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[Aug 02, 2020] Antifa and the mega rich and wall street tycoon money

Aug 02, 2020 | www.unz.com

Justvisiting , says: August 1, 2020 at 2:42 pm GMT

@Hossein ="https://www.ammoland.com/2020/06/antifa-osint-profile-violent-leftist-group-part-1/"> https://www.ammoland.com/2020/06/antifa-osint-profile-violent-leftist-group-part-1/
https://www.ammoland.com/2017/06/antifa-profile-radical-left-anarchist-group-part-2/
https://www.ammoland.com/2017/07/antifa-osint-profile-leaders-weaknesses-exposed-part-3/

Part 3 follows the mega rich and wall street tycoon money ..

[Aug 02, 2020] Some of Antifa fighters can be the most disgusting racists in the world.

Aug 02, 2020 | www.unz.com

Malla , says: August 1, 2020 at 1:26 pm GMT

@Trinity

Some of these Bolsheviks can be the most disgusting racists in the world. Some months back, a bunch of anti-fa criminal baffoons attacked two Hispanics, who they mistook to be members of the Conservative group 'The Proud Boys' and called them spics and beaners. So much for anti-racism.

[Jul 30, 2020] The facts are almost irrelevant. We're dealing with faith, religious ecstasy. We're in the midst of BLMania by Gregory Hood

Notable quotes:
"... The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind ..."
"... Black Panther ..."
"... Black Is King ..."
"... White Fragility ..."
"... The Invention of the Jewish People ..."
"... sanctum sanctorum ..."
Jul 29, 2020 | www.unz.com

Feelings don't care about facts. The mass hysteria that's gripped the Western world after the death of George Floyd can't be explained in rational terms. Police are shooting fewer unarmed black men each year, and most of the shootings are justified. Police are more likely to shoot a non-threatening white than a non-threatening black. In the Floyd case specifically, there's nothing that shows racial bias by police officers, and Floyd was on drugs and resisting arrest . Minneapolis police procedure allowed neck pressure in some circumstances. Former police officer Derek Chauvin's conduct wasn't extraordinary. But the facts are almost irrelevant. We're dealing with faith , religious ecstasy. We're in the midst of BLMania.

Collective frenzies aren't new. Almost every American knows about the Salem witch trials, during which Christians claimed they saw demons and devils. Evil had to be rooted out, whatever the cost. Arthur Miller's fictional re-telling in The Crucible , originally meant to criticize McCarthyism, now reads like a satire of SJWs .

In 1536, Anabaptists took over Münster, Germany, and tried to establish a divine kingdom. Would-be prophet Jan Matthys cannot have been a charlatan; he must have believed he was chosen by God, because he rode out almost by himself to attack a besieging army. He was instantly killed, but that didn't shake the faith of his followers. In 1917, hundreds of people in Fátima, Portugal, claimed they saw the sun dance in the sky. The Catholic Church, which often debunks alleged visions and miracles, declared this "worthy of belief."

Still, because of the doctrine of Original Sin and man's fallen nature, Christians are reminded not to " immanentize the eschaton " and seek heaven on earth. If Christians are delusional, can go only so far. "Secular" movements have no such restraints. During the last century, tens of millions were butchered in Russia, China, Cambodia, and other places in the name of the Brotherhood of Man, with the revolutionaries often creating cults of personality to replace older faiths and heroes. The Revolutionary Communist Party, which can be found burning American flags around the country, has its own cult of personality around leader Bob Avakian .

During the French Revolution, a "Cult of Reason" was established, with Robespierre as high priest. Busts of the assassinated revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat replaced crucifixes in some churches. During the Spanish Civil War, anarchists burned churches, shot at statues of Jesus, murdered clergy, and desecrated the dead to pave the way for a new order. The Communards executed Archbishop Georges Darboy during the Paris Commune and destroyed the original Vendôme Column because it glorified empire. The famous French protests of May 1968, which strongly influenced the current intellectual climate, had a utopian, religious flavor. Would-be revolutionaries destroyed property as they spray-painted the following slogans:

Ann Coulter analyzed mobs in her 2011 book Demonic . She heavily cited Gustave Le Bon's famous 1895 book The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind . Miss Coulter said a mob is "an irrational, childlike, often violent organism that derives its energy from the group" and is "intoxicated by messianic goals." One chapter is called "Imaginary Violence From the Right Vs. Actual Violence From The Left." This is especially prescient. CHAZ/CHOP "security" in Seattle murdered a black teenager and wounded another because they thought right-wing paramilitaries would attack any second (no one has been arrested for these shootings). As cities burn, NBC reports that "an expert" thinks the real threat is "far right" violence.

The "messianic goal" Miss Coulter wrote of is human equality. The premise is that if existing social institutions are removed, a natural and authentic human equality will emerge. Even the past must be destroyed to make this possible. The French Revolution remade the calendar, with 1792 as Year Zero. All culture and history from the past was irrelevant because everything was to be built anew. Rousseau famously wrote that "man is born free and everywhere is in chains." This comes from assuming that man is a blank slate and that people are born equal. If there is inequality, it can only be because of unjust institutions or exploitative social forces.

Who is the boogeyman? Many once believed it was the Church: Voltaire's " infâme ." Some blamed kings; Jefferson's post-revolutionary writings show paranoia about "monarchial" tendencies. Many believe capitalism is the enemy, but I'd argue that most progressives today believe the fundamental problem is "whiteness."

What is whiteness? Psychology Today says it's "an unfairly privileged exclusionary category, based on physical features, most notably a lack of melanin." Many others who study "whiteness" say something similar. Whiteness is a social construct used to justify domination, slavery, and economic exploitation today.

There are three obvious objections to this.

This is clearly not true . Third, it assumes that those with power use white racism to exercise privilege. However, almost every powerful corporation openly supports Black Lives Matter and opposes white racial consciousness. Though "whiteness as property" is a common theme in "whiteness studies," there are benefits to being labeled non-white, which is why some whites fake their racial identity and some groups organize politically so the government won't call them white.

"Whiteness" has become the explanation for all "the evils of the modern world."

Critical race theorists are right to say that "whiteness" is socially constructed; what they fail to understand is that they created its modern meaning.

Most race realists, Identitarians, and white advocates know Susan Sontag's quote that the "white race is the cancer of human history." She also said America, which is "the culmination of Western white civilization," is guilty of causing global suffering. The full context is even more revealing: "The truth is that Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Marx, Balanchine ballets, et al., don't redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world."

In this sentence, she concedes three things that would be politically incorrect today. First, Western civilization is white civilization . Second, despite the pathetic claims of some journalists and academics , Sontag recognized that white civilization isn't simply built on domination of non-whites, and that it has produced things of great value. Third, Sontag admits that some (if not all) progressive accomplishments such as "the emancipation of women" are products of "this particular civilization." "Morgoth's Review" made this same point , noting that when progressives try to destroy "whiteness," they are dynamiting the foundations of their own liberal, universal worldview.

However, Sontag still thought white civilization was irredeemable because it "eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads" and threatens the planet. Whiteness wasn't cancer just because it was bad. Sontag meant that whiteness, like cancer, grows, metastasizes, and consumes. It never seemed to occur to Sontag that this universalizing, homogenizing force "eradicated" authentic European cultures too. If "Western culture" is Netflix, Amazon, and Hollywood, I'm with the Third World anti-imperialists.

Still, at least Sontag recognized that whites had a real culture, at least in the past. Her intellectual successors are worse. They accepted her view the whiteness is cancer while denying any value to our culture and our standards. Instead, " Whiteness Studies " and "Critical Race Theory" criticize "white" civilization because of its standards. The National Museum of African American History and Culture identifies objective, rational linear thinking, cause and effect relationships, and hard work to be "whiteness" and therefore "racist." Everything can therefore be "racist" or in need of "decolonization," including math , grammar , grades , SAT and ACT tests , bar exams , and artificial intelligence .

This ends in denying truth itself. Claire Lehmann found a slide at an education conference in Washington that said that "if you conclude that outcomes differences [sic] by demographic subgroup are a result of anything other than a broken system, that is, by definition, bigotry." Actually, bigotry is "obstinate or intolerant devotion to one's own opinions and prejudices." We've now come full circle, and define bigotry as not being bound by opinions and prejudices. The way many academics and journalists talk about whiteness is worse than anything Susan Sontag said.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1195528833157386240&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.unz.com%2Fghood%2Fblmania-and-the-new-progressive-faith%2F&theme=light&widgetsVersion=9066bb2%3A1593540614199&width=500px

This is the thinking of a fanatic religious sect, like the one Jim Jones led . "We were too good for this world," Jones said before the infamous mass suicide. While progressives haven't yet gone that far, they clearly enjoy the feeling of "woke" moral righteousness, which has replaced the sense of being "elect" that some Protestant sects once provided . Much as the French revolutionaries replaced saints with Jacobins during the Terror, today's woke disciples are creating their own saints, with "Big George" Floyd taking the place of Christ. Insufficient adulation for Floyd cost one priest his job. BLMania is even consuming the churches themselves.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-1&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1286604034556690433&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.unz.com%2Fghood%2Fblmania-and-the-new-progressive-faith%2F&theme=light&widgetsVersion=9066bb2%3A1593540614199&width=500px

Black Lives Matter is more sacred than the American flag or Christ. Federal agents , police , military , athletes , politicians , and many others all genuflect before BLM. Many would never bow before God. This new, powerful faith even has a liturgical calendar and a hymn built on a sacred myth.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-2&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1286525526455103489&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.unz.com%2Fghood%2Fblmania-and-the-new-progressive-faith%2F&theme=light&widgetsVersion=9066bb2%3A1593540614199&width=500px

Worse, because this creed is impervious to truth, it must always seek new scapegoats (or devils) for egalitarianism's continuing failure. Despite the constant funding, programs, and repression, equality never arrives. The late Lawrence Auster's " First Law of Majority/Minority Relations In Liberal Society " holds that "the more egregiously any non-Western or non-white group behaves, the more evil whites are made to appear for noticing and drawing rational conclusions about that group's bad behavior." Likewise, the more blacks fail, the more fictional portrayals of black superiority must be created, from Black Panther to Black Is King . And the more whites give, the more fiercely they must be accused of bigotry for wanting good schools , classical music , or even video games left alone.

The egalitarian revolution is a Permanent Revolution. BLMania will constantly devour its children . It will continue until it is stopped by superior power. Even Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility and high priestess of the Anti-Racist Church of the Damned , is no longer pure enough.

Linguist John McWhorter Says 'White Fragility' Is Condescending Toward Black People ," NPR, July 20, 2020 " White Fragility is real. But 'White Fragility' is flawed ," Washington Post, June 18, 2020 " Is the Anti-Racism Training Industry Just Peddling White Supremacy? " by Jonathan Chait, July 16, 2020

The late Noel Ignatiev , editor of Race Traitor , famously said that "treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity." However, he said that this wasn't a call to violence against whites. "When we say we want to abolish the white race, we do not mean we want to exterminate people with fair skin," he said . "We mean that we want to do away with the social meaning of skin color, thereby abolishing the white race as a social category." I question this. If I cited Shlomo Sand's The Invention of the Jewish People to deconstruct Jewish identity, religious claims, and Israel, one might rightly suspect I had an anti-Jewish motive.

Still, let's assume Ignatiev was sincere. Could we "abolish the social meaning of skin color" today? Skin color is more important as a social category than at any other time in decades. Those with power may say whites are just a "social construct," but they have no trouble telling who is white and who is not when it comes to affirmative action. The media view almost all economic, political, and cultural issues through a racial lens. Indeed, with a separate black "national anthem ," graduation ceremonies , and separate events for non-whites , we're seeing the return of segregation. It may even be the beginning of America's breakup along racial lines.

"Wokeness" holds that whites are racist no matter what we do. "White racism" is the new original sin. Fighting one's own racism is a lifelong struggle -- one that ultimately can't be won. "Whiteness" is also responsible for great evil. If all whites are racist and "whiteness" is evil, isn't it best just to eliminate whites? Some whites may even want to join this racial death drive, exhausted, ashamed, and despairing after decades of relentless anti-white propaganda . Even those whites who don't want to surrender psychologically may see no hope, and become a " defeated and despairing race ," in Steve Sailer's words.

This new faith even has holy sites and sacred rites. The site of George Floyd's killing is now a shrine , with white activists declaring it "holy ground." According to journalist Michael Tracey , the unwashed police generally do not enter this sanctum sanctorum .

At one BLM rally, white liberals flaggelated themselves:

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-3&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1275204372738142208&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.unz.com%2Fghood%2Fblmania-and-the-new-progressive-faith%2F&theme=light&widgetsVersion=9066bb2%3A1593540614199&width=500px

In Bethesda, Maryland, the white congregation repeated after the priest:

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-4&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1267911752462843904&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.unz.com%2Fghood%2Fblmania-and-the-new-progressive-faith%2F&theme=light&widgetsVersion=9066bb2%3A1593540614199&width=500px

And of course, the mantric chants of "Black Lives Matter" and "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" are familiar refrains:

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-5&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1286902289710501888&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.unz.com%2Fghood%2Fblmania-and-the-new-progressive-faith%2F&theme=light&widgetsVersion=9066bb2%3A1593540614199&width=500px

What can we call this death-cult? Some leftists, including Ignatiev, called for "abolishing" the white race. It's tempting to call it " Abolitionism ." However, this word is forever linked with (whites) ending slavery. Some leftists may eventually use the term, but it will never catch on. Still, it is useful because of its vivid history. Many 19th century abolitionists were not peaceful idealists but blood-crazed fanatics , who cloaked their dreams of war and slaughter in apocalyptic, Biblical language. John Brown, whose band began its infamous raid on Harpers Ferry by killing a free black man, is the primary example.

The creed's violence, militancy, and destructiveness lead me to call it Eradicationism. Like some Christian sects, whites who embrace it want collectively to abandon the world, if not through suicide then by failing to reproduce. Instead of making the world better "for ourselves and our posterity," they will expunge their blood guilt by ending their line. White Saviors share a curious mix of self-hatred and self-exaltation, something we see when white protesters post themselves indulging in BLMania online.

Eradicationism will be with us for some time. Regardless, our course is clear. Facts are important, but statistics don't move mountains. Faith does. We must act with faith in victory , in service to a great ideal. Our Western tradition tells us to do our duty to uphold the cosmic order . This chaotic time will be an opportunity for racial rebirth. Steel yourself against this death cult that has hijacked our civilization. Reject BLMania. We were meant for something great. We shouldn't fear this time of struggle, which is demonstrating what we've been warning of all along. We should welcome it. The American experiment in equality couldn't have ended any other way.


American Citizen 2.0 , says: July 29, 2020 at 10:01 pm GMT

Good summary of the points we are all familiar with by now.

"Whiteness" has become the explanation for all "the evils of the modern world."

If black people weren't so bad at practically everything, we wouldn't have to play this game where everyone goes overboard to avoid talking about race realism, or scientific racism. India encountered White Western Civilization, basically absorbed parts of it, and came out the other side as the people they always were. Same with China. Same with Japan. Same with Mexico. Etc. The Western World has also encountered other civilizations as the weaker party to an extent, and likewise absorbed or fought back, and came out the other side still being themselves. The Mongols and the Ottoman Turks, just to name a couple of examples, both enslaved white people. We are not all sitting around moaning about it centuries later and saying that's why we can read or do math. That realization forces people down a path where they have to believe against all the evidence that there was something extremely different about the way white people treated black people for them to turn out this way. And as a corollary that there is something very different about white people that makes them uniquely evil.

Or, alternatively, you could just think about your own actual experiences with real black people you have met in life and notice that you generally have to talk to them like they are special needs children and they are really really dumb and aggressive. And then it all makes sense.

Curmudgeon , says: July 29, 2020 at 11:40 pm GMT

Good summation, other than pretending George Floyd was killed by police. Drug overdoses are suicide.

Baxter , says: July 30, 2020 at 2:24 am GMT

We are witnessing something extraordinary, the death of what some call 'liberal progressivism' or what I prefer to call 'American atheistic humanism.' It's a hell of a thing to watch. What's next is anybody's guess. It's going to get much worse before it gets better. I'd like to share some of the things I do to maintain strength and sanity.
1 exercise and work out.
2 do not watch television.
3 associate with non-cucked Catholics and practice the Faith
4 read voraciously, especially the classics and lives of the saints.
5 flirt with women regularly (not the fat ones)
6 set aside resources for 'fallout.' If and when shit hits the fan I'm prepared for a long winter.
This list could be a expanded. These are the big things I've integrated into my daily life.

American Citizen 2.0 , says: July 30, 2020 at 3:03 am GMT
@Baxter

Good list. My list:

1. Exercise
2. Never watch television
3. Read books written before the "Woke" era and never any book written by a Jew, not even Ben Shapiro. I always google the authors before I read anything.
4. Use bookmarks instead of search for the vast majority of the content you look at online. Search is a tool Silicon Valley uses to "recommend" woke content.

Of course, these rules only apply in the current times of information warfare where everyone is trying to demoralize you and subvert anything you think is valuable.

Justvisiting , says: July 30, 2020 at 4:39 am GMT

Anyone who has traveled a bit has come across ruins of formerly great (or small) civilizations.

Here is a small one in central Arizona we have visited:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuzigoot_National_Monument

That civilization lasted for approximately 280 years, and disappeared without a trace around 1400 AD.

As you walk around the ruins of an obviously civilized people, there is one question that goes through everyone's mind.

What happened?

This was before there were settlers from Europe, and the land is empty for many miles around so there are no obvious enemies anywhere to be found.

It is unlikely that an earthquake or flood or other natural event destroyed the city–there seems to be no physical evidence to support that. Perhaps there was a long dry period (since this is Arizona) but long enough to destroy the entire civilization?

Then there is the little voice in your head that says the most likely explanation–"They must have destroyed themselves, probably based on some horrible ideology or religious fervor."

Bottom line–insanity is toxic, and can destroy a civilization.

There is no arguing with insanity, there is no negotiating with insanity, there is no solution for insanity.

Civilizations must have the will to remove the insane people from the territory before they destroy it–or they will become just another forgotten ruin on the landscape.

JesusMary 137 , says: July 30, 2020 at 4:40 am GMT

The hatred for whiteness in America comes from 70 years of massive number of Jews who in many parts of the country dominated public schools and universities in teaching and leadership positions in academia.

mkr , says: July 30, 2020 at 5:38 am GMT

Black person to white person: "your ancestors enslaved my ancestors"

White person to black person: "your ancestors along with the Arabs enslaved my ancestors in the Ottoman Empire for over 400 years up until the 1800s"

White person to black person: "you have never been a slave and neither have I"

White person to black person: "all white majority nations have outlawed slavery, have outlawed segregation, have enshrined equal rights into law, and have outlawed the taking of land by force"

White person to black person: "many black majority nations have not outlawed slavery, have not outlawed segregation, have not enshrined equal rights into law, and still take land by force"

White person to black person: "man up like my ancestors did and go to Africa and free the slaves, put your blood, sweat, and tears on the land and get it done like my ancestors did"

White person to black person: "you can't blame white people for black criminality and for black underperformance in society, most black people are not criminals and many black people perform and overperform in society, so stop being racist towards white people and take responsibility and build something"

Bas , says: July 30, 2020 at 5:50 am GMT

The unemployed. Without hope and nothing to show for, members will do anything to proof thy can. In history famous for doing the ting attacking the unarmed, on orders. Controlling is their hidden desire. Makes them the ideal public servant. Handicapped only by lack of the brain part called working IQ. In war of times of change, needed badly by ones who own a little of that stuff wile steering the ship named state..

