun mountain tribesmen whose primary sin is fiercely opposing occupation by the US and its local Afghan opium-growing stooges. ..."
"... But the war was far from being 'almost won.' The US-installed puppet regime in Kabul of President Ashraf Ghani, a former banker, holds on only thanks to the bayonets of US troops and the US Air Force. Without constant air strikes, the US-installed Ghani regime and its drug-dealing would have been swept away by Taliban and its tribal allies. ..."
"... So the US remains stuck in Afghanistan. Obama lacked the courage to pull US troops out. Always weak in military affairs, Obama bent to demands of the Pentagon and CIA to dig in lest the Red Chinese or Pakistan take over this strategic nation. The US oil industry was determined to assure trans-Afghan pipeline routes south from Central Asia. India has its eye on Afghanistan. Muslims could not be allowed to defeat the US military. ..."
"... This longest of wars has cost nearly $1 trillion to date – all of its borrowed money – and caused the deaths of 3,518 US and coalition troops, including 158 Canadians who blundered into a war none of them understood. ..."
"... No one has the courage to end this pointless war. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Afghans are being killed. Too bad no one at the Democratic or Republican Conventions had time to think about the endless war in forgotten Afghanistan. ..."
Anti-Russian hysteria in America reached its apogee this week as Democrats tried to divert
attention from embarrassing revelations about how the Democratic Party apparatus had rigged the primaries
against Bernie Sanders by claiming Vlad Putin and his KGB had hacked and exposed the Dem's emails.
This was rich coming from the US that snoops into everyone's emails and phones across the globe.
Remember German chancellor Angela Merkel's cell phone being bugged by the US National Security Agency?
Unnamed US 'intelligence officials' claimed they had 'high confidence' that the Russian KGB
or GRU (military intelligence) had hacked the Dem's emails. These were likely the same officials
who had 'high confidence' that Iraq had nuclear weapons.
Blaming Putin was a master-stroke of deflection. No more talk of Hillary's slush fund foundation
or her status as a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs and the rest of Wall Street. All attention was focused
on President Putin who has been outrageously demonized by the US media and politicians.
Except for a small faux pas – a montage of warships shown at the end of the Democratic Convention
is a blaze of jingoistic effusion embarrassingly turned out to be Russian warships!
Probably another trick by the awful Putin who has come to replace Satan in the minds of many Americans.
And what a joy for the war party that those dastardly Ruskis are now back as Enemy Number
One. Much more fun than scruffy Arabs. The word is out: more stealth bombers, more warships, more
missiles, more troops for Europe. The wicked Red Chinese will have to wait their turn until Uncle
Sam can deal with them.
I always find conventions depressing affairs. Rather than the cradle of democracy, they remind
me of clownish Shriners Conventions. Or as the witty Democratic advisor Paul Begala said, `Hollywood
for ugly people.' What, I kept wondering, is the rest of the world thinking as it watching this tawdry
spectacle?
One thing that that amazed me was the Convention's lack of attention to America's longest
ever war that still rages in the mountains of Afghanistan. For the past thirteen years, America,
the world's greatest military and economic power, has been trying to crush the life out of Afghan
Pashtun mountain tribesmen whose primary sin is fiercely opposing occupation by the US and its local
Afghan opium-growing stooges.
The saintly President Barack Obama repeatedly proclaimed the Afghan War over and staged phony
troops withdrawals. He must have believed his generals who kept claiming they had just about defeated
the resistance alliance, known as Taliban.
But the war was far from being 'almost won.' The US-installed puppet regime in Kabul of President
Ashraf Ghani, a former banker, holds on only thanks to the bayonets of US troops and the US Air Force.
Without constant air strikes, the US-installed Ghani regime and its drug-dealing would have been
swept away by Taliban and its tribal allies.
So the US remains stuck in Afghanistan. Obama lacked the courage to pull US troops out. Always
weak in military affairs, Obama bent to demands of the Pentagon and CIA to dig in lest the Red Chinese
or Pakistan take over this strategic nation. The US oil industry was determined to assure trans-Afghan
pipeline routes south from Central Asia. India has its eye on Afghanistan. Muslims could not be allowed
to defeat the US military.
Look what happened to the Soviets after they admitted defeat in Afghanistan and pulled out. Why
expose the US Empire to a similar geopolitical risk?
With al-Qaida down to less than 50 members in Afghanistan, according to former US defense chief
Leon Panetta, what was the ostensible reason for Washington to keep garrisoning Afghanistan? The
shadowy ISIS is now being dredged up as the excuse to stay.
This longest of wars has cost nearly $1 trillion to date – all of its borrowed money – and
caused the deaths of 3,518 US and coalition troops, including 158 Canadians who blundered into a
war none of them understood.
No one has the courage to end this pointless war. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Afghans
are being killed. Too bad no one at the Democratic or Republican Conventions had time to think about
the endless war in forgotten Afghanistan.
... leak also revealed anti-gay slurs, mocking African Americans and attempts to con reputable
news outlets with fake Trump videos.
The computer network used by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign was
hacked as part of a broad cyber attack on Democratic political organizations, people familiar with
the matter told Reuters. The latest attack, which was disclosed to Reuters on Friday, follows reports
of two other hacks on the Democratic National Committee and the party's fundraising committee for
candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives.
The U.S. Department of Justice national security division is investigating whether cyber hacking
attacks on Democratic political organizations threatened U.S. security, sources familiar with the
matter said on Friday.
DryBack, Voilà: Wikileaks recently released documents proving that Hillary Clinton took $100,000
of cash from a company she ran (and worked for in the 80's and 90's) that also funded ISIS in
Syria. French industrial giant, Lafarge, gave money to the Islamic state to operate their (Lafarge's)
cement plant in Syria, and purchased oil from ISIS. Lafarge are also large donators to Clinton's
election and the Clinton Foundation. More is here: http://yournewswire.com/clinton-was-director-of-company-that-donated-money-to-isis/
Lafarge is a regular donor to the Clinton Foundation – the firm's up to $100,000 donation was
listed in its annual donor list for 2015.
rberger -> doublreed
Lame. When Clinton worked as a lawyer, she did some legal work for Lafarge. She later said
on the board. This was in 1991. The so-called association with ISIS happened in 2014. Clinton
did not take $100,000 from the company. The company donated $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation,
which is a non-profit organization and not a cent goes to Clinton.
A very important, informative interview. Outlines complexity of challenges of modern society and
the real power of "alphabet agencies" in the modern societies (not only in the USA) pretty
vividly. You need to listen to it several times to understand better the current environment.
Very sloppy security was the immanent feature both of Hillary "bathroom" server and DNC emails hacks.
So there probably were multiple parties that has access to those data not a single one (anti Russian
hysteria presumes that the only party are Russian and that's silly; what about China, Iran and
Israel?).
Russian government would not use a "known attack" as they would immediately be traced back.
Anything, any communications that goes over the network are totally. 100% exposed to NSA data
collection infrastructure. Clinton email messages are not exception. NSA does have
information on them, including all envelopes (the body of the message might be encrypted and that's
slightly complicate the matter, but there is no signs that Clinton of DNC used encryption of them)
NSA has the technical capabilities to trace the data back and they most probably have most if not
all of deleted mail. The "total surveillance", the total data mailing used by NSA definitely includes
the mail envelopes which makes possible to enumerate all the missing mails.
Notable quotes:
"... The National Security Agency (NSA) has "all" of Hillary Clinton's deleted emails and the FBI could gain access to them if they so desired, William Binney, a former highly placed NSA official, declared in a radio interview broadcast on Sunday. ..."
"... Binney referenced testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in March 2011 by then-FBI Director Robert S. Mueller in which Meuller spoke of the FBI's ability to access various secretive databases "to track down known and suspected terrorists." ..."
"... "Now what he (Mueller) is talking about is going into the NSA database, which is shown of course in the (Edward) Snowden material released, which shows a direct access into the NSA database by the FBI and the CIA Which there is no oversight of by the way. So that means that NSA and a number of agencies in the U.S. government also have those emails." ..."
"... Listen to the full interview here: ... ..."
"... And the other point is that Hillary, according to an article published by the Observer ..."
The National Security Agency (NSA) has "all" of Hillary Clinton's deleted emails and the FBI
could gain access to them if they so desired, William Binney, a former highly placed NSA official,
declared in a radio interview broadcast on Sunday.
Speaking as an analyst, Binney raised the possibility that the hack of the Democratic National
Committee's server was done not by Russia but by a disgruntled U.S. intelligence worker concerned
about Clinton's compromise of national security secrets via her personal email use.
Binney was an architect of the NSA's surveillance program. He became a famed whistleblower when
he resigned on October 31, 2001, after spending more than 30 years with the agency.
He was speaking on this reporter's Sunday radio program, "Aaron
Klein Investigative Radio," broadcast on New York's AM 970 The Answer and Philadelphia's NewsTalk
990 AM.
Binney referenced
testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in March 2011 by then-FBI Director Robert S.
Mueller in which Meuller spoke of the FBI's ability to access various secretive databases "to track
down known and suspected terrorists."
Stated Binney:
"Now what he (Mueller) is talking about is going into the NSA database, which is shown
of course in the (Edward) Snowden material released, which shows a direct access into the NSA
database by the FBI and the CIA Which there is no oversight of by the way. So that means that
NSA and a number of agencies in the U.S. government also have those emails."
"So if the FBI really wanted them they can go into that database and get them right now," he stated
of Clinton's emails as well as DNC emails.
Asked point blank if he believed the NSA has copies of "all" of Clinton's emails, including the
deleted correspondence, Binney replied in the affirmative.
"Yes," he responded. "That would be my point. They have them all and the FBI can get them right
there."
Listen to the full interview here: ...
Binney surmised that the hack of the DNC could have been coordinated by someone inside the U.S.
intelligence community angry over Clinton's compromise of national security data with her email use.
And the other point is that Hillary, according to an
article published
by the Observer in March of this year, has a problem with NSA because she compromised Gamma
material. Now that is the most sensitive material at NSA. And so there were a number of NSA
officials complaining to the press or to the people who wrote the article that she did that. She
lifted the material that was in her emails directly out of Gamma reporting. That is a direct compromise
of the most sensitive material at the NSA. So she's got a real problem there. So there are many
people who have problems with what she has done in the past. So I don't necessarily look at the Russians
as the only one(s) who got into those emails.
The Observer defined the GAMMA classification:
GAMMA compartment, which is an NSA handling caveat that is applied to extraordinarily sensitive
information (for instance, decrypted conversations between top foreign leadership, as this was).
Aaron Klein is Breitbart's Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He
is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, "Aaron
Klein Investigative Radio." Follow him on
Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow
him on Facebook.
However, there are a significant number of voters who supported Sen. Bernie
Sanders during the Democratic primary who now say they will either vote for
Dr. Stein, Mr. Trump, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson or not at all–in that
order.
Below is an interactive chart based on more than 400 responses conducted
last night (7/30/2016) via our Internet panel and live interviews. It provides
cross tab data to determine the presidential preference for primary voters based
on the candidate they voted for in the primaries. While these results are particularly
strong for Dr. Stein–there were also an unusually high number of 18 to 29 year-old
samples–the total results include the 7-day rolling average, are weighted based
on demographics from the U.S. Census Current Population Survey and show Mr.
Trump ahead 46.8% to 42.2%.
The sub-sample shown in the chart paints pretty much the same picture as
the overall result. The polling data indicate Mr. Trump did a better job winning
over those Republicans who did not vote for him in the Republican presidential
primary (88%), as well as maintain those who did (97.8%). Mrs. Clinton is maintaining
94.4% of Democratic voters who cast their primary ballot for her, but less than
half (47.7%) of those who voted for Sen. Sanders say they are certain they will
be on board.
Now to Dr. Stein's bump. Again, we do not believe Mrs. Clinton will only
end up with half of Sen. Sanders' voters. Last night was an unusual response.
But we are saying many, many voters are very, very angry.
Nearly 16% of Sanders supporters say they will vote for Mr. Trump, but more
than a quarter are at least giving Dr. Stein a serious look. Sanders' voters
also have a largely favorable view of Dr. Stein (56%), compared to only 33%
who say the same for Mrs. Clinton. Not surprisingly, these voters are markedly
more likely to say they don't believe the federal government acts in the interest
of the people. Another 5.6% of her support comes from the small pool of voters
who supported another candidate in the Democratic presidential primary.
Whether Dr. Stein can maintain that level of support is uncertain and worth
debating as we collect and digest more polling data in the upcoming days and
weeks. But what isn't up for debate is the fact that a significant number of
Sen. Sanders' voters have extremely negative views of Mrs. Clinton and are not
quite ready to just suck it up and move on.
"... Similar to the styling of the British vote to leave the European Union, they're calling the movement #DemExit. ..."
"... After the Democratic National Convention brought some Sanders supporters into the fold, others are refusing to settle viewing the leaked emails, indicating the DNC's preference for Hillary Clinton over Sanders as the final straw. ..."
There's a push to make green the new blue. As some Bernie Sanders supporters
are jumping ship from the democratic party, opting instead to vote for green
party candidate Jill Stein.
Similar to the styling of the British vote to
leave the European Union, they're calling the movement #DemExit.
Some Sanders supporters see the choice between the Democratic and Republican
presidential nominees as simple: "Whether we get Hillary or we get Trump, we
get just as dangerous on either side just-in different ways," Sanders supporter
Erik Rydberg said.
After the Democratic National Convention brought some Sanders supporters
into the fold, others are refusing to settle viewing the leaked emails, indicating
the DNC's preference for Hillary Clinton over Sanders as the final straw.
Progressives who are fed up with the Democratic leadership's adherence to the status quo are
calling for a major #DemExit on July 29. However, progressive groups, such as Black Men for
Bernie, are urging voters to stay in the party until they have a chance to vote in their states'
primaries, especially if they live in closed or semi-closed primary states.
Abstaining from #DemExit until after state and local primaries is especially important for Florida,
which has a closed primary. On August 30, Professor and legal expert Tim Canova has a chance to unseat
Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, whose tenure as the head of the Democratic
Party has been fraught with controversy and more recently, allegations of election fraud and rigging.
A mass exodus, therefore, could sabotage progressives' own agenda to elect officials who are challenging
incumbents and establishment candidates. As of now, 23 states and territories have local and state
primaries up until September 13, so it is imperative for current members of the Democratic party
to stay until they've voted and then commit to #DemExit.
"... Why do we see such an orchestrated attempt to preemptively accuse Russia of potentially manipulating U.S. voting? This without ANY evidence that Russia ever has or would attempt to do so? Are there already plans for such manipulations that need a plausible foreign culprit as cover up story? Or is there a color revolution in preparation to eventually disenfranchise the election winner? ..."
"... "hacking", or rather, snooping and leaking, is business as usual... remember when the Sanders and Clinton campaigns were fighting over DNC server data? ..."
"... The source of the DNC email leak is irrelevant. The Orwellian chant "Putin bad; US good!" is the point of the whole thing, and the media is just a bullhorn for the party/parties. ..."
"... But I do look forward to the show when the emails Trump referred to are released. What is Hillary afraid of? it's not like nobody knows what she's done... and wants to do next. ..."
"... the United States has been a failed state from the perspective of voting integrity from at least 2000. The lunatics are running the asylum here and we voters are only allowed to participate as a hollow form of placation. ..."
"... Our famous "free press," so totally controlled by Big Corporations. Always looking for a way to try to persuade the public that any political and social actions is bad and of no importance. ACK! ..."
"... My immediate thought was of the White House managed meetings with mayors of cities where Occupy was very much not "crushed," and how they coordinated their attacks by knocking down tents, dumped books into dupsters, which were part of the free lending library in some cities, and forcing people out of sites long occupied with the persuasion of threatened force and physical harm. ..."
"... we know the neocons intend to cheat to get Hillary elected. Sounds like a warning to Russia to keep out of the way or else. ..."
"... This video below shows that the pressure of the Russian hacking lies worked on Trump. What kind of genius is that b ? Trump: Putin has no respect for the US. Starts at 1min 20 sec : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=riuduXz5Y2I Trump on Russia finding Hillays emails : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gNa2B5zHfbQ ..."
"... If Trump is such a genius then why would he make so many idiotic and contradictory statements, and then cave it so easily into pressure of lies like this against Russia ? Immediately antagonizing Russia. ..."
"... The problem with the 'Trump as Manchurian Candidate' narrative is that most people (even Democrats) deep down, probably don't really believe it. It runs right into his 'America First' that the same people have been complaining about. In the absence of hard evidence, actually shared with the public, the Putin connection will eventually fall apart. ..."
"... Bruce Schneier has been having a neolibcon bias for years with a blind spot for NSA activities. I stopped reading his stupid blog, with little to no added value regarding security news, when it became too obvious. ..."
"... 'The only reason not to have paper copies is to allow fraud.' ..."
"... Very well and concisely put. Except for the 'copies' bit. The only reason not to have paper ballots ..."
"... To me the answer seems obvious: voters registered and elections administered, ballots tallied and stored at the precinct level. There are about 175,000 precincts in the USA, each composed of 1,000 to 2,000 people. A workable size for real, participatory democracy, the basis for all constituencies - municipal, county, state, federal - erected upon them. First come the people , then come our governments. ..."
"... Russia told the United States on Thursday to get to the bottom of of its own hacking scandal. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said accusations of a Russian hand in hacking Democratic Party emails bordered on "total stupidity" and were motivated by anti-Russian sentiment. ..."
"... Michael Connell - who died at age 45, leaving a wife and four kids - was a computer networking expert who lived near Akron. Last July 17, an attorney who's filed a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging a conspiracy to rig elections in Ohio held a press conference at which he identified Connell as a principal witness. ..."
"... the missing deleted emails would most likely also reveal the innards of the Clinton family Foundation. Not really missing. It would be a great disappointment if copies are not in a few 3 letter agencies. ..."
"... Great George Carlin probably did not know many actual names of the "big owners" when he wrote ..."
"... ...The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice you don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own, and control the corporations. They've long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. ..."
"... They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying lobbying, to get what they want Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I'll tell you what they don't want they don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking... ..."
"... The perfidy of Manly is that he does not say how to _prevent_ possible breaches, but creates perception of "Russians having access to everything" instead. So he does not really care about solving the problem, but about maintaining the notion that the problem magically persist. ..."
"... "As regards these (email) batches, that is not our headache. We never poke our noses into others' affairs and we really don't like it when people try to poke their nose into ours," he said. "The Americans needs to get to the bottom of what these emails are themselves and find out what it's all about." ..."
"... The DNC was "hacked "by some of Killary's Israeli chums/clients... Lets look at the proffered "evidence" for a Russian Hack.. The hackers "seem to have been following a schedule of "Russian" holdiays... Half (or more) of the people in Israel follow that same schedule of holdiays... ..."
"... Article on Gen. Breedlove: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/breedlove-network-sought-weapons-deliveries-for-ukraine-a-1104837.html Defense contractors, think tanks, and Breedlove feared Congress would cut U.S. troop levels in Europe. ..."
"... desperate ..."
"... The Americans are beginning to tell themselves another 'real' war will solve their problems ... look at the DNC convention ... and it'll be OK because it will be another war 'over there'. It won't be over there, it'll be right here no matter where that is. ..."
"... Bruce Schneier used to charge the Chinese in every hacking incident, I guess there is now a "pivot" in the propaganda world. ..."
"... It is obvious that our elections are hacked: Florida in 2000, Ohio 2004, and now Brooklyn, Nevada, Arizona, California and other locations this year. They were hacked by our own crooks who would never allow Rooskies to muscle in on the action. Few polling stations in crowded districts, removing names from voter lists, private companies contracted to "count", voter suppression ID laws, jailing of voting populations, gerrymandering, etc. The Rooskies can only bring a rubber chicken to a gun fight. ..."
"... I have said many times: "We must abolish election machines, such as voting computers. If they make casting and tallying 10 times faster, they make organized cheating 10 times easier as well. Which can we truly afford?" ..."
"... I can't for the life of me understand why so many hawks in the State Dept and elsewhere are sooooo afraid of Putin. They still mad he nationalized oil companies? ..."
"... Just suppose the emails of the DNC were released by the Clinton Machine, what a creative tactic, and certainly there is no reason to doubt that...a great media firestorm ensues, DWS had to fall on her sword but quickly gets hoisted on the Clinton petard..as a campaign manager ..."
"... The evil that we face is an alternate philosophical position which rejects all the moral tenets of the world's 7 great religions. The goal is the rule of a tiny sect which imagines itself a godhead over humanity. ..."
The Clinton campaign and some pseudo experts assert that Russia is somehow guilty of hacking the
Democratic National Committee and of revealing DNC emails via Wikileaks. There is
zero hard evidence for that. The Clinton campaign also
claims that Trump asked Russia to hack Clinton's emails. That is also not the case.
But two "liberal" computer experts, who are taken serious in the security scene, now build on
those false assertions to say that Russia might manipulate voting machines in the November 9 elections.
It would do so, presumably, to change the vote count in favor of Trump.
That headline alone is already dumb. ANY hacker could target and manipulate the easy to deceive
voting machines - should those be connected to the Internet. Local administrators of such machines
can manipulate them any time.
Schneier is, untypically for him, in war mongering mode.
If the intelligence community has indeed ascertained that Russia is to blame, our government needs
to decide what to do in response. This is difficult because the attacks are politically partisan,
but it is essential. If foreign governments learn that they can influence our elections with impunity,
this opens the door for future manipulations, both document thefts and dumps like this one that
we see and more subtle manipulations that we don't see.
The U.S. manipulates foreign elections all the time,
according to Bush administration
lawyer Jack Goldsmith. It may not feel nice to suddenly be the target of manipulation attempts instead
of the perpetrator, but manipulation attempts in elections are normal everywhere and no reason to
start a war or other "response" measures.
Schneier:
[W]e need to secure our election systems before autumn. If Putin's government has already used
a cyberattack to attempt to help Trump win, there's no reason to believe he won't do it again
- especially now that Trump is inviting the "help."
What a joke. Trump has not invited Russian "help" to manipulate voting computers. Trump also did
not ask Russia to "hack" the Clinton email sever. That server no longer exists. If the Clinton email-server
was secure, as Clinton asserts, and if the emails in question have been deleted, as Clinton also
asserts, how could Russia "hack" for them?
Trump made a FOIA request for emails that, Hillary Clinton claims, have been deleted. What does
she fear about that? Trump asked Russia to give the deleted Clinton emails to the FBI, should it
by chance have a copy of them. Such a Freedom of Information Act request usually goes to a part of
the U.S. administration. But the Obama administration says it does not have those emails. Trump then
made a joke in directing the request to Russia.
Trump did get the furious media "outrage" response he intended to get. He thereby ruined the PR
effect of the last night of the Democratic Convention. That was likely the sole intention of his
stunt and
again shows his marketing genius.
But back to the Schneier op-ed. That one is now joined
by
a piece at Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow. Doctorow is like Schneier a famous person in the computer
scene. He quotes the Schneier piece and adds:
Voting machines are so notoriously terrible that they'd be a very tempting target for
Russia or other states that want to influence the outcome in 2016 (or merely
destabilize the US by calling into question the outcome in an election).
The Doctorow sentence neglects, like Schneier, that the entities with the most obvious interest
and capabilities to manipulate U.S. voting machines are not foreign countries. U.S. presidential
candidates and their parties have much more at stake. The candidates and the money and interests
behind them have stronger motives as well as more potential to change the voting results.
Why do we see such an orchestrated attempt to preemptively accuse Russia
of potentially manipulating U.S. voting? This without ANY evidence that Russia ever has or would
attempt to do so? Are there already plans for such manipulations that need a plausible foreign culprit
as cover up story? Or is there a color revolution in preparation to eventually disenfranchise the
election winner?
Cory Doctorow also sees destabilization as a possible motive and outcome of voting manipulations.
Already back in March John Robb
warned of a scenario this fall in which election results come into serious doubt and where a
conflict over voting results escalates into a civil war.
I do not foresee such a scenario (yet). But should large scale voting manipulations take place,
and be blamed on Russia, more than a civil war enters the realm of possibilities.
The source of the DNC email leak is irrelevant. The Orwellian chant "Putin bad; US good!"
is the point of the whole thing, and the media is just a bullhorn for the party/parties.
The voting machine rumor is probably aimed at the actual corruption in some places that was designed
to favor republicans in swing states. (ironic!) watch them call for more honest verification this
time around.
But I do look forward to the show when the emails Trump referred to are released. What
is Hillary afraid of? it's not like nobody knows what she's done... and wants to do next.
For all intents and purposes, the United States has been a failed state from the perspective
of voting integrity from at least 2000. The lunatics are running the asylum here and we voters
are only allowed to participate as a hollow form of placation.
Our famous "free press," so totally controlled by Big Corporations. Always looking for a way
to try to persuade the public that any political and social actions is bad and of no importance.
ACK!
On Tuesday night, iirc, but could have been Wednesday, the discussion mentioned Occupy as a
failed political/social movement. PBS's Gwen Ifill said that it was "crushed by its own weight."
It was part of the MCM (Mainstream Corporate Media) declaring the Sanders' promoted political
revolution dead and nearly buried.
My immediate thought was of the White House managed meetings with mayors of cities where
Occupy was very much not "crushed," and how they coordinated their attacks by knocking down tents,
dumped books into dupsters, which were part of the free lending library in some cities, and forcing
people out of sites long occupied with the persuasion of threatened force and physical harm.
But her statement was part and parcel of how the actual left of any type is dismissed and disrespected
by the Corporatist Dems and their Repub allies.
The neo-cons realized how easy it was to rig the election in 2000 after which both sides do it.
Now it's down to who who rigs it best. It's a one-party state anyway, two cheeks on the same ass,
but every politician wants to be the one who does the telling not the told.
I think the neo-cons impeached Clinton to ruin the Democrat run because 9/11 was ready to go,
and they needed to be in power or they risked being uncovered by the security services of a Gore
White House. When the impeachment failed they had no choice but to go in and steal it, because
they'd have gone down for their treason. Look what it did to the world.
US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that the US intelligence authorities
are not ready to say who is responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee emails.
I do not think we are quite ready yet to make a call on attribution," Clapper stated
at the Aspen Security Forum.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Why not and when will he be ready? Oh never mind. If Schneier is so concerned the election
voting machines can be hacked -(Notice no mention of pre-programmed votes) - let's return to paper
ballots and pencils. And who counts the votes?
Oh wait... the Supreme Court may issue a decree to stop the count as they did on December 12,
2000.
In a desperate attempt for bs stupid assertion of Trumps genius, b refuses to give a link for
what Trump actually said. B also refuses to give us a sentenced quote from Trump. How weak.
This video below shows that the pressure of the Russian hacking lies worked on Trump. What
kind of genius is that b ?
Trump: Putin has no respect for the US. Starts at 1min 20 sec :
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=riuduXz5Y2I
If Trump is such a genius then why would he make so many idiotic and contradictory statements,
and then cave it so easily into pressure of lies like this against Russia ? Immediately antagonizing
Russia.
Also if trump really understands how corrupt the US voting system is, then what kind of genius
would not hedge himself against that voting corruption surely to be done against Trump and for
Hitlery - by saying insanely incessant stupid moronic things that expose him to attacks.
Wouldn't you hedge yourself by keeping on core message and not dragging yourself back into
the pack with stupidity.
Trump said that Putin called Trump a genius, and pathetically that's all b needs to know.
The problem with the 'Trump as Manchurian Candidate' narrative is that most people (even Democrats)
deep down, probably don't really believe it. It runs right into his 'America First' that the same
people have been complaining about. In the absence of hard evidence, actually shared with the
public, the Putin connection will eventually fall apart.
Trumps MO is to say something that generates a lot of outrage that dominates the news cycle
at opportune moments. He does this when there is something else he doesn't want you to pay attention
to. Remember when Trump University was in the news? He comes back with those statements about
the judge. Last night, you had the president, the vice-president among the heavy hitters - what
better time to pull a stunt like that? For a party that prides themselves as being the 'smart'
one, the Democrats have been remarkably slow in figuring this out.
Trump probably won't pull anything like this with Hillary - the thing with her is that the
more people see her, the less they like her - so let her have her hour of shouting a speech at
us.
For voting machine issues, watch the Stephen Spoonamore series on YouTube. Each segment is about
3-4 minutes. Think there are eight segments. The series is 10 years old but extremely timely.
Velvet Revolution Interviews Stephen Spoonamore (segment 1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAyEfovA404
THEN watch his 2008 series, search YouTube. Warning: Annoying white noise in background. His
solution to vote fraud specified in the later segments is ingenious. Spoonamore was the guy American
Express and major banks called when they are hacked.
A cyber attack has been given the status of a conventional military attack by NATO on
14th June in a major policy change that increases the likelihood of a world war against Russia.
Bruce Schneier has been having a neolibcon bias for years with a blind spot for NSA activities.
I stopped reading his stupid blog, with little to no added value regarding security news, when
it became too obvious.
PS: when will you remove the embedded links to google, yahoo, ...?
The democrats are warning loud and clear that Russia may hack the voting machines in favor of
Trump. In fact, they are preparing the terrain to use this argument in case Trump is elected.
To make such stupid statements, it shows that the dems are seriously worried that Hillary is quickly
loosing ground.
@27 cresty, 'The only reason not to have paper copies is to allow fraud.'
Very well and concisely put. Except for the 'copies' bit. The only reason not to have paper
ballots is to allow fraud.
To me the answer seems obvious: voters registered and elections administered, ballots tallied
and stored at the precinct level.
There are about
175,000 precincts in the USA, each composed of 1,000 to 2,000 people. A workable size for
real, participatory democracy, the basis for all constituencies - municipal, county, state, federal
- erected upon them. First come
the people , then
come our governments.
2004, not 2008. Obama and Dems won Ohio in 2008. The Republicans' computer expert in Ohio died
afterwards in a fishy small plane accident just as he was about to testify.
from Russia (with Love). Russia To US: "Sort Out Your Own Hacking Scandal; It Is Not Our Headache"
As the silly farce over whether Russia hacked the DNC continues, earlier today the Kremlin had
some harsh words for the US.
Russia told the United States on Thursday to get to the bottom of of its own hacking scandal.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said accusations of a Russian hand in hacking Democratic Party
emails bordered on "total stupidity" and were motivated by anti-Russian sentiment. Suggestions
of Russian involvement riled the Kremlin, which has categorically denied this and accused U.S.
politicians of seeking to play on Cold War-style U.S. fears of Moscow by fabricating stories for
electoral purposes.
"As regards these (email) batches, that is not our headache. We never poke our noses into
others' affairs and we really don't like it when people try to poke their nose into ours,"
he said.
"The Americans needs to get to the bottom of what these emails are themselves and find out
what it's all about."
"... Trump made a FOIA request for emails that, Hillary Clinton claims, have been deleted. What
does she fear about that? Trump asked Russia to give the deleted Clinton emails to the FBI, should
it by chance have a copy of them. Such a Freedom of Information Act request usually goes to a
part of the U.S. administration. But the Obama administration says it does not have those emails.
Trump then made a joke in directing the request to Russia ..."
What Clinton fears is that the deleted emails are emails related to the work she did (or supposedly
did) while she was US Secretary of State and therefore they would be proof that she violated federal
US laws on recordkeeping. Some of these emails might cast light on the 2012 Benghazi consulate
attack and whether she can be held partly responsible for the deaths of four Americans during
that attack.
Jessia @3. Schneier is an insider - Harvard and the US DoD. It is also ironic that he wrote a
book titled: Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive.
If voter fraud is the criterion of a failed state (and why not), the US failed in 1960 when
John Kennedy not only stole the Democratic nomination through voter fraud in West Virginia but
also stole the general election through voter fraud in Illinois.
Tricky Dick Nixon was urged to contest the Illinois vote and contest the outcome of the election.
He pointedly refused to do so saying that a contested election would do more harm to the country
than allowing a fraudulent victory for JFK.
Well, it does appear the U.S. is in full Loon mode (my apologies to the bird). The Clinton campaign
is doing a fantastic job of deflection and distraction and the idiots are falling for it. It would
seem Russia's Pres. Putin is indeed omnipotent.
The missing Hitlary Killton's deleted emails would reveal most probably that the current war against
Libya, Syria, Iraq has been mostly her private endeavor (plus Petreaus, CIA, Raytheon) at the
request of her Bilderberg/City of London Crown Corporation masters, outside Obama's control.
@23 Thank you Noirette for that missing piece of the puzzle.
I forgot abut that in my reply on earlier thread.
The scenario deep state/global criminal cabal has been preparing against the US people and
the world would go like this:
Hitlary looses to Trump
Russia is blamed with fabricated evidence for rigging the election
civil unrest in incited (Israeli snipers shooting civilians at random + police trained
by the Israeli advisors brutalizes protesters)
hot spots in conflict zones (Turkey, Ukraine, Pribaltica) are set on fire - blamed on Russia
(Phillipines blamed on China)
nukes going off in Chicago
NATO considers "Russian cyber attack" as an act of war and responds
In order to avoid this at this point anybody who supports the Hell Bitch should be boycotted
and ostracized, including all the celebrities (who obviously pay their dues for their dark, secret
deals) not only that filth
Sarah Silverman and alike, who lower themselves to such a sewer level, also companies, local
politicians and so on...
Web guru was potential witness in Ohio voting fraud case
Shannon Connell of Madison says her brother Michael rarely talked about work. She knew he
ran an Ohio company called New Media Communications that set up websites for Republicans including
former President George H.W. Bush and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. But it wasn't until after he died
last December, when the small plane he was piloting crashed, that she learned via the Internet
of his tie to a voter fraud case and to allegations that presidential adviser Karl Rove had
made threats against him.
"At first, it was really hard for me to believe Mike was dead because somebody wanted him
dead," says Shannon, a buyer for a local children's resale shop. "But as time goes on, it's
hard for me not to believe there was something deliberate about it."
A native of Illinois, Shannon moved to Madison in 2002, the same year as her sister, Mary
Jo Walker. Walker, a former Dane County Humane Society employee, has similar concerns about
their brother's death: "It doesn't seem right to me at all."
Michael Connell - who died at age 45, leaving a wife and four kids - was a computer
networking expert who lived near Akron. Last July 17, an attorney who's filed a federal civil
rights lawsuit alleging a conspiracy to rig elections in Ohio held a press conference at which
he identified Connell as a principal witness.
The attorney, Cliff Arnebeck of Columbus, Ohio, tells Isthmus he doesn't believe Connell
was engaged in criminal activity but may have been a "data-processing implementer" for those
who were. "I was told he was at the table when some criminal things were discussed."
A week after the press conference, on July 24, Arnebeck wrote U.S. Attorney General Michael
Mukasey seeking protection for Connell, whom he said had been "threatened" by Rove, a key player
in the campaigns of George W. Bush. Arenebeck says Connell was told through an intermediary
that unless he agreed to "take the fall" for election fraud in Ohio, his wife [and New Media
partner] faced prosecution for lobby law violations. There was no claim of a threat on Connell's
person.
Arnebeck was permitted to depose Connell last Nov. 3. The portion of this deposition that
dealt with the alleged threats was sealed, but Arnebeck is preparing a motion to make it all
public. He affirms that Connell denied any involvement in voter fraud, but thinks Rove still
had reason to regard him as a threat.
"The problem that Mike Connell represented is [he was] a guy of conscience," says Arnebeck.
"If it came right down to it, he would not commit perjury." Arnebeck "absolutely" would have
called Connell as a witness in his lawsuit.
Shannon and Mary Jo both say their brother, a devout Catholic, seemed upset in the weeks
before his death. Mary Jo feels he was "stressed out and depressed" on his birthday last November;
Shannon says he atypically did not respond to an email she'd sent.
On Dec. 19, Connell flew alone in his single-engine Piper Supercub from a small airport
near Washington, D.C. The plane crashed on its final approach to his hometown Akron-Canton
Airport, between two houses. The cause is still under investigation but is presumed accidental.
The blogosphere refuses to accept this. "Mike was getting ready to talk," writes one online
journalist who labels Connell a source. "He was frightened."
Going viral and encouraging disgruntled Democrats to leave the party in all states without
upcoming primaries. This does not mean that a percentage of these people won't still vote Democrat
in the general election but there is also an active effort coming from the Green Party to recruit
these people. Sanders very publicly leaving the Democrat Party to return to Independent was
very significant and a signal to his supporters to give the Demexit go sign. Many states have
a deadline of August 1st for pre-election party switches, so that leaves only a couple days
for many.
The interactive map and Demexit instruction page being circulated is here. As is customary
with the left, alot of work and coordination went into putting this together.
Sanders is an Independent in the Senate but also a member of the Democratic Party, according
to his spokesman, Michael Briggs.
Notice Biggs said member?
= = = =
the missing deleted emails would most likely also reveal the innards of the Clinton family
Foundation. Not really missing. It would be a great disappointment if copies are not in a few
3 letter agencies.
FBI investigates hacking of Democratic congressional group – sources
[.] Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist who once worked for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid,
said the possibility of the DCCC being hacked was cause for great concern.
"Until proven otherwise, I would suggest that everyone involved with the campaign committee
operate under the assumption Russians have access to everything in their computer systems," Manley
said.
[. ] The disclosure of the DCCC breach is likely to further stoke concerns among Democratic
Party operatives, many of whom have acknowledged they fear further dumps of hacked files that
could harm their candidates. WikiLeaks has said it has more material related to the U.S. election
that it intends to release.[.]
= = = =
"They fear" Wikileaks intends to release the big one?
Great George Carlin probably did not know many actual names of the "big owners" when he wrote
...The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice
you don't.
You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the
important land. They own, and control the corporations. They've long since bought, and paid
for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their
back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the
news and information you get to hear.
They got you by the balls.
They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying lobbying, to get what they want Well,
we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I'll
tell you what they don't want they don't want a population of citizens capable of critical
thinking...
Blackstone is one of them, others being Fidelity, PIMCO, StateStreet...
Blackstone, the giant Wall Street private equity firm, will hold an invitation-only reception
before the final night of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. The event, at
the swanky Barnes Foundation art museum, includes the usual perks for attendees: free food,
drink, and complimentary shuttle buses to the final night of the convention.
What's unusual is that the host is precisely the kind of "shadow banker" that Hillary Clinton
has singled out as needing more regulation in her rhetoric about getting tough on Wall Street.
But Blackstone President and Chief Operating Officer Hamilton "Tony" James doesn't seem
the least bit intimidated...
... The head-scratcher here is that James runs a private equity firm, exactly the kind of
"shadow bank" that Clinton has derided as a scourge to the financial system. Shadow banks are
financial institutions that do bank-like activities (such as lending or investing for clients)
but aren't chartered as banks, existing outside of the traditional regulatory perimeter.
Clinton argued during the primaries with Bernie Sanders that they were more dangerous than
the big banks, because of the lack of scrutiny on their risk-taking. That was the linchpin
of her argument that Sanders's plan was too myopic, and thather plan, which sought to crack
down on shadow banking and deny it sources of funds, was more comprehensive.
James has not only actively engaged in defending the whole concept of shadow banking, he
created the original private equity trade group, formerly known as the Private Equity Council.
The group later quietly changed its name to the more innocuous-sounding American Investment
Council.
In 2014, James penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed where he called shadow banking an "Orwellian
term that can undermine critical thought." It was the regulated entities, not shadow banks,
that were "the source of almost all the systemic risk in the financial crisis," he wrote. James
explicitly sought to steer policymakers away from "regulations that undermine the many thousands
of companies and jobs that need market-based financing to survive and grow."
That term, "market-based financing," is a Tony James original. He prefers it because it
removes the more sinister connotations associated with the shadows. "Private equity sounds
bad, but shadow banking is worse," he told NPR.
Blackstone operates in leveraged buyouts, asset management, and real estate transactions.
It is the largest real estate private equity firm in the world, holding over $103 billion in
assets. After the housing bubble collapsed, Blackstone bought 43,000 single-family homes over
a two-year period, at one point buying more than $100 million worth of homes per week. They
converted most of these into rentals, becoming one of the largest landlords in the world.
Renters have sued Blackstone's real estate unit, Invitation Homes, for renting out homes
in shoddy condition. They've also been accused of jacking up rents to satisfy investors, charging
as high as 180 percent of the market rent value. Nevertheless, Blackstone plans to spin off
Invitation Homes with an initial public offering next year.
James's company also benefits from taking business lines from regulated banks, such as one
of the trading businesses of global firm Credit Suisse. Blackstone then runs that company without
government interference; assets in the Credit Suisse group have doubled since 2013.
So Clapper did not call it, but Manley has already "suggestion" blaming Russia... LOL.
The perfidy of Manly is that he does not say how to _prevent_ possible breaches, but creates perception
of "Russians having access to everything" instead. So he does not really care about solving the
problem, but about maintaining the notion that the problem magically persist.
Obviously to use that notion/perception later for some sinister goals.
This is just agitprop disinformation. Since the 'hanging chad' soft coup, all US voting machines
have backdoors to allow thevotes to be flipped, and since the Patriot Act, an Israeli subcontractor
and AT&T have had an NSA contract to 'hack' all US cell phone and internet traffic, but now there
is no need...GOOG and FB have apps on your tablet, your phone, and your sports band that record
and database all your thoughts and actions.
If you following computing, significant breakthroughs have been made in database manipulation,
to where terabytes of information can now be ground down to streaming focus group metrics on the
entire herd of so-called Little People. They can literally 'read your mind'.
'Russia' is just a Zionist mind-meld 'shiney object' whatever cognitive dissociation memes
they need to blunt-force eye-socket rape we and our children have to endure ... FOREVER
And to further make my point about the emails there is this quote from a Kremlin spokesman
Dmitry Peskov:
"As regards these (email) batches, that is not our headache. We never poke our noses
into others' affairs and we really don't like it when people try to poke their nose into ours,"
he said. "The Americans needs to get to the bottom of what these emails are themselves and
find out what it's all about."
The toxicity of this (2016) election has only been equalled by the election of 1860. Republicans
and Democrats were involved then also though the rôles have substantially changed, the results
are yet to be seen. What will 156 years of experience bring?
The DNC was "hacked "by some of Killary's Israeli chums/clients... Lets look at the proffered
"evidence" for a Russian Hack.. The hackers "seem to have been following a schedule of "Russian"
holdiays... Half (or more) of the people in Israel follow that same schedule of holdiays...
There are "clues" 'suggesting connections" with known Russian hacker groups..right..again,
any Russian hacker group "known" this well and this long, is not an active hacker group any more...
Except when Israelis, or whoever, are gaslighting them....The rest of the evidence, where any
one has even bothered to offer it, is just as weak, or even weaker.
"Nowhere on the intertubes that I frequent are stories about implications of the CONTENT of
the DNC emails. The only angle of the story that is allowed to be covered in excruciating detail
is who done it."
That is the whole point of the 'Putin did it' exercise. It is to distract the people from the
content. Contrast with the Panama Papers release where the target, Putin, was immediately targeted
indirectly in carefully selected releases. There was very little interest in who was behind the
hack. The info was publicly released via a US-government funded entity.
It should also be seen in context of the earlier public declaration that such hacking would
constitute an act of war. Trump has played into USG hands creating a 'reality' that 'Putin did
it' - after saying that "Russia should release the emails, if it has them". Was this done wittingly
or unwittingly?
ian @ 20: The problem with the 'Trump as Manchurian Candidate' narrative is that most people
(even Democrats) deep down, probably don't really believe it.
I agree! .. hogwash. Trump is the Donald and not more. Yet, after thinking about ian's post,
there is an oblique argument to be made: that this election is in fact IS all about Putin. Not
Putin as Vladimir, but Putin as a stand-in for Russia. The central issue, the ginormous elephant
in the room that is not being discussed is foreign policy - it only shows up in some remarks and
many are oblivious to it.
camps
Killary and escalation - the continuation of Bush-Obama foreign policy on speed
+ steroids, which involves destroying places and going for one 'enemy' after another and flailing
about (e.g. Iraq) - now aimed at the higher-stake ones (e.g. weakening Europe, dividing it
from Russia, and attacking Russia with all means at hand.) The backers are neo-cons, neo-libs,
the MIC, Wall Street (gingerly), and others, long list, some/many are criminal enterprises.
Going on strong is the meme.
Trump, with a nationalistic bent (partly calculated and not the most important)
shows at the same time an isolationist stance (as opposed to conquering position)
e.g. walls, anti-globalization on trade (ostensibly), America first of a certain flavor, and
going so far! as to question the existence of NATO and to have a neutral or positive attitude
towards the latest green-clawed fire-breathing devil. Reversing decline is the meme.
Arguably, foreign policy in terms of life/death of its citizens is the most crucial point,
but it is sub rosa. That is partly why all the talk/analysis in terms of ethnicity-race-religious
identities / values in this election (black / brown voters, abortion..), class (economic), tribal
political belonging, has become utterly confused, as these archaic divisions become meaningless,
while upheld in political discourse (with endless switcheroos) by all, to confuse and gather votes
here 'n there.
The US public is left adrift with two despised candidates, who do or might represent
two very different paths forward if one can even contemplate 'the forward' at present.
Your summary is excellent. Reading it, the choice between the two (excluding 3rd choices) is
clear. There exists a chance for peace or the guarantee of perpetual war.
@64 noirette, 'two despised candidates, who do or might represent two very different
paths forward if one can even contemplate 'the forward' at present.'
Yeah. Absolutely. My italics on the might. Hillary has a record. She can lie, but not to me.
Trump has ... a mouth. When he says reasonable things - given Hillary - people are desperate
to believe him. I can't.
I don't think we can, or should. Trump seems far more likely to be another Obama than
not. I think we have wasted far too many of these quadrennial exercises and that the time to do
something different is now. Look what happened in Libya. That could happen in Russia ... and a
lot more people than a US Ambassador will die. The Europeans are mad not to abrogate the US at
this point. The Americans are beginning to tell themselves another 'real' war will solve their
problems ... look at the DNC convention ... and it'll be OK because it will be another war 'over
there'. It won't be over there, it'll be right here no matter where that is.
Concerted action by our atomized selves is the only option left open to us. Let us Americans
envision a different future and simply effect it.
No
to Clinton, not to Trump . Let's
emulate a higher life form
. We can make it we try.
Bruce Schneier used to charge the Chinese in every hacking incident, I guess there is now
a "pivot" in the propaganda world.
It is obvious that our elections are hacked: Florida in 2000, Ohio 2004, and now Brooklyn,
Nevada, Arizona, California and other locations this year. They were hacked by our own crooks
who would never allow Rooskies to muscle in on the action. Few polling stations in crowded districts,
removing names from voter lists, private companies contracted to "count", voter suppression ID
laws, jailing of voting populations, gerrymandering, etc. The Rooskies can only bring a rubber
chicken to a gun fight.
I keep dreaming of a "dream" (or a "nightmare") scenario in which a) Trump wins on the election
night, just, maybe by 10-20 electoral votes; and b) on the day the Electoral College actually
meets, 10-20 electors from "Trump" states, quote, "vote their conscience", end quote, and Hillary
becomes president. Which, legally, they can do - remember the electors aren't formally bound by
anything other than "tradition" (read: what their local party officials would do to them were
they to change their vote).
I know, I know, slim chance. But it would be a thing of beauty to behold were it to actually
happen. For those of us who revel in chaos and anarchy, of course, the types who wished for a
Sarah Palin presidency just for the sheer amount of comedy material involved; the rest of the
population might well differ. In any event, the "Russian voting machine fraud" story would fit
in very well with this particular sequence of events - the electors "voting their conscience"
could then be portrayed as patriotic anti-communists (or whatever), for example.
For those 10-20 electors to vote for Hillary would be regarded as a betrayal of the system and
make her an illegitimate, crippled president.
What those 10-20 electors could do instead is to vote for some third candidate. Say, Gary Johnson
or John Kasich. When no candidate wins a majority of electors, the election is thrown into the
House of Representatives, in which each state's delegation has one vote and the vote must be among
the three candidates who got the greatest number of electoral votes.
He makes a good point: " From inception, America proved itself the cruelest, most ruthless
nation in world history, harming more people over a longer duration than any other. Tens of millions
of corpses attest to its barbarity."
"If elected, Hillary risks committing greater high crimes of state than her predecessors, including
possible nuclear war - why it's crucial to defeat her in November. Humanity's fate hangs in the
balance."
All the rest is just rhetoric ... and the primary reason AmeriKKKans have Clinton as President
in the first place. AmeriKKKans know that their best interests, even when jobless, are with continued
murder, rape and theft!
Proof? You want proof? Each of you AmeriKKKans who post to this site. Not that other are blameless,
they just don't vote.
I have stated here and "everywhere" that automated elections are not really elections at all.
While the USA buys more and more election computers, most of the rest of the (ostensibly democratic)
world has tossed out election computers, and moved to using had counted paper ballots.
I have said many times: "We must abolish election machines, such as voting computers. If
they make casting and tallying 10 times faster, they make organized cheating 10 times easier as
well. Which can we truly afford?"
I read several computer programmer's blogs, and comments almost every day, and I am sure most
of these professionals are aware of the fact that their machines can never be made safe for use
in elections. Yet, they virtually never come out and say that. Job security trumps having democracy
for nearly all of them. Most of these programmers are depressing examples of self-centeredness.
@58 "It is worth to mention that Bruce Schneier is part of the "Tor Project" board of directors
since July 2016."
That's indeed worth mentioning since one of the TOR founders, Jacob Appelbaum, was ejected
from the board in June by a phony sex scandal identical to the one of Julian Assange. There was
also the recent departure in July of one of the major TOR contributors, Lucky Green, who didn't
disclose a lot about his reasons ("I feel that I have no reasonable choice left within the bounds
of ethics")
http://thehackernews.com/2016/07/tor-anonymity-node.html . The departures of Jacob Appelbaum
and Lucky Green and the welcoming of sellout Bruce Schneier who's opinions were always in line
with US foreign policy spell doom and gloom for TOR's security reliability.
A lot of people outside the US are probably unaware of some very important features of federal
elections here. Many of these people may assume that the US has a single presidential election,
run by the federal government, as is the case in their own countries (Australia, for example).
But in reality, there are 51 presidential elections, and only one of them (the one in the District
of Columbia) is run by the federal government.
Each state has its own way of collecting and counting ballots, and its own laws about voter
eligibility, absentee voting, ballot access for third parties, voting procedures, etc. Because
the counties within each state actually run the polling places, these state election laws are
mainly instructions for county election officials. So there are ample opportunities for election
fraud at the county and state levels, but not at the federal level (except for mass media mind
control).
In unusual situations, state election laws can be challenged in federal courts. In my home
state of Tennessee, Republicans and Democrats many years ago passed a law that essentially makes
it impossible for third parties to appear on the ballot. And for all those many years, the Tennessee
Green Party has routinely gone to federal court, claiming that the state law unreasonably restricts
Tennesseans' voting rights, and the court routinely rules in their favor. Thus my ability to vote
for Jill Stein exists only because a federal court has intervened in Tennessee's election system.
But judicial intervention like this is essentially the only power the federal government can exercise
over voting.
I can't for the life of me understand why so many hawks in the State Dept and elsewhere are
sooooo afraid of Putin. They still mad he nationalized oil companies?
Just suppose the emails of the DNC were released by the Clinton Machine, what a creative
tactic, and certainly there is no reason to doubt that...a great media firestorm ensues, DWS had
to fall on her sword but quickly gets hoisted on the Clinton petard..as a campaign manager
It is possible that Schneier and Doctorow may not have an anti-Russia agenda but are using the
Russia angle because then the U.S. press will report on the security problems with electronic
voting. Russia should just tell the U.S. to switch to mechanical voting if they are worried. How
is Russia responsible for our insecure voting?
Thanks for so much intelligent commentary this thread.
Your comment, "As I have often mentioned on these pages previously, I do believe pedophiles
and various other perverts are actively recruited into positions of power so that they can be
compromised and controlled by the criminal cabal." I don't think that the pedophiles are recruited
into power so that they can be controlled by fear of disclosure. In fact nothing happens to them
when they're found out: the records are "lost", evidence is "insufficient", etc. Rather, the explanation
I think is that the secret societies and higher levels of Masonry all use sexual deviancy as a
means of bonding their initiates into a criminal cabal outside of the norms of society. There
is a philosophical embracing of the destruction of innocence just as there is a glorification
of the chaos produced by war.
The evil that we face is an alternate philosophical position which rejects all the moral
tenets of the world's 7 great religions. The goal is the rule of a tiny sect which imagines itself
a godhead over humanity. Their main tools against us are informational and moral. Many of
the novels of the 20s, the 30s and especially the late 19th century reveal by contrast how greatly
they've degraded the very idea of living one's life informed by a moral ideal.
The examined life has been swept away, replaced by the exclusively material and physical. Did
you know that one of the early objectives was to control the appointment of divinity school teachers?
The Rockefellers personally championed Unitarianism, which helped to trivialize religion. Without
religion or an organized system of moral limits and the complete absence of the idealization of
the moral and the possession of moral purpose, that great generational sink of morality once so
vibrant among the American people has long-since sprung a leak now become a torrent. One looks
in vain for that which would nourish the soul of the very young. The moral ideal has vanished
from our culture. How could it not? The Rockefellers alone control over 2,000 domestic NGOs, foundations
and think tanks. Even the culturally trivial is now being replaced by the overtly destructive.
The human eclipsed by the bestial.
Enough people, armed simply with knowledge and the resolution to look for the truth wherever
it leads, can still stop it.
The problem wit this comment is why it was made at all. You do not announce forthcoming explosive
information for several reasons: 1. You may be assassinated. 2. You may be blackmailed. 3. You
allow the people time to respond 4. The information may be stolen. Think about it. When has an
individual promised ahead of time a release of blockbuster info, and then delivered. Perhaps Assange
is waiting to be paid off not to release the information.
The NWO is the only benefiting entity of war. Who owns the companies that manufactures and sells
all armament to both side? the same ones that supplied WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, the American
Civil war, and revolutions all over the world for the last two-hundred years... need I go on.
They have made trillions on weapons, armament, and armored vehicles to lock down America and take
everything. The biggest land grab in history. Who always comes out on top in every Wall Street
crash? They keep pushing for war because its the only means for unending power and profit. Know
one wants a war because no one sees a need. We are all saner than the NWO thugs. You realize,
there are 7.5 billion of us in the world, all manipulated, killed, and blamed for all those thugs
do. They are only a drop in the toilet. WE don't comply, their reality vaporizes over night. Know
where they are right now? under ground. Their scared to death because they've been discovered
and tracked. They should be. Don't believe the network media. Rely on your own best judgement.
Nothing can fall that we can't rebuild stronger and better. Who needs them? Is humanity better
off without the Devil? There's only one answer.
Daly Jones
I randomly found this video and realized that you made one of my favorite documentaries!!!!
I try to get everyone I know to watch it....The Money Masters! It's one of the best/horrifyingly
true documentaries I've ever watched. Thank you sir! You have just earned another subscriber
Rudy Hassen
Question: why do entrenched entities hate dissemination of information? As reference....see
North Korea......or DNC.
Rudy Hassen
BTW....unlikely Russia is behind the leaks. Putin is a much better chess player the Obama,
Clinton and probably Trump as well. Don't he surprised if it's DNC insiders behind this.
Da Guy
How can anyone trust someone that lied, cheated and conned to get the nomination, just because
they now say they won't lie, cheat and con anymore now that they got what they wanted by lying,
cheating and conning & got caught w/evidence proving it, otherwise they would still be denying
it. All I hear and see now is how Hillary and the DNC can spin what they got caught & proven doing
to get votes from the very people they lied to, cheated and conned. I would no longer trust anything
Hillary or the DNC said or promised unless someone like Bernie cleaned it up of corrupt people.
Why isn't the FBI investigating/attacking/prosecuting this coup??? The email leaks, college &
research analysis of elections and results did a lot of their job already.
If a con, lied, cheated and conned you out of your life savings, would you trust them a few
days later w/your kids life savings just because they say: sure that guy exposed our personal
communications that proved we lied, cheated & conned you out of your life saving but were different
now and you can trust us w/your kids life savings, now that we got what we wanted. (note to self):
make sure no one can get a hold of our personal communications in the future so no one can prove
anything we do, this way we can blame anything &/or anyone else for the loss of their kids life
savings. "take Hillary's lead, delete and scrub the memories so nothing is retrievable and all
released info has to go through our lawyers. We can tell them our lawyers are looking out for
their best interest not ours". Once a con, always a con. This is an attempted theft of a country
or a coup.
I would not only feel a traitor to my Country, kids & future generations if I just accepted
this and joined the coup: I WOULD BE A TRAITOR. If this coup fails and Trump gets elected, it's
on you, the collaborators and coup member, not anyone else. Look what the leaders or the head
person of other countries do to the people that attempt a coup in their country. We pretend it's
not happening. And if this coup succeeds, we all live under false pretenses and have allowed our
country to betray what it's supposed to stand for "again", the spiral down from there will be
easy. I've never been so ashamed of my country & worried about the future of this planet as I
am now.
Clinton campaign is trying to hide their very serious domestic allegation tried to play "Russians
are coming" trick... Sanders campaign was sabotages by crooks in DNC.
Also does this presstitute who interviewed Julian Assange any moral right to ask question about
the legitimacy of foreign interference if this interference is the cornerstone of the US foreign policy.
As in color revolutions and similar subversive actions against "not neoliberal enough" government of
countries with natural resources or of some geopolitical value.
This is the situation of "king is naked" -- the state that teaches other countries about democracy
has completely corrupted election process, like a typical banana republic.
Notable quotes:
"... According to the leaked emails, he, Chuck Todd, is part of the rigging process. ..."
"... Their Motive is to tell the truth. Clearly that why they released the information before the convention and delegates still went forward with corruption. That defies the DNC, case closed ..."
"... Because we've never interfered in another government or anything right? what a joke! ..."
Chuck Todd, Establishment Gatekeeper and Chief Presstitute. He proves that the Fourth Estate needs
a total overhaul, and that the MSM needs to be broken-up like the banks & other institutions need
to be in order to become truly competitive rather than in name only. The tightening grip
of oligarchs must be pried apart! Assange is doing his part to expose the powers that oppress
us, and should be commended for his work!
Loki7072
This interviewer is obviously a democrat , trying to blame the Russians for the content of
the emails , so sad the democratic corruption in this country runs so deep
Charles W
According to the leaked emails, he, Chuck Todd, is part of the rigging process.
Anthony Marin
Chuck Todd isn't a journalist, just another government PR person. Corporate media is a joke.
Rafael Reyes
Their Motive is to tell the truth. Clearly that why they released the information before
the convention and delegates still went forward with corruption. That defies the DNC, case closed.
Now do the constituents of that party still have faith in staying with that party? That's totally
up to the ppl. Whether of not it was domestic or foreign info isn't important, due to the fact
that the information was authentic and proven true by our own officials who investigated the digital
encryption of the files.
Frank Rizzo
Because we've never interfered in another government or anything right? what a joke!
Notecrusher
So what if the Russian government was the source? I have gratitude to WHOEVER provided the
leak. Now we know the truth about the DNC's crimes and corruption. I hope they burn.
Guardian presstitutes are trying hard to please their owners...
Notable quotes:
"... Joe Biden's son has major business interests in Ukraine. Is that why Biden is so supportive of Ukraine? Paul Manafort is a rat, like all the major league campaign operatives ..."
"... Under globalism, it is only natural for corporations and their CEOs to have more contact with foreign entities and their leaders. Apple and CEO Tim Cook has made a huge commitment to communist China, one that he told President Obama will not be shaken or reduced. ..."
"... This is all so entertaining for as much as they try they cannot lay a finger on Putin.. the PBS special on Putin wealth ended an hour of innuendo with this.. ''How much is a matter of speculation and some educated guesswork.'' ..."
"... I have family in the military and the last thing we need is Clinton leading us into another cold war. ..."
"... Clinton: corruption you can believe in. ..."
"... Well looks like Hillary has stared the cold war again before she ever got into office. This is worse than anything Trump could do...but very beneficial to her military/security industrial complex backers. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton = Dick Cheney ..."
"... Julian Assange is not a Republican. He's an Australian with no vested interest in the election. I'd be worried if I were a Clinton supporter. ..."
"... The extremely well informed Israeli website Debkafile is confident that the Russians didn't hack the DNC or any aspect of the Democrats. Debka believes the signatures on the hack are so easy to find and so obviously intended to be found that the real culprit lies somewhere within an anti-Clinton faction of the Democrats. ..."
"... This is a fantasy article, pie in the sky stuff. I can't stand Trump and I am sure neither can the Russian government, he's unpredictable, unstable, what he says today he changes his mind on tomorrow and so on. Now, Clinton isn't much better all said. Anyone who would trust either needs to see a psychiatrist urgently. Russia is but a bystander in the US presidential race, except for the conspiracy theorists at The Guardian. ..."
"... So a former official of that russophobic neocon infested State Department which ran both the 2004 Orange Revolution and the 2014 coup in Kiev also member of the US-Ukraine business council is now supposed to have helped Yanokovich in 2010 and be in bed with Putin. How gullible do you think we are? ..."
"... Stop the presses! Trump and people associated with him have had dealings with people from the LARGEST country in the world. If that doesn't prove he's an active Manchurian candidate on The Kremlin payroll, then nothing will. ..."
"... What it really proves is that by going the low road of McCarthyist red-baiting, the Democrats seemed determined to blow another election by not running a campaign on Hillary's supposed merits and attacking Trump for rational, verifiable reasons. ..."
"... You are all a school of piranhas waiting to tear the flesh of anyone who is against 'Her'. I have noticed your comments towards any rational reply is met with condescending and abusive tones. You've probably realised I am poorly educated. However, I have common sense which I believe most of you don't. Most of you comment in order to receive recognition and votes in order to make you feel good because of low self esteem and belonging issues. ..."
"... I believe we in the west currently live in a pluralist society for now. If Hillary is elected I reckon she will lay the foundation for sharia law, Merkel is doing her bit. Anyway, how can anyone vote for this vile human being? ..."
"... Hillary Rodman Clinton does not care about YOU! Its all about her wanting power to control YOU. Have you ever asked yourself why does she want to be President? What is her motivation? ..."
"... Oh, come on, Hillary has all 30 of the admirals and generals that previously endorsed Jeb. Can't Donald have one general? The US military is in schism between the moderates (represented by Flynn) and the hawks (represented by Allen, presumably). Hillary's hawks got booed off the stage at the convention. Allen was trying to shout down the protesters but they were pretty feisty. ..."
"... Follow the money. The Clinton elite and the military/security industrial complex will MAKE BILLIONS with a new cold war. As much as they made off of Iraq and MORE! ..."
"... Julian Assange showed to the DNC who they are, but they are not angry at him, they are angry at Donald Trump. Of course, how can anyone be angry at the mirror because it has shown its ugly face.:-))) ..."
"... A vote against Hillary is not a vote for Trump any more than a vote against the Iraq War was a vote for Saddam Hussein. ..."
"... Hilarious. This Red Scare is ridiculous, will only carry weight with the over 60s. It is just one of the many missteps in Hillary's tone deaf campaign which is going to cost her the presidency. ..."
"... Not a Trump supporter, but this shitty rag attacks everyone except the Red Queen...who is responsible for many acts of terror and murder...documented. ..."
"... Ta, much of the information, especially what Tom Curley (formerly AP chief) revealed, has been removed from the net. I wish I had saved the pdf of his Kansas speech before it vanished everywhere. There was also something on a British server, but that stopped being fed. ..."
"... Often we could see it on the posters' string, how many in how many hours, hence the attempts to hide it through multi ID facility. For disqus, they block the string. We know we are being manipulated. And very few people take things at face value these days, or do they? ..."
"... That single sentence exposes the Guardian as a completely fraudulent news reporting medium. With tears in my eyes I ask you "How does Putin releasing e-mails about the secret and illegal American electoral shenanigans amount to an attack on western democracy?" ..."
"... The old saying "you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time" is demonstrated by the Guardians reporting without sources, other than anonymous so-called "experts". Your journalistic integrity is little higher than the height of Hillary Clinton's honesty, or the level of the Donald's business ethics. Shame on you. Double shame for being so blatantly easy to expose. ..."
"... The western media, controlled by special interest groups, are driving your low-level sputum which tries to pass for accurate and unbiased reportage. ..."
"... On the whole I would have to agree with you. The picture painted by the Western News Media is that the US is the White Knight when it comes to democracy, they never interfere in other countries political affairs, never try to break into computer systems of other countries, try to topple or assassinate leaders of other countries. They never carry out torture and they ignore the 30m on the poverty line in their own country. ..."
"... Well at least Trump is fostering positive relations with Russia - Hillary Clinton is pushing us to the brink of nuclear war with them. You Tube it. Wishing Good Luck to all people of courage and honesty. ..."
"... Reuters/Ipsos changed it polling methodology as soon as they saw a 17 point swing in favor of Donald the Drumpf. When the methodology by their own admission was under reporting Trump support and over reporting Hillbilly's numbers they did nothing. So don't believe any polls. There is no enthusiasm for Hillbilly in the Democratic party, so the Democratic turn out will be low, on the other hand people want to shake things up, they will vote for Drumpf. I just wished Donald had half a brain in his head to see how much good he could do, with the opportunity he has. ..."
"... A lot of associations and coincidences have been listed here. But no hard evidence linking the hacking to Putin, nor Putin to Trump. It sounds like a load of muckraking. ..."
"... True. If it was the other way round, Guardian journalists and establishment shills would be screaming 'tin-foil' when they should be holding that woman to account. ..."
Joe Biden's son has major business interests in Ukraine. Is that why Biden is so supportive
of Ukraine? Paul Manafort is a rat, like all the major league campaign operatives. All that
is important to them is the win and those that can jump over each other to rent their expertise
around the globe to whatever scumbag has money. It is a bipartisan gig. To spin this in such a
partisan manner when the entire political machinery on both sides operates like this is is either
knowingly deceitful or just plain ignorant. When it is nearly impossible to just get straight
balanced news from a newspaper, when the coverage is just so obviously slanted, real journalism
is dead. This style of news by innuendo and the selective parsing of fact is shoddy reportage.
Shame.
macmarco
Under globalism, it is only natural for corporations and their CEOs to have more contact
with foreign entities and their leaders. Apple and CEO Tim Cook has made a huge commitment to
communist China, one that he told President Obama will not be shaken or reduced.
US tax laws that allow 'profit centers' to be claimed anywhere around the world will almost
certainly bring corporate leaders and foreign leaders closer together as their interests merge
and intertwine.
Political parties will have difficulty claiming this or that country is now an enemy depending
on how much corporate investment and profit holdings were made in the new 'enemy'. One could see
the enormous difficulty the DNC/Hillary would have if they had to make a case against communist
China hacking their emails. Apple, Walmart etal would be working overtime to protect the relationship
at all costs.
notindoctrinated
Has it ever occurred to you Yanks that Putin may be playing global political chess. I'm sure
he is shrewd enough to realize that open support to Trump could be a "kiss of death". A Democratic
presidency may be in Russia's long-term interest, if they want the US to go further down the drain:
Overrunning of the US by Hispanics, as well as Muslims from North Africa and the Mideast,
the latter resulting in increasing insecurity and terrorist attacks at home
Destruction of US economy by the pursuit of green fanatic policies.
Of course a trigger-happy Clinton presidency increases the risk for WW3, therefore Putin's
finger will never be far from the nuke-button.
2. The number one US economic strain is War.....not windfarms.
3. Clinton is a bit more hawkish than I would like, but she is far from trigger happy. Also,
she can handle an insult without declaring the need to punch someone in the face :p
Sam3456
I love the entitled Hillary fans are trying to stifle any dissent of the Queen with "You're
a Putin Bot, You're a commie, your a Trumpster."
Stifling dissent allows for corruption and abuse of power and is what got us into the Iraq
War.
Their condescending attitude is what we can expect from a Clinton Administration?
JohnManyjars
Putin bashing idiots...choke on your spittle! At least he puts the interests of his country
first, unlike US/UK sell outs to Israel-First traitors.
R. Ben Madison -> JohnManyjars
Yet another antisemitic diatribe from the Hillary-haters.
Lee Van Over -> JohnManyjars
Lol, the US supports Israel because its in the best interests of the US, not Israel. They,
unfortunately, are our little forward base of operations in the Mid-east.
John Smith
Burisma is the largest non-governmental gas producer in Ukraine, it was incorporated in 2006
and is based in Limassol, Cyprus - a European tax haven
April 18, 2014, Burisma Holdings announced us VP Biden's son Hunter Biden appointed to the board
Aleksander Kwaśniewski,took up in a director's post named in January.[27] Kwaśniewski was President
of the Republic of Poland from 1995 to 2005 permitted the CIA torture ops in Poland during the
G. W. Bush presidency
Chairman of Burisma is the Wall Street former Merrill Lynch investment banker Alan Apter
Devon Archer, Hunter Biden's partner at the US investment firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners, and
a manager of the family wealth fund of Secretary of State John Kerry's wife Theresa Heinz Kerry,
And all friends together in a company that should be helping Ukraine recover nestled away in
a tax haven!
The director of the US-Ukraine Business Council Morgan Williams pointed to an "American tradition
that frowns on close family members of government working for organizations with business links
to active politics". Williams stated Biden appears to have violated this unwritten principle:
"... when you're trying to keep the political sector separate from the business sector, and reduce
corruption, then it's not just about holding down corruption, it's also the appearance.
This is all so entertaining for as much as they try they cannot lay a finger on Putin..
the PBS special on Putin wealth ended an hour of innuendo with this.. ''How much is a matter of
speculation and some educated guesswork.''
And thats what it was speculation & guesswork!
he may be the richest man on the planet.. he may be richer than god... but they just can't
find it.. they can't find a bankstatement with billions or trillions in it they can't even find
the shoebox with all his cash under his bed... they got nothing!
MtnClimber -> John Smith
They found Putin's money. It's cared for by "friends". One is a concert cellist with over a
billion dollars. They must pay musicians well in Russia.
You seem to like dictators. Do you like the complete censorship of the media in Russia? Do
you like the new laws that allow Putin to jail anyone that denounces him or Russia?
Given that Russians are only allowed to post good things about Putin, what do you expect to
see from them?
John Smith -> MtnClimber
there were plenty of russians in that PBS 'show' complaining about putin and they are still
alive n well..
the only time russian critics become endangered is when they are of no further use to the yankee
and then they come to a sticky end and then the finger gets pointed at putin.. then they have
fully 'outlived' their usefulness.. more useful dead!
annberk
It is obvious that Trump will benefit financially from being nice to Putin and his inner circle.
Trump combs the world for projects and money and Russia must be seen as a target. Win or lose
the election he'll be seen as a friend who deserves to be rewarded. At some point in the next
year or so, the Trump Corporation will announce at least one landmark Russian hotel/condo tower.
I'd bet money on it. Meanwhile, poor old Hillary who has devoted her life to doing good, is being
bullied and lied about by the serfs who want to elect him. (Read 'Dark Money' to see what I mean
by serfs. Trump's adherents won't benefit in the slightest from his policies.)
Sam3456
I have family in the military and the last thing we need is Clinton leading us into another
cold war.
delphicvi
What a lame lead in i.e. "Donald Trump and Russia: a web that grows more tangled all the time.
Donald Trump travelled to Moscow in 2013 to meet Vladimir Putin hoping to discuss plans for
a Trump Tower near Red Square."
Did it really take four 'journalists' viz. Peter Stone, David Smith, Ben Jacobs, Alec Luhn
and Rupert Neate to write this fluff? More worthy of a supermarket check out rag than a serious
newspaper. This facile attempt to stitch together the incongruous and the bizarre is downright
amazing for a paper that puffs itself as the leaker of truth. By the bye, Ukraine is not Russia.
And Russia is not Ukraine.
Sam3456
The Director of National Intelligence says Washington is still unsure of who might be behind
the latest WikiLeaks release of hacked Democratic National Committee emails, while urging that
an end be put to the "reactionary mode" blaming it all on Russia.
"We don't know enough to ascribe motivation regardless of who it might have been," Director
of National Intelligence James Clapper said speaking at Aspen's Security Forum in Colorado, when
asked if the media was getting ahead of themselves in fingering the perpetrator of the hack.
John Smith -> Sam3456
Anonymous have been quietly busy in the background... laughing at the merkins blaming everything
on Russia..
clintons corrupt... and its Russia's fault??
''The State Department misplaced and lost some $6 billion due to the improper filing of contracts
during the past six years, mainly during the tenure of former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton,
according to a newly released Inspector General report.
I know billions don't mean much today after the american laundering of Trillions of $s worth
of their bad mortgage debt causing the 2008 crash....... BUT SURELY $6 Billion missing must count
for something!
So again...
what really happened in Benghazi? in September 2012
Were they sending gaddafi's weapons to unsavouries in Syria and Assad got wind of it & sent a
team to stop it?
Because it was not a youtube vid or some people on a friday night out deciding to kill americans
as clinton would have us believe. What we have is a clandestine operation.. a democrat version
of reagans ''Arms for Iran''.. or shall we say 'Arms for ISIS' Did they get Ollie North out of
retirement for this??
Having failed this gun running operation...
They then went to Plan B..
''claimed 3,000 tons of weapons dating back to the former Yugoslavia have been sent in 75 planeloads
from Zagreb airport to the rebels, largely via Jordan since November (2012).'' 3000 tons of weapons!!......
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9918785/US-and-Europe-in-major-airlift-of-arms-to-Syrian-rebels-through-Zagreb.html
But When they arrived in Jordan..
''Weapons shipped into Jordan by the Central Intelligence Agency and Saudi Arabia intended
for Syrian rebels have been systematically stolen by Jordanian intelligence operatives and sold
to arms merchants on the black market, according to American and Jordanian officials.'' I mean
can the CIA be that incompetent? or is this incompetence covering up something else...?
Well looks like Hillary has stared the cold war again before she ever got into office.
This is worse than anything Trump could do...but very beneficial to her military/security industrial
complex backers.
Hillary Clinton = Dick Cheney.
Oldiebutgoodie
With all the tension and volatility in the world, we need mature, rational people leading our
countries. Let's hope that's what we get -- * Vote thoughtfully.
While we watch campaign circuses, a serious situation is taking place in Turkey that will effect
Europe, the West, and the Middle East.
- Erdogan has taken control of, and is purging all sectors of Turkish society.
Julian Assange is not a Republican. He's an Australian with no vested interest in the election.
I'd be worried if I were a Clinton supporter.
spraydrift
'Trump's links to Russia are under scrutiny after a hack of Democratic national committee emails,'
The extremely well informed Israeli website Debkafile is confident that the Russians didn't
hack the DNC or any aspect of the Democrats. Debka believes the signatures on the hack are so
easy to find and so obviously intended to be found that the real culprit lies somewhere within
an anti-Clinton faction of the Democrats. Now who might that be?
Greg Popa -> spraydrift
Wired.com's Noah Shachtman wrote in 2001 that the site "clearly reports with a point of view;
the site is unabashedly in the hawkish camp of Israeli politics".[4] Yediot Achronot investigative
reporter Ronen Bergman states that the site relies on information from sources with an agenda,
such as neo-conservative elements of the US Republican Party, "whose worldview is that the situation
is bad and is only going to get worse," and that Israeli intelligence officials do not consider
even 10 percent of the site's content to be reliable.[1] Cornell Law professor Michael C. Dorf
calls Debka his "favorite alarmist Israeli website trading in rumors."[5]
The site's operators, in contrast, state that 80 percent of what Debka reports turns out to
be true, and point to its year 2000 prediction that al-Qaeda would again strike the World Trade
Center, and that it had warned well before the 2006 war in Lebanon that Hezbollah had amassed
12,000 Katyusha rockets pointed at northern Israel.[1]
mandzorp
This is a fantasy article, pie in the sky stuff. I can't stand Trump and I am sure neither
can the Russian government, he's unpredictable, unstable, what he says today he changes his mind
on tomorrow and so on. Now, Clinton isn't much better all said. Anyone who would trust either
needs to see a psychiatrist urgently. Russia is but a bystander in the US presidential race, except
for the conspiracy theorists at The Guardian.
errovi
"The coordinator of the Washington diplomatic corps for the Republicans in Cleveland was Frank
Mermoud, a former state department official involved in business ventures in Ukraine via Cub Energy,
a Black Sea-focused oil and gas company of which he is a director. He is also on the board of
the US Ukraine Business Council."
So a former official of that russophobic neocon infested State Department which ran both
the 2004 Orange Revolution and the 2014 coup in Kiev also member of the US-Ukraine business council
is now supposed to have helped Yanokovich in 2010 and be in bed with Putin. How gullible do you
think we are?
Oldiebutgoodie -> errovi
Seems every news media outlet and reporter is looking into his Russian business dealings and
funding.
Stop the presses! Trump and people associated with him have had dealings with people from
the LARGEST country in the world. If that doesn't prove he's an active Manchurian candidate on
The Kremlin payroll, then nothing will.
What it really proves is that by going the low road of McCarthyist red-baiting, the Democrats
seemed determined to blow another election by not running a campaign on Hillary's supposed merits
and attacking Trump for rational, verifiable reasons.
John Smith -> MentalToo
drivel.. Nuland admitted/boasted about spendin $5 billion in ''bring democracy to ukraine..
$5 Billion is a lot of money in Ukraine..
Did they build schools No
Did they build hospitals No!
They just destabilised the country...
So $5 billion wasted and the yanks wonder why they don't really have a space program... coz $5
Billion would have bought 3 Space shuttles!
jezzam -> John Smith
The US spent 5 billion over 25 years - trying to encourage the basic institutions of democracy
in Ukraine. Without these corruption cannot be eliminated. Without the elimination of corruption,
none of the things you mention are possible. Non-coincidentally such institutions have been eliminated
in Russia since Putin came to power.
Brian Burman -> jezzam
Yes, those NGOs encouraged democracy so well that they instigated a violent coup against the
elected government. Halt, you say, that government was corrupt!?! But by all standards, the current
government is more corrupt than the one that was overthrown, and polls in the last year show that
Ukrainians are convinced of that fact. Infact, the man hand-picked by Victoria Nuland to be Prime
Minister, "Yats" Yatesenyuk, had to resign under accusations of corruption. Andbthe current Kiev
reginme continues to bomb the civilian population of Donbass and terrorize them with neo-Nazi
militias...ah, the wonders of US funded "democracy".
Виктор Захаров
I wonder, if you say that you are democrats why you are not interested in truth about Malaysian
Boing? Now in the West, Merkel, Obama etc, no one worried about this tragedy because now it's
clear that Ukrainian authorities did it. It's barbarian blasphemous....
Henrychan
Hello all Hillary supporters,
You are all a school of piranhas waiting to tear the flesh of anyone who is against 'Her'.
I have noticed your comments towards any rational reply is met with condescending and abusive
tones. You've probably realised I am poorly educated. However, I have common sense which I believe
most of you don't. Most of you comment in order to receive recognition and votes in order to make
you feel good because of low self esteem and belonging issues.
I believe we in the west currently live in a pluralist society for now. If Hillary is elected
I reckon she will lay the foundation for sharia law, Merkel is doing her bit. Anyway, how can
anyone vote for this vile human being?
You must be either:
Ignorant
Misinformed
Lack common sense or
Mentally ill
Hillary Rodman Clinton does not care about YOU! Its all about her wanting power to control
YOU. Have you ever asked yourself why does she want to be President? What is her motivation?
Comment all you like, you Hillary supporter are defending a witch. I'm not with HER.
Oilyheart
Bernie Sanders visited the USSR. Does that make him a communist? Bernie Sanders visited the
Vatican. Does that make him a Catholic? Gen. Flynn visited RT. Does that make him Scott Pelley?
Bill visits a lot of places.
Виктор Захаров
First of all why Obama calls yourself democrat? It's nonsense, by definition democrats those
who against the coup! Having lied once who would believe you ( Russian saying ). Obama continued
to lie. Malaysian Boing had been shot down by Ukrainian jet, radars neither in Dnepro nor in Rostov
hadn't seen buk missile, buk missile weighs 700 kg radar could not to see it. But radars had seen
Ukrainian jet, Ukrainian authorities restricted access to records....
Oilyheart
Oh, come on, Hillary has all 30 of the admirals and generals that previously endorsed Jeb.
Can't Donald have one general? The US military is in schism between the moderates (represented
by Flynn) and the hawks (represented by Allen, presumably). Hillary's hawks got booed off the
stage at the convention. Allen was trying to shout down the protesters but they were pretty feisty.
Try not to bogart all the retired general officers, Democrats. The moderates are trying to
de-escalate tensions with Russia, is that so wrong? Does gangsterism have to proliferate all over
the place? Does the whole world have to break bad like Walter White into gangsterism and chaos
because it's cool?
GODsaysBRESCAPE
Clinton wants a new cold war with Russia, forget the real enemy the Islamists. She is showing
her warmongering stripes again already. Shame on you Sanders for your betrayal of your supporters,
that will now be your ever lasting and shameful legacy.
Sam3456 -> GODsaysBRESCAPE
Follow the money. The Clinton elite and the military/security industrial complex will MAKE
BILLIONS with a new cold war. As much as they made off of Iraq and MORE!
HRC is Dick Cheney in a pants suit.
GODsaysBRESCAPE
The media, big business and the pentagon: "a web that grows more tangled all the time"
dikcheney
I have to do this. #canthackHillary.
I cant hack her lies
I cant hack her faux ignorance of IT security
I cant hack her unbelievability
I cant hack her attacks on any challenger
I cant hack the cloth she didn't use to wipe her server
I cant hack the way she puts USA security at risk to protect her "private" shenanigans
I cant hack her capacity to corrupt any decent process associated with democray
I cant hack her network of "get out of jail free cards"
I cant hack her transparent deceptions
I cant hack her associates
I cant hack her war criminal mentors
I cant hack her media admirers and shills
I cant hack her Wall Street buddies
I cant hack her mate Obama
Is there anyone out there who can hack Hillary?
Shatford Shatford -> dikcheney
You left out Clinton Foundation donors who receive lucrative contracts in disaster zones or
in African dictatorships.
nnedjo
Julian Assange showed to the DNC who they are, but they are not angry at him, they are
angry at Donald Trump. Of course, how can anyone be angry at the mirror because it has shown its
ugly face.:-)))
Shatford Shatford -> nnedjo
Bless cognitive dissonance for keeping everyone from seeing the truth.
Shatford Shatford -> NewWorldWatcher
I'm sure once Hillary cheats her way into the White House, she'll sick the IRS on him since
she does that to all of her enemies. And naturally, all of her and her husband's crimes will go
unpunished as they always have. Her husband almost got impeached. Not for getting a hummer from
an intern, but because there was so much other bullshit they wanted to nail him on and lying under
oath was the only thing they could use because the Clintons are very good at buying people off.
nnedjo
The Democratic Party and its vassal media proves for the umpteenth time that they have nothing
to do with democracy. If the opposition is called traitors and accused of collaboration with foreign
governments without any evidence, then it is not a democracy, it is called a dictatorship.
So if they think they have evidence that Trump is a traitor, they should arrest him. Otherwise,
they have to admit that Donald Trump is genuine representative of American democracy, and that
they would rather belong to a kind of dictatorship.
gondwanaboy -> nnedjo
So if they think they have evidence that Trump is a traitor, they should arrest him.
They don't have any evidence. This is mud slinging and a diversion from the DNC email corruption
scandal that actually has proof
miri84
Analysts suggest three primary motivations for the WikiLeaks email dump, quite probably overlapping:
doing harm to the US political process to undermine its credibility; doing harm to Clinton (WikiLeaks
founder Julian Assange is no friend); and boosting Trump
The hack would not have succeeded in any of these areas, had the DNC been conducting its operations
fairly and with integrity.
guest88888
Donald Trump and Russia: a web that grows more tangled all the time
Only if you're full of BS, and lack even a shred of journalistic integrity.
McCarthy would be proud. After years of pretending otherwise, it seems the US government has
finally returned to its old and proud tradition of smearing anyone it finds undesirable as in
cahoots with the ever-changing 'enemy.'
All of this is merely a diversion to avoid talking about the mountain of corruption revealed
about both parties in recent days. Not to mention a diversion from talking about the key issue,
that the US is increasingly antagonizing nuclear armed powers like Russia and China, which if
not stopped will lead to a war capable of killing millions.
selvak
I am not Trump but I would much rather ally with Russia than Saudi Arabia. Both have plenty
of oil by the way. Only one is spreading a Death cult over the Globe but still Presidents Bush
and Obama bowed for the Saudi king. More money the be made out of Arab oil for a few uber rich
in the US Establishment I guess. Less 'competition" for the Pentagon from Riyadh too.
sejong -> selvak
Bibi and King Salman will get joint custody of Clinton, so don't worry.
PCollens
100% bullshit, lies and a psy-op being fed to us from all sides on this.
Seriously Graun, what gives with this bullshit? Confirms my conclusion that the Graun, like the
rest of the MSM, has been infiltrated by an Operation Mockingbird as well.
So many psychopaths - GOP, DNC, Trump, the US deep state petro-nazis, the oligarchs in all countries
- all panicking more and more now, out of control.
Here comes some kind of armagedon. Sorry, sheeple - but its bad news for us all.
Alec Dacyczyn
It's worth mentioning the context of the "the US would not automatically come to the aid of
Nato allies" thing. He wants for other Nato countries to either pull their own weight militarily
(2% of GDP) or pay to cover the costs of other countries for defend them. The threat of willingness
to "walk away" is negotiating leverage. He's making a gamble that they will capitulate rather
than be left defenseless.
I believe it's a reasonable safe bet. So until these Nato countries indicate that they'd rather
not spend that much on their militarizes I reject the argument that a President Trump would result
in a weaker Nato alliance and that Putin want Trump to win for that reason (I suspect Putin would
indeed prefer Trump, but because he views Clinton as a neo-con warmonger who would rather bomb
someone than negotiate a deal).
Bruno Costa Alec Dacyczyn
I hate Trump, but this is a VERY safe bet.
Russia will not invade Poland or the Baltic. The world change. Putin has an agenda different from
Ivan the Terrible...
NATO countries will pay their bills and psychopaths like Erdogan will think twice before put down
a Russian fighter.
That was insane. The most dangerous act since the 80's!
Made by a religious fanatical dictator who is ending Turkey secular tradition.
If Russia had responded, protecting Erdogan would've been fair? NATO starting 3rd WW because of
a authoritarian guy that should be expelled is reasonable?
Sam3456
A vote against Hillary is not a vote for Trump any more than a vote against the Iraq War
was a vote for Saddam Hussein.
niftydude
Hilarious. This Red Scare is ridiculous, will only carry weight with the over 60s. It is
just one of the many missteps in Hillary's tone deaf campaign which is going to cost her the presidency.
livingstonfc
Not a Trump supporter, but this shitty rag attacks everyone except the Red Queen...who
is responsible for many acts of terror and murder...documented.
BSchwartz
Trump is married to a woman who grew up under communism. Some his closest advisors have worked
for communists. Many of his own business dealings are with Russians. He has claimed a relationshp
with Putin and says he admires him. He has amended Republican policies to favour Russia. He called
on the Russian's to undertake espionage into Hillary Clinton. There is a pattern here.
A man like Trump, who believed in the conspiracy theory that Obama was Kenyan, should understand
that conspiracies grow as evidence build. There was no evidence to sustain Trump's conspiracy
regarding Obama.
But Trump himself provides much evidence to sustain the theory that his interests are closer
to the Russians than to much of America.
Sam3456 -> BSchwartz
Really? Democrats red baiting and calling people "commies" how shameful and ignorant of you
history. What next Hillary comes out with a "list of Trump/Putin sympathizers"? Shame.
Bruno Costa -> BSchwartz
Hahahahahahahahahaha OMG! Are you going beyond Manchurian Candidate and saying that Trump is
communist? Do you really understand how funny this is?
PCollens -> BSchwartz
A-ha! I see it now! Trump is a commie Manchurian candidate, cleverly hidden as a son of a rich
guy who became a billionaire, spreading capitalist ideology to the masses as a front for his USSR
commie masters. Its obvious! Wake up sheeple!
Gem59
The Clinton-Media machine in full force....Those Russians are in bed with Trump! It must be
the barbarians! Shame on you traitor Donald! Whatever it takes, corrupted Media! Here is an interview
with Julian Assange who argues there is no evidence of any hacking by Russians
Russian literature, the language, the culture...all quite beautiful. OK, and maybe the women
too. But this 'relationship' between Trump and Russia makes me feel uncomfortable. I'm willing
to admit that I may simply be conditioned to be wary of Russian involvement because of all those
Cold War years. Still...creepy!
Ta, much of the information, especially what Tom Curley (formerly AP chief) revealed, has
been removed from the net. I wish I had saved the pdf of his Kansas speech before it vanished
everywhere. There was also something on a British server, but that stopped being fed.
Often we could see it on the posters' string, how many in how many hours, hence the attempts
to hide it through multi ID facility. For disqus, they block the string. We know we are being
manipulated. And very few people take things at face value these days, or do they?
Ping2fyoutoo
"experts argue Vladimir Putin has attempted in the past to damage western democracy."
That single sentence exposes the Guardian as a completely fraudulent news reporting medium.
With tears in my eyes I ask you "How does Putin releasing e-mails about the secret and illegal
American electoral shenanigans amount to an attack on western democracy?"
It doesn't. It's something the western mainstream media should be doing to enlighten the people
about the depths of the crookedness and the evil chicanery surrounding "western democracy" (as
practised today in the US). That omission is what weakens and threatens western democracy.
The old saying "you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all
of the people all of the time" is demonstrated by the Guardians reporting without sources, other
than anonymous so-called "experts". Your journalistic integrity is little higher than the height
of Hillary Clinton's honesty, or the level of the Donald's business ethics. Shame on you. Double
shame for being so blatantly easy to expose.
The western media, controlled by special interest groups, are driving your low-level sputum
which tries to pass for accurate and unbiased reportage.
And please let us know who these "experts" are that you say that you are quoting.
Alexander Dunnett -> Ping2fyoutoo
On the whole I would have to agree with you. The picture painted by the Western News Media
is that the US is the White Knight when it comes to democracy, they never interfere in other countries
political affairs, never try to break into computer systems of other countries, try to topple
or assassinate leaders of other countries. They never carry out torture and they ignore the 30m
on the poverty line in their own country.
PCollens -> Ping2fyoutoo
Agreed. There is a Deep State mole inside the Graun.
Its Operation Mockingbird for sure.
normankirk
So Starbucks is in Russia,sinister? or is it just that globalisation means financial interests
are worldwide.
And why is no one mentioning that James Clapper head of the NSA, who should know, says that he
is "taken aback by the media's hyperventilations" and that no one knows who was behind the hack
of the DNC.
Suga
Whatever Lies you believe or even think of HRC...
Clinton is our only hope of keeping the White House from The Insane Republican Party!.
Please...Check-out this excellent interview with Michael Ruppert, who tracked exactly what took
place under The Horrible Bush/Cheney Reign Of Terror that brought down America on 9/11!
(Ruppert supposedly committed suicide in 2014) It's amazing this interview is still available...it
will absolutely shock you into realizing that we cannot give the White House back to the GOP...they
are surrounded by Pure Evil!
Brilliant! - Bless you. Mike Ruppert is the greatest hero to emerge from all this.
Copy-paste the following - it is pure fact, forensic level evidence, of the most serious issues,
yet it always gets taken down. I've concluded that this is by the moles in the MSM, including
the Graun, sadly:
Chapter and verse on the drills of terror attacks being run on 911 which removed the air defences
– an coordinated by Cheney: 9/11 Synthetic Terror https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar6I0jUg6Vs
The Chief CIA back-channel asset who exposed the fore-knowledge of 911 survived the attempts
to rub her out, and finally told the truth:
CIA WhistleBlower Susan Lindauer EXPOSES Everything - "Extreme Prejudice" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68LUHa_-OlA
Well at least Trump is fostering positive relations with Russia - Hillary Clinton is pushing
us to the brink of nuclear war with them. You Tube it. Wishing Good Luck to all people of courage
and honesty.
Eddie2000
Reds under the bed! Reds under the bed! Surely they can beat Trump without resorting to this
nonsense?
woof92105
****warning - This comment area is infested with russian trolls. It becomes easy to spot their
bizarre but consistent pro-putin statements. They reply to each other and uprate each other, etc.
These people are in Russia and are paid by Putin's cronies. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html?_r=0
sejong -> woof92105
Accuracy score 1/10.
normankirk -> woof92105
and how do we know you aren't part of the cyber warrior force thats become a growth industry
in the US and UK?
Gina Mihajlovska -> woof92105
Your an idiot. It's not about Putin it's about how the public is being played. No matter where
the leak came from the dnc is corrupt.focus on the prize. Not on the BS....
shaftedpig
Trump might have his faults, like being a motor mouth but he's not even in the same category
as GW Bush or HR Clinton when it comes to corruption, the Democrats haven't got much on Trump,
so they resort to tin-foil hat conspiracy theories, when what is staring at us directly in the
face is out-and-out full-on corruption by HRC.
This is not about left vs right, it's about right vs wrong. Read any book by investigative
journalist, Roger Stone who nails HRC. If you're on the left and feel let down by Bernie, at least
consider Gary Johnson or Jill Stein, I can't for the life of me understand why Americans revere
corrupt officials when you got decent potential presidents who aren't in the pockets of banksters
like HRC.
Reuters/Ipsos changed it polling methodology as soon as they saw a 17 point swing in favor
of Donald the Drumpf. When the methodology by their own admission was under reporting Trump support
and over reporting Hillbilly's numbers they did nothing. So don't believe any polls. There is
no enthusiasm for Hillbilly in the Democratic party, so the Democratic turn out will be low, on
the other hand people want to shake things up, they will vote for Drumpf. I just wished Donald
had half a brain in his head to see how much good he could do, with the opportunity he has.
So the dreaded ruskies are trying to help Trump? Oh my goodness!
Meanwhile, Clinton's big love for Israel remains unmentioned during most of the Primaries and
even now. I've done a lot of work around the Middle East. The reason certain people hate us is
because the US has vetoed all UN efforts to right the wrongs committed by Israel against the Palestinians.
And with Netanyahu in his 4th term, gelding the news media, and rolling more completely fascist,
we can expect more rubber stamping of territory occupation (that seems like a very simple and
illegal act, but since the USA - and only the USA - disagrees, it's okay) and abuses that will
further fuel hatred from people who'd, at minimum, appreciate it if justice could apply to them.
Let the candidate without sin cast the first stone of superiority!
BTW - What the Russians want is more cash for their wealthiest, trusted oligarchs. That's exactly
what Clinton and Trump are working to do. So why can't they all just be friends?
ahmedfez
A lot of associations and coincidences have been listed here. But no hard evidence linking
the hacking to Putin, nor Putin to Trump. It sounds like a load of muckraking.
shaftedpig -> ahmedfez
True. If it was the other way round, Guardian journalists and establishment shills would
be screaming 'tin-foil' when they should be holding that woman to account.
"... However, to ease tensions with the Clinton wing of the party, Obama selected Clinton to be his Secretary of State, one of the first and most fateful decisions of his presidency. He also kept on George W. Bush's Defense Secretary Robert Gates and neocon members of the military high command, such as Gen. David Petraeus. ..."
"... Inside Obama's foreign policy councils, Clinton routinely took the most neoconservative positions, such as defending a 2009 coup in Honduras that ousted a progressive president. ..."
"... Clinton also sabotaged early efforts to work out an agreement in which Iran surrendered much of its low-enriched uranium, including an initiative in 2010 organized at Obama's request by the leaders of Brazil and Turkey. Clinton sank that deal and escalated tensions with Iran along the lines favored by Israel's right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a Clinton favorite. ..."
"... But no one should be gullible enough to believe that Clinton's invasion of Syria would stop at a "safe zone." As with Libya, once the camel's nose was into the tent, pretty soon the animal would be filling up the whole tent. ..."
"... Perhaps even scarier is what a President Clinton would do regarding Iran and Ukraine, two countries where belligerent U.S. behavior could start much bigger wars. ..."
"... In Ukraine, would Clinton escalate U.S. military support for the post-coup anti-Russian Ukrainian government, encouraging its forces to annihilate the ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine and to "liberate" the people of Crimea from "Russian aggression" (though they voted by 96 percent to leave the failed Ukrainian state and rejoin Russia)? ..."
"... Robert Kagan, a co-founder of the neocon Project for the new American Century, has endorsed Clinton, saying "I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy. If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue it's something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else." [See Consortiumnews.com's " Yes, Hillary Clinton Is a Neocon. "] ..."
"... So, by selecting Clinton, the Democrats have made a full 360-degree swing back to the pre-1968 days of the Vietnam War. After nearly a half century of favoring a more peaceful foreign policy – and somewhat less weapons spending – than the Republicans, the Democrats are America's new aggressive war party. ..."
... But former Secretary of State Clinton has made it clear that she is eager to use military
force to achieve "regime change" in countries that get in the way of U.S. desires. She abides by
neoconservative strategies of violent interventions especially in the Middle East and she strikes
a belligerent posture as well toward nuclear-armed Russia and, to a lesser extent, China.
Amid the celebrations about picking the first woman as a major party's presumptive nominee, Democrats
appear to have given little thought to the fact that they have abandoned a near half-century standing
as the party more skeptical about the use of military force. Clinton is an unabashed war hawk who
has shown no inclination to rethink her pro-war attitudes.
As a U.S. senator from New York, Clinton voted for and avidly supported the Iraq War, only cooling
her enthusiasm in 2006 when it became clear that the Democratic base had turned decisively against
the war and her hawkish position endangered her chances for the 2008 presidential nomination, which
she lost to Barack Obama, an Iraq War opponent.
However, to ease tensions with the Clinton wing of the party, Obama selected Clinton to be
his Secretary of State, one of the first and most fateful decisions of his presidency. He also kept
on George W. Bush's Defense Secretary Robert Gates and neocon members of the military high command,
such as Gen. David Petraeus.
This "Team of Rivals" – named after Abraham Lincoln's initial Civil War cabinet – ensured a powerful
bloc of pro-war sentiment, which pushed Obama toward more militaristic solutions than he otherwise
favored, notably the wasteful counterinsurgency "surge" in Afghanistan in 2009 which did little beyond
get another 1,000 U.S. soldiers killed and many more Afghans.
Clinton was a strong supporter of that "surge" – and Gates
reported in his memoir that she acknowledged only opposing the Iraq War "surge" in 2007
for political reasons. Inside Obama's foreign policy councils, Clinton routinely took the most
neoconservative positions, such as defending a 2009 coup in Honduras that ousted a progressive president.
Clinton also sabotaged early efforts to work out an agreement in which Iran surrendered much
of its low-enriched uranium, including an initiative in 2010 organized at Obama's request by the
leaders of Brazil and Turkey. Clinton
sank that deal and escalated
tensions with Iran along the lines favored by Israel's right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
a Clinton favorite.
Pumping for War in Libya
In 2011, Clinton successfully lobbied Obama to go to war against Libya to achieve another "regime
change," albeit cloaked in the more modest goal of establishing only a "no-fly zone" to "protect
civilians."
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi had claimed he was battling jihadists and terrorists who were building
strongholds around Benghazi, but Clinton and her State Department underlings accused him of slaughtering
civilians and (in one of the more colorful lies used to justify the war) distributing Viagra to his
troops so they could rape more women.
Despite resistance from Russia and China, the United Nations Security Council fell for the deception
about protecting civilians. Russia and China agreed to abstain from the vote, giving Clinton her
"no-fly zone." Once that was secured, however, the Obama administration and several European allies
unveiled their real plan, to destroy the Libyan army and pave the way for the violent overthrow of
Gaddafi.
Privately, Clinton's senior aides viewed the Libyan "regime change" as a chance to establish what
they called the "Clinton Doctrine" on using "smart power" with plans for Clinton to rush
to the fore and claim credit once Gaddafi was ousted. But that scheme failed when President Obama
grabbed the limelight after Gaddafi's government collapsed.
But Clinton would not be denied her second opportunity to claim the glory when jihadist rebels
captured Gaddafi on Oct. 20, 2011, sodomized him with a knife and then murdered him. Hearing of Gaddafi's
demise, Clinton went into a network interview and
declared , "we came,
we saw, he died" and clapped her hands in glee.
Clinton's glee was short-lived, however. Libya soon descended into chaos with Islamic extremists
gaining control of large swaths of the country. On Sept. 11, 2012, jihadists attacked the U.S. consulate
in Benghazi killing Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other American personnel. It turned
out Gaddafi had been right about the nature of his enemies.
Undaunted by the mess in Libya, Clinton made similar plans for Syria where again she marched in
lock-step with the neocons and their "liberal interventionist" sidekicks in support of another violent
"regime change," ousting the Assad dynasty,
a top neocon/Israeli goal since the 1990s.
Clinton pressed Obama to escalate weapons shipments and training for anti-government rebels who
were deemed "moderate" but in reality
collaborated closely with radical Islamic forces, including Al Nusra Front (Al Qaeda's Syrian
franchise) and some even more extreme jihadists (who coalesced into the Islamic State).
Again, Clinton's war plans were cloaked in humanitarian language, such as the need to create a
"safe zone" inside Syria to save civilians. But her plans would have required a major U.S. invasion
of a sovereign country, the destruction of its air force and much of its military, and the creation
of conditions for another "regime change."
In the case of Syria, however, Obama resisted the pressure from Clinton and other hawks inside
his own administration. The President did approve some covert assistance to the rebels and allowed
Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the Gulf states to do much more, but he did not agree to an outright U.S.-led
invasion to Clinton's disappointment.
Parting Ways
Clinton finally left the Obama administration at the start of his second term in 2013, some say
voluntarily and others say in line with Obama's desire to finally move ahead with serious negotiations
with Iran over its nuclear program and to apply more pressure on Israel to reach a long-delayed peace
settlement with the Palestinians. Secretary of State John Kerry was willing to do some of the politically
risky work that Clinton was not.
Many on the Left deride Obama as "Obomber" and mock his hypocritical acceptance of the Nobel Peace
Prize in 2009. And there is no doubt that Obama has waged war his entire presidency, bombing at least
seven countries by his own count. But the truth is that he has generally been among the most dovish
members of his administration, advocating a "realistic" (or restrained) application of American power.
By contrast, Clinton was among the most hawkish senior officials.
A major testing moment for Obama came in August 2013 after a sarin gas attack outside Damascus,
Syria, that killed hundreds of Syrians and that the State Department and the mainstream U.S. media
immediately blamed on the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
There was almost universal pressure inside Official Washington to militarily enforce Obama's "red
line" against Assad using chemical weapons. Amid this intense momentum toward war, it was widely
assumed that Obama would order a harsh retaliatory strike against the Syrian military. But U.S. intelligence
and key figures in the U.S. military smelled a rat, a provocation carried out by Islamic extremists
to draw the United States into the Syrian war on their side.
At the last minute and at great political cost to himself, Obama listened to the doubts of his
intelligence advisers and called off the attack, referring the issue to the U.S. Congress and then
accepting a Russian-brokered deal in which Assad surrendered all his chemical weapons though continuing
to deny a role in the sarin attack.
Eventually, the sarin
case against Assad would collapse. Only one rocket was found to have carried sarin and
it had a very limited range placing its firing position likely within rebel-controlled territory.
But Official Washington's conventional wisdom never budged. To this day, politicians and pundits
denounce Obama for not enforcing his "red line."
There's little doubt, however, what Hillary Clinton would have done. She has been eager for a
much more aggressive U.S. military role in Syria since the civil war began in 2011. Much as she used
propaganda and deception to achieve "regime change" in Libya, she surely would have done the same
in Syria, embracing the pretext of the sarin attack – "killing innocent children" – to destroy the
Syrian military even if the rebels were the guilty parties.
Still Lusting for War
Indeed, during the 2016 campaign – in those few moments that have touched on foreign policy –
Clinton declared that as President she would order the U.S. military to invade Syria. "Yes, I do
still support a no-fly zone," she said during the April 14 debate. She also wants a "safe zone" that
would require seizing territory inside Syria.
But no one should be gullible enough to believe that Clinton's invasion of Syria would stop
at a "safe zone." As with Libya, once the camel's nose was into the tent, pretty soon the animal
would be filling up the whole tent.
Perhaps even scarier is what a President Clinton would do regarding Iran and Ukraine, two
countries where belligerent U.S. behavior could start much bigger wars.
For instance, would President Hillary Clinton push the Iranians so hard – in line with what Netanyahu
favors – that they would renounce the nuclear deal and give Clinton an excuse to bomb-bomb-bomb Iran?
In Ukraine, would Clinton escalate U.S. military support for the post-coup anti-Russian Ukrainian
government, encouraging its forces to annihilate the ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine and
to "liberate" the people of Crimea from "Russian aggression" (though they voted by 96 percent to
leave the failed Ukrainian state and rejoin Russia)?
Would President Clinton expect the Russians to stand down and accept these massacres? Would she
take matters to the next level to demonstrate how tough she can be against Russian President Vladimir
Putin whom she has compared to Hitler? Might she buy into the latest neocon dream of achieving "regime
change" in Moscow? Would she be wise enough to recognize how dangerous such instability could be?
Of course, one would expect that all of Clinton's actions would be clothed in the crocodile tears
of "humanitarian" warfare, starting wars to "save the children" or to stop the evil enemy from "raping
defenseless girls." The truth of such emotional allegations would be left for the post-war historians
to try to sort out. In the meantime, President Clinton would have her wars.
Having covered Washington for nearly four decades, I always marvel at how selective concerns for
human rights can be. When "friendly" civilians are dying, we are told that we have a "responsibility
to protect," but when pro-U.S. forces are slaughtering civilians of an adversary country or movement,
reports of those atrocities are dismissed as "enemy propaganda" or ignored altogether. Clinton is
among the most cynical in this regard.
Trading Places
But the larger picture for the Democrats is that they have just adopted an extraordinary historical
reversal whether they understand it or not. They have replaced the Republicans as the party of aggressive
war, though clearly many Republicans still dance to the neocon drummer just as Clinton and "liberal
interventionists" do. Still, Donald Trump, for all his faults, has adopted a relatively peaceful
point of view, especially in the Mideast and with Russia.
While today many Democrats are congratulating themselves for becoming the first major party to
make a woman the presumptive nominee, they may soon have to decide whether that distinction justifies
putting an aggressive war hawk in the White House. In a way, the issue is an old one for Democrats,
whether "identity politics" or anti-war policies are more important.
At least since 1968 and the chaotic Democratic convention in Chicago, the party has advanced,
sometimes haltingly, those two agendas, pushing for broader rights for all and seeking to restrain
the nation's militaristic impulses.
In the 1970s, Democrats largely repudiated the Vietnam War while the Republicans waved the flag
and equated anti-war positions with treason. By the 1980s and early 1990s, Ronald Reagan and George
H.W. Bush were making war fun again – Grenada, Afghanistan, Panama and the Persian Gulf, all relatively
low-cost conflicts with victorious conclusions.
By the 1990s, Bill Clinton (along with Hillary Clinton) saw militarism as just another issue to
be triangulated. With the Soviet Union's collapse, the Clinton-42 administration saw the opportunity
for more low-cost tough-guy/gal-ism – continuing a harsh embargo and periodic air strikes against
Iraq (causing the deaths of a U.N.-estimated half million children); blasting Serbia into submission
over Kosovo; and expanding NATO to the east toward Russia's borders.
But Bill Clinton did balk at the more extreme neocon ideas, such as the one from the Project for
the New American Century for a militarily enforced "regime change" in Iraq. That had to wait for
George W. Bush in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. As a New York senator, Hillary Clinton made sure
she was onboard for war on Iraq just as she sided with Israel's pummeling of Lebanon and the Palestinians
in Gaza.
Hillary Clinton was taking triangulation to an even more acute angle as she sided with virtually
every position of the Netanyahu government in Israel and moved in tandem with the neocons as they
cemented their control of Washington's foreign policy establishment. Her only brief flirtation with
an anti-war position came in 2006 when her political advisers informed her that her continued support
for Bush's Iraq War would doom her in the Democratic presidential race.
But she let her hawkish plumage show again as Obama's Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013 – and
once she felt she had the 2016 Democratic race in hand (after her success in the southern primaries)
she pivoted back to her hard-line positions in full support of Israel and in a full-throated defense
of her war on Libya, which she still won't view as a failure.
The smarter neocons are already lining up to endorse Clinton, especially given Donald Trump's
hostile takeover of the Republican Party and his disdain for neocon strategies that he views as simply
spreading chaos around the globe. As The New York Times has
reported, Clinton is "the vessel into which many interventionists are pouring their hopes."
Robert Kagan, a co-founder of the neocon Project for the new American Century, has endorsed
Clinton, saying "I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy. If she pursues a policy which we
think she will pursue it's something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters
are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else." [See Consortiumnews.com's
"Yes,
Hillary Clinton Is a Neocon."]
So, by selecting Clinton, the Democrats have made a full 360-degree swing back to the pre-1968
days of the Vietnam War. After nearly a half century of favoring a more peaceful foreign policy –
and somewhat less weapons spending – than the Republicans, the Democrats are America's new aggressive
war party.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated
Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen
Narrative, either in
print here or as an e-book (from
Amazon and
barnesandnoble.com).
How about WAPO does some real reporting and compares the two candidate on the issues at hand and
leaves out all the speculation"
Judging from comments the level of brainwashing of WaPo readship is just staggering... Far above
that existed in soviet Russia (were most people were supciously about Soviet nomeklatura and did not
trust them).
Notable quotes:
"... In their zeal to portray Donald Trump as a dangerous threat to national security, the Clinton campaign has taken a starkly anti-Russian stance, one that completes a total role reversal for the two major American parties on U.S.-Russian relations that Hillary Clinton will now be committed to, if she becomes president. ..."
"... And now, for mostly political reasons, the Clinton campaign has decided to escalate its rhetoric on Russia. ..."
"... This year, the Clinton team is accusing Putin of waging information warfare against the Democratic candidate in order to help elect the Republican candidate. Clinton is also running ads claiming she stood up to Putin. Meanwhile, Trump is called for a weakening of NATO and his staff worked to remove an anti-Russia stance on Ukraine from the GOP platform. ..."
"... Now that the Democrats are the tough-on-Russia party, they should explain exactly what that means. What would Clinton do about Russia's increasingly aggressive cyber-espionage and information warfare in Europe and around the world? Would she expand sanctions on Russia in response to the hacks? Would she use U.S. cyber forces to retaliate? Would she abandon President Obama's plan to deepen U.S.-Russian military and intelligence cooperation in Syria? ..."
"... if Clinton wins, she will be committed to implementing the anti-Putin, tough-on-Russia policy she is running on and Democrats will need to fall in line ..."
"... I am not a national security expert but it does not look intelligent to antagonize Russia and China at the same time. But I think it is unfair to blame Hillary for this, Obama has been antagonizing Russia and China for some time now. He has being very successful at that, for the first time in many years now Russia and China are BFF doing naval exercises together. ..."
"... In other words, her use of a homebrew email server constituted a threat to national security? ..."
"... The Dems and their Washington Post surrogates are apoplectic over Donald Trump's supposed affinity for the Russians. Russia is now America's mortal enemy in the current Dem narrative. ..."
"... Mook's claim of Russian involvement would be more convincing if he had offered any proof. Otherwise it just looks like pure deflection and distraction and disinformation. ..."
In their zeal to portray Donald Trump as a dangerous threat to national security, the Clinton
campaign has taken a starkly anti-Russian stance, one that completes a total role reversal for the
two major American parties on U.S.-Russian relations that Hillary Clinton will now be committed to,
if she becomes president.
The side switching between the parties on Russia is the result of two converging trends. U.S.-Russian
relations have gone downhill since Russian President Vladimir Putin came back to power in 2012, torpedoing
the Obama administration's first term outreach to Moscow, which Clinton led. Then, in the past year,
Trump's Russia-friendly policy has filled the pro-engagement space that Democrats once occupied.
And now, for mostly political reasons, the Clinton campaign has decided to escalate its rhetoric
on Russia. After Trump
suggested Wednesday that if Russia had indeed hacked Clinton's private email server it should
release the emails, the Clinton campaign sent out its Democratic surrogates to bash Russia and Trump
in a manner traditionally reserved for Republicans.
"This has gone from being a matter of curiosity, and a matter of politics, to being a national
security issue," Clinton senior foreign policy adviser Jake Sullivan said.
Set to one side that Trump was probably joking. Russia clearly does not need Trump's permission
to hack U.S. political organizations or government institutions. And there's no consensus that Russia
released the Democratic National Committee emails in order to disrupt the presidential election.
In fact, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has his own personal vendetta against Clinton, claimed
that he alone chose the timing of the release of the DNC emails.
Regardless, the idea that a GOP presidential nominee would endorse Russian cyber-espionage was
too tempting for the Clinton campaign to resist, especially on the day their convention was dedicated
to painting Trump as dangerous on national security.
At an event on the sidelines of the convention Wednesday, several top Clinton national security
surrogates focused on Trump's latest comments to argue that they embolden Russia in its plan to destabilize
and dominate the West. Former national security adviser Tom Donilon said that Russia is interfering
with elections all over Europe and said Trump is helping Russia directly.
"The Russians have engaged in cyberattacks in a number of places that we know about, in Georgia,
in Estonia and in Ukraine. . . . In the Russian takeover of Crimea, information warfare was a
central part of their operations," Donilon said. "To dangerously embrace a set of strategies by
the Russian Federation that are intent on undermining key Western institutions . . . is playing
into the hands of Russian strategy."
Former defense secretary and CIA director Leon Panetta said that if Donilon was still in the White
House, he would have tasked the CIA to retaliate against Moscow. Panetta then doubled down on Sullivan's
argument that Trump's comments by themselves are making the United States less safe.
"This is crazy stuff, and yet somehow you get the sense that people think it's a joke. It has
already represented a threat to our national security," Panetta said. "Because if you go abroad
and talk to people, they are very worried that someone like this could become president of the
United States."
In 2008, the Russian government was definitely not rooting for the Republican candidate for president.
Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) had made a feature of his campaign a pledge to stand up to Russian aggression
and dispatched two top surrogates to Georgia after the Russian invasion.
In 2012, Mitt Romney warned that Russia was the United States' "number one geopolitical foe."
Then-Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John F. Kerry mocked Romney at the Democratic National
Convention in Charlotte, saying that Romney got his information about Russia from the movie "Rocky
IV."
This year, the Clinton team is accusing Putin of waging information warfare against the Democratic
candidate in order to help elect the Republican candidate. Clinton is also running ads claiming she
stood up to Putin. Meanwhile, Trump is called for a weakening of NATO and his staff worked to remove
an anti-Russia stance on Ukraine from the GOP platform.
Now that the Democrats are the tough-on-Russia party, they should explain exactly what that
means. What would Clinton do about Russia's increasingly aggressive cyber-espionage and information
warfare in Europe and around the world? Would she expand sanctions on Russia in response to the hacks?
Would she use U.S. cyber forces to retaliate? Would she abandon President Obama's plan to deepen
U.S.-Russian military and intelligence cooperation in Syria?
The Clinton team hasn't said. For now, they are content to use Trump's statements about Russia
to make the argument that he's not commander-in-chief material. But if Clinton wins, she will
be committed to implementing the anti-Putin, tough-on-Russia policy she is running on and Democrats
will need to fall in line . If Putin wasn't rooting for Trump before, he is now.
NotaClinton , 7/28/2016 6:25 PM EDT
So TRUMP is threat to NATIONAL SECURITY for asking RUSSIA for the emails she destroyed? Because
they would be the one likely to have them since she completely ignored Security protocol while
in Russia? WOW they get better every day. They have already explain Russia could have been in
and out of her accounts all along because of her complete lack of security of her devises. She
had less security than a commercial account using the private server the way she did. And she
did cause a breach in national security. She fwd classified email to an intern and it did get
hacked. Whether or not Russia got any info from her we will never know. Because the lack of security
on her server Russia could have got her password and and the info leaving no tracks.
NotaClinton , 7/28/2016 5:22 PM EDT
People agree with PUTIN you know like the ones in CRIMEA and SYRIA. I'd rather see a PUTIN
TRUMP ticket. I like what I see in PUTIN doing in the world. He seems to be the one SAVING people
around the world. Assad let the people have freedom of religion. These Sunni the USA is arming
want to force Sharia law. I don't approve of my tax dollars being spent arming those terrorists
nor do I consider Saudi Arabia an ally!!! I would rather see a TRUMP PUTIN ticket and add 75 more
stars to our flag. Than what the current government is. Although I would more so like to see the
USA government take a much more democratic stance. Change our government to be more like Switzerland
Norway and the Netherlands. Who were inspired by the USA constitution. Our constitution and democracy
has been lost to corruption!!!!
George1955, 7/28/2016 5:08 PM EDT
I am not a national security expert but it does not look intelligent to antagonize Russia
and China at the same time. But I think it is unfair to blame Hillary for this, Obama has been
antagonizing Russia and China for some time now. He has being very successful at that, for the
first time in many years now Russia and China are BFF doing naval exercises together. Maybe
there is a very profound strategy in that (everybody says that Obama is a genius) but I cannot
see what is the logic of provoking at the same time the two biggest military powers apart of the
United States while weakening our military forces with budget cuts.
It is the worst foreign policy since the Arab Spring brought us ISIS. They are incapable of
intelligent policy. Their whole idea was to "not do stupid stuff" and here they are. They just
can't help themselves.
chayapartiya, 7/28/2016 5:01 PM EDT
The only thing standing between a highly productive US/Russian relationship are the other relationships
the United States has, both institutional and personal among our elites.
Russia is the sworn enemy of many US allies and has barred our richest citizens from taking
charge of large sectors of the Russian economy. That is the source of our new Cold War.
Lacking Communist ideology Russia will never be an existential threat to the United States
or our way of life. On the other hand, Islam is. On the other hand, Red China is.
You have to be willing to abandon the entire US foreign policy establishment to turn our relationship
with Russia around, and if we did maintaining our relationships with Poland, the Baltics, Georgia,
Turkey, Saudi Arabia and more would become vastly more difficult.
But the idea is too good of one to abandon, Russia is far too influential to ignore. I'm glad
one major party is going to recognize that now.
invention13, 7/28/2016 5:01 PM EDT
"This has gone from being a matter of curiosity, and a matter of politics, to being a national
security issue," Clinton senior foreign policy adviser Jake Sullivan said.
In other words, her use of a homebrew email server constituted a threat to national security?
I'm finding this whole flap just too funny. The whole point was probably to step on the news
coverage of the convention on the night that the president and vice president were to speak. Trump
is happy to fan the flames a bit. This is what he does when there is something he doesn't want
people to pay attention to (whether it is unfavorable coverage of Trump University, or a convention).
He throws out something outrageous that sucks the oxygen out of the news cycle. This whole thing
will die down, simply because in the absence of hard evidence, most people don't believe it is
true that Trump is Putin's agent. He may admire him, but work for him? I doubt it.
NotaClinton, 7/28/2016 5:44 PM EDT
Her actions DID once agains threaten NATIONAL SECURITY there was no doubt about that. She fwd
classified email to her interns who got hacked. That is definitely a threat to national security.
She carried her Blackberry and laptop into countries while acting as head of state. Which was
not recommended for anyone to do even if there devices were secured by the state. She took hers
to countries with her personal server that had zero security less than a commercial account. Then
there was the fact she deleted and kept her business out of reach of FOIA. Zero respect for those
laws. All federal employees are allowed to have a personal email for there person life. But Hilary
decides she is above the law. Those federal laws don't apply to her and got away with it. When
Comey was asked about that. He said he wasn't asked to investigate whether she broke those federal
laws. He wasn't investigating whether she broke the law. But only if he should charge her for
violating security. His conclusion was yes she violated the law. But he sees the law meant nothing
so why file a criminal charge.
Trump only requested information that they very well may have. Because Hilary handed it to
them. it's hard to believe the Russians hacked the DNC. They most likely had the passwords from
Hilary's accounts. Which would leave no footprints.
OswegoTex , 7/28/2016 2:54 PM EDT
The Dems and their Washington Post surrogates are apoplectic over Donald Trump's supposed
affinity for the Russians. Russia is now America's mortal enemy in the current Dem narrative.
Wasn't Romney ridiculed by a snarky and arrogant Obama and his press sycophants for identifying
Russia as a major geopolitical threat in the 2012 election cycle. What happened? Oh-- I know---
the Clinton/Obama "reset".
stella blue, 7/28/2016 2:45 PM EDT
Very interesting article. Hillary is a neocon. She never saw a war she didn't like. I don't
know what would be so wrong with having good relations with Russia. Wasn't that what Hillary's
stupid reset button was all about?
NotaClinton, 7/28/2016 6:11 PM EDT [Edited]
I admire PUTIN and so do a lot of people. If you are a Citizens and believe in our values and
the constitution. He held a democratic Legal election in Crimea. Where the people voted unanimously
in favor of Belonging to Russia, A Vote that would be exactly the same today. The USA invades
Syria with terrorists from countries whose own people wouldn't vote them in.
All I have seen Putin do is save people. He saved Syria finally. i don't know what took him
so long. Maybe WMDs he knew the opposition would use and some more dirty filthy rotten tricks
that have been happening there. He turned the war around on less money than a shipment of weapons
and training to the rebels forces costed the USA. those shipments and training was going on since
before the conflict broke out. What was the point?
Why has the USA spent a dime in that country other than they should have immediately neutralized,
destroyed or recovered all the military equipment that was stolen from Iraq. I you like Russian
your anti american? If you don't like illegal Immigrants your a racist. That is to be expected
from those educated Hilary Voters...
Nikdo, 7/28/2016 4:26 PM EDT
Mook's claim of Russian involvement would be more convincing if he had offered any proof.
Otherwise it just looks like pure deflection and distraction and disinformation.
The video accompanying the article is actually better the the text. John Bolton made some interesting
remarks. For example he said that it is stunning that Hillary Clinton said something about damage from
hack of DNC server. What she though by engaging in her reckless behaviors with bathroom server four
years while she were in office. He also suggested that points to Russia might be just attempt if disinformation
from a real perpetuator.
Notable quotes:
"... In her acceptance speech, Clinton reaffirmed a commitment to NATO, saying she was "proud to stand by our allies in NATO against any threat they face, including from Russia." ..."
"... As U.S. secretary of state, Clinton in 2009 presented her Russian counterpart with a red button intended to symbolize a "reset" in relations between the two countries, one of U.S. President Barack Obama's initiatives. In Russia, the gesture is best remembered for the misspelling of the word in Russian, while the reset itself failed in the face of Putin's return as Russian president in 2012 and Russia's seizure of Crimea from Ukraine two years later. ..."
"... Clinton once compared the annexation of Crimea to Adolf Hitler's moves into Eastern Europe at the start of World War II, a comparison that was deeply offensive in Russia, where the country's victory over Nazi Germany remains a prime source of national pride. ..."
"... "And as far as the Ukraine is concerned, it's a mess. And that's under the Obama's administration with his strong ties to NATO. So with all of these strong ties to NATO, Ukraine is a mess," Trump said. "Crimea has been taken. Don't blame Donald Trump for that." ..."
"... Putin was outraged by U.S. support for Ukraine and by U.S. military intervention around the world, particularly in Libya, on Clinton's watch. But it was what he saw as interference in Russia that really rankled. ..."
"... When Clinton described Russia's 2011 parliamentary elections as rigged, Putin said she was "sending a signal" to his critics. He then accused the U.S. State Department of financially supporting the protests that drew tens of thousands of people to the streets of Moscow to demand free elections and an end to Putin's rule. ..."
"... Channel One began its report by introducing Clinton as "a politician who puts herself above the law, who is ready to win at any cost and who is ready to change her principles depending on the political situation." The anchorwoman couched the description by saying that was how Clinton is seen by Trump's supporters - but it was a nuance viewers could easily miss. ..."
MOSCOW – To understand what the Kremlin thinks about the prospect of Hillary Clinton becoming
the U.S. president, it was enough to watch Russian state television coverage of her accepting the
Democratic nomination.
Viewers were told that Clinton sees Russia as an enemy and cannot be trusted, while the Democratic
Party convention was portrayed as further proof that American democracy is a sham.
In her acceptance speech, Clinton reaffirmed a commitment to NATO, saying she was "proud to
stand by our allies in NATO against any threat they face, including from Russia."
In doing so, she was implicitly rebuking her rival, Republican nominee Donald Trump, who has questioned
the need for the Western alliance and suggested that if he is elected president, the United States
might not honor its NATO military commitments, in particular regarding former Soviet republics in
the Baltics.
While Trump's position on NATO has delighted the Kremlin, Clinton's statement clearly stung.
"She mentioned Russia only once, but it was enough to see that the era of the reset is over,"
Channel One said in its report.
As U.S. secretary of state, Clinton in 2009 presented her Russian counterpart with a red button
intended to symbolize a "reset" in relations between the two countries, one of U.S. President Barack
Obama's initiatives. In Russia, the gesture is best remembered for the misspelling of the word in
Russian, while the reset itself failed in the face of Putin's return as Russian president in 2012
and Russia's seizure of Crimea from Ukraine two years later.
Clinton once compared the annexation of Crimea to Adolf Hitler's moves into Eastern Europe
at the start of World War II, a comparison that was deeply offensive in Russia, where the country's
victory over Nazi Germany remains a prime source of national pride.
Trump, on the other hand, told ABC's "This Week" in a broadcast Sunday that he wants to take a
look at whether the U.S. should recognize Crimea as part of Russia. "You know, the people of Crimea,
from what I've heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were," Trump said.
This runs counter to the position of the Obama administration and the European Union, which have
imposed punishing sanctions on Russia in response to the annexation.
"And as far as the Ukraine is concerned, it's a mess. And that's under the Obama's administration
with his strong ties to NATO. So with all of these strong ties to NATO, Ukraine is a mess," Trump
said. "Crimea has been taken. Don't blame Donald Trump for that."
Putin was outraged by U.S. support for Ukraine and by U.S. military intervention around the
world, particularly in Libya, on Clinton's watch. But it was what he saw as interference in Russia
that really rankled.
When Clinton described Russia's 2011 parliamentary elections as rigged, Putin said she was
"sending a signal" to his critics. He then accused the U.S. State Department of financially supporting
the protests that drew tens of thousands of people to the streets of Moscow to demand free elections
and an end to Putin's rule.
In the years since, the Kremlin has defended Russian elections in part by implying they are no
different than in the United States, a country it says promotes democracy around the world while
allowing its business and political elite to determine who wins at home.
The Democratic Convention, which ended Friday morning Moscow time, was given wide coverage throughout
the day on the nearly hourly news reports on state television, the Kremlin's most powerful tool for
shaping public opinion.
Channel One began its report by introducing Clinton as "a politician who puts herself above the
law, who is ready to win at any cost and who is ready to change her principles depending on the political
situation." The anchorwoman couched the description by saying that was how Clinton is seen by Trump's
supporters - but it was a nuance viewers could easily miss.
The reports ran excerpts of Clinton's speech, but the camera swung repeatedly to a sullen Sen.
Bernie Sanders of Vermont, her Democratic challenger, and his disappointed supporters. The Rossiya
channel also showed anti-Clinton protesters outside the convention hall who it said "felt they have
been betrayed after the email leak that showed Bernie Sanders was pushed out of the race."
Russia is a prime suspect in the hacking of Democratic National Committee computers, which led
to the release of emails showing that party officials favored Clinton over Sanders for the presidential
nomination.
The Kremlin has denied interfering in the U.S. election. A columnist at Russia's best-selling
newspaper, however, said it would have been a smart move.
"I would welcome the Kremlin helping those forces in the United States that stand for peace with
Russia and democracy in America," Israel Shamir wrote in Komsomolskaya Pravda.
Trump, meanwhile, has encouraged Russia to seek and release more than 30,000 other missing emails
deleted by Clinton. Democrats accused him of trying to get a foreign adversary to conduct espionage
that could affect this November's election, but Trump later said he was merely being sarcastic.
whollop
Putin has tried to remind the world what a mistake break up of Yugoslavia was and corruption
involved and lies, no one listens. Next leader of Russia might not be so restrained and patient.
Sad we are letting such bad minds lead US now. What is it about Clinton's that make ppl so gullible?
whollop
Read "how the srebrenica massacre redefined US policy," by US professor. Media distorts truth
everywhere, all the time. Bought and paid for.
Russians didn't start last 2 WW's either. You can bet if ISIS attacks Russia, Pres O won't
go to their aid.
This constant demonizing of Russia has pushed them closer to China. Obama and Clinton and Bill
Clinton (from earlier and beyond) have made a mess of the world because their values are built
on wrong philosophy. German rationalism does not mesh with American freedom and love of law.
Trump17
Her and Obama interfered in their affairs and now without any proof they are blaming Russia
for a hacking of the DNC. Back in March the FBI told the DNC it was hacked and wanted information
to conduct an investigation which Hillary of course blocked. Now they are crying the blues..
HmmIsee
Dems have hated Russia ever since Reagan disbanded their beloved USSR
teabone
Russia and the U.S. used to have a common enemy, radical/extremist Islamism.
Not anymore since Obama and Clinton loves Muslims more than they like American citizens.
Looks like this is a new part of Hillary strategy to take Trump down
Notable quotes:
"... "We know that Russian intelligence services hacked into the DNC," Clinton said, in her first interview with Fox in more than five years. "And we know that they arranged for a lot of those emails to be released and we know that Donald Trump has shown a very troubling willingness to back up Putin, to support Putin." ..."
Clinton answered tough questions on Benghazi, her emails and her campaign and policies, and focused
her own attack on her opponent's alleged links to Russia and Putin.
"We know that Russian intelligence services hacked into the DNC," Clinton said, in her first interview
with Fox in more than five years. "And we know that they arranged for a lot of those emails to be
released and we know that
Donald Trump has shown
a very troubling willingness to back up Putin, to support Putin."
Asked if she believed Putin wanted Trump to win the presidency, Clinton said she would not make
that conclusion. "But I think laying out the facts raises serious issues about Russian interference
in our elections, in our democracy," she said.
The US would not tolerate that from any other country, Clinton said, adding: "For Trump to both
encourage that and to praise Putin despite what appears to be a deliberate effort to try to affect
the election, I think, raises national security issues."
The Russian theme has expectedly become one of the most important in the US presidential election.
Democrats are unsurprisingly engaged in anti-Russian hysteria. Donald Trump says that he will establish
good relations with Russia and is ready to discuss the issue of recognition of the referendum in
the Crimea.
Noise and hysteria
Mass hysteria on the part of the Democrats, neocons, ultra-liberals and plain and simple Russophobes,
was provoked by the recent statements of Donald Trump. Speaking at a press conference in Florida,
Trump called on Russia to hand over the 30,000 emails "missing" from the Hillary Clinton's email
server in the US. Their absence is a clear sign that Clinton destroyed evidence proving that she
used her personal e-mail server to send sensitive information. Democrats immediately accused Trump
of pandering to Russian hackers, although in reality the multi-billionaire rhetorically hinted that
the data that Clinton hid from the American investigation is in the hands of foreign intelligence
services. So, Clinton is a possible target for blackmail.
Trump's statement that he is ready to
discuss the status of Crimea and the removal of anti-Russian sanctions caused even more noise. This
view is not accepted either in the Democrat or in the Republican mainstream. Trump also said that
Vladimir Putin does not respect Clinton and Obama, while Trump himself hopes to find a common language
with him. Trump appreciates Putin's leadership and believes that the US must work together with Russia
to deal with common threats, particularly against Islamic extremism.
The establishment's tantrum
Both Democrats and Republicans are taking aim at Trump. The vice-presidential candidate, Mike Pence,
made threats to Russia. The head of the Republican majority in Congress, Paul Ryan, became somewhat
hysterical. He said that Putin is "a thug and should stay out of these elections."
It is Putin
personally, and the Russian security services, who are accused of leaking correspondences of top
employees of the National Committee of the Democratic Party. This unverified story united part of
the Republicans and all of the Democrats, including the Clinton and Barack Obama themselves. Trump
supporters note that the Russian threat is used to divert attention from the content of these letters.
And these show the fraud carried out during the primaries which favored Hillary Clinton.
The pro-American candidate
The "Russian scandal" demonstrates that on the one hand the thesis of the normalization of relations
with Russia, despite the propaganda, is becoming popular in US society. It is unlikely that Donald
Trump has made campaign statements that are not designed to gain the support of the public in this
election. On the other hand - Trump - a hard realist, like Putin, is not pro-Russian, but a pro-American
politician, and therefore the improvement of relations with Russia in his eyes corresponds to the
US's national interests. Trump has never to date done anything that would not be to his advantage.
Sometimes he even said he would order US fighter jets to engage with Russian ones, and declared he
would have a hard stance in relations with Russia.
Another thing is that his understanding of US
national interests is fundamentally different from the dominant American globalist elite consensus.
For Trump, the US should not be the source of a global liberal remaking of the world, but a national
power, which optimizes its position just as efficiently as any commercial project. And in terms of
optimizing the position of the United States, he says there should be a normal American interaction
with Putin and Russia in the field of combating terrorism and preventing the sliding of the two countries
into a global war. He claims this is to be the priority instead of issues relating to the promotion
of democracy and the so-called fight against "authoritarian regimes".
"... "In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them. And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us." ..."
"... Plus there's the psychological advantage of having some country/countries to blame for the lack of US success, or to distract attention away from US problems that need it. ..."
"... I've always thought the US inherited the hatred of Russia from the Brits and the Brits hated Russia at least back as far as the Crimean War in 1853. Not saying this as fact and am happy to get updated. ..."
"... Official Brit hatred of Russia got started right after the Napoleonic Wars. About 4 centuries of Brit hatred of France got transferred, lock, stock, and barrel, to Russia, since Russia then became the most powerful land power in the world. ..."
"... Russia's primary offense is that it has dared to have its own national interests. ..."
"... Today, all those "freedom-loving" people of former USSR, even including all those scores of West Ukrainians who hate Russian guts and Middle Asian "nationalists" flock to Russia "in pursuit of happiness". ..."
"... I am not saying that all those people are bad, but the question I do ask sometimes is this: you hated us, you evicted (sometimes with bloodshed) us, Russians, from your places. You got what you asked for, why then, do you come to Russia in millions (I am not exaggerating, in fact, most likely underestimating)? What happened? Of course, we all know what happened. ..."
"... I read before that Obama was pushing back against this lunacy. Now the HRC-NEOCON camp are in full attack mode. I honestly think I'll be voting for Trump because I feel he can't do all of the things that I would hate for him to do. I KNOW that Hillary would get away with murder. I'm quite serious. ..."
"... "I KNOW that Hillary would get away with murder. I'm quite serious." It has already happened on this watch, see the case of MH-17. ..."
"... The American talking point about the Crimea is a laughable piece of High School Debating Team rhetoric. The people in charge know full well the truth about Ukraine's claim to the Crimea. The thing that hurts is that the whole point of the "Nuland Putsch",and the rise of a western aligned govt., was to provide the crown jewel in Nato's (read America) crown: Eliminating Russia's naval base at Sevastopol completing the encirclement of Russia in the west (except for the always vulnerable Kaliningrad). ..."
"... Once the FreeMarketDemocratic Reformers were removed from power, Russia began to recover. The birth rate started to improve immediately, and Russia's death rate started to decline in 2006. By 2009, the gap between Russia's births and deaths closed sufficiently that immigration could fill it, and so the Russian population was growing. By 2012, births in the Russian Federation exceeded deaths, for the first time since 1991. ..."
"... In the mid-2000s, Putin proposed measures to support families having children. Western politicians and demographers poured scorn on the very idea that Russian demographics might improve. In fact, the U.S. Census Bureau's population projections had Russia's population declining by 500,000/year as recently as 2015. Now Western politicians and demographers are reduced to claiming that "Putin had nuthin' to do with it!" ..."
"... Putin inherited a helpless, bankrupt, dying Russia. ..."
"... Russia, for all the Borg media grandstanding, seems to only be concerned with Russian related interests. There is no indication of greater plan for global domination. They are upgrading and preparing for a future war, sure. Any country would be smart to prepare accordingly to defend itself (and their interests). ..."
"... Russia became the enemy of United States in early 2000's after Putin started cracking down on the oligarchs that had taken over Russia's economy during Yeltsin's privatization efforts. It is estimated that seven individuals were controlling as much as 50% of Russia's economy at its peak during the late 90's: ..."
"... The ruling ideology of the West is the free movement of capital and people together with the dismantling of sovereign states and replacing them with global institutions and corporate trade pacts. Donald Trump's "America First" threatens this so he is subject to full throated attacks by the media and the connected. Vladimir Putin stands in the way of the global hegemony and the return of Russia to the 1990s. Thus, the western hybrid war for a Kremlin regime change. ..."
"... If Clinton takes over for Obama it will only mean continued escalation by the US against any country resisting a unipolar world. There are a lot more than Russia and China resisting US hegemony and that attacks, subtle as they are, continue unabated. If Trump dials that back this can only be a good thing for world peace. The neocons apparently are betting the farm on Hillary. Good, I pray they lose and are cleansed permanently from the US political landscape. Personally, I see a win by Clinton as the end of mankind. ..."
"... I remember the end of Cold War extremely well, when the relations warmed up and the danger of nuclear exchange faded. In Russia, at that time, this was precisely the idea what you described but, as Pat Buchanan wrote several days ago "The inability to adapt was seen when our Cold War adversary extended a hand in friendship, and the War Party slapped it away." ..."
"... In the early 1880s the U.S. government decided to become a global seapower. Hostility towards the world's largest landpower followed, as night follows day. ..."
The Democratic Party convention and the media are full of the assumption that Russia is the enemy
of the United States. What is the basis for that assumption?
Russian support for the Russian ethnic minority in eastern Ukraine? How does that threaten
the United States?
Russian annexation of the Crimea? Khrushchev arbitrarily transferred that part of Russia to
Ukraine during his time as head of the USSR. Khrushchev was a Ukrainian. Russia never accepted
the arbitrary transfer of a territory that had been theirs since the 18th Century. How does this
annexation threaten the United States?
Russia does not want to see Syria crushed by the jihadis and acts accordingly? How does that
threaten the United States?
Russia threatens the NATO states in eastern Europe? Tell me how they actually do that. Is
it by stationing their forces on their side of the border with these countries? Have the Russians
made threatening statements about the NATO states?
Russia has made threatening and hostile statements directed at the United States? When and
where was that?
Russia does not accept the principle of state sovereignty? Really? The United States is on
shaky ground citing that principle. Remember Iraq?
Russian intelligence may have intercepted and collected the DNC's communications (hacked)
as well as HC's stash of illegal e-mails? Possibly true but every country on earth that has the
capability does the same kind of thing every single day. That would include the United States.
The Obama Administration is apparently committed to a pre-emptive assertion that Russia is a world
class committed enemy of the United States. The Borgist media fully support that.
We should all sober up. pl
Valissa
"In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate,
so we will rally behind them. And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order
to mobilize us."
-- Thich Nhat Hanh
Not to mention the financial advantages to the Military-Industrial-Thinktank complex (I'm including
NATO in this) and all the politicians that benefit from the lobbying monies from that complex.
Plus there's the psychological advantage of having some country/countries to blame for
the lack of US success, or to distract attention away from US problems that need it.
Grizziz -> Ghostship...
I've always thought the US inherited the hatred of Russia from the Brits and the Brits
hated Russia at least back as far as the Crimean War in 1853. Not saying this as fact and am happy
to get updated.
rkka said in reply to Grizziz...
Official Brit hatred of Russia got started right after the Napoleonic Wars. About 4 centuries
of Brit hatred of France got transferred, lock, stock, and barrel, to Russia, since Russia then
became the most powerful land power in the world.
Maritime empires hate, with undying passion, the most powerful land power in the world.
And its a funny thing, the U.S. hatred of Russia dates from the early 1880s, right when the
U.S. began laying down a new steel navy to replace the rotting wooden navy built for the Civil
War, started with the explicit intention of making the U.S. a global power.
Tel said in reply to Valissa...
Quote: "Plus there's the psychological advantage of having some country/countries to blame
for the lack of US success, or to distract attention away from US problems that need it."
Clinton and Obama are busy campaigning that the USA has been completely successful, nothing
is going wrong, everyone has jobs, etc.
I dunno who would believe this, but that's their story and for the time being they are sticking
to it. You have never had it so good.
Dave Schuler
Russia's primary offense is that it has dared to have its own national interests.
SmoothieX12 -> kooshy ...
Today, all those "freedom-loving" people of former USSR, even including all those scores
of West Ukrainians who hate Russian guts and Middle Asian "nationalists" flock to Russia "in pursuit
of happiness".
I am not saying that all those people are bad, but the question I do ask sometimes is this:
you hated us, you evicted (sometimes with bloodshed) us, Russians, from your places. You got what
you asked for, why then, do you come to Russia in millions (I am not exaggerating, in fact, most
likely underestimating)? What happened? Of course, we all know what happened.
NotTimothyGeithner said...
Moscow is large enough to be a mommy figure for a small country with an interest in dealing
with China which doesn't want to be swamped by Beijing's sheer size. Moscow is a threat to U.S.
financial and military domination without firing a shot, engaging in a trade war, or leading a
diplomatic revolt.
The average American doesn't care about a loss of hegemony. We naturally want cooperation and
hippie peace, love, dope. The Western industries with effective monopolies abroad would see immense
profits under threat because the Chinese and Russian competitors would drive prices down in finance,
defense, pharmaceuticals, tech, and so forth. So they are turning to the Goering play book to
keep the Russians out of the world stage. The professional Risk players in the neoconservatives
would see their plans fall apart if the Erdogan-Putin meeting is a positive one.
Also, Putin embarrassed Obama over Syria in 2013 and then was magnanimous. Obama hasn't forgotten
that perceived slight.
SmoothieX12 -> NotTimothyGeithner...
Moscow is large enough to be
A medium-size European country herself. It is also a very peculiar economic entity. I do, however,
have a question on what do you mean by a "mommy for a small country"? No matter how small the
country is, in my understanding, it still will have a fair degree of freedom when building trade
relations with any entity, even of such mammoth size as China.
Cee:
Col. Lang,
I read before that Obama was pushing back against this lunacy. Now the HRC-NEOCON camp
are in full attack mode. I honestly think I'll be voting for Trump because I feel he can't do
all of the things that I would hate for him to do. I KNOW that Hillary would get away with murder.
I'm quite serious.
"I KNOW that Hillary would get away with murder. I'm quite serious." It has already happened
on this watch, see the case of MH-17.
Erik
The American talking point about the Crimea is a laughable piece of High School Debating
Team rhetoric. The people in charge know full well the truth about Ukraine's claim to the Crimea.
The thing that hurts is that the whole point of the "Nuland Putsch",and the rise of a western
aligned govt., was to provide the crown jewel in Nato's (read America) crown: Eliminating Russia's
naval base at Sevastopol completing the encirclement of Russia in the west (except for the always
vulnerable Kaliningrad).
All the rest about Russia's alleged expansionism is similar debating team poppycock.
Looking at the history of empire building and aggressive wars, one is well served to think
in terms of the 3 legged stool of criminology (for aggressive wars are simply, as Jackson said
at Nurnberg, the supreme international crime) and consider means, opportunity, and motive.
We have motive, the Russians do not. The motive in this case is theft, plain and simple. Russia
with its small population and vast real estate holdings is already provided with more resources
than she knows what to do with. We, on the other hand are not, and have not been since at least
the seventies. Russia has its work cut out for it to develop what it owns already and why would
they want to conquer populous resource poor neighbor states?
Not only has Putin snatched away the score of the century by re-asserting Russian control over
Crimea, but he had since 2000 or so been forestalling the western feeding frenzy on the carcass
of the Soviet Union that had Americans creaming their jeans. Re assertion of Russian true sovereignty
was his real offense.
What's so poignant is the long standing western ambition to be able to steal what Russia has.
2 centuries of western aggression against Russia, and all dedicated to theft. Same now, and the
drumbeat of warmongering rhetoric now directed at Russia is hilarious in a dangerous way. We really
are using the Goering argument to drag our unwilling population towards war.
James said...
If I might be permitted to express some thoughts about why Russians feel the way they do about
Putin ...
Median income in Russia increased 260% (in inflation adjusted terms) during the first 10 years
that Putin was in power. That is a staggering increase in people's financial well being. The Economist
and its brethren like to dismiss this achievement as being "solely due to the increased price
of oil" - but if you look at Canada, its oil production per capita was and is equal to that of
Russia yet Canada's median income only increased 9% during the same time period.
I think a good way to get a better sense of how the Russian's feel about Putin is to watch
the Russian film "Bimmer" (if you can get access to a copy with English subtitles):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bimmer_(film)
I took a trip in Africa where our white South African guides favorite catch phrase was "In
Africa, anything is possible." Dystopias are terribly messed up and most people living in them
suffer greatly - but there is something really sexy about them, about the feeling that anything
is possible.
Russia was dystopic like this before Putin came to power - utter anarchy, crime, poverty, worse
corruption than now despite what you hear from the Borg ... but at the same time, anything was
possible. Bimmer depicts the transition from the anarchy of the Yeltsin years to the greater prosperity
and rule of law that Russia now enjoys - while at the same time communicating the fact that many
Russians can't help but feel some nostalgia for the time when anything was possible.
(I visited Russia before, during, and after this transition. I have friends who live there.)
kao_hsien_chih said in reply to James...
The 260% increase in the Russian median income (an important point--the middle Russian became
financial secure under Putin) under Putin's watch underscores the other point: before Putin, Russia
was a total and complete economic wreck. People who saw economic ruin firsthand don't cavalierly
dismiss hard won economic security.
rkka -> Ulenspiegel...
While Russia was being run by FreeMarketDemocratic Reformers, Russians were dying off at the
rate of nearly a million/year.
Once the FreeMarketDemocratic Reformers were removed from power, Russia began to recover.
The birth rate started to improve immediately, and Russia's death rate started to decline in 2006.
By 2009, the gap between Russia's births and deaths closed sufficiently that immigration could
fill it, and so the Russian population was growing. By 2012, births in the Russian Federation
exceeded deaths, for the first time since 1991.
In the mid-2000s, Putin proposed measures to support families having children. Western
politicians and demographers poured scorn on the very idea that Russian demographics might improve.
In fact, the U.S. Census Bureau's population projections had Russia's population declining by
500,000/year as recently as 2015. Now Western politicians and demographers are reduced to claiming
that "Putin had nuthin' to do with it!"
Putin inherited a helpless, bankrupt, dying Russia.
Russia now has a future. That's what Putin did, and he is rightly popular with Russians, Russians
who pine for the days of the drunken incompetent comprador buffoon Yeltsin excepted.
SmoothieX12 -> Ulenspiegel...
Putin is judged by his ability to transform the Russian economy from an exporter of oil, gas
and academics to something more sustainable.
It seems like you are one of those thinkers who thinks that repeating popular BS will create
new reality. FYI, Russia now is #1 exporter of grain in the world. If you didn't catch real news
from Russia, Rosatom's portfolio of contracts exceeds 100 billion USD. Evidently you also missed
the fact that Russia is #2 exporter of many #1 weapon systems in the world, some of which are
beyond the expertise (industrial and scientific) of Europe (I assume you are from that part of
the world). Do you know what it takes and what host of real hi-tech goes into production of a
top fighter jet or modern SSK? Russia is an active and a dominant player at the commercial space
launch business, in fact whole US Atlas program flies on Russian-made RD-180 rocket engines. I
will repeat again, learn facts on the ground, which is relatively easy to do in the world of global
IT. And finally, Russia will never live as well as US or Canada, for starters--there is a colossal
difference in consumer patterns between Russians and North Americans (albeit there are many similarities
too) but there is very little doubt that standard of living in Russia grew tremendously and a
lot of it has very little to do with gas or oil prices. It has, however, a lot to do with retooling
and re-industrialization of the country, which was ongoing since circa 2008. It is a very significant
year. Last, but not least--Russia is huge own consumer market (and then some due to markets of
former USSR) and that is a key. German MTU followed sanctions, well, guess what--it will never
appear again on Russian markets. Thales loved to sell IR matrices to Russia, well, guess what.....you
may fill in the blanks.
SmoothieX12 said in reply to different clue...
In terms of pork and poultry Russia produces 100% of that and, which did surprise me, even
exports turkey. Beef--about 80% covered. Most of what Russia consumes in food stuff is home grown
or made. Exceptions are some luxury food items and things like well-aged cheeses. Russian food
stores can give any best US or European grocery chain a run for their money. Variety is excellent
and most of it affordable. Per salmon, as far as I know it is both farm-raised and wild. What
are the proportions, I don't know. I can, however, testify to the fact that, say, in Troitsky
supermarket you can buy alive strelyad' (sturgeon). ...
SmoothieX12,
This is good to hear. When the "sanction Russia" crowd began embargoing various food-items
being sold to Russia, they unintentionally began without realizing it an economic experiment in
Protectionism. The food embargo against food going into Russia amounts to a kind of Protectionism
for Russian food production within a protectionized and defended Russian market.
If it ends up allowing more monetizable food-as-wealth to be produced withIN Russia, that will
allow all sorts of sectors and people to buy and sell more monetizable non-food goods and non-food
services FROM withIN Russia TO withIN Russia as well. If that allows Russia to become more all-sectors-in-balance
wealthier, that fact would be hard to hide eventually. And various farm-sector advocates in America
could seize upon it and point to it as evidence that Protectionism WORKS to allow a country to
increase its own net production and enjoyment of overall wealth withIN its own borders. And it
might inspire more people to suggest we try it here within America as well. And through the abolition
of NAFTA, allow Mexico to revive Protectionism for its agricultural sector as well. It might allow
for enough broad-based ground-up revival of economic activity withIN Mexico that some of the millions
of NAFTAstinian exiles in America might decide they have a Mexican economy to go back to again.
And some of them might go back.
IF! NAFTA can be abolished and Mexico set free to re-protectionize its own agricultural economy.
Perhaps if enough Mexican political-economic analysts look at events in Russia and see the ongoing
success there, they too might agitate for the abolition of NAFTA and the re-protectionization
of farm-country Mexico.
SmoothieX12 -> different clue...
Protectionism WORKS to allow a country to increase its own net production and enjoyment of
overall wealth withIN its own borders
Free Trade fundamentalism (which is a first derivative of liberalism) is what killing USA and,
I assume, Mexico. Most "academic" so called economists and bankers (monetarists) are clueless
but it is them who set the framework of discussion on economy. It is a long discussion but let
me put it this way--all their "theories" are crap. As for Russia--she is largely self-sustainable
for years now.
kao_hsien_chih -> Ulenspiegel...
That Russia before Putin provides for better explanation of his support than even the 260%.
Yes, Russia is still a relatively poor country, but only a decade before, it was a total and complete
basketcase and people remember that Putin is responsible for putting things back to a semblance
of normalcy.
Daniel Nicolas
In another thread, it was mentioned that countries have no friends, only interests.
Russia, for all the Borg media grandstanding, seems to only be concerned with Russian related
interests. There is no indication of greater plan for global domination. They are upgrading and
preparing for a future war, sure. Any country would be smart to prepare accordingly to defend
itself (and their interests).
Obama's USA has been far too hostile to Russia without apparent cause. A Clinton administration
would likely swing even further. While Russia has openly declared that it not want a new hot war,
they are preparing accordingly because they have no choice but to prepare for the possible future
USA being even more hostile.
The Germans are obviously still sore about it all.
EricB
Russia became the enemy of United States in early 2000's after Putin started cracking down
on the oligarchs that had taken over Russia's economy during Yeltsin's privatization efforts.
It is estimated that seven individuals were controlling as much as 50% of Russia's economy at
its peak during the late 90's:
The ruling ideology of the West is the free movement of capital and people together with
the dismantling of sovereign states and replacing them with global institutions and corporate
trade pacts. Donald Trump's "America First" threatens this so he is subject to full throated attacks
by the media and the connected. Vladimir Putin stands in the way of the global hegemony and the
return of Russia to the 1990s. Thus, the western hybrid war for a Kremlin regime change.
Hillary Clinton is supremely qualified to maintain the status quo. If Donald Trump wins, it
has to be due to the perfidious Russians hacking the election; not Globalism's Losers voting against
their exploitation by the insanely wealthy and the enabling technocrats. Meanwhile, the "War of
Russian Aggression" heats up, Turkey turns Islamist and the EU splinters due to the war refugees
and austerity.
Old Microbiologist -> Bill Herschel...
Bill,
I am with you all the way. It, of course, goes much further. There are ongoing US-manufactured
destabilization events unfolding all around Russia. Then you have the economic attacks via sanctions
and trade which have arguably crippled Russia. On top of that you have these insipid attacks via
things like SWIFT bank transfers, IMF, World Bank and idiocy such as attempting to ban the entire
Russian Olympic team from the Olympics. Russia senses these attacks on all fronts and was unfortunately
caught early being unprepared. During the Soviet Union Russia was 100% self sufficient but as
mentioned in other comments under Yeltsin's "privatization" programs an awful lot of that industry
was sold or closed. Now Russia has had to start from scratch replacements for things not available
in Russia and yet still has a budget surplus (unlike the US with a near $20 trillion deficit).
They have created alternates to SWIFT, VISA/Mastercard, the IMF and even the G8.
The Crimea debacle was a clear attempt to kick Russia out of their base in Sevastopol which
was brilliantly countered. However, the cost has been enormous. Little commented on is that Ukraine
under US leadership has cut off water, gas, and electricity to the peninsula and blocked all traffic
to the mainland. Russia is nearing the completion of the bridge to Crimea from Russia and water/power
are already being delivered. This is a huge effort which shows the dedication to their control
of Crimea.
Then they have undertaken to directly thwart the anti-Assad US-led coalition in Syria and have
hoisted the US on its own petard. It hasn't been easy nor cheap and all of this has been happening
simultaneously. On top of all of this we have buildups on the Russian borders so Putin also has
to upgrade his military to counter any potential EU/NATO/US invasion of Russia. The aggression
has all been one sided but delusional citizens in the US see our aggression as defensive as bizarre
as that is. Outside the US people see US aggression for what it is and are not fooled into believing
that we are trying to help anyone except the rich plutocrats. The immigrant invasion of Europe
is seen as a US caused problem for these continuous insane wars that never end nor apparently
have any actual purpose.
If Clinton takes over for Obama it will only mean continued escalation by the US against
any country resisting a unipolar world. There are a lot more than Russia and China resisting US
hegemony and that attacks, subtle as they are, continue unabated. If Trump dials that back this
can only be a good thing for world peace. The neocons apparently are betting the farm on Hillary.
Good, I pray they lose and are cleansed permanently from the US political landscape. Personally,
I see a win by Clinton as the end of mankind.
Peter Reichard said...
Have always thought Russians and Americans were more like each other than either of us were
like Europeans. Both a little crude, crazy, traditionally religious and musical with big countries
created from an expanding frontier and thinking big in terms of infrastructure and vehicles. We
ought to be natural allies as we were in the nineteenth century in opposition to the British Empire
and again in World War 2. Russia, a land power in the heart of the world island in balance with
the US, an ocean power on the other side of the planet with mutual respect could create a stable
multi-polar world.
SmoothieX12 -> Peter Reichard...
That is generally true. There are a lot of similarities. And I remember the end of Cold
War extremely well, when the relations warmed up and the danger of nuclear exchange faded. In
Russia, at that time, this was precisely the idea what you described but, as Pat Buchanan wrote
several days ago "The inability to adapt was seen when our Cold War adversary extended a hand
in friendship, and the War Party slapped it away."
kao_hsien_chih -> SmoothieX12...
In mid-19th century, Russia was extremely friendly to United States, where many remained deeply
suspicious of the British Empire. Somehow, by the end of 19th century, United States became peculiarly
fond of the British Empire and inexplicably hostile to Russia--Mahan was both an Anglophile and
Russophobe, as I understand, and his sentiments shows up in his ideas, or so I've heard. (I imagine
SmoothieX12, as an ex Soviet navy man, is far more familiar with this than I ever could). How
did that happen?
rkka -> kao_hsien_chih...
"How did that happen?"
In the early 1880s the U.S. government decided to become a global seapower. Hostility towards
the world's largest landpower followed, as night follows day.
"... Westen is a Democrat and he basically wrote this book to try and help Democrats win more presidential election, though the research portion in the beginning of the book shows how people in both parties are biased in their interpretation of political events based on their political party allegiance. ..."
"... Then a year or two later he wrote some follow up articles whining and complaining about how disappointed he was in Obama not being much different from Bush, etc, etc ..."
"... The fact that Mr. Western could wake up to Obama's basic Bushness in only one or two years means that Mr. Western had a freer mind than most Obama supporters. ..."
"... Good find. Yes and yes. They never stop manipulating. Now the MSM will finally have to admit that the machines are compromised ONLY when it serves the interests of th few. ..."
Two "liberal" IT luminaries today pick up the (totally unproven) assertion that Russia hacked
and published via wikileaks the DNC shennigens of preferring Clinton.
The used this to (preemptively) accuse Russia of manipulating the U.S. election via voting
computers on November 9.
I think this is a sign that both Schneier and Doctorow are democrats who fear Trump. Tribal allegiance
exerts a very powerful, and irrational, force on the so-called rational mind.
Warning, Westen is a Democrat and he basically wrote this book to try and help Democrats
win more presidential election, though the research portion in the beginning of the book shows
how people in both parties are biased in their interpretation of political events based on their
political party allegiance.
When Obama first ran in 2007-2008, Westen had clearly been drinking the glorious pro-Obama
koolaid as was evident in some HuffPo articles he wrote at the time.
Then a year or two later he wrote some follow up articles whining and complaining about
how disappointed he was in Obama not being much different from Bush, etc, etc.
Clearly this man was so caught up in his tribal allegiance he couldn't recognize the very biases
his research showed. Btw, he is still a consultant to the Democrats... attempting to be the Frank
Luntz of the left.
The fact that Mr. Western could wake up to Obama's basic Bushness in only one or two years
means that Mr. Western had a freer mind than most Obama supporters.
Good find. Yes and yes. They never stop manipulating. Now the MSM will finally have to
admit that the machines are compromised ONLY when it serves the interests of th few.
If the intent is to expose corruption then that is doing a public service. The public's interest
is the content of the e-mails and the dirty tricks played by the DNC and Clinton. The e-mails
clearly show that the journalists are in bed with the DNC/Clinton and this article is just another
example of this corruption of the media
Notable quotes:
"... Reading the comments it is hard to understand what is wrong with a lot of you commenters. You seem to swallow whole one side or the other and march off the cliff just like lemming. This argument is a few sentences and is about proper handling of the leaks, not the leaks themselves. The leaks show Hillary supporters helped steal the primary votes from Sanders when the DNC was supposed to be neutral. That is a crime against democracy, an attack on you, it is third world corruption. If you believe Hillary is for you than you are just hopeless. ..."
"... All the noise about Russian plots and secret agendas is a bit ironic as it seems the truth is that the DNC and their presidential candidate are the ones with a secret agenda that was made public. ..."
"... The collapse of the government and Google as a-censor is imminent. ¨ Everyone is switching to Duckduckgo.com ..."
"... How this backfire ??? We just get proof how the DNC establishment nominate what candidate they want not what people want. If after this Sanders supporters will still vote for Hillary, they just simply give the establishment green lite to do it same thing anytime they want and democracy really is just the empty word...... ..."
"... Wikileaks only confirms that DNC has rigged the primaries to help Hillary Clinton, that's why Debbie W. Schultz had to resign her Chair. Whether that will cost Clinton her election depends on how many of the Bernie Sanders supporters are angry enough to boycott the election. ..."
"... The problem in America is that we have a two party political system that can be easily manipulated by the wealthy and those with evil intent .When that happens you have basically one party speaking double talk , controlled by the few and sewing confusion among the voters in order to divide and polarize the country . ..."
"... It is interesting (albeit unsurprising) that since the leak makes Hillary Clinton's backers in the DNC look bad, the media is so interested in the motives of the leakers. This was never the case with the anti-Bush crowd in the 2000's. Going back a bit further, anyone involved in exposing the Watergate break-in is practically treated like a national hero. Suddenly, the "truth to power" crowd has become the "can't handle the truth" crowd. ..."
"... This #$%$ article is just ridiculous! "Oh, well, the leak hasn't revealed anything important". Hello! Wake up! It has shown how crooked the DNC was during this election cycle ..."
"... Did you notice there's no (By-Line) for this article? Because what is IN the emails is most important. Firstly, they blame the Russians. Then they blame Trump. Then they blame the Russians and Trump. Now they don't know who to blame. But, the FBI said for certain the server was hacked and there were indications of who hacked it. This was established in a couple of short weeks - or less. The FBI had Hillary's server for a year and couldn't make a determination. ..."
"... The most important question to ask is about the motives of American Journalists is there report a distraction from the truth are they in fact trying to do damage control are they being controlled by a political party as these E-MAILS seem to suggest . The motive of the leaker is less important than the truth. ..."
"... The DNC had to hire actors at $50 a pop by advertising on Craigslist so Hillary Clinton wouldn't look like the clown she is in front of a half-empty DNC stadium during her acceptance speech. ..."
"... The exodus of hundreds, if not thousands, of Bernie Sanders supporters from the convention made crystal clear the extent of discord among Democratic voters. ..."
"... It's a sad state of affairs in that we are depending on Julian Assange to save the Republic from corrupt Hillary and the Clinton foundation. If Clinton becomes President she will basically place the United States up for sale so that the globalists can destroy what little remains of the American middle class. America will truly become a third world nation with only rich and poor. ..."
"... We can not allow this to happen. Trump may be a little "rough around the edges" however he is a true American who will bring back jobs, try his best to eliminate illegal immigration, and take America back from the globalists. This will help middle class Americans to thrive -- Vote Trump for President in 2016 -- ..."
"... I think most commenters are missing the point that Snowden made: what is the intent of the leak? If the intent is to expose corruption then that is doing a public service. ..."
"... All look at the bang up job the FBI did with Clinton's email wrong doings. She broke the law and lied and the FBI tip toed around it by not taking her statements under oath so she wouldn't be charged. ..."
"... Another article to divert from the content of the emails, which were so damning that the DNC used all their Media contacts to create the "Russia Hack" scenario and then accused Trump of conspiring with Russia. As of yet not one DNC official has denied the facts or content in the e-mails. ..."
"... I found it interesting you didn't mention that Politico was found in cahoots with the DNC as well in the emails.. Just like the mainstream media didn't hardly cover the protesters at the DNC convention but surely did at the RNC convention. You pick & choose what you want to report don't you. ..."
Reading the comments it is hard to understand what is wrong with a lot of you commenters.
You seem to swallow whole one side or the other and march off the cliff just like lemming. This
argument is a few sentences and is about proper handling of the leaks, not the leaks themselves.
The leaks show Hillary supporters helped steal the primary votes from Sanders when the DNC was
supposed to be neutral. That is a crime against democracy, an attack on you, it is third world
corruption. If you believe Hillary is for you than you are just hopeless.
DoctorNoDoctorNo
At what point in civilization did the truth become unethical? No one is denying that the information
contained in these e-mails is not true. All the noise about Russian plots and secret agendas
is a bit ironic as it seems the truth is that the DNC and their presidential candidate are the
ones with a secret agenda that was made public.
We have one presidential candidate under IRS, FBI and State Department investigation and another
who opens their mouth only to change feet placing the American voter in an untenable position
come November.
fudmer
@ Tim Schultze Humanity refuses to be ruled by the few! ¨
The collapse of the government and Google as a-censor is imminent. ¨ Everyone is switching
to Duckduckgo.com
Enough Oligarch monopoly and control. Yesterday 40 civilians bombed to death and 50 more injured
in Syria by US Air force and marines killed in actions in Yemen. What the hell is the USA doing
in Syria or Yemen?
Democracy is freedom of movement, action and thought, not controlled, restricted and regulated
movement, not punishment for each action that challenges the established monopolies, and not mind
control and media propaganda as a total cultural environment.
Everywhere world wide humanity, Christian, Jew, Hindu, or Moslem [except the wabahi Sunni]
are rising to the challenge the few.
nobodynobody
"The DNC email leak has backfired on WikiLeaks, and arguably Russia and Trump, because
theorizing about who leaked these emails has been far more intriguing to journalists and the
general public than the emails themselves."
How this backfire ??? We just get proof how the DNC establishment nominate what candidate
they want not what people want. If after this Sanders supporters will still vote for Hillary,
they just simply give the establishment green lite to do it same thing anytime they want and democracy
really is just the empty word......
AlitaAlita,
Wikileaks only confirms that DNC has rigged the primaries to help Hillary Clinton, that's
why Debbie W. Schultz had to resign her Chair. Whether that will cost Clinton her election depends
on how many of the Bernie Sanders supporters are angry enough to boycott the election.
JohnJohn
The problem in America is that we have a two party political system that can be easily
manipulated by the wealthy and those with evil intent .When that happens you have basically one
party speaking double talk , controlled by the few and sewing confusion among the voters in order
to divide and polarize the country . Which leads to a lack of unity and everyone for him
or her self . What we need is not more or fewer political parties but a more informed public
Scotty P.Scotty P.
It is interesting (albeit unsurprising) that since the leak makes Hillary Clinton's backers
in the DNC look bad, the media is so interested in the motives of the leakers. This was never
the case with the anti-Bush crowd in the 2000's. Going back a bit further, anyone involved in
exposing the Watergate break-in is practically treated like a national hero. Suddenly, the "truth
to power" crowd has become the "can't handle the truth" crowd.
Similarly, Edward Snowden proudly violated national security laws, in the name of exposing
government corruption. But now that someone else has done it to a politcal base Snowden finds
more tolerable (he's a known liberal), he takes issue with it? Get over yourself, Ed. You're no
better than WikiLeaks, and your agenda is no more "pure" than theirs.
Lastly, the author of this article saying the leak has "backfired" is truly rich. This isn't
the 90's, when feckless partisans tried to take down the Clintons, only to have disgraced themselves-
although Newt Gingrich still ATTEMPTS to be relevant. (But I digress.) This time, the Clintons
have angered a lot of people on the left, who see that the Democrats are no more a "party of the
people" than the Republicans are- although anyone paying attentions wouldn't need WikiLeaks to
tell them that.
SomeSome
Talk about playing it down, this proved media collusion further evidenced by the blackout of
delegates lack of media coverage when over 1,000 walked out after roll call and stormed the media
tents. (Video's all over YouTube)
My Revolution brothers and sisters, even though we are separated by #DemExit, I understand
and appreciate your fight from within. I am fighting to build a new home in the Green party. We
are still together even when we are apart.
If you can't fly then run,
If you can't run then walk,
If you can't walk then crawl,
But whatever you do you have to keep moving forward!
michael
Another is a long line of distortion and lies by the establishment to make the establishment
Queen elected. The lies just never stop. Snowden tweeted a sentence and Wikileaks tweeted by another.
from this a whole pyramid of lies and distortions was written. There is zero evidence the Russians
government hacked these emails, zero, nada, nothing. What is important is the DNC was for Hillary
and was trying to sabotage another Democrat, Sanders, running for the same office. That is corruption
pure and simple, nothing less. Third world corruption going on at the DNC.
TimmyTimmy
This #$%$ article is just ridiculous! "Oh, well, the leak hasn't revealed anything important".
Hello! Wake up! It has shown how crooked the DNC was during this election cycle, and in truth
the RNC probably isn't any better. But here we have PROOF of just how crooked hilary and her cronies
are, and they are all getting a free pass. No one sees a problem with this?
Gordon
Did you notice there's no (By-Line) for this article? Because what is IN the emails is
most important. Firstly, they blame the Russians. Then they blame Trump. Then they blame the Russians
and Trump. Now they don't know who to blame. But, the FBI said for certain the server was hacked
and there were indications of who hacked it. This was established in a couple of short weeks -
or less. The FBI had Hillary's server for a year and couldn't make a determination.
Too much of this just doesn't add up. The Democrats went into immediate Damage Control mode
when the emails came out and Not ONE person was screaming, "This ain't True!". Nope, not even
a whisper. We can't tell who's pulling the strings on this. But, there's dammed sure someone behind
the curtain.
Richard
The most important question to ask is about the motives of American Journalists is there
report a distraction from the truth are they in fact trying to do damage control are they being
controlled by a political party as these E-MAILS seem to suggest . The motive of the leaker is
less important than the truth. Wiki-leaks hates Clinton , Russia hacked the DNC server that
is another subject . The fact weather or not the DNC acted in a unethical manner is the subject.
JULEA
There is nothing wrong with Transparency. We need MORE of it. How long did WE Hack and Spy
on Germany, Merkel? They were suing US. What ever happened about this? We ALSO need more transparency
about TPP and who can be sued for some Corporation losing profits..even if they are doing wrong
to make their profits. I think something falls on States, counties, even citizens. Even SCIENCE
for proving harmful things involved. We just need Transparency and who is giving money to who
and why. The DNC became VERY Undemocratic and this just a BIG BIG BIG No to every Liberal and
should not be covered up for anything. WE HACK EVERY COUNTRY.
DickDick
Nobody except America's enemies wants vital secrets that jeopardize our well being hacked.
On the other hand we have a national interest in finding out what our leaders have been hiding
that jeopardize our liberties. Snowden exposed extreme violations of the fourth amendment by the
NSA. Wikileaks exposed political chicanery by the democrat central committee. Hiding information
like this is harmful and only benefits those who are trying to cover up something just to protect
themselves. Both Snowden and wikileaks have done good deeds.
Snowden, who risked his life to spill the beans, said he would reveal all in return for immunity.
But too many people have reason to fear the truth so I doubt if he will be granted it. A shame.
mike
Democrat or Republican they both pull this kind of #$%$. The only answer is to vote all of
them out of office and put term limits in place . We need to stop the Life long politicians who
are in it for their own riches. And we know its "All" of them, they find out how easy it is to
rip the American people off and get by with it.
DavidSDavidS
This attempt to paint Clinton the victim is sooooo over played. She has been the "victim" all
her life. Focus on just how corrupt she and everyone around her is. DWS didn't get punished for
what she did (or allowed), she was rewarded. Doesn't that speak volumes about Clinton? The more
corrupt you are, the more she and hers will reward. Wake up people, there was a time when a single
lie told to the public was a career ending blotch. Now it's who can tell the biggest.
Ron
I love how this story tries to downplay the content of the emails and focus on the hackers.
The emails exposed a coordinated effort to rob Bernie. Journalists may be having more fun speculating
on who hacked them, but Bernies followers could care less. They know the old man got robbed.
Lord Doom
The Leak disclosed how the main stream media has bias with the DNC. Yahoo news wants to blow
down the story and mask its importance it seems to me.
Idontwanngiveit
Dan Seitz.... Do you practice being a political dolt or does it come naturally?
The DNC had to hire actors at $50 a pop by advertising on Craigslist so Hillary Clinton
wouldn't look like the clown she is in front of a half-empty DNC stadium during her acceptance
speech.
The exodus of hundreds, if not thousands, of Bernie Sanders supporters from the convention
made crystal clear the extent of discord among Democratic voters.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the devastating fall-out of the WikiLeaks
e-mail dump on Hillary Clinton's election bid. She is the No. 1 casualty -- albeit "collateral
damage" -- inflicted by the party upon itself!
Prior to the WikiLeaks e-mail showing how Bernie got jerked around by a rigged system, most
of his supporters would have held their nose and grudgingly voted for Hillary in November. Now,
since learning how party officials conspired against them, they want and deserve blood!
The disgruntled masses who stormed out of the DNC represent a microcosm of the equally disgruntled
masses of Democrats nation-wide who are incensed over the party's machinations and shenanigans.
The ones in Pennsylvania and those watching on TV, following events on the Internet and reading
newspapers at home are fully informed about what took place and will now do one of three things:
Sit out the election entirely our of frustration over a status-quo system that's patently
rigged against them, which benefits Donald Trump.
Vote for a third-candidate, which splits the Democratic ticket and, again, benefits Trump.
Vote for Donald Trump directly out of shear spite to show the Democratic Party exactly what
it deserves for screwing with them, which also Trump.
Even if all those people constitute just 5 or 10 percent of the Party's voting base, their
loss and its effect on Hillary's chances of winning the White House will be devastating!
So, as a staunch Trump supporter myself, Thank you, Julian Assange! Thank you very much for
your generous and very helpful assistance in securing the Oval Office for Donald J. Trump on Nov.
8.
Oh yeah. And one other thing.... Please keep those Democratic Party internal e-mails coming.
They're absolutely fascinating!
Joseph
It's a sad state of affairs in that we are depending on Julian Assange to save the Republic
from corrupt Hillary and the Clinton foundation. If Clinton becomes President she will basically
place the United States up for sale so that the globalists can destroy what little remains of
the American middle class. America will truly become a third world nation with only rich and poor.
We can not allow this to happen. Trump may be a little "rough around the edges" however
he is a true American who will bring back jobs, try his best to eliminate illegal immigration,
and take America back from the globalists. This will help middle class Americans to thrive -- Vote
Trump for President in 2016 !
Elizabeth
I think most commenters are missing the point that Snowden made: what is the intent of
the leak? If the intent is to expose corruption then that is doing a public service. Leaking
private information like credit card numbers and SS numbers only makes the victims vulnerable
to thieves and does not fall in the "need to know" category. Wiki could have edited the leak to
expose the DNC while protecting private information.
joanjoan
All look at the bang up job the FBI did with Clinton's email wrong doings. She broke the
law and lied and the FBI tip toed around it by not taking her statements under oath so she wouldn't
be charged.
A Yahoo reader
What could be more hypocritical of this pro-Clinton commentary questioning the objectivity
of documents released with no commentary at all. Any rational person appreciates being provided
the truth. It's of no consequence that the truth provider doesn't like Clinton. There's no law
that says people have to like Clinton, at least not yet.
alfredalfred
Nice try to discredit the emails. They happened. She resigned. Democrats are terrible people.
They get away with it because we are stupid and believe everything this media tells us.
Danny
OK, you won't listen to a guy (Edward Snowden) about issues, when he releases information that
the public NEEDS to know, but "MAY BE" detrimental to the people in National Security, you put
him on the World's MOST WANTED LIST, take his citizenship away. So what is his choice, he HAS
NO CHOICE, he goes on the offense, obtaining and releasing even more information, and working
with whomever will protect him.
There is no evidence Russia is holding him prison, just protecting him. There is no evidence
he can't leave anytime he wants, even come back to his own country. Yet our government continues
to villanize Snowden.
Look at the data released - It is true, it proves ALL the crooks are in our own government
and politics, there is no evidence Russia is doing anything but helping people find, obtain and
release material our politicians create.
So, Killary, DNC, Obama, one and all attack Snowden and Russia, even adding Trump to the mix.
I think we need to pack up all these crooked Democrats, including Obama, and ship them off to
another country and tell them to GET A JOB. Then, let Snowden back into his country and let him
do his job of protecting the United States of America. And Trump doesn't have anything to do with
Killary, Obama and DNCs crooked politics.
krainkrain
Then there is the language issue. "I hate being attributed to Russia," the Guccifer 2.0 account
told Motherboard, probably accurately. The person at the keyboard then claimed in a chat with
Motherboard's Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai that Guccifer 2.0 was from Romania, like the original
Guccifer, a well-known hacker. But when asked to explain his hack in Romanian, he was unable to
respond colloquially and without errors. Guccifer 2.0's English initially was also weak, but in
subsequent posts the quality improved sharply, albeit only on political subjects, not in technical
matters-an indication of a team of operators at work behind the scenes.
VernyVerny
The government is protecting Hillary and the Clinton Gang, so "leaks and hacks" are the only methodology of showing Americans the truth about Hillary, the most corrupt politician in American history.
Jayster b
Another article to divert from the content of the emails, which were so damning that
the DNC used all their Media contacts to create the "Russia Hack" scenario and then accused
Trump of conspiring with Russia. As of yet not one DNC official has denied the facts or
content in the e-mails. So, Assange scored in this first round so much that Debbie is no
longer head of the DNC, and the FBI has demanded access to the DNC server to analyze it,
meaning they will have access to all the donor information from foreign countries that are
helping the Democrats steal the nomination from Bernie. What a crazy world. Assange 1, DNC 0
TomTom
I found it interesting you didn't mention that Politico was found in cahoots with the
DNC as well in the emails.. Just like the mainstream media didn't hardly cover the protesters
at the DNC convention but surely did at the RNC convention. You pick & choose what you want to
report don't you.
As my colleague Glenn Greenwald
told
WNYC on Monday, while there may never be conclusive evidence that the Democratic National Committee
was hacked by Russian intelligence operatives to extract
the trove of embarrassing emails
published by WikiLeaks, it would hardly be shocking if that was what happened.
"Governments do spy on each other and do try to influence events in other countries," Glenn noted.
"Certainly the U.S. government has
a very long and
successful history of doing exactly that."
Even so, he added, given the ease with which we were misled into war in Iraq by false claims about
weapons of mass destruction - and
the long history
of Russophobia in American politics - it is vital to cast a skeptical eye over whatever evidence
is presented to support the claim, made by Hillary Clinton's aide Robby Mook, that this is all part
of a Russian plot to sabotage the Democrats and help Donald Trump win the election.