Biff , says: July 30, 2020 at 7:24 am GMT

It seems some people(such as this author) are viewing the current situation through one prism, and I think it has multiple causations.

1.Militarized police abuse of the general population is real – especially the poor(soft targets). As incidents pile up, resistance grows.

2.Funding by various political entities are responsible for the political strengthening of BLM and other groups as controlled opposition and used as divide and conquer tactics.

3.The progressive left is low hanging ripe fruit for the former, especially after the election of Donald Trump.

4.An education system pumping out SJW's at an exponential rate.

5.Now just add poverty and depravity from a lockdown.

George Floyd or no George Floyd the current situation(or new religion) was just a matter of time.

What to do? Running away comes to mind .

Anon [295] Disclaimer , says: July 30, 2020 at 7:29 am GMT

This anti-whiteness among Liberal whites reminds me of old Gnostic cults. They sought to overcome the flesh to achieve heaven on earth. Some took it so far as to avoid reproduction. I don't think any took it so far as to adopt the children of other races.

RobF , says: July 30, 2020 at 7:48 am GMT

It is a privilege to read UNZ everyday. It is important for everyone who is kind at heart, reading this article and others who are concerned about this actual insanity made sane, is nothing more than a movement to draw foolish people, black, white and everyone else, to drink just another flavor of Koolaid, into self-selecting their genetic discontinuation in the New World. It is a sublime process supported by the powers that be – to thin the hierd. Don't be alarmed by this. All shall pass. BLM is a part of the culling process – and you may or may not be aware of it: opioids & legal & illegal drugs, obesity, dumberism, political extremism on either side, China/Russia bashing, J bashing, and so on. Stay sure-footed. Understand the motivations of the PTB, and truly understand WHY they must take action for the good of the human race. It is only thru these operations, the wiser among us can & must understand why the human herd must be culled. And if you have a problem with that, please do stand first in line with the many lines & flavors of protesters, refuseniks & freedom fighters. The New World will truly be a better place for better human beings. Anyone who wants to get in to the New World & must first qualify with kind-heartedness, a strong obligation responsibility to better oneself & the community in which we live in. Forget all the political terms of democracy, freedom, liberty, capitalism, & such. It will simply be a New World where people are healthy in mind, body & soul. The crazies, psychopaths & criminals will not survive. It will be a much better world. And, the Powers that be are creating every sort of selection process to sift thru humanity's strata. If you are possibly fit for the New World, this comment will ring bells – and all will be clear to you. If not, go ahead and disagree with me . G*d bless you – for we will in time bow (or made to bow) to our Master(s). If you can't accept that, well, you're not likely to make it, and neither will your progeny . Please discern.

idealogus , says: July 30, 2020 at 9:03 am GMT
@American Citizen 2.0 rey.
BLM handlers know this and that is why it encourages ANTIFA and BLM to group together and at the same time discourages for decades any attempt by whites to associate in leagues, groupings, unions, sindicats etc. Look what hapenned to Proud Boys.
The second in which 100 whites joined together the ruling elite put the leaders in prison and dismembered the white group.
United we surely stand, divided guaranteed to fall.
We must learn from the Jews – tribalism, fight for our kind no matter what.
They do not give a shit if you exercise, don't watch tv, read books etc. You are not a threat to them.
A threat is 1000 sheep + one lion.
Stephen Paul Foster , says: Website July 30, 2020 at 11:33 am GMT

In the last year of his Presidency (2015) Barack Obama in an interview made the following observation:

Obama: "What is also true is that the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in almost every institution of our lives -- you know, that casts a long shadow. And that's still part of our DNA that's passed on. We're not cured of it."
Interviewer: "Racism"
Obama: "Racism. We're not cured of it."

Few, if any of the cognoscenti who constantly lecture Americans 24×7 on the ubiquity of "racism" and daily pounce on yet another politician or celebrity who breaks the strict rules of "Diversity-Speak," bothered to decode the President's remarks so that the average American might get a sense of what he was in for. They can be boiled down to: "Racism has always been the defining feature of American life and will be far into the future." What then, we might wonder, is the "cure," and who gets to say that it has been successful and the patient is whole and released from treatment?

Obama chose the wrong metaphor. His view of race is better expressed in theological terms. "Racism" is America's "original sin." It was, and still is, committed exclusively by white people, and no matter what metaphor you care to use, consider it a permanent fixture of American society. "We shall overcome someday." But, sorry Pal, not today. With sin comes guilt, and white America now finds itself confronted with guilt, virtually unlimited guilt.

http://fosterspeak.blogspot.com/2019/02/racism-its-time-to-repudiate-guilt.html

Hartnell , says: July 30, 2020 at 12:38 pm GMT
@Miro23 motherland. Imperialism has been a long term disaster for the West.

Stupid white people – Yes, yes, people here blame the Jews but let's be honest here, if it was the Jews who helped contribute, who happily lapsed it up and performed the dance? The stupid white people! Had the stupid white people been more intelligent, they would have put two and two together and stopped the madness along time ago. Instead they are worshipping George Floyd.

Look, I'm no leftie liberal. I want white people to survive and prosper. But honestly, I see alot of sins and ultimately stupidity at the white man's feet. I blame him more then anyone else.

[Jul 30, 2020] One of the key problem with any polls is conformism of the respondents: answering the poll in a certain way does not necessary means that the person intends to vote this way.

Highly recommended!
Jul 30, 2020 | angrybearblog.com
  1. July 27, 2020 5:46 pm

    This series is adapted from Patterson's book
    "Is the Republican Party Destroying Itself?"

    Cracks in the Republican Party establishment are getting bigger

    via @BrookingsInst

    As Republican leaders find themselves forced to distance themselves from the president they will also begin discussions about what their party looks like in the post-Trump era. For starters they may want to dip into a new book by Thomas E. Patterson, a professor at Harvard University. Titled Is the Republican Party Destroying Itself, the book outlines five traps the party has found itself in.

  2. Likbez , July 29, 2020 10:38 am

    One of the key problem with any poll is conformism of the respondents: answering the poll in a certain way does not necessary means that the person intends to vote this way.

    He might be simply deceiving the pollster providing the most "politically correct" opinion. In this sense any poll conducted by an MSM does not worth electrons used to display its results. Most people are way too smart not to feel what is expected of them

    Add to this the fact that you need to reach people on cell phones. Only a certain category of people will answer such a call. Limiting yourself to a landline distorts the sampling in more than one way by definition.

    The key question of November elections that will never be asked in polls: Will a majority of voters side with the protesters? Or they will view them as rioters. In the latter case this looks like a Nixon elections replay.

[Jul 30, 2020] MSM polls have become the latest propaganda weapon of the Democrats that are meant to move public opinion, not gauge it.

Jul 30, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

>

jsmith5893 10 hours ago

Re: "The polls show Donald Trump losing to Joe Biden"

In addition to the biased, mainstream media it appears polls have become the latest propaganda weapon of the Democrats that are meant to move public opinion, not gauge it. Of the polls that I have looked at in detail, almost all consistently have more Democrat participants than Republicans and very few reveal how many people were contacted and refused to participate. In addition some of these polls use dedicated, volunteer participants that get a daily/weekly email asking for a response to several issues. So of those polled, it really comes down to people that don't screen their phone calls or emails and have the inclination and free time to answer endless questions from strangers about politics. The Democrat oversampling percentages I have observed are listed below:

ABC News/Washington Post - 2%, 3%, 4%, 6%, 7%, 8%
America Trends Panel - 16%
AP/NORC - 10%
American research Group - 9%
CBS news poll - not revealed
Change Research - 5%
CNBC - not revealed
CNN SSRS Research 7%
Democracy Fund Voter Study Group - not revealed
Democracy Institute 0%
Economist/YouGov - not revealed
Emerson - not revealed
EPIC-MIRA poll 5%
Fox News 0-10% average 6.5%
Gallup 7%
Global Strategy Group 7%
Hart research 6%
Harvard CAPS/Harris - not revealed
Hill/Harris 5%
IBD/TIPP - not revealed
Monmouth 9%, 8%
Morning Consult - 8%
New York Times-Siena College survey 11%
NBC News poll/ Wall Street Journal 12%
NBC News poll/ Survey Monkey - 8%
NPR/Marist 6%
Pew - 16%
Politico/Morning Consult 5%,10%
Public Policy Polling - 10%
Pulse Opinion Research - not revealed
Suffolk University - 5.8%
Quinnipac - 6%, 8%, 10%
Rasmussan - 4% and behind a paywall
Reuters-Ipsos 11%
Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey - behind a paywall
Yahoo News - 8%, 10%
YouGov - 8%, 10%
Zogby - 2%

[Jul 27, 2020] USA: the slippery slope of egalitarian racismn by Thierry Meyssa

Jul 27, 2020 | www.voltairenet.org

USA: The slippery slope of egalitarian racism by Thierry Meyssan

The reactions to the murder of black George Flyod by a white policeman do not refer to the history of slavery in the United States, but - like the systemic opposition to President Trump- to a profound problem in Anglo-Saxon culture: Puritan fanaticism. The domestic violence that rocked this country during the two civil wars of Independence and Secession must be remembered in order to understand current events and prevent their resurgence. Beware: in the United States, the political class now preaches egalitarian racism. All equal, but separate. VOLTAIRE NETWORK | DAMASCUS (SYRIA) | 14 JULY 2020 عربي DEUTSCH ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΆ ESPAÑOL FRANÇAIS ITALIANO PORTUGUÊS TÜRKÇE

It could be humour, but unfortunately it is a puritanical slogan to be taken at face value: "Black Men are an endangered species".
The Anglo-Saxon Puritans

About four hundred members of the Church of England fled their country where they were considered fanatics. They took refuge in Leiden, Holland, where they were able to live according to the Calvinist tradition, or more precisely the Puritan interpretation of Christianity. Probably at the request of King James I, they sent two groups to the Americas to fight against the Spanish Empire. The first founded what was to become the United States, the second was lost in Central America.

Later, the Puritans took power in England with Lord Cromwell. They beheaded the Papist King Charles I, established an egalitarian Commonwealth and colonized Ireland, massacring Catholics en masse. This bloodthirsty experiment was short-lived and discredited for a long time the idea of a General Interest ( Res Publica ) in the eyes of the English.

The 35 Pilgrim Fathers set out from Leiden, stopped in England, and then crossed the ocean on the Mayflower . They arrived in North America in 1620 to practice their religion freely. During their voyage, they signed a Covenant in which they vowed to establish a model society (strict observance of the Calvinist faith and cult, intense community life, and unfailing social and moral discipline). By creating the Colony of Plymouth, they hoped to build the "New Jerusalem" after fleeing from the "Pharaoh" (James I) and crossing the "Red Sea" (the Atlantic). After a year, they thanked God for their epic, which is commemorated each year as Thanksgiving. [ 1 ] They established their capital city 60 kilometers north, in Boston. Their community veiled its women, practiced public confessions and corporal punishment.

The logo of the very powerful Pilgrim's Society: the Pilgrim Father is depicted alongside the British lion and the American eagle.

These events are not only myths that every American should know, they shape the political system of the USA. Eight out of 45 presidents (including the Bushes) are direct descendants of the 35 "Pilgrim Fathers". Despite the arrival of tens of millions of immigrants and institutional appearances, their ideology remained in power for four centuries, until the election of Donald Trump. A very closed club, Pilgrim's Sociey, brought together, under the authority of the English monarch, very high British and American personalities. It set up the "Special Relationship" between London and Washington and, among other things, provided many secretaries and advisers to President Obama.

Many ceremonies planned this year for the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower have been cancelled due to the fight against the coronavirus epidemic, in particular the conference that the former British National Security Advisor was to give at Pilgrim's Society. Bad tongues assure that the epidemic will end the day after the US presidential election, if Donald Trump loses it, and that the festivities can then take place.

There are two cultures that have always been opposed in the United States among Christians: Calvinists or Puritans on the one hand, and Catholics, Anglicans and Lutherans on the other. While some "denominations" among the eight hundred US churches resolutely line up on one side, most are crossed by both because Puritanism has no defined theological corpus. It is rather a way of thinking.

The War of Independence began in 1773 with the Boston Tea Party. Its first actor was John Adams, another direct descendant of one of the 35 "Pilgrim Fathers" and second president of the United States. While the call for independence was made by the political journalist Thomas Paine based on religious arguments although he himself did not believe in anything.

In a way, the War of Independence was a continuation in the Americas of Lord Cromwell's British Civil War (the "Great Rebellion"). This conflict would resurface a third time with the Civil War, which, it should be remembered, had nothing to do with slavery (both sides practised it at the beginning of the war and both sides repealed it during the war to hire former slaves into their armies).

The Puritans lost in England with Cromwell's Republic, but won the next two times in the United States. Historian Kevin Phillips, who was Republican electoral adviser to Republican Richard Nixon (descendant of a brother of one of the 35 "Pilgrim Fathers"), has studied this conflict at length over the centuries. [ 2 ] It is on the basis of this data that he imagined the strategy of "Law and Order" in the face of the segregationist Democrat George Wallace in the 1968 presidential election; a strategy that Donald Trump has taken up again for the 2020 election.

All this to say that appearances are deceiving. The dividing lines are not where the rest of the world thinks they are.

- The Puritans have always supported absolute equality, but only among Christians. They long forbade Jews from entering the civil service and massacred the Indians they claimed to love. During the American Civil War, they extended their egalitarianism to blacks (unlike the Puritans in southern Africa, who defended apartheid to the end), giving rise to the false myth of a war against slavery. Today, they defend the idea that humanity is divided between equal and, if possible, separate races. They are still reluctant to call them interracial marriages.
- The Puritans place lying at the bottom of their scale of values. It cannot be for them a ruse, but always the worst of crimes, far more serious than robbery and murder. In the seventeenth century, they punished with the whip for lying to a pastor for any reason. They established laws that still punish lying to a federal official for any reason.

US Evangelism

With time, and particularly in the 19th century, another current of thought arose within American Christianity: evangelism. These are Christians of all denominations who try to get closer to the original Christianity of which they know little. So they rely on the sacred texts. Like the Puritans, the Evangelicals are fundamentalists, i.e. they give the Scriptures the role of a divine word and interpret them while refusing any contextualization of the texts. But they are much more pragmatic. On everything, they have a position of principle, but when faced with a problem, they act in conscience and not according to the rules of their community.

It is very easy to make fun of the grotesque convictions of the Evangelicals against the theory of evolution, but this is of little importance and they abandon it when necessary. It is much more significant, but unfortunately rarer, to denounce the puritanical vision of a humanity divided into distinct, equal, but separate races. Yet this has serious consequences on a daily basis.

The Puritans remained the masters of U.S. politics until 1997, when Libertine President Bill Clinton issued an executive order banning all expressions of religious faith in federal institutions. The result was a shift in religion from the Administration to the private sector. All major corporations accepted prayer groups in their workplaces. This shift favored the public emergence of Evangelicals at the expense of Puritans.

During the riots outside the White House, President Trump went to St. John's Episcopal Church to present himself, Bible in hand, as the defender of the religious beliefs of all Christians in the face of Puritan fanaticism.
The Return of Puritan Fanaticism

The conflict between the Puritans and the rest of society is today taking a radical and religious turn. It opposes two mentalities, one idealist, egalitarian within their community and fanatical, the other sometimes even more extravagant, agreeing on inequalities, but realistic.

Puritan Hillary Clinton hesitated to become a Methodist pastor after her failure in the presidential election [ 3 ]. She sinned a lot (her affair with Vince Foster), was punished by God (her husband's affair with Monica Lewinsky) repented (within the Pentagon Family [ 4 ]) and was saved. She is sure that she was chosen by God and takes pride in her violence against non-Christian peoples. She supports all wars against the "enemies of America" and hopes to see the return of Christ.

On the contrary, Donald Trump shows no interest in theology, has only an approximate knowledge of the Bible and a summary faith. He has sinned as much as anyone else, but boasts of what he has achieved rather than repenting of his sins in public. He doubts himself and compensates for his feeling of inferiority with excessive egotism. He loves to compete with his enemies, but does not want to destroy them. In any case, he embodies the will to restore the greatness of their country ("Make America Great Again!") rather than to pursue wars always and everywhere, which makes him the champion of the Evangelicals against the Puritans. He offers the opportunity for Christians to reform themselves rather than convert the world.

In the 2016 election campaign, I asked the question, "Will the United States reform or tear itself apart? " [ 5 ] In my view, only Donald Trump could allow the USA to continue as a nation, while Hillary Clinton would provoke a civil war and probably the dissolution of the country on the model of the end of the USSR. What has happened since the death of George Flyod shows that I was not mistaken.

Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election campaign.

Hillary Clinton and Democratic Party supporters are imposing their ideology. They fight against lies and destroy statues like their Puritan ancestors burned the Salem witches. They develop an absurd reading of their own society, denying social conflicts and interpreting inequalities only in terms of so-called distinct human races. They disarm the local police and force "white" personalities to apologize in public for enjoying an invisible privilege.

In the Russian case, the discontinuation of the prosecution of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and the presidential pardon granted to Donald Trump's former advisor, Roger Stone, sparked angry protests from Puritans. Neither man harmed anyone, but they dared to lie to the FBI to keep him out of the White House.

The mayor of Minneapolis (the town of George Flyod) was publicly humiliated for refusing to disband the "racist" city police. While Seattle City Council has just cut its city police budget in half. This does not bother the upper social classes living in private residences, but deprives those who cannot afford private security guards.

The Associated Press , then the New Yok Times , the Los Angeles Times and soon almost all US media, decided to write Black with a capital letter when referring to "race" [ 6 ], but not White in the same way. Indeed, the fact of writing White with a capital letter is a distinctive sign of the white supremacists [ 7 ].

The Pentagon considered renaming its military bases with the names of southern personalities accused of being "racist" and sent an e-mail to all civilian and military personnel of the US Army denouncing as "extreme right" the claim that there is only one human race. Although these initiatives have provoked a strong reaction from the trumped-up GIs and have failed, they mark a very dangerous escalation [ 8 ].

All these decisions demonstrate a loss of collective rationality. Thierry Meyssan Translation
Roger Lagassé

[Jul 26, 2020] Patriotic Dissent- How A Working-Class Soldier Turned Against -Forever Wars- -

Jul 26, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Patriotic Dissent: How A Working-Class Soldier Turned Against "Forever Wars"


by Tyler Durden Sat, 07/25/2020 - 00:05 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print

Authored by Steve Early and Suzanne Gordon via Counterpunch.org,

When it comes to debate about US military policy, the 2020 presidential election campaign is so far looking very similar to that of 2016. Joe Biden has pledged to ensure that "we have the strongest military in the world," promising to "make the investments necessary to equip our troops for the challenges of the next century, not the last one."

In the White House, President Trump is repeating the kind of anti-interventionist head feints that won him votes four years ago against a hawkish Hillary Clinton. In his recent graduation address at West Point, Trump re-cycled applause lines from 2016 about "ending an era of endless wars" as well as America's role as "policeman of the world."

In reality, since Trump took office, there's been no reduction in the US military presence abroad, which last year required a Pentagon budget of nearly $740 billion. As military historian and retired career officer Andrew Bacevich notes , "endless wars persist (and in some cases have even intensified ); the nation's various alliances and its empire of overseas bases remain intact; US troops are still present in something like 140 countries ; Pentagon and national security state spending continues to increase astronomically ."