The theory
gained some traction , particularly among Trump's detractors, in part because the candidate has
seemed obsessed at times with reminding crowds that Russian President Vladimir Putin once said
something sort of nice about him (though
not, as Trump falsely
claims , that the American is "a genius"). Then last week, Trump's campaign staff watered down
a pledge to help Ukraine defend its territory from Russian-backed rebels and the candidate
told the New York Times he would not necessarily honor the NATO treaty commitment that
requires the United States military to defend other member states from a direct attack by Russia.
Since Trump has refused to release his tax returns, there are also questions about whether or
not his businesses might depend to some extent on Russian investors. "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate
cross-section of a lot of our assets," Trump's son Donald Jr. told a real estate conference in 2008,
the Washington Post reported last month. "We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia."
Paul Manafort, who is directing Trump's campaign and was for years a close adviser of a Putin
ally, former President Viktor Yanukovych of Ukraine,
called the theory that Trump's campaign had ties to the Russian government "absurd." (On Monday,
Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News
reported that a DNC researcher looking into Manafort's ties to pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine
in May had been warned that her personal Yahoo email account was under attack. "We strongly suspect
that your account has been the target of state-sponsored actors," the warning from the email service
security team read.)
Unhelpfully for Trump, his most senior adviser with knowledge of the world of hacking, retired
Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency,
told Bloomberg View that he "would not be surprised at all" to learn that Russia was
behind the breach of the DNC network. "Both China and Russia have the full capability to do this,"
he said.
Later on Monday, Trump himself then
attributed
the attack on the DNC to "China, Russia, one of our many, many 'friends,'" who "came in and hacked
the hell out of us."
Since very few of us are cybersecurity experts, and the Iraq debacle is a reminder of how dangerous
it can be to put blind faith in experts whose claims might reinforce our own political positions,
there is also the question of who we can trust to provide reliable evidence.
One expert in the field, who is well aware of the evidence-gathering capabilities of the U.S.
government, is Edward Snowden, the former Central Intelligence Agency technician and National Security
Agency whistleblower who exposed the extent of mass surveillance and has been given temporary asylum
in Russia.
"If Russia hacked the #DNC, they should be condemned for it,"
Snowden wrote
on Twitter on Monday, with a link to
a 2015 report on the U.S. government's response to the hacking of Sony Pictures. In that case,
he noted, "the FBI presented evidence" for its conclusion that North Korea was responsible for the
hacking and subsequent release of internal emails. (The FBI is now investigating the breach of the
DNC's network, which officials
told the Daily Beast they first made the committee aware of in April.)
What's more, Snowden added, the NSA has tools that should make it possible to trace the source
of the hack. Even though the Director of National Intelligence usually opposes making such evidence
public, he argued, this is a case in which the agency should do so, if only to discourage future
attacks.
Edward Snowden
✔ @Snowden
Even if the attackers try to obfuscate origin, #XKEYSCORE makes following exfiltrated data easy.
I did this personally against Chinese ops.
Edward Snowden
✔ @Snowden
Evidence that could publicly attribute responsibility for the DNC hack certainly exists at #NSA,
but DNI traditionally objects to sharing.
Edward Snowden
✔ @Snowden
The aversion to sharing #NSA evidence is fear of revealing "sources and methods" of intel collection,
but #XKEYSCORE is now publicly known.
Edward Snowden2 Verified account ?
@Snowden
Without a credible threat that USG can and will use #NSA capabilities to publicly attribute responsibility,
such hacks will become common.
"... Clinton would want to widen the gulf between AIPAC and Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee. "We need steady hands, not a president who says he's neutral on Monday, pro-Israel on Tuesday, and who knows what on Wednesday, because everything is negotiable," she said to applause, out-hawking the man who is running on a platform of Middle Eastern war crimes. ..."
"... In doing so, she offered a bridge to #NeverTrump neoconservatives like Max Boot and Robert Kagan, who has already written that, should Trump be the nominee, "the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton. ..."
"... It is a strange, strange spectacle, this yearly AIPAC conference, where U.S. politicians from across the political spectrum are compelled to stand in front of a bunch of Israeli flags and proclaim unquestioning fealty to a foreign ethno-state. ..."
"... This year of all years, Clinton could have afforded to show a bit of courage before AIPAC. Jews will vote Democratic no matter what. Sixty-nine percent of them voted for Obama in 2012, despite the well-known tension between him and Netanyahu. ..."
"... Her correspondence with adviser Sid Blumenthal-a man loathed by the Israel lobby for not disavowing his anti-Zionist son, Max-suggests that she's aware of the damage Netanyahu is doing to the cause of peace in the Middle East. But if she is, she doesn't care about it enough to take even a tiny political risk, to tell a crowd something other than exactly what it wants to hear. Either Clinton's AIPAC speech was driven by belief, or it was driven by cynicism. It's hard to say which is worse. ..."
ny presidential candidate speaking to AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, during
an election year is going to bow to the hawkish elements of the Israel lobby. Hillary Clinton's keynote
speech at AIPAC's annual meeting Monday, however, was more debased than it needed to be, promising
that under her administration, Israel will be spared even the mild rebukes it has suffered under
President Obama. A symphony of pandering, it attempted to outflank Donald Trump on the right and
will end up outraging a large chunk of the left.
As Joe Biden acknowledged in his AIPAC
speech on Sunday, Israel's
"steady and systematic process of expanding settlements, legalizing outposts, seizing land" is making
a two-state solution impossible. The settlements are pushing Israel toward a one-state reality, in
which Jews rule over the Arabs with whom they are geographically intermingled. Clinton's speech,
however, barely nodded toward this reality, and when it did, it was with a promise to protect Israel
from the consequences of flouting international law. Advertisement
Here is the entirety of Clinton's remarks about settlements:
"Everyone has to do their part by avoiding damaging actions, including with respect to
settlements. Now, America has an important role to play in supporting peace efforts. And as president,
I would continue the pursuit of direct negotiations. And let me be clear-I would vigorously oppose
any attempt by outside parties to impose a solution, including by the U.N. Security Council."
She spent significantly more time railing against the "alarming"
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement
, which is gaining traction on college campuses nationwide. Pledging to "take our alliance to the
next level," Clinton said that one of the first things she'd do in office is invite the Israeli prime
minister to the White House. That was a barely veiled rebuke to Obama, who never treated Benjamin
Netanyahu with the
deference the prime minister felt entitled to. Before the speech, some had
hoped that Clinton
might offer a word of solidarity or encouragement to beleaguered progressives in Israel. She gave
them nothing. It's understandable that Clinton would want to widen the gulf between AIPAC and
Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee. "We need steady hands, not a president who says he's
neutral on Monday, pro-Israel on Tuesday, and who knows what on Wednesday, because everything is
negotiable," she said to applause, out-hawking the man who is running on a platform of Middle Eastern
war crimes.
In doing so, she offered a bridge to #NeverTrump neoconservatives like Max Boot and
Robert Kagan, who has already
written that, should Trump be the nominee, "the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton.
The party cannot be saved, but the country still can be." Anti-Trump neoconservatives, however, are
a minuscule group of people. And in seeking their approval, Clinton has further alienated left-wing
voters, particularly young ones. Polls show that Americans under 30 are far more
critical of Israel than are older voters. Liberal Democrats
sympathize more with the Palestinians than they do with Israel. There is already deep suspicion
of Clinton's foreign-policy instincts among Bernie Sanders' supporters; Clinton doesn't need to give
them new reasons to distrust her.
It is a strange, strange spectacle, this yearly AIPAC conference, where U.S. politicians from
across the political spectrum are compelled to stand in front of a bunch of Israeli flags and proclaim
unquestioning fealty to a foreign ethno-state.
This year of all years, Clinton could have afforded to show a bit of courage before AIPAC. Jews
will vote Democratic no matter what. Sixty-nine percent of them voted for Obama in 2012, despite
the well-known tension between him and Netanyahu. Unlike Obama, Clinton is going to be running against
a demagogue with German roots who plays footsie with white supremacists and reportedly kept a
volume of Hitler's speeches beside his bed. She'll have all the Jewish support she needs without
sucking up to the Likud. So why is she doing it?
Her
correspondence with adviser Sid Blumenthal-a man loathed by the Israel lobby for not disavowing
his anti-Zionist son, Max-suggests that she's aware of the damage Netanyahu is doing to the cause
of peace in the Middle East. But if she is, she doesn't care about it enough to take even a tiny
political risk, to tell a crowd something other than exactly what it wants to hear. Either Clinton's
AIPAC speech was driven by belief, or it was driven by cynicism. It's hard to say which is worse.
"... Obama has been refusing to help Iraq for at least a year. A year ago, it would have been easy, comparatively, to wipe out ISIS. They were still gathering tightly together in their staging zones. ..."
"... Had you heard of ISIS a year ago? I venture to say that most people heard of ISIS for the first time in the past couple months. So Obama had plenty of chances. In fact, ladies and gentlemen, if Obama had wanted to take out ISIS, he would not have formed a supportive relationship with them in Syria! ISIS is who is "the rebels" in Syria opposing Bashar al-Assad. Before I get to Syria, I just want to put the exclamation point on this thought. ..."
"... Barack Obama, the Democrat Party, and the media (their willing accomplices) need Iraq to be always seen as a Bush miserable failure, a Bush war, a Bush failure. Just as Vietnam was supposed to be seen as a failure for Nixon. Now, you may be learning for the first time that the rebels in Syria were ISIS. Over the weekend, it was reported that Hillary Clinton ripped into Obama for his failure to help the Syrian rebels and that this failure to help the Syrian rebels led to the rise of ISIS. ..."
"... MCINERNEY: I happen to agree with her. I'm not sure why it's just coming out now. I was pushing for the Free Syrian Army. They were a huge ally. We ended up arming the wrong people over there, and, remember, ISIS was formerly Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and so look at what we have now create -- we didn't create it. By doing nothing, we let it create itself. And if we don't stop it now and stop it and protect the Kurds, we have a huge problem not only in the Middle East, but globally. ..."
"... I said, "I'm not defending Assad. As always, I'm interested in the truth, and I just don't believe --" I had to work hard to get to a point where I automatically reject everything I hear coming out of the news media in Washington when the Democrats are in power because, by and large, when it comes to foreign policy, every story is made to cover up for their inadequacies, their incompetence, and the fact that they're wrong about everything. But here's McInerney again because there's a little hidden gem in this sound bite that I want to see, if by some chance, some of you picked up. ..."
RUSH: Now,
I mentioned this, I think, in first hour, previously on the program. Obama has been refusing
to help Iraq for at least a year. A year ago, it would have been easy, comparatively, to wipe out
ISIS. They were still gathering tightly together in their staging zones.
Had you heard of ISIS a year ago? I venture to say that most people heard of ISIS for the first
time in the past couple months. So Obama had plenty of chances. In fact, ladies and gentlemen, if
Obama had wanted to take out ISIS, he would not have formed a supportive relationship with them in
Syria! ISIS is who is "the rebels" in Syria opposing Bashar al-Assad. Before I get to Syria, I just
want to put the exclamation point on this thought.
Barack Obama, the Democrat Party, and the media (their willing accomplices) need Iraq to be always
seen as a Bush miserable failure, a Bush war, a Bush failure. Just as Vietnam was supposed to be
seen as a failure for Nixon. Now, you may be learning for the first time that the rebels in Syria
were ISIS. Over the weekend, it was reported that Hillary Clinton ripped into Obama for his failure
to help the Syrian rebels and that this failure to help the Syrian rebels led to the rise of ISIS.
It's in The Atlantic in a story by Jeffrey Goldberg. It's a long interview. But there is this
knife-in-the-back criticism that Hillary directs at Obama, a comment that he made while Hillary was
his secretary of state. Do you remember he praised her, "best secretary of state ever"? She might
be, he said. On the day she resigned or the day they announced of her resignation, there was a joint
presser.
Obama is praising Hillary to the nines and talking about how she may be one of the best secretaries
of state ever, and now here comes Hillary back-stabbing Obama by claiming that his failure to help
the Syrian rebels led to the rise of ISIS. Right here it is, Jeffrey Goldberg: "The former secretary
of state, and probable candidate for president, outlines her foreign-policy doctrine.
"She says this about President Obama's: 'Great nations need organizing principles, and "Don't
do stupid stuff" is not an organizing principle.'" It's a slam, but I wonder: Are reset buttons organizing
principles? Because, let's not forget that Mrs. Clinton actually showed up with a Soviet leader...
(pfft, slap myself) a Russian leader with a plastic and red toy that said, in crudely spelled words,
"reset button." I kid you not!
... ... ...
The conventional wisdom was that Assad was gassing his own people. Remember,
Obama, in the previous summer of 2013, issued this red line and dared Assad not
to cross it. (imitating Obama) "You cross that red line, pal, you're gonna have
me to deal with," and we never did anything. But the word was out that Assad was
gassing and harming his own people. And I remember saying on this program -- Koko,
go back to that era and just for the website today, go find what I said on those
days and relink it, 'cause I made the point, I asked the question, "What if it
isn't Assad? What if the people creating mayhem in Syria are actually Assad's enemies
disguising themselves as protesters of Assad and trying to make it appear as though
he's doing this, when in fact he's not?"
And after I'd mentioned that, I got an e-mail from a friend who is somewhat aware of the circumstances
in Iraq and I was told that I was more right than I knew. And Hillary is now coming along and essentially
saying the same thing. She's not suggesting that ISIS was there. She is suggesting that our lack
of doing anything about it led to ISIS taking over the anti-Assad movement, when in fact it was ISIS
all along. ISIS was doing it and they were making it look like Assad did it. And just like the media
was biased toward Hamas, so was the media biased toward the same type of people in Syria who are
trying to make it look like Assad was doing this.
I had never seen any evidence that Bashar Assad -- his father was different. His father, Hafez
al-Assad, was a brutal guy and did commit atrocities to keep people in line. But there's no evidence
that Bashar had really done it. I knew that Al-Qaeda's on the march and they're trying to gain control.
The Muslim Brotherhood's trying to gain control, that whole area. It was a lot of Christians in Syria
that were being beaten up, killed, assaulted, what have you, and it was made to look like it was
Assad, and now we've learned that it wasn't.
The point is I called it. I was right, and that's what Hillary is now claiming that Obama missed
and that she was right about, but she never said it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay. Here's me, folks, from this program on September 11th, 2013. By the way, Koko, if
you want to find the website history to link to what I originally said about this, find September
2nd, 3rd, 4th, somewhere in there, my memory is. But this was September 11th of last year.
RUSH ARCHIVE: Here we are 12 years later after 9/11, and think about it. Twelve years later we
are supporting Muslim terrorists in Syria. Muslim terrorists who are threatening to kill Syrian Christians
if they don't convert to Islam. That's who our allies are. Those are the rebels that Bashar Assad
is supposedly gassing. So we're aligned with 'em because we're aligned against Assad. They're threatening
to kill Syrian Christians if they don't convert to Islam.
RUSH: This was ISIS, folks, and we were anti-Assad. It was made to look like Assad was doing the
gassing. He wasn't, as it turns out. This morning on Fox & Friends, Brian Kilmeade spoke to retired
Air Force Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney about Clinton's remarks criticizing Obama's handling
of ISIS and here's what the general said about Hillary's remarks.
MCINERNEY: I happen to agree with her. I'm not sure why it's just coming out now. I was pushing
for the Free Syrian Army. They were a huge ally. We ended up arming the wrong people over there,
and, remember, ISIS was formerly Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and so look at what we have now create -- we didn't
create it. By doing nothing, we let it create itself. And if we don't stop it now and stop it and
protect the Kurds, we have a huge problem not only in the Middle East, but globally.
RUSH: Well, that's General McInerney. I've got 15 seconds before the break. It turns out that
my sources on this way back a year ago were absolutely right, that Assad was not the bad guy.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You know, I tell you what's funny about this is Hillary Clinton. It's clear to me that Hillary
Clinton obviously thinks that foreign policy is still gonna be her strong pantsuit, as she heads
into the campaign. She really does. That's why she's doing all of this. But I want to play this audio
sound bite again from General McInerney, because there's a gem in this that is another example of
how Obama and the left, the Democrats, the media lied for five years, 2004 to 2009. Actually, 2003
to 2008 would be the specific time period, bashing Iraq every day, every night, every day of the
year.
One other thing. Koko has found exactly what I was talking about. There was a post at RushLimbaugh.com
on September 3rd, "What if Assad Didn't Do It?" And my memory has now been refreshed. I had a couple
of sources and an e-mail from a friend confirm, so three different confirmations here from people,
that what we were getting in the news every day that Assad was gassing his people probably wasn't
true. That it was, it turns out ISIS, at the time known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq that was doing it, and
making it look like it was Assad, and that's who our allies were. We were anti-Assad and we actually
had an alliance, loose though it was, formed with the very people we're now bombing in Iraq.
I remember I took my fair share of heat, and I always do when I'm not part of the conventional
wisdom. Assad's easy to hate. Assad's a dictator. Assad has a typical bad image and when somebody
says he's gassing his own people, it's automatically believed. And here I came, all of Washington
supports the idea that Assad was doing it, and I said, "I'm not so sure. What if."
"Rush, you didn't have to say anything. Why are you going out on a limb? Why do you want to sound
like you're defending Assad?"
I said, "I'm not defending Assad. As always, I'm interested in the truth, and I just don't
believe --" I had to work hard to get to a point where I automatically reject everything I hear coming
out of the news media in Washington when the Democrats are in power because, by and large, when it
comes to foreign policy, every story is made to cover up for their inadequacies, their incompetence,
and the fact that they're wrong about everything. But here's McInerney again because there's a little
hidden gem in this sound bite that I want to see, if by some chance, some of you picked up.
MCINERNEY: I happen to agree with her. I'm not sure why it's just coming out now. I was pushing
for the Free Syrian Army. They were a huge ally. We ended up arming the wrong people over there,
and, remember, ISIS was formerly Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and so look at what we have now create -- we didn't
create it. By doing nothing, we let it create itself. And if we don't stop it now and stop it and
protect the Kurds, we have a huge problem not only in the Middle East, but globally.
RUSH: In the early days of 2002 when Bush was traveling the country making the case for invading
Iraq and getting rid of Saddam Hussein, I remember a couple of instances pointing out that Al-Qaeda,
prior to 9/11, had done some training in Iraq. And one of the things that had been found was a hollowed-out
shell of an airliner fuselage.
Now, the conventional wisdom was that Al-Qaeda had never been in Iraq, that Bush was making this
up, or that the intel was all wrong, but likely it was just Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld lying to
make their case, because Al-Qaeda was clearly the enemy after 9/11. Al-Qaeda had hijacked the planes
at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and Al-Qaeda was the evil, Osama bin Laden, and Bush
was going after them in Afghanistan and Saddam in Iraq.
The Democrats and the media, led by Obama starting in 2002, and other Democrats, Teddy Kennedy,
they were all -- I mean, John Kerry, they were all making fun and mocking the idea that Al-Qaeda
had anything to do with Iraq. Al-Qaeda was never in Iraq and nobody can prove it, they said. Saddam
had nothing to do with 911. Now, the Bush people at the time were saying, "We can't afford --" 9/11
had just happened. "What happened here is real. And any time there is anybody in the world vowing
to do that or more, we are going to take it seriously."
They were making the case for preemptive military strikes. That's what all this was called, because
the left and the Democrats were arguing that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11, therefore it was
not moral or strategically wise to hit Iraq. They had nothing to do with it. The Bush people were
saying, whether they did or didn't, it doesn't matter, they're threatening to do the same thing.
And after it's happened once, we are in charge of protecting this country and defending the people,
and we can't sit here and take these threats lightly.
Saddam at the time was lying to the UN inspectors about his weapons of mass destruction. It turned
out that he was big timing and he was trying to look like the most powerful Arab in the region by
being the most feared. So he was lying about at least the size of his weapons of mass destruction
stock. And part of the lie, part of the illusion was to not let the inspectors in. He wanted everybody
to conclude that he had a boatload of the stuff. And the Bush administration was trying to tell everybody
we can't afford to wait to be hit again to take action. We've got to hit preemptively.
I'll never forget any of this, folks. Because I'll never forget the Democrats arguing about it.
Because the Democrats, even after 9/11, after a week of solidarity went by, the Democrats conceived
a political strategy, the purpose of which was to make sure Bush did not secure any long-lasting
credit for any policy he instituted following 9/11.
Also remember this, along those same lines. Bill Clinton, it was reported -- he later denied it
-- but Clinton, according to some famous well-known Democrats, was lamenting that 9/11 didn't happen
on his watch, because it prevented him an opportunity to show greatness and leadership. He was upset
that it had happened with Bush. If it was gonna happen, why couldn't it have happened during his
time? We reported that and all hell broke loose. A string of denials were forthcoming.
But the point is they politicize everything. There was unity for a week and after that the Democrats
devised a political strategy, the purpose of which was to make sure Bush did not secure one positive
achievement in the aftermath of 911. So these guys began opposing everything Bush wanted to do when
it came to Iraq. At first they even opposed the use of force in Afghanistan. That's when they asked
for the vote a second time.
Remember, there was a memo uncovered, a memo that was written by Jay Rockefeller, Democrat senator
from West Virginia, in which it was stated that as a strategy -- and this had come from James Carville
and Stan Greenberg in a memo. It was then written up by Rockefeller, who was the Intelligence Committee
ranking Democrat in the Senate. He said that they had to make Bush out to be a liar.
And it said if they were to succeed with this, that their strategy depended on convincing people
that Bush was lying about all of this in order to depress and lower his high approval numbers. So,
as I say, here's the gem that was in McInerney's piece ('cause I'm running out of time here). Throughout
all of this in the run-up to invading Iraq, whenever the possibility that Al-Qaeda might have been
in Iraq came up, the Democrats said, "No way!
"Al-Qaeda never found its way to Iraq! They wouldn't know how to get to Iraq if you gave 'em a
map. They haven't been to Iraq. They don't have anything to do with Saddam! They were helpless."
Now listen to what we just heard here. ISIS was originally known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Now, some of
you might be saying, "Well, maybe so, Rush, but Al-Qaeda in Iraq didn't exist before we attacked."
It did!
We were able to confirm that elements of Al-Qaeda did connect with Saddam for training exercises
and so forth. But the point is, in hindsight, look at what we're learning here. ISIS and Al-Qaeda
in Iraq are all over the Middle East, just like the Muslim Brotherhood. And in Syria, we were actually,
stupidity and maybe unknowingly (given this bunch, I could believe it was unknowingly) supporting
them
Because we had concluded that Bashar Assad was the one gassing his own people. I had never seen
any evidence that Assad treated his own people that way. I knew he treated political enemies that
way, which is why it was not a very long leap to making people believe that he might gas his own
people if he's gassed others. Ditto, Saddam and the Kurds. But there hadn't been any evidence that
Bashar Assad gassed his own people.
So, anyway, that's that, and it's just... Some of it's ancient history, but some of it's just
last year and some of it's just yesterday, and so much of it is lies. And so many of these lies are
why we're even here today. So all of these lies about all of this stuff is one of the very large
reasons why Obama was elected in the first place. It's just dispiriting in a way -- and in another
way, surely frustrating, and that's why I've been so ticked off all day.
"... If destroying Syria is the way we "help" Israel, how many other nations must the U.S. destroy to "help" Israel? And before John Hagee's braindead disciples start shouting "Destroy them all!" I remind you that Syria and other parts of the Middle East is the historic home of millions of Christians going back to the time of the Apostle Paul. ..."
"... On the whole, Neocons and Neolibs are people without conscience. At their core, they have no allegiance to the United States or any other country. They are globalists. The only god they serve is the god of power and wealth, and they don't care how many people--including Americans--they kill to achieve it. The blood of millions of dead victims around the world is already dripping from their murderous hands. ..."
Why isn't the Mainstream Media (MSM) in America reporting the fact that Hillary Clinton admitted
in public that the U.S. government created Al Qaeda, ISIS, Al Nusra, etc.? Why does the MSM refuse
to tell the American people that the United States has not ever actually fought ISIS but instead
has surreptitiously and very actively supported ISIS and the other radical Muslim terrorists in the
Middle East? Why has the media refused to reveal the fact that ever since Russia started to fight
a true offensive war against ISIS the terrorist organization has been reduced to almost half?
I'll tell you why: the MSM is nothing more than a propaganda machine for the U.S. government--no
matter which party is in power. The MSM doesn't work for the U.S. citizenry. It doesn't even work
for its corporate sponsors. It works for the Washington Power Elite permanently ensconced in D.C.
(and yes, those same Power Elite control most of those media corporate sponsors).
It is a sad reality that if one wants to get accurate news reporting, one must mostly bypass the
U.S. propaganda media and look to sources outside the U.S. Here is a Canadian publication that covered
the Hillary admission:
"The following video features Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton acknowledging that America
created and funded Al Qaeda as a terrorist organization in the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war:
"'Let's remember here the people we are fighting today we funded them twenty years ago.
"'Let's go recruit these mujahideen.
"'And great, let them come from Saudi Arabia and other countries, importing their Wahabi brand
of Islam so that we can go beat the Soviet Union.'"
"What she does not mention is that at no time in the course of the last 35 years has the US ceased
to support and finance Al Qaeda as a means to destabilizing sovereign countries. It was 'a pretty
good idea', says Hillary, and it remains a good idea today:
"Amply documented, the ISIS and Al Nusrah Mujahideen are recruited by NATO and the Turkish High
command, with the support of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel.
"The more fundamental question:
"Should a presidential candidate who candidly acknowledges that 'We created Al Qaeda' without
a word of caution or regret become president of the US, not to mention Hillary's commitment to waging
nuclear war on Russia if and when she becomes president of the United States of America."
The report continues:
"The Global War on Terror (GWOT) is led by the United States. It is not directed against Al Qaeda.
"Quite the opposite: The 'Global War on Terrorism' uses Al Qaeda terrorist operatives as their
foot soldiers.
"'Political Islam' and the imposition of an 'Islamic State' (modeled on Qatar or Saudi Arabia)
is an integral part of US foreign policy."
The report further states:
"It is a means to destabilizing sovereign countries and imposing 'regime change'.
"Clinton's successor at the State Department, John Kerry is in direct liaison with Al Nusra, an
Al Qaeda affiliated organization in Syria, integrated by terrorists and funded by the US and its
allies.
"In a bitter irony, John Kerry is not only complicit in the killings committed by Al Nusra, he
is also in blatant violation of US anti-terrorist legislation. If the latter were to be applied to
politicians in high office, John Kerry would be considered as a 'Terror Suspect'".
Think it through, folks: the U.S. government creates the radical Islamic terror networks that
justify America's "Global War On Terror" which directly results in millions of refugees (and no doubt
plants terrorists among them) flooding Europe. At the same time, it purposely refuses to protect
our own borders and even forces states and local communities to accept hundreds of thousands of Muslim
refugees (but the government is not sending any Christian refugees to America, even though a sizable
percentage of the refugees include Christians also) and pushes NATO to the doorstep of Russia, which
to any objective observer could only be regarded as an overt incitement to war.
Furthermore, why doesn't the MSM report the words of Hillary saying that the "best way to help
Israel" is to destroy Syria? Why doesn't the media acknowledge that official U.S. foreign policy
is to foment perpetual war, not in the name of the safety and security of the United States, but
in the name of "helping" Israel?
Here is how the same Canadian publication covers this part of the story:
"A newly-released Hillary Clinton email confirmed that the Obama administration has deliberately
provoked the civil war in Syria as the 'best way to help Israel.'
"In an indication of her murderous and psychopathic nature, Clinton also wrote that it was the
'right thing' to personally threaten Bashar Assad's family with death.
"In the email, released by Wikileaks, then Secretary of State Clinton says that the 'best way
to help Israel' is to 'use force' in Syria to overthrow the government."
It continues:
"Even though all US intelligence reports had long dismissed Iran's 'atomic bomb' program as a
hoax, (a conclusion supported by the International Atomic Energy Agency), Clinton continues to use
these lies to 'justify' destroying Syria in the name of Israel."
And again:
"The email proves--as if any more proof was needed--that the US government has been the main sponsor
of the growth of terrorism in the Middle East, and all in order to 'protect' Israel.
"It is also a sobering thought to consider that the 'refugee' crisis which currently threatens
to destroy Europe, was directly sparked off by this US government action as well, insofar as there
are any genuine refugees fleeing the civil war in Syria.
"In addition, over 250,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict, which has spread to
Iraq--all thanks to Clinton and the Obama administration backing the 'rebels' and stoking the fires
of war in Syria."
If destroying Syria is the way we "help" Israel, how many other nations must the U.S. destroy
to "help" Israel? And before John Hagee's braindead disciples start shouting "Destroy them all!"
I remind you that Syria and other parts of the Middle East is the historic home of millions of Christians
going back to the time of the Apostle Paul.
The truth is, Hillary (and the rest of the grubby gaggle of Neocons) doesn't give a tinker's dam
about Israel. Neocons such as Hillary Clinton simply use Israel (and the misguided passions of Christians
and conservatives who blindly support Israel) as cover to accomplish their real agenda: manipulating
world governments to the enrichment and empowerment of themselves.
Donald Trump is untested. But if Hillary should be elected, I'm confident she would not make it
through her first term without taking us into another G.W. Bush-type war (or worse)--except she will
also add the attempted disarmament of the American people to her nefarious agenda.
That's what Neocons do: they foment war. To their very soul, they are warmongers. And never forget
that Hillary Clinton is a true-blue Neocon. Or if the word "Neoliberal" sounds better to you in describing
Hillary, so be it. They both mean the same thing: WAR.
Here is a good explanation of how both Neocons and Neolibs are working from the same script:
On the whole, Neocons and Neolibs are people without conscience. At their core, they have
no allegiance to the United States or any other country. They are globalists. The only god they serve
is the god of power and wealth, and they don't care how many people--including Americans--they kill
to achieve it. The blood of millions of dead victims around the world is already dripping from their
murderous hands.
And if you think my indictment against the Neocons is an exaggeration, Paul Craig Roberts (Assistant
Secretary of the Treasury under President Ronald Reagan) was even more scathing in his condemnation
of them:
"The remaining danger is the crazed American neoconservatives. I know many of them. They are completely
insane ideologues. This inhuman filth has controlled the foreign policy of every US government since
Clinton's second term. They are a danger to all life on earth. Look at the destruction they have
wreaked in the former Yugoslavia, in Ukraine, in Georgia and South Ossetia, in Africa, in Afghanistan
and the Middle East. The American people were too brainwashed by lies and by political impotence
to do anything about it, and Washington's vassals in Europe, UK, Canada, Australia, and Japan had
to pretend that this policy of international murder was 'bringing freedom and democracy.'
"The crazed filth that controls US foreign policy is capable of defending US hegemony with nuclear
weapons. The neoconservatives must be removed from power, arrested, and put on international trial
for their horrendous war crimes before they defend their hegemony with Armageddon.
"Neoconservatives and their allies in the military/security complex make audacious use of false
flag attacks. These evil people are capable of orchestrating a false flag attack that propels the
US and Russia to war."
"... ...if you are a hard-core promoter of wars like Robert Kagan, Dick Cheney, Henry Kissinger, Jamie Weinstein, Max Boot, Eliot Cohen, Richard Perle, George Shultz, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, and many others, you have either endorsed or said very positive things about Hillary Clinton. How to explain this? ..."
"... But if you believe that the U.S. military is a force for good that hardly ever kills anyone worthy of redemption, that the chief role of the military is to rescue poor innocents from evil by overthrowing tyrants and spreading democracy by drone missile, if you believe air wars are more humane because in air wars nobody gets hurt, if you think presidents checking off kill lists on Tuesdays is ideal as long as it's the right presidents doing it, if you cheer for diversity in the U.S. military and want the Selective Service expanded to force every 18-year-old woman to register for the draft, if you believe Honduras and Ukraine and Libya had it coming or you have no idea what I'm referring to, if you think suggesting the abolition of NATO or a halt to overthrowing governments is crazy talk, and if you believe a good heavy bombing campaign of Syria would be the perfect way to demonstrate that we care about Syrians and value them as human beings, you just might be a Democrat. ..."
"... I've studied the marketing of wars , and the most successful war marketing campaigns in the United States include, in order from most to least necessary: ..."
"... The demonization of an entire foreign population. ..."
"... The demonization of a particular foreign person. ..."
"... The pretense of urgency, inevitability, and ideally of the state of being already underway. ..."
"... The pretense of upholding the rule of law. ..."
"... The pretense of humanitarianism. ..."
"... Point #7 will pick up a section of the population's support, even among people opposed to some of the other justifications. But alone it won't work. Points #1 and #2 can do well without #7. Any of these points can be strengthened or undone by partisanship if the war is labeled the possession of one political party or the other. And once the war is really up and rolling, a new justification slides into the #1 spot, namely the need to "support the troops" by killing more of them. ..."
...if you are a hard-core promoter of wars like Robert Kagan, Dick Cheney,
Henry Kissinger, Jamie Weinstein, Max Boot, Eliot Cohen, Richard Perle, George
Shultz, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, and many others, you have either
endorsed or said very
positive things about Hillary Clinton. How to explain this? Are the
most rabid war supporters on one side and the most dependable war makers getting
nominated by the other? Well, maybe.
But if you believe that the U.S. military is a force for good that hardly
ever kills anyone worthy of redemption, that the chief role of the military
is to rescue poor innocents from evil by overthrowing tyrants and spreading
democracy by drone missile, if you believe air wars are more humane because
in air wars nobody gets hurt, if you think presidents checking off kill lists
on Tuesdays is ideal as long as it's the right presidents doing it, if you cheer
for diversity in the U.S. military and want the Selective Service expanded to
force every 18-year-old woman to register for the draft, if you believe Honduras
and Ukraine and Libya had it coming or you have no idea what I'm referring to,
if you think suggesting the abolition of NATO or a halt to overthrowing governments
is crazy talk, and if you believe a good heavy bombing campaign of Syria would
be the perfect way to demonstrate that we care about Syrians and value them
as human beings, you just might be a Democrat.
Yes, Hillary Clinton is the most dependable war monger nominated by a major
party in the United States in many years. She has the most
consistent and lengthy
record of doing what she's paid to do, of marketing U.S. weaponry abroad,
of manufacturing justifications for wars, of lobbying branches of the U.S. government
and foreign governments to support wars. And she'll do so while keeping up a
pretense of abiding by some selection of laws.
... ... ...
I've studied the marketing
of wars , and the most successful war marketing campaigns in the United
States include, in order from most to least necessary:
The pretense of a threat to anyone in the United States, most powerfully
if it is a threat of torture or rape or death by hand or knife. It need
not be the least bit realistic.
The demonization of an entire foreign population.
The demonization of a particular foreign person.
Revenge.
The pretense of urgency, inevitability, and ideally of the state
of being already underway.
The pretense of upholding the rule of law.
The pretense of humanitarianism.
Point #7 will pick up a section of the population's support, even among
people opposed to some of the other justifications. But alone it won't work.
Points #1 and #2 can do well without #7. Any of these points can be strengthened
or undone by partisanship if the war is labeled the possession of one political
party or the other. And once the war is really up and rolling, a new justification
slides into the #1 spot, namely the need to "support the troops" by killing
more of them.
"... Robert Mackey would like you to know that many in the Arab-speaking world are doing some genuine soul-searching about their culture's own role in the emergence of ISIS and that these conspiracy theories have simply been a haven for the obstinate and the self-deluded; Muslims who are too afraid to look themselves and their societies in the mirror. ..."
"... Ha, ha. "Washington." What buffoons! ..."
"... In a report this week on the blistering efficiency and military prowess of ISIS, ABC News reporter James Gordon Meek got an incredibly great, short answer as to where the Islamic State gained its technical expertise: "Probably the Chechens," a U.S. official said. ..."
"... ISIS, or ISIL, or the Islamic State-whatever you want to call it-was nearly dead in 2007, after U.S. forces in Iraq and local Sunni tribes successfully joined forces against the group. It wasn't until the Syrian uprisings that it reemerged as a potent force, after a failed merger with the al-Qaida-affiliated Syrian rebel group al-Nusra, lead most of al-Nusra's foreign-born jihadis to defect to ISIS . ..."
"... "Foreign-born jihadis" here meaning career Islamists like the Chechen groups, which have been conducting terror campaigns, kidnappings, and suicide bombings in Russia , with a reasonable degree of success, for over 15 years now. Some of the most prominent leaders now fighting with ISIS are Chechens: the ginger-bearded "rising star" Omar al-Shishani and the group's Che Guevara, Muslem al-Shishani (the unnervingly studly viking face pictured above). In addition to Saudi and Pakistani assistance, many of the Chechens were led and supported by the CIA-trained Afghan mujahideen, up-to-and-including Osama bin Laden: ace mentors, in other words, with proven experience in a professional terror setting. ..."
"... When not actively defending the Chechen extremists with weirdly bipartisan neocon-neoliberal advocacy groups , policy makers and government officials in Washington have turned a proactively blind eye to Chechen Islamist activities in Russia and here in the United States with infamously fatal consequences. Both the 9/11 Commission Report and FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley have shown that senior-level officials refused to classify Islamic terrorists in Chechnya-like their then-leader Ibn al Khattab who had direct contact with bin Laden-as actual terrorists, thus preventing the FBI from properly investigating "20th hijacker" Zaccarias Moussaoui before 9/11. ..."
"... A big part of the reason for this sensitivity is that covertly letting the Saudis and their Islamic radicals chip away at the oil-rich rubble on the fringes of the collapsed Soviet empire has been America's favored strategy for collecting the spoils of the Cold War. ..."
"... "The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries worked marvelously well in Afghanistan against the Red Army," a former CIA analyst told Swiss journalist Richard Labévière back in the late 1990s . "The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia." ..."
Wise Men of Foreign Affairs have jumped at the chance
to debunk a wild rumor that Hillary Clinton bragged about creating ISIS in her new memoir-truly
an easy layup in the annals of punditry. The rumor even got the name of Clinton's memoir wrong. But,
that's OK: The remaining facts still allow America to feel guilty.
According to
at least one Egyptian blogger, the conspiracy theory-complete with fake quotes from a fantasy
version of Clinton's memoir entitled Plan 360-emerged from the hothouse of Egypt's Pro-Mubarak/Pro-Military
Facebook pages: a social circle in which it is already de rigueur to suggest that the U.S.
and the Muslim Brotherhood secretly conspired to orchestrate the Arab Spring. This screenshot of
a Facebook page for the Egyptian military's counter-terrorism and special operations unit,
Task Force 777, and its reconnaissance
special operations unit, Task Force 999, depicts one of the earliest appearances of the fake Clinton
quotes:
Leaving aside for the moment the question of why Clinton would brag about this covert operation,
in progress, in her memoir, what foreign policy objectives could possibly be achieved by America
manufacturing ISIS? Like: Why do that? To what ends?
One version involves Israel (obviously), and something about balkanizing Israel's Mid-East neighbors
to both justify their nefarious Zionist expansion, or whatever, and remove opposition to it. Another
version,
as The Week pointed out Tuesday, claims that the U.S. would plan to recognize an ISIS
caliphate and that this caliphate would turn out to be (somehow) very amenable to America's strategic
and economic interests.
The hashtag #HilaryClintonsMemoirs (
#مذكرات_هيلاري_كلينتون)
quickly started trending across social media in the region,
Huffington Post UK reported, "with satirical tweets mocking the theory with outlandish claims
about what else the Secretary of State might have written-like a secret CIA plot to close all the
restaurants in Cairo and replace them with McDonalds."
Good one, the Middle East. I'm lovin' it.
Not everyone appreciated the Middle East's jokes, however.
Writing in his "Open Source" column for the
New York Times, Robert Mackey would like you to know that many in the Arab-speaking world
are doing some genuine soul-searching about their culture's own role in the emergence of ISIS and
that these conspiracy theories have simply been a haven for the obstinate and the self-deluded; Muslims
who are too afraid to look themselves and their societies in the mirror.
For instance, the Lebanese scholar Ziad Majed
wrote
on his blog that at least six factors from the recent history of the Middle East helped give
birth to the militant movement, including "despotism in the most heinous form that has plagued
the region," as well as "the American invasion of Iraq in 2003," and "a profound crisis, deeply
rooted in the thinking of some Islamist groups seeking to escape from their terrible failure to
confront the challenges of the present toward a delusional model ostensibly taken from the seventh
century."
That sort of introspection is not for everyone, of course, so a popular conspiracy theory has
spread online that offers an easier answer to the riddle of where ISIS came from: Washington.
Ha, ha. "Washington." What buffoons!
Let's learn a valuable lesson from the psychological projections of these weak-willed Third World
plebes: desert Archie Bunkers and izaar-clad Tony Sopranos too parochial in their worldview
and too much in denial of their own culpability to face this present danger.
America is better than that.
Let us examine with clear eyes all the ways in which our own democratically elected government-in
Washington-is responsible for where ISIS came from.
U.S. Policy in Chechnya
In a report this week on the blistering efficiency and military prowess of ISIS, ABC News
reporter James Gordon Meek got
an incredibly great, short answer as to where the Islamic State gained its technical expertise:
"Probably the Chechens," a U.S. official said.
ISIS, or ISIL, or the Islamic State-whatever you want to call it-was nearly dead in 2007,
after U.S. forces in Iraq and local Sunni tribes successfully joined forces against the group. It
wasn't until the Syrian uprisings that it reemerged as a potent force, after a failed merger with
the al-Qaida-affiliated Syrian rebel group al-Nusra,
lead most of al-Nusra's foreign-born jihadis to defect to ISIS.
"Foreign-born jihadis" here meaning career Islamists like the Chechen groups, which have been
conducting
terror
campaigns, kidnappings, and suicide bombings in Russia, with a reasonable degree of success,
for over 15 years now. Some of the most prominent leaders now fighting with ISIS are Chechens:
the ginger-bearded "rising star" Omar al-Shishani and
the group's Che Guevara, Muslem al-Shishani (the unnervingly studly viking face pictured above).
In addition to Saudi and Pakistani assistance, many of the Chechens were led and supported by the
CIA-trained Afghan mujahideen, up-to-and-including Osama bin Laden: ace mentors, in other words,
with proven experience in a professional terror setting.
When not actively defending the Chechen extremists with
weirdly
bipartisan neocon-neoliberal advocacy groups, policy makers and government officials in Washington
have turned a proactively blind eye to Chechen Islamist activities in Russia and here in the United
States with infamously fatal consequences. Both
the 9/11 Commission Report and
FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley have shown that senior-level officials refused to classify Islamic
terrorists in Chechnya-like their then-leader Ibn al Khattab who had direct contact with bin Laden-as
actual terrorists, thus preventing the FBI from properly investigating "20th hijacker" Zaccarias
Moussaoui before 9/11. Another pre-9/11 FBI investigation, this time into a Florida summer camp
run by the Saudi-funded
World Assembly
of Muslim Youth (WAMY), discovered that the group was showing children videos praising Chechen
bombers, only to be pulled off the case according to an FBI memo,
ID 1991-WF-213589, uncovered by
Greg Palast for the BBC and Vice.
Upon further digging by Palast:
Several insiders repeated the same story: U.S. agencies ended the investigation of the bin
Laden-terrorist-Chechen-jihad connection out of fear of exposing uncomfortable facts. U.S. intelligence
had turned a blind eye to the Abdullah bin Laden organisation [yes, WAMY was run by a bin Laden
brother] because our own government was more than happy that our Saudi allies were sending jihadis
to Afghanistan, then, via WAMY, helping Muslims to fight in Bosnia then, later, giving the Russians
grief in Chechnya. The problem is that terrorists are like homing pigeons – they come home to
roost.
As Joe Trento of the National Security News Service, who helped me on the investigation, said,
"It would be unseemly if [someone] were arrested by the FBI and word got back that he'd once been
on the payroll of the CIA What we're talking about is blow-back. What we're talking about is embarrassing,
career-destroying blow-back for intelligence officials."
A big part of the reason for this sensitivity is that covertly letting the Saudis and their
Islamic radicals chip away at the oil-rich rubble on the fringes of the collapsed Soviet empire has
been America's favored strategy for collecting the spoils of the Cold War.
"The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries
worked marvelously well in Afghanistan against the Red Army,"
a former CIA analyst told Swiss journalist Richard
Labévière back in the late 1990s. "The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains
of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia."
Granted: The events of September 11th made this
grand strategy
a little tricky, domestically, but as you may have noticed over the past few years,
particularly in Russian-allied Syria, it's mostly back on track.
"... FBI agents who worked on the investigation of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server reportedly had to sign an unusual non-disclosure form banning them from talking about the case unless they were called to testify. ..."
"... Unnamed sources tell the New York Post they'd never heard of the special form - known as a "case briefing acknowledgment" - being used before, though all agents initially have to sign nondisclosure agreements to obtain security clearance. ..."
FBI agents who worked on the investigation of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server reportedly had to sign an unusual
non-disclosure form banning them from talking about the case unless they were called to testify.
Unnamed
sources tell the New York Post they'd never heard of the special form - known as a "case briefing acknowledgment" - being
used before, though all agents initially have to sign nondisclosure agreements to obtain security clearance.
"This is very, very unusual. I've never signed one, never circulated one to others," one unnamed retired FBI chief tells the Post.
"I have never heard of such a form. Sounds strange," an anonymous FBI agent said.
The Post additionally reports some FBI agents are disappointed that Director James Comey decided against recommending that
charges be broughtagainst Clinton for her mishandling of classified information.
"FBI agents believe there was an inside deal put in place after the [Attorney
General] Loretta Lynch/Bill Clinton tarmac meeting" just hours before the release of a House report on the Benghazi, Libya
terror attack in 2012, one unnamed source tells the Post.
Another Justice Department source tells the newspaper he was "furious" with Comey, deriding him for having "managed to piss off right
and left."
"... Campaign manager Robbie Mook and communications director Jennifer Palmieri-who would later help coax the candidate into issuing an apology-agreed, according to people close to the situation. ..."
"... One thing was quite clear: Clinton was in no mood to apologize for, or even admit to, an error in judgment. She'd repeatedly tell her staff "I have done nothing wrong" and maintained she was simply following the example set by George W. Bush's first secretary of state, Colin Powell, who had transacted much of his own State Department business over private email. ..."
Hillary Clinton is a hard woman to counsel during
a crisis. She is at times warm, at times withering-when staffers offer excuses, her favorite rejoinder
is "shoulda, woulda, coulda!"-and she's prone to fretting that her staff doesn't have her back.
For all the dysfunction on her famously infighting 2008 campaign, Clinton's team that year was
made up of many old friends who knew how to navigate her moods and reassure her when things went
sour. Facing the server scandal, Clinton headed into battle surrounded by people she hardly knew,
and a staff so new that many weren't even officially on the payroll yet. The fact that she spent
most of her time working out of a Manhattan office and seldom visited her cubicle-farm headquarters
in seriously un-hip downtown Brooklyn didn't help either.
When the story splashed onto the New York Times website on the evening of March 2, Clinton
was above all angry, and in the first strategy sessions-over the phone -- she defaulted to what old
Clinton hands refer to as "pity party mode," dismissing the media frenzy over the emails as a whiffle-ball
Whitewater while railing against the very real right-wing campaign amassed against her.
Podesta, often speaking on the road or from his home in Washington, counseled transparency and
disclosure within the legal restrictions placed on him by Kendall. Clinton's new pollster and strategist,
Joel Benenson-a longtime Obama adviser with no longstanding personal relationship with the candidate
-- advised her to take responsibility for what had been, at the least, a political mistake. Campaign
managerRobbie Mook and communications director Jennifer Palmieri-who would later help coax
the candidate into issuing an apology-agreed, according to people close to the situation.
Even Mills, Clinton's most trusted and protective adviser-a lawyer who had been aware of the server
setup as Clinton's chief of staff at the State Department-agreed on the politics. Nonetheless, Mills
had a knack for expressing the advice in the most frightening terms possible: Air your linen, she'd
say, but you'll pay a terrible personal price.
One thing was quite clear: Clinton was in no mood to apologize for, or even admit to, an error
in judgment. She'd repeatedly tell her staff "I have done nothing wrong" and maintained she was simply
following the example set by George W. Bush's first secretary of state, Colin Powell, who had transacted
much of his own State Department business over private email.
"... Wheeler thinks Comey is covering for Attorney General Loretta Lynch, his boss, whose reputation for impartiality was damaged by her recent tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton. Wheeler writes, "By overstepping the proper role of the FBI here, Comey surely gave Lynch cover - now she can back his decision without looking like Bill Clinton convinced her to do so on the tarmac." ..."
"... That's the money line right there. Just as back in the 50's, all of this is based on simplistic moralistic arguments concerning intent to harm the state. HRC virtually embodies the modern state, and thus, her intent cannot and will not ever ..."
"... I agree absolutely. And I would add that the "state" now a days is far more of an ideological monolith than 60 or even 40 years ago. Any "serious" person in the upper echelons of the US governing class believes in the all security state, and whatever is necessary to maintain it. ..."
"... If Daniel Ellsberg had done today what he did in the '70's, he would be in solitary confinement in a maximum security prison, and there would be NONE in the high reaches of the US governing class opposed to this outcome. ..."
"... Or by Exxon and JP Morgan so they could get even more details on how to make a fortune off our tragic foreign policy. http://www.ibtimes.com/campaign-2016-hillary-clinton-pitched-iraq-business-opportunity-us-corporations-2121999 ..."
"... The government tries to stuff this hero/traitor dichotomy up our butts but Manning, Sterling, and Drake are human rights defenders. Manning defended our right to information freedom. Sterling defended our human right to peace by denouncing illegal war propaganda. Drake defended our human right to privacy from illegal NSA surveillance. ..."
"... Chelsea Manning's trial was a classic case for Francis Boyle's civil resistance framework. The issue was not only information freedom but denunciation of war crimes. Under federal law and the Army Field Manual, disobedience was Manning's legal duty. But we heard this drumbeat of he wouldn't dare, he wouldn't dare The implication was, he'd be punished more harshly for explicitly complying with the federal law of war crimes. ..."
"... Human rights defenders like Sakharov, Sharansky, and Slepak helped reform the USSR out of existence. Manning, Sterling, Drake, and the ones who come after them will do the same for all of us Americans trapped in the USA. ..."
"... I like the way you think. Those who defend human rights by pointing fingers at the state for its transgressions are considered traitors, while those who embody the state, yet violate its laws are exonerated. Isn't that pretty close to placing the state above the law – a police state? ..."
"... Yeah depending on to whom she was trading our government secrets for, it doesn't really matter that it was (for example) through intermediaries like Blumenthal in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation and not out of loyalty to a foreign country. There is still the potential that she did things that constituted espionage. ..."
"... Hillary's email debacle and subsequent lack of prosecution is an important milestone on the road to widespread recognition that America has become a third world banana republic. This has undermined belief in the system, credibility of government, and ultimately the global empire. ..."
"... Four months after Clinton left the State Dept, she was still keeping her emails at home, in violation of a requirement to turn them over for official archiving. Had it not been for Guccifer, she would never have turned them over. ..."
"... The commenter is looking at Comey's unusual public statement through the lens of DOJ group-think makes it seem driven by "the need for absolute transparency." This is how they pass the buck in that organization. Comey's statement makes perfect sense inside the DOJ - his assertion that "no reasonable prosecutor" would file charges only makes sense to a careerist to whom pleasing their superiors is the only "sensible" and "reasonable" behavior, and to whom actual justice is a mere abstraction. ..."
"... Apparently at the DOJ, as with Antonin Scalia*, the law is not about right and wrong, innocence or guilt. Its about CYA and protecting the prerogatives of the state. ..."
"... Read Bill Moushey's 10-part "Win at All Costs" series on the federal conviction mill, and you would not even want an "AUSA" living in your neighborhood, for fear of being swept up in their mindless criminal dragnet. ..."
"... As a prosecutor of 32 years successful legal practice, let me just say: "You're wrong." The only mens rea ..."
"... This sort of violation is the easiest thing in the world to prove to a judge or jury, and I've personally taken scores of unanimous jury verdicts involving General Intent crimes. Petraeus was easily convicted of this violation, and many men and women have been cashiered and/or imprisoned for it, especially by the Obama Justice Department. No Ken Starr crusade required - the evidence is beyond dispute ..."
"... My brother is in the service with a security clearance and they are all furious. They said what she did is illegal and if anyone else did it they would be prosecuted . ..."
"... The Clintons are grifters and it would not surprise me if most of those deleted emails involved starting wars in other countries, TPP and scamming for the foundation. The claim she was too stupid to know what she was doing was wrong is ludicrous. If she wins the presidency we need a congress full of tea partiers so she cannot enact anything. ..."
"... The retired LTG who was vetted by Trump for veep also said if it was him, he would be doing jail time for what Hill did. I'm sure that's why Trump would love to have this guy as an attack dog on the campaign trail. ..."
"... I have a cousin who is a commander in the Navy with Southern Command who nearly never talks publicly about "politics" or much that is in the media. He speaks with his near family and very close friends, but widely or on any sort of social media, no way. He is irate about Clinton not being prosecuted. He sees this as an issue of justice and national security and is very public about his views. I asked him why he was willing to be so public with his views in this instance and he explained it is based on the seriousness of the crimes and the undermining of all he believes he is serving for. ..."
"... I used to be a USAFA nuclear launch officer. One of my fellow officers (unthinkingly) brought a crew bag into the classified vault where we were processing a rev change (a periodic change to procedures, methods and/or targets). One of the sheets from the old rev slipped into his crew bag. He took the crew bag into the (occupied) squadron office where it sat for several hours. The destruction inventory came up short. The sheet was found in the officer's crew bag. Consequences were brutal. He was immediately relieved of duty. I never saw him again. The entire squadron was given a mandatory security refresher and told that the consequences for being *involved* in such negligence would, at the least, result in a dishonorable discharge and quite likely would involve an extended stay in Leavenworth, KS. Involvement could include just being in the line of sight of unauthorized containers such as a crew bag. ..."
"... I think this is a basic feature of a totalitarian or fascist state. Make a lot of laws and then enforce only the ones that serve your ends. Whether it's the Espionage Act or a traffic violation, it's then up to the state to decide who they want to punish. Now every time I hear the phrase "rule of law", I think of this. I don't know if we were ever "a nation of laws, not a nation of men", but we can safely say now that we are officially not. ..."
"... To wit, Either Comey, loyal Republican that he is, wants to see Trump elected president and figures that the best thing he can do in that respect is to issue a scathing non-indictment of Clinton, thereby wounding but not killing her candidacy ..."
"... I would argue that the very fact that Comey issued a public opinion on prosecution (completely outside the FBI remit) should be clear evidence of bias and invalidate their investigation and his statements on the basis they were prejudiced. A clever counsel could, in fact, use this as a defence if HRC is indeed tried. Comey, like Lynch, should have been recused. There is bias written all over this entire debacle. ..."
"... The true smoking gun will be the Clinton Foundation, variously described by others as a fraud, a giant slush fund,or a private criminal hedge fund. Just the optics of the pay-for-play circumstances of arms deals, corporate takeovers, mineral concessions, etc. should be more than sufficient to empanel a Grand Jury. Less than $1billion of the $4billion raised for Haiti's earthquake relief effort was ever spent. Where's the rest? Remember the commercials? Poppy Bush and Bill sitting side by side pleading for money. ..."
"... This article doesn't explain why a punishment such as the one given to Petraeus was not considered by Comey or the DOJ. Petraeus was an elite insider who was not a spy and did not threaten the state, yet he still received a minor punishment so as not to delegitimatize the legal system and in order to give at least a minimal impression of fairness. Since Comey said it was possible - and most experts say very possible - that foreign governments read Hillary's emails, she may have caused significant damage to the US national interest over four years. Therefore even a loyal elite could expect to be at least fined for such gross negligence. Why wouldn't a fine and a reprimand and/or temporary loss of security clearance be normal even for a loyal DC insider? This suggests that the power of the Clinton Machine and its real-world ability to deliver retribution was the deciding factor in the lack of any suggestion of indictment. Comey surely wants to keep his job. ..."
"... The article also fails to deal with the fact that Comey mistakenly claimed that only one person had ever been prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act. This is clearly not the case, and you list some of those prosecuted. There have also been several other convictions, including US vs. McGuinness in 1992 (see Andrew C. McCarthy, "Military Prosecutions Show That A Gross Negligence Prosecution Would Not Unfairly Single Out Mrs. Clinton" National Review (7/7/2016), CIA director John Deutch in 1997 (pardoned by Bill Clinton), James Hitselberger (who carried classified documents off his naval base in 1997 and simply kept them), and Jason Brezler, a Marine Major who sent classified information about a dangerous Afghan mayor in order to warn a colleague in 2014 (he is now appealing his conviction based on Comey's criteria). Also please see Jared Beck, "Why Hillary Clinton's Emails Matter: A Legal Analysis" (6/6/2016): Beck lists 4 convictions under 793(f) alone. Also see Beck's "Comey's Volley, Or The Indictment That Wasn't" (7/11/2016). You also need to deal with the question of why Comey ignored the obvious fact that Hillary willfully and knowingly broke State Department rules in setting up the private server and therefore knew she was endangering security. The fact that Comey gave a false number of prosecutions under s. 793 and avoided mention of willful, knowing acts by Hillary suggests his decision to oppose indictment was a political decision, not a legal decision. ..."
"... Let's say Comey and Lynch get together and agree that Clinton should be indicted. That's fine, but what, they ask, are the chances be of having a fair trial in a reasonable timeframe (i.e. before a Clinton inauguration made one meaningless)? What are the chances of it not turning into a highly politicized media circus? The answer of course is zero. ..."
"... Jill Stein and Gary Johnson take more support from Clinton than Trump. Many Millennials or 35 and under will either go with Stein or Johnson. It may be enough to keep her out of the White House. ..."
"... I will point out that regardless of the motives we impute to Comey his presentation on July 5 did real damage to HRC. She has lost ground in the polls taken since then and the GOP has resurrected this issue as a cudgel. Not sure if that makes people around here feel better or not. ..."
"... Comey (in his mind) fatally wounded Hillary Clinton without exposing himself as a coverup merchant. He is wrong of course but he definitely resides in a fool's bubble. Comey handed enough specifics of evidence to enable a wholesale demolition any credibility HRC had left. The dogs of war are out baying for her blood as a result. ..."
"... My guess is that Comeys antics will drive the detestation of HRC harder and deeper to point where she will have little margin with Trump. ..."
By Gaius
Publius , a professional writer living on the West Coast of the United States and frequent
contributor to DownWithTyranny, digby, Truthout, and Naked Capitalism. Follow him on Twitter
@Gaius_Publius ,
Tumblr and
Facebook . Originally published
at
at Down With Tyranny . GP article
here
It's going to be a while before the jury of informed comment returns a verdict regarding James
Comey's pre-emptive declaration of "no prosecution" for Hillary Clinton. But let's see what a
first look gets us. I want to start with a couple of points made by Marcy Wheeler, then amplify
them from other sources. The questions at issue are:
Should James Comey have made the call not to prosecute? Should Clinton be prosecuted at all?
If she should be prosecuted, why? If she should have been prosecuted, why wasn't she?
Some of these questions we can answer now. Others will have to wait until the people who specialize
in this material discuss it more fully, which could take a while.
Comey Had No Business Making a Prosecutorial Decision
Before we get into his argument, consider a more basic point: It is not Jim Comey's job
to make prosecutorial decisions . Someone else - whichever US Attorney oversaw the prosecutors
on this case, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, or Loretta Lynch - makes that decision.
[H]e has no business making this decision, and even less business making it public
in the way he did (the latter of which points former DOJ public affairs director Matthew Miller
was bitching about).
FBI Director Comey Preempts Justice Department By Advising No Charges for Hillary Clinton
FBI Director James Comey took the unprecedented step of publicly preempting a Justice Department
prosecution when he declared at a
press conference Tuesday that "no reasonable prosecutor" would bring a case against Hillary
Clinton for her use of a private email server.
The FBI's job is to investigate crimes; it is Justice Department prosecutors who are supposed
to decide whether or not to move forward. But in a case that had enormous political implications,
Comey decided the FBI would act on its own.
"Although the Department of Justice makes final decisions on matters like this, we are expressing
to Justice our view that no charges are appropriate in this case," he said. Prosecutors could
technically still file criminal charges, but it would require them to publicly disagree with
their own investigators.
Matthew Miller, a former spokesman for the Justice Department under Eric Holder, also agrees,
and is quoted by both Wheeler and Emmons. Emmons account (my emphasis):
Matthew Miller, who was a spokesman for the Department of Justice under Attorney General
Eric Holder, called Comey's press conference an " absolutely unprecedented, appalling, and
a flagrant violation of Justice Department regulations. " He told The Intercept
: "The thing that's so damaging about this is that the Department of Justice is supposed
to reach conclusions and put them in court filings . There's a certain amount of due process
there."
Legal experts could not recall another time that the FBI had made its recommendation so
publicly.
"It's not unusual for the FBI to take a strong positions on whether charges should be brought
in a case," said University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck. " The unusual part is
publicizing it ."
Which leaves us with a mystery. Why did Comey do this?
It Looks Like Comey Said "No Prosecution" So Loretta Lynch Wouldn't Have To
Wheeler thinks Comey is covering for Attorney General Loretta Lynch, his boss, whose reputation
for impartiality was damaged by her recent tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton. Wheeler writes, "By
overstepping the proper role of the FBI here, Comey surely gave Lynch cover - now she can back
his decision without looking like Bill Clinton convinced her to do so on the tarmac."
Emmons largely agrees:
Given the extraordinary circumstances, Vladeck called it "both unusual and completely unsurprising
that Comey went out of his way to make this statement."
He added: "It's certainly preemptive on Comey's part."
Attorney General Loretta Lynch was widely
criticized for meeting with former President Bill Clinton last week while his wife was
still under investigation
You read that right: "unusual and completely un surprising." For Emmons and Vladeck
it appears to be a case of insiders going out of their way, far out of their way in fact, to cover
for insiders. Given how unprecedented Comey's speech was, I think we have to accept this hypothesis
until others weigh in with more likely alternatives. This seems perfectly plausible to me. I can
think of another motives for Comey's actions, but they don't exclude this one.
Should Clinton Be Prosecuted Despite Loretta Lynch's Refusal to Do So?
So far, we've been able to answer the first question, should Comey have made the call not to
prosecute? The answer is clearly no. But that only gets us started. As to the prosecution itself
- should she be prosecuted and why? - we're in more complicated territory, which I hope to make
clear.
(Note, by the way, that in my heading just above, I'm transferring responsibility for the refusal
to prosecute from Comey back to the Justice Department, where it belongs . I suggest in
thinking about this that you do the same. Comey notwithstanding, it's Lynch who has the authority,
and Lynch who is refusing to prosecute.)
About prosecution, there are many laws that Clinton appears to have broken. In fact, there
may develop a minor cottage industry that lists them. Comey himself identified some transgressions
during his post-announcement speech (my emphasis below):
[S]even e-mail chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special
Access Program level when they were sent and received. These chains involved Secretary
Clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and receiving e-mails from others about the
same matters. There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary
Clinton's position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding
about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.
Note that this confirms, by the way, the fact that Special Access Program (SAP) information
- one of the highest, most sensitive levels of secret the government possesses - was indeed housed
on the server. Brian Pagliano, in doing any number of maintenance chores at the Clinton IT home-headquarters,
could have read it, as could anyone helping him. Risking SAP information will be a tripwire for
many in the intelligence community, who are likely to regard its mishandling as unforgivable.
This is one of those areas where we'll know more over time as specialists weigh in. (The political
response of the intel community, if any, could also be interesting, in a "drama of retaliation"
way. This may not occur, but it's one of the possibilities.)
Next Comey adds:
In addition to this highly sensitive information, we also found information that was
properly classified as Secret by the U.S. Intelligence Community at the time it was discussed
on e-mail (that is, excluding the later "up-classified" e-mails). None of these e-mails
should have been on any kind of unclassified system, but their presence is especially concerning
because all of these e-mails were housed on unclassified personal servers not even supported
by full-time security staff, like those found at Departments and Agencies of the U.S. Government-or
even with a commercial service like Gmail.
In other words, despite Ms. Clinton's allegations that nothing she sent or received was "marked
classified at the time" - her statements were incorrect. (Note that the extent of this violation
is in doubt, however; i.e., the exact number of these "properly classified" emails and their contents
was not revealed. Below, as you'll read, Comey admits that the number of these emails is "very
small." Wikileaks
disagrees
.)
Finally:
Separately, it is important to say something about the marking of classified information.
Only a very small number of the e-mails containing classified information bore markings indicating
the presence of classified information. But even if information is not marked "classified"
in an e-mail, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified
are still obligated to protect it .
The last is important. Some material is "born classified," a phrase you've likely encountered
if you've been following this story. If an admiral in World War II, for example, doodles a possible
plan of attack against an enemy fleet, that doodle contains classified information, whether marked
as such or not. And more, the duty to guard this information goes beyond not divulging it. It
must be carefully protected in a non-negligent way.
Hillary Clinton and the Espionage Act
So should Clinton have been prosecuted? The duty to protect important government information
is codified, among other places, in the Espionage Act, Title 18 of the criminal code, Sections
792 and following. I earlier wrote about Clinton's vulnerability to this act, specifically Title
18, Section 793, here: "
Three Data Points Regarding Clinton's Email Server and the Law ". There I made two points:
first, that the information covered by the act doesn't require a formal "classified" designation
to be relevant; and second, that "intent" (meaning intent to disclose) is not necessary to trigger
the law's penalties. "Gross negligence" in handling the information is sufficient to trigger prosecution.
Part of this section
reads :
(f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document
, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint,
plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national
defense , (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper
place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen,
abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally
removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust,
or lost, or stolen , abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such
loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer-
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both .
To get the gist of this language as it applies to Clinton, just read the part bolded above.
Cut down, it says:
Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document relating
to the national defense or having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its
proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen
shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
If your consideration is whether Clinton violated the letter of the law, that's pretty straight-forward.
Storing the information listed by Comey in his non-indictment indictment of Clinton on her unsecured
server (and sent, for a time, by unencrypted transmission) puts Clinton at clear risk of prosecution
for violating the Espionage Act. And again, the bar isn't "intent" to risk or violate national
security information. The bar is "gross negligence" in its handling, a phrase that's almost a
dictionary synonym for what Comey meant when he accused Clinton and her colleagues of being "extremely
careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly
classified information."
Thus she's very likely vulnerable under the letter of the law. Yet unlike others she will not
be tried (a word that means "tested"), much less punished, for violating it. Her lack of prosecution,
when others have been vigorously pursued in court for similar acts or less, explains much of what
exercises her critics. To understand their frustration and anger, let's look at those who have
been prosecuted under the Act for negligence or worse. Then let's look at the critical element
that separates their situations from Clinton's. (It's not just her elevated status.)
The Espionage Act Under Obama
It turns out that the Espionage Act has become a popular tool of punishment under the Obama
administration, which has broadened its application from use against actual espionage to use against
unfriendly
leakers
and whistle-blowers :
Under the Obama
administration , seven
Espionage Act prosecutions have been related not to traditional
espionage but to either
withholding information or communicating with members of the media. Out of a total eleven prosecutions
under the Espionage Act against government officials accused of providing classified information
to the media, seven have occurred since Obama took office.
[89] "Leaks related to national security can put people at risk," the President said
at a news conference in 2013. "They can put men and women in uniform that I've sent into the
battlefield at risk. I don't think the American people would expect me, as commander in chief,
not to be concerned about information that might compromise their missions or might get them
killed."
[90]
Secrecy is a virtual religion in Washington. Those who violate its dogma have been punished
in the harshest and most excessive manner – at least when they possess little political power
or influence. As has been
widely noted , the Obama administration has prosecuted more leakers under the 1917 Espionage
Act than all prior administrations combined . Secrecy in DC is so revered that even
the most banal documents are reflexively marked classified, making their disclosure or mishandling
a felony. As former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden
said
in 2010 , "Everything's secret. I mean, I got an email saying 'Merry Christmas.' It carried
a top secret NSA classification marking."
Even when no leakage or other damage was contemplated or occurred, the Espionage Act was applied
against violators. Here's
what happened to Naval Reserve Engineer Brian Nishimura (link via Greenwald above):
A Naval reservist was sentenced for mishandling classified military materials.
A federal attorney announced Wednesday that Bryan Nishimura of Folsom, California, pleaded
guilty to the unauthorized removal and retention of classified materials.
Nishimura, deployed in Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008 as a regional engineer, admitted to
downloading classified briefings and digital records onto his personal electronic devices.
He carried the materials off base and brought them back to the U.S. when his deployment ended.
An FBI search of Nishimura's home turned up classified materials, but did not reveal evidence
he intended to distribute them.
How was his case handled? He was obviously prosecuted, as the lead paragraph tells us. Then:
He was sentenced to two years of probation and a $7,500 fine , and was ordered to
surrender his security clearance . He is barred from seeking a future security clearance
.
This is a Navy engineer who took home downloaded briefings and records. We're not told under
what act he was prosecuted, but we don't need to be told, just that doing what he did was a crime.
The Espionage Act is perfectly suited to that crime, if the prosecutors wished to use it.
According to court documents, Nishimura was a Naval reservist deployed in Afghanistan in
2007 and 2008. In his role as a Regional Engineer for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, Nishimura
had access to classified briefings and digital records that could only be retained and viewed
on authorized government computers . Nishimura, however, caused the materials to be
downloaded and stored on his personal, unclassified electronic devices and storage media.
In the United States, Nishimura continued to maintain the information on unclassified
systems in unauthorized locations, and copied the materials onto at least one additional
unauthorized and unclassified system
Sounds like what Clinton did to a T. Should she be prosecuted? Loretta Lynch, speaking through
James Comey, doesn't think so. To understand why not, let's look at three more notorious and more
vigorously prosecuted cases: Jeffrey Sterling, Thomas Drake and Chelsea Manning. Those cases not
only reveal why Clinton, in the eyes of many, should be prosecuted; they reveal why she wasn't.
Jeffrey Sterling, Thomas Drake and Chelsea Manning
This gets to the heart of the problem related to when and why to prosecute. There's first a
question of what should happen and what does happen. Then there's a question of
intent, as in, what intent if any is the target of the law , and what intent is the target
of prosecutors who apply the law. These are not the same.
Greenwald doesn't think Clinton should be prosecuted, since in isolation her crime,
as he sees it, doesn't merit it. What Clinton did was attempt to shield all of her communications
to the extent she could, an act that in his mind doesn't deserve jail time, despite the letter
of the law. I would add that we're talking about applying the Espionage Act after all,
and Clinton in no way committed or intended to commit espionage.
But that kind of sensible thinking isn't what does happen. What does happen is that
under Obama, certain people are prosecuted and sentenced very harshly. Greenwald again (bolded
emphasis mine):
But this case does not exist in isolation. It exists in a political climate where secrecy
is regarded as the highest end, where people have their lives destroyed for the most trivial
– or, worse, the most well-intentioned – violations of secrecy laws, even in the absence of
any evidence of harm or malignant intent . And these are injustices that Hillary Clinton
and most of her stalwart Democratic followers have never once opposed – but rather enthusiastically
cheered. In 2011, Army Private Chelsea Manning was charged with multiple felonies and faced
decades in prison for leaking documents that she firmly believed the public had the right to
see; unlike the documents Clinton recklessly mishandled, none of those was Top Secret
. Nonetheless,
this is what then-Secretary Clinton said in justifying her prosecution
Clinton's justification for Manning's prosecution is this (emphasis Greenwald's):
"I think that in an age where so much information is flying through cyberspace, we all have
to be aware of the fact that some information which is sensitive, which does affect the security
of individuals and relationships, deserves to be protected and we will continue to take
necessary steps to do so. "
Seems damning in retrospect, especially the emphasized portion. For Clinton, "necessary steps"
to protect "sensitive" information that's "flying through cyberspace" means
the
following :
In 2010, Chelsea
(formerly Bradley) Manning , the
United States Army
Private First
Class accused of the largest leak of state secrets in U.S. history, was charged under Article
134 of the
Uniform
Code of Military Justice , which incorporates parts of the Espionage Act
18 U.S.C. §
793(e) . At the time, critics worried that the broad language of the Act could make news
organizations, and anyone who reported, printed or disseminated information from WikiLeaks,
subject to prosecution, although former prosecutors pushed back, citing Supreme Court precedent
expanding First Amendment protections.
[103] On July 30, 2013, following a judge-only trial by court-martial lasting eight
weeks, Army judge Colonel Denise Lind convicted Manning on six counts of violating the Espionage
Act, among other infractions.
[98]
That harsh punishment doesn't count the
torture
she endured while in pre-trial detention. The fate that befell Chelsea Manning was (and is) draconian.
Again, in retrospect Clinton's words at the time are damning.
Let's look at two more cases, starting with
Jeffrey
Sterling . As you read, see if you can see the thread that ties these three cases together:
Jeffrey
Alexander Sterling , a former
CIA
agent was indicted under the [Espionage] Act in January 2011 for alleged unauthorized disclosure
of national defense information to
James Risen , a New York Times reporter, in 2003 regarding his book State of War
. The indictment described his motive as revenge for the CIA's refusal to allow him
to publish his memoirs and its refusal to settle his racial discrimination lawsuit against
the Agency. Others have described him as telling Risen about a backfired CIA plot against Iran
in the 1990s.
[91]
But the evidence of wrong-doing was almost non-existent,
flimsily circumstantial , and the conviction relied heavily on the jury's reaction to the
government's presentation of motive.
The government's case consisted mostly of records of emails and phone calls between
Sterling and Risen that began in 2001 and continued into 2005. The emails were very short,
just a line or so, and did not reference any CIA programs. The phone calls were mostly short
too, some just a few seconds, and the government did not introduce recordings or transcripts
of any of them .
Sterling was represented by two lawyers, Edward MacMahon Jr. and Barry Pollack. In his opening
statement, MacMahon pointed to the lack of hard evidence against his client.
"Mr. Trump is a fine lawyer," MacMahon
said . " If he had an email with details of these programs or a phone call, you would
have heard it , and you're not going to hear it in this case . Mr. Trump told you that
[Sterling] spoke to Risen. Did you hear where, when, or anything about what happened? No.
That's because there isn't any such evidence of it whatsoever . You don't see a
written communication to Mr. Risen from Mr. Sterling about the program at all, no evidence
they even met in person ."
Nevertheless, despite this lack of real evidence:
[T]he jury convicted Sterling, based on what the judge, Leonie Brinkema, described at
the sentencing as "very powerful circumstantial evidence." She added, "In a perfect world,
you'd only have direct evidence, but many times that's not the case in a criminal case."
A few minutes before three in the afternoon, Judge Brinkema said that Sterling would go
to prison for three and a half years. This was far below the sentencing guidelines - and was
seen as a
rebuke of the prosecution's portrayal of Sterling as a traitor who had to be locked
away for a long time. But that wasn't much comfort for Sterling or his wife, because he would
nonetheless be locked away. After the hearing ended, Sterling walked to the front row of seats
to console his sobbing wife. You could hear her wails in the courtroom.
His lawyers requested that he be allowed to serve his sentence in his home state of Missouri,
so that his wife and other family members could easily visit him. Earlier this week, Sterling
reported to the prison that was selected for him. It is in Colorado.
We still don't know for sure that Sterling was the person who leaked information to reporter
James Risen. Nothing showing that they worked together was presented in court. Nothing. Yet the
prosecutor did a good job of painting Sterling as "a traitor" motivated by "anger, bitterness,
selfishness," adding, "The defendant struck back at the CIA because he thought he had been treated
unfairly. He had sued the agency for discrimination and demanded that they pay him $200,000 to
settle his claim. When the agency refused, he struck back with the only weapon he had: secrets,
the agency's secrets."
On that basis and almost no evidence, the jury convicted.
Finally, in the case of Thomas Drake, mentioned above by both Wheeler and Greenwald,
this happened:
What sets Drake, Sterling and Manning apart from Clinton in the way their violations of the
Espionage Act are treated? It's not just her elite status.
Why Is Clinton's Case Different?
Clinton may well have been let off because the Justice Department thought prosecution was just
the wrong thing to do. Given all the arcane rules of classification, and the fact that Clinton,
put plainly, is not a spy, Comey and Lynch may well have decided that prosecution was pointless.
Espionage, after all, was never her intent, and getting Hillary Clinton convicted on espionage
charges may have looked to them like a very heavy lift. Yet espionage was never the intent of
Sterling, Drake or Manning, yet they had the proverbial book thrown at them, and more. (Read the
rest of the
article on Sterling to see how his prosecution nearly destroyed his life, literally.)
The government's behavior in these four cases isn't clarified when comparing motives, at least
not initially. It could be argued that the motives of Sterling, Drake and Manning were entirely
beneficial, since whistle-blowers intend to perform a societal good, whereas Clinton's motives
were more self-centered, less morally defensible, and possibly illegal - at the very least, she
was attempting to move all of her communication beyond the reach of FOIA records requests. (We'll
have to wait to see if she may have had other motives, such as shielding the Clinton Foundation
from embarrassing scrutiny, or worse. I keep seeing mention of a separate investigation into that.)
Which brings us to the the matter of intent - not the intent contemplated by the law (intent
to steal or to otherwise mishandle government secrets), but the intent contemplated by the prosecutors
in applying the law. Look again at the Sterling conviction and what the prosecution relied on
to get it. The man was painted by his prosecutors as, in effect, evil - a man whose goal was to
harm the government, a betrayer, a traitor, motivated by anger, bitterness, selfishness, a man
taking revenge. Though most stark in Sterling's prosecution (and in Manning's torture), you see
this thread in all three whistle-blower cases.
What separates these cases from Clinton's is the desire of the government to punish "evil deeds,"
attempts to harm the country as the prosecutors defined harm , then secondarily to use
the Espionage Act as a tool of that punishment, wielded in such a heavy way as to frighten others.
Note that this initial filter - looking for who has done the kind of harm deserving of punishment,
as opposed to looking for who violated the law - precedes the prosecution itself. What doesn't
precede the prosecution - certainly not in Clinton's case - is an even-handed application of the
law.
Yes, this is selective prosecution, but it's much more than elites protecting elites, though
it's that as well. It's also and primarily using the prosecutorial weight of the established state
to mercilessly crush the perceived enemies of that state, while protecting its friends from that
weight should they also stray under the law's dark umbrella.
In other words, the key to determining who will be prosecuted is indeed intent, but not intent
to violate the law. What's being prosecuted is intent to violate the state as the state
perceives it.
So we return where we started, to Marcy Wheeler, who calls the real crime of Sterling and Drake
"disloyalty" and not a violation of the Espionage Act itself.
Wheeler (my emphasis):
I can only imagine Comey came to his improper public prosecutorial opinion via one of two
mental tricks. Either he - again, not the prosecutor - decided the only crime at issue was
mishandling classified information (elsewhere in his statement he describes having no evidence
that thousands of work emails were withheld from DOJ with ill intent , which dismisses
another possible crime), and from there he decided either that it'd be a lot harder to prosecute
Hillary Clinton (or David Petraeus) than it would be someone DOJ spent years maligning like
Sterling or Drake. Or maybe he decided that there are no indications that Hillary is disloyal
to the US.
Understand, though: with Sterling and Drake, DOJ decided they were disloyal to the US,
and then used their alleged mishandling of classified information as proof that they were
disloyal to the US (Drake ultimately
plead to Exceeding Authorized
Use of a Computer).
Ultimately, it involves arbitrary decisions about who is disloyal to the US , and
from that a determination that the crime of mishandling classified information occurred.
This entirely ignores the political dimension, which I'll take up at another time. But it perfectly
characterizes, as I see it, the legal one.
Too Big to Jail, Too Innocent to Flail, or Both
Should Clinton have been prosecuted at all? It depends on whether you wish to apply the law
(many do), to apply what others consider common sense, or to rebalance the scale of unequal prosecution.
And if the latter, rebalance in which direction? Should Clinton go to jail, or should Manning,
among others, go free? I would personally be fine if Clinton never saw a courtroom and prisoners
like Manning were freed. For the overall good of the nation, I would take that trade. Others,
I'm sure, would choose differently.
Returning to why Clinton wasn't prosecuted - was it just that Clinton is too important, too
protected, to prosecute? "Too big to jail" in other words? Too high to be brought down by something
as low as the law? After all, starting with Nixon, the circle of those who can never be punished
for their crimes has grown constantly more inclusive. (I almost wrote "for their non-violent crimes,"
but then I remembered the torturing George W. Bush.) That's certainly a possible explanation,
even a likely one, given our recent failure to prosecute even a
straight-up thief like former Goldman Sachs chief, ex-governor and Democratic Party fundraiser
Jon Corzine.
But we live in a punishing, prosecutorial state as well, one that treats its enemies as harshly
as it treats its friends gently, especially its inner circle friends. It's this second aspect,
not just who is too big to jail, but who is too high-minded and innocent to torture and
flail - too "loyal" to be treated, in other words, like Sterling and Manning - that must be
considered before we can understand the unequal application of these laws. Clinton, for all her
faults in James Comey's eyes, was no Chelsea Manning.
As Wheeler says in her closing, this is "another way of saying our classification system is
largely a way to arbitrarily label people you dislike disloyal." On reflection, it's hard to disagree.
In other words, the key to determining who will be prosecuted is indeed intent, but not
intent to violate the law. What's being prosecuted is intent to violate the state as the state
[itself] perceives it.
That's the money line right there. Just as back in the 50's, all of this is based on simplistic
moralistic arguments concerning intent to harm the state. HRC virtually embodies the modern state,
and thus, her intent cannot and will not ever be questioned. Game over.
I agree absolutely. And I would add that the "state" now a days is far more of an ideological
monolith than 60 or even 40 years ago. Any "serious" person in the upper echelons of the US governing
class believes in the all security state, and whatever is necessary to maintain it.
If Daniel Ellsberg had done today what he did in the '70's, he would be in solitary confinement
in a maximum security prison, and there would be NONE in the high reaches of the US governing
class opposed to this outcome.
We live in a more EFFECTIVELY one party state than the Soviets or Red Chinese ever mustered
Unfortunately, there was quite a lag. The phrase is attributed to Louis XIV, who died in 1715.
Nearly 3/4 of a century elapsed before the events of 1789.
Two submerged legal protections show why the government is trying so hard to fend off human
rights law. The authorities here are freedom of information in accordance with Article 19, and
human rights defenders, who have protections under state and federal common law as customary international
law. The US is legally committed to bring domestic law into compliance with human rights law,
which is the supreme law of the land.
The government tries to stuff this hero/traitor dichotomy up our butts but Manning, Sterling,
and Drake are human rights defenders. Manning defended our right to information freedom. Sterling
defended our human right to peace by denouncing illegal war propaganda. Drake defended our human
right to privacy from illegal NSA surveillance.
Chelsea Manning's trial was a classic case for Francis Boyle's civil resistance framework.
The issue was not only information freedom but denunciation of war crimes. Under federal law and
the Army Field Manual, disobedience was Manning's legal duty. But we heard this drumbeat of he
wouldn't dare, he wouldn't dare The implication was, he'd be punished more harshly for explicitly
complying with the federal law of war crimes.
The government goes through increasingly ridiculous bad-faith contortions to escape this body
of law. International forums are making a laughingstock of this government, shredding its pretensions
to legitimacy. The last step is for human rights defenders to go over the head of this government
to the world and argue the necessity of exposing this criminal state.
Human rights defenders like Sakharov, Sharansky, and Slepak helped reform the USSR out
of existence. Manning, Sterling, Drake, and the ones who come after them will do the same for
all of us Americans trapped in the USA.
I like the way you think. Those who defend human rights by pointing fingers at the state
for its transgressions are considered traitors, while those who embody the state, yet violate
its laws are exonerated. Isn't that pretty close to placing the state above the law – a police
state?
Yeah depending on to whom she was trading our government secrets for, it doesn't really
matter that it was (for example) through intermediaries like Blumenthal in exchange for donations
to the Clinton Foundation and not out of loyalty to a foreign country. There is still the potential
that she did things that constituted espionage.
Hillary's email debacle and subsequent lack of prosecution is an important milestone on
the road to widespread recognition that America has become a third world banana republic. This
has undermined belief in the system, credibility of government, and ultimately the global empire.
It's like the elites took out a payday loan; they get to play their little games and protect
their corrupt friends for now–and in the future their creditors, the American people, will extract
their pound of flesh (via the guillotine). Somewhere in that process the empire will collapse.
Now if only we can avoid a nuclear Armageddon (ie by supporting Trump from here on out) I'd say
that is a win-win for everyone in the world despite how bad it looks in the short term.
In the filing Tuesday [in a Judicial Watch FOIA case], longtime Clinton attorney David Kendall
even offered the politically awkward contention that a general effort by Clinton to thwart
FOIA would not be enough to give the Judicial Watch legal authority to proceed with its case.
Kendall argued that a 1980 Supreme Court case that discussed the possibility of recovering
records sought under FOIA but no longer in agency control "requires a close temporal connection
between an official's removal of records and a specific FOIA request."
"That standard cannot be satisfied here. Judicial Watch's FOIA request was submitted nearly
four months after Secretary Clinton left the State Department, and there is no evidence that
Secretary Clinton or anyone else at the Department knew that Judicial Watch would submit the
request, let alone intended to circumvent it," Kendall wrote, along with attorneys Katherine
Turner and Amy Zaharia.
Four months after Clinton left the State Dept, she was still keeping her emails at home,
in violation of a requirement to turn them over for official archiving. Had it not been for Guccifer,
she would never have turned them over.
It would be not be surprising at this point for Hillary to Arkancide "Bill," and then plead
for the court's mercy because she is a widow.
Speaking as a former AUSA with years of experience making prosecution decisions in complex
fraud cases, some of those decisions in agreement with recommendations made by the investigating
agency (FBI and others), some in the teeth of opposition from the investigating agency, the only
unusual aspect of the handling of the email affair I observed was DOJ's decision to make public,
through Comey's speech, the reasoning behind the declination. Reasoning underlying prosecution
decisions is, as a rule, never made public. Making the reasoning public was likely a nod to the
highly politicized nature of the investigation and the need for absolute transparency.
As for the assertion that the decision was made by the wrong person or department, FBI/Comey
not Lynch the prosecutor, Lynch made it clear beyond dispute that she would defer to the fact
finder's recommendation when it was made. That decision was itself a prosecution decision made
by Lynch, was within her authority and again, given the highly politicized nature of the investigation,
was an obviously sensible decision, given her position as a cabinet member in a Democratic administration.
The remark that this was "an obviously sensible decision, given her position as a cabinet
member in a Democratic administration," is also the kind of crap that I've gotten in the past
from AUSA's, who are one of the most intellectually (and ethically) captive groups I've ever
dealt with. Everything that they do is for "show" value within the DOJ. If I bring up the public's
interest in justice, they look at me like I'm some kind of nut. The commenter is correct that
Lynch's actions make perfect sense within the rules of DOJ Kabuki theater. They very much like
decisions to be made by somebody else.
The commenter is looking at Comey's unusual public statement through the lens of DOJ
group-think makes it seem driven by "the need for absolute transparency." This is how they
pass the buck in that organization. Comey's statement makes perfect sense inside the DOJ -
his assertion that "no reasonable prosecutor" would file charges only makes sense to a careerist
to whom pleasing their superiors is the only "sensible" and "reasonable" behavior, and to whom
actual justice is a mere abstraction.
Ironically, it is the precarious nature of legal employment as recently discussed on NC
that has caused this sort of organizational behavior to be the norm in the profession any more,
and it's prevalence is why I'm getting out.
This brings to mind the mantra "there's justice and then there's the law". Though when I've
heard that said it was not as a defense of how little the latter mirrors the former but a criticism.
Apparently at the DOJ, as with Antonin Scalia*, the law is not about right and wrong, innocence
or guilt. Its about CYA and protecting the prerogatives of the state.
Read Bill Moushey's 10-part "Win at All Costs" series on the federal conviction mill, and you
would not even want an "AUSA" living in your neighborhood, for fear of being swept up in their
mindless criminal dragnet.
Federal prosecutors are like the poseur who knocks out an opponent with no arms, then claims
to be Heavyweight Champion of the World.
They don't know what a fair adversary proceeding is anymore, since federal sentencing guidelines
(1984) and other changes tilted the whole table in their favor.
When 95% of federal criminal cases are plea-bargained under extreme duress for the defendant,
prosecutors don't need any skill whatsoever to put fresh pelts on the wall.
What Tallichet is saying is indeed true. He is not making it up. The burden is upon the government
to prove intent or "mens rea" evil mind. No reasonable prosecutor would take up another Ken Starr
crusade for years to come to prove something which can not be proven. If you are young and maybe
want a crusade (Starr did) then maybe you take it up to make a name for yourself.
I have enough court time to know when a battle can be won and not won. Spent enough money doing
it.