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When the National Defense Authorization Act for the next fiscal year came before Congress this summer, Senator Bernie Sanders proposed a modest 10 percent reduction in military spending so $70 billion could be re-directed to domestic programs. Representative Barbara Lee introduced a House resolution calling for $350 billion worth of DOD cuts. Neither proposal has gained much traction, even among Democrats on Capitol Hill. Instead, the House Armed Services Committee just voted 56 to 0 to spend $740. 5 billion on the Pentagon in the coming year, prefiguring the outcome of upcoming votes by the full House and Senate.

An Appeal to Conscience

Even if Biden beats Trump in November, efforts to curb US military spending will face continuing bi-partisan resistance. In the never-ending work of building a stronger anti-war movement, Pentagon critics, with military credentials, are invaluable allies. Daniel Sjursen, a 37-year old veteran of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan is one such a critic. Inspired in part by the much-published Bacevich, Sjursen has just written a new book called Patriotic Dissent: America in the Age of Endless War (Heyday Books)

Patriotic Dissent is a short volume, just 141 pages, but it packs the same kind of punch as Howard Zinn's classic 1967 polemic, Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal . Like Zinn, who became a popular historian after his service in World War II, Sjursen skillfully debunks the conventional wisdom of the foreign policy establishment, and the military's own current generation of "yes men for another war power hungry president." His appeal to the conscience of fellow soldiers, veterans, and civilians is rooted in the unusual arc of an eighteen-year military career. His powerful voice, political insights, and painful personal reflections offer a timely reminder of how costly, wasteful, and disastrous our post 9/11 wars have been.

Sjursen has the distinction of being a graduate of West Point, an institution that produces few political dissenters. He grew up in a fire-fighter family on working class Staten Island. Even before enrolling at the Academy at age 17, he was no stranger to what he calls "deep-seated toxically masculine patriotism." As a newly commissioned officer in 2005, he was still a "burgeoning neo-conservative and George W. Bush admirer" and definitely not, he reports, any kind of "defeatist liberal, pacifist, or dissenter."

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Sjursen's initial experience in combat -- vividly described in his first book, Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of The Surge (University Press of New England) -- "occurred at the statistical height of sectarian strife" in Iraq.

"The horror, the futility, the farce of that war was the turning point in my life," Sjursen writes in Patriotic Dissent .

When he returned, at age 24, from his "brutal, ghastly deployment" as a platoon leader, he "knew that the war was built on lies, ill-advised, illegal, and immoral." This "unexpected, undesired realization generated profound doubts about the course and nature of the entire American enterprise in the Greater Middle East -- what was then unapologetically labeled the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT)."

A Professional Soldier

By the time Sjursen landed in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, in early 2011, he had been promoted to captain but "no longer believed in anything we were doing."

He was, he confesses, "simply a professional soldier -- a mercenary, really -- on a mandatory mission I couldn't avoid. Three more of my soldiers died, thirty-plus were wounded, including a triple amputee, and another over-dosed on pain meds after our return."

Despite his disillusionment, Sjursen had long dreamed of returning to West Point to teach history. He applied for and won that highly competitive assignment, which meant the Army had to send him to grad school first. He ended up getting credentialed, while living out of uniform, in the "People's Republic of Lawrence, Kansas, a progressive oasis in an intolerant, militarist sea of Republican red." During his studies at the state university, Sjursen found an intellectual framework for his "own doubts about and opposition to US foreign policy." He completed his first book, Ghost Riders , which combines personal memoir with counter-insurgency critique. Amazingly enough, it was published in 2015, while he was still on active duty, but with "almost no blowback" from superior officers.

Before retiring as a major four years later, Sjursen pushed the envelope further, by writing more than 100 critical articles for TomDispatch and other civilian publications. He was no longer at West Point so that body of work triggered "a grueling, stressful, and scary four-month investigation"by the brass at Fort Leavenworth, during which the author was subjected to "a non-publication order." At risk were his career, military pension, and benefits. He ended up receiving only a verbal admonishment for violating a Pentagon rule against publishing words "contemptuous of the President of the United States." His "PTSD and co-occurring diagnoses" helped him qualify for a medical retirement last year.

Sjursen has now traded his "identity as a soldier -- the only identity I've known in my adult life -- for that of an anti-war, anti-imperialist, social justice crusader," albeit one who did not attend his first protest rally until he was thirty-two years old. With several left-leaning comrades, he started Fortress on A Hill, a lively podcast about military affairs and veterans' issues. He's a frequent, funny, and always well-informed guest on progressive radio and cable-TV shows, as well as a contributing editor at Antiwar.com , and a contributor to a host of mainstream liberal publications. This year, the Lannan Foundation made him a cultural freedom fellow.

In Patriotic Dissent , Sjursen not only recounts his own personal trajectory from military service to peace activism. He shows how that intellectual journey has been informed by reading and thinking about US history, the relationship between civil society and military culture, the meaning of patriotism, and the price of dissent.

One historical figure he admires is Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, the recipient of two Medals of Honor for service between 1898 and 1931. Following his retirement, Butler sided with the poor and working-class veterans who marched on Washington to demand World War I bonus payments. And he wrote a best-selling Depression-era memoir, which famously declared that "war is just a racket" and lamented his own past role as "a high-class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the Bankers."

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Sjursen contrasts Butler's anti-interventionist whistle-blowing, nearly a century ago, with the silence of high-ranking veterans today after "nineteen years of ill-advised, remarkably unsuccessful American wars." Among friends and former West Point classmates, he knows many still serving who "obediently resign themselves to continued combat deployments" because they long ago "stopped asking questions about their own role in perpetuating and enabling a counter-productive, inertia-driven warfare state."

Sjursen looks instead to small left-leaning groups like Veterans for Peace and About Face: Veterans Against the War (formerly Iraq Veterans Against the War), and Bring Our Troops Home. US, a network of veterans influenced by the libertarian right. Each in, its own way, seeks to "reframe dissent, against empire and endless war, as the truest form of patriotism." But actually taming the military-industrial complex will require "big-tent, intersectional action from civilian and soldier alike," on a much larger scale. One obstacle to that, he believes, is the societal divide between the "vast majority of citizens who have chosen not to serve" in the military and the "one percent of their fellow citizens on active duty," who then become part of "an increasingly insular, disconnected, and sometimes sententious post-9/11 veteran community."

Not many on the left favor a return to conscription.

But Sjursen makes it clear there's been a downside to the U.S. replacing "citizen soldiering" with "a tiny professional warrior caste," created in response to draft-driven dissent against the Vietnam War, inside and outside the military. As he observes:

"Nothing so motivates a young adult to follow foreign policy, to weigh the advisability or morality of an ongoing war as the possibility of having to put 'skin in the game.' Without at least the potential requirement to serve in the military and in one of America's now countless wars, an entire generation -- or really two, since President Nixon ended the draft in 1973–has had the luxury of ignoring the ills of U.S. foreign policy, to distance themselves from its reality ."

At a time when the U.S. "desperately needs a massive, public, empowered anti-war and anti-imperial wave" sweeping over the country, we have instead a "civil-military" gap that, Sjursen believes, has "stifled antiwar and anti-imperial dissent and seemingly will continue to do so." That's why his own mission is to find more "socially conscious veterans of these endless, fruitless wars" who are willing to "step up and form a vanguard of sorts for revitalized patriotic dissent." Readers of Sjursen's book, whether new recruits to that vanguard or longtime peace activists, will find Patriotic Dissent to be an invaluable educational tool. It should be required reading in progressive study groups, high school and college history classes, and book clubs across the country . Let's hope that the author's willingness to take personal risks, re-think his view of the world, and then work to change it will inspire many others, in uniform and out.

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Justus_Americans , 59 minutes ago

Do we need to be in 160 countries with our military and can we afford it?

Cat Daddy , 1 hour ago

I am all for bringing the troops home except for this one unnerving truth; nature abhors a vacuum, specifically, when we pull out, China moves in. A world dominated by the CCP will be a dangerous place to be. When we leave, we will need to make sure our bases are safely in the hands of our friends.

dogbert8 , 1 hour ago

War is effectively the way the U.S. has done business since the Spanish American War, our first imperial conquests. War is how we ensure big business has the materials and markets they demand in return for their support of political parties and candidates. War is the only area left with opportunities for growth and profit. Don't think for a minute that TPTB will ever let us stop waging war to get what we (they) want.

TheLastMan , 2 hours ago

If you are new to zh all you need to do is study PNAC and the related nature of all parties to understand the criminality of USA militarization and for whose benefit it serves

Anonymous IX , 2 hours ago

I have written many times on this platform the exact same sentiments.

I am most disheartened by the COVID + Antifa/BLM Riots because of the facts this author presents.

We are distracted with emotional and highly volatile MASSIVELY PROPAGANDIZED stories by MSM (I don't watch) while the real problem in the world is as the author describes above.

We are war-mongering nation who needs to bring our troops home and disband over half of our overseas installations and bases.

We have no right to levy economic sanctions to impoverish, sicken, and weaken the citizens of Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, or anywhere else.

Yet, we run around arguing about masks and who can go into a restaurant or toppling statutes and throwing mortar-type fireworks at federal officers. This is what we do instead of facing a real problem which is that we are war-mongering nation with no moral/ethical conscience. These scraggily bearded white Antifas need to WTFU and realize who their true enemy.

Oh, wait. They work for the true enemy! Get it?

Max21c , 1 hour ago

We have no right to levy economic sanctions to impoverish, sicken, and weaken the citizens of Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, or anywhere else.

I don't agree with the economic sanctions nonsense thing as they seem to be more of a crutch for people that are not any good at planning, strategy, analytical thinking, critical thinking, strategic thinking, and lack much in the way of talent or creativity or intellectual acumen or intellectual skills...I believe there's around just shy of 10k economic sanctions by Washington...

But the USA does have the right to receive or refuse to receive foreign Ambassadors and Consuls and to recognize or not recognize other nations governments thus it does have some degrees of the right to not trade or engage in commerce with other nations to a certain extent... per imports and exports... et cetera... though it's not necessarily an absolute right or power

IronForge , 2 hours ago

Sjursen may admire General Butler; but he doesn't seem to know that several of the General's Descendants Served in the US Military.

Sjursen isn't Butler. The General Prevented a Coup in his Time.

The USA are a Hegemony whose KleptOchlarchs overtook the Original Constitutional Republic.

PetroUSD, MIC, Corporate Expansion-Conquest, AgriGMO, and Pharma Interests Span the Globe.

Wars are Rackets; and Societies to Nation-States have waged them over Real Estate, Natural Resources, Trade Routes, Industrial Capacity, Slavery, Suppresive Spite, Religious/Ideological Zeal, Economic Preservation, and Profiteering Greed.

YET, Militaries are still formed by Nation-States to Survive and for Some - Thrive above such Competitive Existenstential Threats.

*****

The Hegemony are running up against New Shifts in Global Power, Systems, and Influences; and are about to Lose their Unilateral Advantages. The Hegemon themselves may suffer Societal Collapses Within.

Sjursen should read up on Chalmers Johnson. Instead of trying to Coordinate Ineffective Peace Demonstrations, the Entire Voting/Political Contribution/Candidacy Schemes should be Separated from the Oligarchy of Plutocrats and Corporate/Political KleptOchlarchs.

Without Bringing the Votes back to the Collective Hands of Citizenry Interests First and Foremost, the Republic are Forever Conquered; and the Ethical may have to resort to Emigration and/or Secession.

Ink Pusher , 2 hours ago

Nobody rides for free,there's always a cost and those who can't pay in bullion will often pay in bodily fluids of one form or another.

Profiteers that create warfare for profit are simply parasitical criminals and should not be considered a "special breed" when weighed upon the Scales of Justice.

gzorp , 2 hours ago

Read 'Starship Troopers' by Robert A Heinlein (1959) pay especial attention to the "History and Moral Philosophy" courses... that's where his predictions for the future course of 'America's' future appear.... rather accurately. Heinlein was a 1930's graduate of Annapolis (Navy for you dindus and nohabs).....

A DUDE , 2 hours ago

t's not just the war machine but the entire system, the corporatocracy, of which the MIC is a part. And there is no way to change the system from within the system because whatever is anti-establishment becomes absorbed and neutered and part of the system.

So why would anyone vote is my question? 11. Trump and Biden Are Far Right of Center and Running to Offenbach Nearly Every Day

sbin , 2 hours ago

Tulsi Gabbard ran on anti interventionism foreign policy.

Look how fast the DNC disappeared her.

Of course destroying Kamala Harris in a debate and going after the ancient evil Hitlery sealed her fate.

BarkingWolf , 2 hours ago

In reality, since Trump took office, there's been no reduction in the US military presence abroad, which last year required a Pentagon budget of nearly $740 billion. As military historian and retired career officer Andrew Bacevich notes , "endless wars persist (and in some cases have even intensified ); the nation's various alliances and its empire of overseas bases remain intact; US troops are still present in something like 140 countries ; Pentagon and national security state spending continues to increase astronomically ."

Now wait just a minute there mister, that sounds like criticism of the Donald John PBUH PBUH PBUH ... you can't do that ... the cult followers will call you a leftist and a commie if you point out stuff like that even if it is objectively true! That's strike one, punk.

An Appeal to Conscience

Even if Biden beats Trump in November, efforts to curb US military spending will face continuing bi-partisan resistance.

November doesn't have anything to do with anything really. The appeal to conscience is wasted. The appeal would be better spent on removing the political class that is on the AIPAC dole and have dual citizenship in a foreign country in the ME while pretending to serve America while they are members of Congress. That's only the tip of the spear ... and that is a nonstarter from the get go.

Sjursen skillfully debunks the conventional wisdom of the foreign policy establishment, and the military's own current generation of "yes men for another war power hungry president."


I don't think Trump is necessarily a war power hungry president. While it is true that we have not withdrawn from Syria and basically stole their oil as Trump has repeated promised he would do, it is also true that Trump has yet to deliver Israels war with Iran and in fact had called back an invasion of Iran ten minutes before a flotilla of US warships was about to set sail to ignite such an invasion leaving Tel Aviv not only aggrieved, but angry as well.

Sjursen has now traded his "identity as a soldier -- the only identity I've known in my adult life -- for that of an anti-war, anti-imperialist, social justice crusader," albeit one who did not attend his first protest rally until he was thirty-two years old. With several left-leaning comrades ...

Okay, this is where you are starting to lose me .... i't like listening to a concert and suddenly the music is hitting sour notes that are off key, off tempo, and don't seem to fit somehow.

Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, the recipient of two Medals of Honor for service between 1898 and 1931. Following his retirement, Butler sided with the poor and working-class veterans who marched on Washington to demand World War I bonus payments. And he wrote a best-selling Depression-era memoir, which famously declared that "war is just a racket" and lamented his own past role as "a high-class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the Bankers."

"On July 28, 1932, at the command of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, they marched down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capitol to launch an attack on World War I veterans. " https://www.stripes.com/news/us/the-veterans-were-desperate-gen-macarthur-ordered-us-troops-to-attack-them-1.480665

Butler was correct, war especially nowadays, is a racket that makes rich people who never seem to get their hands dirty, even richer. As one grunt put it long ago, "it's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it."

That "somebody" is going to be the kids of the little people (the real high-class muscle-men ) who are hated by their political class overlords even as the political class are worshipped as gods.

Sjursen looks instead to small left-leaning groups like Veterans for Peace and About Face: Veterans Against the War (formerly Iraq Veterans Against the War), and Bring Our Troops Home. US, a network of veterans influenced by the libertarian right.

The problem here is that the so-called "left" brand has always been about war and the capitalism of death.

The Democrat party is really the group that started the American civil war for instance, they are the ones behind legacy of Eugenists like Margaret Sanger who was a card carrying Socialist who founded the child murder mill known today as Planned Parenthood that sadly still exists under Trump but has turned into the industrialized slaughter of children ...even after birth so that their organs can be "harvested" for profit.

Sjursen's affinity for "the left" as saintly purveyors of peace, goodness, love, and life strikes me as rather disingenuous. Then he seems to argue if I read the analysis correctly that conscription will somehow be the panacea for the insatiable appetite for war?

One false flag such as The Gulf of Tonkin or 911 or even Perl Harbor or the Sinking of the Lusitania or the assassination of an Arch Duke ... is all that is really needed to arouse the unbridled hoards to march off to battle with almost erotic enthusiasm -the political class KNOWS IT!

Amendment X , 2 hours ago

And don't forget President Wilson (D) who was re-elected on the platform "He kept us out of the war" only to drag U.S. into the hopeless European Monarchary driven WWI.

11b40 , 1 hour ago

Yo! Low class muscle man here, and I have to agree with bringing back the draft. It should never have been eliminated, and is the root of the golbalists abiity to keep us in Afghanistan, and other parts of the ME, for going on 20 years.

Skin in the game. It means literally everything. As noted we now have 2 generations of men who never had to give much thought at all to what's happening around the world, and how America is involved....and look at the results. It would be a much different situation today if all those 18 year olds had to face the draft board with an unforgiving lottery.

Yes, one false falg can whip up the country to a war time fever pitch, but unless there is a real, serious threat, the fever cannot be maintained. The 1969 draft lottery caught me when I stayed out the first semester of my senior year. Didn't want to go, but accepted my fate and did the best job I could to stay alive and keep those around me as safe as possible. In 1966, I was in favor of the war, and was about to go Green Beret on the buddy system. We were going to grease gooks with all the enthusiasm of John Wayne. My old man, an artillery 1st Sgt at the time in Germany, talked me out of it. More like get your *** on a plane back to the States and into college, befroe i kick it up around your shouders. A WW2 & Korea vet, he told me then it was the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

The point is, when kids are getting drafted, Mom's, Dad's, and everyone else concerned with the safety of their friends & relatives, start paying attention and asking hard questions of politicians. Using Afghanistan as an example, we would have been on the way out by the 2004 election cycle, or at max before the next one in 2008. That was 12 years ago, and we are still there.

I addition, the reason we went would have been more closely examined, and there may have been a real investigtion into 9/11. Plus, I am convinced that serving your country makes for a better all around citizen, and God knows, we need better citizens.

Cassandra.Hermes , 2 hours ago

Trump and Pompeo started new cold war with China, but have no way to back up their threats and win it!! When i was in Kosovo peace corps i heard so many stories from Albanian who were blamed to be Russian or American spy because of double cold war against Albania. Trump and Pompeo just gave excuse to Xi to blame anyone who protest as American spy. BBC were showing China's broadcast of the protests in Oregon to Hong Kong with subtitle "Do you really want American democracy?", LMFAO

Max21c , 2 hours ago

Joe Biden has pledged to ensure that "we have the strongest military in the world," promising to "make the investments necessary to equip our troops for the challenges of the next century, not the last one."

The United States shall continue to have a weak military until it starts to fix its foreign policy and diplomacy. You cannot have the strongest military in the world if you lack a good foreign policy and good diplomacy. Brains are a lot more important than battleships, battalions, bullets, barrels, or bombs. Get a frickin' clue you friggin' Washington morons.

Washington is weak because they are dumb. Blind, deaf, and dumb.

Heroic Couplet , 2 hours ago

Too little, too late. Great ad for a book that will be forgotten in a week. Read Bolton's book. The minute Trump tries to reduce troops, Bolton is right there, saying "No, we can't move troops to the perimeter. No, we can't move troops from barracks to tents at the perimeter." Who needs AI?

Erik Prince wrote 3.5 years ago that 4th gen warfare consists of cyberwarfare and bio-weapons. The US military is fooked. There's probably an interesting book to be researched: How do Republicans feel about contracting COVID-19 after listening to Trump fumble?