As a prosecutor of 32 years successful legal practice, let me just say: "You're wrong." The only mens rea required to prove a violation of 18 U.S.C. 1924 is General Criminal
Intent, not Specific Intent. There is no legal requirement that a person accused of Unauthorized
Removal and Retention of Classified Documents intend to break the law or damage the interests
of the United States. The only requirement is that the accused person knowingly remove
the materials and intentionally retain them at an unauthorized location.
This sort of violation is the easiest thing in the world to prove to a judge or jury, and I've
personally taken scores of unanimous jury verdicts involving General Intent crimes. Petraeus was
easily convicted of this violation, and many men and women have been cashiered and/or imprisoned
for it, especially by the Obama Justice Department. No Ken Starr crusade required - the evidence
is beyond dispute.
However, the difference is that I've been at my work for 32 years, and I've never had the slightest
intention of walking through the revolving door of representing the very people who it was my
duty to prosecute.
Your ability to generalize with such breadth and detail about a very large, diverse group of
individuals is impressive. My experience as a state prosecutor, Federal prosecutor, defense attorney
and thoughtful human being has taught me that such generalizations cannot be relied upon. I have
interacted with many police and investigators from a multitude of agencies ranging from small
town Texas pds to FBI and have found that some of them were tall, others short, some blue eyed,
others brown eyed some smart others not so smart, some honest, others not. I have found the same
diversity in other groups I have come to know through experience judges, prosecutors, defense
attorneys, women, men, blonds, brunettes the list is really endless. Are you able to similarly
generalize with such breadth and detail about groups within our society other than AUSAs?
i dont know shit about 'the law', and NO LONGER CARE because it is a totaaly corrupted institution
which serves the interests of the 1%
my personal morals are a superset of 'the law', only mine are evenhanded, not corrupt
oh, you sound like quite the douche, hoping we have an opportunity to meet at a necktie party
when the hard rain comes lawyers will be escorted to the front of the line
My brother is in the service with a security clearance and they are all furious. They said
what she did is illegal and if anyone else did it they would be prosecuted .
The Clintons are grifters and it would not surprise me if most of those deleted emails involved
starting wars in other countries, TPP and scamming for the foundation. The claim she was too stupid
to know what she was doing was wrong is ludicrous. If she wins the presidency we need a congress
full of tea partiers so she cannot enact anything.
I'd definitely be interested in reading more about how the email scandal is sowing distrust
and discord in the national security state. Please share more about how people on the inside are
feeling; it's always reassuring to get confirmation that not all of these people are vile and
mendacious crooks.
The retired LTG who was vetted by Trump for veep also said if it was him, he would be doing
jail time for what Hill did. I'm sure that's why Trump would love to have this guy as an attack
dog on the campaign trail.
I have a cousin who is a commander in the Navy with Southern Command who nearly never talks
publicly about "politics" or much that is in the media. He speaks with his near family and very
close friends, but widely or on any sort of social media, no way. He is irate about Clinton not
being prosecuted. He sees this as an issue of justice and national security and is very public
about his views. I asked him why he was willing to be so public with his views in this instance
and he explained it is based on the seriousness of the crimes and the undermining of all he believes
he is serving for.
I used to be a USAFA nuclear launch officer. One of my fellow officers (unthinkingly) brought
a crew bag into the classified vault where we were processing a rev change (a periodic change
to procedures, methods and/or targets). One of the sheets from the old rev slipped into his crew
bag. He took the crew bag into the (occupied) squadron office where it sat for several hours.
The destruction inventory came up short. The sheet was found in the officer's crew bag.
Consequences were brutal. He was immediately relieved of duty. I never saw him again. The entire
squadron was given a mandatory security refresher and told that the consequences for being *involved*
in such negligence would, at the least, result in a dishonorable discharge and quite likely would
involve an extended stay in Leavenworth, KS. Involvement could include just being in the line
of sight of unauthorized containers such as a crew bag.
It's glaring that HRC sold the office and that is why a private server and hiding emails was
essential.
Puleeze can we stop being insulted that she didn't know, wasn't technically sophistocated !
She went to GREAT Lenghts at considerable inconvenience to set up and operate seperate system ..
Think of the opportunities to shape policy and approve/disapprove State Department transactions
around Clinton Foundation contributors!!
Allowing this obvious glaring conflict of interest to exist in the first place was incredible
and an example of how corrupt and far down things have fallen.
Where are the Clinton Foundation emails ??? Intent is a no brainer
I think this is a basic feature of a totalitarian or fascist state. Make a lot of laws and
then enforce only the ones that serve your ends. Whether it's the Espionage Act or a traffic violation,
it's then up to the state to decide who they want to punish. Now every time I hear the phrase
"rule of law", I think of this. I don't know if we were ever "a nation of laws, not a nation of
men", but we can safely say now that we are officially not.
Comey made the decision most everyone with skin in the game that's not a Sander's supporter
wanted him to make. And in that regard there is one ultimate explanation that Trumps all others
as it were. Though this can be parsed in two ways, to his credit Comey manages to cover both with
his public statement.
To wit, Either Comey, loyal Republican that he is, wants to see Trump elected
president and figures that the best thing he can do in that respect is to issue a scathing non-indictment
of Clinton, thereby wounding but not killing her candidacy – in full knowledge that polling has
consistently shown Trump would likely fare much less well against Sanders, or perhaps another
democrat who might replace Clinton; or, loyal republican that he is, Comey believes Trump would
be even more of a disaster for the Republican party than he already is if he were actually elected
president – thus Comey elicits sympathy for Clinton, casting himself as part of the vast right
wing conspiracy against her by airing his belief in her culpability, yet he spares her political
viability and himself the possibility of political retribution from her side down the line.
Win-win
for Comey. Brilliant! At one stroke he's made the case to both Clinton and Trump that he would
be the perfect nominee to fill Scalia's slot on SCOTUS.
Nice analysis. My first thought when I read Comey's statement was that he had delivered a huge
passive aggressive fu to some person or persons who had told him what result they wanted. This
was perfect if the goal was to make sure the issue didn't go away politically for Clinton. Much
more effective than delivering a pro indictment message that would be ignored quietly.
Come on! Team D will not nominate Bernie under any circumstances.
If HRC were to die today, Team D would shove Biden into the nomination or trot out Kerry or
even Al Gore if they must, but Bernie is a threat that must be dealt with.
I would argue that the very fact that Comey issued a public opinion on prosecution (completely
outside the FBI remit) should be clear evidence of bias and invalidate their investigation and
his statements on the basis they were prejudiced. A clever counsel could, in fact, use this as
a defence if HRC is indeed tried. Comey, like Lynch, should have been recused. There is bias written
all over this entire debacle.
The true smoking gun will be the Clinton Foundation, variously described by others as a
fraud, a giant slush fund,or a private criminal hedge fund. Just the optics of the pay-for-play
circumstances of arms deals, corporate takeovers, mineral concessions, etc. should be more than
sufficient to empanel a Grand Jury. Less than $1billion of the $4billion raised for Haiti's earthquake
relief effort was ever spent. Where's the rest? Remember the commercials? Poppy Bush and Bill
sitting side by side pleading for money.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse or will,
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won:
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
Oh Captain! My Captain!
One more sabre to the torso of democracy. How many more can we ThePeople endure and survive?
>looking for who has done the kind of harm deserving of punishment, as opposed to looking for
who violated the law - precedes the prosecution itself.
This is a global takeaway from this article. I always hated the second "civil" prosecution
of OJ Simpson almost as much as I hated OJ himself – the ability to keep bringing somebody "bad"
to trial until something sticks is exactly what double-jeopardy is supposed to prevent.
Having covered the second OJ trial, I can say only this in its defense: the two trials asked
juries to rule on two different questions. The first trial asked the jury whether the state had
proved its case against Simpson beyond a reasonable doubt. The second asked the jury who was responsible
for the killings of Brown and Goldman. Both juries, imho, answered correctly.
This article doesn't explain why a punishment such as the one given to Petraeus was not considered
by Comey or the DOJ. Petraeus was an elite insider who was not a spy and did not threaten the
state, yet he still received a minor punishment so as not to delegitimatize the legal system and
in order to give at least a minimal impression of fairness. Since Comey said it was possible -
and most experts say very possible - that foreign governments read Hillary's emails, she may have
caused significant damage to the US national interest over four years. Therefore even a loyal
elite could expect to be at least fined for such gross negligence. Why wouldn't a fine and a reprimand
and/or temporary loss of security clearance be normal even for a loyal DC insider? This suggests
that the power of the Clinton Machine and its real-world ability to deliver retribution was the
deciding factor in the lack of any suggestion of indictment. Comey surely wants to keep his job.
The article also fails to deal with the fact that Comey mistakenly claimed that only one person
had ever been prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act. This is clearly not the case, and you list
some of those prosecuted. There have also been several other convictions, including US vs. McGuinness
in 1992 (see Andrew C. McCarthy, "Military Prosecutions Show That A Gross Negligence Prosecution
Would Not Unfairly Single Out Mrs. Clinton" National Review (7/7/2016), CIA director John Deutch
in 1997 (pardoned by Bill Clinton), James Hitselberger (who carried classified documents off his
naval base in 1997 and simply kept them), and Jason Brezler, a Marine Major who sent classified
information about a dangerous Afghan mayor in order to warn a colleague in 2014 (he is now appealing
his conviction based on Comey's criteria). Also please see Jared Beck, "Why Hillary Clinton's
Emails Matter: A Legal Analysis" (6/6/2016): Beck lists 4 convictions under 793(f) alone. Also
see Beck's "Comey's Volley, Or The Indictment That Wasn't" (7/11/2016). You also need to deal
with the question of why Comey ignored the obvious fact that Hillary willfully and knowingly broke
State Department rules in setting up the private server and therefore knew she was endangering
security. The fact that Comey gave a false number of prosecutions under s. 793 and avoided mention
of willful, knowing acts by Hillary suggests his decision to oppose indictment was a political
decision, not a legal decision.
The article also fails to deal with the theory that Comey, taking into account various evidence,
such as his talks with DOJ attorneys and the fact that Lynch agreed to meet Bill Clinton, decided
that that there was no possibility that the Democrat-staffed DOJ would indict Hillary. Therefore
Comey decided to make the best of a difficult situation by giving a two-part speech that first
laid out reasons why Hillary could be indicted and then explained that it was not "reasonable"
to indict her. "Reasonable" is of course a legal term, but it also covers a variety of meanings,
including political motives. Do you reject this theory, or were you just unaware of it?
Seriously? Go back and see what Petraeus did and admitted to and what Clinton did and did not
admit to and then analyze what you said. You have not proven intent in Clinton's case. You have
a specious argument going on here.
Stop this. You are just plain wrong. You are not an attorney and you are out of your depth.
Go read the link I provided in my into and the rebuttal to your comment above.
I don't know why everyone seems to be ignoring that she destroyed evidence, 30,000 e-mails,
when she knew the investigation was zeroing in on her. Her claim that they were ALL about personal
matters is totally suspect considering how much the Foundation received during that period and
the global events that transpired.
Say the 30,000 emails were private. Taking a very liberal assumption that she only spent 10
minutes ((read and respone – just 10 minutes – I really am bending over backwards)) on each, that
means "private" email time took 5,000 hours. In 4 years, a government employee officially is suppose
to put in 8, 348 hours. So more than half the time was spent on private emails???
Now, for those who say that maybe some of these emails were done after hours .I say why weren't
they ALL done after hours? – On her own home private computer???
WHAT was so damn urgent about those yoga pants???? (or does Goldman Sachs demand instant gratification???)
I mean, the Secretary of State has time from her O SO BUSY schedule for all this private emailing .?????
HMMMM what president said he was SO, SO, SO busy he never would have time for a hummer in the
oval office?????
Alex Jones (yes, I admit to being a fan, albeit less than totally devoted -and I can't stand
his heavy metal bumper music) has contracted to have airplanes towing "Hillary For Prison" banners
over both the repug and dem conventions. I'm interested in seeing: (1) if these planes are even
allowed in the air space by the relevant authorities, and (2) if they do fly, will there be any
press coverage whatsoever. Jones already had his first contractor cancel, but his second aerial
contractor apparently intends to go through with it.
Optimader, TFR applies to prez and veep--the airplane guy has stated they won't be able to
fly on the last day of the dem convention, when Obama and/or Biden will be there. The other days
should be OK, in his opinion.
OK, just today the FAA announce TFR for 10 nautical miles around both convention sites. Just
the feds shutting down freedom of speech for your protection.
In the grand scheme probably ok by me. Someone could drop a Cessna Caravan filled with ****
and make a real mess of it. Some employees might get killed .
Yes, well I hope that was all theraputic for GP, dont really need any more than the bold print.
-HRC admits what she was doing;(parsing modivation is not relevant)
-She knowingly has (is?) engaged in a series of illegal activities; (Everyone at the SofS dept
down to secretaries were explicitly classroom trained how to appropriately handle anything that
is gov info (including *.gov) and signed off on it. Those records exist
-Her employees knowingly engaged with her in illegal activities (conspiracy, all premeditated);
-HRC has serially lied about her activities, under oath or not, a pattern of knowingly trying
to hide criminal behaviour;
-Everyone involved who took an oath of office violated said oath;
-The last one arguably applies to Comey as well. Comey concedes that his investigation confirmed
the nuts and bolts of what HRC and her conspirators did yet he has attempted to intervene in the
legal process in an unprecedented and illegal manner; (it doesnt matter what he thinks, descretion
on prosecution is above his pay grade)
-If Comey's interview with HRC was infact not peformed under oath, you can probably take that
deerpath into the woods on Comey as well; (is that normal procedure with a perp, no less when
it is well established criminal activity has and probably still IS occurring – as a minimum she
is still trying to coverup felonies allegations).
This I confirmed in less than one beer floating in a pool.
Another big difference is whether or not the higher ups have a social relation with the accused.
If they have never even met the accused, they have no personal feelings about ruining the life
of the accused and the lives of the relatives of the accused. If they have socialized with the
accused and are in the same social class as the accused, they can believe the accused is such
a nice person that the accused does not deserve severe punishment.
One of the amazing sub-texts to all of this is the secrecy that covers what should be public
information. After all, Hillary did use a very public server to do her "business" as SoS. It should
be understood that such information as she had on it (in spite of her obvious goal of keeping
it secret from the Department, a really ludicrous attempt, given the spying ability of today's
governments and hackers) was public information to be seen by the citizens of this country, since
she was, and will be as President, a public EMPLOYEE
This is a case of straight-forward, audacious corruption of the US judicial system.
Comey claims that a "reasonable" prosecutor would not indict Clinton; and in the next breath
insists that a "reasonable" prosecutor would savagely indict anyone else who committed the same
acts as Clinton. And furthermore that the "intent" defense would never stand.
What more needs to be said?
The Clintons operate with full immunity. Always have, always will.
Let's say Comey and Lynch get together and agree that Clinton should be indicted. That's
fine, but what, they ask, are the chances be of having a fair trial in a reasonable timeframe
(i.e. before a Clinton inauguration made one meaningless)? What are the chances of it not turning
into a highly politicized media circus? The answer of course is zero.
The (perhaps not so) obvious solution to this would be to turn it over to the House, where
the matter would be handled via impeachment. Instead of being halted by inauguration, and indictment
would be triggered by one, and of course, impeachment by its very definition is meant to be a
political (and media) event.
Sure, it would be messy, but how would a criminal indictment be any less so. Hell, Clinton
could even pardon herself with a criminal indictment, so impeachment isn't merely an option, it
is the only option that would even have a chance of functioning as it was supposed to.
So that's what (I believe) Comey and Lynch agreed upon. Send it to the House, and let the political
process handle it.
Lynch did not agree to turn it over to the House. We will find out what she receives if Clinton
makes it to the White House. I expect her to either remain as AG or go into lobbying with a hefty
pay raise.
I also do not think that Clinton will win the White House. Republicans control important battle
ground states and they will either help Trump steal the election if necessary or prevent Clinton
from stealing the election if she is behind. Clinton only beat Sanders by rigging the electronic
voting machines. I do not expect her to get away with that in states controlled by Republican
governors.
Jill Stein and Gary Johnson take more support from Clinton than Trump. Many Millennials
or 35 and under will either go with Stein or Johnson. It may be enough to keep her out of the
White House.
Trump can win because he is a brilliant marketer (or at least maintaining and enhancing his
own brand) and it appears that he is more under control. Clinton's negatives will only increase
as the House investigates Clinton for perjury followed by the debates where Trump will tear apart
Clinton's record whenever they attempt to attack Trump on Trump U, Molestation, or outsourcing.
The latter is a cakewalk. The Clinton's crafted the rules that Trump used. He was playing the
game and they wrote the rules. How on Earth do they think that Trump will allow that line of attack
to stick to him.
I really go side tracked. Clinton passed on information to her husband and son in law. Her
son in law received information about Greece as his hedge fund was entering the Greek market.
She passed along information for private gain which is corruption but since this information was
classified it was also espionage just not between states.
KING HENRY V
We judge no less. Uncle of Exeter,
Enlarge the man committed yesterday,
That rail'd against our person: we consider
it was excess of wine that set him on;
And on his more advice we pardon him.
SCROOP
That's mercy, but too much security:
Let him be punish'd, sovereign, lest example
Breed, by his sufferance, more of such a kind.
KING HENRY V
O, let us yet be merciful.
CAMBRIDGE
So may your highness, and yet punish too.
GREY
Sir,
You show great mercy, if you give him life,
After the taste of much correction.
And then there was Hillary:
"I think that in an age where so much information is flying through cyberspace, we all have to
be aware of the fact that some information which is sensitive, which does affect the security
of individuals and relationships, deserves to be protected and we will continue to take necessary
steps to do so." But Comey is no Henry and there is no Exeter to remove Hillary from the room
I will point out that regardless of the motives we impute to Comey his presentation on
July 5 did real damage to HRC. She has lost ground in the polls taken since then and the GOP has
resurrected this issue as a cudgel. Not sure if that makes people around here feel better or not.
Yeah. So a shoutout to the state prosecutor quoted by Yves, I'm with you bro (or sis). My own
brief experience representing the state in the middle of the "Age of Reagan" provided similar
experiences with how things work, although I didn't see a lot of differences at the state and
local level. Looking back, especially on the whole drug war thing, none of us had any excuse for
going along. Props to Yves' correspondent for at least trying. Too many of us didn't. On their
future plans: take it from this ex-lawyer who walked away under his own power while still in good
standing, leaving the law was the best thing I ever did for myself and my family. Godspeed to
you.
I am angry that powerful people don't get indicted for crimes while regular folk do. But I
am equally furious that HRC is the one getting busted based on a fishing expedition born out of
the politicized Benghazi affair. If Benghazi had been about looking into whether or not the CIA
was routing weapons to rebels in Syria, then I might be sympathetic. But no, this was about the
fact that the administration didn't use the right language in describing the attacks and may have
alluded to the incident being caused by a video and was not quick enough to pin the blame on Al
Qaida, even though their saying these things out loud would not have changed anything. In other
words, a tragic event happened that was like countless tragic events that happens under any administration's
watch and the GOP started a fishing trip.
We all know that if we want to bring down any president we just need to start a scandal and
then spawn fishing trips. With the countless interactions a president and their staff has it is
almost certain that they will be caught doing something wrong. Perhaps they will go to a campaign
event while on an official government trip. Should they have skipped the event even though it
would have been very convenient? How many people, from work, have used office phones to call up
the mechanic and arrange for a time to take the car in? We all do it and we are all vulnerable.
And we all know that if we chose to create a massive fishing expedition aimed at Trump we could
find loads of dirt much more serious than what is confronting HRC.
So in light of the context, do we really want to bring HRC down when we know this was the aim
of the GOP all along and we all know that they are sitting on equally reprehensive acts that are
going unpunished? And do we really think this will change things? As if, by punishing HRC we will
somehow make it the norm to bust powerful people for their crimes. To me, that is the crux. If
I believed for half a second that this would somehow set a new standard and that the Justice Department
and the FBI and SEC and so on would actually start prosecuting powerful people for the crimes
we know they are committing then I would say yes, she should be indicted. Lock her up. Lock them
all up! Or, compare her crime to what others really are doing. Lying to get us into wars. CEOs
who break the law to earn billions and get off with a small fine in comparison. How many politicians
knowingly allow our banks to launder money for drug cartels and do nothing while actively throwing
the book at low-level users and dealers? It's rampant. And yet we are hung up on the fact that
HRC sent classified emails on an unsecure server. Emails that probably shouldn't have been classified.
Content of classified emails that should be scrutinized more than their classification status.
How about the fact that we don't question the actions being discussed in those emails because
they would be supported by GOP politicians anyway and they do not want those acts to be the focus
of any investigation? Instead, we pretend that the mode of her communication is some kind of grave
issue and we are willing to prevent her from being president over the guy who willfully scams
people and admits to paying off politicians. We have all been played by the GOP's scandal machine.
Why does everyone presume Clinton would not assist or otherwise allow information to land in
the hands of foreigners?
Seems like the unstated presumption of the article is that she wouldn't sell out the US to a foreigner
under any circumstances ..is that a good bet? Depends on what you mean by *is*?
Answering my own hypothetical, I think the presumption is that the SoS gets to pick who is
a friend, and who is an enemy, of the US. So there is discretion inherent in the job.
But how does oversight of that critical government function work, when Clinton has expended
a remarkable amount of effort over a long period of time to directly undermine FOIA request &
government records requirements? This is what I find appalling - that she had the time and motivation
to scrub out the normal government records necessary to determine whether she is conducting official
government business on behalf of the US, or not. Especially in the "if you are doing nothing wrong,
what do you have to hide?" war on terror era she gets a free pass issued when normal non-governmental
officials living private lives are having every email they've ever sent vacuumed up for evaluation
relative to the national good.
A thought: I am never convinced that any situation of political importance is all on the individual.
I am not convinced of any unitary theories of command and control. In short, it ain't Hilly or
Billy but the outfit they clearly work for: the inheritors of the Rhodes dream of Anglo-Saxon
ownership of the entire world, which is to say, the CFR. If not for the power of the CFR (which
really means the combined power of the oligarchs represented by the CFR) neither of these two
CFR aparatchiks would possess any immunity whatsoever. In the words of Captain Bryant in Bladerunner
they would just be "little people". So it seems almost to me that fretting about which stooge
gets off this time is missing the point because there is always another stooge lined up for the
job in case this one gets picked off. Always.
Another question rarely addressed in these musings on the Clinton case is the accusation that
her motivation for using her own server was to be able to keep any emails she wanted out of FOIA
requests–which due to her deletion of many emails before their delivery to the government seems
to have been accomplished successfully, at least so far. Whether she committed "espionage" or
not, it's widely acknowledged that she was doing dealmaking with the Clinton Foundation while
serving as Secretary of State. Granted, there may not be hard evidence to prove this link but
the circumstantial evidence in terms of donations to the CF and arms deals involving those countries
is extremely damning.
Great story and love the comments. I can see why Bernie Sanders should be endorsing Clinton
in a tactical sense. I will hazard an explanation.
Comey (in his mind) fatally wounded Hillary Clinton without exposing himself as a coverup merchant.
He is wrong of course but he definitely resides in a fool's bubble. Comey handed enough specifics
of evidence to enable a wholesale demolition any credibility HRC had left. The dogs of war are
out baying for her blood as a result.
Bernie Sanders has moved so close as to tactically shut out any third person chance to get
the nomination should the dogs of war take her down. My guess is that Comeys antics will drive
the detestation of HRC harder and deeper to point where she will have little margin with Trump.
Consider that Bernie Sanders is clearly seen to be a solid Democrat supporter (and reformer),
he did not traipse off after the hapless Greens as he has millions more support than they can
muster, he did not maul HRC viciously (its not in his character) through the campaign, he brings
vast numbers of new voters to the game to fulfill the adage that Democrats win when voter turnout
is high.
He is most likely the only Democrat who could pull off a last minute switch as nominee with
any prospect of trouncing Trump. It is a long shot of course but starting a revolution and seeing
it through is a long game necessitating tactics that include persistence against heavy odds, shock,
surprise and tactical positioning in both political space and ethical behavior. I know many are
seriously p!ssed with him but what else is there than catch the momentum and resources that can
position a win now or in three years.
Would an indictment of Clinton over her handling of sensitive information via email forced
the identification and indictment of those who exchanged that information with her?
I was in the Foreign Service for about 30 years. Early in my career, I left classified material
on my desk twice and got caught. It didn't happen again. Fear did its job.
That may not work with senior people who think they are too important. They need to be protected
with effective help or replaced. It really is that simple.
"... Hillary Clinton may not be indicted on criminal charges over her handling of classified email, but the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, all but indicted her judgment and competence on Tuesday - two vital pillars of her presidential candidacy - and in the kind of terms that would be politically devastating in a normal election year. ..."
Hillary Clinton may not be indicted on criminal charges over her handling of classified email, but the
F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, all but indicted her judgment and competence on Tuesday - two vital pillars of her presidential
candidacy - and in the kind of terms that would be politically devastating in a normal election year.
... ... ...
To her charge that he is "reckless," Mr. Trump may now respond by citing Mr. Comey's rebuke: that Mrs. Clinton and her team "were
extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information."
To her promises to defend the United States, Mr. Trump may now retort with Mr. Comey's warning that "it is possible that hostile
actors gained access" to Mrs. Clinton's email account and the top secret information it contained.
And to her reproofs about his temperament and responsibility, Mr. Trump may now point to Mr. Comey's finding that "there is evidence
of potential violations of the statutes" on handling classified information - though Mr. Comey said that other factors, like Mrs.
Clinton's intent, argued against criminal charges.
Worst of all was the totality of Mr. Comey's judgment about Mrs. Clinton's judgment.
She is running as a supremely competent candidate and portraying Mr. Trump, in essence, as irresponsible and dangerous. Yet the
director of the F.B.I. basically just called her out for having committed one of the most irresponsible moves in the modern history
of the State Department.
... ... ...
Her clearest selling point - that she, unlike Mr. Trump, can manage challenging relationships with allies and adversaries - has
now been undercut because she personally mismanaged the safeguarding of national security information.
"... "I thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for personal emails instead of two." – 12 March 2015, New York ..."
"... Comey said that Clinton not only used multiple servers but also "used numerous mobile devices to view and send email" using her personal account, undercutting her justification. ..."
"I thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for personal emails
instead of two." – 12 March 2015, New York
Comey said that Clinton not only used multiple servers but also "used numerous mobile devices to
view and send email" using her personal account, undercutting her justification.
"... The reality is that prosecutors don't normally consider the legislative history or possible unconstitutionality of criminal statutes. Why? Because that's not their job. ..."
"... We can say, accurately, that the judgment of the FBI in its investigation into Clinton and her associates ― and Comey confirmed Clinton was indeed a "subject" of the investigation ― is that Clinton is a criminal. ..."
"... whether criminal statutes on the books had been violated ..."
"... criminal statutes had been violated ..."
"... So, my first point: for Comey to imply that there is any prosecutor in America uncomfortable with the "constitutionality" of criminal statutes predicated on "negligent," "reckless," or "knowing" mental states is not just laughable but an insult to both the prosecutorial class and our entire criminal justice system. Whatever issue Comey may have had with the felony statute he agrees Clinton violated, that wasn't it. ..."
"... specific intent ..."
"... Black's Law Dictionary ..."
"... First he asked, "What would other prosecutors do?" That's not a question prosecutors are charged to ask, and we now see why: as Comey himself concedes, countless prosecutors have already come out in public to say that, had they been investigating Clinton, they would have prosecuted her. A standard for prosecutorial discretion in which you weigh what others in your shoes might do based on some sort of a census leads immediately to madness, not just for the reasons I'm articulating here but many others too numerous to go into in detail in this space. ..."
"... Comey found credible that Clinton had created her private basement server set-up purely out of "convenience"; yet he also found that old servers, once replaced, were "stored and decommissioned in various ways." Wait, "various ways"? If Clinton was trying to create a streamlined, convenient personal process for data storage, why were things handled so haphazardly that Comey himself would say that the servers were dealt with "in various ways" over time? ..."
"... And indeed, the evidence Comey turned up showed that Clinton's staff was aware ― was repeatedly and systematically made aware ― that the Secretary's set-up had the effect of evading FOIA requests. And Clinton was, by her own admission, clear with her inferiors that "avoiding access to the personal" was key to her private basement-server set-up. That's very different from "convenience." ..."
"... completely different and more stringent protocols and requirements for data storage ..."
1. According to Comey, Clinton committed multiple federal felonies and misdemeanors.
Many people will miss this in the wash of punditry from non-attorneys in the mainstream media that
has followed Comey's public remarks and Congressional testimony.
The issue for Comey wasn't that
Clinton hadn't committed any federal crimes, but that in his personal opinion the federal felony
statute Clinton violated (18 U.S.C. 793f) has been too rarely applied for him to feel comfortable
applying it to Clinton. This is quite different from saying that no crime was committed; rather,
Comey's position is that crimes were committed, but he has decided not to prosecute those crimes
because (a) the statute he focused most on has only been used once in the last century (keeping in
mind how relatively rare cases like these are in the first instance, and therefore how rarely we
would naturally expect a statute like this to apply in any case), and (b) he personally believes
that the statute in question might be unconstitutional because, as he put it, it might punish people
for crimes they didn't specifically intend to commit (specifically, it requires only a finding of
"gross negligence," which Comey conceded he could prove). Comey appears to have taken the extraordinary
step of researching the legislative history of this particular criminal statute in order to render
this latter assessment.
The reality is that prosecutors don't normally consider the legislative history or possible
unconstitutionality of criminal statutes. Why? Because that's not their job. Their job is to
apply the laws as written, unless and until they are superseded by new legislation or struck down
by the judicial branch. In Comey's case, this deep dive into the history books is even more
puzzling as, prior to Attorney General Loretta Lynch unethically having a private meeting with Bill
Clinton on an airport tarmac, Comey wasn't even slated to be the final arbiter of whether Clinton
was prosecuted or not. He would have been expected, in a case like this, to note to the Department
of Justice's career prosecutors that the FBI had found evidence of multiple federal crimes, and then
leave it to their prosecutorial discretion as to whether or not to pursue a prosecution. But more
broadly, we must note that when Comey gave his public justification for not bringing charges ― a
public justification in itself highly unusual, and suggestive of the possibility that Comey knew
his inaction was extraordinary, and therefore felt the need to defend himself in equally extraordinary
fashion ― he did not state the truth: that Clinton had committed multiple federal crimes per statutes
presently on the books, and that the lack of a recommendation for prosecution was based not on the
lack of a crime but the lack of prosecutorial will (or, as he might otherwise have put it, the exercise
of prosecutorial discretion).
The danger here is that Americans will now believe many untrue things about the executive branch
of their government. For instance, watching Comey's testimony one might believe that if the executive
branch exercises its prosecutorial discretion and declines to prosecute crimes it determines have
been committed, it means no crimes were committed. In fact, what it means (in a case like this) is
that crimes were committed but will not be prosecuted. We can say, accurately, that the judgment
of the FBI in its investigation into Clinton and her associates ― and Comey confirmed Clinton was
indeed a "subject" of the investigation ― is that Clinton is a criminal. She simply shouldn't,
in the view of the FBI, be prosecuted for her crimes. Prosecutorial discretion of this sort is relatively
common, and indeed should be much more common when it comes to criminal cases involving
poor Americans; instead, we find it most commonly in law enforcement's treatment of Americans with
substantial personal, financial, sociocultural, and legal resources.
Americans might also wrongly believe, watching Comey's testimony, that it is the job of executive-branch
employees to determine which criminal statutes written by the legislative branch will be acknowledged.
While one could argue that this task does fall to the head of the prosecuting authority in a given
instance ― here, Attorney General Loretta Lynch; had an independent prosecutor been secured in this
case, as should have happened, that person, instead ― one could not argue that James Comey's
role in this scenario was to decide which on-the-books criminal statutes matter and which don't.
Indeed, Comey himself said, during his announcement of the FBI's recommendation, that his role was
to refer the case to the DOJ for a "prosecutive decision" ― in other words, the decision on whether
to prosecute wasn't his. His job was only to determine whether criminal statutes on the books
had been violated.
By this test, Comey didn't just not do the job he set out to do, he wildly and irresponsibly
exceeded it, to the point where its original contours were unrecognizable. To be blunt: by obscuring,
in his public remarks and advice to the DOJ, the fact that criminal statutes had been violated
― in favor of observing, more broadly, that there should be no prosecution ― he made it not just
easy but a fait accompli for the media and workaday Americans to think that not only would no prosecution
commence, but that indeed there had been no statutory violations.
Which there were.
Americans might also wrongly take at face value Comey's contention that the felony statute Clinton
violated was unconstitutional ― on the grounds that it criminalizes behavior that does not
include a specific intent to do wrong. This is, as every attorney knows, laughable. Every single
day in America, prosecutors prosecute Americans ― usually but not exclusively poor people ― for crimes
whose governing statutes lack the requirement of "specific intent." Ever heard of negligent homicide?
That's a statute that doesn't require what lawyers call (depending on the jurisdiction) an "intentional"
or "purposeful" mental state. Rather, it requires "negligence." Many other statutes require only
a showing of "recklessness," which likewise is dramatically distinct from "purposeful" or "intentional"
conduct. And an even larger number of statutes have a "knowing" mental state, which Comey well knows
― but the average American does not ― is a general- rather than specific-intent mental state (mens
rea, in legal terms).
And the term "knowingly" is absolutely key to the misdemeanors Comey appears to concede
Clinton committed, but has declined to charge her for.
To discuss what "knowingly" means in the law, I'll start with an example. When I practiced criminal
law in New Hampshire, it was a crime punishable by up to a year in jail to "knowingly cause unprivileged
physical contact with another person." The three key elements to this particular crime, which is
known as Simple Assault, are "knowingly," "unprivileged," and "physical contact." If a prosecutor
can prove each of these elements beyond a reasonable doubt, the defendant could, at the discretion
of a judge, find themselves locked in a cage for a year. "Physical contact" means just about exactly
what you'd expect, as does "unprivileged" ― contact for which you have no claim of privilege, such
as self-defense, defense of another, permission of the alleged victim, and so on. But what the heck
does "knowingly" mean? Well, as any law student can tell you, it means that you were aware of the
physical act you were engaged in, even if you didn't intend the consequences that act caused. For
instance, say you're in the pit at a particularly raucous speed-metal concert, leaping about, as
one does, in close proximity with many other people. Now let's say that after one of your leaps you
land on a young woman's foot and break it. If charged with Simple Assault, your defense won't be
as to your mental state, because you were "knowingly" leaping about, even if you intended no harm
in doing so. Instead, your defense will probably be that the contact (which you also wouldn't contest)
was "privileged," because the young lady had implicitly taken on, as had you, the risks of being
in a pit in the middle of a speed-metal concert. See the difference between knowingly engaging in
a physical act that has hurtful consequences, and "intending" or having as your "purpose" those consequences?
Just so, I've seen juveniles prosecuted for Simple Assault for throwing food during an in-school
cafeteria food fight; in that instance, no one was hurt, nor did anyone intend to hurt anybody, but
"unprivileged physical contact" was "knowingly" made all the same (in this case, via the instrument
of, say, a chicken nugget).
So, my first point: for Comey to imply that there is any prosecutor in America uncomfortable
with the "constitutionality" of criminal statutes predicated on "negligent," "reckless," or "knowing"
mental states is not just laughable but an insult to both the prosecutorial class and our entire
criminal justice system. Whatever issue Comey may have had with the felony statute he agrees Clinton
violated, that wasn't it.
What about the misdemeanor statute?
Well, there's now terrifying evidence available for public consumption to the effect that Director
Comey doesn't understand the use of the word "knowingly" in the law ― indeed, understands it less
than even a law student in his or her first semester would. Just over an hour (at 1:06) into the
six-hour
C-SPAN video of Comey's Congressional testimony, Representative Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) makes a
brief but absolutely unimpeachable case that, using the term "knowingly" as I have here and as it
is used in every courtroom in America, Secretary Clinton committed multiple federal misdemeanors
inasmuch as she, per the relevant statute (Title 18 U.S.C. 1924), "became possessed of documents
or materials containing classified information of the United States....and knowingly removed such
documents or materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents or materials
at an unauthorized location." Comey, misunderstanding the word "knowingly" in a way any law school
student would scream at their TV over, states that the FBI would still, under that statutory language,
need to prove specific intent to convict Clinton of a Title 18 U.S.C. 1924 violation. Lummis
points out that Comey is dead wrong ― and she's right, he is wrong. Per the above, all Clinton
had to be aware of is that (a) she was in possession of classified documents, and (b) she had removed
them to an unauthorized location. Comey admits these two facts are true, and yet he won't prosecute
because he's added a clause that's not in the statute. I can't emphasize this enough: Comey makes
clear with his answers throughout his testimony that Clinton committed this federal misdemeanor,
but equally makes clear that he didn't charge her with it because he didn't understand the statute.
(At 1:53 in the video linked to above, Representative Ken Buck of Colorado goes back to the topic
of Title 18 U.S.C. 1924, locking down that Comey is indeed deliberately adding language to that federal
criminal statute that quite literally is not there.)
Yes, it's true. Watch the video for yourself,
look up the word "knowingly" in Black's Law Dictionary, and you'll see that I'm right.
This is scary stuff for an attorney like me, or really for any of us, to see on television ― a government
attorney with less knowledge of criminal law than a first-year law student.
2. Comey has dramatically misrepresented what prosecutorial discretion looks like.
The result of this is that Americans will fundamentally misunderstand our adversarial system of justice.
Things like our Fourth and Fifth Amendment are part and parcel of our "adversarial" system of
justice. We could have elected, as a nation, to have an "inquisitorial" system of justice ― as some
countries in Europe, with far fewer protections for criminal defendants, do ― but we made the decision
that the best truth-seeking mechanism is one in which two reflexively zealous advocates, a prosecutor
and a defense attorney, push their cases to the utmost of their ability (within certain well-established
ethical strictures).
James Comey, in his testimony before Congress, left the impression that his job as a prosecutor
was to weigh his ability to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt not as a prosecutor, but as a
member of a prospective jury. That's not how things work in America; it certainly, and quite spectacularly,
isn't how it works for poor black men. In fact, what American prosecutors are charged to do is imagine
a situation in which (a) they present their case to a jury as zealously as humanly possible within
the well-established ethical code of the American courtroom, (b) all facts and inferences are taken
by that jury in the prosecution's favor, and then (c) whether, given all those conditions, there
is a reasonable likelihood that all twelve jurors would vote for a conviction.
That is not the standard James Comey used to determine whether to prosecute Hillary Clinton.
What Comey did was something else altogether.
First he asked, "What would other prosecutors do?" That's not a question prosecutors are charged
to ask, and we now see why: as Comey himself concedes, countless prosecutors have already come out
in public to say that, had they been investigating Clinton, they would have prosecuted her. A standard
for prosecutorial discretion in which you weigh what others in your shoes might do based on some
sort of a census leads immediately to madness, not just for the reasons I'm articulating here but
many others too numerous to go into in detail in this space.
The second thing Comey did was ask, "Am I guaranteed to win this case at trial?" Would that
this slowed the roll of prosecutors when dealing with poor black men! Instead, as I discuss later
on, prosecutors ― via the blunt instrument of the grand jury ― usually use the mere fact of misdemeanor
or felony charges against a defendant as a mechanism for ending a case short of trial. Even prosecutors
who ultimately drop a case will charge (misdemeanor) or indict (felony) it first, if only to give
themselves time ― because defendants do have speedy trial rights, and statutes of limitation do sometimes
intercede ― to plan their next move.
Third, Comey imagined his case at trial through the following lens: "How would we do at trial
if the jury took every fact and presumption ― as we already have ― in Clinton's favor?" Indeed, I'm
having more than a hard time ― actually an impossible time ― finding a single unknown or unclear
fact that Comey took in a light unfavorable to Clinton (including, incredibly, the facts that became
unknowable because of Clinton's own actions and evasions). Instead, Hillary was given the benefit
of the doubt at every turn, so much so that it was obvious that the only evidence of "intent" Comey
would accept was a full confession from Clinton. That's something prosecutors rarely get, and certainly
(therefore) never make a prerequisite for prosecution. But Comey clearly did here.
I have never seen this standard used in the prosecution of a poor person. Not once.
3. Comey left the indelible impression, with American news-watchers, that prosecutors
only prosecute specific-intent crimes, and will only find a sufficient mens
rea (mental state) if and when a defendant has confessed. Imagine, for a moment, if
police officers only shot unarmed black men who were in the process of confessing either verbally
("I'm about to pull a gun on you!") or physically (e.g., by assaulting the officer). Impossible to
imagine, right? That's because that's not how this works; indeed, that's not how any of this works.
Prosecutors, like police officers, are, in seeking signs of intent, trained to read ― and conceding
here that some of them do it poorly ― contextual clues that precede, are contemporaneous with, and/or
follow the commission of a crime.
But this apparently doesn't apply to Hillary Clinton.
It would be easier to identify the contextual clues that don't suggest Clinton had consciousness
of guilt than those that do ― as there are exponentially more of the latter than the former.
But let's do our best, and consider just a few of the clear signs that Clinton and her team, judging
them solely by their words and actions, knew that what they were doing was unlawful.
For instance, Clinton repeatedly said she used one server and only one device ― not that she
thought that that was the correct information, but that she knew it was. Yet the
FBI found, per Comey's July 5th statement, that Clinton used "several different servers" and "numerous
mobile devices." So either Clinton didn't know the truth but pretended in all her public statements
that she did; or she was given bad information which she then repeated uncritically, in which case
a prosecutor would demand to know from whom she received that information (as surely that
person would know they'd spread misinformation); or she knew the truth and was lying. A prosecutor
would want clear, on-the-record answers on these issues; instead, Comey let other FBI agents have
an unrecorded, untranscripted interview with Clinton that he himself didn't bother to attend. It's
not even clear that that interview was much considered by the FBI; Comey declared his decision just
a few dozen hours after the interview was over, and word leaked that there would be no indictment
just two hours after the interview. Which, again, incredibly ― and not in keeping with any
law enforcement policy regarding subject interviews I'm aware of ― was unrecorded, untranscripted,
unsworn, and unattended by the lead prosecutor.
This in the context of a year-long investigation for which Clinton was the primary subject.
Since when is an hours-long interview with an investigation's subject so immaterial to the charging
decision? And since when is such an interview treated as such a casual event? Since never. At least
for poor people.
And since when are false exculpatory statements not strong evidence of intent?
Since never - at least for poor people.
Comey found credible that Clinton had created her private basement server set-up purely out
of "convenience"; yet he also found that old servers, once replaced, were "stored and decommissioned
in various ways." Wait, "various ways"? If Clinton was trying to create a streamlined, convenient
personal process for data storage, why were things handled so haphazardly that Comey himself would
say that the servers were dealt with "in various ways" over time? Just so, Comey would naturally
want to test Clinton's narrative by seeing whether or not all FOIA requests were fully responded
to by Clinton and her staff in the four years she was the head of the State Department. Surely, Clinton
and her staff had been fully briefed on their legal obligations under FOIA ― that's provable ― so
if Clinton's "convenience" had caused a conflict with the Secretary's FOIA obligations that would
have been immediately obvious to both Clinton and her staff, and would have been remedied immediately
if the purpose of the server was not to avoid FOIA requests but mere convenience. At a minimum, Comey
would find evidence (either hard or testimonial) that such conversations occurred. And indeed,
the evidence Comey turned up showed that Clinton's staff was aware ― was repeatedly and systematically
made aware ― that the Secretary's set-up had the effect of evading FOIA requests. And Clinton was,
by her own admission, clear with her inferiors that "avoiding access to the personal" was key to
her private basement-server set-up. That's very different from "convenience."
Even if Comey believed that "avoiding access to the personal," rather than "convenience," was
the reason for Clinton's server set-up, that explanation would have imploded under the weight
of evidence Clinton, her team, and her attorneys exercised no due caution whatsoever in determining
what was "personal" and what was not personal when they were wiping those servers clean. If Clinton's
concern was privacy, there's no evidence that much attention was paid to accurately and narrowly
protecting that interest ― rather, the weight of the evidence suggests that the aim, at all times,
was to keep the maximum amount of information away from FOIA discovery, not just "personal" information
but (as Comey found) a wealth of work-related information.
But let's pull back for a moment and be a little less legalistic. Clinton claimed the reason for
her set-up was ― exclusively ― "convenience"; nevertheless, Comey said it took "thousands of hours
of painstaking effort" to "piece back together" exactly what Clinton was up to. Wouldn't that fact
alone give the lie to the claim that this system was more "convenient" than the protocols State already
had in place? "Millions of email fragments ended up in the server's 'slack space'," Comey said of
Clinton's "convenient" email-storage arrangement. See the contradiction? How would "millions of email
fragments ending up in a server's 'slack space'" in any way have served Clinton's presumptive desire
for both (a) convenience, (b) FOIA complicance, (c) a securing of her privacy, and (d) compliance
with State Department email-storage regulations? Would any reasonable person have found this set-up
convenient? And if not ― and Comey explicitly found not ― why in the world didn't that help
to establish the real intent of Clinton's private basement servers? Indeed, had Clinton
intended on complying with FOIA, presumably her own staff would have had to do the very same painstaking
work it took the FBI a year to do. But FOIA requests come in too fast and furious, at State, for
Clinton's staff to do the work it took the FBI a year to do in a matter of days; wouldn't this in
itself establish that Clinton and her staff had no ability, and therefore well knew they had no intention,
of acceding to any of the Department's hundreds or even thousands of annual FOIA requests in full?
And wouldn't ignoring all those requests be not just illegal but "inconvenient" in the extreme? And
speak to the question of intent?
It took Clinton two years to hand over work emails she was supposed to hand over the day she left
office; and during that time, she and her lawyers, some of whom appear to have looked at classified
material without clearance, deleted thousands of "personal" emails ― many of which turned out the
be exactly the sort of work emails she was supposed to turn over the day she left State. In this
situation, an actor acting in good faith would have (a) erred on the side of caution in deleting
emails, (b) responded with far, far more alacrity to the valid demands of State to see all work-related
emails, and (c) having erroneously deleted certain emails, would have rushed to correct the mistake
themselves rather than seeing if they could get away with deleting ― mind you ― not just work emails
but work emails with (in several instances) classified information in them. How in the world was
none of this taken toward the question of intent? Certainly, it was taken toward the finding of "gross
negligence" Comey made, but how in the world was none of it seen as relevant to Clinton's
specific intent also? Why does it seem the only evidence of specific intent Comey would've looked
at was a smoking gun? Does he realize how few criminal cases would ever be brought against anyone
in America if a "smoking gun" standard was in effect? Does anyone realize how many poor black men
wouldn't be in prison if that standard was in effect for them as well as Secretary Clinton?
4. Comey made it seem that the amount and quality of prosecutorial consideration he gave
Clinton was normal. The mere fact that Comey gave public statements justifying his prosecutorial
discretion misleads the public into thinking that, say, poor black men receive this level of care
when prosecutors are choosing whether to indict them.
While at least he had the good grace to call the fact of his making a public statement "unusual"
― chalking it up to the "intense public interest" that meant Clinton (and the public) "deserved"
an explanation for his behavior ― that grace ultimately obscured, rather than underscored, that what
Comey did in publicly justifying his behavior is unheard of in cases involving poor people. In the
real America, prosecutors are basically unaccountable to anyone but their bosses in terms of their
prosecutorial discretion, as cases in which abuse of prosecutorial discretion is successfully alleged
are vanishingly rare. Many are the mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers of poor black men who
would love to have had their sons' (or brothers', or fathers') over-charged criminal cases explained
to them with the sort of care and detail Hillary Clinton naturally receives when she's being investigated.
Clinton and the public "deserve" prosecutorial transparency when the defendant is a Clinton; just
about no one else deserves this level of not just transparency but also ― given the year-long length
of the FBI investigation ― prosecutorial and investigative caution.
What's amazing is how little use Comey actually made of all the extra time and effort. For instance,
on July 5th he said that every email the FBI uncovered was sent to the "owning" organization to see
if they wanted to "up-classify" it ― in other words, declare that it should have been classified
at the time it was sent and/or received, even if not marked that way at the time. One might think
Comey would want this information, the better to determine Clinton's intent with respect to those
emails (i.e., given Clinton's training, knowledge, and experience, how frequently did she "miss"
the classified nature of an email, relative to the assessment of owning agencies that a given email
was effectively and/or should have been considered classified ― even if not marked so ― at the time
Clinton handled it?) Keep in mind, here, that certain types of information, as Clinton without a
doubt knew, are "born classified" whether marked as such or not. And yet, just two days after July
5th, Comey testified before Congress that he "didn't pay much attention" to "up-classified" emails.
Why? Because, said Comey, they couldn't tell him anything about Clinton's intent. Bluntly,
this is an astonishing and indeed embarrassing statement for any prosecutor to make.
Whereas every day knowledge and motives are imparted to poor black men that are, as the poet Claudia
Rankine has observed, purely the product of a police officer's "imagination," the actual and indisputable
knowledge and motives and ― yes ― responsibilities held by Clinton were "downgraded" by Comey to
that of merely an average American. That is, despite the fact that Clinton was one of the most powerful
people on Earth, charged with managing an agency that collects among the highest number of classified
pieces of information of any agency anywhere; despite the fact that Clinton's agency had the strictest
policies for data storage for this very reason; despite the fact that State is, as Clinton well knew,
daily subjected to FOIA requests; despite all this, Comey actually said the following: "Like many
email users, Secretary Clinton periodically deleted emails..."
What?
How in the world does the "many email users" standard come into play here? Clinton's server, unlike
anyone else's server, was set up in a way that permitted no archiving, an arrangement that one now
imagines led (in part) to the person who set up that server taking the Fifth more than a hundred
times in interviews with the FBI; even assuming Clinton didn't know, and didn't request, for her
server to be set up in this astonishing way ― a way, again, that her own employees believe could
incriminate them ― how in the world could she have been sanguine about deleting emails "like many
email users" when the agency she headed had completely different and more stringent protocols
and requirements for data storage than just about any government agency on Earth? Just so, once
it was clear that Clinton had deleted (per Comey) "thousands of emails that were work-related" instead
of turning them over to State, in what universe can no intent be implied from the fact that her attorneys
purged 30,000 emails simply by looking at their headers? At what point does Clinton, as
former Secretary of State, begin to have ill intent imputed to her by not directing her attorneys
to actually read emails before permanently destroying them and making them unavailable to the FBI
as evidence? If you were in her situation, and instead of saying to your team either (a) "don't delete
any more emails," or (b) "if you delete any emails, make sure you've read them in full first," would
you expect anyone to impute "no specific intent" to your behavior?
The result: despite saying she never sent or received emails on her private basement server that
were classified "at the time," the FBI found that 52 email chains on Clinton's server ― including
110 emails ― contained information that was classified at the time (eight chains contained
"top secret" information; 36, "secret" information; and another eight "confidential" information).
Moreover, Clinton's team wrongly purged ― at a minimum ― "thousands" of work-related emails. (And
I'm putting aside entirely here the 2,000 emails on Clinton's server that were later "up-classified.")
At what point does this harm become foreseeable, and not seeing it ― when you're one of the best-educated,
smartest, most experienced public servants in U.S. history, as your political team keeps reminding
us ― become evidence of "intent"? Comey's answer? Never.
Indeed, Comey instead makes the positively fantastical observation that "none [of the emails Clinton
didn't turn over but was supposed to] were intentionally deleted." The problem is, by Comey's own
admission all of those emails were intentionally deleted, under circumstances in which the
problems with that deletion would not just have been evident to "any reasonable person" but specifically
were clear ― the context proves it ― to Clinton herself. During her four years as Secretary of State
Clinton routinely expressed concern to staff about her own and others' email-storage practices, establishing
beyond any doubt that not only was Clinton's literal key-pressing deliberate ― the "knowing" standard
― but also its repeated, systemic effect was fully appreciated by her in advance. Likewise, that
her attorneys were acting entirely on their own prerogative, without her knowledge, is a claim no
jury would credit.
Clinton's attorneys worked Clinton's case in consultation with Clinton ― that's how things work.
In other words, Clinton's lawyers are not rogue actors here. So when Comey says, "They [Clinton and
her team] deleted all emails they did not produce for State, and the lawyers then cleaned their devices
in such a way as to preclude complete forensic recovery," we have to ask, what possible reason would
an attorney have for wiping a server entirely within their control to ensure that no future court
order could access the permanently deleted information? In what universe is such behavior not
actual consciousness of guilt with respect to the destruction of evidence? Because we must be clear:
Comey isn't saying Clinton and her lawyers accidentally put these emails outside even a hypothetical
future judicial review; they did so intentionally.
There's that word again.
The result of these actions? The same as every other action Clinton took that Comey somehow
attributes no intent to: a clear legal benefit to Clinton and a frustration, indeed an obstruction,
of the FBI's investigation. As Comey said on July 5th, the FBI can't know how many emails are "gone"
(i.e., permanently) because of Clinton and her team's intentional acts after-the-fact. So Comey is
quite literally telling us that the FBI couldn't conclude their investigation with absolute confidence
that they had all the relevant facts, and that the reason for this was the intentional destruction
of evidence by the subject of the investigation at a time when there was no earthly reason to destroy
evidence except to keep it from the FBI.
In case you're wondering, no, you don't need a legal degree to see the problem there.
As an attorney, I can't imagine destroying evidence at a time I knew it was the subject of a federal
investigation. And if I ever were to do something like that, I would certainly assume that all such
actions would later be deemed "intentional" by law enforcement, as my intent would be inferred from
my training, knowledge, and experience as an attorney, as well as my specific awareness of a pending
federal investigation in which the items I was destroying might later become key evidence. That Clinton
and her team repeatedly (and falsely) claimed the FBI investigation was a mere "security review"
― yet another assertion whose falseness was resoundingly noted by Comey in his public statements
― was clearly a transparent attempt to negate intent in destroying those emails. (The theory being,
"Well, yes, I destroyed possible evidence just by looking at email headers, but this was all just
a 'security review,' right? Not a federal investigation? Even though I knew the three grounds
for referral of the case to the FBI, and knew that only one of them involved anything like a 'security
review'?")
And certainly, none of this explains Comey's (again) gymnastic avoidance of stating the obvious:
that crimes were committed.
Listen to his language on July 5th: "Although we did not find clear evidence that Clinton or her
colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information" (emphasis
in original) ― actually, let's stop there. You'd expect the second half of that sentence to be something
like, "...they nevertheless did violate those laws, despite not intending to." It's the natural continuation
of the thought. Instead, Comey, who had prepared his remarks in advance, finished the thought this
way: "....there is evidence that they were extremely careless with very sensitive, highly
classified information" (emphasis in original).
Note that Comey now uses the phrase "extremely careless" instead of "gross negligence," despite
using the latter phrase ― a legal phrase ― at the beginning of his July 5th remarks. That matters
because at the beginning of those remarks he conceded "gross negligence" would lead to a statutory
violation. So why the sudden shift in language, when from a legal standpoint "extreme carelessness"
and "gross negligence" are synonymous ― both indicating the presence of a duty of care, the failure
to meet that duty, and moreover a repeated failure on this score? Comey also avoids finishing
his sentence with the obvious thought: that they may not have intended to violate criminal
statutes, but they did nonetheless. Remember that, just like our hypothetical raver may not have
intended to commit a Simple Assault by stepping on that poor young woman's foot, he nevertheless
could be found to have done so; just so, had Comey accepted the statute as written, Clinton's "gross
negligence" would have forced him to end the above sentence with the finding of a statutory violation,
even if there had been no "specific intent" to do so.
This is how the law works. For poor black men, just not for rich white women.
5. Comey, along with the rest of Congress, left the impression, much like the Supreme
Court did in 2000, that legal analyses are fundamentally political analyses. Not only is
this untrue, it also is unspeakably damaging to both our legal system and Americans' understanding
of that system's operations.
I'm a staunch Democrat, but I'm also an attorney. Watching fellow Democrats twist themselves into
pretzels to analyze Clinton's actions through a farcically slapdash legal framework, rather than
merely acknowledging that Clinton is a human being and, like any human being, can both (a) commit
crimes, and (b) be replaced on a political ticket if need be, makes me sick as both a Democrat and
a lawyer. Just so, watching Republicans who had no issue with George W. Bush declaring unilateral
war in contravention of international law, and who had no issue with the obviously illegal behavior
of Scooter Libby in another recent high-profile intel-related criminal case, acting like the rule
of law is anything they care about makes me sick. Our government is dirty as all get-out, but the
one thing it's apparently clean of is anyone with both (a) legal training, and (b) a sense of the
ethics that govern legal practice. Over and over during Comey's Congressional testimony I heard politicians
noting their legal experience, and then going on to either shame their association with that august
profession or honor it but (in doing so) call into question their inability or unwillingness to do
so in other instances.
When Comey says, "any reasonable person should have known" not to act as Clinton did, many don't
realize he's quoting a legal standard ― the "reasonable person standard." A failure to meet that
standard can be used to establish either negligence or recklessness in a court of law. But here,
Clinton wasn't in the position of a "reasonable person" ― the average fellow or lady ― and Comey
wasn't looking merely at a "reasonableness" standard, but rather a "purposeful" standard that requires
Comey to ask all sorts of questions about Clinton's specific, fully contextualized situation and
background that he doesn't appear to have asked. One might argue that, in keeping with Clinton's
campaign theme, no one in American political history was more richly prepared ― by knowledge, training,
experience, and innate gifts ― to know how to act properly in the situations Clinton found herself.
That in those situations she failed to act even as a man or woman taken off the street and put in
a similar situation would have acted is not indicative of innocence or a lack of specific intent,
but the opposite. If a reasonable person wouldn't have done what Clinton did, the most exquisitely
prepared person for the situations in which Clinton found herself must in fact have been providing
prosecutors with prima facie evidence of intent by failing to meet even the lowest threshold
for proper conduct. Comey knows this; any prosecutor knows this. Maybe a jury would disagree with
Comey on this point, but his job is to assume that, if he zealously advocates for this extremely
powerful circumstantial case, a reasonable jury, taking the facts in the light most favorable to
the government, would see things his way.
Look, I can't possibly summarize for anyone reading this the silly nonsense I have seen prosecutors
indict people for; a common saying in the law is that the average grand jury "would indict a ham
sandwich," and to be clear that happens not because the run-of-the-mill citizens who sit on grand
juries are bloodthirsty, but because the habitual practice of American prosecutors is to indict first
and ask questions later ― and because indictments are absurdly easy to acquire. In other words, I've
seen thousands of poor people get over-charged for either nonsense or nothing at all, only to have
their prosecutors attempt to leverage their flimsy cases into a plea deal to a lesser charge. By
comparison, it is evident to every defense attorney of my acquaintance that I've spoken to that James
Comey bent over backwards to not indict Hillary Clinton ― much like the hundreds of state
and federal prosecutors who have bent over backwards not to indict police officers over the past
few decades. Every attorney who's practiced in criminal courts for years can smell when the fix is
in ― can hear and see when the court's usual actors are acting highly unusually ― and that's what's
happened here. The tragedy is that it will convince Americans that our legal system is fundamentally
about what a prosecutor feels they can and should be able to get away with, an answer informed largely,
it will seem to many, by various attorneys' personal temperaments and political prejudices.
No one in America who's dedicated their life to the law can feel any satisfaction with how Hillary
Clinton's case was investigated or ultimately disposed of, no more than we can feel sanguine about
prosecutors whose approach to poor black defendants is draconian and to embattled police officers
positively beatific. What we need in Congress, and in prosecutor's offices, are men and women of
principle who act in accordance with their ethical charge no matter the circumstances. While James
Comey is not a political hack, and was not, I don't believe, in any sense acting conspiratorially
in not bringing charges against Hillary Clinton, I believe that, much like SCOTUS did not
decide in the 2000 voting rights case Bush v. Gore, Comey felt that this was a bad time
for an executive-branch officer to interfere with the workings of domestic politics. Perhaps Comey
had the best of intentions in not doing his duty; perhaps he thought letting voters, not prosecutors,
decide the 2016 election was his civic duty. Many Democrats could wish the Supreme Court had felt
the same way in 2000 with respect to the role of judges. But the fact remains that the non-indictment
of Hillary Clinton is as much a stain on the fair and equal administration of justice as is the disparate
treatment of poor black males at all stages of the criminal justice system. I witnessed the latter
injustice close up, nearly every day, during my seven years working as a public defender; now America
has seen the same thing, albeit on a very different stage, involving a defendant of a very different
class and hue.
To have prosecuted Clinton, said Comey, he would need to have seen "clearly intentional and willful
mishandling of classified information, or vast quantities of information exposed in such a way as
to support an inference of intentional misconduct, or....efforts to obstruct justice..." When Comey
concludes, "we do not see those things here," America should ― and indeed must ― wonder what facts
he could possibly be looking at, and, moreover, what understanding of his role in American life he
could possibly be acting upon. The answers to these two questions would take us at least two steps
forward in discussing how average Americans are treated by our increasingly dysfunctional system
of justice.
Seth Abramson is the Series Editor for Best American Experimental Writing (Wesleyan University)
and the author, most recently, of
DATA (BlazeVOX, 2016).
Neoliberal MSM response to latest FBI director Comey testimony is a textbook example of brainwashing (or groupthink). It shows to
me again that you need to go to the source watch at least the fragments of the testimony on YouTube. It deadly serious situation for
Hillary. No person with even cursory knowledge of security can avoid thinking that she should be in jail. Republicans know it and will
not let her off the hook. Probably special prosecutor will be appointed. See for example
https://judiciary.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/House-Letter-to-FBI-Director-1.pdf
Now Comey is under strong fire and need to save his own skin. You can tell anything about Republican members of House of Representative,
but it is now quite clear to me that several of them are brilliant former lawyers/prosecutor/judges.
From now on they will block all attempt to swipe this matter under the carpet and unless Hillary withdraw they might try to implicate
Obama in the cover-up (and they have facts: he recklessly corresponded with her on this account).
They already requested all FBI files on Clinton. Soon they will have all the dirty laundering from Hillary server and FBI probably
recovered most of it.
From this point it is up-hill battle for Obama, and might well think about finding appropriate sacrificial lamp NOW. My impression
is that she lost her chance to became the President. With FBI files in hand, In four month they can do so much damage that she would
be better to take her toys and leave the playground.
And this topic hopefully already influence super-delegates. I think her best option now is give Sanders a chance. Because the real
threat now is not that she will go to jail. She belongs to the elite and is above the law. Now the real threat is that all her close
associates might.
On Tuesday, the FBI assumed the role of prosecutor and not simply investigator and took the unprecedented act of proclaiming that
no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Based on the perception that a decision has been made by the FBI that has seemingly
ignored facts that the FBI itself found in its own investigation, we have additional questions that are aimed at ensuring that the
cloud which now hovers over our justice system is at least minimally pierced:
1) As a former prosecutor, please explain your understanding of the legal difference between actions performed with "gross negligence"
and those done "extremely carelessly." How did you determine that "extreme carelessness" did not equate to "gross negligence?"
2) You said that no reasonable prosecutor would decide to prosecute the Clinton case on the evidence found by FBI agents during
the Bureau's investigation over the past year. We have multiple former prosecutors in Congress, and it is not far-fetched for many
of us to envision a successful prosecution of someone for doing far less than that which was committed by Secretary Clinton. Is your
statement not an indictment and prejudgment against any Assistant United States Attorney who is now tasked with reviewing the evidence
you presented Tuesday? In your judgment, does it not follow that you would think that a prosecutor who moved forward with the instant
prosecution of Secretary Clinton would be "unreasonable?"
3) Are you aware of any internal opinions by FBI agents or management who were intimately aware of the Clinton investigation which
differed from your eventual decision to not recommend the case for prosecution?
4) You mentioned that Top Secret Special Access Programs (SAPs) were included in emails sent and received by Secretary Clinton. SAP
material is some of the most highly classified and controlled material of the U.S. Government. If an agency of the U.S. Government
were to encounter similar information from a foreign adversary, it would be extremely valuable data for us to exploit. Did the FBI
assess how SAP information, due to its controlled nature, ever made it onto unclassified systems that were not air-gapped or physically
blocked from outside Internet access? Is it not "gross negligence" to permit such SAP data to leave the confines of the most protective
and secure governmental enclaves? Or even "intentional" conduct that allowed that to happen?
5) You mentioned that this investigation
stemmed from a referral from the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community to determine whether classified information had
been transmitted on an unclassified personal system. Following your investigation, it is clear that Secretary Clinton transmitted
classified information on an unclassified system. Secretary Clinton on multiple occasions has said that she did not send or receive
classified information or information marked as classified.3 In light of your decision to also not refer a false statements charge
under 18 U.S.C. § 1001 for prosecution, we can only presume that Secretary Clinton admitted during her interview with your agents
that she, in fact, sent and received emails containing classified information. Please confirm.
6) Are you aware of whether any deleted emails which the FBI was able to forensically recover from Secretary Clinton's servers
pertained to the Clinton Foundation?
7) You stated Tuesday, "Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary
Clinton's personal e-mail account." Is the FBI's Counterintelligence Division still involved in determining the level of damage related
to possible exploitation of Secretary Clinton's or her associates' email accounts and other communications?
8) If the FBI performed a background check on an applicant for employment with the FBI or elsewhere in the U.S. Government, and
that applicant engaged in conduct committed by Secretary Clinton, would a security clearance ever be granted to that person?
Mr. Comey said the emails included eight chains of emails and replies, some written by her, that contained information classified
as "top secret: special access programs." That classification is the highest level, reserved for the nation's most highly guarded
intelligence operations or sources.
Another 36 chains were "secret," which is defined as including information that "could be expected to cause serious damage to
the national security"; eight others had information classified at the lowest level, "confidential."
"... The reality is that prosecutors don't normally consider the legislative history or possible unconstitutionality of criminal statutes. Why? Because that's not their job. ..."
"... We can say, accurately, that the judgment of the FBI in its investigation into Clinton and her associates ― and Comey confirmed Clinton was indeed a "subject" of the investigation ― is that Clinton is a criminal. ..."
"... whether criminal statutes on the books had been violated ..."
"... criminal statutes had been violated ..."
"... So, my first point: for Comey to imply that there is any prosecutor in America uncomfortable with the "constitutionality" of criminal statutes predicated on "negligent," "reckless," or "knowing" mental states is not just laughable but an insult to both the prosecutorial class and our entire criminal justice system. Whatever issue Comey may have had with the felony statute he agrees Clinton violated, that wasn't it. ..."
"... specific intent ..."
"... Black's Law Dictionary ..."
"... First he asked, "What would other prosecutors do?" That's not a question prosecutors are charged to ask, and we now see why: as Comey himself concedes, countless prosecutors have already come out in public to say that, had they been investigating Clinton, they would have prosecuted her. A standard for prosecutorial discretion in which you weigh what others in your shoes might do based on some sort of a census leads immediately to madness, not just for the reasons I'm articulating here but many others too numerous to go into in detail in this space. ..."
"... Comey found credible that Clinton had created her private basement server set-up purely out of "convenience"; yet he also found that old servers, once replaced, were "stored and decommissioned in various ways." Wait, "various ways"? If Clinton was trying to create a streamlined, convenient personal process for data storage, why were things handled so haphazardly that Comey himself would say that the servers were dealt with "in various ways" over time? ..."
"... And indeed, the evidence Comey turned up showed that Clinton's staff was aware ― was repeatedly and systematically made aware ― that the Secretary's set-up had the effect of evading FOIA requests. And Clinton was, by her own admission, clear with her inferiors that "avoiding access to the personal" was key to her private basement-server set-up. That's very different from "convenience." ..."
"... completely different and more stringent protocols and requirements for data storage ..."
"... simply by looking at their headers ..."
"... every other action ..."
"... Seth Abramson is the Series Editor for Best American Experimental Writing (Wesleyan University) and the author, most recently, of DATA (BlazeVOX, 2016). ..."
1. According to Comey, Clinton committed multiple federal felonies and misdemeanors.
Many people will miss this in the wash of punditry from non-attorneys in the mainstream media that
has followed Comey's public remarks and Congressional testimony.
The issue for Comey wasn't that
Clinton hadn't committed any federal crimes, but that in his personal opinion the federal felony
statute Clinton violated (18 U.S.C. 793f) has been too rarely applied for him to feel comfortable
applying it to Clinton. This is quite different from saying that no crime was committed; rather,
Comey's position is that crimes were committed, but he has decided not to prosecute those crimes
because (a) the statute he focused most on has only been used once in the last century (keeping in
mind how relatively rare cases like these are in the first instance, and therefore how rarely we
would naturally expect a statute like this to apply in any case), and (b) he personally believes
that the statute in question might be unconstitutional because, as he put it, it might punish people
for crimes they didn't specifically intend to commit (specifically, it requires only a finding of
"gross negligence," which Comey conceded he could prove). Comey appears to have taken the extraordinary
step of researching the legislative history of this particular criminal statute in order to render
this latter assessment.
The reality is that prosecutors don't normally consider the legislative history or possible
unconstitutionality of criminal statutes. Why? Because that's not their job. Their job is to
apply the laws as written, unless and until they are superseded by new legislation or struck down
by the judicial branch. In Comey's case, this deep dive into the history books is even more
puzzling as, prior to Attorney General Loretta Lynch unethically having a private meeting with Bill
Clinton on an airport tarmac, Comey wasn't even slated to be the final arbiter of whether Clinton
was prosecuted or not. He would have been expected, in a case like this, to note to the Department
of Justice's career prosecutors that the FBI had found evidence of multiple federal crimes, and then
leave it to their prosecutorial discretion as to whether or not to pursue a prosecution. But more
broadly, we must note that when Comey gave his public justification for not bringing charges ― a
public justification in itself highly unusual, and suggestive of the possibility that Comey knew
his inaction was extraordinary, and therefore felt the need to defend himself in equally extraordinary
fashion ― he did not state the truth: that Clinton had committed multiple federal crimes per statutes
presently on the books, and that the lack of a recommendation for prosecution was based not on the
lack of a crime but the lack of prosecutorial will (or, as he might otherwise have put it, the exercise
of prosecutorial discretion).
The danger here is that Americans will now believe many untrue things about the executive branch
of their government. For instance, watching Comey's testimony one might believe that if the executive
branch exercises its prosecutorial discretion and declines to prosecute crimes it determines have
been committed, it means no crimes were committed. In fact, what it means (in a case like this) is
that crimes were committed but will not be prosecuted. We can say, accurately, that the judgment
of the FBI in its investigation into Clinton and her associates ― and Comey confirmed Clinton was
indeed a "subject" of the investigation ― is that Clinton is a criminal. She simply shouldn't,
in the view of the FBI, be prosecuted for her crimes. Prosecutorial discretion of this sort is relatively
common, and indeed should be much more common when it comes to criminal cases involving
poor Americans; instead, we find it most commonly in law enforcement's treatment of Americans with
substantial personal, financial, sociocultural, and legal resources.
Americans might also wrongly believe, watching Comey's testimony, that it is the job of executive-branch
employees to determine which criminal statutes written by the legislative branch will be acknowledged.
While one could argue that this task does fall to the head of the prosecuting authority in a given
instance ― here, Attorney General Loretta Lynch; had an independent prosecutor been secured in this
case, as should have happened, that person, instead ― one could not argue that James Comey's
role in this scenario was to decide which on-the-books criminal statutes matter and which don't.
Indeed, Comey himself said, during his announcement of the FBI's recommendation, that his role was
to refer the case to the DOJ for a "prosecutive decision" ― in other words, the decision on whether
to prosecute wasn't his. His job was only to determine whether criminal statutes on the books
had been violated.
By this test, Comey didn't just not do the job he set out to do, he wildly and irresponsibly
exceeded it, to the point where its original contours were unrecognizable. To be blunt: by obscuring,
in his public remarks and advice to the DOJ, the fact that criminal statutes had been violated
― in favor of observing, more broadly, that there should be no prosecution ― he made it not just
easy but a fait accompli for the media and workaday Americans to think that not only would no prosecution
commence, but that indeed there had been no statutory violations.
Which there were.
Americans might also wrongly take at face value Comey's contention that the felony statute Clinton
violated was unconstitutional ― on the grounds that it criminalizes behavior that does not
include a specific intent to do wrong. This is, as every attorney knows, laughable. Every single
day in America, prosecutors prosecute Americans ― usually but not exclusively poor people ― for crimes
whose governing statutes lack the requirement of "specific intent." Ever heard of negligent homicide?
That's a statute that doesn't require what lawyers call (depending on the jurisdiction) an "intentional"
or "purposeful" mental state. Rather, it requires "negligence." Many other statutes require only
a showing of "recklessness," which likewise is dramatically distinct from "purposeful" or "intentional"
conduct. And an even larger number of statutes have a "knowing" mental state, which Comey well knows
― but the average American does not ― is a general- rather than specific-intent mental state (mens
rea, in legal terms).
And the term "knowingly" is absolutely key to the misdemeanors Comey appears to concede
Clinton committed, but has declined to charge her for.
To discuss what "knowingly" means in the law, I'll start with an example. When I practiced criminal
law in New Hampshire, it was a crime punishable by up to a year in jail to "knowingly cause unprivileged
physical contact with another person." The three key elements to this particular crime, which is
known as Simple Assault, are "knowingly," "unprivileged," and "physical contact." If a prosecutor
can prove each of these elements beyond a reasonable doubt, the defendant could, at the discretion
of a judge, find themselves locked in a cage for a year. "Physical contact" means just about exactly
what you'd expect, as does "unprivileged" ― contact for which you have no claim of privilege, such
as self-defense, defense of another, permission of the alleged victim, and so on. But what the heck
does "knowingly" mean? Well, as any law student can tell you, it means that you were aware of the
physical act you were engaged in, even if you didn't intend the consequences that act caused. For
instance, say you're in the pit at a particularly raucous speed-metal concert, leaping about, as
one does, in close proximity with many other people. Now let's say that after one of your leaps you
land on a young woman's foot and break it. If charged with Simple Assault, your defense won't be
as to your mental state, because you were "knowingly" leaping about, even if you intended no harm
in doing so. Instead, your defense will probably be that the contact (which you also wouldn't contest)
was "privileged," because the young lady had implicitly taken on, as had you, the risks of being
in a pit in the middle of a speed-metal concert. See the difference between knowingly engaging in
a physical act that has hurtful consequences, and "intending" or having as your "purpose" those consequences?
Just so, I've seen juveniles prosecuted for Simple Assault for throwing food during an in-school
cafeteria food fight; in that instance, no one was hurt, nor did anyone intend to hurt anybody, but
"unprivileged physical contact" was "knowingly" made all the same (in this case, via the instrument
of, say, a chicken nugget).
So, my first point: for Comey to imply that there is any prosecutor in America uncomfortable
with the "constitutionality" of criminal statutes predicated on "negligent," "reckless," or "knowing"
mental states is not just laughable but an insult to both the prosecutorial class and our entire
criminal justice system. Whatever issue Comey may have had with the felony statute he agrees Clinton
violated, that wasn't it.
What about the misdemeanor statute?
Well, there's now terrifying evidence available for public consumption to the effect that Director
Comey doesn't understand the use of the word "knowingly" in the law ― indeed, understands it less
than even a law student in his or her first semester would. Just over an hour (at 1:06) into the
six-hour
C-SPAN video of Comey's Congressional testimony, Representative Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) makes a
brief but absolutely unimpeachable case that, using the term "knowingly" as I have here and as it
is used in every courtroom in America, Secretary Clinton committed multiple federal misdemeanors
inasmuch as she, per the relevant statute (Title 18 U.S.C. 1924), "became possessed of documents
or materials containing classified information of the United States....and knowingly removed such
documents or materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents or materials
at an unauthorized location." Comey, misunderstanding the word "knowingly" in a way any law school
student would scream at their TV over, states that the FBI would still, under that statutory language,
need to prove specific intent to convict Clinton of a Title 18 U.S.C. 1924 violation. Lummis
points out that Comey is dead wrong ― and she's right, he is wrong. Per the above, all Clinton
had to be aware of is that (a) she was in possession of classified documents, and (b) she had removed
them to an unauthorized location. Comey admits these two facts are true, and yet he won't prosecute
because he's added a clause that's not in the statute. I can't emphasize this enough: Comey makes
clear with his answers throughout his testimony that Clinton committed this federal misdemeanor,
but equally makes clear that he didn't charge her with it because he didn't understand the statute.
(At 1:53 in the video linked to above, Representative Ken Buck of Colorado goes back to the topic
of Title 18 U.S.C. 1924, locking down that Comey is indeed deliberately adding language to that federal
criminal statute that quite literally is not there.)
Yes, it's true. Watch the video for yourself,
look up the word "knowingly" in Black's Law Dictionary, and you'll see that I'm right.
This is scary stuff for an attorney like me, or really for any of us, to see on television ― a government
attorney with less knowledge of criminal law than a first-year law student.
2. Comey has dramatically misrepresented what prosecutorial discretion looks like.
The result of this is that Americans will fundamentally misunderstand our adversarial system of justice.
Things like our Fourth and Fifth Amendment are part and parcel of our "adversarial" system of
justice. We could have elected, as a nation, to have an "inquisitorial" system of justice ― as some
countries in Europe, with far fewer protections for criminal defendants, do ― but we made the decision
that the best truth-seeking mechanism is one in which two reflexively zealous advocates, a prosecutor
and a defense attorney, push their cases to the utmost of their ability (within certain well-established
ethical strictures).
James Comey, in his testimony before Congress, left the impression that his job as a prosecutor
was to weigh his ability to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt not as a prosecutor, but as a
member of a prospective jury. That's not how things work in America; it certainly, and quite spectacularly,
isn't how it works for poor black men. In fact, what American prosecutors are charged to do is imagine
a situation in which (a) they present their case to a jury as zealously as humanly possible within
the well-established ethical code of the American courtroom, (b) all facts and inferences are taken
by that jury in the prosecution's favor, and then (c) whether, given all those conditions, there
is a reasonable likelihood that all twelve jurors would vote for a conviction.
That is not the standard James Comey used to determine whether to prosecute Hillary Clinton.
What Comey did was something else altogether.
First he asked, "What would other prosecutors do?" That's not a question prosecutors are charged
to ask, and we now see why: as Comey himself concedes, countless prosecutors have already come out
in public to say that, had they been investigating Clinton, they would have prosecuted her. A standard
for prosecutorial discretion in which you weigh what others in your shoes might do based on some
sort of a census leads immediately to madness, not just for the reasons I'm articulating here but
many others too numerous to go into in detail in this space.
The second thing Comey did was ask, "Am I guaranteed to win this case at trial?" Would that
this slowed the roll of prosecutors when dealing with poor black men! Instead, as I discuss later
on, prosecutors ― via the blunt instrument of the grand jury ― usually use the mere fact of misdemeanor
or felony charges against a defendant as a mechanism for ending a case short of trial. Even prosecutors
who ultimately drop a case will charge (misdemeanor) or indict (felony) it first, if only to give
themselves time ― because defendants do have speedy trial rights, and statutes of limitation do sometimes
intercede ― to plan their next move.
Third, Comey imagined his case at trial through the following lens: "How would we do at trial
if the jury took every fact and presumption ― as we already have ― in Clinton's favor?" Indeed, I'm
having more than a hard time ― actually an impossible time ― finding a single unknown or unclear
fact that Comey took in a light unfavorable to Clinton (including, incredibly, the facts that became
unknowable because of Clinton's own actions and evasions). Instead, Hillary was given the benefit
of the doubt at every turn, so much so that it was obvious that the only evidence of "intent" Comey
would accept was a full confession from Clinton. That's something prosecutors rarely get, and certainly
(therefore) never make a prerequisite for prosecution. But Comey clearly did here.
I have never seen this standard used in the prosecution of a poor person. Not once.
3. Comey left the indelible impression, with American news-watchers, that prosecutors
only prosecute specific-intent crimes, and will only find a sufficient mens
rea (mental state) if and when a defendant has confessed. Imagine, for a moment, if
police officers only shot unarmed black men who were in the process of confessing either verbally
("I'm about to pull a gun on you!") or physically (e.g., by assaulting the officer). Impossible to
imagine, right? That's because that's not how this works; indeed, that's not how any of this works.
Prosecutors, like police officers, are, in seeking signs of intent, trained to read ― and conceding
here that some of them do it poorly ― contextual clues that precede, are contemporaneous with, and/or
follow the commission of a crime.
But this apparently doesn't apply to Hillary Clinton.
It would be easier to identify the contextual clues that don't suggest Clinton had consciousness
of guilt than those that do ― as there are exponentially more of the latter than the former.
But let's do our best, and consider just a few of the clear signs that Clinton and her team, judging
them solely by their words and actions, knew that what they were doing was unlawful.
For instance, Clinton repeatedly said she used one server and only one device ― not that she
thought that that was the correct information, but that she knew it was. Yet the
FBI found, per Comey's July 5th statement, that Clinton used "several different servers" and "numerous
mobile devices." So either Clinton didn't know the truth but pretended in all her public statements
that she did; or she was given bad information which she then repeated uncritically, in which case
a prosecutor would demand to know from whom she received that information (as surely that
person would know they'd spread misinformation); or she knew the truth and was lying. A prosecutor
would want clear, on-the-record answers on these issues; instead, Comey let other FBI agents have
an unrecorded, untranscripted interview with Clinton that he himself didn't bother to attend. It's
not even clear that that interview was much considered by the FBI; Comey declared his decision just
a few dozen hours after the interview was over, and word leaked that there would be no indictment
just two hours after the interview. Which, again, incredibly ― and not in keeping with any
law enforcement policy regarding subject interviews I'm aware of ― was unrecorded, untranscripted,
unsworn, and unattended by the lead prosecutor.
This in the context of a year-long investigation for which Clinton was the primary subject.
Since when is an hours-long interview with an investigation's subject so immaterial to the charging
decision? And since when is such an interview treated as such a casual event? Since never. At least
for poor people.
And since when are false exculpatory statements not strong evidence of intent?
Since never - at least for poor people.
Comey found credible that Clinton had created her private basement server set-up purely out
of "convenience"; yet he also found that old servers, once replaced, were "stored and decommissioned
in various ways." Wait, "various ways"? If Clinton was trying to create a streamlined, convenient
personal process for data storage, why were things handled so haphazardly that Comey himself would
say that the servers were dealt with "in various ways" over time? Just so, Comey would naturally
want to test Clinton's narrative by seeing whether or not all FOIA requests were fully responded
to by Clinton and her staff in the four years she was the head of the State Department. Surely, Clinton
and her staff had been fully briefed on their legal obligations under FOIA ― that's provable ― so
if Clinton's "convenience" had caused a conflict with the Secretary's FOIA obligations that would
have been immediately obvious to both Clinton and her staff, and would have been remedied immediately
if the purpose of the server was not to avoid FOIA requests but mere convenience. At a minimum, Comey
would find evidence (either hard or testimonial) that such conversations occurred. And indeed,
the evidence Comey turned up showed that Clinton's staff was aware ― was repeatedly and systematically
made aware ― that the Secretary's set-up had the effect of evading FOIA requests. And Clinton was,
by her own admission, clear with her inferiors that "avoiding access to the personal" was key to
her private basement-server set-up. That's very different from "convenience."
Even if Comey believed that "avoiding access to the personal," rather than "convenience," was
the reason for Clinton's server set-up, that explanation would have imploded under the weight
of evidence Clinton, her team, and her attorneys exercised no due caution whatsoever in determining
what was "personal" and what was not personal when they were wiping those servers clean. If Clinton's
concern was privacy, there's no evidence that much attention was paid to accurately and narrowly
protecting that interest ― rather, the weight of the evidence suggests that the aim, at all times,
was to keep the maximum amount of information away from FOIA discovery, not just "personal" information
but (as Comey found) a wealth of work-related information.
But let's pull back for a moment and be a little less legalistic. Clinton claimed the reason for
her set-up was ― exclusively ― "convenience"; nevertheless, Comey said it took "thousands of hours
of painstaking effort" to "piece back together" exactly what Clinton was up to. Wouldn't that fact
alone give the lie to the claim that this system was more "convenient" than the protocols State already
had in place? "Millions of email fragments ended up in the server's 'slack space'," Comey said of
Clinton's "convenient" email-storage arrangement. See the contradiction? How would "millions of email
fragments ending up in a server's 'slack space'" in any way have served Clinton's presumptive desire
for both (a) convenience, (b) FOIA complicance, (c) a securing of her privacy, and (d) compliance
with State Department email-storage regulations? Would any reasonable person have found this set-up
convenient? And if not ― and Comey explicitly found not ― why in the world didn't that help
to establish the real intent of Clinton's private basement servers? Indeed, had Clinton
intended on complying with FOIA, presumably her own staff would have had to do the very same painstaking
work it took the FBI a year to do. But FOIA requests come in too fast and furious, at State, for
Clinton's staff to do the work it took the FBI a year to do in a matter of days; wouldn't this in
itself establish that Clinton and her staff had no ability, and therefore well knew they had no intention,
of acceding to any of the Department's hundreds or even thousands of annual FOIA requests in full?
And wouldn't ignoring all those requests be not just illegal but "inconvenient" in the extreme? And
speak to the question of intent?
It took Clinton two years to hand over work emails she was supposed to hand over the day she left
office; and during that time, she and her lawyers, some of whom appear to have looked at classified
material without clearance, deleted thousands of "personal" emails ― many of which turned out the
be exactly the sort of work emails she was supposed to turn over the day she left State. In this
situation, an actor acting in good faith would have (a) erred on the side of caution in deleting
emails, (b) responded with far, far more alacrity to the valid demands of State to see all work-related
emails, and (c) having erroneously deleted certain emails, would have rushed to correct the mistake
themselves rather than seeing if they could get away with deleting ― mind you ― not just work emails
but work emails with (in several instances) classified information in them. How in the world was
none of this taken toward the question of intent? Certainly, it was taken toward the finding of "gross
negligence" Comey made, but how in the world was none of it seen as relevant to Clinton's
specific intent also? Why does it seem the only evidence of specific intent Comey would've looked
at was a smoking gun? Does he realize how few criminal cases would ever be brought against anyone
in America if a "smoking gun" standard was in effect? Does anyone realize how many poor black men
wouldn't be in prison if that standard was in effect for them as well as Secretary Clinton?
4. Comey made it seem that the amount and quality of prosecutorial consideration he gave
Clinton was normal. The mere fact that Comey gave public statements justifying his prosecutorial
discretion misleads the public into thinking that, say, poor black men receive this level of care
when prosecutors are choosing whether to indict them.
While at least he had the good grace to call the fact of his making a public statement "unusual"
― chalking it up to the "intense public interest" that meant Clinton (and the public) "deserved"
an explanation for his behavior ― that grace ultimately obscured, rather than underscored, that what
Comey did in publicly justifying his behavior is unheard of in cases involving poor people. In the
real America, prosecutors are basically unaccountable to anyone but their bosses in terms of their
prosecutorial discretion, as cases in which abuse of prosecutorial discretion is successfully alleged
are vanishingly rare. Many are the mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers of poor black men who
would love to have had their sons' (or brothers', or fathers') over-charged criminal cases explained
to them with the sort of care and detail Hillary Clinton naturally receives when she's being investigated.
Clinton and the public "deserve" prosecutorial transparency when the defendant is a Clinton; just
about no one else deserves this level of not just transparency but also ― given the year-long length
of the FBI investigation ― prosecutorial and investigative caution.
What's amazing is how little use Comey actually made of all the extra time and effort. For instance,
on July 5th he said that every email the FBI uncovered was sent to the "owning" organization to see
if they wanted to "up-classify" it ― in other words, declare that it should have been classified
at the time it was sent and/or received, even if not marked that way at the time. One might think
Comey would want this information, the better to determine Clinton's intent with respect to those
emails (i.e., given Clinton's training, knowledge, and experience, how frequently did she "miss"
the classified nature of an email, relative to the assessment of owning agencies that a given email
was effectively and/or should have been considered classified ― even if not marked so ― at the time
Clinton handled it?) Keep in mind, here, that certain types of information, as Clinton without a
doubt knew, are "born classified" whether marked as such or not. And yet, just two days after July
5th, Comey testified before Congress that he "didn't pay much attention" to "up-classified" emails.
Why? Because, said Comey, they couldn't tell him anything about Clinton's intent. Bluntly,
this is an astonishing and indeed embarrassing statement for any prosecutor to make.
Whereas every day knowledge and motives are imparted to poor black men that are, as the poet Claudia
Rankine has observed, purely the product of a police officer's "imagination," the actual and indisputable
knowledge and motives and ― yes ― responsibilities held by Clinton were "downgraded" by Comey to
that of merely an average American. That is, despite the fact that Clinton was one of the most powerful
people on Earth, charged with managing an agency that collects among the highest number of classified
pieces of information of any agency anywhere; despite the fact that Clinton's agency had the strictest
policies for data storage for this very reason; despite the fact that State is, as Clinton well knew,
daily subjected to FOIA requests; despite all this, Comey actually said the following: "Like many
email users, Secretary Clinton periodically deleted emails..."
What?
How in the world does the "many email users" standard come into play here? Clinton's server, unlike
anyone else's server, was set up in a way that permitted no archiving, an arrangement that one now
imagines led (in part) to the person who set up that server taking the Fifth more than a hundred
times in interviews with the FBI; even assuming Clinton didn't know, and didn't request, for her
server to be set up in this astonishing way ― a way, again, that her own employees believe could
incriminate them ― how in the world could she have been sanguine about deleting emails "like many
email users" when the agency she headed had completely different and more stringent protocols
and requirements for data storage than just about any government agency on Earth? Just so, once
it was clear that Clinton had deleted (per Comey) "thousands of emails that were work-related" instead
of turning them over to State, in what universe can no intent be implied from the fact that her attorneys
purged 30,000 emails simply by looking at their headers? At what point does Clinton, as
former Secretary of State, begin to have ill intent imputed to her by not directing her attorneys
to actually read emails before permanently destroying them and making them unavailable to the FBI
as evidence? If you were in her situation, and instead of saying to your team either (a) "don't delete
any more emails," or (b) "if you delete any emails, make sure you've read them in full first," would
you expect anyone to impute "no specific intent" to your behavior?
The result: despite saying she never sent or received emails on her private basement server that
were classified "at the time," the FBI found that 52 email chains on Clinton's server ― including
110 emails ― contained information that was classified at the time (eight chains contained
"top secret" information; 36, "secret" information; and another eight "confidential" information).
Moreover, Clinton's team wrongly purged ― at a minimum ― "thousands" of work-related emails. (And
I'm putting aside entirely here the 2,000 emails on Clinton's server that were later "up-classified.")
At what point does this harm become foreseeable, and not seeing it ― when you're one of the best-educated,
smartest, most experienced public servants in U.S. history, as your political team keeps reminding
us ― become evidence of "intent"? Comey's answer? Never.
Indeed, Comey instead makes the positively fantastical observation that "none [of the emails Clinton
didn't turn over but was supposed to] were intentionally deleted." The problem is, by Comey's own
admission all of those emails were intentionally deleted, under circumstances in which the
problems with that deletion would not just have been evident to "any reasonable person" but specifically
were clear ― the context proves it ― to Clinton herself. During her four years as Secretary of State
Clinton routinely expressed concern to staff about her own and others' email-storage practices, establishing
beyond any doubt that not only was Clinton's literal key-pressing deliberate ― the "knowing" standard
― but also its repeated, systemic effect was fully appreciated by her in advance. Likewise, that
her attorneys were acting entirely on their own prerogative, without her knowledge, is a claim no
jury would credit.
Clinton's attorneys worked Clinton's case in consultation with Clinton ― that's how things work.
In other words, Clinton's lawyers are not rogue actors here. So when Comey says, "They [Clinton and
her team] deleted all emails they did not produce for State, and the lawyers then cleaned their devices
in such a way as to preclude complete forensic recovery," we have to ask, what possible reason would
an attorney have for wiping a server entirely within their control to ensure that no future court
order could access the permanently deleted information? In what universe is such behavior not
actual consciousness of guilt with respect to the destruction of evidence? Because we must be clear:
Comey isn't saying Clinton and her lawyers accidentally put these emails outside even a hypothetical
future judicial review; they did so intentionally.
There's that word again.
The result of these actions? The same as every other action Clinton took that Comey somehow
attributes no intent to: a clear legal benefit to Clinton and a frustration, indeed an obstruction,
of the FBI's investigation. As Comey said on July 5th, the FBI can't know how many emails are "gone"
(i.e., permanently) because of Clinton and her team's intentional acts after-the-fact. So Comey is
quite literally telling us that the FBI couldn't conclude their investigation with absolute confidence
that they had all the relevant facts, and that the reason for this was the intentional destruction
of evidence by the subject of the investigation at a time when there was no earthly reason to destroy
evidence except to keep it from the FBI.
In case you're wondering, no, you don't need a legal degree to see the problem there.
As an attorney, I can't imagine destroying evidence at a time I knew it was the subject of a federal
investigation. And if I ever were to do something like that, I would certainly assume that all such
actions would later be deemed "intentional" by law enforcement, as my intent would be inferred from
my training, knowledge, and experience as an attorney, as well as my specific awareness of a pending
federal investigation in which the items I was destroying might later become key evidence. That Clinton
and her team repeatedly (and falsely) claimed the FBI investigation was a mere "security review"
― yet another assertion whose falseness was resoundingly noted by Comey in his public statements
― was clearly a transparent attempt to negate intent in destroying those emails. (The theory being,
"Well, yes, I destroyed possible evidence just by looking at email headers, but this was all just
a 'security review,' right? Not a federal investigation? Even though I knew the three grounds
for referral of the case to the FBI, and knew that only one of them involved anything like a 'security
review'?")
And certainly, none of this explains Comey's (again) gymnastic avoidance of stating the obvious:
that crimes were committed.
Listen to his language on July 5th: "Although we did not find clear evidence that Clinton or her
colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information" (emphasis
in original) ― actually, let's stop there. You'd expect the second half of that sentence to be something
like, "...they nevertheless did violate those laws, despite not intending to." It's the natural continuation
of the thought. Instead, Comey, who had prepared his remarks in advance, finished the thought this
way: "....there is evidence that they were extremely careless with very sensitive, highly
classified information" (emphasis in original).
Note that Comey now uses the phrase "extremely careless" instead of "gross negligence," despite
using the latter phrase ― a legal phrase ― at the beginning of his July 5th remarks. That matters
because at the beginning of those remarks he conceded "gross negligence" would lead to a statutory
violation. So why the sudden shift in language, when from a legal standpoint "extreme carelessness"
and "gross negligence" are synonymous ― both indicating the presence of a duty of care, the failure
to meet that duty, and moreover a repeated failure on this score? Comey also avoids finishing
his sentence with the obvious thought: that they may not have intended to violate criminal
statutes, but they did nonetheless. Remember that, just like our hypothetical raver may not have
intended to commit a Simple Assault by stepping on that poor young woman's foot, he nevertheless
could be found to have done so; just so, had Comey accepted the statute as written, Clinton's "gross
negligence" would have forced him to end the above sentence with the finding of a statutory violation,
even if there had been no "specific intent" to do so.
This is how the law works. For poor black men, just not for rich white women.
5. Comey, along with the rest of Congress, left the impression, much like the Supreme
Court did in 2000, that legal analyses are fundamentally political analyses. Not only is
this untrue, it also is unspeakably damaging to both our legal system and Americans' understanding
of that system's operations.
I'm a staunch Democrat, but I'm also an attorney. Watching fellow Democrats twist themselves into
pretzels to analyze Clinton's actions through a farcically slapdash legal framework, rather than
merely acknowledging that Clinton is a human being and, like any human being, can both (a) commit
crimes, and (b) be replaced on a political ticket if need be, makes me sick as both a Democrat and
a lawyer. Just so, watching Republicans who had no issue with George W. Bush declaring unilateral
war in contravention of international law, and who had no issue with the obviously illegal behavior
of Scooter Libby in another recent high-profile intel-related criminal case, acting like the rule
of law is anything they care about makes me sick. Our government is dirty as all get-out, but the
one thing it's apparently clean of is anyone with both (a) legal training, and (b) a sense of the
ethics that govern legal practice. Over and over during Comey's Congressional testimony I heard politicians
noting their legal experience, and then going on to either shame their association with that august
profession or honor it but (in doing so) call into question their inability or unwillingness to do
so in other instances.
When Comey says, "any reasonable person should have known" not to act as Clinton did, many don't
realize he's quoting a legal standard ― the "reasonable person standard." A failure to meet that
standard can be used to establish either negligence or recklessness in a court of law. But here,
Clinton wasn't in the position of a "reasonable person" ― the average fellow or lady ― and Comey
wasn't looking merely at a "reasonableness" standard, but rather a "purposeful" standard that requires
Comey to ask all sorts of questions about Clinton's specific, fully contextualized situation and
background that he doesn't appear to have asked. One might argue that, in keeping with Clinton's
campaign theme, no one in American political history was more richly prepared ― by knowledge, training,
experience, and innate gifts ― to know how to act properly in the situations Clinton found herself.
That in those situations she failed to act even as a man or woman taken off the street and put in
a similar situation would have acted is not indicative of innocence or a lack of specific intent,
but the opposite. If a reasonable person wouldn't have done what Clinton did, the most exquisitely
prepared person for the situations in which Clinton found herself must in fact have been providing
prosecutors with prima facie evidence of intent by failing to meet even the lowest threshold
for proper conduct. Comey knows this; any prosecutor knows this. Maybe a jury would disagree with
Comey on this point, but his job is to assume that, if he zealously advocates for this extremely
powerful circumstantial case, a reasonable jury, taking the facts in the light most favorable to
the government, would see things his way.
Look, I can't possibly summarize for anyone reading this the silly nonsense I have seen prosecutors
indict people for; a common saying in the law is that the average grand jury "would indict a ham
sandwich," and to be clear that happens not because the run-of-the-mill citizens who sit on grand
juries are bloodthirsty, but because the habitual practice of American prosecutors is to indict first
and ask questions later ― and because indictments are absurdly easy to acquire. In other words, I've
seen thousands of poor people get over-charged for either nonsense or nothing at all, only to have
their prosecutors attempt to leverage their flimsy cases into a plea deal to a lesser charge. By
comparison, it is evident to every defense attorney of my acquaintance that I've spoken to that James
Comey bent over backwards to not indict Hillary Clinton ― much like the hundreds of state
and federal prosecutors who have bent over backwards not to indict police officers over the past
few decades. Every attorney who's practiced in criminal courts for years can smell when the fix is
in ― can hear and see when the court's usual actors are acting highly unusually ― and that's what's
happened here. The tragedy is that it will convince Americans that our legal system is fundamentally
about what a prosecutor feels they can and should be able to get away with, an answer informed largely,
it will seem to many, by various attorneys' personal temperaments and political prejudices.
No one in America who's dedicated their life to the law can feel any satisfaction with how Hillary
Clinton's case was investigated or ultimately disposed of, no more than we can feel sanguine about
prosecutors whose approach to poor black defendants is draconian and to embattled police officers
positively beatific. What we need in Congress, and in prosecutor's offices, are men and women of
principle who act in accordance with their ethical charge no matter the circumstances. While James
Comey is not a political hack, and was not, I don't believe, in any sense acting conspiratorially
in not bringing charges against Hillary Clinton, I believe that, much like SCOTUS did not
decide in the 2000 voting rights case Bush v. Gore, Comey felt that this was a bad time
for an executive-branch officer to interfere with the workings of domestic politics. Perhaps Comey
had the best of intentions in not doing his duty; perhaps he thought letting voters, not prosecutors,
decide the 2016 election was his civic duty. Many Democrats could wish the Supreme Court had felt
the same way in 2000 with respect to the role of judges. But the fact remains that the non-indictment
of Hillary Clinton is as much a stain on the fair and equal administration of justice as is the disparate
treatment of poor black males at all stages of the criminal justice system. I witnessed the latter
injustice close up, nearly every day, during my seven years working as a public defender; now America
has seen the same thing, albeit on a very different stage, involving a defendant of a very different
class and hue.
To have prosecuted Clinton, said Comey, he would need to have seen "clearly intentional and willful
mishandling of classified information, or vast quantities of information exposed in such a way as
to support an inference of intentional misconduct, or....efforts to obstruct justice..." When Comey
concludes, "we do not see those things here," America should ― and indeed must ― wonder what facts
he could possibly be looking at, and, moreover, what understanding of his role in American life he
could possibly be acting upon. The answers to these two questions would take us at least two steps
forward in discussing how average Americans are treated by our increasingly dysfunctional system
of justice.
Seth Abramson is the Series Editor for Best American Experimental Writing (Wesleyan University)
and the author, most recently, of
DATA (BlazeVOX, 2016).
"... "The evidence collected by the FBI during its investigation of Secretary Clinton's use of a personal email system appears to directly contradict several aspects of her sworn testimony. In light of those contradictions, the Department should investigate and determine whether to prosecute Secretary Clinton for violating statutes that prohibit perjury and false statements to Congress, or any other relevant statutes." ..."
"... The evidence collected by the FBI during its investigation of Secretary Clinton's use of a personal email system appears to directly contradict several aspects of her sworn testimony. In light of those contradictions, the Department should investigate and determine whether to prosecute Secretary Clinton for violating statutes that prohibit perjury and false statements to Congress, or any other relevant statutes. ..."
Today, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee
Chairman Jason Chaffetz (UT-03) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (VA-06)
sent a letter to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia requesting an investigation
into whether former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton committed perjury and made false
statements when testifying under oath before Congress.
The letter states:
"The evidence collected by the FBI during its investigation of Secretary Clinton's use of
a personal email system appears to directly contradict several aspects of her sworn testimony.
In light of those contradictions, the Department should investigate and determine whether to
prosecute Secretary Clinton for violating statutes that prohibit perjury and false statements to
Congress, or any other relevant statutes."
Background:
During a July 5,
2016 hearing before the House Oversight Committee, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Director James Comey stated the truthfulness of Secretary Clinton's testimony before Congress was
not within the scope of the FBI's investigation. According to Director Comey the Department of
Justice requires a criminal referral from Congress to initiate an investigation into Secretary
Clinton's congressional testimony.
Additionally, Chairman Chaffetz
sent a letter to Director Comey requesting the FBI's full investigative file from its review
of former Secretary Clinton's use of an authorized private email server.
Chairman Goodlatte
sent a letter to Director Comey pressing for more information about the FBI's investigation
and also led a
letter signed by over 200 members of Congress demanding answers from FBI Director Comey
regarding the many questions surrounding his announcement that he does not recommend federal
prosecution against former Secretary Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information
through private email servers.
The Honorable Channing D. Phillips
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia
555 Fourth Street NW
Washington, D.C. 20530
Dear Mr. Phillips:
We write to request an investigation to determine whether former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton committed perjury and made false statements during her testimony under oath before
congressional committees.
While testifying before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on July 7,
2016, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director James Comey stated the truthfulness of
Secretary Clinton's testimony before Congress was not within the scope of the FBI's
investigation. Nor had the FBI even considered any of Secretary Clinton's testimony.
Director Comey further testified the Department of Justice requires a criminal referral from
Congress to initiate an investigation of Secretary Clinton's congressional testimony. We are
writing for that purpose.
The evidence collected by the FBI during its investigation of Secretary Clinton's use
of a personal email system appears to directly contradict several aspects of her sworn
testimony. In light of those contradictions, the Department should investigate and determine
whether to prosecute Secretary Clinton for violating statutes that prohibit perjury and false
statements to Congress, or any other relevant statutes.
Thank you for your attention to this important matter.
"... Clinton Theater Production. Does NOT work for me. ..."
"... They need Liddy Warren to appear genuine/authentic. If she doesn't, her endorsement does nothing to move the needle on getting Sanders supporters on board with Her. The matching blue pantsuit act didn't focus group very well. ..."
"... I agree. My take on Elizabeth Warren's role in this theater production. The Dems take turns playing the part of "man/woman of the people." In this high visibility, it's HerTurn drama, Elizabeth Warren gets the lead, so HRC doesn't have to try to sell it. ..."
"... What does being a Republican have to do with untrustworthiness? At least Republicans are somewhat honest about wanting to screw everyone. Democrats on the other hand tend to be duplicitous, sanctimonious rats who always try to pretend that they're the good guys who are out to help people – while they're screwing everyone over. I wouldn't trust anyone who's been roped into either party. ..."
"... I've had the exact same thought! The Republicans, as odious as they are, at least are honest about their desire to destroy the lives of vast numbers of people. Sure, they lie about some things, such as Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. But it's the slightly more decent Democrats who are the real pathological liars. ..."
Warren has a problematic habit of criticizing Clinton's most loyal donors, a fact that has
not been overlooked by the Wall Street moneymen bankrolling her campaign. As if that were not
enough to dampen the veepstakes buzz she is embarking on a major nationwide campaign to derail
a major trade deal being pushed by the White House and that Clinton supported as secretary of
state
Warren, in other words, is not the first Democrat (or Republican) to attack the T.P.P., highlighting
Clinton's flip-flop. But it's not the first time the fiery politician has taken a stance that
clashes with Clinton's policy platform, either. Just last week, Warren unloaded on Silicon Valley
for what she claimed are anti-competitive practices, and singled out a handful of the same tech
titans that Clinton had been busy currying favor with less than 24 hours earlier. If the senator
is still in the running for Clinton's ticket, her anti-T.P.P. tirade won't do the presidential
hopeful any favors. It also doesn't inspire confidence in her ability to help Clinton build a
unified front in the battle against Trump, no matter how much she inspires the Sanders wing of
the party. The last thing any presidential nominee needs is a No. 2 who doesn't know how to fall
in line.
We've deemed the rumors that Warren was a serious vice presidential candidate for Clinton as ludicrous.
Yes, the Clinton campaign may have gone through the motions of vetting her, but planting the story
that Warren was under consideration was merely to burnish Clinton's image with progressives and Sanders
voters.
They need Liddy Warren to appear genuine/authentic. If she doesn't, her endorsement does nothing
to move the needle on getting Sanders supporters on board with Her. The matching blue pantsuit
act didn't focus group very well.
Not to worry none of this will be taken seriously once the Clintons have moved back into the
White House.
I agree. My take on Elizabeth Warren's role in this theater production. The Dems take turns
playing the part of "man/woman of the people." In this high visibility, it's HerTurn drama, Elizabeth
Warren gets the lead, so HRC doesn't have to try to sell it.
Agreed. This is pure theater for consumption by the important impoverished grad student Sanders
base -- the future meritocrats who will be running our world as soon as they pay off their student
loans.
What does being a Republican have to do with untrustworthiness? At least Republicans are somewhat
honest about wanting to screw everyone. Democrats on the other hand tend to be duplicitous, sanctimonious
rats who always try to pretend that they're the good guys who are out to help people – while they're
screwing everyone over. I wouldn't trust anyone who's been roped into either party.
I've had the exact same thought! The Republicans, as odious as they are, at least are honest
about their desire to destroy the lives of vast numbers of people. Sure, they lie about some things,
such as Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. But it's the slightly more decent Democrats who are
the real pathological liars.
"... Maureen Dowd is right today, but she didn't really bring out the big guns, like Clinton's ties to Wall Street, Haiti, Syria or a coup in South America. ..."
"... Or maybe she could have written about the Clinton Foundation and those so called "private" emails. And I don't think she won the primary fair and square. Thousands and thousands showed up at Sanders' rallies. Clinton's average was 347 people. ..."
"... After being rescued by FBI director James Comey this week, Mrs. Clinton is both unapologetic and uncontrite for her actions. Particularly galling is her comment dismissing Comey's statements about her actions as "speculative." ..."
"... If the superdelegates care about reversing 35 years of Reaganomics and reversing our slide to oligarchy they would support Bernie Sanders ..."
"... Furthermore, Hillary knew it or should have known it, by knowing that subject matter is classified. She was Sec of State, she knew which things she was doing were Top Secret. Drones. Her Libyan war. Her attempts to expand the Syrian war. Her efforts in Ukraine. ..."
"... For Hillary and Bill to have maintained their positions for decades and stroked their shared sense of entitlement, others collectively needed to bear the consequences of all the karma debt they accumulated. It's as if these they glide along committing what outrages they will, incurring no personal damage, yet those around them populate some portrait of Dorian Gray, collectively taking the blows while the principles smile and move on to the next disaster without a mark on them. ..."
"... She shut down objections to reckless behavior that defied the new, clear, written rules enacted to deal with past problems. It was reckless. It was reckless disregard of the rules and dangers they were designed to prevent. That is one of the definitions of criminal negligence. It was a crime ..."
"... I read an article where someone called Hillary's appointment to be Secretary of State a "vanity appointment." I think that is exactly how she saw it. Just a stepping stone to the presidency and payback from Obama for winning against her. She didn't take the office seriously, and clearly didn't take the requirements of the office seriously, as far as security. The article cited in the column contains a quote where Hillary makes a joke about hacking by the Chinese into an account at the State Department. ..."
"... This column accurately depicts the "Tom and Daisy Buchanan of American Politics." In their eyes, they are the victims of their enemies' ethical standards. It should be possible to agree with the facts that Dowd presents without having to read 30 responses about how terrible Trump is and how necessary she is to avoid a Trump presidency. I don't want Trump as president, but Clinton deserves this critical analysis. It's unfortunate that she has thus far been incapable of accepting criticism and changing her actions. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton benefits from a double standard in evaluating security risks; she is running for President and has the support of the President. Others, at lower levels, who have arguably created far fewer security risks, have been stripped of security clearances, fired, or prosecuted. Those at her top level of government (positions requiring Senate confirmation) are not prosecuted, but are forced to resign. A few examples only, at Clinton's level: former Defense Secretary John Deutsch and former General David Petraeus. ..."
"... What is lost in all the discussion of what emails were classified, when and at what level, is a far bigger issue: Clinton tried to control what information would be available to future historians; in short, she tried to edit future history. ..."
"... Like Nixon, Hillary is a paranoid. She can't wrap her mind around disagreement with her views, preferring instead to think it comes from unfair, mean-spirited bias or worse. Like Nixon, Hillary wants to live a public life but detests scrutiny. Like Nixon, Hillary believes she has earned the privilege to live above those silly ethical rules that should only apply to other people. After all, she knows better than anyone else what the people want and need. And finally, like Nixon, Hillary, if elected, will be the President no one truly wants, elected by default. ..."
"... The parallels are amazing. In retrospect, Nixon turned out to be the very type of person who should never be President. Let's see whether history repeats itself. ..."
"... Well if the voters are 'careless' they will elect her. If we can't blame Hillary for carelessness, why should voters be blamed for being careless. I mean, I guess Nixon was careless to. So was Martha Stewart. Maybe Snowden was careless. And surely Gen. David Petraeus was just a tad careless. Yet the rest went to jail, or resigned, or ran to Russia. ..."
"... Anyone who voted for the Iraq War is not qualified to be president in my opinion. In addition to voting for an unnecessary war, Clinton pushed for intervention in Libya, Syria, Honduras, and Ukraine. ..."
"... For all those that love Clinton, imagine if an R had pulled any of these stunts. The R's kicked Nixon to the curb for far less. Meanwhile if Trump were a D, the press would be eating up his populist message by the spoonful. He would be the next messianic D figure. One big advantage of Trump vs Clinton? At worst, he's a one term mistake. If he doesn't perform, both the R's and D's will toss him aside in a heartbeat. Clinton? She is a two term mistake. As this email case has proven, she is either incredibly incompetent and/or incredibly corrupt ..."
"... NB, Ms. Clinton lied that she had a private e-mail server and she lied that the server contained confidential e-mails. This is the crux of this article, the result of the FBI investigation and the report from the Department of State. And, this article is no longer about e-mail, it is about Ms. Clinton's ethics, or lack of them. ..."
"... Best column in a long time, but are you really that scared of Trump? He may bluster, but in the long run I think he is less likely to get us into a war than Ms. Hillary ..."
"... If Bernie took up Jill Stein's offer to run with her, I've vote for them, and so would millions of others. ..."
"... "So many lawyers in this column, so little law." That is one of the things lawyers are good for. That is what the Bush Admin used them for, from signing statements to memos justifying torture and rendition. They're baaack, like the Terminator. And they bring a good many of the neocons with them. It really isn't much different from W's team. ..."
"... Exactly, but Hillary has often advocated taking us back into that criminal joyride in Mesopotamia. ASAP, she'll do far worse than emails, she'll do Bush Admin neicon policy, on steroids, in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and start it in Ukraine too. She's promised AIPAC to pick an early fight with Iran. She wants to fight at the same time with China and North Korea. ..."
"... The emails are not the problem, they are the warning. ..."
"... Maureen, as brilliant as ever in your absolute, perfect take on a woman who is not just Teflon, but dangerous...as are all the people in her "machine." Read the WP today about the case in the nineties when the same scenario took place, when the judge could not convict, she lied, and yet, she slipped right through. ..."
"... For us mortals who are honest, have a moral core, and know right from wrong, there are no words to express the exasperation that befalls us all at this most dangerous woman ..."
"... Maureen, how about a column on your former Times colleague Judith Miller whose fabricated articles about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq help make the Bush administration's case. She and they should be tried as war criminals. Instead you write about this stupid, non-issue. Clinton made a stupid mistake. Get over it. ..."
"... Well, I think that we've at least laid to rest the oft-repeated accusation that Hillary is calculating. No calculating politician intending to run for president would have committed the silly error ..."
"... He is less likely to get us into wars, because she is near certain to leap gleefully into wars. We already know the multiple ones she'll start with. But it is "pick your poison" because Trump will do other things, not wars, but cause no end of problems all the same. Those many nutty things he says? He'd keep saying them, and start doing them. ..."
"... Her competence is questionable at best resting as it does on a paper-resume, but her dishonesty and ability to lie in your face is beyond any doubt. ..."
"... "Hillary willfully put herself above the rules - again - and a president, campaign and party are all left twisting themselves into pretzels defending her." Twisting like a plane in a death spiral. You'll note that Clinton never puts herself above the rules to take political risks for progressives or progressive causes. She never sticks her neck out to do something bravely principled. ..."
"... Hence, the democratic party has squandered the surge of strength that came with Obama's election in 2008 to end up instead twisted-pretzel-selling exactly what Obama was embraced to refute and replace, feebly marketing it to an electorate that has only grown more informed, engaged, and impatient for the change Obama fell inexplicably short of delivering. ..."
"... That, politically, the Hillary play, so long in the planning, so tedious in the execution, is a self-destructive, backwards-sliding strategic move on nearly every level only underscores that other priorities and constituencies are driving the party. Driving it right off the cliff. ..."
"... Same with the influence peddling. She and Bill took hundreds of millions in speech money while she was Senator, Secretary, and then presumed Dem nominee. The Foundation, the Clinton slushy, took in a billion more. Much of this money all came from very shady places, people needing to buy influence, and the Clinton for sale sign was in blinking neon. They will get away with, however, only because these were not technically gifts, but were speech payments and "charity" donations. ..."
"... Thanks again Maureen for enlightening those who read the NYTimes with the truth about Mrs. Clinton and her extremely reckless behavior. It is obvious there are many rabid Hillary supporters who refuse to accept what you have to say. Old news. A waste of ink. Move on. But the truth is the truth. ..."
"... Sainthood is not a qualification for the office. We could do worse than Clinton ..."
Why not pick a clean candidate? There's still time. Bernie Sanders has not endorsed Clinton,
nor has he backed out of the campaign. Maybe there is a good reason. I can't see endorsing her
if I were him. I still have hope the delegates will understand how tainted Clinton is and how
Trump will make mince meat of her. Maureen Dowd is right today, but she didn't really bring
out the big guns, like Clinton's ties to Wall Street, Haiti, Syria or a coup in South America.
Or maybe she could have written about the Clinton Foundation and those so called "private"
emails. And I don't think she won the primary fair and square. Thousands and thousands showed
up at Sanders' rallies. Clinton's average was 347 people. Except for NYTimes readers, the
rest of the country simply doesn't like her. For that matter they don't care for Trump either.
70% of the independents are for Sanders. In the electorate, 39% are independents. That means 29%
are Republicans and 31% are Democrats. With some Repubicans voting Sanders, DO THE MATH! Clinton
can't win.
Alison, Menlo Park, California 18 hours ago
After being rescued by FBI director James Comey this week, Mrs. Clinton is both unapologetic
and uncontrite for her actions. Particularly galling is her comment dismissing Comey's statements
about her actions as "speculative."
Nick Metrowsky, is a trusted commenter Longmont, Colorado 15 hours ago
Wow. I never expected this in the newspaper that tooted the Clinton horn, since last January,
when they endorsed her. This is quite an honest assessment; effectively the NYT honeymoon is over.
The words here have been said in many ways, by those who seen through Ms. Clinton and those
trying to get her into office, at all costs. It is no longer about e-mails; it was never about
e-mails; it comes down to the ends the the Clintons will go to attain and keep power. That is
lie, cheat, steal. And go further, to poison anyone and anything they touch.
Ms. Clinton could end up in the White House, but a number of people were damaged in the process.
Her aides, members of the Obama Administration, Mr. Sanders, Mr. Biden, the DNC, journalists and
the media. There is still time to undo this possibility.
This sums up things up perfectly:
"We're resigned to the Clintons focusing on their viability and disregarding the consequences
of their heedless actions on others. They're always offering a Faustian deal. This year's election
bargain: Put up with our iniquities or get Trump's short fingers on the nuclear button.
RLS, is a trusted commenter Virginia 19 hours ago
If the superdelegates care about reversing 35 years of Reaganomics and reversing our slide
to oligarchy they would support Bernie Sanders. A Sanders candidacy would help to change
the makeup of Congress because he attracts more Independents and Millennials, and some Republicans.
A bonus in supporting Sanders: no scandals, and no unethical deals and conflicts of interest
(see the Clinton Foundation).
Mark Thomason, is a trusted commenter Clawson, Mich 16 hours ago
No, many more were classified when sent, 14 entire chains about Top Secret matters were sent.
In order for them to "not be marked" someone had to remove the markings by retyping them into
the non-secure system. But that was illegal. Those were already classified.
Furthermore, Hillary knew it or should have known it, by knowing that subject matter is
classified. She was Sec of State, she knew which things she was doing were Top Secret. Drones.
Her Libyan war. Her attempts to expand the Syrian war. Her efforts in Ukraine.
Richard Luettgen, is a trusted commenter New Jersey 23 hours ago
Maureen will be lambasted by the usual suspects here, as offering up yet another dose of humble
pie to the woman who would be president. But of course everything she writes is true. There's
a natural law, the Conservation of Political Viability. For Hillary and Bill to have maintained
their positions for decades and stroked their shared sense of entitlement, others collectively
needed to bear the consequences of all the karma debt they accumulated. It's as if these they
glide along committing what outrages they will, incurring no personal damage, yet those around
them populate some portrait of Dorian Gray, collectively taking the blows while the principles
smile and move on to the next disaster without a mark on them.
However, as the NYT has noted, eMailGate is a ready-made Republican attack ad. Certainly, the
right's establishment as well as the supportive Super-PACs will exploit Comey's dreadful condemnation
of her behavior. We'll see if Trump can get his act together sufficiently to benefit from it in
more than an indirect manner. But those attack ads no doubt are going into the can as we write,
Hillary's poll numbers will go down and the commentariat here as well as much of Dem America will
again wring its blue hands that Trump could win.
Me, very little that Hillary does surprises me; and neither did I want her in prison for this
or expected it to happen. It remains that with an opposed Congress she wouldn't accomplish anything
as president but Trump just might.
Mark Thomason, is a trusted commenter Clawson, Mich 19 hours ago
"Hillary was trying to make her job more efficient and protect her privacy."
No she wasn't. She was entitled and paranoid. She shut down objections to reckless behavior
that defied the new, clear, written rules enacted to deal with past problems. It was reckless.
It was reckless disregard of the rules and dangers they were designed to prevent. That is one
of the definitions of criminal negligence. It was a crime.
Shellie F., Kensington, Md. 10 hours ago
I read an article where someone called Hillary's appointment to be Secretary of State a
"vanity appointment." I think that is exactly how she saw it. Just a stepping stone to the presidency
and payback from Obama for winning against her. She didn't take the office seriously, and clearly
didn't take the requirements of the office seriously, as far as security. The article cited in
the column contains a quote where Hillary makes a joke about hacking by the Chinese into an account
at the State Department.
All of the people here who are supporting her, whether because you want her or because you
are afraid of Trump, really confuse me. Maureen Dowd is absolutely correct about the bizarre behavior
of the Clintons and the sleazy crowd that will return to the White House if she is elected.
anne d, ca 10 hours ago
This column accurately depicts the "Tom and Daisy Buchanan of American Politics." In their
eyes, they are the victims of their enemies' ethical standards. It should be possible to agree
with the facts that Dowd presents without having to read 30 responses about how terrible Trump
is and how necessary she is to avoid a Trump presidency. I don't want Trump as president, but
Clinton deserves this critical analysis. It's unfortunate that she has thus far been incapable
of accepting criticism and changing her actions.
Aram Hollman, Arlington, MA 11 hours ago
Hillary Clinton benefits from a double standard in evaluating security risks; she is running
for President and has the support of the President. Others, at lower levels, who have arguably
created far fewer security risks, have been stripped of security clearances, fired, or prosecuted.
Those at her top level of government (positions requiring Senate confirmation) are not prosecuted,
but are forced to resign. A few examples only, at Clinton's level: former Defense Secretary John
Deutsch and former General David Petraeus.
President Obama's directives to government employees, forbidding them to talk to the media
and promising dire consequences to those who do, have been far more stringent than any other president,
have decreased the openness and transparency of the federal government. Too bad his directives
applied only to the disclosure of government records, not their confiscation.
Clinton is smart, well-spoken, and has used her legal training to navigate the gap between
what is prohibited by guidelines and what is prohibited by law; her private server was the former
(State Dept. rules), not the latter.
What is lost in all the discussion of what emails were classified, when and at what level,
is a far bigger issue: Clinton tried to control what information would be available to future
historians; in short, she tried to edit future history.
Look for a future trend, former Presidents whose Presidential Libraries' content will be more
and more limited.
steven, g 10 hours ago
Thank you Maureen, for perfectly summarizing where things are with the Clintons. What is wrong
with the American people that so many can't see what you so clearly articulate? Hillary and Bill
are a pox on our nation, and yes maybe she is preferrable to Trump, but then let's vote for her,
but that's it. No rallies, no signs, no enthusiasm. Don't give her the wrong impression. Let's
send a message to her that we know she is dishonest. We are simply choosing, as Russell Crowe
once said in a movie, the lesser of two weevils.
AR Clayboy, Scottsdale, AZ 9 hours ago
In an odd way, Hillary Clinton is the second coming of Richard Nixon. Like Nixon, Hillary grew
up as the unpopular, socially awkward over-achiever, whose achievements always were more about
proving the popular kids wrong than the joy of actually accomplishing anything. Like Nixon, Hillary's
resume is hollow -- plenty of appointments and titles, but very little of substance to show for
it. Like Nixon, Hillary is a paranoid. She can't wrap her mind around disagreement with her
views, preferring instead to think it comes from unfair, mean-spirited bias or worse. Like Nixon,
Hillary wants to live a public life but detests scrutiny. Like Nixon, Hillary believes she has
earned the privilege to live above those silly ethical rules that should only apply to other people.
After all, she knows better than anyone else what the people want and need. And finally, like
Nixon, Hillary, if elected, will be the President no one truly wants, elected by default.
The parallels are amazing. In retrospect, Nixon turned out to be the very type of person
who should never be President. Let's see whether history repeats itself.
Paul, Texas 10 hours ago
Well if the voters are 'careless' they will elect her. If we can't blame Hillary for carelessness,
why should voters be blamed for being careless. I mean, I guess Nixon was careless to. So was
Martha Stewart. Maybe Snowden was careless. And surely Gen. David Petraeus was just a tad careless.
Yet the rest went to jail, or resigned, or ran to Russia.
Think carefully folks as to who you really want for President. Votes do matter, and Presidents
can do a great good or grievous damage to this country and to this world.
JJ, Georgia 20 hours ago
This election makes me think of a bank considering a new chief executive. Do you hire a person
with a questionable skill set and personality similar to a Jerry Lewis movie character or the
person known to have embezzled and is unrepentant except for having been caught. For the first
time I am giving the other 3rd party candidates a look.
RLS, is a trusted commenter Virginia 20 hours ago
Anyone who voted for the Iraq War is not qualified to be president in my opinion. In addition
to voting for an unnecessary war, Clinton pushed for intervention in Libya, Syria, Honduras, and
Ukraine.
Jack, Texas 10 hours ago
For all those that love Clinton, imagine if an R had pulled any of these stunts. The R's
kicked Nixon to the curb for far less. Meanwhile if Trump were a D, the press would be eating
up his populist message by the spoonful. He would be the next messianic D figure. One big advantage
of Trump vs Clinton? At worst, he's a one term mistake. If he doesn't perform, both the R's and
D's will toss him aside in a heartbeat. Clinton? She is a two term mistake. As this email case
has proven, she is either incredibly incompetent and/or incredibly corrupt, yet still garners
support of her party.
Nick Metrowsky, is a trusted commenter Longmont, Colorado 16 hours ago
NB, Ms. Clinton lied that she had a private e-mail server and she lied that the server
contained confidential e-mails. This is the crux of this article, the result of the FBI investigation
and the report from the Department of State. And, this article is no longer about e-mail, it is
about Ms. Clinton's ethics, or lack of them.
phil morse, cambridge, ma 8 hours ago
So much to dislike about Hillary and so little time. I hope that Maureen keeps venting because
I think she sees Hillary more clearly than almost anybody else, even the Donald. NY Times readers
can carp about the damage, but most of the people who will vote for Trump despise the Times. Echo
chamber that it is, a discordant note is a good thing. Soldier on Ms Dowd.
Jean, Scarsdale, NY 20 hours ago
Best column in a long time, but are you really that scared of Trump? He may bluster, but
in the long run I think he is less likely to get us into a war than Ms. Hillary
Mark Thomason, is a trusted commenter Clawson, Mich 20 hours ago
If Bernie took up Jill Stein's offer to run with her, I've vote for them, and so would
millions of others. It might be Teddy Roosevelt coming close but failing with the Bull Moose
Party, or it might be Lincoln succeeding with the original Republican Party's creation. Either
way, we've been here before, and we went third party.
Mark Thomason, is a trusted commenter Clawson, Mich 22 hours ago
"So many lawyers in this column, so little law." That is one of the things lawyers are
good for. That is what the Bush Admin used them for, from signing statements to memos justifying
torture and rendition. They're baaack, like the Terminator. And they bring a good many of the
neocons with them. It really isn't much different from W's team.
Mark Thomason, is a trusted commenter Clawson, Mich 20 hours ago
"Compare Benghazi and the emails to what Bush/Cheney did. Hundreds of souls are still
dying in Iraq because of our criminal joyride in Mesopotamia."
Exactly, but Hillary has often advocated taking us back into that criminal joyride in Mesopotamia.
ASAP, she'll do far worse than emails, she'll do Bush Admin neicon policy, on steroids, in Iraq,
Syria, Libya, Yemen, and start it in Ukraine too. She's promised AIPAC to pick an early fight
with Iran. She wants to fight at the same time with China and North Korea.
The emails are not the problem, they are the warning.
Susan, Mass 9 hours ago
Maureen, as brilliant as ever in your absolute, perfect take on a woman who is not just
Teflon, but dangerous...as are all the people in her "machine." Read the WP today about the case
in the nineties when the same scenario took place, when the judge could not convict, she lied,
and yet, she slipped right through. To say there is something pathological, in this woman's
DNA would be too kind. But, the bottom line...or two..is "how does this continue to happen?" And,
"What difference does it make?"
For us mortals who are honest, have a moral core, and know right from wrong, there are
no words to express the exasperation that befalls us all at this most dangerous woman
Michigander, Alpena, MI 6 hours ago
Did she start a war in Afghanistan with no clue how to end it?
Did she lie us into a war with Iraq?
Did she out a CIA agent?
Did she declare "Mission Accomplished" when the 13 year and counting war had only just begun?
Was she responsible for Abu Ghraib and authorize torture?
Was she the one who told Brownie that he was doing a heck of a job while New Orleans was washing
into the ocean?
Was it Hillary who allowed a financial crises and unprecedented deficit to trigger the worst recession
since the Great Depression?
No, her offense is much worse: she used a private email server.
Peter, Cambridge, MA 7 hours ago
Another success for the GOP propaganda machine. Karl Rove, Colin Powell, and General Petraeus
and scores of other Republican officials all used private email servers, one of them located at
the Republican National Committee headquarters, and tens of thousands of their emails were destroyed.
No complaints from the GOP then. They all knew what Clinton knew - the State Department's non-classified
system was cumbersome and leaked like a sieve, and they didn't have the funds to fix it.
It's just like Benghazi "scandal": during the GWBush administration there were 14 terror attacks
on embassies or consulates, with 100 people killed, including a US diplomat. Where was the Republican
outrage then? No investigations, no hearings. Maureen, you should do some homework before leaping
on the Fox Noise bandwagon.
Realist, Santa Monica, Ca 7 hours ago
Isn't it painfully obvious than Hillary set up this private system because she didn't want
every gumshoe on the Koch payroll investigating every action and breath she took in hopes of discovering
a "scandal" that would lead to an "investigation." So this time it backfired big time and she
wound up with more "transparency" than she bargained for. But in the end, what did she do that
was so bad. If Russia is hacking the US Government payroll records, I can hardly see how some
how drone mission intelligence is going to tip the balance of power.
It's just that, since Reagan, Republicans will simply not accept a Democratic (NOT Democrat!)
president. It's all rule or ruin with those guys. How can they blame Obama for a mess when they
scuttled his plans at every turn?
And speaking of Saint Ronnie, where was the fine-tooth-comb "investigation" of Reagan after
he injected US Marines into the Lebanese civil war and got them all killed? And how about an investigation
into how the basic rule of law disintegrated after the Marines took Baghdad. How was all that
looting and secular murder a good thing Mr. Gowdy? Maybe you should look into it, ha ha.
Bruce, MA 8 hours ago
Maureen, how about a column on your former Times colleague Judith Miller whose fabricated
articles about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq help make the Bush administration's case. She
and they should be tried as war criminals. Instead you write about this stupid, non-issue. Clinton
made a stupid mistake. Get over it. This nation faces some very serious issues: racism and
injustice, weapons on our streets, student debt crisis, social security insolvency to name a few.
As we said in the 60's, "if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the pollution." Get
with it Maureen. Stop polluting.
Allie, New York 8 hours ago
Well, I think that we've at least laid to rest the oft-repeated accusation that Hillary
is calculating. No calculating politician intending to run for president would have committed
the silly error of for which she is now being pilloried (again!) by Maureen Dowd.
I find Hillary's decision with respect to her private email server understandable, however
unfortunate. Ever since she was first lady her every word has been parsed (remember "baking cookies"?),
her every action dissected and subjected to the most unfavorable interpretation. She has been
accused of murder. She has been repeatedly investigated by Republican partisans in their effort
to besmirch her, or worse and despite being exonerated each time, she has been vilified by vindictive
people like Dowd. And, speaking of "goo," at the time of the Lewinsky scandal, instead of being
an object of sympathy, she suffered the intrusion of the public into her private life and condemnation
for not leaving her husband.
Is it any wonder that a person so treated over such a long period would be skittish about public
scrutiny of communications she considered exempt from it?
Hillary Clinton may be a flawed human being, like the rest of us, but she is neither arrogant
nor entitled, and compared to Trump she is a sage and and a saint.
Mark Thomason, is a trusted commenter Clawson, Mich 20 hours ago
He is less likely to get us into wars, because she is near certain to leap gleefully into
wars. We already know the multiple ones she'll start with. But it is "pick your poison" because
Trump will do other things, not wars, but cause no end of problems all the same. Those many nutty
things he says? He'd keep saying them, and start doing them.
Dick Purcell, Leadville, CO 4 hours ago
"Obama tried to get Hillary without the shadiness. (Which is what we all want, of course.)"
No, we don't all want that. Wih or without shadiness, Hillary represents Rule of the Money-Insider
Royalty at home, which is what The People have risen up against, and Wars Abroad.
We the People do not want these things.
Applarch, Lenoir City TN 6 hours ago
No Mo, self-described "lifelong Republican" Comey was far out of line with his highly irregular
press conference. He pushed Republican narratives as far as he could get away with, in the process
doing a grave disservice to FBI and Justice Department traditions, policy, and procedure. The
picture he (and you) paint bears little relationship to the truth.
Here's what he should have said. "If it's a crime for people to ever use personal accounts
for government work, whether hosted by a public service or a private server, we'd have to charge
millions of people. We investigated something else: classified information on email systems. In
the 30,000 emails exchanged among 300 top officials at the State Department that included Secretary
Clinton on distribution, only a tiny number had any indication of classification, and these turned
out to not be classified. We also discovered a difference of opinion on about fifty discussions.
The intelligence community's senior professionals believe that these require classification, while
State Department senior professionals believe they do not. Clearly we need to define consistent
classification standards that all federal agencies can agree to. As to the notion that there is
any criminality associated with this difference of opinion, it makes absolutely no sense that
the entire senior ranks of the State Department professional civil service, a group numbering
in the hundreds, needs to be charged, or that we should single out the Secretary."
Vsh Saxena, New Jersey 4 hours ago
It is a lamentable state of political maturity in US that the 'cherub faced con woman' has
an almost inevitable shot at the Presidency.
Her competence is questionable at best resting as it does on a paper-resume, but her dishonesty
and ability to lie in your face is beyond any doubt.
Four months before the election we know this, and are we so helpless as a nation state that
- with Trump as the non-alternative - there is nothing we can do about it?
R.C.W., Heartland 7 hours ago
Pardon my French, but the Clintons are really nothing other than the earliest and biggest example
of the reverberating power of double-career couples-- especially when the couples are in the same
field.
You will see more of this-- in law firms, universities, hospitals, and corporations.
The Clintons are more like Bonnie and Clyde than the Buchanans of the Great Gatsby -- the Buchanans
were simply born into old money, and didn't really work. By contrast, the Clintons are still strivers,
ambitious, determined to see their meritocratic rise via the Ivy League to its most grandiose
fulfillment.
But we have seen this movie before--Imelda Marcos, for example-- and the Macbeths of corse.
But I fear the apparent quid pro quo with Lynch and the FBI director may not be as obvious
as hoping to keep one's job in the new, seemingly inevitable, Clinton administration.
What about their retaliation once in power? Would anyone really dare to cross this powerful
pair?
J, NYC 4 hours ago
"Hillary willfully put herself above the rules - again - and a president, campaign and
party are all left twisting themselves into pretzels defending her."
Twisting like a plane in a death spiral. You'll note that Clinton never puts herself above
the rules to take political risks for progressives or progressive causes. She never sticks her
neck out to do something bravely principled.
Hence, the democratic party has squandered the surge of strength that came with Obama's
election in 2008 to end up instead twisted-pretzel-selling exactly what Obama was embraced to
refute and replace, feebly marketing it to an electorate that has only grown more informed, engaged,
and impatient for the change Obama fell inexplicably short of delivering.
That, politically, the Hillary play, so long in the planning, so tedious in the execution,
is a self-destructive, backwards-sliding strategic move on nearly every level only underscores
that other priorities and constituencies are driving the party. Driving it right off the cliff.
leitskev, Andover, Ma. 15 hours ago
I'm glad to see a rare Democrat not drinking the kool aid. The Clintons will skate on charges
here because it's difficult to prove criminal intent, though we all know she did this to avoid
oversight, knew she was breaking the rules, delayed turning over her emails by years, and then
lied to the public.
Same with the influence peddling. She and Bill took hundreds of millions in speech money
while she was Senator, Secretary, and then presumed Dem nominee. The Foundation, the Clinton slushy,
took in a billion more. Much of this money all came from very shady places, people needing to
buy influence, and the Clinton for sale sign was in blinking neon. They will get away with, however,
only because these were not technically gifts, but were speech payments and "charity" donations.
One might prefer Hillary to Trump, that argument can be made. But no one should fool themselves
about just how corrupt the Clintons are. When you cheer for them, understand what you are enabling.
ss, nj 4 hours ago
Dowd is correct. The crux of the problem is Hillary's continuing pattern of dissembling and
obfuscation. Hillary has demonstrated questionable judgement for a presidential candidate. Equally
disturbing is the self-igniting quality of Bill and Hillary, who create many of their own problems,
like the server fiasco and Bill's recent inappropriate conversation with Lynch. What unpleasant
surprises does the Clinton Foundation yet hold?
While Trump is not a viable candidate, I fear a Clinton administration mired in scandal and
characterized by opacity and secrecy. I realize that in voting for Hillary, I choose to ignore
the red flag waving chaotically for the Clinton's pattern of poor judgement, and their belief
that they are above the law. It is difficult to muster a sanguine outlook for a Clinton presidency,
because established patterns of behavior don't easily change.
tmann, los angeles 4 hours ago
Thanks again Maureen for enlightening those who read the NYTimes with the truth about Mrs.
Clinton and her extremely reckless behavior. It is obvious there are many rabid Hillary supporters
who refuse to accept what you have to say. Old news. A waste of ink. Move on. But the truth is
the truth. And once again you have bravely gone where those who deny and deny, spin and spin
refuse to go. Bravo to you and keep the ink flowing!
John Plotz, Hayward, CA 4 hours ago
Sainthood is not a qualification for the office. We could do worse than Clinton --
witness any Republican you can name. We could do very much worse -- witness her opponent, that
orange lunatic.
N B, is a trusted commenter Texas 17 hours ago
Mark, your love affair with Bernie is messing with your judgment. Sending classified emails
to those with classified clearance seems like a low voltage issue. I get email chains that are
tomes long. I don't read to the fist link ever.
La Mirada, CA 13 hours ago
Well, what I remember is what happened after Bill Clinton had the temerity to reject the received
wisdom of the political class and raise taxes in the early 1990s when the economy flourished to
such a degree that he ended his final years as President with both a robust economy and budget
surpluses sufficient to pay off the entire national debt in just another decade. Then, GWB was
elected, and as usual after electing a Republican, disaster ensued. I don't want to go down the
GWB road again. We've already tried stupid, and it simply doesn't work.
c. thomas, washington 5 hours ago
Hillary released her emails-50K of them. My current job is in public disclosure. So I read
zillions of public officials' emails. Most of the elected are having to be trained to stop using
their private emails, cell phones, etc to conduct business. Why do they do it?
Because it is something they have been doing forever, because it is easier, because they did
it before they became officials, because they are older people and have a harder time figuring
out how to direct their devices to the shared servers.
Hillary admitted she made a mistake.
Jeb Bush used a private server to handle state business when he was governor, but no one made
a big deal about that. Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell also used personal email accounts that
had classified emails in them. It has been distressing to see people attack Clinton viciously
for everything that I have to believe they would not do to a man. She was crucified as the First
Lady for doing more than giving tea parties, for forgiving her husband for cheating, for being
a strong smart woman with ambition.
This article attempts to tarnish her because of who she is married to, again, the wife role.
And it brands her actions in gutter terms that are not supported by the investigation. Hillary
is a role model to many of us who thought none of us would see the possibility of a smart brave
woman at the helm. Obama is right on about Hillary. Even Republicans praised her as a rock star
for her performance as Secretary of State.
"... House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) formally requested Thursday that Clinton's security clearance be revoked because of the careless handling of classified material that the FBI investigation revealed. ..."
"... Clinton's personal system did not have full-time security staff ensuring that its protection was up to date. ..."
"... Comey said as many as ten people who did not have clearance had access to the system. ..."
"... Unconfirmed media reports had indicated that the FBI investigation spread to look at the activities of the Clinton Foundation as well ..."
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) formally requested Thursday that Clinton's security clearance be revoked because of the careless
handling of classified material that the FBI investigation revealed.
... ... ...
While Comey maintained that nobody else would face criminal prosecution for doing the same things Clinton did, he emphasized in
his testimony that there would be consequences if a current government employee did it. This could include termination, administrative
sanctions, or losing clearance.
He refused to definitively assess a hypothetical situation where someone like Clinton was seeking security clearance for an FBI
job, though.
... ... ...
Gmail: One aspect of Clinton's actions that Comey said was particularly troubling was that he could not completely exclude
the possibility that her email account was hacked. Unlike the State Department or even email providers like Gmail, Clinton's
personal system did not have full-time security staff ensuring that its protection was up to date.
... ... ...
Clearance: Clinton and her top aides had security clearance to view the classified material that was improperly being transmitted
on the server, but Comey said as many as ten people who did not have clearance had access to the system.
... ... ...
Clinton Foundation:Unconfirmed media reports had indicated that the FBI investigation spread to look at the activities
of the Clinton Foundation as well
Trey Gowdy GRILLS James Comey On Hillary Clinton Emails. Hillary Clinton Email Investigation FBI Director James Comey testified
at a hearing on the FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of private email servers while serving as secretary of state,
as well as the decision to not recommend criminal charges against her. Rep. Gowdy Q&A - Oversight of the State Department.
At a congressional hearing Thursday, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) grilled FBI director James Comey about several of Hillary Clinton's
statements to the public, which the FBI investigation revealed to be untrue. For instance, Clinton had previously claimed that she
had never received or sent classified information to or from her private email server; Comey conceded to Rep. Gowdy that that was
not true.
Another claim of Clinton's, which the investigation revealed to be untrue, was that she had retained all work-related emails.
Comey noted that they had uncovered "thousands" of work-related emails not returned to the State Department. "In the interest of
time and because I have a plane to catch tomorrow afternoon," Gowdy concluded after running through a catalogue of Clinton's claims,
"I'm not going to go through any more of the false statements."
But Gowdy determined that "false exculpatory statements" can be used to determine intention and consciousness of guilt.
Wesley Eskildsen
Is this guy a Starfish from Bikini Bottom!? If Hillary gave her Lawyer, or anyone without the proper Security Clearance AND
the "Need to know", access to her Server containing classified information then she is in violation of Federal Law. If she were
on active Duty she would be court-martialed. that is Chaffetz point exactly!
John Doe
As a democrat, I am disgusted that every member of my party, when givin the opportunity to ask some questions, not one of these
cowards asked a real question and instead focussed on basically explaining about what a wonderful human being Hillary Clinton
is, and what terrible people the republicans are....
Wayne Paul
This chick Maloney just throwing softballs I have no clue why she is even talking.
aadrgtagtwe aaqerytwerhywerytqery
Comey is a liar, look at his reaction when asked about what questions did FBI ask hillary during the 3 and a half hour interview.
He said he couldn't remember at the moment. How is that possible? The only question to ask hillary during the fbi interview was:
"Did you send and receive classified top secret emails through your servers?"
Both answers Hillary could have given, would have been enough to indict her. If she said "Yes", then she would have been indicted
for sending top secret info. If she said "No" , she would have lied, because the report that Comey presented said that "top secret
emails were sent and received, and they were top secret at the time they were sent and received. Fbi didn't ask that question
at all. That tells you that the whole interview was a sham, Hillary was never interviewed.
The propaganda-media reported "hillary was grilled by fbi during 3 and a half hour interview". What unbelievable bullshit!
WE WANT JUSTICE!!!!!!!!! For all those people who are now in jail for the rest of their lives for doing much less than the criminal-hillary!!!!!!!
"... At a contentious hearing of the House oversight committee, Mr. Comey acknowledged under questioning that a number of key assertions that Mrs. Clinton made for months in defending her email system were contradicted by the FBI's investigation. ..."
"... Mr. Comey said that Mrs. Clinton had failed to return "thousands" of work-related emails to the State Department, despite her public insistence to the contrary, and that her lawyers may have destroyed classified material that the F.B.I. was unable to recover. He also described her handling of classified material as secretary of state as "negligent" - a legal term he avoided using when he announced on Tuesday that "no reasonable prosecutor" would bring a case against her. ..."
... He also provided new details that could prove damaging to her just weeks before she is to be named the Democrats' presidential
nominee.
At a contentious hearing of the House oversight committee, Mr. Comey acknowledged under questioning that a number of key assertions
that Mrs. Clinton made for months in defending her email system were contradicted by the FBI's investigation.
Mr. Comey said that Mrs. Clinton had failed to return "thousands" of work-related emails to the State Department, despite her
public insistence to the contrary, and that her lawyers may have destroyed classified material that the F.B.I. was unable to recover.
He also described her handling of classified material as secretary of state as "negligent" - a legal term he avoided using when he
announced on Tuesday that "no reasonable prosecutor" would bring a case against her.
"... I also made this comment during the morning links, but I think it bears repeating. Robinson considers this to be a great day for Clinton? By what standard? The FBI director went on national television and described her as "extremely careless," and then essentially called her a liar. Is a politician considered to be ethical if he or she is not indicted? ..."
"... Called her a liar? Un-indicted liar or perjurer because the investigators are reasonable. ..."
"... What an inversion – this must be the first time it was good for Hillary that her husband had a scandalous private meeting with a younger woman. ..."
"... In Hillary's nomination victory speech a month ago she argued she has the moral high ground and Trump's response was to focus on the problems in the economy. If the recession starts to hit hard enough late this year, Trump will win, and he will tell Hillary and Bill, "Its the economy stupid!" ..."
"... It is a SAD day when a President of the US cheers for an "extremely careless" leaker after being the most aggressive prosecutor of whistleblowers under the Espionage Act ever. Can I haz my money back? ..."
"... When "mere mortals" undertake the kind of reckless action with regard to classified material that Clinton did, wouldn't a likely and appropriate sanction be to pull that person's security clearance? ..."
"... Can a president operate without having a security clearance? ..."
"... "Mere mortals" get indicted. Here is the complaint filed in U.S.A v. Bryan Nishimura, July 24, 2015 ..."
"... BRYAN H. NISHIMURA, defendant herein, from on or about January 2007 through April 2012, while deployed outside of the United States on active military duty with the United States Navy Reserve in Afghanistan and thereafter at his residence located in the County of Sacramento, State and Eastern District of California, being an officer and employee of the United States, specifically: a United States Navy Reserve Commander, and, by virtue of his office and employment as such, becoming possessed of documents and materials containing classified information of the United States, specifically: CLASSIFIED United States Army records, did knowingly remove such documents and materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents and materials at his residence in the County of Sacramento, an unauthorized location, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1924(a), a Class A misdemeanor. ..."
"... In a decision Tuesday in a case not involving Clinton directly, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held that messages contained in a personal email account can sometimes be considered government records subject to Freedom of Information Act requests. ..."
"... Apparently Hillary's problems with the FOIA cases will worsen. ..."
"Comey and Lynch asked to testify before Congress on Clinton probe" [MarketWatch].
From my armchair at 30,000 feet: If the Republicans really want to make Lynch squirm, they just have to ask Lynch one question, which
Comey - strong passive-aggressive move, there, Jim! - handed to them on a silver platter at his presser, yesterday. I've helpfully
written it down (quoted phrases
from Comey's press release, parsed here):
Q: Attorney General Lynch, what "security or administrative sanctions" do you feel are appropriate for Secretary Clinton's
"extremely careless" handling of her email communications at the State Department?
No speeches instead of questions, no primping on camera for the folks back home, nothing about the endless lying, no Benghazi
red meat, no sphincter-driven ranting about "security", tie gormless Trey Gowdy up in a canvas bag and stuff him under a desk. Just
ask that one question. And when Lynch dodges, as she will, ask it again. I don't ever recall having written a sentence that
includes "the American people want," but what the American people want is to see some member of the elite, some time, any time, held
accountable for wrong-doing. If it's Clinton's "turn" for that, then so be it. She should look at the big picture and consider the
larger benefit of continued legitimacy for the Republic and take one for the team. So let's see if the Republicans overplay their
hand. They always have. UPDATE This
is a good, that
is, sane letter from Bob Goodlatte (pdf), chair of the House Judiciary Committee (via MsExPat). But don't get down in the goddamned
weeds!! K.I.S.S.!!!
"Comey's solo appearance Tuesday stood out for historical reasons, because it's highly unusual for the FBI to make public findings
when investigators have decided no charges should be brought" [CNN].
This purports to be the inside story of how Comey "stood alone" to make the announcement. But there are some holes in the narrative:
Matthew Miller, the former top Justice spokesman under Attorney General Eric Holder, called Comey's announcement "outrageous."
"The FBI's job is to investigate cases and when it's appropriate to work with the Justice Department to bring charges," he said
on CNN. House Republican
sides with Comey over Trump on Clinton emails. Instead, Miller said: "Jim Comey is the final arbiter in determining the appropriateness
of Hillary Clinton's conduct. That's not his job."
When you've lost Eric Holder's spokesperson And then there's this. After Clinton's "long-awaited" Fourth-of-July weekend three
hours of testimony:
Officials said it was already clear that there wasn't enough evidence to bring criminal charges. The interview cemented that
decision among FBI and Justice officials who were present.
By Monday night, Comey and other FBI officials decided the public announcement should come at the earliest opportunity.
The fact that Tuesday would also mark the first public campaign appearance by Obama alongside Hillary Clinton didn't enter
in the calculation, officials said.
But as Yves points out, there was no time to write an official report of Clinton's "interview" over the weekend. So for this narrative
to work, you've got to form a mental picture of high FBI officials scanning the transcript of Clinton's "interview," throwing up
their hands, and saying "We got nuthin'. You take it from here, Jim." That doesn't scan. I mean, the FBI is called a
bureau for good reason. So to me, the obvious process violation means that political pressure was brought
to bear on Comey, most likely by Obama, despite the denials (those being subject to the Rice-Davies Rule). But Comey did the bare
minimum to comply, in essence carefully building a three-scoop Sundae of Accountability, and then handing it, with the cherry ("security
or administrative sanctions"), to Lynch, so Lynch could have the pleasant task of making the decision about whether to put the cherry
on top. Or not. Of course, if our elites were as dedicated to public service as they were in Nixon's day, there would have been a
second Saturday Night Massacre (link for those who
came in late), but these are different times. (Extending the sundae metaphor even further, it will be interesting to see if the
ice cream shop staff knows what else is back in the freezer, the nuts and syrups that Comey decided not to add; Comey certainly made
the ethical case for leaks.)
"Hillary Clinton's email problems might be even worse than we thought " [Chris Cilizza,
WaPo]. Cillizza, for whom I confess a sneaking affection, as for Nooners, isn't the most combative writer in WaPo's stable
voteforno6, July 6, 2016 at 2:12 pm
Re: "Hillary Clinton's great day"
I also made this comment during the morning links, but I think it bears repeating. Robinson considers this to be a great day
for Clinton? By what standard? The FBI director went on national television and described her as "extremely careless," and then essentially
called her a liar. Is a politician considered to be ethical if he or she is not indicted?
MyLessThanPrimeBeef, July 6, 2016 at 3:29 pm
Called her a liar? Un-indicted liar or perjurer because the investigators are reasonable.
Elizabeth Burton, July 6, 2016 at 6:17 pm
The cultish nature of Clinton followers struck me months ago; it's quite plain to anyone who's done any amount of study of cults.
The giddy insistence now that the Comey statement is total vindication is a case in point, and any attempt to point out how damning
it actually was only brings an "innocent until proven guilty" reply.
One can only surmise that a large number of people have been so inured to corruption they no longer consider it a negative unless
the perpetrator goes to jail; and even then there would likely be more insistence that person was railroaded.
Tertium Squid, July 6, 2016 at 2:15 pm
What an inversion – this must be the first time it was good for Hillary that her husband had a scandalous private meeting
with a younger woman.
Tim, July 6, 2016 at 2:40 pm
On election day hindsight will show the real inversion with the Clintons is:
In 1990s Bob Dole ran on a platform of having the moral high ground, while Bill Clinton said "it's the economy stupid", and Bill
won.
In Hillary's nomination victory speech a month ago she argued she has the moral high ground and Trump's response was to focus
on the problems in the economy. If the recession starts to hit hard enough late this year, Trump will win, and he will tell Hillary
and Bill, "Its the economy stupid!"
Isolato, July 6, 2016 at 2:18 pm
It is a SAD day when a President of the US cheers for an "extremely careless" leaker after being the most aggressive prosecutor
of whistleblowers under the Espionage Act ever. Can I haz my money back?
Kokuanani, July 6, 2016 at 3:19 pm
When "mere mortals" undertake the kind of reckless action with regard to classified material that Clinton did, wouldn't a
likely and appropriate sanction be to pull that person's security clearance?
Can we hope for that to happen to Clinton? [Why not?]
Can a president operate without having a security clearance?
3.14e-9, July 6, 2016 at 6:05 pm
When "mere mortals" undertake the kind of reckless action with regard to classified material that Clinton did, wouldn't
a likely and appropriate sanction be to pull that person's security clearance?
"Mere mortals" get indicted. Here is the complaint filed in U.S.A v. Bryan Nishimura, July 24, 2015:
The United States Attorney charges: THAT BRYAN H. NISHIMURA, defendant herein, from on or about January 2007 through April
2012, while deployed outside of the United States on active military duty with the United States Navy Reserve in Afghanistan and
thereafter at his residence located in the County of Sacramento, State and Eastern District of California, being an officer and
employee of the United States, specifically: a United States Navy Reserve Commander, and, by virtue of his office and employment
as such, becoming possessed of documents and materials containing classified information of the United States, specifically: CLASSIFIED
United States Army records, did knowingly remove such documents and materials without authority and with the intent to retain
such documents and materials at his residence in the County of Sacramento, an unauthorized location, in violation of Title 18,
United States Code, Section 1924(a), a Class A misdemeanor.
voteforno6, July 6, 2016 at 6:13 pm
Since the classification program falls under the President by law, it is impossible for a President to not have a security clearance.
Pookah Harvey, July 6, 2016 at 2:54 pm
Clinton supporters seem to feel the fat lady has sung but it might be they are only hearing someone who is slightly chunky. From
Politico:
On the same day that the FBI announced that the criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server is
likely to conclude without any charges, a federal appeals court issued a ruling that could complicate and prolong a slew of ongoing
civil lawsuits over access to the messages Clinton and her top aides traded on personal accounts.
In a decision Tuesday in a case not involving Clinton directly, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held that
messages contained in a personal email account can sometimes be considered government records subject to Freedom of Information
Act requests.
Apparently Hillary's problems with the FOIA cases will worsen.
Rep. Ken Buck questions FBI Director James Comey about his insertion of the term "willfully"
into 18 U.S. Code § 1924. Comey says he "imputes" the term in line with the Department of
Justice's history/tradition of enforcing the statute.
The above clip is taken from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's hearing
regarding Hillary Clinton's criminal email conduct.
"... ...Mr. Comey also referenced a more obscure provision of the Espionage Act that has little to do with intent or state of mind, but rather makes it a crime to disclose classified information through "gross negligence." ..."
"... But the crime of "gross negligence" in the Espionage Act doesn't appear to require proof of any intentional mishandling of documents, according to Stephen I. Vladeck , a national security scholar at the University of Texas. ..."
"... Specifically, the law makes it a felony to permit classified information relating to national defense to be "removed from its proper place of custody" through gross negligence. ..."
"... Why are you focusing on the gross negligence aspect? ..."
"... Where is the removal from the proper place of custody? I've seen nothing in any legal analysis in this paper that talks about it. Is the presence of classified material on a private server of one who is authorized to have it equivalent to such a removal? ..."
"... She was specifically not authorized to have a private server. ..."
"... "From the group of 30,000 emails returned to the State Department in 2014, 110 emails in 52 email chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was TOP SECRET at the time they were sent; 36 of those chains contained SECRET information at the time; and eight contained CONFIDENTIAL information at the time. That's the lowest level of classification." ..."
"... "We assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton's personal email account." ..."
"... Making an argument for the difference between "gross negligence" and "extreme carelessness" is the sort of semantic hair-splitting that Hillary Clinton ought to have been compelled to do in court - in the same way that her husband prevaricated over "what the meaning of the word 'is' is," shortly before he lost his law license. ..."
...Mr. Comey also referenced a more obscure provision of
the Espionage Act that has little to
do with intent or state of mind, but rather makes it a crime to disclose classified information through
"gross negligence."
That provision of the Espionage Act, the primary law governing the handling of classified information,
could require at least proof that the offender knew the classified information disclosed could harm
the United States or benefit a foreign power if it got into the wrong hands.
But the crime of "gross negligence" in the Espionage Act doesn't appear to require proof of any
intentional mishandling of documents, according to
Stephen I. Vladeck, a national security scholar at the University of Texas.
Specifically, the law makes it a felony to permit classified information relating to national
defense to be "removed from its proper place of custody" through gross negligence.
What would constitute a degree of recklessness that rises to gross negligence? Mr. Vladeck offered
an example of accidentally leaving a briefcase stuffed with classified national security secrets
on a busy sidewalk in Washington, D.C.
... ... ...
Charles Silva
Why are you focusing on the gross negligence aspect?
Where is the removal from the proper place of custody? I've seen nothing in any legal analysis
in this paper that talks about it. Is the presence of classified material on a private server
of one who is authorized to have it equivalent to such a removal?
Lee Hartwig
@Charles Silva She was specifically not authorized to have a private server.
Clifford Crouch
@Michael Piston
"From the group of 30,000 emails returned to the State Department in 2014, 110 emails in 52
email chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the
time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was TOP SECRET
at the time they were sent; 36 of those chains contained SECRET information at the time; and eight
contained CONFIDENTIAL information at the time. That's the lowest level of classification."
-FBI Director James Comey, July 5, 2016
"We assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton's personal
email account."
-James Comey, July 5, 2016
Making an argument for the difference between "gross negligence" and "extreme carelessness"
is the sort of semantic hair-splitting that Hillary Clinton ought to have been compelled to do
in court - in the same way that her husband prevaricated over "what the meaning of the word 'is'
is," shortly before he lost his law license.
Hillary coped her emails and gave all of the to her private lawyer, who has no security clearance, on the USB stick.
That's alone qualifies for gross negligence.
Notable quotes:
"... Hillary Clinton also used the department's secure email system for transmitting classified information, but the FBI found that some of the regular communications with her staff on the personal server involved facts and details that she should have known were classified. In a few cases, the emails bore markings to indicate they contained classified information. ..."
"... Stewart Baker, a top national security lawyer in the Bush administration, called Comey's statement "pretty damning for Secretary Clinton, even if the facts don't make for an impressive criminal case. He suggests that she should have been, or arguably could still be, subjected to 'security or administrative sanctions.' What he doesn't say, but what we can infer, is that she ran those incredible risks with national security information because she was more worried about the GOP reading her mail than of Russian or Chinese spies reading it. That's appalling," he said. ..."
"... HIllary lied about her servers, she lied about sending classified information, she lied about the re-classification of confidential, secret and SAP documents. Some two hours after Comey's announcement, she and Obama took off on Air Force One for a rally together. ..."
"... But a new security regimen is dawning for those who hold security clearances. According to the FBI, they are now free to transfer data between secure and non-secure networks without punishment, as long as the INTENT is not to harm the United States. ..."
"... A retired FBI agent on Fox said this : The Comey conference was to take the heat off of Lynch - because if the FBI had just been quiet with their results, and it would have been Lynch who came out and said...No charges - AFTER the Phoenix scandal, people would really be skeptical. end - ..."
"... Of course this took AG-LL off the hook. NOW - for all of this to fall in place? Had to be some meetings beforehand - AG - FBI and Whitehouse general council - 3 US government lawyers colluding this event - to make SURE they have jobs the next 4 years and the GRATITUDE of Potus Hillary. ..."
"... Corrupt? I would not go that far...let's just say DIRTY. ..."
"... "Gross negligence" is the standard under 18 U.S.C., section 793-f. FBI Director Comey said Hillary Clinton was "extremely careless" in her handling of highly classified information. What's the difference, other than semantics, between "gross negligence" and "extremely careless?" ..."
"... Hillary's emails may be great confirmation of Hillary's war role in the Mid-east and even Ukraine. However, more to the point they confirm for all Democrats that Hillary's agenda is the Neo-con one of Geo. W. Bush's handlers from PNAC, Chicago School of Economics, Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan and his wife Victoria Nuland. (The Neo-con/Neo-liberal company includes Larry Summers, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc.) She is not a run of the mill hawk like John McCain, she is a New World Order marionette just as Geo W was. She needs to be dumped as she is beholden to anti-democratic values of elitism. ..."
"... Bill Kristol is attacking Donald Trump because his candidate is Hillary. ..."
"... This was historical. Law enforcement does not make decisions on prosecution. That is left to prosecutors. Law enforcement are fact finders who should have presented the case to a career professional prosecutor to make a decision. ..."
"... The question is, why was well established policy and protocol violated and the case not presented to a prosecutor for a decision? Ask any local D.A. If they reject a case, they write a "reject" documenting their rationale. In a very public or complicated case, that reject is written in great detail regarding each and every potential charge. ..."
"... The Obama Administration has prosecuted more people under the same WW I espionage act than all other administrations COMBINED. Comey has prosecuted a person under this act for a 21-word email .not 30,000 destroyed emails. ..."
"... Everybody knows this was fixed. The examples of similar incidents, putting people in jail, are coming out of the shadows. It is time to vote the career politicians out of office and take our country back. ..."
"... NSA has copies of every email sent to/from US, & likely most others, for last 10+ years. So they have all 30,000+ of the emails she deleted. ..."
"... When in the Navy I saw a LT. career destroyed for leaving a top secret safe open over night. We did not know who maybe got in. The assumption by NCIS was that someone did enter and Top Secret information was taken. He was prosecuted for maybe forgetting and Clinton no prosecution for being dumb? ..."
"It's just not a crime under current law to do nothing more than share sensitive information over unsecured networks," said Stephen
Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas. "Maybe it should be, but that's something for Congress to decide going forward."
John M. Deutch, another former CIA director, narrowly avoided a misdemeanor charge for having taken hundreds of top secret files
home on his laptop computer. He was pardoned by Clinton before charges were filed.
... ... ...
Hillary Clinton also used the department's secure email system for transmitting classified information, but the FBI found
that some of the regular communications with her staff on the personal server involved facts and details that she should have known
were classified. In a few cases, the emails bore markings to indicate they contained classified information.
However, investigators did not find evidence she knowingly or intentionally disclosed government secrets or that she exposed secrets
through gross negligence. Clinton's apparent interest was in maintaining her privacy.
... ... ...
Stewart Baker, a top national security lawyer in the Bush administration, called Comey's statement "pretty damning for Secretary
Clinton, even if the facts don't make for an impressive criminal case. He suggests that she should have been, or arguably could still
be, subjected to 'security or administrative sanctions.' What he doesn't say, but what we can infer, is that she ran those incredible
risks with national security information because she was more worried about the GOP reading her mail than of Russian or Chinese spies
reading it. That's appalling," he said.
knox.bob.xpg
No amount of facts, no amount of evidence, and no amount of lies will change the minds of supporters of Hillary Clinton. Her
coronation was pre-determined. Ideology is more important to her supporters than the quality of the candidate. While brash, Trump
nailed it yesterday. The fix was in and the optics played out.
HIllary lied about her servers, she lied about sending classified information, she lied about the re-classification of
confidential, secret and SAP documents. Some two hours after Comey's announcement, she and Obama took off on Air Force One for
a rally together.
Obama would have never done this if Comey's decision was to seek criminal charges. Presidential travel is not spur
of the moment, it is carefully planned weeks in advance. So what happened here ? I believe Comey knew that DOJ would not seek
criminal charges against her despite the overwhelming evidence of gross negligence.
Comey "fried" her yesterday and now she will be tried in the court of public opinion. There are simply some people who believe
that global warming, income inequality, and transgender bathrooms are more important than ISIS, our economy, terror, or national
debt.
unclesmrgol
Hillary has been freed from any punishment, for some animals are more important than others.
But a new security regimen is dawning for those who hold security clearances. According to the FBI, they are now free to
transfer data between secure and non-secure networks without punishment, as long as the INTENT is not to harm the United States.
That is the new standard, and a mighty fine one it is -- right?
SandyDago
A retired FBI agent on Fox said this : The Comey conference was to take the heat off of Lynch - because if the FBI had
just been quiet with their results, and it would have been Lynch who came out and said...No charges - AFTER the Phoenix scandal,
people would really be skeptical. end -
That seems very obvious at this point...The FBI does not do - what James Comey did yesterday. No comment is how they roll -
Yet we get a play by play yesterday.
Of course this took AG-LL off the hook. NOW - for all of this to fall in place? Had to be some meetings beforehand - AG
- FBI and Whitehouse general council - 3 US government lawyers colluding this event - to make SURE they have jobs the next 4 years
and the GRATITUDE of Potus Hillary.
Corrupt? I would not go that far...let's just say DIRTY.
Chris Crusade
"Gross negligence" is the standard under 18 U.S.C., section 793-f. FBI Director Comey said Hillary Clinton was "extremely
careless" in her handling of highly classified information. What's the difference, other than semantics, between "gross negligence"
and "extremely careless?"
lon.ball
Hillary's emails may be great confirmation of Hillary's war role in the Mid-east and even Ukraine.
However, more to the point they confirm for all Democrats that Hillary's agenda is the Neo-con one of Geo. W. Bush's handlers
from PNAC, Chicago School of Economics, Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan and his wife Victoria Nuland. (The Neo-con/Neo-liberal company
includes Larry Summers, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc.) She is not a run of the mill hawk like John McCain, she is a New
World Order marionette just as Geo W was. She needs to be dumped as she is beholden to anti-democratic values of elitism.
Bill Kristol is attacking Donald Trump because his candidate is Hillary. (See this article
in this issue.) So, it is not about Democrat vs. Republican. The new political dichotomy is Centralization (corporatism, totalitarian,
collectivism) vs. Personal Constitutional freedom. I am a lifelong Democrat and Sanders man who is "never Hillary" for good reason.
I cannot sit by idly and watch as our national Democracy continues to devolve into world fascism with the Neo-cons. Hillary is
a traitor to the Nation and to the late great Democratic Party.
It is time for the old right and old progressive left to unite for preservation of the US Constitution
and personal freedom. Never Hillary; never New World Order!"
less
tommy501
This was historical. Law enforcement does not make decisions on prosecution. That is left to prosecutors. Law enforcement
are fact finders who should have presented the case to a career professional prosecutor to make a decision.
The question is, why was well established policy and protocol violated and the case not presented to a prosecutor for a
decision? Ask any local D.A. If they reject a case, they write a "reject" documenting their rationale. In a very public or complicated
case, that reject is written in great detail regarding each and every potential charge.
Something's fishy.
andytek2
@tommy501 he didn't make a prosecutorial decision he only said that no reasonable prosecutor would file charges.
DennisWV
The Obama Administration has prosecuted more people under the same WW I espionage act than all other administrations COMBINED.
Comey has prosecuted a person under this act for a 21-word email .not 30,000 destroyed emails.
Everybody knows this was fixed. The examples of similar incidents, putting people in jail, are coming out of the shadows.
It is time to vote the career politicians out of office and take our country back.
Outside the Herd
NSA has copies of every email sent to/from US, & likely most others, for last 10+ years. So they have all 30,000+ of the
emails she deleted.
FBI & O knew months ago what was in all of them, & delayed looking away until primaries were clinched. Which was also crooked,
ask Bernie's peep's.
Andre-Leonard
"A second law makes it a crime to "remove" secret documents kept by the government or to allow them to be stolen through
"gross negligence."
Funny how they went after Edward Snowden for the very same thing. Yet no one in their 'right' mind expected a Justice Department
led by Obama to allow for Billary to be indicted. It's all about favorites here and justice is 'not' really blind.
kenwrite9
When she was in foreign countries she should have known that those countries spy on American officials. I now that, why she
did not is strange. When in the Navy I saw a LT. career destroyed for leaving a top secret safe open over night. We did not
know who maybe got in. The assumption by NCIS was that someone did enter and Top Secret information was taken. He was prosecuted
for maybe forgetting and Clinton no prosecution for being dumb?
"... Hillary Clinton checked every box required for a felony violation of Section 793(f) of the federal penal code (Title 18) ..."
"... The point of having a statute that criminalizes gross negligence is to underscore that government officials have a special obligation to safeguard national defense secrets; when they fail to carry out that obligation due to gross negligence, they are guilty of serious wrongdoing. The lack of intent to harm our country is irrelevant. People never intend the bad things that happen due to gross negligence. ..."
"... It is a common tactic of defense lawyers in criminal trials to set up a straw-man for the jury: a crime the defendant has not committed. ..."
"... Judges generally do not allow such sleight-of-hand because innocence on an uncharged crime is irrelevant to the consideration of the crimes that actually have been charged. ..."
"... Meanwhile, although there may have been profound harm to national security caused by her grossly negligent mishandling of classified information, we've decided she shouldn't be prosecuted for grossly negligent mishandling of classified information. ..."
"... To my mind, a reasonable prosecutor would ask: Why did Congress criminalize the mishandling of classified information through gross negligence? The answer, obviously, is to prevent harm to national security. So then the reasonable prosecutor asks: Was the statute clearly violated, and if yes, is it likely that Mrs. Clinton's conduct caused harm to national security? If those two questions are answered in the affirmative, I believe many, if not most, reasonable prosecutors would feel obliged to bring the case. ..."
Hillary Clinton checked every box required for a felony violation of Section 793(f) of the federal penal code (Title 18):
With lawful access to highly classified information she acted with gross negligence in removing and causing it to be removed it from
its proper place of custody, and she transmitted it and caused it to be transmitted to others not authorized to have it, in patent
violation of her trust. Director Comey even conceded that former Secretary Clinton was "extremely careless" and strongly suggested
that her recklessness very likely led to communications (her own and those she corresponded with) being intercepted by foreign intelligence
services.
In essence, in order to give Mrs. Clinton a pass, the FBI rewrote the statute, inserting an intent element that Congress did not
require. The added intent element, moreover, makes no sense: The point of having a statute that criminalizes gross negligence
is to underscore that government officials have a special obligation to safeguard national defense secrets; when they fail to carry
out that obligation due to gross negligence, they are guilty of serious wrongdoing. The lack of intent to harm our country is irrelevant.
People never intend the bad things that happen due to gross negligence.
... ... ...
It is a common tactic of defense lawyers in criminal trials to set up a straw-man for the jury: a crime the defendant has
not committed. The idea is that by knocking down a crime the prosecution does not allege and cannot prove, the defense may confuse
the jury into believing the defendant is not guilty of the crime charged.
Judges generally do not allow such sleight-of-hand because innocence on an uncharged crime is irrelevant to the consideration
of the crimes that actually have been charged. It seems to me that this is what the FBI has done today. It has told the public
that because Mrs. Clinton did not have intent to harm the United States we should not prosecute her on a felony that does not require
proof of intent to harm the United States.
Meanwhile, although there may have been profound harm to national security caused by her grossly negligent mishandling of
classified information, we've decided she shouldn't be prosecuted for grossly negligent mishandling of classified information.
I think highly of Jim Comey personally and professionally, but this makes no sense to me. Finally, I was especially unpersuaded
by Director Comey's claim that no reasonable prosecutor would bring a case based on the evidence uncovered by the FBI.
To my mind, a reasonable prosecutor would ask: Why did Congress criminalize the mishandling of classified information through
gross negligence? The answer, obviously, is to prevent harm to national security. So then the reasonable prosecutor asks: Was the
statute clearly violated, and if yes, is it likely that Mrs. Clinton's conduct caused harm to national security? If those two questions
are answered in the affirmative, I believe many, if not most, reasonable prosecutors would feel obliged to bring the case.
"... The truth is that the pretext for military intervention was almost as thin in Yugoslavia as it was in Libya. ..."
"... SANCTIONS HAVE been the favorite smart weapon of both Clintons. Iraq was the target country for Bill in the 1990s, as Iran would be for Hillary starting in 2009. The point of sanctions is to inflict pain, in response to which (it is hoped) the people will blame their government. The point is therefore also to create the conditions for regime change. Neither of the Clintons seems to have absorbed a central lesson of the Amnesty International Report on Cuba in 1975–76: that the "persistence of fear, real or imagined, of counterrevolutionary conspiracies" bore the primary responsibility for "the early [Cuban] excesses in the treatment of political prisoners"; and that "the removal of that fear has been largely responsible for the improvements in conditions." Both Clintons have felt pressed to perform supererogatory works to show that liberals can be tough. For Mrs. Clinton, there is the additional need-from self-demand as much as external pressure-to prove that a female leader can be tougher than her male counterpart. ..."
"... Those sentences are notable for a historical omission and a non sequitur. The NATO expansion that began under George H. W. Bush, was enhanced in the presidency of Bill Clinton and continued under George W. Bush and Obama, was not a widely appreciated moderate policy, as Mrs. Clinton implies. The policy was subject to skeptical challenge from the first, and one of its sharpest critics was George F. Kennan. (He described it, coincidentally, as "a tragic mistake.") Leaving aside the abridgment of history, there is a disturbing logical jump in Clinton's dismissal of the challenge regarding NATO. The gratitude expressed by newly admitted member states does nothing at all to "refute" the fact that Vladimir Putin, along with many Western diplomats, thought the post–Cold War expansion of a Cold War entity was a hostile policy directed provocatively against Russia in its own backyard. ..."
"... Her sentences about NATO could have been written by Tony Blair; and this explains why at least three neoconservatives-Eliot A. Cohen, Max Boot and Robert Kagan, in ascending order of enthusiasm-have indicated that a Clinton presidency would be agreeable to them. She is a reliable option for them. ..."
"... Her comparison of Putin to Hitler in March 2014 and her likening of Crimean Russians to Sudeten Germans were reminiscent, too, of the specter of Munich evoked by an earlier secretary of state, Dean Rusk, to defend the escalation of the Vietnam War in 1965-the kind of tragic mistake that Hillary Clinton seems prepared to repeat for the most laudable of humanitarian reasons. ..."
An incorrigible belief in the purity of one's motives is among the most dangerous endowments a
politician can possess.
... ... ...
Clinton gave two pages to the war in her memoir Living History. She sympathized there with the burden of responsibility borne by
President Johnson for "a war he'd inherited," which turned out to be "a tragic mistake." Johnson
is her focus: the man of power who rode a tiger he could not dismount. On a second reading, "mistake"
may seem too light a word to characterize a war that destroyed an agrarian culture forever and killed
between one and three million Vietnamese. "Mistake" is also the word that Hillary Clinton has favored
in answering questions about her vote for the Iraq War.
Like every Democrat who has run for
president since 1960, Clinton sometimes talks as if she wished foreign policy would go away. A president's
most important responsibility, she agrees, is to strengthen the bonds of neighborhood and community
at home, to assure a decent livelihood for working Americans and an efficient system of benefits
for all. Yet her four years as secretary of state-chronicled in a second volume of memoirs,
Hard Choices-have licensed her
to speak with the authority of a veteran in the world of nations. War and diplomacy, as that book
aimed to show, have become an invaluable adjunct to her skill set. Clinton would want us to count
as well a third tool besides war and diplomacy. She calls it (after a coinage by Joseph Nye) "smart
power." Smart power, for her, denotes a kind of pressure that may augment the force of arms and the
persuasive work of diplomacy. It draws on the network of civil society, NGOs, projects for democracy
promotion and managed operations of social media, by which the United States over the past quarter
of a century has sought to weaken the authority of designated enemies and to increase leverage on
presumptive or potential friends. Smart power is supposed to widen the prospects of liberal society
and assist the spread of human rights. Yet the term itself creates a puzzle. Hillary Clinton's
successful advocacy of violent regime change in Libya and her continuing call to support armed insurgents
against the Assad government in Syria have been arguments for war, but arguments that claim a special
exemption. For these wars-both the one we led and the one we should have led-were "humanitarian wars."
This last phrase Clinton has avoided using, just as she has avoided explaining her commitment to
the internationalist program known as "Responsibility to Protect," with its broad definition of genocide
and multiple triggers for legitimate intervention. Instead, in a Democratic primary debate in October
2015, she chose to characterize the Libya war as "smart power at its best."
The NATO action to overthrow Muammar el-Qaddafi, in which Clinton played so decisive a role,
has turned out to be a catastrophe with strong resemblances to Iraq-a catastrophe smaller in degree
but hardly less consequential in its ramifications, from North Africa to the Middle East to southern
Europe. The casus belli was the hyperbolic threat by Qaddafi to annihilate a rebel force in Benghazi.
His vow to hunt down the rebels "like rats" door to door could be taken to mean a collective punishment
of inhabitants of the city, but Qaddafi had marched from the west to the east of Libya, in command
of an overwhelming force, without the occurrence of any such massacre, and the Pentagon and U.S.
intelligence assigned low credibility to the threat. Clinton took more seriously an alarmist reading
of Qaddafi by Bernard-Henri Lévy, Nicolas Sarkozy, David Cameron, Susan Rice and Samantha Power,
and chose to interpret his threat as a harbinger of "genocide."
Landler, in his book Alter Egos on the Clinton-Obama relationship, joins the consensus
that has lately emerged from the reporting of Patrick Cockburn, Anne Barnard and other journalists
on the ground. "Libya," Landler writes, "has descended into a state of Mad Max–like anarchy";
the country is now "a seedbed for militancy that has spread west and south across Africa"; it "has
become the most important Islamic State stronghold outside Syria and Iraq"; "it sends waves of desperate
migrants across the Mediterranean, where they drown in capsized vessels within sight of Europe."
Clinton's most recent comments, however, leave no doubt that she continues to believe in the healing
virtue of smart power. The belief appears to be genuine and not tactical.