ChecksandBalances , 3 hours ago

Blame the voters. Run on a platform to reduce military and police spending. See how many of those lose. Probably all of them. You have to stop feeding the beast. This is a slogan Trump correctly said but as usual didn't actually mean. We should cut all military and police spending by 1/2 and then take the remaining money and build a smarter, more efficient military and police force.

Max21c , 3 hours ago

It's not just the "Deep State." It's Washingtonians overall. It's Deep Crazy. They're all Deep Crazy! They're nuts. And the rare exceptions that may know better and have enough common sense to know its wrong to sick the secret police on innocent American civilians aren't going to say anything or do anything to stop it. The few that know better in foreign policy aren't going to say anything or do anything against the new Cold Wars on the Eastern Front against China or on the Western Front against Russia since they're not willing to go up against the Regime. So the Regimists know they have carte blanche to persecute or terrorize or go after any that stand in their way. This is how tyrannies and police states operate. It's the nature of the beast. At a minimum they brow beat people into submission. People don't want to stick their neck out and risk going up against the Regime and risk losing to the Regime, its secret police, and the powers that be. They shy away from anything that would bring the Regime and its secret police and its radicals, extremists, fanatics, and zealots their way.

nonkjo , 4 hours ago

It's okay to be against "forever war" and still not have to be a progressive douchbag.

Sjursen is an unprincipled ******** artist. He leaves Iraq disillusioned as a lieutenant but sticks around long enough for them to pay for his grad school and give him some sweet "resume building" experiences that he can stand on to sell books? FYI, from commissioning time as a second lieutenant to promotion to captain is 3 years...that means Sjusen was so disillusioned that he decided to stick around for 12 more years which is about 9 years longer than he actually needed to as an Academy grad (he only had to serve 6 unless he elected to go to grad school).

The bottom line is Sjusen capitalizes on people not knowing how the military works. That is, that his own self-interest far outweighs his the principles he espouses. Typical leftist hypoctite.

Max21c , 4 hours ago

...the U.S. "desperately needs a massive, public, empowered anti-war and anti-imperial wave ..."

Perhaps the USA just needs a better foreign policy. Though we all know that's not going to happen with the flaky screwballs of Washington and the flaky screwballs in the Pentagon, CIA, State Department, foreign policy establishment, think tanks et cetera.

Minor technical point: the time for the "anti-imperial wave" was before Washingtonians destroyed much of the world and created their strategic blunders and disastrous foreign policy. You folks all went along with this nonsense and now you have your quagmires, forever wars, and numerous trouble spots that have popped up here and there along the way to boot.

Pottery barn rule: you broke it and you own it and it's yours...Ma'am please pay at the register on the way out...Sorry Ma'am there's no more free gluing...though the gluing specialist may be in on the third Thursday this month though it's usually the second Tuesday each month...

Contemporaneously, in the same vein the American public has been brainwashed into going along with the new Cold Wars on the Western Front against Moscow and the even newer Cold War on the Eastern Front against Beijing. It's like P.T. Barnum said "There's a sucker born every minute," and you fools in the American public just keep buying right in to the brainwashing. They're now successfully indoctrinating you into buying into their new Cold Wars with Russia and China. The Cold War on the Eastern Front versus Peking is more getting more fanciful attentions at the moment and the Cold War on the Western Front has temporarily been relegated to the back burner but they'll move the Western Front Cold War from simmer to boil over whenever it suits their needs. It's just a rendition of the Oceania has always been at war with East Asia and Eurasia is our friend are just gameplays right out of George Orwell's 1984.

Most of the quagmires can be fixed to a certain extent by applying some cement and engineering to the quicksand and many of the trouble spots can become more settled and less unstable if not stable in some instances. Even some of the more serious strategic problems like the South China Sea, North Korean nuclear weapons development, and potential Iranian nuclear weapons development can still be resolved through peaceful strategies and solutions.

In re sum, while I won't disparage a peace movement I do not believe it is either necessary nor proper simply because you will not solve anything through a peace movement. The sine qua non or quintessential element is simply to end one of these wars successfully through a peaceful diplomatic solution or solve one of these serious foreign policy problems through diplomacy which is something that hasn't been the norm since the downfall of the Berlin Wall, is no longer in favor, and which is the necessary element to prove that peace can be achieved through strategy and diplomacy and thereby change the course of the country's future.

In foreign affairs the foreign policy establishment has its pattern of behavior and it is that pattern of behavior that has to be changed. It's the mindset of the Washingtonians & elites that has to be changed. Just taking to the streets won't really change their ways or their beliefs for any significant part of the duration. They may pay lip service to peace & diplomacy but it won't win out in their minds in the long run. They are so warped in their views and beliefs that it'll have little or no effect over the long haul. As soon as the protests dissipate they'll be right back at it, back to their bad ways and bad behavior.

Son of Captain Nemo , 4 hours ago

For the past 19 years... And as Anti-War as you will ever get!...

https://action.ae911truth.org/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=11418&killorg=True&loggedOut=True

https://www.ae911truth.org/grandjury

P.S.

Remind 0range $hit $tain ( https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/11/14/trump-im-reopening-911-investigation/ ) that if he makes this a campaign pledge and an issue for debate he maybe can avoid a war crimes tribunal given how much has already been spent on the war machine ( https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/944-trillion-reasons-why-fed-quietly-bailing-out-hedge-funds )!

Hatterasjohn , 4 hours ago

Was it George Carlin that said " if voting made a difference they wouldn't let us do it " ? The only way to stop these forever wars is for people to stop joining the military. Parents should teach their children that joining the military and trotting off to some country to fight a war for the elite is not being patriotic . I was in the military from 1964 -1968. When Lyndon Johnson became president he drug out the Vietnam war as long as he could. Oh ! Lady Byrd Johnson bought Decon Company [ rat poison ] when most people never heard of it. Johnson bought this rat poison , government paid for ,at an inflated price . Sent ship loads of it to Vietnam .Never mind all the Americans and so called enemy killed.. Jane Fonda , Hanoi Jane , was really a hero who helped save countless lives by helping to end the war. Tommy and **** Smothers , Smother Brothers , spoke out against the war . Our government had them black balled from TV. Our government is probably as corrupt as any other country.

No-Go zone , 5 hours ago

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-19/top-us-general-says-american-troops-should-be-ready-die-israel

cowboyted , 7 hours ago

A piece of irony, one of our greatest generals was Dwight Eisenhower, the Allied Supreme Commander in WWII and two term president. He kept the peace for almost 10 years and warned Americans to beware of the "military-industrial complex." Most military men never want war, they just make sure they are ready if it comes. We have had the military industrial complex for way too long, it needs to be reduced and we need more generals to run for president, Gen. Flynn maybe? I'll also take Schwartzkoff.

cowboyted , 7 hours ago

The U.S. should only use our military if we are attacked, period. Otherwise, as Jefferson astutely stated, a standing army is a threat to democracy.

captain noob , 7 hours ago

Capitalism has no morals

Profit is the driving force of every single thing

cowboyted , 7 hours ago

The U.S. should only use our military if we are attacked, period. Otherwise, as Jefferson astutely stated, a standing army is a threat to democracy.

Chief Joesph , 7 hours ago

After what General Smedley Butler had to say and warned us about, here we are, 90 years later, doing the very same thing. Goes to show how utterly dumb, unprogressive, sheepish, and Medieval Americans really are. And you thought this is what makes America Great????

cowboyted , 8 hours ago

The U.S. Constitution provides for a "national defense." Yet, the last time we were attacked by a foreign nation was on Dec. 7, 1941 in which, the Congress declared war on Japan. Yet, in the past 100 years our country's leaders have convinced Americans that we can wage war if the issue concerns our "national INTEREST." This is wrong and needs to be deleted and replaced with our Constitution's language. Also, Congress is the ONLY Constitutional authority to declare war, not the executive branch. Too many countries, including the U.S., spend too much money preparing for war on levels of destruction that are unnecessary. We must attain a new paradigm with leading countries to achieve a mutual understanding that the people of the world are better off with jobs, food, families, peace, and a chance at a better life, filled with hope, faith, and flourishing communities. Things have to change.

transcendent_wannabe , 8 hours ago

I have to agree in sentiment with the author, but the reality of humans on earth almost demands constant war, it is the price we pay for the modern city lifestyle. There are various reasons.

1. Ever since WW1, the country has become citified, and the old peaceful country farm life was replaced with the rat race of industrial production. Without war, there is no need for the level of industrial production required to give full employment to the overpopulated cities. People will scream for war and jingoism when they have no city jobs. How do you deal with that? Sure, War is a Racket, but so far a necessary racket.

2. Every 20 years the military needs a real shooting war to battle test its upcoming soldiers and new equipment. Now the battles are against insurgencies... door-to-door in cities and ghettos, and new tactics need to be field tested. If the military goes more than 20 years without a real shooting war, they lose the real men, the sargeant majors, who just become fat pot bellied desk personel without the adrenaline of a real fight.

3. Humans inately like to fight. Even children, boys wrestle, girls taunt one another. There is no way discovered yet to keep people from turning violent in their attempts to steal what others have, or to gain dominance thru physical intimidation. Without war, gangs will form and fight over territorial boundaries. There is no escaping it.

4. Earth is where the battle field is, Battlefield Earth. There is no fighting allowed in heaven, so Earth is where souls come to fight. Nobody on earth likes it, but fighting and war is here to stay, and you should really use this life to find out how to transcend earth and get to a place where war is not needed or allowed, like heaven or Valhalla.

Tortuga , 8 hours ago

So. He thinks the crooked, grifting, regressive hate US murdering dim pustules aren't the warmongering, globalist, hate US, crooked, grifting, murdering republicrats. What a mo ron.

HenryJonesJr , 8 hours ago

Real conservatives were always against foreign intervention. It was the Left that embraced foreign wars (Wilson / Roosevelt / Truman / Johnson).

messystateofaffairs , 8 hours ago

From my perspective being a professional goon to serve the greater glory of international criminals, is, aside from having to avoid the mirror, way too much hard and dangerous work for the money. As a civilian of a society run by criminals on criminal imperialist principles, I have no literal PTSD type of skin in that filthy game, but like most citizens, knowing and unknowing, I do swim in that sewer everyday, doing my best to avoid bumping into the larger turds. My "patriotism" lies where the turds are fewest, anywhere in the world that might be.

bh2 , 8 hours ago

The threat to US interests is not in the ME (apart from Israel). It's in the Pacific.

NATO was never intended to be a defense arrangement perpetually funded by the US. Once stood up and post-war economies in Europe were restored, it was supposed to be a European defense shield with the US as ultimate backup. Not as a sugar-daddy for wealthy nations. Now that Russia is no longer situated to attack through the Fulda Gap, NATO is a grotesque expression of Parkinson's Law writ large.

China is a real threat to US interests. That's obvious simply by consulting a map. Military assets committed to engagement in theaters that no longer seriously matter is feckless and spendthrift. Particularly when Americans are put in harm's way with no prospect of either winning or leaving.

Worse yet is the accelerating prospect of being drawn into conflict in the South China Sea because fewer than decisive US and allied assets are deployed there.

While nations are now responding to that threat (including Japan, who are re-arming), China must realize a successful Taiwan invasion faces steadily diminishing prospects. They must act soon or give up the opportunity. Moreover, the CCP are loosing face with their own people because of multiple calamities wreaking havoc. The danger of a desperate CCP turning to a hot war to save face is an ever-rising threat. (If Three Gorges Dam fails, that could be the final straw.)

FDR deliberately suckered Japan into attacking the US (but apparently never guessed it would be on Pearl Harbor). It appears modern neo warmongers of all stripes would be delighted if China were tempted into yet another senseless war in the Pacific. And more lives lost on all sides.

While the size of US military and (ineptly named) "intelligence" budgets are vastly out of scale, the short-term cost in money is secondary to risk of long-term cost in blood. Surging the budget may make good sense when guns are all pointing in the wrong direction and political donors don't care as long as it pays well.

Defeating that outrageously wasteful spending is the first battle to be won. Disengaging from stupid, distracting, unwinnable conflicts is an imperative to achieve that goal.

The Judge , 8 hours ago

US. is the real threat to US interests.

DeptOfPsyOps-14527776 , 8 hours ago

An important part of this statue quo is propaganda and in particular neo-con propaganda.

Once it was clear that agitating against the Russian federation had failed, they started agitating against the PRC.

FDR administration wasn't that clever, they just had (((support))). They wanted Imperial Japan unable to strengthen itself against the United Kingdom as it was waging a war against the European Axis, did not realize that the Japanese fleet could reach as far as Hawaii and after Pearl Harbor, believed the West Coast could have been attacked as well.

Hovewer, they likely expected the Japanese to intercept their fleet on the way to the Phillipines after a war between Imperial Japan and the Commonwealth had started.

Salzburg1756 , 8 hours ago

"FDR deliberately suckered Japan into attacking the US (but apparently never guessed it would be on Pearl Harbor)." No, we knew the japs were going to attack Pearl Harbor. We had broken their code. That's why we sent our best battle ships away from Hawaii just before the attack. Most of the ships they sank were old and worthless; our good ships were out at sea.

TheLastMan , 4 hours ago

What constitutes "America's interests"?

the us military is the world community welcome wagon for global multi national Corp chamber of commerce

Do us citizens serve corporations or do corporations serve us citizens?

next ?, who owns / controls corporations?

Alice-the-dog , 8 hours ago

There is a reason why suicide is the leading cause of death among active duty military. They come to realize that what they are doing is perfect male bovine fecal matter. That they are guilty of participating in completely unwarranted death and destruction.

847328_3527 , 9 hours ago

Liberals and "progressives" are traditionally against wars. This new "woke" group of Demorats shows they are NOT liberals or progressives since they support the Establishment War Criminals like Obama and his side kick, demented Biden, and Bloodthirsty Clinton.

[Jul 25, 2020] Characteristics of fascism

Jul 25, 2020 | caucus99percent.com

There are sources all over the web giving 14 identifying points of fascism, including from Umberto Eco, who lived under Mussolini, but I leave finding that material as an exercise. Rump's a close fit. My take right now is more personal.

My father left Europe when Hitler came to power. Dad had wandered into one of his early rallies and heard him speak, and it scared him when he assumed power. I heard these stories growing up, and I've had a terrible sinking feeling for the last 4 years. Yeah, Rump is a tv era artifact (like Reagan was a movie era artifact), with no true power or talent except manipulating, but the occupant of that house is always a figurehead for the ruling class.

There are truly frightening people invested in his "movement", like the aforementioned Erik Prince. I've been saying for years that Rump has been grooming CBP and ICE as his personal force, loyal to him and not the nation, and we're seeing the fruition.

(added)

It's not so much that Rump is a fascist. He's a seed crystal for the American propensity for fascism. Americans have always had a soft spot for fascism. I am frightened. I remember the stories. up 5 users have voted. --

If I'm wrong, it's the first time I'm happy to be confused. -Don Van Vliet

[Jul 21, 2020] Why We Shouldn't Believe Polling About Trump by Lord Pettigrew

Highly recommended!
If not this also about conformism? Social desirability == conformism.
Notable quotes:
"... Mark Twain is credited with introducing into the American vernacular the phrase, "Lies, damned lies and statistics." One of the pervasive damned lies people take for granted is the results of political polls, especially in the Trump era. Most polls show him behind several of the myriad candidates vying to represent Democrats in the 2020 election. But the American Association for Public Opinion Research confirms that "national polls in 2016 tended to under-estimate Trump's support significantly more than Clinton's." ..."
"... Social desirability is a concept first advanced by psychologist Allen L. Edwards in 1953. It advances the idea that when asked about an issue in a social setting, people will always answer in a socially desirable manner whether or not they really believe it. Political polling, whether by telephone or online, is a social setting. Respondents know that there is an audience who are posing the questions and monitoring their response. As a result, despite a respondent's true belief, many will answer polling questions in what may appear to be a more socially desirable way, or not answer at all. ..."
Jul 21, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Why We Shouldn't Believe Polling About Trump

Authored by Lord Pettigrew, op-ed via Townhall.com,

Many conservatives are concerned about polling results regarding conservative issues, especially about President Trump. For example, the latest CNN poll found that 51% of voters believe the president should be impeached. How much credence should conservatives give these polls?

Mark Twain is credited with introducing into the American vernacular the phrase, "Lies, damned lies and statistics." One of the pervasive damned lies people take for granted is the results of political polls, especially in the Trump era. Most polls show him behind several of the myriad candidates vying to represent Democrats in the 2020 election. But the American Association for Public Opinion Research confirms that "national polls in 2016 tended to under-estimate Trump's support significantly more than Clinton's."

We are inundated with the latest polling on President Trump's approval rating and how people are likely to vote in the 2020 election. Both bode poorly for the president, but he doesn't believe them and neither should we. As an academic, I ran a research center that conducted local, state-wide and national public opinion polls and took a year's leave of absence from my university to work for Lou Harris, founder of the Harris Poll.

Social Desirability

The reason why we shouldn't believe most of the current or future polling results about President Trump can be summarized in two words: Social Desirability.

Social desirability is a concept first advanced by psychologist Allen L. Edwards in 1953. It advances the idea that when asked about an issue in a social setting, people will always answer in a socially desirable manner whether or not they really believe it. Political polling, whether by telephone or online, is a social setting. Respondents know that there is an audience who are posing the questions and monitoring their response. As a result, despite a respondent's true belief, many will answer polling questions in what may appear to be a more socially desirable way, or not answer at all.

When it comes to President Trump, the mainstream media and academics have led us to believe that it is not socially desirable (or politically correct) to support him. When up against such sizable odds, most conservatives will do one of three things:

1) Say we support someone else when we really support the president (lie);

2) tell the truth despite the social undesirability of that response;

3) Not participate in the poll (nonresponse bias).

This situation has several real consequences for Trump polling. First, for those in the initial voter sample unwilling to participate, the pollster must replace them with people willing to take the poll. Assuming this segment is made up largely of pro-Trump supporters, finding representative replacements can be expensive, time-consuming and doing so increases the sampling error rate (SER) while decreasing the validity of the poll. Sampling error rate is the gold standard statistic in polling. It means that the results of a particular poll will vary by no more than + x% than if the entire voter population was surveyed. All else being equal, a poll with a sampling error rate of + 2% is more believable than one of + 4% because it has a larger sample. Immediate polling on issues like President Trump's impeachment may provide support to journalists with a point of view to broadcast, but with a small sample and high sampling error rates, the results aren't worthy of one's time and consideration.

Some political pollsters often get around the necessity of repeated sampling over the course of an election by forming a panel of people who match the demographics (party affiliation, age, gender, race, location, etc.) of registered voting public. Polling companies often compensate panel members and use them across the entire election cycle. Such panels are still subject to the effects of social desirability and initial substitution error.

Interpretive Bias

Another factor to consider is the institution that is conducting the poll and those reporting the data. Their progressive sensibilities are thumbing the scale of truth. In my experience, polls conducted by media companies are less credible since they are often guilty of the same biases seen in their news reports. The perfect example of this is The New York Times's " Poll Watch ," which provides a weekly review of their political poll. My experience is that it reflects strongly the Times's negative opinions about President Trump and conservative ideas and the paper's heavy political bias.

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Even the Harris Poll, when Lou was alive, suffered somewhat from this bias. Lou Harris was the first person to conduct serious political polling on a national level and is credited with giving John Kennedy the competitive advantage over Richard Nixon in the 1960 election. He made political polling de require for future elections. While many people point to Nixon's twelve o'clock shadow during the televised debate, Harris gave Kennedy the real competitive advantage -- a more complete grasp of what issues voters thought were most important and how to tailor his policy pitches toward that end.