FOLLOW HER definition a little further and a host of perplexities arise. Cyber war could presumably
be justified as a use of smart power, on the Clinton model, since it damages the offensive capabilities
of a hostile power in an apparently bloodless way. Shall we therefore conclude that the deployment
of the Stuxnet worm against Iran's nuclear program was an achievement of smart power? Or consider
a related use that would disrupt the flow of water or electricity in a city of three million persons
controlled by a government hostile to the United States-an action aimed at stirring discontents to
spur an insurrection. Could that be called smart power? We approach a region in which terminological
ingenuity may skirt the edge of sophistry; yet this is the rhetorical limbo in which a good deal
of U.S. policy is conceived and executed.
Clinton also plainly has in view the civil associations that we subsidize abroad, and the democracy-promotion
groups, funded indirectly through USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House and
other organizations. The nonviolent protests that turned bloody in Tahrir Square in Cairo, and in
the Maidan in Kiev, received indications of American support by means both avowed and unavowed-a
fact acknowledged by Victoria Nuland (assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs)
when in December 2013 she said that more than $5 billion had been spent on democracy promotion in
Ukraine since 1992. If the story of the Syrian Civil War is ever fully told, we are likely to discover
that the early "liberal" or "moderate" rebels were encouraged in their misreading of U.S. intentions
through social-media messaging approved by forces within the U.S. government.
In Ideal Illusions-a study
of the history of NGOs, the international culture of rights and U.S. foreign policy-James Peck noticed
how the responsibilities of the caretakers of human rights had expanded after the 1970s "from prisoners
of conscience to the rights of noncombatants to democratization to humanitarian intervention." It
is the last of these elements that completes the R2P package; and Hillary Clinton is among its warmest
partisans. The Western powers have a moral obligation to intervene, she believes, especially when
that means guarding the rights of women and assuring the welfare of the neediest children. Her mistakes
in the cause have been not tragic like President Johnson's in Vietnam but, as she sees them, small,
incidental and already too harshly judged. One ought to err on the side of action, of intervention.
And military intervention in this regard bears a likeness to the "community intervention" that may
save the life of a child in an abusive family.
The bombing, invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 were, among other things, an experiment to
prove the neoconservative strategy of "force projection." The experiment did not work out as planned.
By contrast, the test for liberal interventionists was Kosovo, and popular memory has abetted the
legend that Kosovo was a success. Thus Anne-Marie Slaughter was able to
write in a tweet
regarding the Munich Security Conference of February 2014: "Contrast b/w Serb-Kosovo panel this morning
& ME panel now at #msc50 so striking; in Balkans US was willing to ACT w/ diplomacy AND force." Recall
that, in order to create the nation of Kosovo, NATO acted against the nation of Yugoslavia with smart
power whose leading articulation was seventy-seven days of bombing. The satisfied pronouncements
on Kosovo and Libya that emanate from liberal interventionists show a striking continuity. As a director
of policy planning in Clinton's State Department, Slaughter had written to her boss three days after
the start of the NATO bombing of Libya: "I have NEVER been prouder of having worked for you."
The truth is that the pretext for military intervention was almost as thin in Yugoslavia as
it was in Libya. There, too, genocide was said to be in progress-the slaughter of tens of thousands
of ethnic Albanians-but the reports were chimerical. In
First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and
the Destruction of Yugoslavia, David Gibbs concluded that approximately two thousand
had been killed before the NATO bombing; whereas, during the bombing itself and in retaliation for
it, Serbian security forces killed approximately ten thousand. Given the status of the episode in
liberal mythology, the treatment of Kosovo in Living History is oddly minimal: less than a
paragraph, all told, scattered over several chapters. Living History was published in 2003;
and it seems possible that Clinton had an inkling of the mob violence that would break out in March
2004 in the nationwide pogrom against the Serbs of Kosovo-violence that would lead in early 2016
to the construction of tent cities in the capital, Pristina, and the firing of tear gas canisters
in parliament to protest the abridgment of the political rights of the remaining ethnic minority.
The aftermath of the Kosovo intervention has recently entered a new chapter. "How
Kosovo Was Turned Into Fertile Ground for ISIS" was the astute headline of a New York Times
story by Carlotta Gall, on May 21, 2016. Gall's opening sentence offers a symptomatic tableau:
"Every Friday, just yards from a statue of Bill Clinton with arm aloft in a cheery wave, hundreds
of young bearded men make a show of kneeling to pray on the sidewalk outside an impoverished mosque
in a former furniture store."
SANCTIONS HAVE been the favorite smart weapon of both Clintons. Iraq was the target country
for Bill in the 1990s, as Iran would be for Hillary starting in 2009. The point of sanctions is to
inflict pain, in response to which (it is hoped) the people will blame their government. The point
is therefore also to create the conditions for regime change. Neither of the Clintons seems to have
absorbed a central lesson of the Amnesty International Report on Cuba in 1975–76: that the "persistence
of fear, real or imagined, of counterrevolutionary conspiracies" bore the primary responsibility
for "the early [Cuban] excesses in the treatment of political prisoners"; and that "the removal of
that fear has been largely responsible for the improvements in conditions." Both Clintons have felt
pressed to perform supererogatory works to show that liberals can be tough. For Mrs. Clinton, there
is the additional need-from self-demand as much as external pressure-to prove that a female leader
can be tougher than her male counterpart.
Landler's account suggests that neither the Iran nuclear deal nor the restoration of diplomatic
relations with Cuba would have been likely to occur in a Hillary Clinton presidency. When President
Obama
announced the thaw with Cuba in December 2014, he said that the United States "wants to be a
partner in making the lives of ordinary Cubans a little bit easier, more free, more prosperous."
Clinton, by contrast, warned that the Cuban regime should not mistake the gesture for a relaxation
of hostility; and
on a visit to Miami in July 2015, she threw in a characteristic warning and proviso: "Engagement
is not a gift to the Castros. It's a threat to the Castros." She thereby subverted the meaning of
Obama's policy while ostensibly supporting the measure itself.
"Superpowers
Don't Get to Retire" was the title and message of a New Republic essay by Robert Kagan,
published in May 2014, about the time it became clear that President Obama would not be confronting
Russia over its annexation of Crimea and would disappoint the neoconservative appetite for regime
change in Syria. Writing in Hard Choices of the eastward expansion of NATO, Clinton concurred:
"In the wake of Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea in early 2014, some have argued that
NATO expansion either caused or exacerbated Russia's aggression. I disagree with that argument,
but the most convincing voices refuting it are those European leaders and people who express their
gratitude for NATO membership."
Those sentences are notable for a historical omission and a non sequitur. The NATO expansion
that began under George H. W. Bush, was enhanced in the presidency of Bill Clinton and continued
under George W. Bush and Obama, was not a widely appreciated moderate policy, as Mrs. Clinton implies.
The policy was subject to skeptical challenge from the first, and one of its sharpest critics was
George F. Kennan. (He described it, coincidentally, as "a tragic mistake.") Leaving aside the abridgment
of history, there is a disturbing logical jump in Clinton's dismissal of the challenge regarding
NATO. The gratitude expressed by newly admitted member states does nothing at all to "refute" the
fact that Vladimir Putin, along with many Western diplomats, thought the post–Cold War expansion
of a Cold War entity was a hostile policy directed provocatively against Russia in its own backyard.
It would do no harm to her persuasiveness if Clinton admitted a degree of truth in the case made
by her opponents, whether on the Libya war, the advisability of repeating that experiment in Syria,
or the innocent design of propagating democracy that drove the expansion of NATO. An incorrigible
belief in the purity of one's motives is among the most dangerous endowments a politician can possess.
Her sentences about NATO could have been written by Tony Blair; and this explains why at least
three neoconservatives-Eliot A. Cohen, Max Boot and Robert Kagan, in ascending order of enthusiasm-have
indicated that a Clinton presidency would be agreeable to them. She is a reliable option for them.
Her comparison of Putin to Hitler in March 2014 and her likening of Crimean Russians to Sudeten
Germans were reminiscent, too, of the specter of Munich evoked by an earlier secretary of state,
Dean Rusk, to defend the escalation of the Vietnam War in 1965-the kind of tragic mistake that Hillary
Clinton seems prepared to repeat for the most laudable of humanitarian reasons.
51 neocons warmongers, who need to be send to Afghanistan for some on site learning. Nuland's birds
of feather try to get worm places in Hillary new administration, playing on her war hawk tendencies...
Those "diplomats" forgot about the existence of Saudis and other theocracies which are much more brutal
and less democratic, viewing woman as domestic animals. These are dark times for American foreign
policy. the easy part is to depose Assad. But what might happen after Assad is disposed of? You
know, the hard part, what follows?
Notable quotes:
"... These Diplomats should be fired as idiots. Did they not just live through the Iraqi occupation, destruction and disaster? ..."
"... Are you a bit confused as to who these neocon dissenters at State support in the Syrian civil war? ..."
"... This is simply a roll call of neocon diplomats making a case for another non-strategic war that would badly hurt US interests. It does not represent State Department policy. The neocons have been very persistent in securing career appointments at State for decades now. ..."
"... You are pushing the world closer to war. ..."
"... what is intolerable about the position of the 51 "diplomats" in the memo is that it is their (failed) efforts to dislodge Assad by proxy, facilitating and organizing the flow of arms that more often than ended up in the hands of hard-line jihadists, that has led to almost 400,000 deaths (not to mention wounded) and the flight of over a million refugees. ..."
"... Wow, sounds like some housecleaning is needed at State. Whatever happened to jaw-jaw being better than war-war? If they are so keen on military action, they're in the wrong building. I'm sure some of the overworked troops and officers in the armed forces would be happy to let these guys take a few of the chances of getting shot or blown up that they deal with daily. ..."
"... It is troubling that the State Department, long a bulwark of common sense against America's foreign adventurism, has become as hawkish as its former head, Hillary Clinton. ..."
"... The Middle East Institute is financed, primarily, by the petroleum and arms industries. The Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy has HRC's close ally, Dennis Ross; who, with Martin Indyk, founded AIPAC in the mid-80's. ..."
"... This group's contention that direct confrontation with Russia could be avoided echoes their 2002 claim that Operation Iraqi Freedom would be a three month cake walk. ..."
"... Since WWII, U.S. foreign policy has been rooted in the projection and use of force (covert and overt) as the primary means to achieve whatever goals the executive office seeks. It placed the world on notice that the U.S. was ready and willing to use violence to back its foreign policy objectives. Just as in Vietnam and before the disastrous decision to escalate the use of ground forces, President Johnson's national security advisors (all holdovers from Kennedy's Presidency) pressed Johnson to use aerial bombardment against N. Vietnam to induce them to seek a negotiated peace that would allow the U.S. to withdraw from the conflict and save face while preserving the policy of projecting force as a means to maintain world order in accordance with U.S. designs. ..."
"... My oldest son is now completing his sixth Afghan/Iraq tour.I don't want him in Syria. Let these 51 diplomats volunteer their sons/daughters for Syria.That'll demonstrate their commitment.I'll bet not one of these 51 "geniuses" has a child on active military duty in Iraq/Afghan. ..."
"... These folks are, it appears, mid-level foreign service officers like I was. They are utterly unqualified to make these judgements as the Department of State is a failed organization culturally and functionally. Like HRC, who is still advocating for forced regime change if she wins, they have learned nothing from the past and again have no answer for what follows Asad being deposed. A majority Sunni regime in Syria will tear Iraq apart and there is no likelihood of it avoiding the trajectory of other "pluralistic" Arab state attempts. The fact that State has no culture of strategic analysis informing operational design and operational planning which, in turn, spawn series of tactical events, comes clear in situations like this. Doing nothing is the best case here. Tragic but still the best case. President Obama has seen this. Asad needs to regain control of Syria's territory, all of it. Feeding the hopes of the Ahmed Chalabi equivalents in Syria is perpetuating the violence. And, there is no room for an independent Kurdistan in the region, nor is it in the United States' interest for there to be one. ..."
"... That's the same class of people who figured that invading in Iraq in 2003 would turn out all right. ..."
"... Exhibit A being Samantha Power, the latest in a long line of militaristic, European-born white Americans (see Albright, Kissinger, Brzezinski) who believe that American firepower can bring order to the world. ..."
"... Sorry hawkish diplomats, but you're living in a fantasyland where the invasion of Iraq in 2003 did not permanently tarnish the image of the USA and wreck its credibility as an honest arbiter. That is the reality all US presidents will have to face in the post-Bush 43 era. ..."
"... Are those 51 U.S. Diplomats responsible for advising the Obama Administration to bomb Libya back in 2011? Apparently they have not learned from their mistakes. Or maybe they should just go work for their true Employer, The Military Industrial Complex. ..."
"... This is reckless and irresponsible. US backed "moderates" are fighting elbow to elbow with the Nusra Front and other radicals groups; that is why the cease-fire is collapsing. ..."
"... If we weaken Assad, Islamists will take over Damascus and if Damascus falls, soon Beirut will follow. These folk at State are neo cons, as usual shooting from the hip. ..."
"... Vietnam, 212,000 dead and countless north and south Vietnamese and citizens. Unjust and unwarranted war on Iraq with 4,491 and counting dead and countess Iraqi citizens. Now, Syria? Are you wanting the draft returned? You asking for boots on the ground? How about you 50 join up. I will willingly pay for taxes just arm you and send you in. Along with every other know it all who wants us 'TO DO MORE'!! Spare me. You have learned NOTHING in your past failures, have you? 1956, Iran. Cause the over throw of a duly elected government for the Shahs which led to 1980 revolution to fear of them acquiring nuclear weapons. Vietnam led to 'WHAT'? Now Iraq. ..."
"... The worse destabilization in that area I can remember. Not even during their many attacks on Israel when Egypt got a clue. Fire Saddam Hussein's soldiers and they become ISIS by 2006, yet one bright senator lied and said Obama caused them when we left which was President Bush's treaty Maliki. They did not want us there. Leave per the Iraqi people, also. When ISIS showed up they ran and left the weaponry we gave them and the money in the banks for them to grab. Now, you want us steeped into Syria. It's been said, hindsight is 20/20, ..."
"... In these so called diplomats cases, it is totally and legally blind. Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles has a better perception and one of them is dead. ..."
"... The war hawks, so comfortably away from the battle, are banging those drums of war again. Easy to do when your life and the lives of your fellow military are not at risk. ..."
"... We all know now that the invasion of Iraq by Mr. Bush junior was a) a mistake, and b) a War Crime - there were no threatening WMDs nor did Saddam hold hads with Al Quaeda (he was, actually, their worst enemy - and our security!), so, Iraq was c) total stupidity. It was an aggressive war without any cause - for the USA! ..."
"... This is much more about what Mark Landler thinks than about what those generic diplomats think. The Times's principal hawk, Landler has book and a series of articles pushing his neocon view. I guess we should assume the Times agrees. ..."
"... Having spent substantial time as a private consultant at the US Embassy in Kabul I was shocked by the lack of feelings of midlevel officials there with regard to the dead and injuries of American Troops. The Embassy shared a wall with the ISAF/NATO Main Quarters and every single day the US Flag there was half-mast to acknowledge the dead of our troops on that day in that country. The Embassy never shared this sadness and all midlevel officials there were only concerned about their paycheck, quality of meals served, having a drink, going for a swim, and their frequent trips back to the US; for such people wanting to have a say in when to fight in Syria is a sad state of affair. ..."
"... Perhaps we should figure out one take-down before we move on to the next. After 13 years, we still haven't figured out life in Iraq without Saddam. Any thoughts, neocons, on what might happen after Assad is disposed of? You know, the hard part, what follows? ..."
"... Get Rid of Assad, make relations with Russia worse (they back Assad) and allow ISIS to effectively take over Syria. Sounds like a great plan. I guess our military-industrial complex is getting itchy for a new war. And, of course, doing what these diplomats want will also result in putting boots on the ground. This will be a great legacy for Ms. Clinton (under her watch ISIS came into being), Mr. Kerry (who continued Clinton's failed legacy) and Mr. Obama (the Nobel Peace Prize president; who wasn't). ..."
"... The signers of the dissent letter are militarist neocons (of the Victoria Nuland ilk). More than any other, these people and their CIA collaborators are responsible for the death and destruction in Syria and the ensuing refugee crisis. They can't even give a cogent reason for deposing Assad other than point to the carnage of the civil war they fomented-as if Assad were solely responsible. Assad is acting no differently than the US did during it's own Civil War. ..."
"... The value of the memo can be summed up in one sentence as described in the article itself "what would happen in the event that Mr. Assad was forced from power - a scenario that the draft memo does not address." ..."
"... I wonder about the arrogance of these mid-level State Department foreign service officers. ..."
"... Sure -- a few well-placed cruise missiles will make it all good. Yeah, right. ..."
"... Absolutely amazing. My first question is who released this memo? Having a back channel does not permit anyone to unilaterally decide to release information that could cost lives and ruin negotiations that the releasing person knows nothing about. If you do not like the chain of command, then leave. We cannot continue to be involved in sectarian conflicts that cannot be resolved except by the combatants. Haven't we learned anything from Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Vietnam? No neocon insanity. We have lost enough lives and treasure in the ME. ..."
"... Are these the same ingrates who urged Bush to attack Iraq - his legacy - ISIS! ..."
"... As a 26 year Marine Corps combat veteran I have a hard time trying to figure out what is going on here, and a harder time not becoming totally disgusted with our State Department. ..."
"... My suggestion would be that we arm these 51 individuals, given them a week's worth of ammunition and rations, and drop them into Syria, I am sure they can lead the way in showing us how to solve the mess in the ME. ..."
"... It's the fact that these are not "widely known names" which scares me most. However, Western-instituted regime change in that region has proven disastrous in every single country it has been tried. If possible, I would investigate these diplomats' ties to defense contractors. ..."
"... US intervention created the rubble and hell that is now Syria. When Assad had full control of Syria, the human rights of the people of Syria suffered under him but many if not most people led a civilised life. They had water and electricity. Past US interventions created Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. To puy it simply, life expectancy in all these countries dropped by 20 to 30 years after the US intervened, each time with the highest utopian ideals, and increased the power of Sunni supremacists after each act. ..."
"... Let's not forget that Bush's hasty appointment of Paul Bremer as the hapless Governor of Iraq following the defeat of Hussein's military regime led immediately to the disbanding of the entire Iraqi military, an incredibly short-sighted and reckless move that essentially unleashed 400,000 young trained fighters (including a honed officers corps) absent support programs to assimilate back into Iraqi society, only to have them emerge as readily available fodder essential for ISIS's marshalling a strong military force almost overnight. A huge price is now being exacted for this astounding stupidity. ..."
"... This is conveniently laying grounds for Hillary's grand comeback to the theatre of "humanitarian interventionism" in the Middle East. God help us all, as this is a prelude to the WW3. ..."
"... Wow the neo-cons are beating the war drums yet again! They have already created a huge mess throughout the Middle East with wars and revolutions directly attributable to the United States in invading Afghanistan and Iraq under false pretenses, helping overthrow the government in Libya, and arming rebels in Syria and Yemen. ..."
"... Unfortunately if Hillary Clinton wins, she is a neo-con puppet and we will be at war in Syria and/or Iran within a year or two. God help us! ..."
"... First of all, if this was a channel for employees to share "candidly and privately" about policy concerns, why is it on the front page of the NY Times? Additionally, as usual, it seems the war hawks are hawking war without thought for what comes next. We've done this most recently in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, all of which are now failed states and havens for terrorists. Because this seems rather obvious, either we are pathologically incapable of learning from past mistakes, or there are people who have an agenda different from the publicly stated one. ..."
"... The U.S. has a lengthy, very sordid history of leaping into the fray in areas such as the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Central America and Afghanistan, among others - all with catastrophic results, for which we never seemed to have a credible, well- crafted plan, nor have we ever comprehended the millennia of internecine tribal hatred and sectarian warfare. ..."
"... I am more scared of US diplomats and politicians than terrorists! Have they learned nothing from the US efforts to create western style democracy in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria (by supporting separatists att an early stage). The US diplomats proposal would ensure more chaos, death and prolonged wR. 38 % of the population are Alewits. They will be killed, Christians will be killed. ..."
ScottW, is a trusted commenter Chapel Hill, NC 16 hours ago
These Diplomats should be fired as idiots. Did they not just live through the Iraqi occupation,
destruction and disaster?
A few years ago, a diplomat who quit was complaining about Syria at a conference I attended.
When I asked who would fill the void if Assad was deposed he said, "That is a difficult question
to answer." What he really meant to say is, "I don't have a clue."
We have already disrupted Syria by supporting rebels/terrorists. The region cannot tolerate
another Iraq.
Dan Stewart, NYC 16 hours ago
Are you a bit confused as to who these neocon dissenters at State support in the Syrian
civil war?
Here's a helpful hint:
If they have beards down to their belt buckles and seem to be hollering something about Allah,
those are the guys the neocons support.
If they're recently shaved and wearing Western attire, in other words, if they look like anyone
you might bump into on a US city street, those are the people the neocons call the enemy.
Retroatavist, DC 10 hours ago
This is simply a roll call of neocon diplomats making a case for another non-strategic
war that would badly hurt US interests. It does not represent State Department policy. The neocons
have been very persistent in securing career appointments at State for decades now. It's
as if we hadn't forgotten the endless horrible mess they got us and the rest of the world into
by breaking Iraq and destroying all its institutions with the insane de-baathification policy.
And it all started with a similar steady drumbeat for war throughout the mid and late '90s and
up to the 2003 disastrous invasion. Did we not learn anything? Really: Whose interest would
an open US war against Assad really serve, and what predictable outcome would be in the US's strategic
favor?
Robert Sawyer, New York, New York 14 hours ago
How many among the 51 are members of "Hillary's Legions, " the same geniuses responsible for
the unqualified success we achieved in Libya?
Gennady, Rhinebeck 16 hours ago
Stop this irresponsible reporting. You are pushing the world closer to war. Humanitarian
support is all we should bring to the Syrian people, regardless of which side they are on.
ScottW, is a trusted commenter Chapel Hill, NC
These Diplomats should be fired as idiots. Did they not just live through the Iraqi occupation,
destruction and disaster?
A few years ago, a diplomat who quit was complaining about Syria at a conference I attended.
When I asked who would fill the void if Assad was deposed he said, "That is a difficult question
to answer." What he really meant to say is, "I don't have a clue."
We have already disrupted Syria by supporting rebels/terrorists. The region cannot tolerate
another Iraq.
Alyoshak, Durant, OK
Isn't Congress supposed to declare war, and the President command our armed forces when such
declarations occur? But what is intolerable about the position of the 51 "diplomats" in the
memo is that it is their (failed) efforts to dislodge Assad by proxy, facilitating and organizing
the flow of arms that more often than ended up in the hands of hard-line jihadists, that has led
to almost 400,000 deaths (not to mention wounded) and the flight of over a million refugees.
But no, these casualties have nothing to do with our attempts at regime change, No!, the blame
for them lies squarely upon Assad for not scooting out of town immediately and submissively when
the U.S. decided it was time for him to go. So now we're supposed to double-down on a deeply immoral
and flawed strategy? How many more Syrians' lives must be ruined to "save" them from Assad?
Everyman, USA 16 hours ago
Wow, sounds like some housecleaning is needed at State. Whatever happened to jaw-jaw being
better than war-war? If they are so keen on military action, they're in the wrong building. I'm
sure some of the overworked troops and officers in the armed forces would be happy to let these
guys take a few of the chances of getting shot or blown up that they deal with daily.
Dan, Alexandria 16 hours ago
It is troubling that the State Department, long a bulwark of common sense against America's
foreign adventurism, has become as hawkish as its former head, Hillary Clinton.
I am grateful to President Obama for resisting this foolishness, but make no mistake, no matter
who gets into office in January, the kind of farcical, counterproductive, unrealistic "limited
engagement" advocated by these so-called diplomats will be our future. Clinton is champing at
the bit for it, and Trump is too weak to do anything but go along with it.
Clark M. Shanahan, Oak Park, Illinois 16 hours ago
Sadly, they'll most likely have a more accommodating commander and chief with HRC.
The Middle East Institute is financed, primarily, by the petroleum and arms industries.
The Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy has HRC's close ally, Dennis Ross; who, with
Martin Indyk, founded AIPAC in the mid-80's.
This group's contention that direct confrontation with Russia could be avoided echoes their
2002 claim that Operation Iraqi Freedom would be a three month cake walk.
Paul Cohen, is a trusted commenter Hartford CT 15 hours ago
Since WWII, U.S. foreign policy has been rooted in the projection and use of force (covert
and overt) as the primary means to achieve whatever goals the executive office seeks. It placed
the world on notice that the U.S. was ready and willing to use violence to back its foreign policy
objectives. Just as in Vietnam and before the disastrous decision to escalate the use of ground
forces, President Johnson's national security advisors (all holdovers from Kennedy's Presidency)
pressed Johnson to use aerial bombardment against N. Vietnam to induce them to seek a negotiated
peace that would allow the U.S. to withdraw from the conflict and save face while preserving the
policy of projecting force as a means to maintain world order in accordance with U.S. designs.
Nixon carried on this bombing for peace strategy to insane war crime level. This heavy reliance
on military force over a diplomatic solution has never worked. It didn't work for our knee-jerk
response to 9/11 by immediately resorting to military force without first thinking through the
consequences. We are now into our 15th year of aggression against the Muslim World. The time is
long past due to question our failed policy and seek an alternative solution.
Bud, McKinney, Texas 16 hours ago
My oldest son is now completing his sixth Afghan/Iraq tour.I don't want him in Syria. Let
these 51 diplomats volunteer their sons/daughters for Syria.That'll demonstrate their commitment.I'll
bet not one of these 51 "geniuses" has a child on active military duty in Iraq/Afghan.
Abu Charlie, Toronto, Ontario 14 hours ago
These folks are, it appears, mid-level foreign service officers like I was. They are utterly
unqualified to make these judgements as the Department of State is a failed organization culturally
and functionally. Like HRC, who is still advocating for forced regime change if she wins, they
have learned nothing from the past and again have no answer for what follows Asad being deposed.
A majority Sunni regime in Syria will tear Iraq apart and there is no likelihood of it avoiding
the trajectory of other "pluralistic" Arab state attempts. The fact that State has no culture
of strategic analysis informing operational design and operational planning which, in turn, spawn
series of tactical events, comes clear in situations like this. Doing nothing is the best case
here. Tragic but still the best case. President Obama has seen this. Asad needs to regain control
of Syria's territory, all of it. Feeding the hopes of the Ahmed Chalabi equivalents in Syria is
perpetuating the violence. And, there is no room for an independent Kurdistan in the region, nor
is it in the United States' interest for there to be one.
AR, is a trusted commenter Virginia 15 hours ago
How undiplomatic. I don't care that these people are diplomats and that many of them probably
have impeccable academic pedigrees with degrees from the usual suspects such as the Ivy League
schools, SAIS, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and Kennedy. That's the same class
of people who figured that invading in Iraq in 2003 would turn out all right. Obama is correct
to ignore these people, who more often than not are possessed by the notion of American Exceptionalism.
Exhibit A being Samantha Power, the latest in a long line of militaristic, European-born white
Americans (see Albright, Kissinger, Brzezinski) who believe that American firepower can bring
order to the world.
Let this be made clear: Any escalation of American involvement in Syria will be interpreted
as 1) an attempt to enhance the national security of Israel, 2) a means of benefiting the revenue
stream of the American military industrial complex, or 3) both. Only the most naive and foolish
people, since the absolutely disastrous events of 2003, would be inclined to believe that American
military intervention in Syria is motivated mainly by humanitarian impulses.
Sorry hawkish diplomats, but you're living in a fantasyland where the invasion of Iraq
in 2003 did not permanently tarnish the image of the USA and wreck its credibility as an honest
arbiter. That is the reality all US presidents will have to face in the post-Bush 43 era.
Robert Roth, NYC 14 hours ago
Everyone closes their eyes and imagines all the bloodshed they will prevent by all the bloodshed
they will cause.
Samsara, The West 16 hours ago
Have Iraq and Libya taught these State Department officials NOTHING??
Simon, Tampa 15 hours ago
The neo-cons who love regime change that never works. Let us examine their track record:
Iraq - a mess and infested with ISIS and Al Qaeda.
Libya - now an anarchist state infested with ISIS and Al Qaeda.
Yemen - bombing and murdering thousands of innocents and Al Qaeda.
Syria, the only secular Arab state, destroyed and infested with ISIS and Al Qaeda. The only
reason Syria hasn't completely fallen apart is thanks to Assad and his Sunni dominated army, Iran,
and the Russians. So of course, these neo-cons want to complete the job at the behest of the money
they will be getting from the Saudis and the other Gulf States.
Don't worry you warmongering greedy neocon, Hillary Clinton is one of you and will be president
soon enough.
Title Holder, Fl 15 hours ago
Are those 51 U.S. Diplomats responsible for advising the Obama Administration to bomb Libya
back in 2011? Apparently they have not learned from their mistakes. Or maybe they should just
go work for their true Employer, The Military Industrial Complex.
Andrea, New Jersey 15 hours ago
This is reckless and irresponsible. US backed "moderates" are fighting elbow to elbow with
the Nusra Front and other radicals groups; that is why the cease-fire is collapsing. Syrians
and Russians can not split hairs on the battlefield.
If we weaken Assad, Islamists will take over Damascus and if Damascus falls, soon Beirut
will follow. These folk at State are neo cons, as usual shooting from the hip.
Jett Rink, lafayette, la 15 hours ago
Here's the thing most people don't get about ISIS. They thrive on us being involved in the
Middle East. They are willing to kill other Muslims in order to keep us involved. As long as we
are there, terrorism will persist, over there and here too. They are playing us like chumps. They
use our tendency to knee-jerk reactions against us. They're out smarting us at every juncture.
Of course it's human nature to want to help people in such dire straights. But that's exactly
what ISIS wants, and correctly predict, that we'll do. So as long as they out-think us, they'll
continue to win.
If you want to help the innocent people caught in the cross-hairs of ISIS, the best thing we
could possibly do is pack up and leave. There'll be some more carnage, but eventually the backlash
from within will force them to stop the wrecking and killing. Many people will die, but in the
end, the tally would be far fewer.
Their goal is to keep us engaged. Ours should be to get out! As long as we stay, they win.
And that's how they're able to convince long-wolf's to strike us here, even when here is home
to them too.
Joane Johnson, Cleveland, Ohio 15 hours ago
Vietnam, 212,000 dead and countless north and south Vietnamese and citizens. Unjust and
unwarranted war on Iraq with 4,491 and counting dead and countess Iraqi citizens. Now, Syria?
Are you wanting the draft returned? You asking for boots on the ground? How about you 50 join
up. I will willingly pay for taxes just arm you and send you in. Along with every other know it
all who wants us 'TO DO MORE'!! Spare me. You have learned NOTHING in your past failures, have
you? 1956, Iran. Cause the over throw of a duly elected government for the Shahs which led to
1980 revolution to fear of them acquiring nuclear weapons. Vietnam led to 'WHAT'? Now Iraq.
The worse destabilization in that area I can remember. Not even during their many attacks
on Israel when Egypt got a clue. Fire Saddam Hussein's soldiers and they become ISIS by 2006,
yet one bright senator lied and said Obama caused them when we left which was President Bush's
treaty Maliki. They did not want us there. Leave per the Iraqi people, also. When ISIS showed
up they ran and left the weaponry we gave them and the money in the banks for them to grab. Now,
you want us steeped into Syria. It's been said, hindsight is 20/20,
In these so called diplomats cases, it is totally and legally blind. Stevie Wonder and
Ray Charles has a better perception and one of them is dead.
Bev, New York 16 hours ago
Yes the war machine wants more wars. Who will take the place of the evil Assad? We have removed
a number of evil dictators in that area of the world and all it has done is sap our resources,
killed hundreds of thousands of innocents, made millions hate us, and created vacuums of power
which are then filled with Saudi-assisted ISIS - AND profited our war machine (that's the important
part!) We need less involvement in the Mideast, not more. Bring them all home and start transitioning
from a war economy to an economy that serves the American citizens here.
ME, Toronto 13 hours ago
Thank goodness Obama kept his head and didn't (and hopefully won't) listen to such crazy advice.
To call the signers "diplomats" is a real stretch. It seems that somewhere back in time various
U.S. "diplomats" decided that they have the right to decide who and what the government should
be in various jurisdictions throughout the world. Of course this is motivated by purely humanitarian
concerns and love of democracy and not the self-interest of the U.S., as in having a friendly
government in place. As despicable as some governments are, the lessons over many years now should
be that military strikes are just as (maybe more) likely to produce something bad as anything
good. Better to talk and try to influence the development of nations through positive reinforcement
(as Obama has done in Iran). Undoubtedly this is a slow and somewhat frustrating process but that
is something real "diplomats" should be good at. If this process had been pursued in Syria we
would all be better off today and especially the Syrian people.
Mitchell, New York 16 hours ago
I assume these people at State also believe in the Tooth Fairy. The fantasy of "moderate" rebels
who will be grateful to us after they depose a tyrant and put in a fair democratic government
that takes into account all of our Western ideals and freedoms is so unrealistic that these people
at State need to find a job where their last words are, "Can I supersize that for you?" Our involvement
in the Middle East displacing despots and replacing them with chaos has been the biggest disaster
in foreign policy in many decades. Egypt, Iraq, Libya, and even Syria (remember the line in the
sand?). We should join with Russia in destroying ISIS and use our leverage to push Assad to make
some level of concessions.
Dan, Sandy, UT 15 hours ago
Here we go again. The war hawks, so comfortably away from the battle, are banging those
drums of war again. Easy to do when your life and the lives of your fellow military are not at
risk.
Second thought, as stated by a political comedian/satirist, let the Middle East take its own
trash out.
I couldn't agree more.
blackmamba, IL 16 hours ago
Since 9/11/01 only 0.75% of Americans have volunteered to put on the military of any American
armed force. They have been ground to emotional, mental and physical dust by repeated deployments.
Getting rid of Arab dictators has unleashed foreign ethnic sectarian socioeconomic political educational
civil wars that cannot be resolved by American military power.
Assad is an Arab civil secular dictator. Just like many of Americas Arab allies and unlike
those American Arab allies who are Islamic royal fossil fuel tyrants. But Assad is an Alawite
Shia Muslim allied with Russia. The alternatives to Assad are al Qaeda, ISIL and al Nusra. Diplomats
need to stick to diplomacy.
Jo Boost, Midlands 16 hours ago
This situation is not that simple.
There is not -as people in Washington who know better have told for years now- one big bad
wolf called Assad preying and devouring all poor little peaceful lambs (who, accidentally, have
been armed to their teeth by a certain Ms. Clinton and her Saudi friends - even with poison gas
which was, then, blamed on the said Assad).
We have here a follow-up civil war to the (also US started) one in Libya.
Let us just look at International Law, as understood since the Nuremberg Trials:
We all know now that the invasion of Iraq by Mr. Bush junior was a) a mistake, and b) a
War Crime - there were no threatening WMDs nor did Saddam hold hads with Al Quaeda (he was, actually,
their worst enemy - and our security!), so, Iraq was c) total stupidity. It was an aggressive
war without any cause - for the USA!
But a great cause for Saudi "Royals" whose cousins had been thrown out of Iraq, which is good
enough cause, in Arab customs, for a bloody feud and revenge.
The same applies to Syria, and could one, therefore, still wonder why ISIL was so well equipped
for the follow-up (envisaged) invasion?
Libya was a danger for Saudi Autocrates, because a secular Arab country with such a living
standard from fair distribution of oil wealth would be a dangerous advertisement for a Mother
of All Arab Springs in the desert.
So, we have one side with interest - and one without any - but the latter does the dirty work.
Is there more than one tail that wags the US dog?
Bonnie Rothman, NYC 13 hours ago
How brilliant---not! And what do these 50 people expect to happen if and when Assad falls,
chaos prevails and ISIS rushes in? Not to mention the immediate nasty confrontation with Putin.
This isn't 1941 and big Armies and big bombs are useless, USELESS against ISIS which operates
like cancer cells in the human body. And the last time we toppled a tyrant we midwived the ISIS
group which is funded by the Saudis which is funded by our own use of oil. Don't you dopes ever
read history and see the "whole" problem? Sheesh.
Prof. Jai Prakash Sharma, is a trusted commenter Jaipur, India. 16 hours ago
Given the complexity of the Syrian crisis and the multipower stakes involved in Syria, it would
be foolish for the US to direct its unilateral military fury at toppling the Assad regime ignoring
its fall out and the military financial cost to the US itself, specially when except for meeting
the common challenge and threat of the ISIS no direct national interests are at stake for the
US in Syria. The state department's dissenting memo to the President seems an attempt by the vested
interests to further complicate President Obama's Middle East policy that's on the right track
following the Iran deal.
Dennis Sullivan, NYC 16 hours ago
This is much more about what Mark Landler thinks than about what those generic diplomats
think. The Times's principal hawk, Landler has book and a series of articles pushing his neocon
view. I guess we should assume the Times agrees.
Rudolf, New York 7 hours ago
Having spent substantial time as a private consultant at the US Embassy in Kabul I was
shocked by the lack of feelings of midlevel officials there with regard to the dead and injuries
of American Troops. The Embassy shared a wall with the ISAF/NATO Main Quarters and every single
day the US Flag there was half-mast to acknowledge the dead of our troops on that day in that
country. The Embassy never shared this sadness and all midlevel officials there were only concerned
about their paycheck, quality of meals served, having a drink, going for a swim, and their frequent
trips back to the US; for such people wanting to have a say in when to fight in Syria is a sad
state of affair.
pat knapp, milwaukee 16 hours ago
Perhaps we should figure out one take-down before we move on to the next. After 13 years,
we still haven't figured out life in Iraq without Saddam. Any thoughts, neocons, on what might
happen after Assad is disposed of? You know, the hard part, what follows?
Mike Edwards, Providence, RI 16 hours ago
In what way do the views of the State Department officials in ISIS differ from those in the
US State Department who signed this memo?
Recent terrorist attacks in France and the US have been inspired by ISIS, not Mr. Assad. ISIS
is our enemy right now. Let Mr. Assad do what he can to eliminate them.
And haven't we learnt that the removal of a head of State, be it in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya
does not lead to an improvement; it actually causes an outright deterioration.
Finally, please let's also do away with this twaddle about "moderate" forces being present
in the Middle East, ready to enact our fantasy of what a peaceful Middle East should be like.
They don't exist in the Middle East. Ask the Israelis. Those moderates that do exist seem to serve
one purpose, which is to hand over the weapons supplied to them by the West to the terrorists.
I wish the signatories would have had the guts to spell it out. The Middle East is home to
a number of weal nations, a situation the stronger ones don't wish to correct. The only solution
would be for the West to take over the running of those countries and provide for their policing
and defense, as once the West leaves, a vacuum is created allowing terrorist groups to proliferate.
I doubt there is any appetite in the West for such a cause.
Donald, Yonkers 16 hours ago
Interesting how these " moderate" Syrian rebels so often fight alongside al Nusra.
The death toll in Syria is as high as it is because the rebels have outside help, Somehow no
one in the American mainstream, including the NYT, ever points this out. Incidently, note how
the NYT always uses the largest estimates for the death toll-- quite different from what they
did in Iraq.
Nick Metrowsky, is a trusted commenter Longmont, Colorado 17 hours ago
Get Rid of Assad, make relations with Russia worse (they back Assad) and allow ISIS to
effectively take over Syria. Sounds like a great plan. I guess our military-industrial complex
is getting itchy for a new war. And, of course, doing what these diplomats want will also result
in putting boots on the ground. This will be a great legacy for Ms. Clinton (under her watch ISIS
came into being), Mr. Kerry (who continued Clinton's failed legacy) and Mr. Obama (the Nobel Peace
Prize president; who wasn't).
So, guess what? The US starts bombing Syria, Assad will use human shields. ISIS is already
using human shields. So, the US will have more innocent blood on their hands. Of course, the US
follows through with these diplomats idea, ISIS, and their allies, will increase the risk of terrorism
attacks in the US. More mass shootings and bombings.
Of course, in an election year, the political rhetoric will be pushed up a notch between the
two wonderful people now running for president. Both who are more than willing to love the diplomat's
idea to show they are "strong". Mr. Obama may or may not follow through, but he hand may be forced.
Clinton or Trump will go after him, as both would pull the trigger first and ask questions later.
But, rest assured,. if you feel that a terrorist is lurking around each corner now, just wait
until the US decides that getting in the middle of the Syrian civil war is some warped good idea.
Diplomacy can be messy, as can politics.
Dan Stewart, NYC 16 hours ago
The signers of the dissent letter are militarist neocons (of the Victoria Nuland ilk).
More than any other, these people and their CIA collaborators are responsible for the death and
destruction in Syria and the ensuing refugee crisis. They can't even give a cogent reason for
deposing Assad other than point to the carnage of the civil war they fomented-as if Assad were
solely responsible. Assad is acting no differently than the US did during it's own Civil War.
For five years the US has been promoting Muslim extremists in Syria that move with fluidity
between the ranks of ISIL, al Nusra, al Qeada, etc. There are no reliable "moderates" in Syria.
The best hope for a stable Syria lies only with Bashar Assad, the secular Western-trained optometrist
(and his J.P. Morgan investment banker wife, Asma), who has kept Syria stable and free of terrorists
for decades.
To end the killing in Syria, and to defeat ISIL, the US should immediately stop arming and
funding the Islamic jihadists trying to overthrow the Assad government and join with Russia to
support Assad's military in regaining control over all Syrian territory and borders.
CT View, CT 17 hours ago
The value of the memo can be summed up in one sentence as described in the article itself
"what would happen in the event that Mr. Assad was forced from power - a scenario that the draft
memo does not address."
Why on earth would we support deposing a secular dictator who has multi-ethnic multi-religious
support in favor of a non-secular/ie religious leadership that has no moderates...remember we
tried to train vetted moderates, we found about 2 dozen and gave up on the program after half
were killed and the rest defected to the radicals WITH THE WEAPONS WE SUPPLIED. Perhaps, since
the military is anti-intervention and these diplomats are pro-intervention, the diplomats can
take the front line...would that change their opinion?
Gimme Shelter, 123 Happy Street 17 hours ago
I wonder about the arrogance of these mid-level State Department foreign service officers.
Do they think the National Security Council hasn't considered all options with respect to the
use of air power to affect the political situation in Syria? Do they think the President is unaware
of the what is required to stem the humanitarian crisis? How certain are they that their recommendations
will lead to their desired outcome? Do they not realize their actions undermine the commander
in chief in effectively addressing these issues?
Sure -- a few well-placed cruise missiles will make it all good. Yeah, right.
Wayne, Lake Conroe, Tx 7 hours ago
Absolutely amazing. My first question is who released this memo? Having a back channel
does not permit anyone to unilaterally decide to release information that could cost lives and
ruin negotiations that the releasing person knows nothing about. If you do not like the chain
of command, then leave. We cannot continue to be involved in sectarian conflicts that cannot be
resolved except by the combatants. Haven't we learned anything from Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon,
and Vietnam? No neocon insanity. We have lost enough lives and treasure in the ME.
Chagrined, La Jolla, CA 10 hours ago
Are these the same ingrates who urged Bush to attack Iraq - his legacy - ISIS!
Real Americans don't want any more squandered blood and treasure in wars in the Middle East!
It is sad that our tax dollars pay the salaries for these insidious State Department war mongering
fools. How many neocons are among them?
The war in Syria is tragic as was the war in Iraq. Even more tragic would be more squandered
American blood and treasure.
Fifteen hundred American Jews joined the IDF terrorists to commit the "Gaza Genocide." Perhaps
they will volunteer to go to Syria.??
President Obama has the intellect, sophistication and morals not to repeat the mistakes of
the Bush administration. These State Department rank and file are obviously attempting to undermine
him just as many members of congress attempted to undermine him by supporting Netanyahu and Israel
during the Iran Diplomacy debate. Betraying America has become sport for so many insidious ingrates.
America deserves better!
xtian, Tallahassee 11 hours ago
As a 26 year Marine Corps combat veteran I have a hard time trying to figure out what is
going on here, and a harder time not becoming totally disgusted with our State Department.
So these 51 mid-level diplomates want to bomb a bit more, and that is going to do what?????
And how will that bring peace to that region of the world? Oh, and by the way, the Department
of Defense is not in agreement with that course of action. How wonderful.
My suggestion would be that we arm these 51 individuals, given them a week's worth of ammunition
and rations, and drop them into Syria, I am sure they can lead the way in showing us how to solve
the mess in the ME.
David Henry, Concord 17 hours ago
War is easy to do. Ask "W."
Lives matter! These "diplomats" should be fired.
Yinka Martins, New York, NY 17 hours ago
It's the fact that these are not "widely known names" which scares me most. However, Western-instituted
regime change in that region has proven disastrous in every single country it has been tried.
If possible, I would investigate these diplomats' ties to defense contractors.
PKJharkhand, Australia 7 hours ago
US intervention created the rubble and hell that is now Syria. When Assad had full control
of Syria, the human rights of the people of Syria suffered under him but many if not most people
led a civilised life. They had water and electricity. Past US interventions created Afghanistan,
Iraq, and Libya. To puy it simply, life expectancy in all these countries dropped by 20 to 30
years after the US intervened, each time with the highest utopian ideals, and increased the power
of Sunni supremacists after each act.
Jai Goodman, SF Bay Area 7 hours ago
These "diplomats" should instead be urging US to pressure Turkey and Saudi to stop supporting
terrorists in the region. Both Al Nusra and ISIS. That'll be the right step.
Thank you.
cml, pittsburgh, pa 10 hours ago
How many of these are the same (or same sort) of "wise" men that advised ignoring our weapon's
inspectors and invading Iraq? They're living inside an echo chamber. In a world of imperfect choices
I would prefer Assad to the Nusra Front or ISIL, as apparently our president does as well.
Lawrence, Washington D.C. 15 hours ago
How many of those 51 diplomats haves served in front line units and seen combat? How many have
their children in uniform? They wouldn't allow it.
Each bombing mission costs more than a million dollars, and we live in a nation of Chiraq and
Orlando.
We have more pressing needs at home, and you can't fix stupid mixed with superstition, topped
with hatred.
These diplomats want to continue to strap suicide vests on the rest of us, while they sip champagne.
Out now, no more of our children wasted for corporate profits.
John, San Francisco 15 hours ago
50 employees? There are approximately 24,000 employees in the state department. That's 0.002833%.
Not really a significant voice. Don't listen.
Vanessa Hall, is a trusted commenter Millersburg MO 13 hours ago
Reminds me of those 47 idiots in the House who signed on to the warmonger Tom Cotton's treasonous
letter.
John Townsend, Mexico 15 hours ago
Let's not forget that Bush's hasty appointment of Paul Bremer as the hapless Governor of
Iraq following the defeat of Hussein's military regime led immediately to the disbanding of the
entire Iraqi military, an incredibly short-sighted and reckless move that essentially unleashed
400,000 young trained fighters (including a honed officers corps) absent support programs to assimilate
back into Iraqi society, only to have them emerge as readily available fodder essential for ISIS's
marshalling a strong military force almost overnight. A huge price is now being exacted for this
astounding stupidity.
Hobart, Los Angeles, CA 7 hours ago
This is conveniently laying grounds for Hillary's grand comeback to the theatre of "humanitarian
interventionism" in the Middle East. God help us all, as this is a prelude to the WW3.
rice pritchard, nashville, tennessee 12 hours ago
Wow the neo-cons are beating the war drums yet again! They have already created a huge
mess throughout the Middle East with wars and revolutions directly attributable to the United
States in invading Afghanistan and Iraq under false pretenses, helping overthrow the government
in Libya, and arming rebels in Syria and Yemen. Apparently no regime that does not knuckle
under to the U.S. war machine is "fair game". This turmoil is sending millions of refugees fleeing
their homeland, many trying to swamp Europe, but the arm chair warriors in the diplomatic corps,
Congress, Wall Street, and the military contractors still cry for more intervention, more bombing,
more blockades, more invasions, etc.! Sheer madness! The more America meddle in the Middle East
the worse things become and unrest and fighting spread. Unfortunately if Hillary Clinton wins,
she is a neo-con puppet and we will be at war in Syria and/or Iran within a year or two. God help
us!
xmas, Delaware 13 hours ago
HOW MUCH WILL THIS COST????? When people demand an invasion of a foreign country, can they
please add the total cost of the bill to their request? Instead of saying "we need to invade,"
can they say, "I want your support to spend $1.7 trillion for invading this other country for
humanitarian reasons. Oh, by the way, sorry, about all the cuts to domestic spending. We just
don't have the money." We spent $1.7 TRILLION on Iraq. $1.7 TRILLION. I can think of several things
I would have preferred to spend a fraction of that on. I'm sure you can too.
Robert G. McKee, Lindenhurst, NY 12 hours ago
This is a very interesting development within the walls of the State Department. There seems
to be much enthusiasm for escalating war in the Middle East. My only question is does this enthusiasm
extend to the deaths and maiming of these same State Department officials' children and grandchildren?
Or do they propose that other people's children should die pursuing their high ideals in this
endless and fruitless religious civil war in Syria?
Kathy, Flemington, NJ 13 hours ago
First of all, if this was a channel for employees to share "candidly and privately" about
policy concerns, why is it on the front page of the NY Times? Additionally, as usual, it seems
the war hawks are hawking war without thought for what comes next. We've done this most recently
in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, all of which are now failed states and havens for terrorists.
Because this seems rather obvious, either we are pathologically incapable of learning from past
mistakes, or there are people who have an agenda different from the publicly stated one.
Rebecca Rabinowitz, . 13 hours ago
The U.S. has a lengthy, very sordid history of leaping into the fray in areas such as the
Middle East, Southeast Asia, Central America and Afghanistan, among others - all with catastrophic
results, for which we never seemed to have a credible, well- crafted plan, nor have we ever comprehended
the millennia of internecine tribal hatred and sectarian warfare. We have "been there, done
that" countless times, at the cost of our precious military blood and treasure, and incurring
the enmity of hundreds of millions of people. I empathize with the frustration of these State
Department employees - but apparently, they do not recall our overthrow of the Shah of Iran when
it suited our "cause du jour," or our fraudulent "domino theory" in Vietnam, or the hard reality
that no one has ever successfully invaded or "governed" Afghanistan, not to mention being able
to battle ideology with weapons. The President has already presided over significant mission creep
in the Iraq cesspool left by the Cheney-Bush neo-con crowd. His judicious caution is to be lauded
when it comes to Syria. Are these mid-level State Department employees advocating a war against
Vladimir Putin?
Yngve Frey, Sweden 12 hours ago
I am more scared of US diplomats and politicians than terrorists! Have they learned nothing
from the US efforts to create western style democracy in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria (by
supporting separatists att an early stage). The US diplomats proposal would ensure more chaos,
death and prolonged wR. 38 % of the population are Alewits. They will be killed, Christians will
be killed.
The only way will probably be to work with Russia and force other opposition groups to sign
a peace agreement. Then we should arrange an intensive training course for US diplomats as well
as Syrian leaders: "There is no final truth: we have to learn the art of tolerance and accept
to live in a society where people you don't agree with also can live."
Looks like State Department became a paradise for neocons. Protest of diplomats is typical trick
used by State Departement during color revolution. That actually means this "color revolution" trick
came to the USA. Our presidents come and go, Republican or Democrat, but our Strangeloves remain permanent
employees of State Department. .
Notable quotes:
"... The State Department and the CIA's 'Plan C' (or are they on 'Plan D' yet?) is an independent Syrian Kurdistan. ..."
"... A desperate attempt to save the rebels, who now hate them and completely understand how they have been thrown under the bus by the State Department neocons. I really don't think the rebels will be the least bit impressed by the phony theatrics of a internal memo by mid-level bureaucrats. ..."
"... The Pentagram is in a bit of a different pickle. They have to do something to stop the Wahhabi head-choppers, but its a bit like herding cats. The best they've come up with is ginning up the SDF to take/hold ISIS territory. But they can't arm the Kurds or Arab members with any REAL weapons because that would anger Turkey. So they give them a bunch of eastern European AKs and a few pickup trucks with anti-aircraft guns, promise air support and toss in a few SF guys ..."
"... The MSM (as CIA lapdogs are paid to do) constantly try to reinforce the message that the independent YPG/YPJ militias are somehow 'the PYD's army'. Nothing is further from the truth - it's all MSM spin to create the impression that the Syrian Kurds uniformly desire the usurped PYD vision of an independent Kurdistan. In reality, the U.S. State Department neocons and the CIA are the ones that want an independent Syrian Kurdistan for their own scheming (and to deny Assad the land/water/oil). The MSM is constantly on message with this to set the narrative to the American public for Syrian partition - most people have no clue. ..."
"... For what it's worth, Assad is keenly aware of his history with the Kurds. Even by Kurdish media reports , he is willing to work with the Syrian Kurds as part of a unified Syrian state. He does not object to Kurdish rights or autonomy, just the U.S. meddling to goad the PYD into creating a separate Kurdish state. ..."
"... The whole Syria nightmare was planned from the US Embassy in Damascus in 2006 because Assad was so broadly popular in the country and "the region." Can't have that so a strategy was drummed up: http://www.globalresearch.ca/syria-and-conspiracy-theories-it-is-a-conspiracy/29596 ..."
"... I'm sure the US will throw the Syrian Kurds "under the bus" when their usefulness is finished. I'm sure also that a lot of Syrian Kurds know this, and are hedging their bets. ..."
"... http://www.globalresearch.ca/france-building-military-bases-in-syria-report/5531259 "The use of proxy forces to destroy the secular government of Syria is now starting to give way to stealth methods of direct ground deployment of Western Special Forces and ground troops under the guise of assistance and coordination with "moderate" terrorists. "With a wide variety of Western-backed terrorist groups ranging from "extremist" terrorists like ISIS, al-Qaeda, and al-Nusra to the "moderate" terrorists of the FSA and the loose collection of terrorists, Kurds, and Arabs like the SDF, the West has a kaleidoscope of proxy forces on the ground already. ..."
"... So Russian peace talks with US evil empire in Syria were a disaster, which makes Putin look like an idiot, as well as the supporters of this idiocy. As well as Russian invitations for the US to join it in Syria makes it one of the most stupidest invitations ever. ..."
"... A preview on America's future strategies? http://www.cnas.org/sites/default/files/publications-pdf/CNASReport-EAP-FINAL.pdf ..."
"... The Iranians have been warring with Kurds by the border with Turkey. Neither the Turks nor the Iranians - nor the Syrians, but they do need the Kurds now - want a Kurdistan. The Kurds must know by now - must have been betrayed enough by now - to know that the US will tell them anything, promise them anything, and deliver nothing but betrayal in the end. ..."
"... As regards the State Department, the Pentagon, the US government ... what's required is a neo-con purge, top to bottom. They are all working against American interests and against the American people. and have been for the past two decades. The likelihood of such a purge is about zero. Neither Trump nor Hillary has the will or the backbone to stand up to anyone. Trump's all mouth and looking out for number one, and Hillary's plugged in to the money-mosaic as well. Obama's getting ready to cash in his chips. ..."
"... I am amazed at your unflagging obsession with holding Putin responsible for the US/UK/EU/NATO/GCC destruction of Syria. You've set him up as your omnipotent god and he's failed you, somehow. Putin, Rusia, is not responsible for the death, devastation, and destruction of Iraq, Syria, Libya or the rest of the middle east or north africa. You're throwing your stones at the wrong guy, at the only guy who's done anything at all to help the Syrians and to forestall the monstrous neo-con plan. ..."
"... Israeli bombed military base in Homs province with impunity from S400 http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.723701 ..."
"... There is more about Russian de-facto acquiescence for Syrian partition and pivot to Israel: STRANGE DAYS: Did Israelis Pivoted to Russia? Or the other way around. https://syrianwarupdate.wordpress.com/ ..."
"... On the bright side, maybe the 50 signatures are just trying to get noticed by the Clinton transition crew. ..."
"... The document you posted is a typical wet dream written by utterly incompetent neocons (Kagan's and Zoellik names are a tell), people who can not and must not be allowed to operate with serious strategic and operational categories in any "advisory" role. ..."
"... i read about 30 of 160 or so comments on this article at NYT. given who the audience of that shit rag is & that comments are vetted, overwhelmingly commenters stated increased military involvement is retarded. ..."
"... How can Russia, which dwarfs Israel in every meaningful category -- from economy to military -- and who does remember her history well can "pivot" to largely regional player -- I don't know. Russian "neocons" are a dramatically different breed than US ones, for starters they are much more educated and, actually, support Assad. Israel's pivot to Russia in some sense is inevitable, albeit it could be fairly protracted, with Russia being observed as honest broker. They are not completely stupid in Israel and are very aware of real situation in American politics, economy and military. ..."
"... I note that the 'moderate' Hillary Clinton is a blood-soaked queen of chaos, who if elected is certain to embroil us in pointless wars and spread death and devastation across even more of the world. ..."
"... Donald Trump is admittedly a gamble, but depute his over-the-top stage persona, his track record is of actually getting along with people and brokering stable working relationships. ..."
"... At this point I wish I could vote for Richard Nixon (!), but we have the choice that we have... ..."
"... This piece out of the NYT is pure propaganda. Period. Here's the big clue - where's the memo? It's not embedded in the article. It can't be found anywhere on the web. It's b/c it doesn't exist. The reader is 'TOLD' by a third party journalist few follow who writes for a MIC/Political/Policy corporate mouthpiece. ..."
"... We see the point of all the saber-rattling by NATO on Russia's borders: to get Putin tied up in a diversionary direct threat to Russia, thereby mitigating or eliminating his efforts in behalf of Assad. And you know what? Americans on the street couldn't care one way or the other what Obama or CIA or DoS does or says about Syria. 280,000 dead, millions displaced and Americans are more concerned by a factor of 1000 about 4 dozen gays in Orlando. ..."
"... Saudi Arabia rejoining Turkey: http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13950326000441 ..."
"... These 51 useful idiots are IMO auditioning for the Clinton team while also providing cover for the neo-cons above them like Nuland, Powers, etc. And directionless Kerry says he'll rush home to confer with these idiots rather than dismissing them out of hand. Kerry could only be useful to anyone if Lavrov was in the room with him at all times to keep him in line -- otherwise he reverts to his normal mindless servant of US empire viewpoint, which is to follow whichever way the winds of power are blowing through Washington, DC. ..."
"... Hillary is the neocon's neocon. Pravy Sektor's honorary storm trooper Vicky Nuland is a Hillary protege. NYT has been positioning its readers to embrace Kerry's Plan B for the last month-plus. ..."
"... How many of these diplomats were bribed by Saudi Arabia? ..."
"... This clown Kagan is also the husband of the infamous Victoria Nuland who somehow, defying all logic, still has her job post imbroglio that is the Ukraine today. Hell, she's probably being hailed for that and is an inspiration for lowly State employees. ..."
"... Thank you Victoria, for giving Crimea back to the Russian Federation where it belongs. ..."
"... There are almost exactly 7 months until either Trump or Clinton takes office (presuming that the elites manage to completely control any bad news prior to the Dem nominating convention in late July; if the email dam breaks after that I have no idea what the Dem elites will do, but I figure they won't choose the obviously best candidate against Trump, Bernie). ..."
"... might the West actually directly take on Russia/Syrian government forces? Claiming, of course, some version of R2P ..."
"... State Department Diplomats who have captained failure after failure? If these people were Russian or Chinese they would have been executed for their serial failures in the ME and Afghanistan. The main problem with being 'exceptional' is that the 'exceptional' ones never make a mistake. "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength" ..."
"... So I was kind of wondering what psychopathic qualities the U.S. War... er, State Department is looking for in potential parasitic career bureaucrats, and came across this self-promotion page on their site. ..."
"... Counterpunch had a great article: http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/06/17/the-case-for-not-voting-in-defense-of-the-lazy-ungrateful-and-uniformed/ ..."
"... And though the content of the review by Army Gen. John W. Nicholson is secret, the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan received a major incentive this month when President Obama decided to expand America's involvement with more airstrikes against insurgents, giving the U.S. military wider latitude to support Afghan forces, both in the air and on the ground." ..."
"... No respect for R2P warriors at the State Department, nor for HRC, Susan Rice and Samantha Power. ..."
"... For Israel to bomb the Syrian military right under the nose of Russian s-400s? Russia, supposedly so dedicated to defending sovereignty, smiles and yawns benignly? A dirty deal has been made... ..."
"... Saudi Arabia desperately needs battlefield success, or there will be a prince, I mean price, to pay http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-s-officials-fear-saudi-collapse-if-new-prince-fails-n593996 ..."
"... "Earlier this week as America was trying to make sense of the deadliest case of Islamic terrorism on US soil since 9/11, I wrote a detailed article here at Breitbart News that laid out the clear factual case about Hillary Clinton's top assistant Huma Abedin. I showed how she has deep, clear, and inarguable connections to a Saudi Arabian official named Abdul Omar Naseef, a powerful Kingdom insider who has helped lead a group called the Muslim World League. The Muslim World League is the huge "charity" whose goal is to spread Islam throughout the world and which has been connected to terror groups like Al Qaeda. ..."
"... What is Huma's relationship with a Saudi Arabian official named Abdullah Omar Naseef? ..."
"... Was he the founder of a Saudi charity called the Rabita Trust? ..."
"... Right after 9/11, was the Rabita Trust put on a list by the U.S. government of groups that were funding terrorism? ..."
"... the State Department official obviously has an agenda by providing it to the NYT. The NYT has its own agenda filled as well by prominently posting the article on the top of the front page . ..."
"... One senior official said that the test for whether these proposals for more aggressive action are given high-level consideration will be whether they "fall in line with our contention that there is no military solution to the conflict in Syria." ..."
"... It's important for Russia to ensure that the remains of the first "Israeli" jet it shoots down falls to earth inside Syria. If you've seen a story about the IAF doing something courageous it's bullshit. ..."
"... Wonder how many of these 51 war mongers were appointed by Hillary. ..."
"... The EU-Turkey deal's financial package includes one billion euros in humanitarian aid. There are undoubtedly needs in Turkey, a country which currently hosts close to three million Syrian refugees, but this aid has been negotiated as a reward for border control promises, rather than being based solely on needs. This instrumentalisation of humanitarian aid is unacceptable. ..."
"... kreepy kerry is "running out of patience" since his most desired regime change isn't happening fast enough. ..."
"... The difference between Hillary and ISIS: the latter "takes" the head of enemies, Hillary "gives" head to donors. Forgive the graphic. ..."
"... 50 diplomats petition president for war. Was that written by Orwell? ..."
"... Allow me to further my argument against American Exceptionalism. It is not merely the fact that the U.S. is far from exceptional. From education to infant mortality, the U.S. is woefully behind much of the world. ..."
"... So Hillary, the bloodthirsty Goddess of War, is longing for a second Libya, i.e., a Syria smashed to smithereens, in ashes and ruins, ruled by a chaotic bunch of mad Takfiri extremists, at war all against all. ..."
"... The FBI is stonewalling, keeping the contents of Mateen's 911 call unavailable - though it's part of the public record - presumably because it undermines the "ISIS did it" meme poured over the Orlando mass murder. Apparently Mateen may have mentioned ISIS not quite in the same light as has been portrayed. ..."
"... Now the NYTimes/WSJ are doing the same thing with the 50 dancing diplomats. Releasing what they want us to know and redacting what we want to know : the names of those 50 dancing diplomats. ..."
"... I suppose it comes under the CIA's blanket excuse for secrecy? "Methods and means", or whatever their boilerplate. ..."
"... No doubt the State Department dwarves were ginned up by "Cookies" Nuland and Count Kagan by visions of "x memorandum" of 1946 immortality by attacking the resistance to an unipolar hegemony. Mixing it up in Syria with the Russian presence seems civilization limiting at the outer limits of challenge/ response in a military confrontation. ..."
WASHINGTON - More than 50 State Department diplomats have signed an internal memo sharply critical
of the Obama administration's policy in Syria, urging the United States to carry out military
strikes against the government of President Bashar al-Assad to stop its persistent violations
of a cease-fire in the country's five-year-old civil war.
Note that it was Ahrar al Sham, Jabhat al-Nusra and other U.S. paid and supported "moderates"
who on April 9
broke the ceasefire in Syria by attacking government troops south of Aleppo. They have since
continuously bombarded the government held parts of Aleppo which house over 1.5 million civilians
with improvised artillery.
Back to the piece:
The memo, a draft of which was provided to The New York Times by a State Department official
, says American policy has been "overwhelmed" by the unrelenting violence in Syria. It
calls for "a judicious use of stand-off and air weapons, which would undergird
and drive a more focused and hard-nosed U.S.-led diplomatic process."
...
The names on the memo are almost all midlevel officials - many of them career diplomats - who
have been involved in the administration's Syria policy over the last five years, at home or abroad.
They range from a Syria desk officer in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs to a former deputy
to the American ambassador in Damascus.
While there are no widely recognized names, higher-level State Department officials are known
to share their concerns. Mr. Kerry himself has pushed for stronger American action
against Syria, in part to force a diplomatic solution on Mr. Assad.
...
The State Department officials insisted in their memo that they were not "advocating for a
slippery slope that ends in a military confrontation with Russia," but rather a credible threat
of military action to keep Mr. Assad in line.
These State Department loons have their ass covered by Secretary of State Kerry. Otherwise they
would (and should) be fired for obvious ignorance. What "judicious" military threat against Russian
S-400 air defense in Syria is credible? Nukes on Moscow (and New York)?
In the memo, the State Department officials argued that military action against Mr. Assad would
help the fight against the Islamic State because it would bolster moderate Sunnis
, who are necessary allies against the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
Would these "diplomats" be able to name even one group of "moderate Sunnis" in Syria that is not
on the side of the Syrian government? Are Ahrar al-Sahm and the other U.S. supported groups, who
recently killed
50 civilians out of purely sectarian motives when they stormed the town of Zara, such "moderate
Sunnis"?
These 50 State Department non-diplomats, and the stinking fish head above them, have obviously
failed in their duty:
"Diplomats" urging military action do nothing but confirm that they do not know their job
which is diplomacy, not bombing. They failed.
These "diplomats" do not know or do not want to follow international law. On what legal basis
would the U.S. bomb the Syrian government and its people? They do not name any. There is none.
To what purpose would the Syrian government and the millions of its followers be bombed? Who
but al-Qaeda would follow if the Assad-led government falls? The "diplomats" ignore that obvious
question.
The NYT writer of the piece on the memo demonstrates that he is just as stupid or dishonest as
the State Department dupes by adding this paragraph:
[T]he memo mainly confirms what has been clear for some time: The State Department's rank and
file have chafed at the White House's refusal to be drawn into the conflict in Syria
.
How is spending
over $1 billion a year to hire, train, arm and support "moderate rebels" against the Syrian government
consistent with the claim of a U.S. "refusal to be drawn into the conflict"?
It is obvious and widely documented that the U.S. has been fueling the conflict from the very
beginning throughout five years and continues up to today to
deliver thousands of tons of weapons to the "moderate rebels".
All the above, the "diplomats" letter and the NYT writer lying, is in preparation of an open U.S.
war on Syria under a possible president Hillary Clinton. (Jo Cox, the "humanitarian" British MP who
was murdered yesterday by some neo-nazi, spoke
in support of such a crime.)
The U.S. military
continues to reject an escalation against the Syrian government. Its reasonable question "what
follows after Assad" has never been seriously answered by the war supporters in the CIA and the State
Department.
Unexpected support of the U.S. military's position now
seems to come from the Turkish side. The Erdogan regime finally acknowledges that a Syria under
Assad is more convenient to it than a Kurdish state in north-Syria which the U.S. is currently helping
to establish:
"Assad is, at the end of the day, a killer. He is torturing his own people. We're not going to
change our stance on that," a senior official from the ruling AK Party told Reuters, requesting
anonymity so as to speak more freely.
"But he does not support Kurdish autonomy. We may not like each other, but on that
we're backing the same policy ," he said.
Ankara fears that territorial gains by Kurdish YPG fighters in northern Syria will fuel an
insurgency by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged an armed struggle in Turkey's
southeast for three decades.
The Turks have suddenly removed their support for their "Turkmen" proxies fighting the Syrian
government in Latakia in north west Syria. Over the last few days the "Turkmen" retreated and the
Syrian army
advanced . It may soon reach the Turkish border. Should the Latakia front calm down the Syrian
army will be able to move several thousand troops from Latakia towards other critical sectors. The
Turkish government, under the new Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, is now also
sending peace signals towards Russia.
The situation in Syria could rapidly change in favor of the Syrian government should Turkey
change its bifurcating policies and continue these moves. Without their Turkish bases and support
the "moderate rebels" would soon be out of supplies and would lack the ability to continue their
fighting. The Russians and their allies should further emphasize the "Kurdish threat" to advance
this Turkish change of mind.
The race to preempt a Hillary administration war on Syria, which the "diplomats" memo prepares
for, is now on. May the not-warmongering side win.
This is the Yankees trying to pretend that they're still exceptionally invincible, in order to
conceal the fact that they never were. One only need look at all the tentative tiptoeing around
China & Russia to see that they're trying to convince themselves that Russia and China are run
by people as loony and disconnected as the self-seducers in charge of AmeriKKKan Foreign Policy.
SmoothieX got it 100% right in the previous thread..
"The names on the memo are almost all medeival offiCIAls ..."
There, fixed it for you. Enjoying the calm before the Goldman Sturm, the takeover of the US
Executive in 2017 for the Final Solution on liberating the Fifth Quintile's Last Free Life Savings,
and plunging the globe into a New Dark Ages: Trump or Clinton, allatime same-same.
The State Department and the CIA's 'Plan C' (or are they on 'Plan D' yet?) is an independent
Syrian Kurdistan.
The FSA Sunnistan plan has been going down the tubes for months. With the imminent fall of
the last few FSA strongholds, the State Department has gone berserk with their latest standoff
bombing memo 'leak' nonsense. A desperate attempt to save the rebels, who now hate them and
completely understand how they have been thrown under the bus by the State Department neocons.
I really don't think the rebels will be the least bit impressed by the phony theatrics of a internal
memo by mid-level bureaucrats.
The Pentagram is in a bit of a different pickle. They have to do something to stop the
Wahhabi head-choppers, but its a bit like herding cats. The best they've come up with is ginning
up the SDF to take/hold ISIS territory. But they can't arm the Kurds or Arab members with any
REAL weapons because that would anger Turkey. So they give them a bunch of eastern European AKs
and a few pickup trucks with anti-aircraft guns, promise air support and toss in a few SF guys.
This almost works, but not completely. For what it's worth, I don't think the Pentagram cares
at all about an independent Syrian Kurdistan, unifying the cantons or who gets what land/resources,
as long as it's taken from ISIS. When ISIS is wiped out, the SDF will cease to exist and
the SF guys will leave. The SDF and especially the YPG/YPJ will NOT ever be incented to provoke
or go to war with Assad after ISIS is gone. That's a problem for the State Department and CIA
The neocon State Department and CIA - normally at odds with the Pentagon's increasing reluctance
to get involved at all - are taking this opportunity to agitate for an independent Kurdistan.
This is done by funding the Kurdish PYD political party which purports to speak for all Kurds.
The State Department and CIA also fund the PYD's growing Asayish thug secret police 'enforcers'.
The PYD took control of Rojava by throwing out all the other political parties last year and crowning
itself the King of all Syrian Kurds. But most Kurds don't trust the PYD, figuring that either
Assad or the U.S. is really pulling the strings. The Kurds agree with the original PYD ideology,
but not its current land/resource-grabbing frenzy NOR the kind of independent Kurdistan the PYD
is suggesting. They want more rights and control of their affairs, but they do not want an actual
or de facto independent Syrian Kurdistan.
The MSM (as CIA lapdogs are paid to do) constantly try to reinforce the message that the
independent YPG/YPJ militias are somehow 'the PYD's army'. Nothing is further from the truth -
it's all MSM spin to create the impression that the Syrian Kurds uniformly desire the usurped
PYD vision of an independent Kurdistan. In reality, the U.S. State Department neocons and the
CIA are the ones that want an independent Syrian Kurdistan for their own scheming (and to deny
Assad the land/water/oil). The MSM is constantly on message with this to set the narrative to
the American public for Syrian partition - most people have no clue.
For what it's worth, Assad is keenly aware of his history with the Kurds. Even by
Kurdish media reports
, he is willing to work with the Syrian Kurds as part of a unified Syrian state. He does not
object to Kurdish rights or autonomy, just the U.S. meddling to goad the PYD into creating a separate
Kurdish state. The U.S. State Department does NOT want Rojava to be part of Syria or the
Syrian State and spins the Assad/Kurd relation as antagonistic in the MSM. This is the 'Plan C'
Syrian partition scheme. Hopefully, the average Kurd can see through their scheming and will not
follow the dictates of a usurped PYD to go to war with Syria for their independence. They would
be better off dumping and outlawing the PYD completely and working with the new Syrian government
on the future AFTER ISIS (and hopefully without any U.S. State Department and CIA).
Your assessment above is a supremely eloquent assessment and a scream for sanity to return.
Thank you so very much for your always illuminating writings.
I think you're quite right. That corresponds with what I've thought for some time. I'm
sure the US will throw the Syrian Kurds "under the bus" when their usefulness is finished. I'm
sure also that a lot of Syrian Kurds know this, and are hedging their bets.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/france-building-military-bases-in-syria-report/5531259 "The
use of proxy forces to destroy the secular government of Syria is now starting to give way to
stealth methods of direct ground deployment of Western Special Forces and ground troops under
the guise of assistance and coordination with "moderate" terrorists. "With a wide variety of Western-backed
terrorist groups ranging from "extremist" terrorists like ISIS, al-Qaeda, and al-Nusra to the
"moderate" terrorists of the FSA and the loose collection of terrorists, Kurds, and Arabs like
the SDF, the West has a kaleidoscope of proxy forces on the ground already.
"Yet, even as Syria's military clashes with the West's proxies, the United States, Britain,
and France have begun moving in Special Forces soldiers to assist in the mission of destroying
the Syrian government, a mission that Israeli, Jordanian, and Turkish officers have joined in
as well. That is, of course, despite the fact that Russian Special Forces are on the ground fighting
on the side of the Syrian military.
"Likewise, both the United States and Russia are busy building military bases in the northern
regions of Syria to use as staging grounds for new operations."
So Russian peace talks with US evil empire in Syria were a disaster, which makes Putin look
like an idiot, as well as the supporters of this idiocy. As well as Russian invitations for the
US to join it in Syria makes it one of the most stupidest invitations ever.
Since B is not mentioning it, he might as well not mention that the French terrorist invaders
along with the already US terrorists, and possibly German invaders will be occupying parts of
Syria.
Oh, but that's alright because Putin invited the evil minions of the Us empire into Syria,
you know, because the bad PR opportunity is a much better outcome then world War three.
The Iranians have been warring with Kurds by the border with Turkey. Neither the Turks nor
the Iranians - nor the Syrians, but they do need the Kurds now - want a Kurdistan. The Kurds must
know by now - must have been betrayed enough by now - to know that the US will tell them anything,
promise them anything, and deliver nothing but betrayal in the end.
As regards the State Department, the Pentagon, the US government ... what's required is
a neo-con purge, top to bottom. They are all working against American interests and against the
American people. and have been for the past two decades. The likelihood of such a purge is about
zero. Neither Trump nor Hillary has the will or the backbone to stand up to anyone. Trump's all
mouth and looking out for number one, and Hillary's plugged in to the money-mosaic as well. Obama's
getting ready to cash in his chips.
It looks to be more of the same, until they really do go after Russia, when it will be all
over for all of us. I can't imagine that they really believe they can get away with this, but
this bunch is all 'mid-level', 'just following orders', it won't be 'their fault' and that's the
level they're working at. The people calling the tune think they can play the real world as they
do their fake financial world, making up new rules as they go along, as they redefine success
after each of their serial failures.
Talk about boiled frogs. How in the hell have we let it get this far?
I am amazed at your unflagging obsession with holding Putin responsible for the US/UK/EU/NATO/GCC
destruction of Syria. You've set him up as your omnipotent god and he's failed you, somehow. Putin,
Rusia, is not responsible for the death, devastation, and destruction of Iraq, Syria, Libya or
the rest of the middle east or north africa. You're throwing your stones at the wrong guy, at
the only guy who's done anything at all to help the Syrians and to forestall the monstrous neo-con
plan. This letter may be, as b says, a measure of theneo-cons' fear that it will all be over
for 'their guys' in Syria by 21 January. If that were to come to pass, Vladimir Putin will have
had a big hand in it.
Nicola @10 from your link 'Extending American power' I had to laugh at this... 4. "All of which
provides the basis for our strong belief
that the United States still has the military, economic,
and political power to play the leading role in pro
-tecting a stable rules-based international order". 'Rules based',ha, the US is the leading regime
change state, acting always contrary to International law to benefit its hegemonic ambitions.
All five veto wielding powers and their friends are above International law for all time. Thankfully,
Russia and China cannot be threatened militarily and will confront the monstrous US designs in
Syria, once the head choppers are defeated the victors should move against the real source of
terrorism in the region, Saudi Arabia and the various GCC satraps. b's article above is excellent
and is echoed in this piece in Antiwar.com
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2016/06/16/something-going-worse-thought/
There are other worrying development in Syroi a namely changing of Riusssian attitude to Assaad.
First Lavrov said that Russia is not Syrian government ally, they just fight terrorists together.
An obvious nonsense.
And now this.
Israel, following several similar air raids in previous months just bombed SAA installation
in Homs province, in the middle of Syria just 45 second flight of S400 rockets located in latakia,
while Netanyahu was smiling with Putin in Moscow.
Can you explain WTF? All of that while IDF artillery provides cover for ANF commanded by formed
ISIL commander in Golan Heights foothills,
There is more about Russian de-facto acquiescence for Syrian partition and pivot to Israel:
STRANGE DAYS: Did Israelis Pivoted to Russia? Or the other way around.
https://syrianwarupdate.wordpress.com/
This is not preview nor is it a strategy, since strategies are based on more or less professional
and realistic, I may add, assessments of the outside world. I do not have any recollection of
any serious US doctrinal (policy or military wise) document in the last 20 years written from
the position of comprehensive situational awareness--this is a non existent condition among most
of US current "power elites". The document you posted is a typical wet dream written by utterly
incompetent neocons (Kagan's and Zoellik names are a tell), people who can not and must not be
allowed to operate with serious strategic and operational categories in any "advisory" role.
They simply have no qualifications for that and are nothing more than a bunch of ideologues and
propagandists from Ivy League humanities degree mill. Back to "preview"--it is a dominant ideology
of "exceptionalism" which afflicted US "elites" today, this document is just another iteration
of this ideology.
i read about 30 of 160 or so comments on this article at NYT. given who the audience of that
shit rag is & that comments are vetted, overwhelmingly commenters stated increased military involvement
is retarded. Of course, many of those speak from ignorance of what's really going on, but
the knee-jerk suspicion of US Syria policy & these FSO dickheads seems a good sign.
There is more about Russian de-facto acquiescence for Syrian partition and pivot to Israel:
It is exactly the other way around. How can Russia, which dwarfs Israel in every meaningful
category -- from economy to military -- and who does remember her history well can "pivot" to
largely regional player -- I don't know. Russian "neocons" are a dramatically different breed
than US ones, for starters they are much more educated and, actually, support Assad. Israel's
pivot to Russia in some sense is inevitable, albeit it could be fairly protracted, with Russia
being observed as honest broker. They are not completely stupid in Israel and are very aware of
real situation in American politics, economy and military. In other words -- they know how
to count and see who pulls the strings. And then there is another "little tiny" factor--Israelis
know damn well who won WW II in Europe. It matters, a great deal.
I note that the 'moderate' Hillary Clinton is a blood-soaked queen of chaos, who if elected
is certain to embroil us in pointless wars and spread death and devastation across even more of
the world. I say this not because I am psychic, but because that is her unambiguous record.
Donald Trump is admittedly a gamble, but depute his over-the-top stage persona, his track
record is of actually getting along with people and brokering stable working relationships.
This November I'm going for the wild-card who at least sounds rational (if you listen to what
he actually proposes, and not his style) and has a track record of actually being pragmatic, over
certain doom.
At this point I wish I could vote for Richard Nixon (!), but we have the choice that we
have...
This piece out of the NYT is pure propaganda. Period. Here's the big clue - where's the memo?
It's not embedded in the article. It can't be found anywhere on the web. It's b/c it doesn't exist.
The reader is 'TOLD' by a third party journalist few follow who writes for a MIC/Political/Policy
corporate mouthpiece.
If an article does not link to an original source OR quotes only 'anon sources' be skeptical.
Journalism, especially alt news journalists, site original sources AND try like hell to get sources
to go on the record.
My apologies in advance if I'm being offensive to our generous host. That is not my intent.
Rather, it's venting a long held frustration I've had with the division within corporate newsrooms
who are there solely to sell the readers the news, even if it's made up out of thin air.
Yeah . . .agree 90%. Here are some minor details that need to be tidied up, and a couple thoughts.
1.
b: it was Ahrar al Sham, Jabhat al-Nusra and other U.S. paid and supported "moderates"
who on April 9 broke the ceasefire in Syria.
This is not quite accurate. Resolution 2254 exempted al Nusra from the cease-fire, not sure
about al Sham and whatever others you are referring to. If they were excluded from the cease-fire,
then they couldn't break it.
2.
The NYT writer is Mark Landler, not Lander. If you're going to accuse him of being stupid or dishonest,
you want to get the name right. Mark Lander, whoever he is, might have a pack of bulldog lawyers.
3.
I don't see in Landler's article a link to the memo or a list of the people who signed it. Someone
needs to publish that list of signatories to preserve the record of who the DOS idiots are.
4. We see the point of all the saber-rattling by NATO on Russia's borders: to get Putin tied
up in a diversionary direct threat to Russia, thereby mitigating or eliminating his efforts in
behalf of Assad. And you know what? Americans on the street couldn't care one way or the other
what Obama or CIA or DoS does or says about Syria. 280,000 dead, millions displaced and Americans
are more concerned by a factor of 1000 about 4 dozen gays in Orlando.
Thanks for sharing your outrage, b. I completely agree. I have been ranting about this all morning
and it's good to see someone else stating the case so the rest of us don't feel isolated in our
anger at this vicious and dangerous stupidity. These 51 useful idiots are IMO auditioning
for the Clinton team while also providing cover for the neo-cons above them like Nuland, Powers,
etc. And directionless Kerry says he'll rush home to confer with these idiots rather than dismissing
them out of hand. Kerry could only be useful to anyone if Lavrov was in the room with him at all
times to keep him in line -- otherwise he reverts to his normal mindless servant of US empire
viewpoint, which is to follow whichever way the winds of power are blowing through Washington,
DC.
CIA .... YPG .... ALNUSRA.... FSL , all these acronyms are so confusing , how about considering
the level of sanity and intelligence of these groups ( which is probably below that of a wounded
flea .... ) why not call them Scoobidoos vs the Syrian Army
so the article would go something like this :
In the memo, the Scoobidoos State Department officials argued that military action against
Mr. Assad would help the fight against the Scoobidoos because it would bolster moderate Scoobidoos,
who are necessary allies against the group, also known as Scoobidoos .
I thought it was a "cessation of hostilities" not a case fire. The difference is not trivial,
and State Department employees should know the difference. The signers are either incompetent
or evil (not mutually exclusive, of course).
dont think landler is stupid. dishonest and deceiving would be my say. he is a nyt's jew writing,
maybe lying, regarding syria. NYT: only news acceptable to jews. sometimes, many times we have
to make up stories and facts to (maybe) fit.
cant find any of the dissenting names.
like to know how many are jew if story not total fake
then there is the political hatchet job on the russian track/field olym team.
I think the key takeaway is b's last two sentences: "The race to preempt a Hillary administration
war on Syria, which the 'diplomats' memo prepares for, is now on. May the not-warmongering side
win."
Hillary is the neocon's neocon. Pravy Sektor's honorary storm trooper Vicky Nuland is a
Hillary protege. NYT has been positioning its readers to embrace Kerry's Plan B for the last month-plus.
Whether during or shortly after Hillary's first 100 days in office, U.S. military engagement
with Libya and Syria will likely be significantly greater than it is now.
This is the exact reason the Ministers of Defense of Syria, Russia and Iran held meeting in Teheran
just recently. My assumption is they are planning on rolling up the acres, so to speak in Syria.
All before the new POTUS comes to office. Also, Hezbollah just announced it's sending in reinforcements
to the battlefield. All this while the Chinese continue to sleep. Sigh.
The Kurds are the last great hope for the oil and especially natural gas pipelines dream from
the GCC to Europe, but still, Israel is not happy. They wanted a branch-off pipeline for themselves.
Also Jordan was to get a small branch-off too. Israel is no more than a parasite, look up the
definition. It's exact. Turkey would benefit economically due to transit fees. That's why the
Turks are so heavily involved. Turkey, who's economy is done for due to Chinese cheap products
swamping the M.E; is crashed. Jordan is broke (hence they allow the head choppers to be trained
on their territory). The U.S is the overlord who wants this project to be implemented so as to
deny Russia the European market (see Saudia too).
Netanyahu has visited Russia 3-4 times (not sure)to dissuade Putin on his support for Bashar
( who said yes to the Friendship pipeline- Running from Russia, Iran, Iraq, Syria..to the Mediterranean
thru to Greece, Europe). No other World leader makes that many visits is such a short time to
another capital. Netanyahu obviously failed in his endeavor, as the Russians are familiar with
these Zionist snakes very well. All they have to look at is the genocide perpetrated by said Zionists
in their very own 20th Century history. I even read that Putin irked Netanyahu when Putin offered
him back the Pale of Settlement if they wanted to make the smart choice. Beautiful if true. Probably
wishful thinking tho.
Anyways, Israel runs the U.S State Department(see, the Crazies in the Basement). They don't
call it Foggy Bottom for nothing. Must be foggy now due to too many employess smoking bongs in
the downstairs cafeteria, hence the ridiculous memo. Also the writer of the memo is most certainly
another member of the chosen tribe.
Yes, a 'Night of the Broken Glass' or 'Night of the Long Knives' is much needed to save Humanity
essentially. But don't hope for it. Congress, Capital Hill leaders , MSM heads and head anchors,
most everybody in the Whit house(except the kitchen staff) would have to be rounded up.
The only hope would have been the U.S Military Officer Corp. before the great purges post 9-11.
Now it's I'm possible. God help the American people and the World.
This clown Kagan is also the husband of the infamous Victoria Nuland who somehow, defying
all logic, still has her job post imbroglio that is the Ukraine today. Hell, she's probably being
hailed for that and is an inspiration for lowly State employees.
Thank you Victoria, for giving Crimea back to the Russian Federation where it belongs.
There are almost exactly 7 months until either Trump or Clinton takes office (presuming
that the elites manage to completely control any bad news prior to the Dem nominating convention
in late July; if the email dam breaks after that I have no idea what the Dem elites will do, but
I figure they won't choose the obviously best candidate against Trump, Bernie).
Seven months. If Russia lends more of its strength, is it possible to gain the territory and
hold it to the point that, oh, the West's illegal bases will have to close down? Or might
the West actually directly take on Russia/Syrian government forces? Claiming, of course, some
version of
R2P
State Department Diplomats who have captained failure after failure? If these people were
Russian or Chinese they would have been executed for their serial failures in the ME and Afghanistan.
The main problem with being 'exceptional' is that the 'exceptional' ones never make a mistake.
"War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength"
So I was kind of wondering what psychopathic qualities the U.S. War... er, State Department
is looking for in potential parasitic career bureaucrats, and came across this self-promotion
page on their site. They seem to feel that working for them immerses you in a 'Culture of
Leadership'. I guess the 'Culture of Chaos and Death' theme, although more neocon-appropriate,
was shot down in favor of tempting potential employees with the possibility of more power and
control.
There are times the depressing mood on MoA is mitigated by some of the rather classic spelling
errors. I sometimes wonder if they might be intentional in order to lighten the mood?
In the inner halls of Pentagramagon nothing succeeds financially like serial designed failure
...
KABUL, Afghanistan - "The new U.S. commander in Afghanistan has submitted his first three-month
assessment of the situation in the war-torn country and what it's going to take to defeat the
Taliban, a U.S. military official has told The Associated Press.
And though the content of the review by Army Gen. John W. Nicholson is secret, the U.S.
strategy in Afghanistan received a major incentive this month when President Obama decided to
expand America's involvement with more airstrikes against insurgents, giving the U.S. military
wider latitude to support Afghan forces, both in the air and on the ground."