I worked for Lou between 1999-2000. During the election season we would get the daily tab read-outs. While the results were pristine, Lou would interpret those numbers on NPR and in other media in a way that showed his clear Democrat bias. His wishful thinking that Al Gore would beat George W. Bush would color his interpretation of what the numbers meant. In the end, by a razon thin margin, Bush took the White House and Gore was relegated to inconvenient environmental truths. Similarly, the 2016 election saw Trump beat favorite Hillary Clinton by a significant electoral margin, despite the vast majority of polls giving Mrs. Clinton the edge by between 3-5%.

Where We Go from Here

Public opinion polling is generally not junk science although with some companies it can be. Companies like Gallup and Pew consistently do a good job of chronicling political opinion in America. At issue is the fact that these polling stalwarts don't work for media companies and use large national samples from current voter rolls; they also tend to not put their thumbs on the interpretation of data. President Trump is a president unlike any other and most of his supporters don't participate in political polls. Even Trump's own pollsters were surprised by his 2016 win. We would do well during these fractured times to ignore political opinion polls for they will continue to be much to do about nothing.

Just be sure to vote your conscience and that is nobody's opinion but your own. AntiSocial , 5 hours ago

The polls are skewed, intentionally by the pollsters and unintentionally by anyone with the common sense not to identify as a Trump supporter.

Would you tell the Nazi Party questioner you were anti - Nazi? How do you feel about Josef Stalin might be the last question someone would ever answer. Trump people have an overwhelmingly justified reason to keep it to themselves. Especially in the age of digital record keeping, and Neo fascism on the Left.

Trump vs: a man whose brain is dying should be a landslide, and could be. BUT the democrats have succeeded in making the entire population sick to death of hearing about Trump Is The Devil.

People en masse are not very intelligent and generally do what everyone else is doing, whatever it is. This time they may know instinctively that the Biden regime will be American history's biggest failure but they just don't want to hear about Trump anymore, or Covid, or BLM, and will vote for Biden making just hoping to make it all go away. After that they will find that when you make mistakes on purpose you usually get what you deserve.

Hawkenschpitt , 6 hours ago

There is another bias besides the article's "interpretive bias." I call it "assumption bias."

I am one of those whom Pew samples on a regular basis, and across a wide range of issues. In responding to their queries, I have in the back of my mind how I perceive my responses are going to show up in the aggregations and the public reporting. It certainly is a consideration when the survey question is double-edged. For example, given a series of questions surrounding my perceptions of "climate change" overlooks the wide variance of what is exactly meant by climate change: are the questions related to the natural dynamism of the earth's climate, or are they surrogates for Anthropogenic Global Warming? Their questions assume an agreed-upon definition, and my responses will vary, depending upon what I perceive to be the underlying basis to the series of questions. This introduces a bias in my responses.

A recent poll had a series of questions about my activities during these coronavirus lock-downs: e.g. how does the lock-down affect various of my activities (charitable donations, volunteer services, neighborly assistance)? Do I do more? Less? About the same? The wording of the questions shows that they had made an underlying, but false, assumption that the coronavirus affects my actions.

At the end of every Pew survey, they ask whether I perceived bias in the questions; they also allow comments on the survey. I take them to task when I encounter these kind of things. I can only hope that they take my remarks under consideration for their next efforts.

Homer E. Rectus , 6 hours ago

This article spends most of its words trying to convince us that polls are junk science and then says Pew and Gallup are not. How are they not also junk if they fail to get truthful answers?

isocratic , 6 hours ago

You have to be really special to trust polls after 2016.

Im4truth4all , 9 hours ago

Polls are just another example of the propaganda...

DrBrown314 , 10 hours ago

Public polls have been rubbish for decades. They average a 0.9% response rate. That is not a random sample folks. If only 1 person in 100 will agree to take a poll you have a self selecting sample. Pure garbage. The pollsters have resorted to using "invitation" polling on the internet and claim this is a probability sample. It is not. It too is rubbish. But you already knew that because of what the polls said in 2016 and what actually happened. qed.

Alice-the-dog , 10 hours ago

Not to mention that I'm sure there are many like me, who has lied profusely in answer to every polling call I've gotten ever since I became eligible to vote in 1972. In fact, I strongly suspect that Trump voters are the most likely demographic to do so.

The Herdsman , 11 hours ago

Bottom line; the polls are fake. We already saw this movie in 2016, we know how it ends. Back in 2016 you might be fooled by the polls but we already know empirically that they are rigged. We literally saw it all with our own eyes.... never let anyone talk you out of what you saw.

Ex-Oligarch , 11 hours ago

This article gives way too much credit to the pollsters.

Polls are constructed to produce a desired result. The respondents selected and the questions asked are designed to produce that result.

If they do not produce that result, the data can be altered. No one polices this sort of manipulation, formally or informally.

Adding spin to the result when it is "interpreted" is only the last step. The narrative promoted in this article that pollsters are honest social scientists carried away by unconscious biases is a crock.

We have seen articles blaming the respondents for the failures of pollsters over and over again. This narrative that Trump voters are ashamed of supporting him and so lie to the pollsters is just more spin designed to make republicans look insincere, amoral and devious.

Hook-Nosed Swede , 12 hours ago

Mark Twain was quoting Benjamin Disraeli and admitted he wasn't sure the PM actually ever used that phrase. Incidentally, Twain threw his Confederate uniform away and headed West in the middle of America's Civil War. I don't see support for Jefferson Davis or Abraham Lincoln there.

whatisthat , 12 hours ago

I would observe every intelligent and experienced person knows that political based polling data is suspect to corruption and used as propaganda...

hootowl , 13 hours ago

Political and media polls are used to persuade people to vote for the demonunists by purposely exaggerating the numbers of demonunists in their polling samples to deceive the public in order to try to swing the vote to the demonunists and/or to dissuqade conservatives into believing it is futile to vote because the demonunists are too numerous to overcome.

Ignore the political polls because they are largely conducted by paid liars, manipulators, and propagandists. The 2020 presidential election is easy to assess. Do you want to elect a senile, old , treasonous, crook and his family into the WH; or a man, who may, at times make you a little upset with his abrasive rhetoric, but can be trusted to do what he thinks is best for his fellow Americans, while he is continuously beset by the worst political cadre of communists, demonunists, lying MSM/academia, and anti-American deep state crooks in the history of our great republic.

Gold Banit , 13 hours ago

This is the end for the corrupt racist DemoRat party.

The DemoRats and their fake news media are in a panic and are very desperate and this is why they are promoting this rioting looting destroying and burning cause their internal polling has Trump wining 48 states in a landslide....

[Jul 20, 2020] Polls lie. -Why We Shouldn't Believe Polling About Trump- Lloyd Pettigrew - Sic Semper Tyrannis

Jul 20, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Thank you Col. Lang for posting portions of the Pettegrew essay.

I'm taking the liberty to clarify Pettegrew essay.

[[Sampling error rate is the gold standard statistic in polling. It means that the results of a particular poll will vary by no more than +x% than if the entire voter population was surveyed. All else being equal, a poll with a sampling error rate of +2% is more believable than one of +4% because it has a larger sample.]]

First, inference may be drawn from a poll ONLY when [IF] there is an actual random sample.

Thus random sample creates condition for inference [prediction]; this does not guarantee it.

Second, the inference is a snapshot, at a point in time, not a motion picture, thus any value days or weeks later may be nil.

This is why polls done weekly or monthly, and if they are done daily, one may perceive a trend, more easily.

[[Sampling Error rate is the gold standard statistic in polling]]

SE is the difference between what is actual, from the entire population, versus what a sample – what the sampled data says.

There is no way to know this ahead of time. This is why there are polls.

Polls attempt to know this, within a certain range, usually expressed in percentages.

Polls are supposed to be designed to keep bias as low as possible; because it is bias that distorts them.

How to measure and/or cure this? There is the tried and true method.

Randomization.

The problem with polls is an age-old one: are data truly taken from a random sample; or not?

Most these days are not, for many reasons. And pollsters come up with all sorts of models [often using junk science] to try and get around this elephant in the room as it were.

Some polls may be less non random than others.

This is the problem.

This polling problem is compounded by non response.

Non response is related to problem -- simply because prior to polling, a random sample is selected ahead of time.

The sample selected may in fact be random; non response destroys the randomness simply because for each individual who does not respond, the rigor of the poll is diminished.

Even one or two people not responding greatly erodes the rigor of a random sample. [A poll of 500 people to represent a nation of more than 300 million.]

What actually happens is a polling company may have designed an experiment -- and selected a random sample of 1,000, or 2,000, or more.

Often they get about 2 percent response rate!

Thus, they have 20 responses; from which no inference can be drawn.

So they re poll and re poll, and might get 400 responses, or more, eventually.

This is where the problems begin. It is a huge problem, from the perspective of trying to draw inference [prediction] – because what began as an attempt to poll a random sample is no longer a random sample.

This particular phenomena – is a different problem [which is not to say this is not related to] the fact that many Trump supporters either do not participate in answering pollsters; or, on purpose lie to them because -- owing to lack of random sample and pollster bias – i.e., the pollsters may have a political agenda, or a perceived political agenda. . . as opposed to conducting a poll that is the public interest.

[["Political polling, whether by telephone or online, is a social setting."]] Pettegrew states.

Wrong.

Social setting only involve physical interaction; the nature of social is person to person. This is beyond dispute.

"Social desirability" as Pettegrew frames it, as a factor to potentially distort polling data is an interesting thesis; however, polling organizations are supposed to and are expected to have trained questioners and well-designed questions, and ways of asking to adequately address what this phenomena actually is: plain old "bias." [This training and apropriate framing of questions reduces bias or at least is supposed to.]

In fact, interviewing someone in person, asking a person questions for a poll, this method – which is actual social interaction – is not done because it is time consuming and expensive.

However, expert questioners are much more able to get honest answers, when done in person, for obvious reasons.

The most obvious one is that someone is not going to sit down and be asked questions unless they want to.

Since they want to, there is no reason to want to lie, on the face of it.

This person sits down because they believe that their opinion matters.

[[Sampling error rate is the gold standard statistic in polling. It means that the results of a particular poll will vary by no more than +x% than if the entire voter population was surveyed. All else being equal, a poll with a sampling error rate of +2% is more believable than one of +4% because it has a larger sample.]]

1] Thus sampling error is the difference between what a total population actually thinks/believes; and what a survey, via a sample of them say – which cannot be known.

The SE itself is a guess, and there is no way to verify if it is right or wrong; random sample can be used to obtain a good approximation – to address this conundrum.

2] SE does not mean "that the results of a particular poll will vary by no more than [plus or minus] + or - x% than if the entire voter population was surveyed."

This refers to something else actually.

It is called the Confidence Interval.

Typical CI is 95 percent [less common CI for polling are 90 percent, and 99 percent].

The plus or minus percent [the range] Pettegrew refers to is a function of
A] the sample size
B] the confidence interval

The higher the confidence interval, the greater the plus or minus range – what Pettegrew refers to as: "It means that the results of a particular poll will vary by no more than +x%"

A 99 percent CI means that if a sample surveyed was done 100 times, 99 of those times it would be within this plus or minus range.

95 percent CI means 19 out of 20 times.

90 percent CI means 9 out of 10 times.

In other words: As the confidence level increases, the margin of error increases – that is to say, the "+x%" is greater, to use Pettegrew's terminology.

The x becomes a larger percent as confidence interval increases.

With a 90 percent CI, there is always a one in ten chance the data from the sample is a total bust, for example.

Statisticsshowto.com says it this way: [[A margin of error tells you how many percentage points your results will differ from the real population value. For example, a 95% confidence interval with a 4 percent margin of error means that your statistic will be within 4 percentage points of the real population value 95% of the time.]]

This means the "+x%" will be within this/the range: 19 out of 20 attempts at sampling.

Pettegrew says [[All else being equal, a poll with a sampling error rate of +2% is more believable than one of +4% because it has a larger sample]]

This is because: The Central Limit Theory says that the greater the number of participants in a random sample, the closer the statistic obtained [from the sample] will be to the actual population parameter. [Also, the larger the sample size, the more its distribution approaches a normal probability distribution – the bell curve – and this is key for inference or attempts at inference from data from a random sample: because inference is a function of probability.]

Since the actual population universe is not known, the actual parameter is unknown, thus a statistic from a sample can [potentially] mimic or come close to reality, assuming it is from an actual random sample.

PS

A quick note on the man most responsible for developing and making modern statistics and probability a worthwhile and excellent system and advancing the field of knowledge.

This man is as important to the science of modern statistics and probability as Jesus Christ and St. Joan are to Christianity, and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King is too – to the spirit of freedom and dignity [as opposed to fraudulence and propaganda and parstisan-ism – all enemies of knowledge and the human spirit] -- Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher, is to the science of statistics and probability.

Because of Fisher's painstaking work, the design of scientific experiments, especially the use of inference, became a great advance in human knowledge and science.

Because of Fisher, the field of medicine and disease prevention expanded and blossomed.

Random drug trials, for example, all use the pioneering work of Fisher, his conception of the absolute necessity of random samples from which inference may be drawn from designed experiments to test medicines -- using probability.

A window honoring him was recently removed from a college at University of Cambridge.

Feel free to read this story [link below], which, sad to say, though it includes the basics of what just happened, fails to underscore in any way shape or form the perfidy of it all, this malice, the evil behind it.

A symbolic crucifixion, as it were.

This, the moral turpitude of this counter cultural revolution and their myriad agents – and all that this implies in western civilization here and now.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/jun/27/cambridge-gonville-caius-college-eugenicist-window-ronald-fisher

Fisher was born February 17, 1890, East Finchley, London; died July 29, 1962, Adelaide, Australia.

Reason . . . --55 years ago, Barrington Moore Jr. noted that it always hangs in the balance, on the verge of being murdered, destroyed. This scum trying to destroy us [and themselves -- they are stuck on self-destruction] is a project to destroy Reason. Plain and simple.

"Science is tolerant of reason; relentlessly intolerant of unreason and sham. A flickering light in our darkness it is, as Morris Cohen once said, but the only one we have, and woe to him who would put it out."

https://monoskop.org/images/5/55/Wolff_Moore_Marcuse_A_Critique_of_Pure_Tolerance.pdf

-30-

Posted by: Jim | 19 July 2020 at 12:06 PM

[Jul 20, 2020] How NATO-Member Turkey Reverted Back To Being An Islamic Dictatorship -

Jul 20, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

How NATO-Member Turkey Reverted Back To Being An Islamic Dictatorship by Tyler Durden Mon, 07/20/2020 - 02:00 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print

Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

The gradual process of Turkey's becoming an Islamic sharia-law country , again, is no longer so gradual . It has taken a sudden and sharp rightward turn, into Islamic-nationhood. Turkey's Hagia Sophia, which had been "the world's largest cathedral for nearly a thousand years, until Seville Cathedral was completed in 1520," has now been officially declared by the Turkish Government to be, instead, a mosque.

On July 10th, the BBC bannered "Hagia Sophia: Turkey turns iconic Istanbul museum into mosque" and reported that the biggest , oldest, and the most important, cathedral in all of Orthodox Christendom -- and the world's most important Byzantine building, which was constructed as the Saint Sophia Cathedral by the Byzantine Roman Emperor Justinian I in Constantinople (now Istanbul) in the year 537, and which stands on the site that had been consecrated in the year 325 by the Roman Emperor Constantine (and which cathedral was relabelled the Hagia Sophia "museum" in 1935 by Turkey's Constitutionally secularist Government) -- has now become, officially, at last, designated, by the restored Islamic Government of Turkey, a Muslim house of worship, a mosque, a Muslim house of worship.

This signals the end of Turkey's being ruled by a secular Government, which it had been, ever since 1923. It is the end of Turkey's secular Government and the restoration of the Islamic Mehmed the Conqueror's 1453 order that it be a mosque . That ended the Byzantine Roman Catholic Empire, and started Islamic-ruled Turkey. It ended Constantinople and started Istanbul . Mehmet, however, allowed Christianity to continue, in the Islamic Ottoman Empire, but only as an accepted part of the Greek East ("Orthodox"), not as part of the Roman West (imperialistic) , Christianity (which he had just then conquered with the fall of Constantinople on that same date, 29 May 1453). And now, even the Orthodox Christians are being marginalized in Turkey, because the Hagia Sophia had been "for almost 1,000 years the most important Orthodox cathedral."

This is an act with huge international implications. It is an important event in human history.

Turkey's strongman, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose entire actual education was only in Islamic schools though he lies about it and claims to have received a degree from a non-Islamic university , is in the process of transforming Turkey back again into a specifically Islamic type of dictatorship, a Sharia-law-ruled state. The secularist Turkish Republic that was instituted in 1923 by the Enlightenment-inspired Kemal Attaturk has now decisively ended. The widespread speculations that Erdogan has been aiming to restore Turkey to being the imperial nation and ruler of a restored Islamic Ottoman Empire are now decisively confirmed by this brazen act of insult to Orthodox Christians, and even to Roman Christians, because -- as Wikipedia notes -- "Justinian has sometimes been known as the 'Last Roman' in mid-20th century historiography." The Orthodox Church in America titles him as "Saint Justinian The Emperor" . However, Wikipedia also notes that Constantine XI Palaiologos, who was killed by Mehmet's forces on that date, 29 May 1453, was actually the last Roman Emperor. That ended the Roman Empire.

In other words: the Turkish Government's official change of Saint Sophia Cathedral, which Justinian had created in 537, into now and henceforth a mosque, is a taking ownership of, and a Turkish-Muslim declaration of supremacy over, a different religion's main house of worship. It's a historical dagger into the heart of Orthodox Christianity, as well as being an insult to Roman Christianity.

This is not merely an isolated act, either; it is, instead, something to which Erdogan has long been building. Erdogan's grab of land from secularist-ruled (committedly anti-sectarian) Syria , and his recent sending of troops to help conquer the formerly secularist Libya, which land had been turned into a hellish civil war by a U.S.-and-allied invasion in 2011 and which chaos there continues to this day, all are consistent with an understanding of Erdogan in which his foremost objective is a restoration of the Ottoman Empire. And the U.S. Government has supported this objective of his (but only as Turkey being a branch of the U.S. empire), and tried to get the EU to accept it.

The question now -- since the United States Government has been pushing against European resistance to accepting a military alliance with an Islamic dictatorship -- is whether continuation of the NATO alliance will be ended because of the path that Erdogan and the United States Government have jointly been taking to re-impose a decidedly Sunni Islamic dictatorship upon Turkey (by means of which, Turkey will serve as a wedge against both Shiite controlled Iran, and an increasingly Orthodox-dominated Russia). However, there has been a split between Erdogan and the U.S. regime, because he does not intend his restored Ottoman empire to be a part of the U.S. or any other empire. Erdogan's independent streak is what now threatens to break-up the Western Alliance -- the U.S. empire (which is actually the Rhodesist UK-U.S. empire ).