No respect for
R2P warriors
at the State Department, nor for HRC, Susan Rice and Samantha Power. Jo Cox as former
Oxfam executive was moved by the same massacres of Rwanda, Yugoslavia and Darfur.
Unwittingly (?) the R2P argument was used by the Obama White House to intervene in Libya and
Syria. The US took R2P a step further to force regime change which is illegal by International
law. See George Bush and
Tony Blair
to white-wash the cruelty of torture, rendition, Abu Ghraib, extrajudicial assassinations,
etc, etc.
Former US Ambassador to Syria Robert S. Ford was an apprentice of John Negroponte in Baghdad,
Iraq.
If I were Assad, I would be shaking in my boots right now and having Gaddafi dreams. Russia has
clearly allied itself closely to Israel and Nato in Syria. Some kind of sanctions relief deal
must be in the works. Syria will be split up soon. Assad is a dead man.
For Israel to bomb the Syrian military right under the nose of Russian s-400s? Russia,
supposedly so dedicated to defending sovereignty, smiles and yawns benignly? A dirty deal has
been made...
"Earlier this week as America was trying to make sense of the deadliest case of Islamic terrorism
on US soil since 9/11, I wrote a detailed article here at Breitbart News that laid out the clear
factual case about Hillary Clinton's top assistant Huma Abedin. I showed how she has deep, clear,
and inarguable connections to a Saudi Arabian official named Abdul Omar Naseef, a powerful Kingdom
insider who has helped lead a group called the Muslim World League. The Muslim World League is
the huge "charity" whose goal is to spread Islam throughout the world and which has been connected
to terror groups like Al Qaeda. If that sounds like a serious accusation, you're damn right
it is."
"The three questions are very simple, very straightforward, and, frankly, anybody can research
the answers themselves. They are:
1) What is Huma's relationship with a Saudi Arabian official named Abdullah Omar Naseef?
2) Was he the founder of a Saudi charity called the Rabita Trust?
3) Right after 9/11, was the Rabita Trust put on a list by the U.S. government of groups
that were funding terrorism?"
"If I were Assad, I would be shaking in my boots right now and having Gaddafi dreams."
Interesting opinion? If you made a list of democratically elected Presidents and National Leaders
the US/GB/ISR axis have terminated you will fill a book. From Patrice Lumumba to Hugo Chavez the
list goes on and on. Could you supply me with a list of National Leaders that Russia under Putin
has terminated?
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - US Department of State has no plans to make public an internal memo
calling for the United States to take military action against Syrian President Bashar Assad's
government, US Department of State spokesperson John Kirby said in a briefing on Friday. "There's
no plans to make it public," Kirby stated when asked when the State Department would release
the dissent letter.
Furthermore, Kirby said there will be no investigation as to how the letter ended up in
the public domain.
By 'public domain', Kirby means on some writer's desk at the NYT, never to be seen by the unwashed
masses. To be fair, the State Department's "Dissent Memo" program is supposed to be confidential
even within the State Department itself to encourage its use. Mark Landler said in his article
that a draft of it was leaked by 'a State Department official' to the NYT. So some skepticism
of the existence or eventual submission of the actual memo is warranted. Not that Landry is lying
or hasn't verified it, but the State Department official obviously has an agenda by providing
it to the NYT. The NYT has its own agenda filled as well by prominently posting the article
on
the top of the front page .
Nyt participating in these pressures is coordinated with medecins sans frontiere announcing
today that they ll refuse eu money to protest on the treatment of refugees and with recent surge
in french and uk msm of so called white helmets exclusive pictured
Obama, despite dissent on Syria, not shifting toward strikes on Assad
The U.S. administration sought on Friday to contain fallout from a leaked internal memo critical
of its Syria policy, but showed no sign it was willing to consider military strikes against Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad's forces called for in the letter signed by dozens of U.S. diplomats.
Several U.S. officials said that while the White House is prepared to hear the diplomats' dissenting
viewpoint, it is not expected to spur any changes in President Barack Obama's approach to Syria
in his final seven months in office.
One senior official said that the test for whether these proposals for more aggressive
action are given high-level consideration will be whether they "fall in line with our contention
that there is no military solution to the conflict in Syria."
It's important for Russia to ensure that the remains of the first "Israeli" jet it shoots
down falls to earth inside Syria. If you've seen a story about the IAF doing something courageous
it's bullshit.
The EU-Turkey deal's financial package includes one billion euros in humanitarian aid.
There are undoubtedly needs in Turkey, a country which currently hosts close to three million
Syrian refugees, but this aid has been negotiated as a reward for border control promises,
rather than being based solely on needs. This instrumentalisation of humanitarian aid is unacceptable.
Last week the European Commission unveiled a new proposal to replicate the EU-Turkey logic
across more than 16 countries in Africa and the Middle East.
These deals would impose trade and development aid sanctions on countries that do not stem
migration to Europe or facilitate forcible returns, rewarding those that do. Among these potential
partners are
Somalia ,
Eritrea , Sudan and Afghanistan – four of the top ten* refugee generating countries.
kreepy kerry is "running out of patience" since his most desired regime change isn't happening
fast enough. How many others are in the works? I'm running-out-of-patience waiting for the
regime change anyone with 1/2 a brain wants, right here in the U.S. Regime Change US. It's our
turn. I just read Putin's speech at the St. Petersburg Int'l Forum. He must have used the word
"cooperation" at least 20 times. We need such a great leader. Terroristic turds like kerry and
co. belong in jail.
50 diplomats petition president for war. Was that written by Orwell? Isn't it enough
that this "peaceful" nation arms the world and places economic "pressure" on those nations that
displease her to the point of causing millions to die - do we really have to "kill the village
to save it?" Yes, I agree, each and every one of those "career diplomats" should be looking for
other work. They have not merely lost their way, they have lost their minds. My contempt for them
is manifest, as is my contempt for the entire MIC. That those trained in diplomacy should send
such a despicable petition illuminates the deep corrupting influence of American Exceptionalism
- a force for the kind of nationalism Germany endured 1933-45. Idiots.
Allow me to further my argument against American Exceptionalism. It is not merely the fact
that the U.S. is far from exceptional. From education to infant mortality, the U.S. is woefully
behind much of the world. My objection is that belief in exceptionalism leads to moral decay.
It is the functional equivalent of the 19th Century preachers who endorsed slavery, who preached
that negroes carried the mark of Cain, etc. Whites were God's chosen. The pseudo-righteousness
that preaching created in believers was largely responsible for America's Civil War. Americans
will be better people, with a better society, if we dispel this myth immediately. We're OK, you're
OK. Then we could have peace. Wouldn't that be nice?
So Hillary, the bloodthirsty Goddess of War, is longing for a second Libya, i.e., a Syria
smashed to smithereens, in ashes and ruins, ruled by a chaotic bunch of mad Takfiri extremists,
at war all against all. The Queen of Chaos, indeed, loves these scenarios. Especially because
her quick attack as first thing should she win the White House would shut the mouths of her critics
wanting her prosecuted for her crooked political and business corruption. But she and her State
Department surrogates would be in for a surprise: Russian and Syrian defences would not remain
silent. And afterwards, what would be left? How would the Exceptionalist who "gets things done"
proceed?
The FBI is stonewalling, keeping the contents of Mateen's 911 call unavailable - though it's
part of the public record - presumably because it undermines the "ISIS did it" meme poured over
the Orlando mass murder. Apparently Mateen may have mentioned ISIS not quite in the same light
as has been portrayed.
Now the NYTimes/WSJ are doing the same thing with the 50 dancing diplomats. Releasing what
they want us to know and redacting what we want to know : the names of those 50 dancing diplomats.
I suppose it comes under the CIA's blanket excuse for secrecy? "Methods and means", or
whatever their boilerplate.
Releasing their names might give us the means to track the 5th column as it winds its way through
'our' government, and that must be prevented at all costs. Think it might lead through Hillary?
Seems no doubt here.
No doubt the State Department dwarves were ginned up by "Cookies" Nuland and Count Kagan by
visions of "x memorandum" of 1946 immortality by attacking the resistance to an unipolar hegemony.
Mixing it up in Syria with the Russian presence seems civilization limiting at the outer limits
of challenge/ response in a military confrontation.
"... If Donald Trump, as seems more than likely, prevails in the GOP primary, then a number of neocons may defect to the Clinton campaign. Already Robert Kagan announced in the Washington Post ..."
"... The impulse of the neocons to return to the Democratic Party should not be wholly surprising. In 1972, for example, Robert L. Bartley, the editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... For its part, neoconservatism has always had a nationalistic streak. But Trump represents everything that the neocons believed that they had purged from the GOP. He represents continuity with the Buchananite wing, the belief that America should tend to its own knitting before launching hopeless wars abroad. When it comes to foreign policy, however, the second generation of neocons such as Kagan does not trace its lineage back to Ohio Senator Robert Taft but to the one that Republicans in the early 1950s reviled: the Truman administration. ..."
Anyone looking for further converts to the Hillary Clinton campaign might do well to look at the
Marco Rubio campaign. If Clinton is the leading liberal hawk, Rubio is the foremost neocon candidate.
In 2014 National Review published an article about him titled "The
neocons return."
Whether it's Cuba or Iran or Russia, he stakes out the most
intransigent line: "I disagree with voices in my own party who argue we should not engage at
all, who warn we should heed the words of John Quincy Adams not to go 'abroad, in search of monsters
to destroy.'" Not surprisingly, he's surrounded himself with neocon advisers, ranging from Max Boot
to Jamie Fly to Elliott Abrams.
If Donald Trump, as seems more than likely, prevails in the GOP primary, then a number of
neocons may defect to the Clinton campaign. Already
Robert Kagan announced in the Washington Post on Thursday that he intends to back Hillary
Clinton if Donald Trump receives the GOP nomination. The fact is that the loyalty of the neocons
has always been to an ideology of American exceptionalism, not to a particular party.
This is what separates the neocon conversion to Clinton from previous examples of Republicans
endorsing Barack Obama. Colin Powell wasn't making an ideological statement. He was making a practical
one, based on his distaste for where the GOP was headed. For the neocons this is a much more heartfelt
moment. They have invested decades in trying to reshape the GOP into their own image, and were quite
successful at it. But now a formidable challenge is taking place as the GOP reverts to its traditional
heritage.
The impulse of the neocons to return to the Democratic Party should not be wholly surprising.
In 1972, for example, Robert L. Bartley, the editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal,
wrote that the fledgling neoconservatives represented "something of a swing group between the two
major parties." He was right. The neoconservatives had their home in the Democratic Party in the
1960s. Then they marched rightward, in reaction to the rise of the adversary culture inside the Democratic
Party. George McGovern's run for the presidency in 1972, followed by the Jimmy Carter presidency,
sent them into the arms of Ronald Reagan and the GOP.
But it wasn't until the George W. Bush presidency that the neocons became the dominant foreign
policy force inside the GOP. They promptly proceeded to wreck his presidency by championing the war
in Iraq. Today, having wrecked it, they are now threatening to bolt the GOP and support Hillary Clinton
rather than Donald Trump for the presidency.
Something like this scenario is
what I predicted in the New York Times in July 2014. Trump wasn't around then as a force
inside the GOP. But already it seemed clear that some of the leading neocons such as Kagan were receptive
to Clinton. Now, in a Washington Post column, Kagan has gone all in.
He decries Republican obstructionism, antipathy to Obama, and the rise of Trump. The tone is apocalyptic.
According to
Kagan,
"So what to do now? The Republicans' creation will soon be let loose on the land, leaving to
others the job the party failed to carry out. For this former Republican, and perhaps for others,
the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton. The party cannot be saved, but the country
still can be."
This itself represents a curious case of neocon hyperbole. Kagan is an eloquent writer, but he
elides the fact that many of Trump's positions are not all that different from what the GOP has espoused
in the past when it comes to domestic issues. It is on foreign affairs where Trump represents a marked
shift and it is this that truly troubles the neocon wing.
Trump has made it clear that he's dubious about foreign interventions. He's indicated that he
would treat with Russian president Vladimir Putin. His entire foreign policy credo, such as it is,
seems to have a
Jacksonian pedigree-don't tread on me.
For its part, neoconservatism has always had a nationalistic streak. But Trump represents
everything that the neocons believed that they had purged from the GOP. He represents continuity
with the Buchananite wing, the belief that America should tend to its own knitting before launching
hopeless wars abroad. When it comes to foreign policy, however, the second generation of neocons
such as Kagan does not trace its lineage back to Ohio Senator Robert Taft but to the one that Republicans
in the early 1950s reviled: the Truman administration.
Here we come full circle. The origins of the neocons are in the Democratic Party. Should Clinton
become the Democratic nominee and Trump the Republican one, a number of neocons may make common cause
with Clinton. Watch Rubio's ranks first.
Jacob Heilbrunn is editor of the National Interest.
"... Prominent neocon Robert Kagan has endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton for president, saying she represents the best hope for saving the United States from populist billionaire Donald Trump, who has repudiated the neoconservative cause of U.S. military interventions in line with Israel's interests. ..."
"... Then referring to himself, he added, "For this former Republican, and perhaps for others, the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton. The [Republican] party cannot be saved, but the country still can be." ..."
"... Kagan, who I've known since the 1980s when he was a rising star on Ronald Reagan's State Department propaganda team (selling violent right-wing policies in Central America), has been signaling his affection for Clinton for some time, at least since she appointed him as an adviser to her State Department and promoted his wife Victoria Nuland, a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, to be the State Department's chief spokesperson. Largely because of Clinton's patronage, Nuland rose to assistant secretary of state for European affairs and oversaw the provocative "regime change" in Ukraine in 2014. ..."
"... "I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy. If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue it's something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else." ..."
"... Now, Kagan, whose Project for the New American Century wrote the blueprint for George W. Bush's disastrous Iraq War, is now abandoning the Republican Party in favor of Hillary Clinton. ..."
"... While Kagan's op-ed surely makes some accurate points about Republicans, his endorsement of Hillary Clinton raises a different issue for Democrats: Do they want a presidential candidate who someone as savvy as Kagan knows will perpetuate neocon strategies around the world? Do Democrats really trust Hillary Clinton to handle delicate issues, such as the Syrian conflict, without resorting to escalations that may make the neocon disasters under George W. Bush look minor by comparison? ..."
"... Perhaps Robert Kagan's endorsement of Hillary Clinton and what that underscores about the likely foreign policy of a second Clinton presidency might finally force war or peace to the fore of the campaign. ..."
Exclusive: Hillary Clinton's cozy ties to Washington's powerful neocons
have paid off with the endorsement of Robert Kagan, one of the most influential neocons. But it also
should raise questions among Democrats about what kind of foreign policy a President Hillary Clinton
would pursue, writes Robert Parry.
Prominent neocon Robert Kagan has endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton for president, saying
she represents the best hope for saving the United States from populist billionaire Donald Trump,
who has repudiated the neoconservative cause of U.S. military interventions in line with Israel's
interests.
In a Washington Post
op-ed published on Thursday, Kagan excoriated the Republican Party for creating the conditions
for Trump's rise and then asked, "So what to do now? The Republicans' creation will soon be let loose
on the land, leaving to others the job the party failed to carry out."
Then referring to himself, he added, "For this former Republican, and perhaps for others,
the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton. The [Republican] party cannot be saved, but
the country still can be."
While many of Kagan's observations about the Republican tolerance and even encouragement of bigotry
are correct, the fact that a leading neocon, a co-founder of the infamous Project for the New American
Century, has endorsed Clinton raises questions for Democrats who have so far given the former New
York senator and Secretary of State mostly a pass on her pro-interventionist policies.
The fact is that Clinton has generally marched in lock step with the neocons as they have implemented
an aggressive "regime change" strategy against governments and political movements that don't toe
Washington's line or that deviate from Israel's goals in the Middle East. So she has backed coups,
such as in Honduras (2009) and Ukraine (2014); invasions, such as Iraq (2003) and Libya (2011); and
subversions such as Syria (from 2011 to the present) all with various degrees of disastrous results.
Yet, with the failure of Republican establishment candidates to gain political traction against
Trump, Clinton has clearly become the choice of many neoconservatives and "liberal interventionists"
who favor continuation of U.S. imperial designs around the world. The question for Democrats now
is whether they wish to perpetuate those war-like policies by sticking with Clinton or should switch
to Sen. Bernie Sanders, who offers a somewhat less aggressive (though vaguely defined) foreign policy.
Sanders has undermined his appeal to anti-imperialist Democrats by muting his criticism of Clinton's
"regime change" strategies and concentrating relentlessly on his message of "income inequality" for
which Clinton has disingenuously dubbed him a "single-issue candidate." Whether Sanders has the will
and the time to reorient his campaign to question Clinton's status as the new neocon choice remains
in doubt.
A Reagan Propagandist
Kagan, who I've known since the 1980s when he was a rising star on Ronald Reagan's State Department
propaganda team (selling violent right-wing policies in Central America), has been signaling his
affection for Clinton for some time, at least since she appointed him as an adviser to her State
Department and promoted his wife Victoria Nuland, a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney,
to be the State Department's chief spokesperson. Largely because of Clinton's patronage, Nuland rose
to assistant secretary of state for European affairs and oversaw the provocative
"regime change" in Ukraine in 2014.
Later in 2014, Kagan told The New York Times that he hoped that his neocon views which he had
begun to call "liberal interventionist" would prevail in a possible Hillary Clinton administration.
The Times reported that Clinton "remains the vessel into which many interventionists are pouring
their hopes" and quoted Kagan as saying:
"I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy. If she pursues a policy which we think she
will pursue it's something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not
going to call it that; they are going to call it something else."
Now, Kagan, whose Project for the New American Century wrote the blueprint for George W. Bush's
disastrous Iraq War, is now abandoning the Republican Party in favor of Hillary Clinton.
... ... ...
While Kagan's op-ed surely makes some accurate points about Republicans, his endorsement of
Hillary Clinton raises a different issue for Democrats: Do they want a presidential candidate who
someone as savvy as Kagan knows will perpetuate neocon strategies around the world? Do Democrats
really trust Hillary Clinton to handle delicate issues, such as the Syrian conflict, without resorting
to escalations that may make the neocon disasters under George W. Bush look minor by comparison?
Will Clinton even follow the latest neocon dream of "regime change" in Moscow as the ultimate
way of collapsing Israel's lesser obstacles - Iran, Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Palestinian
resistance? Does Clinton have the wisdom to understand that neocon schemes are often half-baked (remember
"the cakewalk" in Iraq) and that the risk of overthrowing Vladimir Putin in Moscow might lead not
to some new pliable version of Boris Yeltsin but to a dangerous Russian nationalist ready to use
the nuclear codes to defend Mother Russia? (For all Putin's faults, he is a calculating adversary,
not a crazy one.)
The fact that none of these life-and-death foreign policy questions has been thoroughly or intelligently
explored during the Democratic presidential campaign is a failure of both the mainstream media moderators
and the two candidates, Sanders and Clinton, neither of whom seems to want a serious or meaningful
debate about these existential issues.
Perhaps Robert Kagan's endorsement of Hillary Clinton and what that underscores about the
likely foreign policy of a second Clinton presidency might finally force war or peace to the fore
of the campaign.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated
Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative,
either in
print here or as an e-book (from
Amazon and
barnesandnoble.com).
The presumptive GOP nominee was referring to Bill's
numerous trysts with women over the years. Trump accused Hillary of being
the reason for Bill's infidelities, and shamed her for mistreating the women
Bill cheated with.
"And just remember this," Trump said. "She was an unbelievably nasty, mean
enabler, and what she did to a lot of those women is disgraceful."
"... Clinton preaches trickle-down feminism, which just like trickle-down economics,/*serves only the interests of those at the top of the food chain.*/ She essentially established woman and children trafficked rings in Libya and Syria. ..."
"... In any case here is not much difference between neoliberal attitude toward woman ( women as marketable "perishable goods" including such things as sex trade, sex slavery, etc) and Saudi attitude. ..."
Clinton preaches trickle-down feminism, which just like trickle-down economics,/*serves only
the interests of those at the top of the food chain.*/
She essentially established woman and children trafficked rings in Libya and Syria.
In any case here is not much difference between neoliberal attitude toward woman ( women as
marketable "perishable goods" including such things as sex trade, sex slavery, etc) and Saudi attitude.
"... Wasserman is a great replacement for him as a stunningly inept strategist. "In the summer of 1994, Coelho was the principal Democratic political strategist during the run-up to the mid-term Congressional elections. Officially, he was Senior Advisor to the Democratic National Committee. ..."
"... The Republican Party won a landslide victory in the fall congressional elections, capturing both the House and Senate by commanding margins." ..."
"... I was trying to be "polite" to temper the rage I feel at these dishonest people who pretend they even comprehend the word progressive and neatly sidestep the role the Koch Brothers played. ..."
Bill and Obama seem to follow the strategy to lose the house and senate. But the smug Clinton
acolytes blame the voters. Always deflect blame eh?
Wasserman is a great replacement for him as a stunningly inept strategist. "In the summer
of 1994, Coelho was the principal Democratic political strategist during the run-up to the mid-term
Congressional elections. Officially, he was Senior Advisor to the Democratic National Committee.
The Republican Party won a landslide victory in the fall congressional elections, capturing
both the House and Senate by commanding margins."
I was trying to be "polite" to temper the rage I feel at these dishonest people who pretend
they even comprehend the word progressive and neatly sidestep the role the Koch Brothers played.
Now we get more of the same. I am part of the 1% financially but I was raised to understand
it was all going to get better for the poor.
But yeah must have been Fox news who MADE Bill get into bed with these creeps. I can't sit
back smugly and proclaim I am alright jack I have 4 kids and I am horrified the world they will
inherit.
Looks like neoliberal Guardian presstitutes love neocons and religious nuts Cruz. Who would guess
? Interesting...
Notable quotes:
"... He also has a certain kind of roguish charm and can be quite amusing, which Hillary Clinton rarely is; he'd easily win the "who'd I prefer to have a beer with" competition. ..."
"... How can anyone say that yet? What we DO know is that the Bush-Obama administration has been an unqualified disaster on many fronts. Change, even with the possibility - NOT 'certainty' - of "bad things happening" is much more desirable... ..."
"... The more this election plays out the more I totally understand why Trump has made it this far. I've lived a long time and been politically active my entire adult life, and I've never seen voters send such a resounding and well deserved fuck you to the political elite. ..."
"... Indeed, the failure and dysfunction of the present political system in the US can be traced to one thing: the failure of the fourth estate. It is worse than failure, it is a betrayal of the nation for those thirty pieces of silver. ..."
"... What his campaign ultimately proves, is that only appealing to ideologically conservative Republicans is not enough to win the nom. The bulk of the party is traditionalist and reactionary rather than puritanical. They'll pretty reliably vote for any grumpy old white guy with a sense of humour (Nixon, Reagan, Bush I, Romney, McCain, now Trump). Secondly Cruz misread the issues of the year. People are frustrated because they believe that they are struggling while others are milking them. Trump gets this, so does Bernie. Hillary, not so much. This will be a big problem for her in the general. ..."
"... I'm getting just a bit tired of the feigned "I can't understand it" air of these articles about Donald Trump. The Trump gave the voters in his party the red meat of bigotry and hate that they require. The others dog-whistled a merry tune. Why talk about 'strange political jujitsu'? Why not admit that a large portion of the Republican Party is unloved by their own candidates. Why not look at the fact that Republicans accept the votes of 'poor white trash' but do nothing for them. ..."
No, I did not think that....however, I do think that there is enough awareness of this issue
that it does not get dangerously into the main stream in Europe. In the US there much less awareness.
Decades of the indoctrination that all bad things are either "communist" or "socialist" has left
the door wide open for a return of the populist nationalist. Trump is just that.
bluet00ns 5 May 2016 13:18
"happy campaign"?...review the tapes, "happy" is nowhere in the oily, twisted, display of sly
that was cruz's campaign, the numb, if not painful, looks on the faces of family as he trotted
them out like props, is exhibit A.
bcarey -> sour_mash 5 May 2016 13:08
My point is that it's common for candidates to suspend their campaigns and continue to
collect money.
Definitely true.
However, we must also take into account the fact that the Cruz delegates are still active and
maybe able to deliver Cruz.... or Romney if necessary. It is likely that Trump will get way more
delegates than needed to stop a contested/open convention, however.
The Cruz suspension is about 2 things. It accomplishes potentially 2 things. Money is just
one of them. The other part is Romney, if he can.
fallentower 5 May 2016 13:02
I actually think the Republican Party made a good choice once it was down to "Cruz or Trump"
by sitting on its hands and thereby letting Trump win. Of course, Trump is far more likely to
do and say unorthodox (from a post-Reagan Republican Party standpoint) things, and will probably
increase the tension and turmoil within the party. But he actually has a chance of winning the
election; Cruz's smarmy personality and nauseating brand of religious conservatism would have
gone down like a lead balloon outside the Bible belt, and he's too committed ideologically to
change his policy positions.
Trump will turn on a sixpence and happily disavow things he may have said in the primary if
he considers them unhelpful baggage for the general, and because he's seen as a showman rather
than a professional politician he'll have much more leeway to do so than your average flip-flopper.
He also has a certain kind of roguish charm and can be quite amusing, which Hillary Clinton
rarely is; he'd easily win the "who'd I prefer to have a beer with" competition. Admittedly
he is going to have to cut down on the clownishness and ill-disciplined outbursts, but if he gets
the right campaign team together and they manage to keep him vaguely on-message I think he'll
have good chances. Better than Cruz, anyway, who had zero chance.
sour_mash bcarey 5 May 2016 12:58
I take your point regarding Secret Agent Mormon and I was aware that he had filed with the
FEC. My point is that it's common for candidates to suspend their campaigns and continue to collect
money.
The exploratory PAC is the new retirement vehicle but that's a different issue.
taxhaven wjousts 5 May 2016 12:58
Trump most certainly is not change for the better.
How can anyone say that yet? What we DO know is that the Bush-Obama administration has
been an unqualified disaster on many fronts. Change, even with the possibility - NOT 'certainty'
- of "bad things happening" is much more desirable...
Harry Dresdon 5 May 2016 12:42
Good riddance to Cruz. Boehner called him "the devil in the flesh". Cruz would have been way
worse for the country than Trump will ever be. Sad but true.
DillyDit2 5 May 2016 12:34
Hey Stephanie Cutter: You think Bernie is responsible for what his supporters think, whether
we'll support Hillary, and how we will decide to vote in the fall? Pappa Bernie should tell us
what to do, and we should fall in line and salute?
Could Cutter and Hillary's minions be any more clueless?! And could they reveal their top down
authoritarian mindset any more clearer?
The more this election plays out the more I totally understand why Trump has made it this
far. I've lived a long time and been politically active my entire adult life, and I've never seen
voters send such a resounding and well deserved fuck you to the political elite.
I wish I could support Trump, because I second that fuck you. For now, along with what is likely
the majority of American voters, all I can do is say- pox on BOTH your houses and may 2020 be
the year an Independent runs and wins.
danubemonster 5 May 2016 12:32
I think it is worth comparing Cruz with Nixon. Both men are/were not particularly likable,
yet Nixon was able to be a two-term president. Nixon was a conservative, but he was not an ideologue
- and he lived in an age where the Republican Party was a relatively broad church. Nixon also
have political instincts which were way beyond those of Cruz. He knew how to play high politics,
and he knew what was required to get to the White House.
PATROKLUS00 -> Tommy Cooper 5 May 2016 12:14
Trump will beat her to death with being the Queen of the Establishment... the Dems will be
idiots to nominate her.
PATROKLUS00 -> voxusa 5 May 2016 12:12
Indeed, the failure and dysfunction of the present political system in the US can be traced
to one thing: the failure of the fourth estate. It is worse than failure, it is a betrayal of
the nation for those thirty pieces of silver.
PATROKLUS00 -> 8MilesHigh 5 May 2016 12:09
Yup, and the Democrat establishment is too stupid and out of touch to recognize that HRC is
just the grist that Trump needs for his anti-establishment mill.
PATROKLUS00 5 May 2016 12:07
Cruz a master strategist???? BWWWWWwwwwwaaaaahhhhhhhaaaaaaaa! Ludicrous ... beyond ludicrous.
Vintage59 David Perry 5 May 2016 12:07
His religious beliefs and the political dogma that goes with them have been well documented.
Have you not been paying attention? Do you insist your wife get you a beer from the fridge when
you can get off your ass and get it yourself?
8MilesHigh 5 May 2016 12:06
What his campaign ultimately proves, is that only appealing to ideologically conservative
Republicans is not enough to win the nom. The bulk of the party is traditionalist and reactionary
rather than puritanical. They'll pretty reliably vote for any grumpy old white guy with a sense
of humour (Nixon, Reagan, Bush I, Romney, McCain, now Trump). Secondly Cruz misread the issues
of the year. People are frustrated because they believe that they are struggling while others
are milking them. Trump gets this, so does Bernie. Hillary, not so much. This will be a big problem
for her in the general.
MalleusSacerdotum 5 May 2016 12:05
I'm getting just a bit tired of the feigned "I can't understand it" air of these articles
about Donald Trump. The Trump gave the voters in his party the red meat of bigotry and hate that
they require. The others dog-whistled a merry tune. Why talk about 'strange political jujitsu'?
Why not admit that a large portion of the Republican Party is unloved by their own candidates.
Why not look at the fact that Republicans accept the votes of 'poor white trash' but do nothing
for them.
The Donald has understood the dynamic better than the rest and has given the voters a coherent,
albeit repugnant, analysis of their problems. An article like this that can shed no light on the
phenomenon that is Trump is hardly worth publishing.
Muammar al-Qaddafi was an easy target. Oil was the goal. Everything else is describable attempt
to white wash the crime.
Notable quotes:
"... At the end, the brainwashing media convince the people to vote for the "bad choice" instead of the worst (which is Trump in this case). You don't need to have any plans or anything, just repeat "Trump bad, Trump bad, Trump bad, Me good" and the sheeple will follow! This strategy has been so successful that almost everywhere around the world are using it to win all types of elections! xD ..."
"... She should be a felon by now, and only her name protects her from jail. ..."
"... Although everyone recognizes that Qaddafi is a brutal ruler, his forces did not conduct deliberate, large-scale massacres in any of the cities he has recaptured, and his violent threats to wreak vengeance on Benghazi were directed at those who continued to resist his rule, not at innocent bystanders. There is no question that Qaddafi is a tyrant with few (if any) redemptive qualities, but the threat of a bloodbath that would "stain the conscience of the world" (as Obama put it) was slight ..."
"... As I've argued previously, the term "humanitarian crisis" is desperately imprecise and the informed public's ability to distinguish between civil strife (which is always bloody) and outright massacres and extermination campaigns is weak. Walt's certainty notwithstanding, the debate about the humanitarian rationale in this case has not been settled. In fact, it's barely begun ..."
"... on the basis that Gaddafi's forces were about to commit a Srebrenica-style massacre in Benghazi. Naturally we can never know what would have happened without Nato's intervention. But there is in fact no evidence – including from other rebel-held towns Gaddafi re-captured – to suggest he had either the capability or even the intention to carry out such an atrocity against an armed city of 700,000 . ..."
"... Of those, uncounted thousands will be civilians, including those killed by Nato bombing and Nato-backed forces on the ground. These figures dwarf the death tolls in this year's other most bloody Arab uprisings, in Syria and Yemen. Nato has not protected civilians in Libya – it has multiplied the number of their deaths, while losing not a single soldier of its own. ..."
"... For the western powers, of course, the Libyan war has allowed them to regain ground lost in Tunisia and Egypt, put themselves at the heart of the upheaval sweeping the most strategically sensitive region in the world, and secure valuable new commercial advantages in an oil-rich state whose previous leadership was at best unreliable. No wonder the new British defence secretary is telling businessmen to "pack their bags" for Libya, and the US ambassador in Tripoli insists American companies are needed on a "big scale". ..."
"... But for Libyans, it has meant a loss of ownership of their own future and the effective imposition of a western-picked administration of Gaddafi defectors and US and British intelligence assets. Probably the greatest challenge to that takeover will now come from Islamist military leaders on the ground, such as the Tripoli commander Abdel Hakim Belhaj – kidnapped by MI6 to be tortured in Libya in 2004 – who have already made clear they will not be taking orders from the NTC. ..."
"... This was an unpopular stance to take on Libya during the high tide of the Arab Spring, when foreign governments and media alike were uncritically lauding the opposition. The two sides in what was a genuine civil war were portrayed as white hats and black hats; rebel claims about government atrocities were credulously broadcast, though they frequently turned out to be concocted, while government denials were contemptuously dismissed. Human rights organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch were much more thorough than the media in checking these stories, although their detailed reports appeared long after the news agenda had moved on." ..."
"... the Taliban were winning against the Northern Alliance for various reasons, one was that a lot of people supported them. We turned a blind eye to the destabilising effects of Saudi and Pakistan support of the Taliban as well. We set this up for failure a long time ago. Riding in like the calvary and handing out billions to the Northern Alliance was not very helpful for stability. ..."
"... What people related to me was this: The Taliban were more predictable. Dostum was not predictable. Both were bad, but as Clinton fans love to highlight, the lessor of two evils must be selected. The Taliban also represented the Pashtun who were the largest ethnic bloc in Afghanistan. So in essence the people mostly supported the Taliban. The Northern Alliance had the support of Russia, and you might recall the Afghans did not have fond memories of them. ..."
"... Given our support of Saudi and knowing their interventions, as well as Pakistan, we were stupid to intervene. ..."
Most politicians these days don't care about the people and this ridiculous cycle is repeating
every 4 years! Candidates who actually want to make progress get dumped by the corrupt system
and the parties that are being controlled by their corporate masters and their money to do as
they want to return the more money to them later when they have the office!
At the end, the brainwashing media convince the people to vote for the "bad choice" instead
of the worst (which is Trump in this case). You don't need to have any plans or anything, just
repeat "Trump bad, Trump bad, Trump bad, Me good" and the sheeple will follow! This strategy has
been so successful that almost everywhere around the world are using it to win all types of elections!
xD
Maybe Trump becoming president is necessary for the people to realize once and for all that
this cycle of mistakes and corruption needs to stop and fundamental changes need to happen! Starts
with the USA and the world will follow over time. I personally am done with following these corrupt
political systems and their media and do as they tell me to (same goes for the financial system
but there's no escaping this one in the near future with corps and banks being in total control
of the society).
"As Alan Kuperman of the University of Texas and Stephen Chapman of the Chicago Tribune
have now shown, the claim that the United States had to act to prevent Libyan tyrant Muammar
al-Qaddafi from slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Benghazi does not stand
up to even casual scrutiny.
Although everyone recognizes that Qaddafi is a brutal ruler, his forces did not conduct
deliberate, large-scale massacres in any of the cities he has recaptured, and his violent threats
to wreak vengeance on Benghazi were directed at those who continued to resist his rule, not
at innocent bystanders. There is no question that Qaddafi is a tyrant with few (if any) redemptive
qualities, but the threat of a bloodbath that would "stain the conscience of the world" (as
Obama put it) was slight. "
"If humanitarian intervention is to remain a live possibility, there must be much more public
scrutiny, debate and discussion of what triggers that intervention and what level of evidence
we can reasonably require. Did administration officials have communications intercepts suggesting
plans for large-scale killings of civilians? How exactly did they reach their conclusion that
these reprisals were likely? It should be no more acceptable to simply accept government claims
on this score than it was for previous administrations.
As I've argued previously, the term "humanitarian crisis" is desperately imprecise and
the informed public's ability to distinguish between civil strife (which is always bloody)
and outright massacres and extermination campaigns is weak. Walt's certainty notwithstanding,
the debate about the humanitarian rationale in this case has not been settled. In fact, it's
barely begun."
"David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy won the authorisation to use "all necessary means" from
the UN security council in March on the basis that Gaddafi's forces were about to commit a
Srebrenica-style massacre in Benghazi. Naturally we can never know what would have happened without
Nato's intervention. But there is in fact no evidence – including from other rebel-held towns
Gaddafi re-captured – to suggest he had either the capability or even the intention to carry out
such an atrocity against an armed city of 700,000 .
What is now known, however, is that while the death toll in Libya when Nato intervened was
perhaps around 1,000-2,000 (judging by UN estimates), eight months later it is probably more than
ten times that figure. Estimates of the numbers of dead over the last eight months – as Nato leaders
vetoed ceasefires and negotiations – range from 10,000 up to 50,000. The National Transitional
Council puts the losses at 30,000 dead and 50,000 wounded.
Of those, uncounted thousands will be civilians, including those killed by Nato bombing
and Nato-backed forces on the ground. These figures dwarf the death tolls in this year's other
most bloody Arab uprisings, in Syria and Yemen. Nato has not protected civilians in Libya – it
has multiplied the number of their deaths, while losing not a single soldier of its own.
For the western powers, of course, the Libyan war has allowed them to regain ground lost
in Tunisia and Egypt, put themselves at the heart of the upheaval sweeping the most strategically
sensitive region in the world, and secure valuable new commercial advantages in an oil-rich state
whose previous leadership was at best unreliable. No wonder the new British defence secretary
is telling businessmen to "pack their bags" for Libya, and the US ambassador in Tripoli insists
American companies are needed on a "big scale".
But for Libyans, it has meant a loss of ownership of their own future and the effective
imposition of a western-picked administration of Gaddafi defectors and US and British intelligence
assets. Probably the greatest challenge to that takeover will now come from Islamist military
leaders on the ground, such as the Tripoli commander Abdel Hakim Belhaj – kidnapped by MI6 to
be tortured in Libya in 2004 – who have already made clear they will not be taking orders from
the NTC.
"Explanations of what one thought was happening in these countries were often misinterpreted
as justification for odious and discredited regimes. In Libya, where the uprising started on 15
February 2011, I wrote about how the opposition was wholly dependent on Nato military support
and would have been rapidly defeated by pro-Gaddafi forces without it. It followed from this that
the opposition would not have the strength to fill the inevitable political vacuum if Gaddafi
was to fall. I noted gloomily that Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies,
who were pressing for foreign intervention against Gaddafi, themselves held power by methods no
less repressive than the Libyan leader. It was his radicalism – muted though this was in his later
years – not his authoritarianism that made the kings and emirs hate him.
This was an unpopular stance to take on Libya during the high tide of the Arab Spring,
when foreign governments and media alike were uncritically lauding the opposition. The two sides
in what was a genuine civil war were portrayed as white hats and black hats; rebel claims about
government atrocities were credulously broadcast, though they frequently turned out to be concocted,
while government denials were contemptuously dismissed. Human rights organisations such as Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch were much more thorough than the media in checking these
stories, although their detailed reports appeared long after the news agenda had moved on."
And then in another note, why do people like you condemn the Taliban but give a free pass to the
Saudi's who have a lot to do with the state of fundamentalism in Afghanistan, and essentially
operate the same as the Taliban? Why are we not intervening in Saudi Arabia to free the people?
Nah. Do people die from either side in Afghanistan? Yes. Excusively the Taliban? no. The western
press prefers the narrative of Taliban extremism. The western press ignores and fails to report
killings by US troops, one incident I know of personally in Kabul. Never reported in the press.
So I suggest you educate yourself on the complexities of Afghanistan before you sound off with
smugness. It is obvious you have no idea of what really goes on there.
Have you ever visited Saudi Arabia? Want a litany of the horrors there? No, you don't. You
have a narrative which I suspect is ill informed.
the Taliban were winning against the Northern Alliance for various reasons, one was that
a lot of people supported them. We turned a blind eye to the destabilising effects of Saudi and
Pakistan support of the Taliban as well. We set this up for failure a long time ago. Riding in
like the calvary and handing out billions to the Northern Alliance was not very helpful for stability.
"was if ending Taliban rule had made things better"
You try to simplify a very complex situation. In fact there was never absolute rule by the
Taliban. You seem to forget there was a civil war in the country before 9/11. There was the Taliban
and the Northern Alliance. There was Pakistan and the ISI ( Pakistan of course if often supported
by the US, then we had Saudi Arabia, again supported by us). Before 9/11 The northern alliance
was about to be defeated. On both sides was indiscriminate killings. You also had a complex mix
if Pashtun Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras. You had multiple political alliances which I will not bother
to list. Kabul was destroyed by the fighting. Atrocities on both sides.
You had Dostum with the Northern Alliance and Massod as well. Massod was reasonable, Dostum
was an animal worse than the Taliban.
What people related to me was this: The Taliban were more predictable. Dostum was not predictable.
Both were bad, but as Clinton fans love to highlight, the lessor of two evils must be selected.
The Taliban also represented the Pashtun who were the largest ethnic bloc in Afghanistan. So in
essence the people mostly supported the Taliban. The Northern Alliance had the support of Russia,
and you might recall the Afghans did not have fond memories of them.
So, you want to simplify the Taliban atrocities and ignore the rest. Afghans did not have the
luxury of this. They had to choose the lesser evil. Had Massood not been entangled with Dostum,
perhaps things would have been different.
We came in and supported the Northern Alliance, which did NOT sit well with a lot of people.
The majority? I don't have statistics exactly pointing this out. The Pashtun felt pushed out of
affairs by the minority remnants of the Northern Alliance. Every ..... and I mean every government
office had photos of Massood on the wall. Not Karzai. Karzai was seen as irrelevant by all sides,
he was seen as the American imposed choice. ( I will not even discuss the "election" but I was
on the ground dealing with Identity cards before the UN arrived, had meetings with the UN team
about approaches to getting ID cards out to all voters, and there is a stink over aspects of the
participation in the elections).
"And seeing a self-described leftist explaining that life under the Taliban wasn't all that
bad if you just grew a beard [!] and fell in line is really sort of pathetic."
Your smug simplistic statement indicates you have no idea of the horrors enacted on both sides.
I was told this time and time again as how people decided to survive by picking a side where there
were rules and they could survive the rules.
But lets put aside my anecdotal evidence and look at the people of Afghanistan:
"Looking at Afghans' views on reconciling with the Taliban does not appear to bear out the
concerns over ethnic divisions shared by Jones and Kilcullen. When asked whether the Afghan central
government should negotiate a settlement with the Taliban or continue fighting the Taliban and
not negotiate, a recent national survey of Afghanistan found that roughly three- quarters (74%)
of Afghans favor negotiating with the Taliban .74 This is in line with previous studies, such
as a series of polls sponsored by ABC News which found that the number of Afghans favoring reconciliation
had risen from 60% in 2007 to 73% in 2009."
""Do you think the government in Kabul should negotiate a settlement with Afghan Taliban
in which they are allowed to hold political offices if they stop fighting, or do you think the
government in Kabul should continue to fight the Taliban and not negotiate a settlement?""
77% of men and 70% of women agree with this.
Here is the ultimate point. We intervened and we had no fucking idea what we were doing. The
Afghans saw the money flowing to Beltway Bandits rather than flowing to real aid and needs. They
saw this! They were not stupid. They saw that the Pashtuns were pushed out of Government, ( hence
the Massod images in ALL government offices [My project of reform dealt with EVERY government
offices and I visited a fair few personally and finally had to ask abut why each office had Masood
an not Karzai)
My opinion? I see indications that the Taliban would have handed over Bin Laden. We refused.
Is this disputed? Yes. Were we right to favour the Northern Alliance? No. They were as bad as
the Taliban, but more ..... unpredictable.
Given our support of Saudi and knowing their interventions, as well as Pakistan, we were
stupid to intervene.
"... Trumpsters are against the billionaires in their own way. Bernie Bros are against billionaires in a different manner. Neo liberals are not disposed to engage the billionaires. Crubio are all for the billionaires. While neo libs and Crubio are peas in a pod for international violence for the billionaires' neocon themes. ..."
"... Krugman : "Let's dispel with this fiction that the Trump phenomenon represents some kind of unpredictable intrusion into the normal course of Republican politics." I must have missed Krugman's forecast of the rise of this phenomenon. I'm sure he would have cited a prior column if it existed. What is happening on the US right and left is the same thing happening on the European right and left. The dominant status quo political parties have utterly failed large swathes of the electorate for a long period of time. I think the person who did get this early on was Bill McBride. ..."
"... There is less and less reason to read Krugman columns. Economically, he rarely discusses the policy issues most Americans now want to talk about, and when he does, the discussion is flippant, derivative and superficial. ..."
"... Yesterday's propaganda with little innovation and seldom anything that would be accepted by an academic publication. Does he write that trash? A ghost writer? For his rubber stamp? What he gets paid for the stamp? What did he pay for the Nobel Prize? Starting to make people wonder ..."
"... "The establishment composed of journos, BS-Vending talking heads with well-formulated verbs, bureaucrato-cronies, lobbyists-in training, New Yorker-reading semi-intellectuals, image-conscious empty suits, Washington rent-seekers and other 'well thinking' members of the vocal elites are not getting the point about what is happening and the sterility of their arguments. People are not voting for Trump (or Sanders). People are just voting, finally, to destroy the establishment." ..."
...endless austerity and depression would eventually be rejected in a democracy
...the underlying assumption behind the establishment strategy was that voters could be fooled
again and again
...That rage was bound to spin out of the establishment's control sooner or later.
ilsm -> DrDick...
Trumpsters are against the billionaires in their own way. Bernie Bros are against billionaires
in a different manner. Neo liberals are not disposed to engage the billionaires. Crubio are all
for the billionaires. While neo libs and Crubio are peas in a pod for international violence for
the billionaires' neocon themes.
New Deal democrat -> pgl...
Krugman : "Let's dispel with this fiction that the Trump phenomenon represents some kind of
unpredictable intrusion into the normal course of Republican politics." I must have missed Krugman's
forecast of the rise of this phenomenon. I'm sure he would have cited a prior column if it existed.
What is happening on the US right and left is the same thing happening on the European right and
left. The dominant status quo political parties have utterly failed large swathes of the electorate
for a long period of time. I think the person who did get this early on was Bill McBride.
Dan Kervick -> pgl...
There is less and less reason to read Krugman columns. Economically, he rarely discusses the
policy issues most Americans now want to talk about, and when he does, the discussion is flippant,
derivative and superficial.
Politically, his analyses are no more insightful that those of any number of other routine
liberal commentators.
If the stuff that floats your boat is the inflation rate in Japan, or yet another try at the
idea that there is no socioeconomic problem that a little bit of additional demand management
won't solve, then go ahead - Krugman is still your guy. But from my point of view the world is
passing him by.
π day ->Dan Kervick...
Yesterday's propaganda with little innovation and seldom anything that would be accepted by
an academic publication. Does he write that trash? A ghost writer? For his rubber stamp? What
he gets paid for the stamp? What did he pay for the Nobel Prize? Starting to make people wonder
"Years ago we discussed how endless austerity and depression would eventually be rejected in
a democracy."
Did he specifically foresee Trump_vs_deep_state? No. Did he foresee that alternatives to the status quo
would gain traction? Absolutely.
BenIsNotYoda -> DrDick...
Those of us who have lived and run away from socialist democracies (because they do not work)
are afraid of Bernie. These are someone else's words that sum it up perfectly.
Socialism sounds great in speech soundbites and on Facebook, but please just keep it there.
In practice, it corrodes not only the economy but the human spirit itself, and the ambition and
achievement that made modern capitalism possible and brought billions out of poverty. Talking
about socialism is a huge luxury, a luxury made possible by successes of capitalism. The idea
that more government, regulation and more debt will lead to less risk and cure inequality is dangerous
and absurd. And Scandinavia is not a great example, because implementing some socialistic elements
AFTER becoming a wealthy capitalistic economy works as long as you dont choke off what got you
there in the first place.
Dan Kervick -> BenIsNotYoda...
Scandinavia's form of socialism has been in effect for almost a century. But the US is a classic
case for your recommendation. The US isn't Russia or China, trying to jump from an agrarian to
socialist economy. The US already knows how to do capitalism, which it has been doing double-time
and in spades forever, both in industrial and post-industrial forms. It's now time to mix some
sensible socialist elements into the extremist US capitalist formula. All of the market and free-enterprise
infrastructure exists here in the US to build a successful Nordic mixed economy socialism on the
foundation.
cawley -> BenIsNotYoda...
I'm just dying to see some examples of social democracies that people are fleeing ...
Dan Kervick -> cawley...
Well, I guess Anders Breivik doesn't like modern Norway all that much. For almost everyone else,
though, it's A-OK.
Dan Kervick -> BenIsNotYoda...
It's not an either/or thing. All modern developed economies have some combination of liberalized
institutions and socialized institutions. Does socialism work? For some things, definitely yes:
health care, education, retirement, for example. We could also do more to reduce gross income
inequalities by partially socializing income flows without getting rid of private property, private
enterprises and the incentive system.
BenIsNotYoda -> Dan Kervick...
Agreed. Single payor healthcare, public education etc should be done. But, if people have the
delusion that they can raise marginal tax rates much higher from here (40%+8% state + 8%FICA+3.5%Obamacare+7%sales
tax+%real estate = roughly 70%) and are not going to kill any incentive to work, they are wrong.
and no, people dont have ways to get around taxes unless you are private equity fund managers.
There. That IS the marginal tax rate right now. I said it. Have at it socialists.
> I'm just dying to see some examples of social democracies that people are fleeing ...
Be patient. You never know what the next few hundred years might bring.
Jesse :
"The establishment composed of journos, BS-Vending talking heads with well-formulated verbs,
bureaucrato-cronies, lobbyists-in training, New Yorker-reading semi-intellectuals, image-conscious
empty suits, Washington rent-seekers and other 'well thinking' members of the vocal elites
are not getting the point about what is happening and the sterility of their arguments. People
are not voting for Trump (or Sanders). People are just voting, finally, to destroy the establishment."
For the past eight months, Donald Trump's divisive, racially tinged Presidential campaign has
been tearing apart the Republican Party. Over the next eight months, if Trump wraps up the G.O.P.
nomination, it could well have a similar impact on the country at large.
The fracas at a University of Illinois at Chicago campus on Friday, in which hundreds of protesters
clashed with Trump supporters live on national television, shocked many people. But something
like this was inevitable once Trump took his rabble-rousing campaign from predominantly white
suburbs and exurbs to polyglot Northern cities, which are home to many of the people, including
Hispanics and Muslims, who serve as the objects of Trump's rhetoric, as well as to an energetic
left-wing protest movement.
The effort to shut down Trump's rally was prompted by anger that the New York billionaire would
seek to bring his campaign to the college, which has a very diverse student body. As Alex Seitz-Wald
detailed in a report for NBC News, a number of student organizations decided at a meeting last
Monday to organize a protest. "He's marginalized and dehumanized a lot of different groups, and
they all come together," Juan Rosas, one of the student organizers, told Seitz-Wald. After a student
posted a petition on MoveOn.org, outside groups and activists also got involved. "Everyone, get
your tickets to this. We're all going in!!!! #
Big business loves bribing the Clintons. They get great returns on investment. In the last forty
years the Clintons have received over three billion from big money interests. Cenk Uygur, host of
the The Young Turks, breaks it down. Tell us what you think in the comment section below.
"Over four decades of public life, Bill and Hillary Clinton have built an unrivaled global network
of donors while pioneering fundraising techniques that have transformed modern politics and paved
the way for them to potentially become the first husband and wife to win the White House.
The grand total raised for all of their political campaigns and their family's charitable foundation
reaches at least $3 billion, according to a Washington Post investigation.
Their fundraising haul, which began with $178,000 that Bill Clinton raised for his long-shot 1974
congressional bid, is on track to expand substantially with Hillary Clinton's 2016 White House run,
which has already drawn $110 million in support. "*
Here's some more confirmation of what a crook Clinton is!
"In 2010/2011 Saudi Arabia was trying to secure the one of largest arms deal ever between a US
company and a ME country. The deal was worth 29.4 BILLION dollars to Boeing and had to be approved
by the State Department – specifically Hillary Clinton.
Regional allies were sceptical; Robert Gates wrote in his book that Israel had to be bribed to
stop them from publicly attacking the deal. They worried the deal would destabilise the region. And
in fact the State Department had released two reports outlining just how atrocious SA was, with it's
endless human rights abuses, and endless subjugation of women Saudi Arabia donated at least 10m (some
sources say as much as 25M) to the Clinton Foundation.
Boeing donated at least 10M to the Clinton Foundation (CF). Boeing also paid Bill 250K for a single
speech.
And Hillary signed off on the deal.
When she did, she and her aides celebrated, and publicly admitted that the weapons deal was a
"top priority". Not helping women in SA, not defending human rights, but signing off on a deal worth
billions between two Foundation donors.
Hillary was confirmed in 2008, with the understanding that the CF would disclose ALL donors, to
avoid even the look of impropriety. In fact Hillary signed an Memorandum of Understanding – a written
promise to the President, that the donor list would be made public annually. Hillary broke that promise
and stopped reporting CF donors. the Foundation also concealed over 1100 foreign donors by siphoning
their money through a Canadian charity owned by yet another big donor.
Hillary's first big hire for her 2016 Presidential run was her Campaign Chairman, John Podesta.
John and his brother Tony own one of DC's biggest lobbying firms. Tony has bundled many hundreds
of thousands for Hillary and the DNC and (DSCC, etc). The Podesta groups, as the lobbying firm is
known, counts among it's clients both Boeing and Saudi Arabia.
Oh and hey, those weapons Clinton signed off on, they're now being used to commit war crimes in
Yemen. Two of the main groups benefiting from those Saudi military strikes in Yemen? ISIS and al
Qaeda."
Looks like neocons will attack Trump, fearing that he might expose their role in 9/11 and become
an obstacle for their interventionalist foreign policy
A civil war within Republican party officially stated. The party elite opens fight against the
choice of rank-and-file members. Marco Rubio and Kasich are no longer running for president. They are
running to keep Trump from being president.
Notable quotes:
Notable quotes:
"... And it mirrored the broader slog of a Republican primary, where for months Jeb Bush, Rubio, Cruz, Kasich, Chris Christie and the rest tore each other apart to prevent one another from emerging as the chief Trump alternative. All believed they could beat Trump one-on-one. None has gotten the chance. ..."
"... In failing to back a single Trump alternative, Romney essentially called for a Republican civil war to wage through this summer, a retrenchment for an irreparably divided GOP in hopes of outmaneuvering Trump at a contested convention where party elites still control some levers of power. ..."
"... Romney's speech was certainly historic. Perhaps never before has the most recent party nominee for president so thoroughly rebuked the prohibitive front-runner for the nomination four years later. But, as Romney said in his speech, "The rules of political history have pretty much all been shredded during this campaign." ..."
"... Romney did not stand alone. Moments after he finished speaking, Sen. John McCain, the 2008 Republican nominee, seconded Romney's speech. "I share the concerns about Donald Trump that my friend and former Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, described," McCain said in a statement. ..."
"... Trump went on the attack even before Romney took the stage in Salt Lake City, blasting Romney for having "begged" for his endorsement four years earlier. In February 2012, Romney traveled to one of Trump's hotels to accept the endorsement. "There are some things that you just can't imagine happening in your life," Romney said then. "This is one of them. Being in Donald Trump's magnificent hotel and having his endorsement is a delight." ..."
"... Romney said he expected the blowback: "This may tell you what you need to know about his temperament, his stability, and his suitability to be president." As the old guard of the Republican Party cheered Romney's outspoken remarks on Thursday, there remained downside in having so prominent a party leader rip apart Trump, should he still become the nominee. ..."
It was a stirring call to arms for a strategic-voting retreat.
And it mirrored the broader slog of a Republican primary, where for months Jeb Bush, Rubio,
Cruz, Kasich, Chris Christie and the rest tore each other apart to prevent one another from emerging
as the chief Trump alternative. All believed they could beat Trump one-on-one. None has gotten the
chance.
Along the way, Trump has skated. In one remarkable statistic, Trump suffered less in attack ads
through Super Tuesday than Romney's team hurled at Newt Gingrich in the final days in Florida alone
in 2012. The Republican Party's top financiers are mobilizing now, with millions in anti-Trump ads
expected in the next two weeks, but it may be too late to slow Trump after he has carried 10 of the
first 15 contests, many of them by wide margins.
In failing to back a single Trump alternative, Romney essentially called for a Republican
civil war to wage through this summer, a retrenchment for an irreparably divided GOP in hopes of
outmaneuvering Trump at a contested convention where party elites still control some levers of power.
(Also, by not picking a single anti-Trump standard-bearer, Romney, who briefly considered running
for president again in 2016, left slightly more open the door that might allow a contested convention
to select him.)
"He's playing the members of the American public for suckers," Romney said of Trump. "He gets
a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat."
Romney's speech was certainly historic. Perhaps never before has the most recent party nominee
for president so thoroughly rebuked the prohibitive front-runner for the nomination four years later.
But, as Romney said in his speech, "The rules of political history have pretty much all been shredded
during this campaign."
Romney ripped about Trump's business background, ticking off bankruptcies and abandoned efforts.
"What ever happened to Trump Airlines?" he said. "How about Trump University? And then there's Trump
Magazine and Trump Vodka and Trump Steaks, and Trump Mortgage?" "A business genius he is not," Romney
said. Of Trump's varied stances on issues, Romney added, "Dishonesty is Donald Trump's hallmark."
Romney did not stand alone. Moments after he finished speaking, Sen. John McCain, the 2008
Republican nominee, seconded Romney's speech. "I share the concerns about Donald Trump that my friend
and former Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, described," McCain said in a statement.
"Well said," tweeted Kasich.
Trump went on the attack even before Romney took the stage in Salt Lake City, blasting Romney
for having "begged" for his endorsement four years earlier. In February 2012, Romney traveled to
one of Trump's hotels to accept the endorsement. "There are some things that you just can't imagine
happening in your life," Romney said then. "This is one of them. Being in Donald Trump's magnificent
hotel and having his endorsement is a delight."
On Thursday, Trump hammered back on NBC's "Today" show: "Mitt Romney is a stiff."
Romney said he expected the blowback: "This may tell you what you need to know about his temperament,
his stability, and his suitability to be president." As the old guard of the Republican Party cheered
Romney's outspoken remarks on Thursday, there remained downside in having so prominent a party leader
rip apart Trump, should he still become the nominee.
Said Justin Barasky, a spokesman for the super PAC dedicated to electing Hillary Clinton, understatedly,
"Certainly, having a former Republican nominee go after him is not unhelpful."
"... Bryan Pagliano, the person who set up Clinton's private server and email apparatus, was just given immunity by the Justice Department. According to The Washington Post ..."
"... These 31,830 deleted emails, by the way, were deleted without government oversight. ..."
"... Only one person set up the server that circumvented U.S. government networks and this person is Bryan Pagliano. Not long ago, Pagliano pleaded the Fifth , so this new development speaks volumes. ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... I'm a Bernie supporter. And honestly, offering immunity to Pagliano is almost certainly just so they can close loose ends and begin to close their investigation. Most likely, Clinton or her aides will get called in for one last round and then the FBI will end their investigation. This says nothing to a possibility of her guilt in anything. ..."
"... Thats not an assumption-its a fact. SHE scrubbed the server when she knew the FBI had asked her for it-SHE erased over 31,000 emails, SHE has dozens of emails SHE sent and received that were SEP classification-the very highest level. THis is about corruption at the highest levels and now SHE will have to pay the piper. ..."
"... The real issue i have had for a couple of years are the middle eastern gov. Donors to the clinton foundation while she was sec. Of state... Yeah i am waiting for that to come to light. That the huge REAL as opposed to emails ..."
"... Granting "use immunity" to this witness probably means that they have little to no evidence a crime was committed, and that they need his testimony to advance the investigation. If they had evidence, they would prosecute (or threaten to prosecute), convict him, and then use him to testify about his higher-ups in exchange for leniency. Use immunity means they don't have the goods even on this small fish. ..."
"... It is not a tempest in a teapot. Only a federal judge can grant immunity, and this means they are seating a grand jury, prosecutors, whole nine yards. ..."
"... With Donald Trump revving up his attacks against Clinton, as he is proving to be the Republican nominee, you know that he's not going to let this go. Bernie Sanders may be running a campaign that doesn't get caught up on issues outside of policy, but this is exactly the kind of thing that Donald Trump will obsess about. It's like when he went after Obama's birth certificate. If he makes this a primary issue of his campaign, Hillary will be deemed guilty before anybody has a chance to say otherwise. ..."
"... Clinton wanted to avoid the Wikileaks-revealed searches into her hopefully private exchanges. ..."
Bernie Sanders's path to the presidency was never going to be easy. After surging in the polls and
consistently proving America's political establishment wrong, Sanders won Colorado and other states
on Super Tuesday. He still has a path to win the Democratic nomination via the primaries, but Bernie
Sanders just won the presidency for another reason: Hillary Clinton's quest for
"convenience."
Bryan Pagliano, the person who set up Clinton's private server and email apparatus, was just
given immunity by the Justice Department. According to
The Washington Post, "The Clintons paid Pagliano $5,000 for 'computer services' prior to
his joining the State Department, according to a financial disclosure form he filed in April 2009."
First, this can't be a right-wing conspiracy because it's President Obama's Justice Department
granting immunity to one of Hillary Clinton's closest associates. Second, immunity from what? The
Justice Department won't grant immunity to anyone unless there's potential criminal activity involved
with an FBI investigation. Third, and most importantly for Bernie Sanders, there's only one Democrat
in 2016 not linked to the FBI, Justice Department, or
31,830 deleted emails.
These 31,830 deleted emails, by the way, were deleted without government oversight.
Only one person set up the server that circumvented U.S. government networks and this person
is Bryan Pagliano. Not long ago, Pagliano
pleaded the Fifth, so this new development speaks volumes. His immunity, at this point in
Clinton's campaign, spells trouble and could lead to an announcement in
early May from the FBI about whether or not Clinton or her associates committed a crime. As stated
in
The New York Times, "Then the Justice Department will decide whether to file criminal charges
and, if so, against whom."
... ... ...
In addition to
born classified emails (emails that were classified from the start of their existence, undermining
the claim that certain emails weren't classified when Clinton stored them on her server), as well
as
Top Secret intelligence on an unguarded server stored in her basement, Hillary Clinton has never
explained the political utility of owning a private server.
Why did Hillary need to own a private server?
Aside from her excuse pertaining to convenience, why did Clinton need to circumvent U.S. government
networks?
... ... ...
There are most likely a number of reasons Clinton needed the server and Pagliano's immunity helps
the FBI immeasurable in deciphering whether or not criminal intent or behavior is a part of their
recommendation to the Justice Department. Pagliano's immunity is explained in a
Washington Post piece titled Justice Dept. grants immunity to staffer who set up Clinton
email server:
The Justice Department has granted immunity to a former State Department staffer, who worked
on Hillary Clinton's private email server, as part of a criminal investigation
into the possible mishandling of classified information, according to a senior law enforcement
official.
The official said the FBI had secured the cooperation of Bryan Pagliano, who worked on Clinton's
2008 presidential campaign before setting up the server in her New York home in 2009.
As the FBI looks to wrap up its investigation in the coming months, agents are likely
to want to interview Clinton and her senior aides about the decision to use a private server,
how it was set up, and whether any of the participants knew they were sending classified information
in emails, current and former officials said.
... Spokesmen at the FBI and Justice Department would not discuss the investigation. Pagliano's
attorney, Mark J. MacDougall, also declined to comment.
"There was wrongdoing," said a former senior law enforcement official. "But was it
criminal wrongdoing?"
... ... ...
As for the issue of criminality, Detroit's
Click on Detroit Local 4 News explains the severity of this saga in a piece titled DOJ grants
immunity to ex-Clinton staffer who set up email server:
Bryan Pagliano, a former Clinton staffer who helped set up her private email server, has accepted
an immunity offer from the FBI and the Justice Department to provide an interview to investigators,
a U.S. law enforcement official told CNN Wednesday.
With the completion of the email review, FBI investigators are expected to shift their
focus on whether the highly sensitive government information, including top secret and other classified
matters, found on Clinton's private email server constitutes a crime.
.... Huma Abedin is also part of this email investigation, as
stated in a CNN article titled Clinton emails: What have we learned?:
The State Department is furthermore being sued for the emails of top aides, and for the tens
of thousands of emails Clinton deemed personal and didn't turn over for review.
At a hearing last week in one such lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said
he's considering asking the State Department to subpoena Clinton, and aide Huma Abedin, in an
effort to learn more about those emails...
Clinton and her aides insist none of the emails she sent or received were marked as classified
at the time they were sent, but more than 2,101 have been retroactively classified during the
State Department-led pre-release review process.
Whether or not the intelligence was classified at the time is irrelevant; there's already proof
of
born classified intelligence on Clinton's server. Former Obama official Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn
believes Hillary Clinton should
"drop out" of the race because of the FBI investigation.
... ... ....
Tim Black
Thank You HA Goodman! As a former Managerof Executive IT Services for an Obama Cabinet member
I can say with total certainty this dangerous handling of government correspondence Hillary Clinton
not only broke security protocols, she ripped them in half, stepped on them and did the 'Dab'.
Based on the information provided no one's framing, stalking, shalacking or setting up the Clintons.
This is the Clintons sabotaging The Clintons. I don't want to hear the cop outs "They're attacking
me!". No Madame Secretary. You're attacking yourself. No Republicans necessary!
Tab Pierce · Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
AMEN TIM!!! I to worked for the government for 5 years as an email administrator. There is
no way that she was not briefed and well versed in the protocols surrounding emails. If it had
been me the FBI would have kicked down my door day one and I would be in jail. She should be held
accountable to an even higher standard than you and I. She was the Secrtary of State for gods
sake. Igorance is no excusse and on top of that is a lie.
Malcolm Smith · Translator at Self-Employed
O lord, they used an MS Exchange server that was naked on the internet to boot. Microsoft's
pervasive OS presence in Government is all by itself a national security risk.
Scott Laytart · Los Angeles, California
I'm a Bernie supporter. And honestly, offering immunity to Pagliano is almost certainly just
so they can close loose ends and begin to close their investigation. Most likely, Clinton or her
aides will get called in for one last round and then the FBI will end their investigation. This
says nothing to a possibility of her guilt in anything.
This is not positive or negative for Clinton, other than the investigation part of this may
be over (probably) before June. If charges are filed, that's most likely when it would happen.
Or they may not... no one knows but the FBI/DoJ.
No one should take anything H.A. Goodman writes seriously.
Hillary has been asking for him to testify all along. What does immunity represent? Does it mean
that either Pagliano (or Clinton) are accused of offenses? Quite the opposite. If the DOJ thought
they had a case against Pagliano, they would not grant him immunity. In any event, for all the
shrill attention that it will get, immunity for Bryan Pagliano will help move the Hillary Clinton
email inquiry toward an end – and be one less thing for her to worry about.
Thats not an assumption-its
a fact. SHE scrubbed the server when she knew the FBI had asked her for it-SHE erased over 31,000
emails, SHE has dozens of emails SHE sent and received that were SEP classification-the very highest
level. THis is about corruption at the highest levels and now SHE will have to pay the piper.
The real issue i have had for a couple of years are the middle eastern gov. Donors to the clinton
foundation while she was sec. Of state... Yeah i am waiting for that to come to light. That the
huge REAL as opposed to emails
Granting "use immunity" to this witness probably means that they have little to no evidence a
crime was committed, and that they need his testimony to advance the investigation. If they had
evidence, they would prosecute (or threaten to prosecute), convict him, and then use him to testify
about his higher-ups in exchange for leniency. Use immunity means they don't have the goods even
on this small fish.
This is an important aspect of the campaign at this point. With Donald Trump revving up his
attacks against Clinton, as he is proving to be the Republican nominee, you know that he's not
going to let this go. Bernie Sanders may be running a campaign that doesn't get caught up on issues
outside of policy, but this is exactly the kind of thing that Donald Trump will obsess about.
It's like when he went after Obama's birth certificate. If he makes this a primary issue of his
campaign, Hillary will be deemed guilty before anybody has a chance to say otherwise.
Clinton wanted to avoid the Wikileaks-revealed searches into her hopefully private exchanges.
My God, if Merkel was being hacked, surely everyone else of note was also, both foreign and domestic.
My question is, to whom were these questionably high intensity emails sent? Don't the recipients
have a say in this? Everyone knows they're being watched.
There are no exceptions I would think, least of all those searches useful for later political
assassination. But those on the other end of these questionable emails must have some interest
here, as they are involved.
"... I wonder if voters will be beguiled by Clinton's steely public persona-or if they'll look at the broken life of the victim, whom the attack left infertile for life? Will they remember that defense lawyer Hillary Clinton smeared the 12-year-old victim as a delusional seducer? ..."
"... I fear that this story will go away. That Hillary will dodge this bullet as her husband dodged a credible charge that he actually, personally, raped a woman with his very own penis. ..."
"... We still think that our country is a beautiful exception to the cruel calculus of politics, and expect that our leaders will be more than schemers skilled at clawing their way to power. Perhaps it's a lingering ghost of our Puritan forefathers who meant to found a "city on a hill," ..."
"... We see an immaculately groomed, elite-educated person like Hillary Clinton who repeats all the pious phrases of humanitarian liberalism, and we cannot wrap our heads around the idea that she might be an icy, conscienceless sociopath. ..."
"... But the best-selling expert on sociopaths, Dr. Martha Stout of Harvard, reminds us that some four Americans out of a 100 are in fact clinical sociopaths-people who simply do not experience empathy with their fellow human beings, who do not experience guilt. ..."
"... Sociopaths experience horror stories-such as the story of a 12-year-old girl being brutally raped-the way you and I experience crossword puzzles. And one might very well chuckle and brag over how quickly one finished a crossword puzzle. ..."
"... I have known a few such sociopaths in my life, and like most normal people I simply could not accept the evidence of my senses. Faced with their ruthless actions and habitual lies, I fell back on denial. I made excuses for their cruelties and believed their jaw-dropping lies. ..."
John Zmirak received his B.A. from Yale University in 1986, then his M.F.A. in screenwriting and
fiction and his Ph.D. in English in 1996 from Louisiana State University. John Zmirak is author,
most recently, of the upcoming book The Race to Save Our Century (with Jason Jones). His columns
are archived at www.badcatholics.com.
Will the scandal over Hillary Clinton's cynical, take-no-prisoners
defense of a child rapist damage her chances at winning the White House?
Can we choke down the fact that she
willingly took on that
rape case, then lied about it in print-as revealed by recently unearthed
audio tapes? (Clinton wrote that she was assigned the case against her will; the tapes reveal
that she took on the case as a personal favor, representing a rapist who seems to have calculated
that a female attorney would help his chances.)
Will women vote for a woman who used technicalities to get a brutal rapist less than a year in
jail, then chuckled about the case to another lawyer? A lawyer who bragged how cleverly she had helped
her client cheat justice?
I wonder if voters will be beguiled by Clinton's steely public persona-or if they'll look
at the broken life of the victim, whom the attack left infertile for life? Will they remember that
defense lawyer Hillary Clinton smeared the 12-year-old victim as a delusional seducer? Will
Hillary's campaign be dogged by women who have suffered the trauma of rape, picketing her speeches
with signs that say, "Hillary Blames Victims"?
I fear that this story will go away. That Hillary will dodge this bullet as her husband dodged
a credible charge that he actually, personally, raped
a woman with his very
own penis.
And I wonder how on God's earth that can happen-how any woman, or any man with a wife, daughter,
or sister, can look at Hillary Clinton now without throwing up in his mouth. Are Americans morally
deaf, dumb, and blind?
No. I think that I've figured it out. It's not just that liberals will read the story and assume
it's a baseless slander-not when the Daily Beast and ABC News are echoing the claims that appear
on Fox. Not when you can read
what the rape victim thinks of Hillary:
"I would say [to Clinton], 'You took a case of mine in '75, you lied on me I realize the truth
now, the heart of what you've done to me. And you are supposed to be for women? You call that
[being] for women, what you done to me? And I hear you on tape laughing."
Americans are not jaded cynics who expect their politicians to be moral monsters, on a par with
stone-faced killers like
Vladimir Putin. (Charles de Gaulle famously agreed with Nietzsche that "the State is a cold monster.")
Americans are not so blasé about political evil-which is why we drove Richard Nixon out of power
after Watergate, to the puzzlement of foreigners worldwide who took Nixonian "dirty tricks" for granted.
We still think that our country is a
beautiful exception to the cruel calculus of politics, and expect that our leaders will be more
than schemers skilled at clawing their way to power. Perhaps it's a lingering ghost of our Puritan
forefathers who meant to found a "city on a hill," or the faded echo of the Founding Fathers
who warned
that without virtuous citizens and upright leaders, our Republic would degenerate into just another
squalid tyranny, like today's Venezuela.
But we expect better.
So when we are faced with evil, we are confused. We cannot quite believe it.
We see an immaculately groomed, elite-educated person like Hillary Clinton who repeats all
the pious phrases of humanitarian liberalism, and we cannot wrap our heads around the idea that she
might be an icy, conscienceless sociopath. When we visualize a sociopath, we think of a leering
loner who dresses up as a
clown and murders children, or a
late-term abortionist who collects
fetal feet as trophies.
But the best-selling expert on sociopaths, Dr. Martha Stout of Harvard, reminds us that some
four Americans out of a 100 are
in fact clinical sociopaths-people who simply do not experience empathy with their fellow human beings,
who do not experience guilt.
Brain scans of sociopaths have shown that when they are presented with photos that in normal humans
provoke strong emotions, such as pictures of dead children or animals being tortured, the emotional
centers in sociopaths' brains remain coolly inactive. Instead, what lights up is the part of their
brains that in normal people gets active when they play chess. Sociopaths experience horror stories-such
as the story of a 12-year-old girl being brutally raped-the way you and I experience crossword puzzles.
And one might very well chuckle and brag over how quickly one finished a crossword puzzle.
I have known
a few such sociopaths in my life, and like most normal people I simply could not accept the evidence
of my senses. Faced with their ruthless actions and habitual lies, I fell back on denial. I made
excuses for their cruelties and believed their jaw-dropping lies.
That seemed like the "Christian" thing to do. Of course it wasn't. It was just a lie I told myself,
but choking it down was easier than facing the stark, appalling fact: That I had befriended a moral
monster.
My question for Americans is: Will we go ahead and elect one?
John Zmirak is author, most recently, of the upcoming book "The
Race to Save Our Century" (with Jason Jones). His columns are archived at www.badcatholics.com.
"... Equality in America has been falling since 1980's, real terms median income falling since 1999. Black or white, America was a more equal more livable place 20-30 years ago. ..."
"... You should speak for yourself. Look at the economic data for American GDP, Inequality and real terms household income. The economy used to work better for the average American. Rising income trends have been reversed by globalisation and automation, not by increasing diversity. Why should American voters trust mainstream candidates who simply repeat the same failed messages they have stuck to for the last generation? ..."
"... median household incomes in America peaked (in real terms) around 1999 and inequality has been rising since 1980. The drivers of this are automation and globalisation, not increasing diversity. ..."
"... Yeah, my family has white privilege- write a play about this. My great-great grandfather served two enlistments in the northern army of the Civil war to free the slaves. Lucky for him, he survived and I got to be born 90 years later. Many of his friends died and their entire future family line got cut off. I dare say that tens of millions of white Americans never got to be born, because their kin fought and died in the Civil war to free the slaves. I don't think blacks today appreciate the blood sacrifice that was made by northern whites to free them. ..."
"... The Southern Baptist church attended by millions of African-Americans, with its traditional, creationist, homophobic platform, is far more representative of African-American culture than is the select group of playwrights listed in the article. ..."
It took how many years to come up with the appalling misconception that blue collar steel workers
benefited from any type of "supremacy" unless you believe that having a job that pays enough to
put a roof over your family's heads and food on the table should be beyond the reach of all but
a selected few....Blue collar workers have only ever aspired to keeping their kids in school as
long as possible and neither they nor their kids ever had any designs on a college education.
Word hard, pay the bills, retire, and die within five years. I don't know in what world that translates
to white privelege or advantage, especially when they worked with African Americans and Latinos.
Now politicians promise every child a college education. If you can't understand the difference
between this generation that has been told the world is their oyster and the ones who worked in
the Steel mills for generations and knew what their kids could look forward, knew that college
was beyond the modest aspirations of their kids and their grandkids you didn't ask the right questions
or the right people and the result is an ideologically driven mess of race baiting, sexist claptrap.
Get used to being called on your bullsh*t. We all need to check our privilege when we write about
race. Talk about entitlement.
The tough part for me is constantly hearing about what the President did or didn't do. The US
government is structured specifically to limit the actions of the executive branch. The conditions
of the economic disaster were exacerbated by the unparalleled obstructionism of the opposition
party and the lack of support from the president's own party. If Democrats had been willing to
oppose a sitting president back in '03 we might have avoided a bankrupting war that still has
not ended.
Not really. Equality in America has been falling since 1980's, real terms median income falling
since 1999. Black or white, America was a more equal more livable place 20-30 years ago.
For sure it was better to be white then black but since you can never really measure the extent
of white privilege on your own life, how can you have nostalgia for it?
The writer claims that current political events are being shaped by a chimaera she can provide
no evidence for and ignoring the very real changes that could be driving the political shifts
toward more radical candidates.
You should speak for yourself. Look at the economic data for American GDP, Inequality and
real terms household income. The economy used to work better for the average American. Rising
income trends have been reversed by globalisation and automation, not by increasing diversity.
Why should American voters trust mainstream candidates who simply repeat the same failed messages
they have stuck to for the last generation?
Trump is insane, of course, but voting for Hillary or Cruz is equally insane for most of middle
America. They would effectively be voting to see their incomes go down and to fall further behind
the wealthiest. Why is that a good decision?
For sure there is nostalgia: nostalgia for the time when middle class incomes were enough to provide
a decent lifestyle, were expected to rise and provide enough to pay for your kids to get a decent
education. The writer then frames this as nostalgia for white privilege, but I have to question
that. Surely the expectation was that as discrimination was rolled back, ethnic minorities would
start to come up and equalise their incomes with the white population. After all, that is what
every mainstream politician promised would happen. But median household incomes in America
peaked (in real terms) around 1999 and inequality has been rising since 1980. The drivers of this
are automation and globalisation, not increasing diversity.
And *every* US president and political party has dissembled on this point. Every time, the
promise is the same - we can get back to the rising incomes and increasing equality of the last
century. And every time, nothing of the sort is delivered.
So if there is nostalgia, it not only has a very real basis in fact, but is a nostalgia for
a time when economic gains were distributed more equally, not a nostalgia for a time when white
privilege (whatever that means) was a greater force.
Sanders and Trump both represent a break from politicians and messages that have palpably failed
to deliver. The voters put up with being lied to for some time but their patience has run out.
Of course Trump can be portrayed as an out and out racist, so its easy to say - well his support
is based on race politics. I have no doubt that many do support him for that reason. But the wider
picture is this:
The American voters feel they have been lied to by established politicians and are now looking
for alternatives. If they have nostalgia for times past, that is founded not on a dream of white
supremacy, but founded on a recollection of times when the economy did work better for the majority.
Yeah, my family has white privilege- write a play about this. My great-great grandfather served
two enlistments in the northern army of the Civil war to free the slaves. Lucky for him, he survived
and I got to be born 90 years later. Many of his friends died and their entire future family line
got cut off. I dare say that tens of millions of white Americans never got to be born, because
their kin fought and died in the Civil war to free the slaves. I don't think blacks today appreciate
the blood sacrifice that was made by northern whites to free them.
They now realize their automatic entitlement to being consequential is gone
What the hell are you talking about? My father didn't have any damn " entitlement to
being consequential". He worked his heart out for it, day in and out, and I was proud to do it
alongside him.
Maybe instead of just applying a racist take on perspective, why not think about what you write
first? And why is it that every time - every. single. time - this topic comes up that someone
widens the gap of guilt to the entirety of white people generally? Where's the border for you?
Canada? The UK? Latvia? What is enough of a geographic guilt complex for your needs? Let us know.
The Southern Baptist church attended by millions of African-Americans, with its traditional,
creationist, homophobic platform, is far more representative of African-American culture than
is the select group of playwrights listed in the article.
the fact that the more academically qualified white female has less chance of getting a place
in harvard than a wealthy African-American, is hardly the fault of African Americans or any form
of reverse racism, it s the fault of first Harvard being a private university that caters to economic
elites, the lack of funding in education and that education is handled at the local level, so
funding and quality depend greatly on the education level of the local community and how wealthy
they are. This perpetuates inequalities. Still, if you put this hypothetical white female from
Harlan County in nice clothes and send her to a fancy mall, together with an equally well dressed
young black woman, who do you think security will follow?
There are also studies where equal CV were sent to potential employers, with the only difference
being white, latino, asian or African American sounding names, and the white sounding names were
picked more often, everything else being equal.
It is time that you realize that racism is a real thing and no, working class whites 't doing
poorly because of minorities, they are doing poorly (together with minorities) because of the
economic system. Unless of course, you think that whites should do better, because, well, they
are whites. The later is what I think the nostalgia is all about, 50 years ago white would have
had an edge over minorities that today no longer have in most places.
This woman is so so wise and enlightened that that her extreme intellect has crossed the line
on insanity. Liberals like her will do their best to herd the rest of us into believing that only
white working class men are attracted to people like trump and it's only because they are racists.
No no lady bone head.
First of all, you and your elitists, pompous and supposed educated comrades need to stop using
the race card overtime you find someone you disagree with. Secondly, Trump has attracted the attention
on a multitude of people across all facets of our society and it's not because we are racists,
it't because he at least vocalizes, inspire of all of your absurd PC proclamations, facts that
the majority of us Americans know and see each day.
By the way, I am an American with brown skin who's ancestry is African and I appreciate most
of what Trump espouses. So please stop trying to make the rest of us fear and hate white working
class men just because you've fantasized about their hatred toward you. You and your kind (elitists
liberals) will no longer lead me down the path of destruction.
Exactly, all the places that hit rock bottom during the crack epidemic are on their way up now
just in time to start attracting people back from the suburban and peri-urban sprawl with its
body and soul weakening car dependent isolation.
Cities like New York and DC are way ahead of surrounding areas in providing public services
and creating sustainable buildings plus car-less ways of getting around.
While we would be the first
to admit that Jeffrey Sachs was the godfather of "shock therapy" (aka "the economic rape of Russia"
and several other xUSSR republics), he is right as for the ongoing Syria bloodbath which has come to
define the geopolitical situation for the past 3 years. And how this is an event that would "surely
rival Watergate in shaking the foundations of the US establishment" if the truth were fully known, we
agree 100 percent.
Notable quotes:
"... Clinton bears heavy responsibility for that carnage, which has by now displaced more than 10 million Syrians and left more than 250,000 dead. ..."
"... As every knowledgeable observer understands, the Syrian War is not mostly about Bashar al-Assad, or even about Syria itself. It is mostly a proxy war, about Iran. And the bloodbath is doubly tragic and misguided for that reason. ..."
"... Saudi Arabia and Turkey, the leading Sunni powers in the Middle East, view Iran, the leading Shia power, as a regional rival for power and influence. Right-wing Israelis view Iran as an implacable foe that controls Hezbollah, a Shi'a militant group operating in Lebanon, a border state of Israel. Thus, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Israel have all clamored to remove Iran's influence in Syria. ..."
"... And Israeli right-wingers are naïve, and deeply ignorant of history, to regard Iran as their implacable foe, especially when that mistaken view pushes Israel to side with Sunni jihadists. ..."
"... Yet Clinton did not pursue that route. Instead she joined Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and right-wing Israelis to try to isolate, even defeat, Iran. In 2010, she supported secret negotiations between Israel and Syria to attempt to wrest Syria from Iran's influence. Those talks failed. Then the CIA and Clinton pressed successfully for Plan B: to overthrow Assad. ..."
"... When the unrest of the Arab Spring broke out in early 2011, the CIA and the anti-Iran front of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey saw an opportunity to topple Assad quickly and thereby to gain a geopolitical victory. Clinton became the leading proponent of the CIA-led effort at Syrian regime change. ..."
"... Clinton has been much more than a bit player in the Syrian crisis. Her diplomat Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Benghazi was killed as he was running a CIA operation to ship Libyan heavy weapons to Syria. Clinton herself took the lead role in organizing the so-called "Friends of Syria" to back the CIA-led insurgency. ..."
"... This instrument of U.S. foreign policy has not only been in stark violation of international law but has also been a massive and repeated failure. Rather than a single, quick, and decisive coup d'état resolving a US foreign policy problem, each CIA-led regime change has been, almost inevitably, a prelude to a bloodbath. How could it be otherwise? Other societies don't like their countries to be manipulated by U.S. covert operations. ..."
"... And where is the establishment media in this debacle? The New York Times finally covered a bit of this story last month in describing the CIA-Saudi connection , in which Saudi funds are used to pay for CIA operations in order to make an end-run around Congress and the American people. The story ran once and was dropped. Yet the Saudi funding of CIA operations is the same basic tactic used by Ronald Reagan and Oliver North in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s (with Iranian arms sales used to fund CIA-led covert operations in Central America without consent or oversight by the American people). ..."
"... Clinton herself has never shown the least reservation or scruples in deploying this instrument of U.S. foreign policy. Her record of avid support for US-led regime change includes (but is not limited to) the US bombing of Belgrade in 1999, the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the Iraq War in 2003, the Honduran coup in 2009, the killing of Libya's Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, and the CIA-coordinated insurrection against Assad from 2011 until today. ..."
"... Many historians believe that JFK was assassinated as a result of his peace overtures to the Soviet Union, overture he made against the objections of hardline rightwing opposition in the CIA and other parts of the U.S. government. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton has never shown an iota of bravery, or even of comprehension, in facing down the CIA She has been the CIA's relentless supporter, and has exulted in showing her toughness by supporting every one of its misguided operations. The failures, of course, are relentlessly hidden from view. Clinton is a danger to global peace. She has much to answer for regarding the disaster in Syria. ..."
"... She is totally unqualified, a disaster of a secretary of state, has incredibly poor judgement is a terrible candidate and should never be allowed to serve in any government capacity - EVER. ..."
"... Well said. Hillary is a warmonger neocon just like Bush/McCain/Graham/Cheney. Trump and Bernie are not. ..."
"... Pundits do not realize when they heap praises at Hillary Clinton's debate performances that ordinary people watching cannot get past her lack of trustworthiness and her dishonesty; and that whatever she says is viewed in that context and is therefore worthless. ..."
"... It's dismaying that the blowback from the 1953 CIA-assisted overthrow of Mossadegh is still behind the instability of the Middle East, and that we have continued to commit the same mistakes over and over. Can't we just get rid of this agency? ..."
"... The CIA repeated this stunt in Vietnam 10 years after the Mossadegh mess and have been doing it at least once every decade since then. In every case, it has been a failure. How supporting that nonsense is seen as foreign policy experience, I'll never know. ..."
"... Hillary helped facilitate the arming of terrorists in Syria in 2010 and 2011. She as far as I al concerned, Hillary supported the deaths of Syrians and terrorism. So why on earth would I want her to be president? Hello? ..."
"... More like a continuance of a disaster deferred. Thanks to John Kerry cleaning up the mess of her disastrous term as SoS. Syria is still a mess, but he has been working his butt off to be every bit of diplomat that Hillary was not. ..."
"... she was for an all out invasion by the USA into Syria to remove Assad. She, John McCain, and Linsey Graham had to settle for just arming the Al Queda and IS for the time being. ..."
"... Clinton, Obama, Bush, etc DC corruption used to bring down regimes that have continually destabilized America & the world. ..."
"... Where & Why was Obama & Holder not as directly held accountable in this discussion. Trump rightfully points that Americans have died for nothing yet the villains who are the catalysts of these atrocities still have jobs & stature in US. America needs to be rebooted once again & bring in leadership not buoyed by greed. power & indifference of those before him. ..."
"... The problem here really is the fact that Americans bitch and don't vote every election and this has let money just walk in and buy more influence, you want a real revolution, ..."
"... That is about it, Clinton is a repub in dem clothing and the US is the biggest threat to world peace when it can not get its way in another countries politics or to get them to follow the US master plan that mainly supports the US's goal. ..."
"... what makes her so maddeningly hawkish? what credentials she has that her peace-loving supporters believe that she can lead the US/world for peace? wake-up, and let's get united behind bernie. ..."
"... They believe the mythology that if women ruled the world it would be a better place...I beg to differ....Margaret Thatcher, Catherine the Great, Elizabeth I were not exactly peace lovers... ..."
"... years ago I was shocked to see that there were women members of the KKK. So much for women by their gender alone saving the world. ..."
"... But let us not forget Hillary Clinton's "regime change" record in Ukraine with Victoria "Fuc# the E.U.!" Nuland, wife of Neocon Robert Kagan and an Under Secretary of Hillary Clinton's at The State Department. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton's fingerprints are all over Ukraine: ..."
"... Yes, Somehow the so-called MSM refuses to expose the continuing debacle of our worldwide acts of Terrorism! The failure after failure of "our" military establishment such as targeted assassinations ..."
"... Further it is American war industry in partnership with our military that is arming the world with military grade weapon systems, tons and tons of munitions, and training to use them for such terror weapons as IEDs. It is MSM control by the establishment that enables the failures of Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Obama, Clinton to treat horrendous failures as successes! ..."
"... Hillary Clinton supporters don't care, they don't care that she could be a felon nor do they care she is owned by Wall Street and many other corporate special interest, they just don't care. ..."
"... Up here in New Hampshire, we soundly rejected untrustworthy, dishonest, disingenuous and corrupt Hillary, we just wish the rest of the nation had as much time to get to know the candidates as we had up here! ..."
In the
Milwaukee debate, Hillary Clinton took pride in her role in a recent UN Security Council resolution
on a Syrian ceasefire:
But I would add this. You know, the Security Council finally got around to adopting a resolution.
At the core of that resolution is an agreement I negotiated in June of 2012 in Geneva, which set
forth a cease-fire and moving toward a political resolution, trying to bring the parties at stake
in Syria together.
This is the kind of compulsive misrepresentation that makes Clinton unfit to be President. Clinton's
role in Syria has been to help instigate and prolong the Syrian bloodbath, not to bring it to a close.
In 2012, Clinton was the obstacle, not the solution, to a ceasefire being negotiated by UN Special
Envoy Kofi Annan. It was US intransigence - Clinton's intransigence - that led to the failure of
Annan's peace efforts in the spring of 2012, a point well known among diplomats. Despite Clinton's
insinuation in the Milwaukee debate, there was (of course) no 2012 ceasefire, only escalating carnage.
Clinton bears heavy responsibility for that carnage, which has by now displaced more than 10
million Syrians and left more than 250,000 dead.
As every knowledgeable observer understands, the Syrian War is not mostly about Bashar al-Assad,
or even about Syria itself. It is mostly a proxy war, about Iran. And the bloodbath is doubly tragic
and misguided for that reason.
Saudi Arabia and Turkey, the leading Sunni powers in the Middle East, view Iran, the leading
Shia power, as a regional rival for power and influence. Right-wing Israelis view Iran as an implacable
foe that controls Hezbollah, a Shi'a militant group operating in Lebanon, a border state of Israel.
Thus, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Israel have all clamored to remove Iran's influence in Syria.
This idea is incredibly naïve. Iran has been around as a regional power for a long time--in fact,
for about 2,700 years. And Shia Islam is not going away. There is no way, and no reason, to "defeat"
Iran. The regional powers need to forge a geopolitical equilibrium that recognizes the mutual and
balancing roles of the Gulf Arabs, Turkey, and Iran. And Israeli right-wingers are naïve, and
deeply ignorant of history, to regard Iran as their implacable foe, especially when that mistaken
view pushes Israel to side with Sunni jihadists.
Yet Clinton did not pursue that route. Instead she joined Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and right-wing
Israelis to try to isolate, even defeat, Iran. In 2010, she supported secret negotiations between
Israel and Syria
to attempt to wrest Syria from Iran's influence. Those talks failed. Then the CIA and Clinton
pressed successfully for Plan B: to overthrow Assad.
When the unrest of the Arab Spring broke out in early 2011, the CIA and the anti-Iran front
of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey saw an opportunity to topple Assad quickly and thereby to gain
a geopolitical victory. Clinton became the leading proponent of the CIA-led effort at Syrian regime
change.
In early 2011, Turkey and Saudi Arabia leveraged local protests against Assad to try to foment
conditions for his ouster. By the spring of 2011, the CIA and the US allies were organizing an armed
insurrection against the regime. On August 18, 2011, the US Government
made public
its position: "Assad must go."
Since then and until the
recent fragile UN Security Council accord, the US has refused to agree to any ceasefire unless
Assad is first deposed. The US policy--under Clinton and until recently--has been: regime change
first, ceasefire after. After all, it's only Syrians who are dying. Annan's peace efforts were sunk
by the United States' unbending insistence that U.S.-led regime change must precede or at least accompany
a ceasefire. As the
Nation editors
put it in August 2012:
The US demand that Assad be removed and sanctions be imposed before negotiations could seriously
begin, along with the refusal to include Iran in the process, doomed [Annan's] mission.
The U.S. policy was a massive, horrific failure. Assad did not go, and was not defeated. Russia
came to his support. Iran came to his support. The mercenaries sent in to overthrow him were themselves
radical jihadists with their own agendas. The chaos opened the way for the Islamic State, building
on disaffected Iraqi Army leaders (deposed by the US in 2003), on captured U.S. weaponry, and on
the considerable backing by Saudi funds. If the truth were fully known, the multiple scandals
involved would surely rival Watergate in shaking the foundations of the US establishment.
The hubris of the United States in this approach seems to know no bounds. The tactic of CIA-led
regime change is so deeply enmeshed as a "normal" instrument of U.S. foreign policy that it is hardly
noticed by the U.S. public or media. Overthrowing another government is against the U.N. charter
and international law. But what are such niceties among friends?
This instrument of U.S. foreign policy has not only been in stark violation of international
law but has also been a massive and repeated failure. Rather than a single, quick, and decisive coup
d'état resolving a US foreign policy problem, each CIA-led regime change has been, almost inevitably,
a prelude to a bloodbath. How could it be otherwise? Other societies don't like their countries to
be manipulated by U.S. covert operations.
Removing a leader, even if done "successfully," doesn't solve any underlying geopolitical problems,
much less ecological, social, or economic ones. A coup d'etat invites a civil war, the kind that
now wracks Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. It invites a hostile international response, such
as Russia's backing of its Syrian ally in the face of the CIA-led operations. The record of misery
caused by covert CIA operations literally fills volumes at this point. What surprise, then, the Clinton
acknowledges Henry Kissinger as a mentor and guide?
And where is the establishment media in this debacle? The New York Times finally covered a
bit of this story last month in
describing the CIA-Saudi connection, in which Saudi funds are used to pay for CIA operations
in order to make an end-run around Congress and the American people. The story ran once and was dropped.
Yet the Saudi funding of CIA operations is the same basic tactic used by Ronald Reagan and Oliver
North in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s (with Iranian arms sales used to fund CIA-led covert
operations in Central America without consent or oversight by the American people).
Clinton herself has never shown the least reservation or scruples in deploying this instrument
of U.S. foreign policy. Her record of avid support for US-led regime change includes (but is not
limited to) the US bombing of Belgrade in 1999, the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the Iraq War
in 2003, the Honduran coup in 2009, the killing of Libya's Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, and the CIA-coordinated
insurrection against Assad from 2011 until today.
It takes great presidential leadership to resist CIA misadventures. Presidents get along by going
along with arms contractors, generals, and CIA operatives. They thereby also protect themselves from
political attack by hardline right-wingers. They succeed by exulting in U.S. military might, not
restraining it. Many historians believe that JFK was assassinated as a result of his peace overtures
to the Soviet Union, overture he made against the objections of hardline rightwing opposition in
the CIA and other parts of the U.S. government.
Hillary Clinton has never shown an iota of bravery, or even of comprehension, in facing down
the CIA She has been the CIA's relentless supporter, and has exulted in showing her toughness by
supporting every one of its misguided operations. The failures, of course, are relentlessly hidden
from view. Clinton is a danger to global peace. She has much to answer for regarding the disaster
in Syria.
The people of the United States do not want that woman, Hillary Rodham Clinton to have relations
with the people of the United States. She is totally unqualified, a disaster of a secretary
of state, has incredibly poor judgement is a terrible candidate and should never be allowed to
serve in any government capacity - EVER.
Simple equation....war=money=power. Perpetual warfare is the post 911 gold rush and every establishment
politician in every country is the snake oil salesman pushing this through. The people on the
top make money and the rest of us get killed and go broke.
Max South
Not only the root cause, but also to-ols are important: now Western media/StateDep try depict
what happens in Syria as sectarian, all while majority of both Syrian army and government are
Sunni (even Assad's wife is Sunni) -- secular ones.
Syrian government is only hope for them, as well as for Christians, Kurds and all other ethnic
and religious minorities that fight against Wahhabi/Salafist jihadists.
Sanders' platform is expansive and IMO he has provided the most detail on how he will get things
done, which anyone can find out with a bit of investigation (http://berniesanders.com/issues/).
But all of it doesn't matter since you can't predict how events will unfold. In this regard, I
trust Sanders more than anyone else to decide what is best for all people in the the country (and
even the world). I personally will do well with anyone but I think Sanders is looking out for
the average person more than anyone else.
Pundits do not realize when they heap praises at Hillary Clinton's debate performances that
ordinary people watching cannot get past her lack of trustworthiness and her dishonesty; and that
whatever she says is viewed in that context and is therefore worthless.
It's dismaying that the blowback from the 1953 CIA-assisted overthrow of Mossadegh is still behind
the instability of the Middle East, and that we have continued to commit the same mistakes over
and over. Can't we just get rid of this agency?
Bijan Sharifi
as an iranian-american (and veteran), i appreciate sen sanders bringing this up in the debate.
Bijan Sharifi Indeed. The CIA repeated this stunt in Vietnam 10 years after the Mossadegh mess
and have been doing it at least once every decade since then. In every case, it has been a failure.
How supporting that nonsense is seen as foreign policy experience, I'll never know.
Hillary helped facilitate the arming of terrorists in Syria in 2010 and 2011. She as far as I
al concerned, Hillary supported the deaths of Syrians and terrorism. So why on earth would I want
her to be president? Hello?
More like a continuance of a disaster deferred. Thanks to John Kerry cleaning up the mess of her
disastrous term as SoS. Syria is still a mess, but he has been working his butt off to be every bit of diplomat that
Hillary was not. As soon as she returns to office expect more of her warfare first and diplomacy 'meh'.
Gary Pack
Ignacio, she was for an all out invasion by the USA into Syria to remove Assad. She, John McCain,
and Linsey Graham had to settle for just arming the Al Queda and IS for the time being.
This is what Trump has been alluding to in re Clinton, Obama, Bush, etc DC corruption used to
bring down regimes that have continually destabilized America & the world.
Where & Why was Obama
& Holder not as directly held accountable in this discussion. Trump rightfully points that Americans
have died for nothing yet the villains who are the catalysts of these atrocities still have jobs
& stature in US. America needs to be rebooted once again & bring in leadership not buoyed by greed.
power & indifference of those before him.
James Elliott cheerleading will not get anything done, I don't think Bernie understands how to
get things done in our system, reality is 40 years of bad will not be fixed in even 4 years.
The problem here really is the fact that Americans bitch and don't vote every election
and this has let money just walk in and buy more influence, you want a real revolution,
vote every election you are alive and you will let your children and their children a better
life.
Harvey Riggs
That is about it, Clinton is a repub in dem clothing and the US is the biggest threat to world
peace when it can not get its way in another countries politics or to get them to follow the US
master plan that mainly supports the US's goal.
More messes in this world has been started with covert means in order to get what we want and
millions upon milllions are suffering and the rest of the world countries 1'%ers who run those
countries are scared to stand up aguinst the US and lose that under the table support.
what makes her so maddeningly hawkish? what credentials she has that her peace-loving supporters
believe that she can lead the US/world for peace? wake-up, and let's get united behind bernie.
They believe the mythology that if women ruled the world it would be a better place...I beg to
differ....Margaret Thatcher, Catherine the Great, Elizabeth I were not exactly peace lovers...
Additionally, years ago I was shocked to see that there were women members of the KKK. So much
for women by their gender alone saving the world.
Sheila Rajan
Looking at the various misguided US excursions over the past 2 decades from outside of America,
this comes as no surprise. Clinton's deep involvement in these venal adventures comes as no surprise
either. Bill Clinton may have been adored in liberal America, but he was NOT, outside of your
borders. To us he appeared as just another one in a long line of Presidents under the sway of
the arms manufacturers, CIA, banks and financiers. Hillary Clinton is just an offshoot.
But let us not forget Hillary Clinton's "regime change" record in Ukraine
with Victoria "Fuc# the E.U.!" Nuland, wife of Neocon Robert Kagan and an Under Secretary of Hillary
Clinton's at The State Department.
Hillary Clinton's fingerprints are all over Ukraine:
Yes, Somehow the so-called MSM refuses to expose the continuing debacle of our worldwide acts
of Terrorism! The failure after failure of "our" military establishment such as targeted assassinations
as an official policy using drones, black ops, spec ops, military "contractors", hired mercenaries,
war lord militias and the like; the illegal and immoral acts of war cloaked in the Israeli framed
rubric of "national defense".
Further it is American war industry in partnership with our military that is arming the
world with military grade weapon systems, tons and tons of munitions, and training to use them
for such terror weapons as IEDs. It is MSM control by the establishment that enables the failures
of Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Obama, Clinton to treat horrendous failures as successes!
Hillary Clinton supporters don't care, they don't care that she could be a felon nor do they
care she is owned by Wall Street and many other corporate special interest, they just don't care.
Up here in New Hampshire, we soundly rejected untrustworthy, dishonest, disingenuous and corrupt
Hillary, we just wish the rest of the nation had as much time to get to know the candidates as
we had up here!
"... The American public has been living under collective Stockholm syndrome. The have secretly been deceived and betrayed while our freedoms, rights and national security has been compromised. The surveillance state was never for our protection. ..."
"... Various rogue agencies have intentionally and illegally subverted our constitution, rights and freedoms while secretly targeting Americans committing various crimes, including murder. ..."
"... When Clapper says "they might" then they are already doing so. ..."
"... Tea party never was. It always was promoted by the media and big business. Financed by the same. Look at the coverage: Occupy was ridiculed by big Media into no existence. Not the same at all. ..."
"... USSR has won! Now we treat our people the same way they did. Soon we can blackmail everyone into compliance. And we can easily plant evidence should we not find any - if they're in they can do anything they want. ..."
"... She is an opportunist, not a feminist. ..."
"... Ban Ki Moon and the Pope saying capitalism is destroying the life AND economy of the entire fricken globe, may be an opportunity for a popular movement, and this Bernie thing has the potential to be part of a wake up moment. ..."
"... I said I wouldn't ever do that again after O'bummer, but as Woodie Guthrie said, Hope is what makes us human and is the driver of evolution. Or something like that. ..."
"... You lost me on "equality is women having all the same opportunities as men". Actually many of us want entirely different "opportunities" and these women who play the patriarch, like Thatcher and Rice, and Shillary, do not represent the diverse and rich culture of "feminism" that is enmeshed in people's real lives. ..."
"... I'm an aussie and I can tell you America Bernie Sanders is what you need to keep you guys from becoming a laughing stock. Hillary, trump is on the same brush as the elitist of your country. Bernie may or not be able to do what he wants to as he will get stonewalled but if everyone is united and keeps fighting with him they will have no choice to implement some of them. ..."
The American public has been living under collective Stockholm syndrome. The have secretly
been deceived and betrayed while our freedoms, rights and national security has been compromised.
The surveillance state was never for our protection.
Various rogue agencies have intentionally and illegally subverted our constitution, rights
and freedoms while secretly targeting Americans committing various crimes, including murder.
I'll say this, if this inevitable surveillance can prevent actual criminals from committing
actual crimes, it might be useful.
And I'll say this: if that is the intention of these devices - and if your bog-standard criminal
is ever caught using them - I'll eat your smart fridge.
Tea party never was. It always was promoted by the media and big business. Financed by the same.
Look at the coverage: Occupy was ridiculed by big Media into no existence. Not the same at all.
USSR has won! Now we treat our people the same way they did. Soon we can blackmail everyone into
compliance. And we can easily plant evidence should we not find any - if they're in they can do
anything they want.
Hear ya, I plan to hold him to the fire. I'm a realist, and married to an uber realist, so not
gonna argue with ya here, but, as this article actually says really well, is that the holistic
embrace of all inequity opens the landscape to the big conversations we do Need to have right
now.
I know i know, the UN is at one hand a weak tool and on the other a NWO franchise, but
Ban Ki Moon and the Pope saying capitalism is destroying the life AND economy of the entire fricken
globe, may be an opportunity for a popular movement, and this Bernie thing has the potential to
be part of a wake up moment.
I have let my Hope thing vibrate a bit, and I said I wouldn't ever
do that again after O'bummer, but as Woodie Guthrie said, Hope is what makes us human and is the
driver of evolution. Or something like that.
You lost me on "equality is women having all the same opportunities as men". Actually many of
us want entirely different "opportunities" and these women who play the patriarch, like Thatcher
and Rice, and Shillary, do not represent the diverse and rich culture of "feminism" that is enmeshed
in people's real lives.
I'm an aussie and I can tell you America Bernie Sanders is what you need to keep you guys from
becoming a laughing stock. Hillary, trump is on the same brush as the elitist of your country.
Bernie may or not be able to do what he wants to as he will get stonewalled but if everyone is
united and keeps fighting with him they will have no choice to implement some of them.
As an Aussie
it is important that his message is heard and implemented as America can then show the world there
is good in the world and that we all can live in a fair, just and equal world. Something America
has stopped showing for a very longtime. This hopefully will filter down to other countries as
America rightly or wrongly leads the world and many countries do follow suit.
"... Spot on. The Republican party is about corporatism and the "1%". They are irrelevant to nearly all the American public apart from democrat haters. The GOP might as well be a corpse. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton's always going on and on about her "Proven track record" at the State Dept....where she set Libya on fire, for example.....unlike her competitor, Bernie Sanders. ..."
"... Dear Lord, please let the American people not vote in anyone from the GOP side as president in 2016 ..."
"... Okay, my prayer skills are a bit rusty, I admit, but you get the idea. ..."
"... Anyhow, Donald Trump reminds me more and more of Italy's media mogul/politician Silvio Berlusconi -- maybe it's just my eyes playing tricks on me, but he is even starting to LOOK more and more like that man, what with the many faces he makes and the populist theatricality and all. Trump offers no substance in terms of policy, but he clearly has an intuitive grasp of how the major media outlets will respond to and cover his every move. ..."
"... I wonder if this column was written before or after the subject events. It is so trite meaningless and predictable he must have written it in his sleep. ..."
"... Trump is a centre-right, and possibly even slightly left candidate. His grandstanding is for the core base. All candidates walk back toward the middle once they have to appeal to the national electorate. He's far more liberal than Cruz, who, I assure you, will set about undoing every last bit of progress for working people and women that managed to creep forward over the last eight years, starting with health care, Medicare, and Social Security. ..."
"... You have to separate out Trump's grandstanding with his east coast New York roots. It's actually Trump who has brought up single-payer health care and some brutal talk about Wall Street. I would wager a month's salary that Trump and Mrs Clinton are not too far apart on how they would govern. And you forget that Congress is involved as well. ..."
"... The hyperbole is meaningless. So far, Jeb Bush's brother and his Vice President have done more damage to the US and the world than I would guess Trump would do in 20 years. ..."
"... And do remember on whose watch NAFTA, that infamous "ending welfare as we know it", the equally infamous DOMA, and the repeal of Glass-Steagall, which paved the way for The Big Short were passed: dear old Bill Clinton. ..."
"... The media is trusted by the public about as much as bankers and politicians. Trump sticking it to FOX not only didn't get him "sidelined" it probably increased his support among the Republican base. ..."
"... Translation: Trump knows he already has the nomination locked up. Why should he give Cruz and Rubio an opportunity to attack him in a live debate? He made the smart move. Since 9/11 and the buildup to the war in Iraq, the media's only real job is political propaganda. ..."
"... As far as I know, Trump, Sanders and Obama were equally resentful because American businessmen are moving production abroad, thus leaving American workers out of work, and the state budget deprived of taxes that go also to foreign countries instead of remaining in the US. ..."
"... In addition, Trump also stands for a kind of economic protectionism, particularly in relation to China, bearing in mind "the urgent need to reduce the trade deficit with China", which is now about $ 500 billion a year, if I remembered well. ..."
"... So, it is interesting that the current as well as two of the possible future US presidents are pushing for some kind of protectionism of domestic production and economic isolationism that are completely contrary to previous commitment of the United States to free markets and free flow of capital in the world.However, taking into account the current economic crisis in the world, that from acute increasingly turns into some kind of chronic phase, it is perhaps not so surprising. ..."
"... The vast majority of the political elite, from Bush to Clinton, are there to further the agenda, as well as their own careers. In this way, you have Obama brought into to finish by proxy what Bush started by direct force. I.e the wrecking of any Nation State that opposes the neo-liberal economic system. ..."
"... They only exist in the spotlight for as long as they are tolerated in terms of their persona, until the public wise-up. It is then they go into their background role; the cushy and lucrative 'consulting' jobs they have been promised by the special interest 'think tanks' they already belong to; be it the Council of Foreign Relations, or the Bilderberg group; all funded by international banking cartels. ..."
"... Supposed 'right' or supposed 'left' of the mainstream media are just part and parcel of the same ultimate deception. ..."
"... Trump, although not perfect in his persona, is certainly a problem for the agenda: thus their attack dogs in the media have been called to take him out. ..."
"... It's amusing to see the attacks on Trump; who just for speaking his mind is starting to steadily resonate with a growing demographic, both at home and abroad. ..."
"... You'd never hear about it here of course; but he harshly denounced the invasion of Iraq, and was a big critic of Bush. ..."
"... He also seems to be the only one who understands that the majority of Americans needs real jobs – not some laughable concept of an 'ideas economy.' and is willing to fight for them on a trade level to ensure this. ..."
"... He is also the least likely to drag the US into dangerous conflicts, (proxy or otherwise) with those such as Russia – Sadly I can see some Guardian commentators already gunning for that. ..."
"... He is also not controlled by the usual financial ties to banking elites: Goldman & Sachs just gave Hillary $3 million – what's that then? Just pocket money? ..."
"... America isn't better than this - this IS America. The land of political dynasties and limitless corporate donations. Where a movie star became the President and a body builder a Governor. It doesn't even have a one-man-one vote voting system for heavens sake. ..."
"... It's kind of like Iranian 'democracy', where the Ayatollah picks out and approves 4-5 candidates, and then the Iranian people get to 'vote' for them. We do it a bit differently, in a society where we have freedom of speech, but the outcome always ends up the same, with 2 establishment, corporate, Wall street, military industrial complex, globalist 'free trade' choices for president. All approved by corporate America, our corporate and mainstream media and by Wall street, it always ends up like that. Like right now, there is no difference between Hillary, and establishment corporate Democrats like the Clintons, and the establishment Republicans like Rubio, Kasich or Bush, on all those really big and truly important issues. ..."
"... That thing about Cruz labelling Trump a Democrat is interesting. I'm sure most Democrats would be understandably offended by the suggestion, and I'm pretty sure Cruz doesn't actually believe it either. I haven't been following Trump's statements on policy closely at all, but from my general impression of him over the years, I always thought that, although he was clearly a dyed in the wool capitalist, he probably wasn't a social conservative. ..."
"... I can't help thinking he's just another wealthy, metropolitan businessman who probably didn't give a single toss about immigration, gay marriage, Islam or any of it, and if you pushed him probably would have been completely relaxed about all those issues. ..."
"... Tough for any GOP candidate to avoid the flip flops in fairness. Pro life gun nuts, military spending addicted defecit hawks, die hard defenders of the Constitution hell bent on removing church/state separation, defenders of the squeezed middle sucking on the teat of Murdoch and the Koch brothers.... A very high and skinny tight rope.... ..."
"... Trump won because these people have nothing people want to listen to. Nobody cares about Rubio or Bush flip flopping on immigration, because they have decided not to vote for them. ..."
"... People care about jobs and their dwindling opportunities. Trump talks populism. He talks about tariffs on manufacturers who moved jobs overseas. People like that. He said he thinks the US should have left Saddam Hussein in power. Every rational person today agrees with that. He says the US should have left Gaddafi in power. While not too many people think about that too much, if they do, they agree with that too. Especially once they learn about the domino effect it has had, such as the attack on the coffee shop in Burkina Faso a week ago or so. ..."
"... People have grown tired of war. All of the mainstream candidates want war because their campaigns depend on it. Bush's family has massive investment in the Carlisle Group and other players in the MIC. ..."
"... Trump made his money in real estate, not war. ..."
"... Not a Trump fan, but it is great to see someone with enough nous to tell Fox to go bite their bum. Good on him. We know from past experience what a sleazy old fart Rupert is and his fellow travelers in Fox are a good fit. The "moderators" are third rate journo's out to polish their image and try the bigmouth on the guy that 'may' become President. No need for Trump to take that kind of crap off of those sort of people. ..."
"... Cruz was attacked, got flustered and blew his opportunity. Trump's judgement turned out to be vindicated in not attending. Trump is currently the front runner and bearing in mind that the entire West is moving to the right it is quite likely that by the time of the election Trump may turn out to be closer to the mainstream. If there are further Islamic terrorist attacks on US soil then this will likely be a certainty. ..."
You could tell the Trumpless debate was an almost normal presidential event by the nature
of the closing statements.
Bland, clichéd, and frankly boring.
Zetenyagli -> benbache 29 Jan 2016 11:49
Trump won because these people have nothing people want to listen to.
Spot on. The Republican party is about corporatism and the "1%". They are irrelevant to
nearly all the American public apart from democrat haters. The GOP might as well be a corpse.
tonybillbob -> Commentator6 29 Jan 2016 11:31
Trump is currently the front runner and bearing in mind that the entire West is moving
to the right it is quite likely that by the time of the election Trump may turn out to be closer
to the mainstream.
Mainstream of what? The conservative movement? America? The globe?
tonybillbob 29 Jan 2016 11:25
Jeb Bush insisted several times that he had "a proven record", begging the question why
he needed to mention such a proven thing quite so many times.
Yeah!!! How come those who have a "proven track record" always have to remind folks that they
have a proven track record and usually follow that claim with "unlike my competitor"?
Hillary Clinton's always going on and on about her "Proven track record" at the State Dept....where
she set Libya on fire, for example.....unlike her competitor, Bernie Sanders.
And her "hands on experience" reforming banks....."Cut that out!!!!" ...another something she
has over Bernie Sanders. Another thing Clinton can say about herself is that she's made a huge
pile of 'speakin' fees' dough rubbin' elbows with bankers.....another something that Bernie can't
say about himself. And don't forget: Hillary's gonna color inside the lines because she's a realist.
She knows what Wall Street will approve of and what Wall Street won't approve of......Hillary's
unique in that regard....at least she thinks so, and claims that's why we should vote for her....because
she already knows what Wall Street will and won't allow a president to do.
simpledino 29 Jan 2016 11:23
Okay, Ted Cruz -- I'll gladly pray on the nation's decision. (Kneeling humbly): "Dear Lord,
please let the American people not vote in anyone from the GOP side as president in 2016.
Lord, hear my prayer -- let them choose either HIllary Clinton or Bernie Sanders (or even thy
faithful and honorable servant Martin O'Malley, who doesn't have a chance in .... oh never mind,
Lord...)."
Okay, my prayer skills are a bit rusty, I admit, but you get the idea.
Anyhow, Donald Trump reminds me more and more of Italy's media mogul/politician Silvio
Berlusconi -- maybe it's just my eyes playing tricks on me, but he is even starting to LOOK more
and more like that man, what with the many faces he makes and the populist theatricality and all.
Trump offers no substance in terms of policy, but he clearly has an intuitive grasp of how the
major media outlets will respond to and cover his every move.
Lafcadio1944 29 Jan 2016 11:15
I wonder if this column was written before or after the subject events. It is so trite
meaningless and predictable he must have written it in his sleep.
Cranios 29 Jan 2016 11:13
I was never warmly disposed toward Trump, but the more I hear him annoying the news media by
refusing to be frightened and dance to their tune, the more I am starting to like him.
tklhmd 29 Jan 2016 11:11
Managing to outfox Fox news is no mean feat, I'll give him that.
Tearoutthehairnow -> hawkchurch 29 Jan 2016 11:11
Trump is a centre-right, and possibly even slightly left candidate. His grandstanding is
for the core base. All candidates walk back toward the middle once they have to appeal to the
national electorate. He's far more liberal than Cruz, who, I assure you, will set about undoing
every last bit of progress for working people and women that managed to creep forward over the
last eight years, starting with health care, Medicare, and Social Security.
You have to separate out Trump's grandstanding with his east coast New York roots. It's
actually Trump who has brought up single-payer health care and some brutal talk about Wall Street.
I would wager a month's salary that Trump and Mrs Clinton are not too far apart on how they would
govern. And you forget that Congress is involved as well.
The hyperbole is meaningless. So far, Jeb Bush's brother and his Vice President have done
more damage to the US and the world than I would guess Trump would do in 20 years.
And do remember on whose watch NAFTA, that infamous "ending welfare as we know it", the
equally infamous DOMA, and the repeal of Glass-Steagall, which paved the way for The Big Short
were passed: dear old Bill Clinton.
Try analysis instead of hyperbole. It works wonders.
Tearoutthehairnow -> lefthalfback2 29 Jan 2016 11:06
I have been nonplussed from this end of things by how lackluster J. Bush's performance has
been - I can only assume that unconsciously, he really doesn't want it - because no one who really
wants it and has the advantage of his experience, access, and background, could possibly be turning
in this deadly a performance. It reeks of self-sabotage in the name of self-preservation. At of
course a huge cost in funds . . .
Tearoutthehairnow 29 Jan 2016 11:02
I was able to catch some US news - Trump not only wasn't "sidelined" as the other Guardian
article on last night's debate proclaimed, firstly he walked out of his own accord, and second,
he cut FOX's debate audience in half. Last night's debate attracted the lowest audience ratings
of all the Republican debates so far - approximately 11-12 million as opposed to the approximately
23 million the debates attracted when he participated. CNN did quite well covering the "other"
event.
And he's still leading in the polls among Republicans - including among Republican women according
to CNN, so the Guardian's recent article on these parties' only audience being "angry white men"
was, again, off the mark by including Trump and the US Republicans.
The media is trusted by the public about as much as bankers and politicians. Trump sticking
it to FOX not only didn't get him "sidelined" it probably increased his support among the Republican
base. Jeb Bush is still pretending to be a candidate as is Ben Carson, and Cruz in the spotlight
reinforced his reputation as so nasty a human being that even if he gets into the Oval Office,
no one, including those on his own side of the aisle, will want to work with him.
It would be refreshing to see the media try to report rather than shape the news to its own
liking.
JackGC -> ACJB 29 Jan 2016 10:34
Keeping people "scared" is a full time job for the government. It would be impossible to have
a war without the "scared" factor.
"We are a nation in grave danger." George Bush.
In 'Merica, people need their guns just in case ISIS invades their town. It's like War of the
Worlds only with Muslims, not Martians. That was a REALLY scary flick back in the 30s. 'Mericans
really didn't know if New Jersey had been invaded and Christie is the guv. of Jersey.
Trump is a New Yorker, so those two are on the front lines of any potential outer space invasion.
War of the Worlds II. 'Merica is ready.
Harry Bhai 29 Jan 2016 10:27
Be like......
This is Ted Cruz.
Cruz is a world-class question-dodger
When Cruz is asked about his votes against defense budgets, he launches into an extended diatribe
against Barack Obama's defense budgets.
When Cruz is asked about his own position on issues, he talks about his idol: Ronald Reagan.
When Cruz is asked about why he flip-flopped on his feelings towards Trump, he pretends that he
was asked to insult Trump
Cruz is a flip-flop politician.
Be like Cruz, NOT.
JackGC N.M. Hill 29 Jan 2016 10:22
Translation: Trump knows he already has the nomination locked up. Why should he give Cruz
and Rubio an opportunity to attack him in a live debate? He made the smart move. Since 9/11 and
the buildup to the war in Iraq, the media's only real job is political propaganda.
N.M. Hill 29 Jan 2016 09:48
Trump just proved: it's possible to win a debate you didn't attend
Translation: Media more obsessed with Trump than actual issues.
MeereeneseLiberation -> LiamNSW2 29 Jan 2016 09:24
he was chastised for saying he'd stop Muslims from entering the US
Because Muslim immigration is really the one thing that affects ordinary Americans the most.
Not affordable health care, wealth distribution, labour rights ... Muslim immigration. Especially
of those few thousand Syrian refugees that are vetted over months and months. (But oh yes, "the
Muslims" hate the West, each and every one. Especially if he or she is fleeing from ISIS terror,
I guess.)
Sweden, that paragon of migrant virtue
Sweden, like all Scandinavian countries, has extremely restrictive immigration and asylum policies.
Calling Sweden a "paragon of migrant virtue" is about as accurate as calling Switzerland a 'paragon
of banking transparency' (or the US a 'paragon of gun control').
nnedjo -> RusticBenadar 29 Jan 2016 08:59
Just curious, can anyone share some actual substance concerning any of Trump's policy
plans?
As far as I know, Trump, Sanders and Obama were equally resentful because American businessmen
are moving production abroad, thus leaving American workers out of work, and the state budget
deprived of taxes that go also to foreign countries instead of remaining in the US.
In addition, Trump also stands for a kind of economic protectionism, particularly in relation
to China, bearing in mind "the urgent need to reduce the trade deficit with China", which is now
about $ 500 billion a year, if I remembered well.
So, it is interesting that the current as well as two of the possible future US presidents
are pushing for some kind of protectionism of domestic production and economic isolationism that
are completely contrary to previous commitment of the United States to free markets and free flow
of capital in the world.However, taking into account the current economic crisis in the world,
that from acute increasingly turns into some kind of chronic phase, it is perhaps not so surprising.
SeniorsTn9 29 Jan 2016 08:44
UPDATE: 2016/01/29 Trump won the debate he didn't even participate in. No surprise here.
Which debate will you focus on, the elephant walk or Trump? If you want to hear positive messages
listen to Trump. Trump stood his ground. Trump is definitely different. When we look at the options
there is simply no alternative. I prefer to watch the next president of the United States of America.
I was on the fence but how I am definitely a Trump supporter. Trump will make America great again.
There is a personality conflict here and everyone knows it. This reporter definitely has a
hate on for Trump. Trump was right to not participate in this debate. Replace the so called bias
reporter. Fox News could have fixed this but choose not to. Call Trump's bluff and he will have
no choice but to join the debate. This is not and should not be about reporters. The press, for
some reason, always plays into Trump's hand. This is another Trump strategic move to force the
debate to focus on him first. Seriously just look at what has already happened, All Trump's opponents
and the media are talking about now is the fact that Trump is not participating in the debate.
Brilliant!
Trump has changed the debating and campaigning rules. Trump will or will not be successful
based on his decisions and his alone. Trump now has the focus on him and the debates haven't even
startled. Trump is now winning debates he isn't even participating in. This has got to be a first
in successful political debating strategies! Amazing! A win win for Trump. Smart man! Smart like
a Fox.
ID0020237 -> NYcynic 29 Jan 2016 08:25
Methinks all this debate and chatter are nothing but distractions for the masses so those behind
and above the scene can carry out their hidden agendas. Debates are like more opium for the masses,
it keeps their brains churning while other issues are burning. I see no problems being solved
here with all the empty rhetoric.
kaneandabel -> kodicek 29 Jan 2016 07:45
Well kodi, your comments are valid in it that ALL of these candidates are part of the revolving
door irrespective of the supposed 'right' or supposed 'left'. Clinton is as much a compromised
candidate as the entire bunch of the republican team. Trump may appear to be a different kind
but that that's only because he is a good "talker" who seems to give 2 hoots to the establishment.
But thats only talk. He would turn on a cent the moment he becomes President. A perfect example
of that is Barack Obama. He talked the sweet talk and made people think a new dawn is coming in
American politics. But as it turned out.... zilch!
But there is a slight ray of hope, a thin one. With Sanders. As he has walked the talk all
along! Otherwise you van be sure to be in the grip of the wall street scamstars and plutocrats
for the next decade.
RusticBenadar B5610661066 29 Jan 2016 06:02
Plutocracy; and all candidates are millionaires or billionaires being hoisted upon Americans
by the establishment media/business/banks/politics- all, that is, with the single exception of
Bernie Sanders, who alone has managed not to enrich himself with special interest bribery or financial
exploitation during his unparalleled 45+ years of outstanding common sense public service.
kodicek -> LazarusLong42 29 Jan 2016 05:52
The vast majority of the political elite, from Bush to Clinton, are there to further the
agenda, as well as their own careers. In this way, you have Obama brought into to finish by proxy
what Bush started by direct force. I.e the wrecking of any Nation State that opposes the neo-liberal
economic system.
They only exist in the spotlight for as long as they are tolerated in terms of their persona,
until the public wise-up. It is then they go into their background role; the cushy and lucrative
'consulting' jobs they have been promised by the special interest 'think tanks' they already belong
to; be it the Council of Foreign Relations, or the Bilderberg group; all funded by international
banking cartels.
Supposed 'right' or supposed 'left' of the mainstream media are just part and parcel of
the same ultimate deception.
Trump, although not perfect in his persona, is certainly a problem for the agenda: thus
their attack dogs in the media have been called to take him out.
This is what first raised my suspicions: I thought for myself, rather than double clicking
on a petition.
Best Regards, K
kodicek 29 Jan 2016 05:19
It's amusing to see the attacks on Trump; who just for speaking his mind is starting to
steadily resonate with a growing demographic, both at home and abroad.
You'd never hear about it here of course; but he harshly denounced the invasion of Iraq,
and was a big critic of Bush.
Despite all the allegations of racism, he has the largest support amongst the Black and Latino
community; and is the most popular Republican candidate with Women.
He also seems to be the only one who understands that the majority of Americans needs real
jobs – not some laughable concept of an 'ideas economy.' and is willing to fight for them on a
trade level to ensure this.
He is also the least likely to drag the US into dangerous conflicts, (proxy or otherwise)
with those such as Russia – Sadly I can see some Guardian commentators already gunning for that.
He is also not controlled by the usual financial ties to banking elites: Goldman & Sachs
just gave Hillary $3 million – what's that then? Just pocket money?
We always drone on about democracy etc, but when someone is actually popular, from Corbyn to
Trump, we denounce them and ridicule their supporters.
Funny thing is; if it wasn't for all these attacks I might never have noticed!
TheChillZone -> SteelyDanorak 29 Jan 2016 05:05
America isn't better than this - this IS America. The land of political dynasties and limitless
corporate donations. Where a movie star became the President and a body builder a Governor. It
doesn't even have a one-man-one vote voting system for heavens sake. The rise of Trump makes
perfect sense - most of American culture has been relentlessly dumbed down; now it's Politics
turn.
europeangrayling -> shaftedpig 29 Jan 2016 04:40
It's kind of like Iranian 'democracy', where the Ayatollah picks out and approves 4-5 candidates,
and then the Iranian people get to 'vote' for them. We do it a bit differently, in a society where
we have freedom of speech, but the outcome always ends up the same, with 2 establishment, corporate,
Wall street, military industrial complex, globalist 'free trade' choices for president. All approved
by corporate America, our corporate and mainstream media and by Wall street, it always ends up
like that. Like right now, there is no difference between Hillary, and establishment corporate
Democrats like the Clintons, and the establishment Republicans like Rubio, Kasich or Bush, on
all those really big and truly important issues.
fanfootbal65 29 Jan 2016 04:20
At least with Trump you know where he stands unlike most politicians who just tell the voters
what they want to hear. Then after getting elected, these lip service politicians just go off
on their own agenda against the wishes of the people that voted for them.
SamStone 29 Jan 2016 03:55
Haha, Trump is tremendously astute and clever when it comes to tactics. It will be awesome
if he actually becomes president.
boldofer 29 Jan 2016 03:46
That thing about Cruz labelling Trump a Democrat is interesting. I'm sure most Democrats
would be understandably offended by the suggestion, and I'm pretty sure Cruz doesn't actually
believe it either. I haven't been following Trump's statements on policy closely at all, but from
my general impression of him over the years, I always thought that, although he was clearly a
dyed in the wool capitalist, he probably wasn't a social conservative.
I can't help thinking he's just another wealthy, metropolitan businessman who probably
didn't give a single toss about immigration, gay marriage, Islam or any of it, and if you pushed
him probably would have been completely relaxed about all those issues. But I guess what
he is above all else is a power hungry narcissist and a showman, and if he feels he needs to push
certain buttons to get elected...
SGT123 29 Jan 2016 03:29
"Megyn Kelly, the Fox News anchor whose participation in the debate led to Trump's boycott,
referred to him as "the elephant not in the room".
Which is both quite funny and accurate. I can see why Donald was so frightened of her!
Blaaboy 29 Jan 2016 03:03
Tough for any GOP candidate to avoid the flip flops in fairness. Pro life gun nuts, military
spending addicted defecit hawks, die hard defenders of the Constitution hell bent on removing
church/state separation, defenders of the squeezed middle sucking on the teat of Murdoch and the
Koch brothers.... A very high and skinny tight rope....
benbache 29 Jan 2016 02:22
Trump won because these people have nothing people want to listen to. Nobody cares about
Rubio or Bush flip flopping on immigration, because they have decided not to vote for them.
And despite the press, no one I know cares about terrorism in the US. No one ever brings it up
in any conversation, despite constant fear mongering.
People care about jobs and their dwindling opportunities. Trump talks populism. He talks
about tariffs on manufacturers who moved jobs overseas. People like that. He said he thinks the
US should have left Saddam Hussein in power. Every rational person today agrees with that. He
says the US should have left Gaddafi in power. While not too many people think about that too
much, if they do, they agree with that too. Especially once they learn about the domino effect
it has had, such as the attack on the coffee shop in Burkina Faso a week ago or so.
People have grown tired of war. All of the mainstream candidates want war because their
campaigns depend on it. Bush's family has massive investment in the Carlisle Group and other players
in the MIC.
Trump made his money in real estate, not war.
ID1569355 29 Jan 2016 01:53
I have no vote in the U.S.A. I greatly respect it's people and achievements. President Obama
has been a big disappointment to me. I really thought he could make some good changes for his
citizens. Should Mr Trump actually win the Presidency life for many will be very, very interesting,
perhaps not in a good way. Then again perhaps his leadership might be just what America needs.
A few years of Mr Trump as leader of the world's greatest super-power may give us all a new
outlook on life as we know it, help us adjust our personal and National priorities. Give him the
power as the Supreme Commander of Military Forces and we can all learn some lessons about the
consequences of Americans votes on everyone else's lives. Americans may learn a thing or two also........Go
Trump !
Oboy1963 29 Jan 2016 01:37
Not a Trump fan, but it is great to see someone with enough nous to tell Fox to go bite
their bum. Good on him. We know from past experience what a sleazy old fart Rupert is and his
fellow travelers in Fox are a good fit. The "moderators" are third rate journo's out to polish
their image and try the bigmouth on the guy that 'may' become President. No need for Trump to
take that kind of crap off of those sort of people.
Commentator6 29 Jan 2016 01:32
Cruz was attacked, got flustered and blew his opportunity. Trump's judgement turned out
to be vindicated in not attending. Trump is currently the front runner and bearing in mind that
the entire West is moving to the right it is quite likely that by the time of the election Trump
may turn out to be closer to the mainstream. If there are further Islamic terrorist attacks on
US soil then this will likely be a certainty.
"... For sale, cheap, one POTUS puppet, strings firmly attached. Keep the kiddies entertained, good for four years worth of distraction. ..."
"... Where does most of the money, dark or obvious, go? Answer: The Main Stream Media (I include the Guardian in this). Do you now understand why they're all having a bob-each-way? Morals, journalistic integrity, decency or the welfare of the public be damned, it's raining wads of cash. ..."
"... Because of the SCOTUS Citizens united decision, it is just fine to bribe politicians IN PUBLIC. How could SCOTUS and the GOP do this to the United States. It is destroying our Democracy. ..."
"... Let the ass-kissing and groveling begin ..."
"... The undue influence of the rich over American politics is an absolute disgrace. How can those who claim to be conservatives justify their destruction of democratic processes? They conserve nothing but their own power. Traitors! ..."
"... I'm afraid that the soul of America was lost with the scotus ruling. Corporations are just that, corporations. They are not people. They already had a disproportionate say in politics because of lobbying money. ..."
"... Now the princes of darkness have descended on the land like perpetual night. Leaving the populace longing for the light! The Kochs and their ilk are slaves to their ideology which is to destroy the federal government, destroy all social safety net's, even privatize our military. All this for the ideology of the extreme right wing corporate fascism. ..."
"... All Hail the Deep State! ..."
"... Check this out...It will blow you away: 'Dark Money: Jane Mayer on How the Koch Bros. & Billionaire Allies Funded the Rise of the Far Right' http://www.democracynow.org/2016/1/20/dark_money_jane_mayer_on_how ..."
"... "Dred Scott turned people into property....Citizens United turned property into people." ..."
"... One of the great sources of Trump's appeal has been the perception of his independence from the Kochs and other corporate manipulators. If he gets the nomination, they will of course attempt to co-opt him just as they did the tea party. It will be interesting to see how he responds. ..."
"... The Kochs didn't co-opt the Tea Party--they created it. They brainstormed it, branded it, funded it, propped it up, bought positive news coverage for it, and pulled its strings to keep the GOP voting base at a full boil for the fall elections in 2010. ..."
"... This was tactically necessary to enable them to take full advantage of the gorgeous opportunity John Roberts had created for them earlier that spring with Citizens United, rushed through precisely to help the oligarchs buy themselves Congress and as many state houses and governor's mansions as they could reap. ..."
"... The best government money can buy...... Since the Supreme Court ruled unlimited corporate bribes to politicians would be considered "free speech" in the eyes of the law, people lost any chance they had of representation based on what's best for average citizen. It's -ALL- about big money now, a literal Corporatocracy. The idea that government should be "Of the people, by the people and for the people" is long lost, RIP. ..."
"... Dark money = Corruption.....period..!! Just because its not illegal doesn't make it right. What it is, is the continual demolition of democracy in the US where whoever has the biggest cheque-book has an advantage over everyone else. Totally wrong and the slippery slope to an end of 'government by the people'... ..."
"... And the theft of the Presidency is underway. Does anyone not think that allowing millions, even a billion dollars to be donated to campaigns with the donor kept secret is a problem? Heck, foreign government can contribute to get the candidate that they want. So.......Who will be the one to kiss Koch butt? ..."
"... Hey look, they're trying to buy the elections again. No surprises there... ..."
"... Not trying. Succeeding. The Koch brothers own many, many politicians who are beholding to Koch and will vote any way Koch wants. ..."
"... Their intentions are now plain: they aim the overthrow of democracy and the establishment of a modern feudal state/oligarchy. ..."
"... If money didn't work, people would not be spending over a billon dollars on the election. Of course money works. Think of it this way: The Koch brothers give almost a billion dollars to support most of the GOP candidates. Regardless of who wins, they will be completely owned by the Koch brothers. It doesn't matter who you vote for if they are all owned by Koch. ..."
"... Moneylenders own the temple. ..."
"... Not to mention that in their own minds and mirrors, the money-lenders are the temple. ..."
"... "The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat." ..."
"... The pendulum has swung too far - the rich are too rich, and the poor are too poor. The Emperor we have been told has beautiful clothes will soon be found to have none. ..."
"... Or that famous Apalachin, NY, meeting of the five families in 1957. One difference: I bet the FBI won't be raiding the Koch compound, forcing all the big dogs to flee into the woods. More likely, the feds will be providing protection, writing down the license plate numbers of everyone who might object to billionaires dividing up their 'turf' in America. ..."
Dark money is the name for cash given to nonprofit organizations that can receive unlimited
donations from corporations, individuals and unions without disclosing their donors. Under IRS
regulations these tax-exempt groups are supposed to be promoting "social welfare" and are not
allowed to have politics as their primary purpose – so generally they have to spend less than
half their funds directly promoting candidates. Other so-called "issue ads" paid for by these
groups often look like thinly veiled campaign ads.
The boom in dark money spending in recent elections came in the wake of the supreme court's
2010 Citizens United decision, which held that the first amendment allowed unlimited political
spending by corporations and unions. That decision and other court rulings opened the floodgates
to individuals, corporations and unions writing unlimited checks to outside groups, both Super
Pacs and dark money outfits, which can directly promote federal candidates. Dark money spending
rose from just under $6m in 2006 to $131m in 2010 following the decision, according to the CRP.
Well, there you have it. In the USA you can actually buy yourself a president. But for Real! No
underhanded bribes, but openly buying. Would you like fries with that...? And here's the kicker
- Everyone, from media outlets all the way down to the 'person on the street' just accepts it
as is without any real protestations...
Learn how Citizens United has allowed Billionaires like the Koch's to rabble-rouse, whip into
a frenzy and influence one-half of America to vote against their own best interest!
For sale, cheap, one POTUS puppet, strings firmly attached. Keep the kiddies entertained,
good for four years worth of distraction.
ps
Where does most of the money, dark or obvious, go? Answer: The Main Stream Media (I include
the Guardian in this). Do you now understand why they're all having a bob-each-way? Morals, journalistic
integrity, decency or the welfare of the public be damned, it's raining wads of cash.
Until we have a system that makes sense, I guess we can only hope someone realizes that if they
just paid a reasonable tax rate it would cost them less than funding Super PACs. Then again, money
doesn't make you smart -- they just might spend a billion to save a million. Can we give crowd
sourcing political decisions a chance?
Because of the SCOTUS Citizens united decision, it is just fine to bribe politicians IN PUBLIC.
How could SCOTUS and the GOP do this to the United States. It is destroying our Democracy.
The undue influence of the rich over American politics is an absolute disgrace. How can those
who claim to be conservatives justify their destruction of democratic processes? They conserve
nothing but their own power. Traitors!
I'm afraid that the soul of America was lost with the scotus ruling. Corporations are just
that, corporations. They are not people. They already had a disproportionate say in politics because
of lobbying money.
Now the princes of darkness have descended on the land like perpetual night. Leaving the
populace longing for the light! The Kochs and their ilk are slaves to their ideology which is
to destroy the federal government, destroy all social safety net's, even privatize our military.
All this for the ideology of the extreme right wing corporate fascism.
Thank you, Peter Stone! So few Americans even know this is happening. Check this out...It will blow you away: 'Dark Money: Jane Mayer on How the Koch Bros. & Billionaire
Allies Funded the Rise of the Far Right' http://www.democracynow.org/2016/1/20/dark_money_jane_mayer_on_how
Please Wake Up America.....Citizens United is the Mirror Image of Dred Scott.
"Dred Scott turned people into property....Citizens United turned property into people."
One of the great sources of Trump's appeal has been the perception of his independence from
the Kochs and other corporate manipulators. If he gets the nomination, they will of course attempt
to co-opt him just as they did the tea party. It will be interesting to see how he responds.
The Kochs didn't co-opt the Tea Party--they created it. They brainstormed it, branded it,
funded it, propped it up, bought positive news coverage for it, and pulled its strings to keep
the GOP voting base at a full boil for the fall elections in 2010.
This was tactically necessary to enable them to take full advantage of the gorgeous opportunity
John Roberts had created for them earlier that spring with Citizens United, rushed through precisely
to help the oligarchs buy themselves Congress and as many state houses and governor's mansions
as they could reap.
Trump is a different matter. They can't invent Trump the same way they invented the so-called
Tea Party.
What they can do is flatter him and wheedle him and beguile him in hopes of making him more
receptive to little things like, for instance, their nominations to the federal bench.
This, given Trump's pathetic grasp of reality and his monumental ego, shouldn't actually prove
too complicated a feat for the Kochs and their worker bees to pull off.
After all, all Marla Maples had to do was say "Donald Trump--best sex I ever had" on Page 6
at the Post and she got to marry the schlub: the Kochs will surely be equally adept at figuring
out the wizened, soulless old billionaire version of this time-honored tactic.
The Donald is one of the oligarchs but with an immense ego. Instead of playing the political puppets
from behind the curtain as the Koch's do, he thought he'd become the puppet show himself.
An oligarch in politician's clothing attempting to persuade America that he's on our side.
How very Putinesque.
The best government money can buy...... Since the Supreme Court ruled unlimited corporate
bribes to politicians would be considered "free speech" in the eyes of the law, people lost any
chance they had of representation based on what's best for average citizen. It's -ALL- about big
money now, a literal Corporatocracy. The idea that government should be "Of the people, by the
people and for the people" is long lost, RIP.
Dark money = Corruption.....period..!!
Just because its not illegal doesn't make it right. What it is, is the continual demolition of
democracy in the US where whoever has the biggest cheque-book has an advantage over everyone else.
Totally wrong and the slippery slope to an end of 'government by the people'...
And the theft of the Presidency is underway.
Does anyone not think that allowing millions, even a billion dollars to be donated to campaigns
with the donor kept secret is a problem? Heck, foreign government can contribute to get the candidate that they want. So.......Who will be the one to kiss Koch butt?
Dark money cannot compete with the elephant on the block, the electorate.
If any one has the finances to buy the oval office and or Congress it is "citizens united" ten
dollars ahead should do it.
What you are failing to reckon with is the scale of their organization and its capacity. This
retreat probably has a trillion dollars backing it. That's a lot of high paying jobs...
If money didn't work, people would not be spending over a billon dollars on the election.
Of course money works. Think of it this way: The Koch brothers give almost a billion dollars to support most of the GOP candidates. Regardless
of who wins, they will be completely owned by the Koch brothers. It doesn't matter who you vote
for if they are all owned by Koch.
So, no, the power does NOT lie with the voters. SCOTUS has stolen our democracy and has given
it to the richest 100 people in the US.
And what you're failing to recognize is the scale and capacity of the internet--the people's MSM
and Super PAC. Whatever the outcome of this year's election, the Sanders' campaign is creating
the template by which guerrilla/insurgent campaigns will be modeled for the next 20 years or longer...depending
on if and when the Kochs et al finally get to end net neutrality.
Dark money - it's the undetectable dark matter of politics that bends and motivates political
stars to the black hole of government. Ordinary people can't detect it or see it, but it's effect
is to control the movement of money to the star clusters (otherwise known as tax havens).
The Kochs are concentrating on State legislatures, the key to amending the Constitution.
By the time they're finished, the President will have less power than the Queen.
These people laugh in the face of democracy.
I like particularly this quote - if I remember it correctly - by Lily Tomlin:
"The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat."
The pendulum has swung too far - the rich are too rich, and the poor are too poor. The Emperor we have been told has beautiful clothes will soon be found to have none.
I'm a U.S. citizen, and I don't know because I stopped watching U.S. "news" although I'm not
sure how much better The Guardian is the people in comments seem a tad nicer better grammar
and spelling did I answer the questions? Oh, a butterfly!
Good--let them blow billions (more) attacking Clinton; it'll only be more delicious when they
find out they should have spent it against Sanders. You better hope Clinton wins IA big, because
if she doesn't, she just might jump-start the process by which she loses the nomination. Like
last time.
Several Koch network donors have voiced strong concerns about the rise of Trump, raising doubts
about his conservative bona fides and his angry anti-immigrant rhetoric, which they fear could
hurt efforts by the Koch network and the Republican party to appeal to Hispanics and minorities.
I wonder if they also worry about their lavishly-funded support of theocratic loudmouth Republican
lunatics such as Tom Cotton, Sam Brownback and Joni Ernst potentially alienating moderate Christians
or, heaven (literally) forbid, non-believers?
Don't let nobody give your guns to shoot down your own brother Don't let nobody give your bombs to blow down my sweet mother
Tell me are you really feeling sweet when you sit down to eat You eating blood money you spending blood money
You think you're funny living off blood money https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anjkSBQDRjc
Its funny to see them without Trump. You are so mesmerised by Trump and his hair that you
haven't
noticed what an incredibly weird looking bunch the rest are. Not that it matters given Bernie
will *ump them all anyway -- :)
"Several Republican congressional incumbents and candidates facing tough races are slated to attend
the Koch retreat this weekend, and, if recent history is a guide, are expecting to gain support
from Koch-backed dark money groups." * For some reason I'm reminded of the opening scene of The Godfather where supplicants meet with
Don Corleone and present their requests on the occasion of his daughter's wedding, kissing his
hand at the end.
That's exactly what it is. The Koch Brothers will own most of the GOP politicians. It doesn't
matter which one you vote for because that person will likely be owned by Koch and will do their
bidding.
Or that famous Apalachin, NY, meeting of the five families in 1957. One difference: I bet the FBI won't be raiding the Koch compound, forcing all the big dogs
to flee into the woods. More likely, the feds will be providing protection, writing down the license plate numbers
of everyone who might object to billionaires dividing up their 'turf' in America.
"... One of the more encouraging (?) developments in Acceptable American Discourse over the last five years or so has been the gradual acceptance, even among Serious Media Outlets, that American voters no longer have any real control over their own government, and more broadly, their collective destiny. ..."
"... In April 2014, Princeton University published a study which found that "economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence." ..."
"... There's the one we elect, and then there's the one behind it, steering huge swaths of policy almost unchecked. Elected officials end up serving as mere cover for the real decisions made by the bureaucracy. ..."
"... "We've become now an oligarchy instead of a democracy. And I think that's been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards of the American political system that I've ever seen in my life," the 90-year-old former president told Winfrey. ..."
"... And given the fact that people would rather know about Kim Kardashian than what makes up the budget or what the government is doing in Mali or Sudan or other unknown places, this is what you get: a disconnected, self-serving bureaucracy that is simply evolving to do what it's doing now. That is, to maintain and enhance its own power. ..."
"... The key institutions are exactly what people would think they are. The military-industrial complex; the Pentagon and all their contractors (but also, now, our entire homeland security apparatus); the Department of Treasury; the Justice Department; certain courts, like the southern district of Manhattan, and the eastern district of Virginia; the FISA courts. ..."
"... It is a complex mechanism, a take-over of key positions within the US power structure, a corporate government mix where the US "government" mission is to advocate, promote, and defend corporate interests worldwide. ..."
"... US National Security Strategy embodies those corporate interests and unfolds them into specific goals and objectives to be attained by means of foreign and domestic policies that "presidents" and other figureheads sell at home and abroad. ..."
"... @15 This is excuse making for falling for Obama who openly admired Reagan, claimed the right to bomb anything anywhere without working with local governments, surrounded himself with pigs, and even denounced Moveon for their ad about Petraeus. ..."
"... The system is totally corrupt. If you make it to Congress, you've got favors to pay back. If you don't work for the corporate interests (already aligned with deep state) you won't get the money to run a second term. Some other craven asshole will take your job whether you want it (by demonstrating total acquiescence) or not (by trying to be Mr.Smith in Washington). ..."
"... The very best thing about Donald Trump, is that he is an outsider - particularly when compared with the other contestants whom are machine politicians (corrupted in the system). BTW, Bernie is full of shit (as is Trump). ..."
"... Jimmy Carter seems like a real nice fellow. It should be remembered, however, that Brzezinski was Carter's National Security Adviser. Now that was probably the deep state hanging that albatross around ol' Peanut Boy's neck (as a minder, perhaps). In any case, Carter didn't do anything to stop that son of a bitch from his evil doings in Afghanistan. ..."
"... "You are soldiers of god. Your cause is right and god is on your side". - Brzezinski addressing the Mujahideen. ..."
"... Jane Mayers new book says Koch Brothers father built a major oil refinery for Hilter ..."
"... Ms. Mayer, a staff writer at The New Yorker, presents the Kochs and other families as the hidden and self-interested hands behind the rise and growth of the modern conservative movement. Philanthropists and political donors who poured hundreds of millions of dollars into think tanks, political organizations and scholarships, they helped win acceptance for anti-government and anti-tax policies that would protect their businesses and personal fortunes, she writes, all under the guise of promoting the public interest. ..."
"... The Kochs, the Scaifes, the Bradleys and the DeVos family of Michigan "were among a small, rarefied group of hugely wealthy, archconservative families that for decades poured money, often with little public disclosure, into influencing how the Americans thought and voted," the book says. ..."
"... You can't run a campaign to be elected President of the United States unless you can tap into billionaires who are willing to hand over $100 millions to your campaign. ..."
"... This is part of the reason why Trump is causing so much mayhem: he is a candidate who already has those $billions, and so he isn't beholden to anyone but himself and his own whacky ideas. ..."
"... Deep down I suspect that this is why he is the Republican frontrunner i.e. deep down Mr Joe Average knows that his "democracy" has been hijacked out from underneath him, so he is receptive to Trump's dogwhistle. ..."
"... The DS vetted Ike and discovered that he looked up to corporate CEOs and Wall Street financiers and their lawyers, he was sympathetic to those he fantasized as captains of industry and looked upon success as a marker of steady men, those of his imagined deep state. ..."
"... Ike bought the 'What's good for GM is good for the country' line, just as Engine Charley Wilson did. No need to assassinate Ike. ..."
For all of those who keep on arguing about the benefits of one US candidate over the other,
they could save their energy for more constructive efforts.
One of the more encouraging (?) developments in Acceptable American Discourse over the
last five years or so has been the gradual acceptance, even among Serious Media Outlets, that
American voters no longer have any real control over their own government, and more broadly,
their collective destiny.
In April 2014, Princeton University published a study which found that "economic elites
and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on
US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or
no independent influence."
Then in October of the same year, a Tufts University professor published a devastating critique
of the current state of American democracy, "National Security and Double Government," which
catalogs the ways that the defense and national security apparatus is effectively self-governing,
with virtually no accountability, transparency, or checks and balances of any kind. He uses
the term "double government":
There's the one we elect, and then there's the one behind
it, steering huge swaths of policy almost unchecked. Elected officials end up serving as mere
cover for the real decisions made by the bureaucracy.
The Boston Globe's write-up of the book was accompanied by the brutal headline, "Vote all
you want. The secret government won't change." Imagine a headline like that during the Hope
and Change craze of 2008. Yeah, you can't. Because nobody's that imaginative.
Yes, people are beginning to smell the rot - even people who watch television in hopes of
not having to confront the miserable reality that awaits them once they turn off their 36-inch
flatscreens. In September, Jimmy Carter warned Oprah Winfrey:
"We've become now an oligarchy instead of a democracy. And I think that's been the
worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards of the American political system that
I've ever seen in my life," the 90-year-old former president told Winfrey.
The live audience were probably hoping for free Oprah cars. Instead, an ex-president told
them that their democracy is in the gutter. What a bummer.
The latest canary in the coal mine is none other than ex-longtime GOP staffer turned best-selling
author Mike Lofgren, whose new book, "The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the
Rise of a Shadow Government," confirms what is already painfully apparent:
The deep state has created so many contradictions in this country. You have this enormous
disparity of rich and poor; and you have this perpetual war, even though we're braying about
freedom. We have a surveillance state, and we talk about freedom. We have internal contradictions.
Who knows what this will fly into? It may collapse like the Soviet Union; or it might go
into fascism with a populist camouflage.
Some excerpts from Salon's recent interview with Lofgren:
On how the deep state operates:
Well, first of all,
it is not a conspiracy. It is something that operates in broad daylight.
It is not a conspiratorial cabal. These are simply people who have evolved [into] a kind
of position. It is in their best interest to act in this way.
And given the fact that people would rather know about Kim Kardashian than what makes
up the budget or what the government is doing in Mali or Sudan or other unknown places, this
is what you get: a disconnected, self-serving bureaucracy that is simply evolving to do what
it's doing now. That is, to maintain and enhance its own power.
On who (and what) is part of the deep state:
The key institutions are exactly what people would think they are. The military-industrial
complex; the Pentagon and all their contractors (but also, now, our entire homeland security
apparatus); the Department of Treasury; the Justice Department; certain courts, like the southern
district of Manhattan, and the eastern district of Virginia; the FISA courts.
And you
got this kind of rump Congress that consists of certain people in the leadership, defense and
intelligence committees who kind of know what's going on. The rest of Congress doesn't really
know or care; they're too busy looking about the next election.
Lofgren goes on to explain that the private sector works hand-in-hand with the deep state,
regardless of which "party" is in power. According to Lofgren, "There are definable differences
between Bush and Obama. However, the differences are so constrained. They're not between the
40-yard lines; they are between the 48-yard lines."
Of course, millions of Americans will still enjoy rooting for the candidate whom they would
most enjoy drinking Bud Lite Lime with, but probably deep in their hearts they all know they're
doomed.
@12, Only a coward would submit to such a threat, instead of regarding it as a challenge to be
defied. If the worst came to the worst, one would at least have died heroically. And such a president,
if he did die, could have taken steps before he died to make sure the public would learn how and
why he died. So it would not be a death without purpose.
How does the deep state ensure that only cowards become president?
@10 Blackmail?
Don't know if true but I remember reading something to the effect that after Obama was sworn in,
he met with Bush sr. and co who told him that he now worked for them with threats to his family
if he wouldn't submit..
What is the mechanism that forces American presidents to go along with what the deep state
decides?
It is a complex mechanism, a take-over of key positions within the US power structure,
a corporate government mix where the US "government" mission is to advocate, promote, and defend
corporate interests worldwide.
US National Security Strategy embodies those corporate interests and unfolds them into
specific goals and objectives to be attained by means of foreign and domestic policies that "presidents"
and other figureheads sell at home and abroad.
@15 This is excuse making for falling for Obama who openly admired Reagan, claimed the
right to bomb anything anywhere without working with local governments, surrounded himself with
pigs, and even denounced Moveon for their ad about Petraeus.
People hate being conned more than con men, and they concoct rationalizations for being duped
that often defy logic.
@10 'What is the mechanism that forces American presidents to go along with what the deep state
decides?'
1. DS vets prospective candidates beforehand, only allowing candidates aligned with deep state
authorities to begin with.
2. DS doesn't make the payoff until successful applicants have left office with an 'acceptable'
record.
3. Assassination is always an option in extreme cases, real or imagined.
The system is totally corrupt. If you make it to Congress, you've got favors to pay back.
If you don't work for the corporate interests (already aligned with deep state) you won't get
the money to run a second term. Some other craven asshole will take your job whether you want
it (by demonstrating total acquiescence) or not (by trying to be Mr.Smith in Washington).
Now, if you want to be President, you've got to have "experience" in Congress or in state gubmint.
The very best thing about Donald Trump, is that he is an outsider - particularly when compared
with the other contestants whom are machine politicians (corrupted in the system). BTW, Bernie
is full of shit (as is Trump).
That is a very good explanation of 'Deep State'. My only caveat is that it doesn't completely
describe the oligarchy because it leaves out the corporate component. When money became speech
a huge mountain of power devolved to the rich. They'd always had clout as the graphs describing
the separation of the rich from the not-so-well off and the rest of us have made clear - but now
the ugly truth is unavoidable and it all goes together to produce what President Carter described.
Jimmy Carter seems like a real nice fellow. It should be remembered, however, that Brzezinski
was Carter's National Security Adviser. Now that was probably the deep state hanging that albatross
around ol' Peanut Boy's neck (as a minder, perhaps). In any case, Carter didn't do anything to
stop that son of a bitch from his evil doings in Afghanistan.
"You are soldiers of god. Your cause is right and god is on your side". - Brzezinski addressing
the Mujahideen.
Jane Mayers new book says Koch Brothers father built a major oil refinery for Hilter
... It looks to be another corker ...
Ms. Mayer, a staff writer at The New Yorker, presents the Kochs and other families as the
hidden and self-interested hands behind the rise and growth of the modern conservative movement.
Philanthropists and political donors who poured hundreds of millions of dollars into think
tanks, political organizations and scholarships, they helped win acceptance for anti-government
and anti-tax policies that would protect their businesses and personal fortunes, she writes,
all under the guise of promoting the public interest.
The Kochs, the Scaifes, the Bradleys and the DeVos family of Michigan "were among a
small, rarefied group of hugely wealthy, archconservative families that for decades poured
money, often with little public disclosure, into influencing how the Americans thought and
voted," the book says.
Many of the families owned businesses that clashed with environmental or workplace regulators,
come under federal or state investigation, or waged battles over their tax bills with the Internal
Revenue Service, Ms. Mayer reports. The Kochs' vast political network, a major force in Republican
politics today, was "originally designed as a means of off-loading the costs of the Koch Industries
environmental and regulatory fights onto others" by persuading other rich business owners to
contribute to Koch-controlled political groups, Ms. Mayer writes, citing an associate of the
two brothers.
@10 "What is the mechanism that forces American presidents to go along with what the deep state
decides?"
Money.
You can't run a campaign to be elected President of the United States unless you can tap
into billionaires who are willing to hand over $100 millions to your campaign.
Without that largess you are not going to get elected, and people who have $billions are
the going to be the very same people who make up the Deep State.
So you either get with the program or you get.... nothing. Not a cent. Not a hope.
This is part of the reason why Trump is causing so much mayhem: he is a candidate who already
has those $billions, and so he isn't beholden to anyone but himself and his own whacky ideas.
Deep down I suspect that this is why he is the Republican frontrunner i.e. deep down Mr
Joe Average knows that his "democracy" has been hijacked out from underneath him, so he is receptive
to Trump's dogwhistle.
Which, basically, is this: why are you bothering with any of these chattering monkeys? Their
votes will end up belonging to people like me anyway, so you may as well just cut out the middle-man.
The Devil's Chessboard. Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government
, chapter 10
Eisenhower's innate midwestern sense of decency initially made him recoil from backing Britain's
colonial siege of Iran. He rebuffed the Dulles brothers' advice, suggesting that it might be
a better idea to stabilize Mossadegh's government with a $100 million loan than to topple it.
If Eisenhower had followed through on his original instincts, the bedeviled history of U.S.-Iran
relations would undoubtedly have taken a far different course.
Realizing that Eisenhower was not inclined to defend British imperial interests, the Dulles
brothers reframed their argument for intervention in Cold War terms. On March 4, 1953, Allen
appeared at a National Security Council meeting in the White House armed with seven pages of
alarming talking points. Iran was confronted with "a maturing revolutionary set-up," he warned,
and if the country fell into Communist hands, 60 percent of the free world's oil would be controlled
by Moscow. Oil and gasoline would have to be rationed at home, and U.S. military operations
would have to be curtailed.
In truth, the global crisis over Iran was not a Cold War conflict but a struggle "between
imperialism and nationalism, between First and Third Worlds, between North and South, between
developed industrial economies and underdeveloped countries dependent on exporting raw materials,"
in the words of Ervand Abrahamian.
The author pours it on thick with zero references but, overall ...
1.
The DS vetted Ike and discovered that he looked up to corporate CEOs and Wall Street
financiers and their lawyers, he was sympathetic to those he fantasized as captains of industry
and looked upon success as a marker of steady men, those of his imagined deep state.
2. Ike came cheap. He felt it was his duty to help out if the people he looked up to thought
he was the right man at the right time.
3.
Ike bought the 'What's good for GM is good for the country' line, just as Engine Charley
Wilson did. No need to assassinate Ike.
The DS uses the same M.O. ... O tempora, o mores ... mutatis mutandis.
Triangulation is the term given to the act of a political candidate presenting their ideology
as being above or between the left and right sides (or "wings") of a traditional (e.g. American or British)
democratic political spectrum. It involves adopting for oneself some of the ideas of one's political
opponent. The logic behind it is that it both takes credit for the opponent's ideas, and insulates the
triangulator from attacks on that particular issue.
Notable quotes:
"... women's issues, LGBT issues, gun issues but anything that involves economics ..."
"... It's like having a serial killer come out in support of you. ..."
"... These pols have played very successfully on out-groups' fear that their hold on legitimacy and power is fragile. ..."
"... I understand that, but there is something in psychology called "shared distinctiveness". LGBT groups are uniquely distinctive just as corrupt politicians are uniquely distinctive. And the more I see corrupt politicians talking about the importance of LGBT issues, etc, the more the two are starting to go together in my head. ..."
"... As I said that's not a rational process, but it's real. The mental connections that are formed mean that whenever I see LGBT activities/people/whatever I immediately think of all the corrupt politicians they're in bed with, and a lot of that aura of corruption brushes off on them. ..."
"... Lindsey Graham is a fine example .. ..."
"... Feminist concerns are not in themselves corrupt, but what the Dem party peddles is tame, second wave weak sauce feminism of the Betty Friedan kind. Basically, "middle class housewives are oppressed by being withdrawn from equity within the workplace," which was even criticized at the time (notably by Germaine Greer) ..."
"... the DCCC's take that you can be liberal on "social" issues while hard right on political economy is not at all in line with contemporary feminist thinking, which holds, more or less, that the economy is a social issue just like reproductive rights, workplace equity, etc. ..."
"... Hillary is a woman despite Hillary losing young women in 2008. ..."
"... Your assessment is more spot on, perhaps, given we can't even get Dems to commit to something as broadly popular as paid family leave. ..."
"... Unfortunately, its become part of the professional centre-left playbook around the world – you see it in many countries. Genuflecting to identity politics has become like right wing politicians pretending to be religious. ..."
"... Its a classic bait and switch move, but it also reflects a professional political class who have completely lost contact with their supposed base. I've met left wing activists who genuinely saw it as something more important than, say, protecting benefits for the poor. ..."
"... Unfortunately, its become part of the professional centre-left playbook around the world – you see it in many countries. Genuflecting to identity politics has become like right wing politicians pretending to be religious. ..."
"... They crunched the polling numbers, and strategised that they could replace them with the one big cohort that pollsters said were 'unclaimed' by other parties – working educated females 25-45. So they quite deliberately refocused their policies from representing working class and poorer people, to focusing on progressive-lite policies. fortunately, it seems that most working educated females 25-45 are too smart to fall for the cynicism, most polls indicate they will be wiped out in the next election. ..."
"... I do see signs of political awakening around the Western world, including here in the epicenter of the neoliberal infestation. ..."
"... Bill Clinton proved how profitable triangulation can be, and Obama followed that model from even before taking his first oath as President in January, 2009. ..."
"... Bill Clinton proved how profitable triangulation can be, and Obama followed that model from even before taking his first oath as President in January, 2009. ..."
"... Bernie Sanders isn't perfect, but he's so much better than Hillary in every way. ..."
"... I don't think the the neolib Dems (aka DLC Dems) want to win full control of the federal government. They want the presidency and only one of the two houses of Congress. This allows them to remain on the money train while blaming the Republicans for their inability to pass progressive legislation which pisses off their paymasters. ..."
"... What drives me crazy about Hillary (though it can easily be extended to other Dems) is all her talk of women, children, gun control, and LGBT rights (remember her tweet when gay marriage was legalised) while as SofS she approved arms deals to Saudi Arabia and the Clinton Slush Foundation took donations from it - surely one of the most despotic, anti-women, anti-LGBT regimes in the world. Not to mention the ongoing US-supported Saudi genocide in Yemen. ..."
"... Hey Team Bernie, in the next debate, if HRC brings up control, just have Bernie quietly but clearly say something like: "Forgive me Madame Secretary, but HOW DARE YOU criticise me on gun control when you were responsible for blowing up Libya and shipping arms to ISIS?" ..."
"... Also re guns and politics, if he can win the nomination, Sanders' position will help him in rural states. I have never seen a national politician address the differing needs between working people who feed their families with the help of a deer or two vs urban people whose primary concern is gang violence. All we hear is pro or anti gun and people have trouble imagining each others circumstances. ..."
"... She keeps getting re-elected because of weak opposition and a complicit local media. ..."
"... And all that cash she gets from the people she sells out to. ..."
"... And if she loses in the primary, so what? As far as I can tell, the head of the DNC does not have to be an elected official still in office. She of course is a "superdelegate," and under DNC rules, wiki reports that "The chairperson is a superdelegate for life." ..."
"... Isn't a name missing from the above rogue's gallery: Nancy Pelosi. If I'm not mistaken DWS was a bit of a protege. ..."
"... Obama's name is missing. He's the one who picked her to head the DNC. ..."
"... Obama never gets blamed for anything. Keep your fingerprints off and find a villain to blame instead. That's Obama's modus operandi and it's worked his entire life. He is beyond Teflon. ..."
"... Great news! How do you get rid of neolib DLC-machine third-way triangulating Dems? One seat at a time. ..."
An Axis of Evil inside the Democratic Party is suddenly on the defensive. Steve Israel was
forced to announce an early retirement for reasons
that are still murky . Rahm Emanuel can barely show his face in Chicago and, with the exception
of Hillary Clinton, all his cronies and allies are
jumping off that sinking ship . And now it's
looking like Debbie Wasserman Schultz's rotten self-serving career is finally catching up with her.
As we mentioned, Tuesday, Roots Action has a petition
drive to force her out of the DNC - with over 30,000 signatures already. And then yesterday,
CREDO launched another petition
drive to get her out of a position she never should have been in in the first place. I don't
like signing petitions but I eagerly signed both of these. The Democratic Party will never be a force
for real progressive change with careerist power mongers like Steve Israel, Rahm Emanuel, Debbie
Wasserman Schultz and Chuck Schumer controlling it.
...There aren't that many Democrats as transactional as Debbie Wasserman Schultz when it comes
to serving the interests of the wealthy people who have financed her political rise, from the
sugar barons and
private prison industry to the
alcohol distillers .
...Wasserman Schultz's support for the dysfunctional corporate trade agreements like TPP very
much motivated Canova to make the difficult decision to take on one of the House's most vicious gutter
fighters. "People are just tired of being sold out by calculating and triangulating politicians,"
told us back in October when he was thinking about running. "Wasserman Schultz has become the ultimate
machine politician. While she stakes out liberal positions on culture war issues, when it comes to
economic and social issues, she's too often with the corporate elites. On too many crucial issues–
from fast-tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership to the war on drugs and medical marijuana and mass
incarceration, to her support for budget sequestrations and austerity– Wasserman Schultz votes down
the line with big corporate interests and cartels: Wall Street banks and hedge funds, Big Pharma,
the private health insurers, private prisons, Monsanto, it goes on and on."
women's issues, LGBT issues, gun issues but anything that involves economics
This is important. Initially I started out not having much of an opinion on LGBT and women's
issues. However, the more I saw corrupt neoliberal politicians advocating for these issues (wasn't
Obama trying to make Lloyd Blankfein the ambassador for LGBT issues or something a couple of years
ago?) the more I started associating them with corruption and evil.
This isn't rational at all, but whenever I see HRC or Obama advocating for some particular
culture war issue, the more I despise the groups and causes they're advocating for and the more
I want to fight against them. Why aren't these people in the LGBT and women communities vocally
and continually disowning these corrupt politicians? It's like having a serial killer come
out in support of you.
These pols have played very successfully on out-groups' fear that their hold on legitimacy
and power is fragile. That is particularly true with gay men, who outside a handful of big
cities, face open discrimination and risk of physical harm.
I understand that, but there is something in psychology called "shared distinctiveness".
LGBT groups are uniquely distinctive just as corrupt politicians are uniquely distinctive. And
the more I see corrupt politicians talking about the importance of LGBT issues, etc, the more
the two are starting to go together in my head.
As I said that's not a rational process, but it's real. The mental connections that are
formed mean that whenever I see LGBT activities/people/whatever I immediately think of all the
corrupt politicians they're in bed with, and a lot of that aura of corruption brushes off on them.
Feminist concerns are not in themselves corrupt, but what the Dem party peddles is tame,
second wave weak sauce feminism of the Betty Friedan kind. Basically, "middle class housewives
are oppressed by being withdrawn from equity within the workplace," which was even criticized
at the time (notably by Germaine Greer) .
bell hooks, on the other hand, doesn't mince words at all, when she shows how questions of
racial and gender oppression are expressly linked to economics/class and militarism. You can't
tackle any of them without tackling all of them, so the DCCC's take that you can be liberal
on "social" issues while hard right on political economy is not at all in line with contemporary
feminist thinking, which holds, more or less, that the economy is a social issue just like reproductive
rights, workplace equity, etc.
I wouldn't even say Team Blue is there. Pelosi and other prominent Team Blue women held a mock
panel to get to the bottom of why Rush Limbaugh was mean to a Georgetown Law school student who
was photogenic. This has been the sum total of Team Blue's defense of feminism since GDub except
to cynically conclude young women will rush to Team Blue because Hillary is a woman despite
Hillary losing young women in 2008.
Your assessment is more spot on, perhaps, given we can't even get Dems to commit to something
as broadly popular as paid family leave.
That said, I've noticed a denigrating tone directed toward what gets labeled as "identity politics"
of late, and I just wanted to make clear that current proponents of things like critical race
theory and what have you are more in line with the NC commentariat than I think people give them
credit for.
Unfortunately, its become part of the professional centre-left playbook around the world
– you see it in many countries. Genuflecting to identity politics has become like right wing politicians
pretending to be religious. Here in Ireland the Irish Labour party, in coalition with a centre
right party, used up every bit of political credit they had to push for gay marriage. Like most
people I was very happy it was legalised, but they were patting themselves on the back for this
while simultaneously supporting vicious austerity.
Its a classic bait and switch move, but it also reflects a professional political class
who have completely lost contact with their supposed base. I've met left wing activists who genuinely
saw it as something more important than, say, protecting benefits for the poor.
Unfortunately, its become part of the professional centre-left playbook around the world
– you see it in many countries. Genuflecting to identity politics has become like right wing politicians
pretending to be religious.
I think the explanation is quite simple, at least in the U.S. (which has effectively exported
its political dysfunction to other developed democracies). When the Washington Consenusus formed
around corporatism (neoliberalism for the Democrats, conservatism/economic libertarianism for
the Republicans), there was no longer meaningful economic distinction between the parties. So
culture war/identity politics issues are all that remain for brand differentiation. Obama's recent
Academy Award performance on guns is a harbinger of how the Democrats will run in 2016 if Clinton
is the nominee. Plus Planned Parenthood and gay marriage and a few additional poll-tested non-economic
issues that the professionals calculate will garner marginally more votes than they will cost.
If the Democrats here truly wanted to win they would nominate Bernie Sanders and run on the wildly-popular
platform of economic populism. (I'd say this is probably true in Britain with Corbyn and Labour
as well, and probably in France and Italy as well, where the nominal leftists parties have been
infected by neoliberalism.) It seems clear at this point that the Democratic Party is more committed
to Wall Street than it is to the middle class, and is quite prepared to lose political power to
keep its place at the financial trough. Obama's reign is solid evidence and the fact that Clinton
remains the frontrunner and the establishment's darling shows they are doubling down, not changing
course.
You are quite right in what you say, even if the processes are slightly different in every
country. In the UK in particular, I think there is a huge problem with the Labour Party in that
it was effectively taken over by middle class left wing student activist types who have only the
most theoretical notion how poor or working class people live. It is inevitable that they start
to reinterpret 'left wing' and 'liberal' in a manner which suits the people they socialise with.
I.e. seeing social progressivism as far more important than economic justice.
Back in the 1990's I shared a house in London with a lawyer who qualified in Oxford – many
of her friends were the first generation of Blairites. They were intelligent, enthusiastic and
genuinely passionate about change. But talking to them it was glaringly obvious the only connection
they had with 'ordinary' people was when they first had to canvass on the streets. I remember
one young woman expressing horror at the potential constituent who came and insisted that she
sort out her welfare entitlements, because thats what a politician is supposed to do. She had
simply never met someone from the 'underclass' if you want to put it that way. It was all too
obvious that people like her would shift rapidly to the right as soon as they achieved power,
they had no real empathy or feel for regular people.
In my own country, in Ireland, it is far more cynical. Its no secret that the traditional main
centre left party, Labour, realised it would lose its core working class base if it supported
austerity. They crunched the polling numbers, and strategised that they could replace them
with the one big cohort that pollsters said were 'unclaimed' by other parties – working educated
females 25-45. So they quite deliberately refocused their policies from representing working class
and poorer people, to focusing on progressive-lite policies. fortunately, it seems that most working
educated females 25-45 are too smart to fall for the cynicism, most polls indicate they will be
wiped out in the next election.
it seems that most working educated females 25-45 are too smart to fall for the cynicism,
most polls indicate they will be wiped out in the next election
I do see signs of political awakening around the Western world, including here in the epicenter
of the neoliberal infestation. Can the forces of reform win? Can the people take control
of the political systems back from the plutocrats? Can they do it in time to avoid catastrophic
global warming and socially-destructive wealth inequality? We'll see.
Bill Clinton proved how profitable triangulation can be, and Obama followed that model
from even before taking his first oath as President in January, 2009.
Bernie Sanders isn't perfect, but he's so much better than Hillary in every way.
Bill Clinton proved how profitable triangulation can be, and Obama followed that model
from even before taking his first oath as President in January, 2009.
True, but there is one glaring difference between the 90s and today. In the 90s one could make
a plausible if not persuasive case that the electorate did not want economic populism and was
content with the Third Way's neoliberal economic royalism. So, Bill Clinton's "triangulation"
was actually designed to secure votes and win elections (as well as pad Clinton's pockets, of
course.). Today, things are very different, with the people since 2007 overwhelmingly clamoring
for economic populism but the Democrats refusing to provide it and indeed castigating
those who want the party to turn left.
Bernie Sanders isn't perfect, but he's so much better than Hillary in every way.
No doubt. And I am very pleased to say that I appear to have been wrong in thinking that Sanders
was fading. I'm not saying Sanders will win, but it looks to me like he may stick around long
enough for Hillary to (very possibly) implode, since she is and always has been a bad politician.
"If the Democrats here truly wanted to win they would nominate Bernie Sanders and run on
the wildly-popular platform of economic populism."
I don't think the the neolib Dems (aka DLC Dems) want to win full control of the federal
government. They want the presidency and only one of the two houses of Congress. This allows them
to remain on the money train while blaming the Republicans for their inability to pass progressive
legislation which pisses off their paymasters.
What drives me crazy about Hillary (though it can easily be extended to other Dems) is
all her talk of women, children, gun control, and LGBT rights (remember her tweet when gay marriage
was legalised) while as SofS she approved arms deals to Saudi Arabia and the Clinton Slush Foundation
took donations from it - surely one of the most despotic, anti-women, anti-LGBT regimes in the
world. Not to mention the ongoing US-supported Saudi genocide in Yemen.
So I guess HRC and the others think Americans need all these rights but people in the Mideast
can just go stuff themselves. Because, you know, ISIS, and TERRORISM, and OIL and arms sales.
Why the fsck doesn't Bernie point out these contradictions? Hillary apparently is blaming him
for being "weak on gun control" while she has been a member of one of the most militaristic, bombing-and-droning
administrations since, well, George W. Bush's.
Hey Team Bernie, in the next debate, if HRC brings up control, just have Bernie quietly
but clearly say something like: "Forgive me Madame Secretary, but HOW DARE YOU criticise me on
gun control when you were responsible for blowing up Libya and shipping arms to ISIS?"
Also re guns and politics, if he can win the nomination, Sanders' position will help him
in rural states. I have never seen a national politician address the differing needs between working
people who feed their families with the help of a deer or two vs urban people whose primary concern
is gang violence. All we hear is pro or anti gun and people have trouble imagining each others
circumstances.
DWS is my Congressperson. She is adored by elderly Jewish women, reluctantly accepted by Democrats
(an overwhelming majority in her District), and loathed by all others. Whenever she appears on
local or national TV, she regurgitates an obvious rote memorized list of talking points that she
refuses to stray from. She will never engage in a true debate, and avoids answering any substantive
questions. She keeps getting re-elected because of weak opposition and a complicit local media.
I'm thrilled that there is a candidate that could derail her.
Readers should be aware that some years back a local politician used her picture as a target
at a local gun range. There was considerable uproar in the media, somewhat offset by a cottage
industry providing actual pictures of her superimposed over a standard target.
when she says it's more important for her to be in a leadership position fighting for
a public plan than it is to make a commitment to vote against a bill that doesn't have one,
I think that's a luxury she can afford:
DWS: I'm planning to reform for a health care reform plan that includes a robust public
option.
Mike Stark: Those are we're calling them "weasel words" over at FDL just because it does
give you a huge loophole to back out of .
DWS: Well I'm not someone who draws lines in the sand.
And if she loses in the primary, so what? As far as I can tell, the head of the DNC does
not have to be an elected official still in office. She of course is a "superdelegate," and under
DNC rules, wiki reports that "The chairperson is a superdelegate for life."
Wiki also reports that the DNC plays no role in "policy." Just writes the platform every so
often. Really?
While they live, they rule, and to re-coin an old legal chestnut, we have buried the Rulers
we unelect, but they rule us from their graves
Obama never gets blamed for anything. Keep your fingerprints off and find a villain to
blame instead. That's Obama's modus operandi and it's worked his entire life. He is beyond Teflon.
Part of that strategy seems to be a definite preference for staying ignorant and uninformed.
How many times has he claimed not to be aware of something going on until it's in the MSM? Of
course hard to keep up when one is on the golf course so much of the time.
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
Ph.D
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But
there was a similar discussion in the 1950s and 1960s, which I'm old enough to remember, about why
the 
A
scene from "Dr. Strangelove," in which the bomber pilot (played by actor Slim Pickens) rides a
nuclear bomb to its target in the Soviet Union.
While we would be the first
to admit that Jeffrey Sachs was the godfather of "shock therapy" (aka "the economic rape of Russia"
and several other xUSSR republics), he is right as for the ongoing Syria bloodbath which has come to
define the geopolitical situation for the past 3 years. And how this is an event that would "surely
rival Watergate in shaking the foundations of the US establishment" if the truth were fully known, we
agree 100 percent. 