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The United States Government has been preferring Erdogan's former political partner but now enemy, Erdogan's fellow Sunni Islamist Fethullah Gulen, who cooperates with the U.S. and is a CIA protégé (including rabidly against Shiite Iran and against Iran's main ally Russia). Gulen is passionately endorsed by America's aristocracy . The U.S. regime has been preferring Gulen to impose this transformation of Turkey into an Islamic U.S. satellite , because Gulen models his operation (and he has even described it in remarkable detail ) upon U.S. and UK 'intelligence' practices (CIA & MI6), whereas Erdogan has insisted upon an independent Turkey with its own nationalistic 'intelligence' organization -- a nationalistically transformed version of Turkey's existing MIT or National Intelligence Organization -- an 'intelligence' organization that's cleansed of what the CIA praises as "Gulen is interested in slow and deep social change, including secular higher education; Erdogan as a party leader is first and foremost interested in preserving his party's power, operating in a populist manner, trying to raise the general welfare ." (The CIA actually knows that this has nothing whatsoever to do with "trying to raise the general welfare" -- the U.S. regime's goal is to extend everywhere the U.S. empire, and Erdogan's Turkish regime has that same goal for the Turkish empire, which doesn't yet even exist, though it once did as the Ottoman Empire, and he wants to restore it.) Erdogan insists upon Turkey's not being merely a vassal-state or colony within a foreign-led empire, but instead the leading nation of its own empire, starting perhaps with gobbling up Syria and Libya , but extending ultimately more globally. There is a soundly documented article titled "Why Are Gulenists Hostile Toward Iran?" and it provides much of the reason why the CIA supports Gulen (they do largely because Erdogan isn't so obsessive against Iran -- which country America's aristocracy crave to conquer again, as they had done in 1953, and Erdogan doesn't support that as passionately as they require).

The question now for Europe is whether it wants to be again a participant in various aristocracies', and clergies', imperialistic designs, or instead to declare itself finally non-aligned and to lead thereby a new global non-aligned movement, not militaristically, but instead by providing, to the entire world, an anti -imperialistic and truly democratic model, a re-start and replacement of today's United Nations, and one that will reflect what had been Franklin Delano Roosevelt's anti -imperialist intention , and not Harry S. Truman's American-imperialist intention -- a start from scratch that has FDR's statements to guide it, and not Truman's actions to guide it (such as has been the case). Perhaps even the U.S., NYC-based, U.N. would ultimately sign onto that new international global federation; but the only basis upon which nations in the old U.N. should be accepted into its successor would be if the old U.N. were gradually to dissolve itself as its individual nations would, each on its own, sign onto the new one. Ultimately, this option must be made available to all Governments, to choose to either continue in Truman's U.N., or else join instead a new, and authentically FDR-based, authentically anti -imperialistic, replacement of it.

That is what this dictatorial Islamization of Turkey is really all about, and only Europe can make the decision -- no other land can. However, such a decision will only fail if any such organization as a new U.N. is to be at all involved in the particular national issues that now are so clearly coming to the fore in the transformation of Turkey into a Sunni Islamist dictatorship.

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The "international community" should have no say in Turkey's intranational (or "domestic") affairs -- regardless of whether Turkey is in or out of Europe. Sectarian and nationalistic concerns cannot rule in the formation of any authentically democratic new international order -- an authentically non -imperialistic international order. All such concerns, domestic concerns, must be strictly the domain of the authority and power of each one of the individual constituent units, each individual national Government itself controlling its own internal affairs. FDR was adamant about that. He was insistent that the U.N. not get involved in individual nations' internal affairs. The profoundly anti-FDR, "Responsibility to Protect" idea (which now has even acquired the status of being represented by an acronym "R2P" catch-phrase), has increasingly arisen recently to become a guiding principle of international relations, and must be soundly and uncompromisingly rejected in the formulation and formation of any replacement-organization -- any authentically democratic international federation of nations. Otherwise, everything would be futile, and there will be a WWIII. We are heading in exactly the opposite direction from that which FDR had intended -- which was to prevent any Third World War.

This decision will be made by the individual nations of Europe. Only they collectively hold this power. They will be able to exercise it only if they will terminate their alliances outside of Europe, and proceed forward no longer bound by external alliances, but instead become a free and independent European federation of European states. Only they, collectively , will be able to make this decision, as Europeans, for the entire world, regarding what the world's future will be. And only they will hold the ultimate responsibility -- and it's NOT the "responsibility to protect" . It is instead the responsibility to protect the future of the entire world . It's the responsibility to protect a future for the world. And if Europe fails it, then the world will inevitably move forward to WWIII, as it is doing. A new international order is needed, and only Europe can lead it, if Europe will.

In order for Europe to do that, Europe must first define itself. Is Turkey part of Europe? Is Russia? What is Europe? If Europeans won't be able to agree on that, then the world will continue to move forward towards WWIII, because the world will then have no center, it will continue to have only contending empires -- exactly what FDR had aimed to prevent .

Europe is the key. But will Europe's leaders place the key in the lock, and open, finally, the door to a non -imperialistic world? The present, U.S.-empire-aligned, Europe, won't do that. Turkey's action on the Hagia Sophia, which is an insult to all Christians, and especially to Orthodox ones, might finally force the issue -- and its solution.

Other than that, however, the official designation of the Hagia Sophia as being a mosque is entirely a domestic, Turkish, matter.

[Jul 19, 2020] Polls are designed to influence public opinion, not so much to inform

Jul 19, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Colonel,

Polls are designed to influence public opinion, not so much to inform. This is especially true for MSNBC and CNN polls. They are just a powerful tool to win the election by projecting the aura of invincibility over Creepy Joe and thus influencing undecided voters and voters who look for a winner.

I think that the increase in polarization of the USA society after the "Summer of love" favors Trump. Neoliberal Dems burned all the bridges, so to speak. Now they symbolize an abysmal failure during the "summer of love," including CHAZ fiasco and the recent Chicago riot -- attempt to topple the Columbus statue.

I wonder how many Americans watched the video with the view from above (probably from a drone) embedded in WGN TV News twit referenced in the article below. It is clear from this video that this was a well-organized attack by a determined group of rioters.

https://www.rt.com/usa/495135-chicago-columbus-police-statue/

also at

https://www.bizpacreview.com/2020/07/18/chaos-in-chicago-18-officers-injured-1000-protesters-riot-attempt-to-tear-down-columbus-statue-948264
WGN TV News
@WGNNews
Protesters launch fireworks and other items at Chicago police officers guarding Columbus statue in Grant Park

0:24
1.3M views
8:41 PM · Jul 17, 2020
4.4K

Looks like a typical Soros staged spectacle with hired guns/thugs coordinating with neoliberal MSM, who is running the show.

Add to this the fallout from Russiagate/Obamagate that probably is coming in some form later and, possibly, from Maxwell scandal (where Clinton was probably involved and needs to be questioned )

Posted by: likbez | 19 July 2020 at 12:51 PM

[Jul 19, 2020] National polls are essentially meaningless when the presidency is decided by a handful of states

Jul 19, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

It will be interesting to see poll results a few days before the November election, as that'll be when many pollsters try to bolster their reputations by presenting results using the best methodologies they're capable of. We witnessed this in 2016 when final polling suddenly indicated a tight race.

Most polls are commissioned or sponsored by the MSM. Enough said I guess...

Posted by: akaPatience | 18 July 2020 at 02:00 PM

IMO it is way too early to handicap the presidential election. In any case national polls are essentially meaningless when the presidency is decided by a handful of states. I think 2020 presidency will be decided by Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin. Trump won some of these states by narrow margins in 2016.

I think the one big difference for Trump in 2020 is that Jared is completely running the campaign, whereas in 2016 Bannon was at the helm during the home stretch while Jared & Parscale managed the Facebook platform.

While this election should have been a home-run for Trump, his campaign has faltered since the spring and as voter attention grows in the next couple months does he have the right people managing the campaign? Especially since 2020 will be unique - probably the first virtual campaign. Biden will not be doing any debates and will have only fully scripted moments that will be broadcast. And Trump rallies will likely be curtailed as older people the main voting demographic will not show up in numbers.

Of course the Senate will be the crucial election with the Democrats only needing a gain of 4 to get the majority.

Posted by: blue peacock | 18 July 2020 at 02:42 PM

[Jul 19, 2020] A Counterrevolutionary Force

Jul 19, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

B efore it became a political term, "conservative" was the antonym of "destructive." When the word acquired political significance in the English language beginning in the early 19th century -- Britain's Conservative Party was founded in 1834 -- this older definition continued to be part of its meaning in the new context. The political forces that conservatives opposed, such as liberalism and radicalism, were inclined toward destruction. Those liberals and radicals who most admired the French Revolution were candid about this: they wished to destroy the existing legal, religious, social, and economic order so as to build a better, more rational one in its place.

Conservatism is a counterrevolutionary force: the antithesis of Jacobinism and Bolshevism, not simply as historical movements but as revolutionary tendencies to which the Left -- and sometimes the Right -- is susceptible. But conservatism is not simply the negation of incendiary ideology; it is also affirmation of a principle -- the anti-utopian view that, despite its flaws, our civilization is worthy of our loyalty, even unto death.

https://lockerdome.com/lad/13045197114175078?pubid=ld-dfp-ad-13045197114175078-0&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theamericanconservative.com&rid=www.theamericanconservative.com&width=838

You may have heard that American conservatism is not really conservative at all, it's just "classical liberalism." America was born in revolution, and as Louis Hartz influentially argued in the 1950s, Lockean liberalism is virtually our sole tradition. True conservatism arises from feudalism, which means that in this country it exists only as an exotic import, displaced in space and time from the lands of Habsburgs or Romanovs.

This is what liberals would like American conservatives to believe, but the opposite is more nearly the truth: conservatism is not classical liberalism; rather, what is best in classical liberalism depends on conservatism. To understand this, one must return to the historical milieu in which "conservative" and "liberal" became political terms. In the 1830s these words indicated on both sides of the Atlantic opposing attitudes toward the French Revolution and its legacy. Writing in the North American Review in 1835, Thomas Jefferson's biographer B.L. Rayner retrospectively applies the labels to the two great factions of American politics in the first decade of the republic: "If Mr. Jefferson and his friends sympathised, as every one knows that they did, with the liberal party in Europe, their opponents, the Federalists of that day, sympathised in like manner with the aristocratic, or as it is now called, legitimate or conservative party in Europe -- the party which, in order to avoid any epithet in the least degree offensive or even questionable, we have called the party of Law."

In Britain, the Conservative Party developed out of a longstanding coalition of anti-revolutionary Whigs and Tories who at one stage had been known as the "Friends of Pitt" -- that is, political allies who carried on the anti-French policies of the "independent Whig" Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, who had died in 1806. In the U.S., the anti-French faction of the 1790s was the Federalist Party, and although George Washington's administration, like Pitt's ministry, was notionally above party, in practice Washington was very much aligned with the anti-French, pro-British, counterrevolutionary politics of his Treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton and his vice president and successor John Adams. America's first government was conservative.

The Federalists did not long survive the election of Thomas Jefferson as president in 1800, but the extinction of a conserative party did not mean the extinction of conservative, counterrevolutionary politics, which lived on within Jefferson's own party. Jefferson himself had cooled in his revolutionary ardor, and conservatism prevailed even under America's first liberal president.

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The fact that America's war of independence had been a revolution, and that John Locke's philosophy was at the heart of its Declaration, is not the refutation of American conservatism that might be imagined. No less a foe of Jacobinism than Edmund Burke cherished another revolution, after all, one that was conservative rather than destructive -- the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 that had established the constitutional order Burke strove to defend. Locke, for his part, had presented his Second Treatise as a justification of the Glorious Revolution. That revolution, like America's nearly a century later, was understood by the revolutionaries themselves as a change in continuity with the nation's historic principles. When the Americans invoked Lockean ideas, they did so in the full knowledge that George III's own legitimacy in England rested in the eyes of many of his subjects -- especially those of parliamentary Whigs who were already skeptical of the war with America -- on the Lockean interpretation of the Revolution of 1688. The British could not deny the Americans their rights without at the same time denying part of the foundation of Britain's own constitution: the Declaration of Independence in effect made a conservative, originalist argument.

There was much historical mythologizing involved in the Glorious Revolution and the American Revolution. But the impulse to reconcile such alterations in government with the historical character of the nation was a conservative motive, in sharp contrast to the rationalistic and radically transformative impulse behind the likes of the Jacobins or the Bolsheviks. As for Britain's legitimist opponents of the Glorious Revolution -- the Jacobite Tories who believed Parliament was wrong to depose James II -- their conservatism was real but hopeless. Conservatism must actually conserve. The ancien regime proved to be unsalvageable everywhere: in Stuart Britain, Bourbon France, Habsburg Austria, Romanov Russia, even imperial China. Italy's Catholic faith was not enough to preserve the Papal States, either.

The age of ideological revolution has not ended; the revolutionary spirit has only assumed new forms. In China, still ruled by a Communist Party, it has become institutionalized, and the revolution is advanced not in the crude manner of the old Soviet Union but through a strategy of global economic transformation, coupled with ruthless reeducation programs at home. In the West, liberalism has cut loose from its civilizational roots, and from all conservative restraint, and has become an ideology of cultural revolution combined with an acceptance of the global economic reconfiguration also desired by China.

The conservative's task today, as during the French Revolution and the Cold War, is counterrevolutionary. But now the revolution is truly global, and though it may not be as violent as in centuries past -- not yet -- the stakes are hardly lower. America and her conservatives will need the utmost resolve, and a deep commitment to the sources of our civilization, if we are to prevail again. Yet until now, at least, Providence seems to have intended the Anglo-Americans to be the firefighters against the conflagration.

Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review , and editor-at-large of The American Conservative.

Related: Introducing the TAC Symposium: What Is American Conservatism?

[Jul 19, 2020] We need to ban corporations from doing anything in the political arena

Jul 19, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Richard Steven Hack , Jul 19 2020 1:17 utc | 78

Posted by: time2wakeupnow | Jul 18 2020 18:59 utc | 13 But there are also very real First Amendment interests implicated by laws which bar entities from spending money to express political viewpoints."

With regard to Greenwald's opinion, mine is relatively simple: ban corporations from doing *anything* in the political arena. Corporations are *not* people, regardless of the legal myth that they are. Officers of corporations have no standing other than their personal standing, and they should be barred from contributing to campaigns, or lobbying for legislation or anything else outside of conducting the business they are *licensed by the state* to do.

This does not apply to incorporated non-profit organizations which are organized to do precisely what corporations should be banned from doing: advocate and attempt to influence specific legislation or policies or candidates for office. For profit corporations should be banned from doing anything to influence non-profit organizations, by the way, otherwise corporations will do an end-run around the ban on political action by funding fake "non-profit" organizations.

With regard to the large social media, there should be a law passed which 1) prevents them from being sued regardless of anything their subscribers say on their platforms, and 2) prevents them from censoring anything their subscribers say on their platforms. This was true on the street and should be true on the Internet. Freedom of speech is a cornerstone of the Constitution and should be protected on the Internet.

That does not apply here in MOA because MOA is a small operation owned and operated by one person. He has the right to ban or censor anything he likes. But if he was the size of Facebook or Twitter, he would have serious social influence. In that case, it would be justified to both hold him blameless for the trolls and also prevent him from censoring trolls.

Dealing with offensive people on the large platforms (and even here) should be done by providing the users adequate personal controls in their interface which enable the users to remove content from their view that they don't like, while the content remains in view for anyone who approves of it or doesn't care. Some forums have been doing this for years, such as Slashdot.

These solutions are incredibly simple. The reason they are not implemented is because different factions see benefit in not implementing them.

Naturally, as an anarchist, the solutions I suggest are predicated on the idiocy of having states and corporations in the first place. Otherwise, all these "issues" wouldn't even exist. This is what you get when you have a religious belief in the state and society.

[Jul 18, 2020] Polls lie -- Why We Shouldn't Believe Polling About Trump by Lloyd Pettigrew

Jul 18, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

"The reason why we shouldn't believe most of the current or future polling results about President Trump can be summarized in two words: Social Desirability.

Social desirability is a concept first advanced by psychologist Allen L. Edwards in 1953. It advances the idea that when asked about an issue in a social setting, people will always answer in a socially desirable manner whether or not they really believe it . Political polling, whether by telephone or online, is a social setting. Respondents know that there is an audience who are posing the questions and monitoring their response. As a result, despite a respondent's true belief, many will answer polling questions in what may appear to be a more socially desirable way, or not answer at all.

When it comes to President Trump, the mainstream media and academics have led us to believe that it is not socially desirable (or politically correct) to support him . When up against such sizable odds, most conservatives will do one of three things: 1) Say we support someone else when we really support the president (lie); 2) tell the truth despite the social undesirability of that response; 3) Not participate in the poll (nonresponse bias).

This situation has several real consequences for Trump polling. First, for those in the initial voter sample unwilling to participate, the pollster must replace them with people willing to take the poll. Assuming this segment is made up largely of pro-Trump supporters, finding representative replacements can be expensive, time-consuming and doing so increases the sampling error rate (SER) while decreasing the validity of the poll. Sampling error rate is the gold standard statistic in polling. It means that the results of a particular poll will vary by no more than + x% than if the entire voter population was surveyed. All else being equal, a poll with a sampling error rate of + 2% is more believable than one of + 4% because it has a larger sample. Immediate polling on issues like President Trump's impeachment may provide support to journalists with a point of view to broadcast, but with a small sample and high sampling error rates, the results aren't worthy of one's time and consideration."

--------------

I watched today as the crypto lefty Michael Smerconish interviewed Jason Miller from the Trump campaign. He insisted that Miller "face up to the bad recent poll results" on Trump. What he wanted was for Miller to concede defeat in the November election. Miller pointed out that all the polls cited by MS consistently under sample Republicans by more than 10%. The typical Republican sample size is between 25 and 30% in these polls. MS simply ignored that and went on making his case for Trump's coming defeat.

MS's weekly on air poll asked the question "Is the election over? " He was visibly disappointed when his mostly liberal audience replied "no" by 69% of a 16000 vote sample. pl

https://townhall.com/columnists/loydpettegrew/2020/01/24/why-we-shouldnt-believe-polling-about-trump-n2559990


Terence Gore , 18 July 2020 at 12:48 PM


All over the news last night.... Not that I saw

https://twitter.com/WGNNews/status/1284287185508864006

18 officers hurt

Leith , 18 July 2020 at 12:49 PM

I don't believe the polls, neither neutral pollsters, nor anybody else's regardless of which way they lean politically. With Caller-ID so prevalent today, nobody I know answers the phone anymore unless they recognize the number. Especially for 800 #s. I have NoMoRobo installed on my landline that automatically cuts off all computerized autodial calls. I need to get something similar for my cell phone.

As for on-air polls, they are complete BS, more like fairy tale genre for four year olds. Doesn't matter whether they are done by MSNBC or Fox or any other TV network or radio station.

AK , 18 July 2020 at 01:39 PM

I've long wondered what the numbers would look like if the pollsters cataloged every response along the lines of "go f*** yourself" as a vote for Trump...

BillWade , 18 July 2020 at 01:47 PM

For those of you who don't watch CNN, I'm in that category, I urge you to watch it on election night, it's pure bliss watching Wolf Blitzer twitch and burn.

[Jul 18, 2020] Polls lie by Lloyd Pettigrew

Jul 18, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

"The reason why we shouldn’t believe most of the current or future polling results about President Trump can be summarized in two words: Social Desirability..."

AK | 18 July 2020 at 01:39 PM

I've long wondered what the numbers would look like if the pollsters cataloged every response along the lines of "go f*** yourself" as a vote for Trump...

[Jul 14, 2020] Though government infiltrators undoubtedly helped to fragment Occupy, most protesters gleefully went along with their own gelding, because, to them, it was never about rallying the 99% towards common goals, as they vaguely claimed, but airing minority grievances.

The question is : what is the role of FBI in organizing and driving the current protests, especially the action of antifa?
Notable quotes:
"... It would be fitting justice for AntiFa to go the way the Red Guards ..."
"... Not quite nine years later, almost no one is talking about banksters, incredibly, although the country has been plunged into a much worse economic hell Broke and enraged, mobs swarm American streets, but instead of targeting those who are imploding their society, they pull down statues, break windows, deface walls, loot stores and attack cops or each other. ..."
"... Pelosi said even if DC burns down to the ground, the US will be 100% for Israel. Why not include Wall Street, the money bag of Jewish Power? ..."
"... In a way, what we are seeing is the Japanization of White America. This is why the US should not have dropped the nukes and forced unconditional surrender. They should have allowed Japan to surrender with honor. Make Japan give up its empire and military ambitions but let the Japanese keep their culture and sacred myths. But the US forced unconditional surrender, turned the Emperor into Tokyo Shoeshine boy, occupied Japan(and still has bases there), used Japanese women as whores & mistresses, and turned Japanese men into castrated cuck-wussies. Sound familiar? ..."
Jul 14, 2020 | www.unz.com

Though government infiltrators undoubtedly helped to fragment Occupy, most protesters gleefully went along with their own gelding, because, to them, it was never about rallying the 99% towards common goals, as they vaguely claimed, but airing minority grievances. Most importantly, they could look cool doing it.

With visual evidence uploaded onto FaceBook, Tumblr and Instagram, etc., soy boys from strip malled subdivisions could accrue street cred.

Since "Occupy Everything, Demand Nothing " became Occupy's rallying cry, it achieved literally nothing, predictably. A month after all tents were cleared from Zuccotti Park, Time Magazine anointed "The Protester" as Person Of The Year, so for being symbolically homeless for two months, the sans cazzo got a participation lollipop from the bossman.

Since then, unscathed and smirking Wall Street has only amped up its state-of-the-art shell games, punctuated by bailouts. What's left of the country's wealth keeps flowing to the top.

Although Occupy Wall Street exposed widespread discontent, it was deftly tamed by the state, without addressing any of the issues raised. Worsened economic malaise is papered over with fake news and statistics. Unable to afford even an efficiency, the young and not so young resignedly or bitterly move back home. I'm sure you know a few.

Beneath each basement, there's another, even darker and danker, Americans kept discovering, so they just had to suck it up and simmer on, when not overdosing on opioids. It's the new normal.

Occupy Wall Street protesters were mostly under-35-year-old whites, with at least some college education. Now, the same demographic is back on the streets, but instead of chanting for economic justice and representing, at least in theory, the 99%, they're fighting Fascism and racism. With their inclusive definitions of such sins, however, they're warring against most of the country.

... ... ...

On August 14th, 2018, CNN reeducated us, "There is no national antifa group. It is mostly made up of people who are far left of center, who make it their mission to battle Fascists, racists and alt right extremists." It's a grassroot, homegrown resistance to hate, that's all. "Behind the masks are people from all walks of life, artist, mom, ordinary American, as well as anarchist." Four most gentle faces were shown.

On June 16th, 2020, CNN reemphasized that antifa was a belief system that unified all anti-Fascists, whatever their color, age or background, so how could you be against it, unless you're a Fascist?! A burly, genial black man explained, "It basically means that you are against Fascism. If you are against Fascism, then you are antifa."

In a BLACK LIVES MATTER muscle-T, a white wuss added, "Antifa is not a group. It's not like everybody sits in, like, some basement, talking about how to overthrow the Fascist regime. I walked around picking up trash yesterday, behind the protesters. That's what antifa looks like."

Burly black guy, "White people have to be involved in fighting racism, in fighting white supremacy [ ] But if you are a white ally, remember that you still have to follow the lead of people of color."

The New York Times and Washington Post have also written sympathetically about antifa. When the corporate media give you a positive spin, it must mean you're serving the establishment. Mussolini had his Blackshirts, Hitler his Brownshirts and Mao his Red Guards. America's rulers have antifa.

Far from threatening the 1%, antifa sows dissension among the 99%. Ignoring Wall Street, antifa trashes one Main Street after another.

Zealously branding its enemies as racist or Fascist, antifa generates more racism and Fascism.

Slammed by the economic crisis of 2008, Americans started to look more closely at Wall Street, Goldman Sachs and the Federal Reserve , etc., and they were enlightened by people like Ron Paul and Matt Taibbi.

In Rolling Stone, Taibbi wrote, "The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."

Banksters were scrutinized with increasing intensity. It was in this climate that Occupy Wall Street was born.

Not quite nine years later, almost no one is talking about banksters, incredibly, although the country has been plunged into a much worse economic hell, with millions suddenly laid off, and millions of mom and pops permanently ruined. Thanks to another monster bailout, only Wall Street is doing well.

Broke and enraged, mobs swarm American streets, but instead of targeting those who are imploding their society, they pull down statues, break windows, deface walls, loot stores and attack cops or each other.

When your tyrants can't even be identified, much less found, no coup, uprising or revolution is possible, and it's pointless to assassinate an American president, since he is but a puppet, so who should be shot?

The month I was born, two presidents were killed. Though Ngo Dinh Diem has often been caricatured as an American puppet, he obviously broke his strings, or he wouldn't have been shot. Kennedy, too, went off script. His death was a warning. It works.

American elections are cathartic farces. Drawn out and elaborately staged, they're designed to give false hopes and stoke emotions. With the national mood already so volatile and foul, however, this year's balloting promises to be a horror show. Unable to aim at their oppressors, Americans will be reduced to shooting each other.


TG , says: July 11, 2020 at 5:53 pm GMT

"Far from threatening the 1%, antifa sows dissension among the 99%. Ignoring Wall Street, antifa trashes one Main Street after another."

Kudos. Well said!!!

"Who should be shot?" I answer the question in the purely hypothetical, I am not in any way suggesting this line of response. But the answer is obvious.

When Tsar Nicholas and his family were murdered by the communists, it put the fear of God (or fear of something) in the hearts of the western plutocrats and we got the New Deal and more than a half century of the working class getting at least sort of a reasonable cut of the proceeds.

"Who shall we shoot?" If the Jeff Bezoses and Zuckerbergs and Soroses etc. of the world take a personal hit – if they begin to think that even they, in their well-guarded bubbles, are not safe – only then will we get any sort of consideration from the top. It is personal fear, not morality, that will cause the elites to again begin to value stability and order over rapacious looting.

No I am not in any way suggesting violence. Not me, no how. But it remains true that only the threat of personal violence directed at the elites, will cause them to reconsider their current socially destructive path.

Carlton Meyer , says: Website July 11, 2020 at 7:49 pm GMT

Though Ngo Dinh Diem has often been caricatured as an American puppet, he obviously broke his strings, or he wouldn't have been shot.

The CIA recruited Diem to be the puppet ruler of a nation they had created. He was living in New Jersey and then became head of South Vietnam without an election. He had attended the same elite school in Hue as Ho Chi Mihn and meant well. When he saw that fighting was increasing he wanted to cut a deal with Ho Chi Mihn, who had won the 1954 elections was the legitimate ruler of all Vietnam after the temporary cease fire line that divided Vietnam ended in 1956. The DMZ was an illusion created by the CIA and Pentagon.

This is why Diem was killed by a CIA coup, and was followed by other puppet leaders. The CIA's attempt to create a new nation that became known as South Vietnam failed by 1964, which is why American troops arrived.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/0B9BM8OTSB0?feature=oembed

The Alarmist , says: July 11, 2020 at 7:49 pm GMT

Mussolini had his Blackshirts, Hitler his Brownshirts and Mao his Red Guards. America's rulers have antifa.

The Black Shirts were able to gracefully fade away for the most part, but the other two groups had a rather difficult go once they had served their purpose. It would be fitting justice for AntiFa to go the way the Red Guards once President Abrams is safely ensconced: After all, you can't feed a country with hooligan student revolutionaries roving the streets rather than working the farms.

Si1ver1ock , says: July 11, 2020 at 11:31 pm GMT

The month I was born, two presidents were killed. Though Ngo Dinh Diem has often been caricatured as an American puppet, he obviously broke his strings, or he wouldn't have been shot. Kennedy, too, went off script. His death was a warning. It works.

Liz Chaney is thwarting Trump's troop draw-down in Afghanistan with help from Dems as well as Republicans.

House Democrats, Working With Liz Cheney, Restrict Trump's Planned Withdrawal of Troops From Afghanistan and Germany

https://theintercept.com/2020/07/02/house-democrats-working-with-liz-cheney-restrict-trumps-planned-withdrawal-of-troops-from-afghanistan-and-germany/

Trump is thinking about doing something stupid in Venezuela.

He is already antagonizing China.

Priss Factor , says: Website July 12, 2020 at 12:01 am GMT

Not quite nine years later, almost no one is talking about banksters, incredibly, although the country has been plunged into a much worse economic hell Broke and enraged, mobs swarm American streets, but instead of targeting those who are imploding their society, they pull down statues, break windows, deface walls, loot stores and attack cops or each other.

Pelosi said even if DC burns down to the ground, the US will be 100% for Israel. Why not include Wall Street, the money bag of Jewish Power?

In a way, what we are seeing is the Japanization of White America. This is why the US should not have dropped the nukes and forced unconditional surrender. They should have allowed Japan to surrender with honor. Make Japan give up its empire and military ambitions but let the Japanese keep their culture and sacred myths. But the US forced unconditional surrender, turned the Emperor into Tokyo Shoeshine boy, occupied Japan(and still has bases there), used Japanese women as whores & mistresses, and turned Japanese men into castrated cuck-wussies. Sound familiar?

... ... ...

animalogic , says: July 12, 2020 at 8:18 am GMT

Great article.
"Their movement fizzled out, however, because it degenerated into an endless display of narcissistic posturing, with everyone making self-important speeches about his or her pet cause, to an audience of fifty, tops, which is not how a revolution is ever made."
"Far from threatening the 1%, antifa sows dissension among the 99%. Ignoring Wall Street, antifa trashes one Main Street after another."
Is it ANY wonder why Elites love the post-modern, the PC, & antifa so much. Talk about the "magic pudding" & the gift that just keeps on giving .

Franz , says: July 12, 2020 at 9:31 am GMT

Broke and enraged, mobs swarm American streets, but instead of targeting those who are imploding their society, they pull down statues, break windows, deface walls, loot stores and attack cops or each other .

Hey! What the 19th century robber baron said has finally come true:

"I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half." -- Jay Gould

They are being paid: BLM and Antifa people are being bankrolled. Just tote up the corporate donations the BLM in the past week and flip. More money than most nations have in the treasury. As to Antifa, Soros funded them for years. All to get rid of white people.

If it weren't happening, who'd believe it?

theMann , says: July 12, 2020 at 12:44 pm GMT
@Brian Reilly

You left out the Media Jackals. They are the willing and ever ready mouthpieces for the Satanic Cult the Financial Elites would turn America into. In fact, the Media liars have as much culpability as any group in the country for our current disaster.

Polemos , says: July 12, 2020 at 3:39 pm GMT

I think one reason why we're no longer talking about a 1% is that enough of us started to ask the question: what race/nationality are the 1%?

Parbes , says: July 12, 2020 at 4:23 pm GMT

Who should be shot? Start with the neocons (particularly the Jewish ones). They are the head of the snake in the West – especially the U.S. – today. Most evils are downstream from their actions/policies, directly or indirectly.

ruralguy , says: July 12, 2020 at 4:45 pm GMT

Who should be shot? It's hard imaging Americans staging a revolution. The DOD says 75% of young Americans don't quality to serve in the military, because they are too fat or too dumb. Our protesters protest because they get to appear virtuous -- they need some kind of participation award.

Jmaie , says: July 12, 2020 at 4:54 pm GMT

Jeff Stryker , says: July 12, 2020 at 5:00 pm GMT

...Upthread someone mentioned Bezos as being in the 1%. While he is certainly uber wealthy, I've always thought of him in a different way. In my mind the 1% are the wall street guys who financialize everything, and if they all went away tomorrow our (main street) economy would greatly improve. If Amazon goes away, I'd have to start buying all my crap in person. Ugh

The same fools assume the 1 percent will hang around when things become very adverse in the US. Nope. They'll do what wealthy South Africans did and the US lumpens will do what Boers did.

Nobody cares if the poor in the gutters of Wall Street go on hunger strike The one percent does not care if the poor go hungry anyhow.

Average middle class Americans are naive as to how callous and unconcerned the one percent is. The blacks and Hispanics at the bottom of society are aware, of course. That is why laws and customs mean nothing, nor bourgeois values. But it is the middle class who is actually naive enough to believe the one percent gives a fat rat's ass about them, about America, about their feelings.

I'm surprised this is not obvious to more people.

Rev. Spooner , says: July 12, 2020 at 5:07 pm GMT

Both Antifa and the Patriots have a huge red-blue target painted on their backs. Unless they can identify their overlords clearly, they will fight each other.
Hey Americans, who is it that you cannot criticize?

gaston julia , says: July 12, 2020 at 7:26 pm GMT
@ruralguy

https://www.wired.com/2009/11/75-of-potential-recruits-too-fat-too-sickly-too-dumb-to-serve/

[Jul 13, 2020] Craig Murray about the glorification of war

Notable quotes:
"... Glorifying war is disturbing but so is the normalization of war. Most do not realize that large standing armies and large police forces were unknown/unusual only a century ago. ..."
"... And very few understand the mentality of the power-elite or how they have secreted themselves and their objectives behind gated communities, political divisiveness, and unaccountable 'national security' bullshit (more like 'war strategy'). ..."
Jul 13, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Jackrabbit , Jul 13 2020 15:11 utc | 181

Craig Murray writes about the glorification of war:

The BBC World War Two Porn Page
Glorifying war is disturbing but so is the normalization of war. Most do not realize that large standing armies and large police forces were unknown/unusual only a century ago.

And very few understand the mentality of the power-elite or how they have secreted themselves and their objectives behind gated communities, political divisiveness, and unaccountable 'national security' bullshit (more like 'war strategy').

The ideologies of the Empire are: neoConservativism (a form of aristocracy); neoLiberalism (a form of facism); and Zionism (a form of colonialism).

In short, a combination of the worst inclinations in the Western tradition.

!!

[Jul 13, 2020] The role on polls in China

Notable quotes:
"... The example of China, which operates under Confucian values and regards stable society as the highest good, is causing many in the world to rethink the idea of "democracy" and what that concept actually entails. As Chinese political scientist Zhang Weiwe has pointed out, in the US, the parties are "parties of interest" - whoever wins the vote gets to push the values of that interest, and the people represented by the losing party are simply outcast from the "democracy" until the next vote. He has a 5-minute clip in great English for those interested: The CPC is not a "party" ..."
Jul 13, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Grieved , Jul 13 2020 2:34 utc | 137

@97 blues

Referring to China, you say "the 'people' have absolutely zero say in regard to what the government/system actually does do."

This is absolutely not the case. The exact opposite is the true picture, ironically so, since the Chinese government conducts more polls than any other entity on the planet. When one studies China's system of government one learns how all that input from the people is actually put to use, being scientifically (i.e. not politically) fed into the decision-making process.

China's way of governing actually presents a measure of democracy, in terms of the voice of the people being heard and acted upon, that is vastly greater than the so-called democracies.

Godfree Roberts over at Unz Review is probably your simplest path to knowing this. Searching his archive there will yield data-driven reports on how the Communist Party actually works, how the President exercises power, what the Constitution dictates (and the penalties for not following it), and how satisfied with their current government are the Chinese people - who are not easy to please when it comes to governance, and who have a history that shows they will rebel when they're not happy.

Try this as a starter from Roberts:
Selling Democracy to China - Still too soon to tell?

Today, Chinese democracy resembles Proctor and Gamble more than Pericles. There are more than a thousand polling firms in China and its government spends prolifically on surveys, as author Jeff J. Brown says, "My Beijing neighborhood committee and town hall are constantly putting up announcements, inviting groups of people–renters, homeowners, over seventies, women under forty, those with or without medical insurance, retirees–to answer surveys. The CPC is the world's biggest pollster for a reason: China's democratic 'dictatorship of the people' is highly engaged at the day-to-day, citizen-on-the-street level. I know, because I live in a middle class Chinese community and I question them all the time. I find their government much more responsive and democratic than the dog-and-pony shows back home, and I mean that seriously".

Even the imperious Mao would remind colleagues, "If we don't investigate public opinion we have no right to voice our own opinion. Public opinion is our guideline for action," which is why Five Year Plans are the results of intensive polling. Citizens' sixty-two percent voter participation suggests that they think their votes count.

It may be that this one article answers the question of democracy for the interested reader, but likely one should read a few more to become convinced.

~~

The example of China, which operates under Confucian values and regards stable society as the highest good, is causing many in the world to rethink the idea of "democracy" and what that concept actually entails. As Chinese political scientist Zhang Weiwe has pointed out, in the US, the parties are "parties of interest" - whoever wins the vote gets to push the values of that interest, and the people represented by the losing party are simply outcast from the "democracy" until the next vote. He has a 5-minute clip in great English for those interested: The CPC is not a "party"

China's government by contrast is a "party of all" and acts on behalf of no vested interest but instead for the greatest benefit for the many.

To get a glimpse of how this works, read the March 2019 commentary on the two annual governance sessions that decide ongoing policy for China, which supplies this acute understanding of the true heart of representative governance:

Democracy is not a decoration, but a means of solving problems.
- Commentary: Chinese democracy puts Western illusion in dust

div> @Cyril , Jul 12 2020 21:41 utc | 105

@Cyril | Jul 12 2020 21:41 utc | 105 /div

[Jul 12, 2020] Trove of Leaked FBI, Fusion Center and DHS Documents Provide Insight Into Antifa, Charlottesville, Political Bias, and the Erosion of Civil Liberties by Eric Striker

Notable quotes:
"... The most interesting document of all is an intelligence assessment by DHS in the run up to the now famous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, which starkly contradicts the mainstream media and FBI's narrative. ..."
"... In a document dated August 9th, 2017, DHS wrote "We assess that anarchist extremists' use of violence as a means to oppose racism and white supremacist extremists' preparations to counterattack anarchist extremists are the principal drivers of violence at recent white supremacist rallies." ..."
"... Ideological uniformity is important in the FBI's relationship with local law enforcement, a flyer sent to law enforcement personnel in Texas shows. ..."
"... As Douglas Valentine points out, these fusion centers are Phoenix centers, which CIA developed in Vietnam to eradicate independent civil society. You can see the CIA mannerisms they teach the Junior Spy Cadets at the fusion center: pretend classmarks: (U//LES), Roger, Wilco, Over and Out! Breathless dumbshit cops get to use U just like real spies, but they don't get get collateral access and they have to make up little codes to try and blow off public records law. ..."
Jul 12, 2020 | www.unz.com

The Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC) reported similar information in its investigation of the Boston Free Speech Rally on August 19th, 2017. BRIC noted that the nationalist and free speech demonstrators, about 60 of them in total, had a permit for the event, while the anarchist groups that showed up to heckle-veto them were there illegally.

The leftist rioters began attacking the protesters, and later, began engaging in gratuitous yet apparently coordinated violence against police officers attempting to intervene, causing multiple injuries.

The most interesting document of all is an intelligence assessment by DHS in the run up to the now famous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, which starkly contradicts the mainstream media and FBI's narrative.

In a document dated August 9th, 2017, DHS wrote "We assess that anarchist extremists' use of violence as a means to oppose racism and white supremacist extremists' preparations to counterattack anarchist extremists are the principal drivers of violence at recent white supremacist rallies."

... ... ...

The close working relationship between mainstream social media companies, the FBI and "NGOs" (the ADL and SPLC) is clear and assumed, adding a new layer of understanding when it comes to tech censorship and the power of privately run organizations that are not subject general ethics or government accountability.

Ideological uniformity is important in the FBI's relationship with local law enforcement, a flyer sent to law enforcement personnel in Texas shows.

The event, hosted by the FBI for local cops, featured lectures on "hate" (which is not a crime) from a former member of the Westboro Baptist Church and the ex-lead singer of a skinhead rock band. The conference was hosted in December 2017, so one can only imagine this indoctrination has gotten more intense since then.

Ultimately, we can gather from these documents a climate of incompetence, rejection of facts for political reasons, and a culture of selective prosecution. Those who post memes making fun of the election are treated as conspirators against the Constitutional rights of others, while anarchists who actively conspire in the open to do the same are rarely prosecuted by the FBI.

The most disturbing aspect of all this is how groups like the Anti-Defamation League appear to have more sway over the FBI's investigative priorities than intelligence provided to them by local fusion centers.

It appears that in defense of their power, our elites are willing to do away with all liberal pretenses and take on "emergency orders" that ultimately punishes peaceful dissent while allowing real criminals to go free.


Farrakhan.DDuke.AliceWalker.AllAgree , says: July 11, 2020 at 2:31 am GMT

Local police are doing good work:

Law enforcement is fully aware of who provokes the fighting and rioting at riots: the left. The documents from fusion centers across the country (intelligence provided by local police departments) repeatedly report this.

But

Both the FBI and to a lesser extent the Department of Homeland Security are far more concerned with political ideology and creating propaganda than upholding the law.

,
Phung Hoang , says: July 11, 2020 at 1:23 pm GMT

As Douglas Valentine points out, these fusion centers are Phoenix centers, which CIA developed in Vietnam to eradicate independent civil society. You can see the CIA mannerisms they teach the Junior Spy Cadets at the fusion center: pretend classmarks: (U//LES), Roger, Wilco, Over and Out! Breathless dumbshit cops get to use U just like real spies, but they don't get get collateral access and they have to make up little codes to try and blow off public records law.

This is why when asshole cops strangle you, you can't complain to the city. CIA controls the cops, not the city. This is most obvious in NYPD, with actual CIA secret police like Sanchez and Cohen, arresting you like cops to facilitate illegal CIA domestic spying. DHS and FBI are in there too, of course, fishing for dissent to repress but they're controlled by CIA focal points.

So next time a pig kneels on your head you can't just burn down the precinct, you have to burn down the CIA fusion center, and Langley too.

anon [234] Disclaimer , says: July 11, 2020 at 2:17 pm GMT

Aside from siccing cops on the latest internal enemies, CIA also uses fusion centers to propagate the party line to cops, who will credulously swallow it and pass it on to show off their double-secret spy connections. For instance, they circulated alt media disinfo claiming KGB killed JFK. This happened to coincide with Unz and other bravura JFK coup exposes, and with CIA's Russiagate fiasco.

Reg Cæsar , says: July 11, 2020 at 3:30 pm GMT

If these people are in league with the state, anarchist is the last word to describe them.

Curmudgeon , says: July 11, 2020 at 4:10 pm GMT

"We assess that anarchist extremists' use of violence as a means to oppose racism and white supremacist extremists' preparations to counterattack anarchist extremists are the principal drivers of violence at recent white supremacist rallies."

Is there a bigger political statement than this? The anarchist extremists aren't opposing racism, they are opposing the government(s). "White supremacist" is a pejorative label used to discredit people's right to free assembly. Clearly, the only investigating the FBI does is on whom it decides are political opponents.

kuraudo , says: July 12, 2020 at 6:21 am GMT

I find it incredibly frustrating that all of this scandalous information is out there confirming what we already knew to be true and yet these organizations, the media, and especially elected officials continue on as if this isn't the case. It's vexing. Frustrating. Enraging.

If this was a dictatorship, at least we could rage against that, but because it has the words "democracy" slapped onto it, we are supposedly able to change things. And yet, representative democracy has proven that nothing changes if the elites do not will it. It's just a vile scheme by plutocrats to keep us in chains of our own imagination: "well, we voted for this so I have to live with the results," no we didn't, and do we truly?

Zarathustra , says: July 12, 2020 at 4:28 am GMT

I can tell you this. what is happening in US now, in Communism was not even remotely close that bad.

Anonymous [661] • Disclaimer , says: July 12, 2020 at 11:28 am GMT
@Zarathustra

I think Solzhenitsyn would respectfully disagree on behalf of the 66 million Russian Christians who were tortured, raped and slaughtered during 1917-1989, not to mention the fourteen years he spent locked up in the gulags run by Jewish Communists.

Might also be a few Ukrainians who disagree with your assessment given the 11-17 million murdered by Jewish Bolsheviks in the 1932 Holodomor, which to my knowledge is still the single biggest genocide in human history.

onebornfree , says: • Website July 12, 2020 at 12:02 pm GMT

This just in:

1] the FBI, as well as the CIA and 1000's of other federal agencies, is an entirely unconstitutional federal agency.

Levtraro , says: July 12, 2020 at 12:09 pm GMT
@Exile

Then we'd have a position of strength from which to force the end to Jewish occupation of America – which is necessary before the rest of the world's gentile populations, particularly Europe, can take similar action.

America freeing herself will be good for America, but not necessary for other nations. For instance, Putin freed Russia from her oligarchs, the overwhelming majority of them Jewish, well before America had shown any progress on this matter. Actually, Russia freed herself in spite of America!

Stupid Pig Tricks , says: July 12, 2020 at 1:08 pm GMT

Here's a sample of the busywork CIA gives the crookedest stupidest cops in the Phoenix/fusion centers, the worms like Tom Gerard.

https://mobile.twitter.com/jmorse_/status/1280527030484742144/photo/1

White man's welfare, they call it. They hold pigs in contempt just like everybody else. But this is how CIA finds the eager beaver cops who'll break the law to suck up and play James Bond with them.

That beaner psycho Sanchez blabbed CIA's real intention while he was illegally spying undercover as a NYPD pig: they don't just want to solve crimes, they want to keep you from committing crimes in the first place. They think it's their job to to keep you under control. These drug-dealing, gun-running, money-laundering, kiddy-pimping criminal scumbags rule your country because they can kill you and torture you and get away with it. Even if you're the president. Your government is CIA, and CIA is a totalitarian state. Until you storm Langley like the Germans stormed the Stasi, all your reforms and revolutions are worth shit.

KenH , says: July 12, 2020 at 2:53 pm GMT

Antifa members routinely cross state lines to violate the civil rights of those they perceive as "fascists" yet the FBI does nothing. Since it's obvious the FBI is dominated by partisan leftists who are either sympathetic with antifa (and BLM) or actively colluding them them against pro-white and right of center groups engaged in lawful but politically incorrect activity.

The FBI is clearly taking their marching orders from the ADL who's lobbied them for years to take a more active and hostile stance towards the pro-white and anti-semitic right. But given the leftist ideological proclivities of the average special agent and their superiors this wasn't that hard of a sell.

The FBI declared that it would begin investigating memes posted on Twitter intended to satirize low civic education by telling people to vote for Hillary Clinton via text message as a "Conspiracy Against Rights Provided by the Constitution and Laws of the United States"

Yet the FBI did absolutely nothing about the black panthers intimidating voters at a Philly precinct in 2008. Their illegal actions were witnessed by several poll watchers yet the Obama/Holder DOJ promptly dropped the charges upon taking office.

The FBI is awash in naked partisanship and corruption and should have at least 25% of its funding cut and be barred from surveilling or infiltrating groups engaged in politically incorrect but lawful activity. It's become an appendage of the Democrat party and radical left wing establishment and should be treated as such.

Pop Warner , says: July 12, 2020 at 2:56 pm GMT
@Reg Cæsar

I usually refer to them as neoliberals because there's little that separates the beliefs of antifa and the board of JP Morgan

Ace , says: July 12, 2020 at 5:24 pm GMT
@GMC

the USA, which is a totally failed country – domestically.

There it is. The U.S.A. does not serve the interests of the majority of the population.

Richard B , says: July 12, 2020 at 6:33 pm GMT
@BL

Great comment.

Unite The Right Rally was a so obviously an ADL/$PLC/FBI Production.

I haven't seen choreography that blatant and stiff since the Lee Harvey Oswald assassination.

Priss Factor , says: • Website July 12, 2020 at 8:04 pm GMT
@Anonymous

You are both right. Soviet Communism was far more murderous and brutal, BUT the West faces a greater crisis. After all, communism didn't wipe Russia off the map, and indeed, Russians began to regain control and power after Stalin's death. Also, Stalin had done much to check Jewish Power, and there was a kind of cultural conservatism in many walks of life.

... ... ...

steinbergfeldwitzcohen , says: July 12, 2020 at 8:29 pm GMT
@Levtraro to HIM and had City of London-Israeli financing. So what actually happened is that the Jews, who had been ousted from power by Krushchev and Brezhnev in the post-ww2 era, got back into positions of economic power in Russia. A position that, as I noted, they had lost. This idea that Putin is a nationalist is simply not true. He is a Jew-boy lapdog who takes his orders from Tel Aviv and London..
The Soviet economy has significant State ownership. Part of what Putin did was to put the oil industry back into the hands of the State so the State would have the Revenues. Most countries do this with Oil and Gas revenue. It is very popular and provides employment and desperately needed money to pay the paltry pensions many Russians subside on.
Russia hasn't been free since 1917 and is still not free. To believe otherwise is to be blinded by Eastern Jewish smoke and mirrors.
Robjil , says: July 12, 2020 at 11:28 pm GMT
@Jiminy

The idea of separation of Church (Synagogue) and State is one way that we could get back our "freedoms".

... ... ...

Robjil , says: July 12, 2020 at 11:32 pm GMT
@steinbergfeldwitzcohen

Chabbad is not having the time of its life in Russia. Neither are Zion uber alles like in our Congress. It quite different in Russia. Russia has a bit more freedom that we do from Zion uber alles.

https://chabadinfo.com/news/another-shliach-kicked-out-of-russia/

For the eighth time this past decade, Russian authorities told a foreign Chabad rabbi living in Russia to leave the country.

Josef Marozof, a New York-born rabbi who began working 12 years ago for Chabad in the city of Ulyanovsk 400 miles east of Moscow, was ordered earlier this week to leave because the FSB security service said he had been involved in unspecified "extremist behavior."

[Jul 06, 2020] Israel is becoming a fascist country

Jul 06, 2020 | m.jpost.com

Right conclusion but the argument made is superficial:

[Jul 05, 2020] Watch: Protesters Pull Down Christopher Columbus Statue In Baltimore, Dump In Harbor

Looks like the most powerful complain for re-election of Trump
Jul 05, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

The statue, dedicated in 1984, is the latest monument to be destroyed in what President Trump dubbed the "left-wing cultural revolution" by "angry mobs."

According to the Baltimore Sun , the Columbus statue has been the site of a wreath-laying ceremony right before the annual Columbus Day parade, which, in 2019 was replaced with the Italian Heritage Festival.

Republican state delegates and Italian-American activists held a press conference at the statue last month to ask Gov. Larry Hogan and Baltimore Mayor Bernard C. "Jack" Young to preserve and protect the memorials , following activists' comments about pulling down the monuments themselves and the introduction of a City Council bill this week to rename one of them in honor of victims of police violence.

The downed statue is one of three monuments to Columbus in Baltimore. - Baltimore Sun

https://twitter.com/i/status/1279588928736104449

erhaps some thoughts by Matt Taibbi are worth repeating ( via SubStack ):

Much of America has watched in quizzical silence in recent weeks as crowds declared war on an increasingly incoherent succession of historical symbols. Maybe you nodded as Confederate general Albert Pike was toppled or even when Christopher Columbus was beheaded, but it got a little weird when George Washington was emblazoned with "Fuck Cops" and set on fire , or when they went after Ulysses S. Grant , abolitionist Colonel Hans Christian Heg , " Forward ," (a seven-foot-tall female figure meant to symbolize progress ), the Portland, Oregon " Elk statue ," or my personal favorite, the former slave Miguel de Cervantes , whose cheerful creations Don Quixote and Sancho Panza were apparently mistaken for reals and had their eyes lashed red in San Francisco.

Was a What the Fuck? too much to ask? It was! In the space of a few weeks the level of discourse in the news media dropped so low, the fear of being shamed as a deviationist so high, that most of the weirder incidents went uncovered. Leading press organs engaged in real-time Soviet-style airbrushing. Here's how the Washington Post described a movement that targeted Spanish missionary Junipero Serra , Abraham Lincoln (a " single-handed symbol of white supremacy ," according to UW-Madison students), an apple cider press sculpture , abolitionist Mathias Baldwin , and the first all-Black volunteer regiment in the Civil War , among others.


lockandload , 52 seconds ago

BLM thugs have already started going after patriots. They ambushed our governor at the small town of Ackley Iowa. They were stalking her as she visited companies providing essential services during the pandemic. Her driver refused to stop, likely saving her life. One BLM thug was hit but not seriously injured. They are not waiting to run out of statues. We ordinary Americans must be heavily armed at all times now. Midwest states are full of illegals, who serve the left as an army. Open civil war is upon us whether we would have it or not.

warsev , 3 minutes ago

What these malicious rioters don't realize is that they are handing the November election to DJT and Republicans for senate and house. Average Americans look on the footage that accompanies this article with revulsion; for the ideas and the people behind them. Trump will walk away with 2020. Just keep it up, loony lefties.

vic and blood , 4 minutes ago

We have been in a race and culture war with multiple factions for some time. The presumed winner is not overtly participating.

Most white people are oblivious, though that is changing. Too bad we are demographically doomed.

SolidGold , 1 minute ago

Divide and conquer. Who creates that genius?

NumberNone , 12 minutes ago

Was in downtown Baltimore less than 2 years ago, it felt like you were one person away from someone that wanted to rob you. The downtown had all the usual suspects of faux high end shopping but the vibe was one of John Wayne Gacy in his clown suit...it had all the look and feel that was supposed to make you happy but it was rotten to the core.

Whoa Dammit , 13 minutes ago

We can't keep coddling these stupid brats. It's time to start making their parents pay for the mess and destruction that their ill raised offspring cause.

GoldRulesPaperDrools , 17 minutes ago

Protesters == pavement apes

House of Cards , 17 minutes ago

Terrorists you mean

Watt Supremacissss , 16 minutes ago

Crybullies.

GoldRulesPaperDrools , 15 minutes ago

Redundant but accurate ... +100_000

Silver Savior , 17 minutes ago

Columbus was a dickhead anyway.

NumberNone , 9 minutes ago

So we tear apart the country for a guy that held a gun to a pregnant woman's stomach...if you're gonna pass judgement and replace other people's icons you might want to make better choices.

Blackdawg7 , 43 minutes ago

I've never been a fan of Christopher Columbus but witnessing these know-nothing sanctimonious twits destroy public property while virtue signalling makes my blood boil.

Workdove , 44 minutes ago

Not worth the 10 years in jail...

vic and blood , 50 minutes ago

History's losers are terrorizing, and soon to be tyrannizing us because Caucasians are too civilized and docile.

Every race and tribe is programmed by God to attempt to dominate.

As an adherent of the non-aggression principle, I don't care for the binary choice, but accept it.

Either dominate or be dominated. Only cucks believe in co-existence. I assure you our rivals do not believe in peaceful co-existence.

unionbroker , 1 hour ago

Christopher Columbus sails out into the unknown where no man has gone before. What the **** has BLM done. Put the statues back up and throw BLM in the water

[Jul 05, 2020] "Coddling these stupid brats." You'll get a kick out of reading this story. It's about Kelly Ann Conway's "woke" 15 year old daughter.

Jul 05, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Whoa Dammit , 13 minutes ago

We can't keep coddling these stupid brats. It's time to start making their parents pay for the mess and destruction that their ill raised offspring cause.

Finn McCool , 9 minutes ago

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8489983/Kellyanne-Conways-daughter-15-slams-parents-blocking-freedom-speech.html

"coddling these stupid brats." You'll get a kick out of reading this story. It's about Kelly Ann Conway's "woke" 15 year old daughter.

What a disaster. Pretty funny though.

ToWo , 12 minutes ago

Rerun

_arrow
Insert farm animal here , 13 minutes ago

100 percent, choose your side wisely now.

[Jul 03, 2020] The BLM-Antifa revolution under the cover of ending systemic racism is an anti-Trump movement controlled by the neoliberal elite through foundations, thinktanks, wealthy donors, and corporate donations; they are not interested in black population economic status and discrimination, only in return to power

Jul 03, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

The BLM-Antifa Marxist revolution under the cover of ending "systemic racism" is controlled by the ruling elite through foundations, progressive think tanks, wealthy liberals - and corporate CEOs you'd think know better.

Success depends on the help of opportunistic Democrat politicians who believe raising a clenched fist and parroting BLM will get them elected or re-elected, thus perpetuating a system of crony capitalism and endless war behind a kinder and gentler Democrat facade that is now falling away.

Gary Allen wrote in 1971:

If one understands that socialism is not a share-the-wealth program, but is in reality a method to consolidate and control the wealth, then the seeming paradox of superrich men promoting socialism becomes no paradox at all. Instead it becomes the logical, even the perfect tool of power-seeking megalomaniacs. Communism, or more accurately, socialism, is not a movement of the downtrodden masses, but of the economic elite.

The ruling elite, the financial class that has profited so mightily from riots and violence, will not allow Marxists and black hoodie nihilists to spawn a violent revolution.


Chocura750 , 4 minutes ago

I doubt very much that there is any significant ideological thinking in 99% of the BLM protestors. Imagine for a minute that George Floyd wasn't murdered, do you think that the BLM organizers could get 100 people to protest capitalism and rally for socialism.

ProsperD9 , 9 minutes ago

Looks like BLM is about to get canceled. They committed the biggest cardinal sin that can ever be committed on this earth. They can shoot all white babies, they can take over a nursing home and strangle all the old white people, they can paint the white house black...but one thing they CANNOT do... .drum roll please ...criticize IsraHell. Looks like they've done the deed and about to be canceled. Read about it BLACK LIVES MATTER 'CANCELED' AFTER CRITICIZING ISRAHELL.

HenryJonesJr , 20 minutes ago

More doom **** .... This kind of hyper-ventilating nonsense might sell well in highly urbanized, totally dependent regions of America, meaning cities. But the majority of Americans - white, black and brown - despise the idiotic Left and all their violence and insanity.

[Jun 29, 2020] What Would the Black Panthers Think of Black Lives Matter? by Paul Street

Run by veteran "non-profits careerists" movement is highly suspect
Notable quotes:
"... The black revolution is much more than a struggle for the rights of Negroes. It is forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws -- racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism. It is exposing evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of our society. It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced. ..."
"... much of what passes for popular and progressive, grass-roots activism has been co-opted, taken over and/or created by corporate America, the corporate-funded " nonprofit industrial complex ," and Wall Street's good friend, the Democratic Party , long known to leftists as "the graveyard of social movements." This " corporatization of activism " (University of British Columbia professor Peter Dauvergne's term) is ubiquitous across much of what passes for the left in the U.S. today. ..."
"... What about the racialist group Black Lives Matter, recipient of a mammoth $100 million grant from the Ford Foundation last year? Sparked by the racist security guard and police killings of Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown and Eric Garner, BLM has achieved uncritical support across the progressive spectrum, where it is almost reflexively cited as an example of noble and radical grass-roots activism in the streets. That is a mistake. ..."
"... I first started wondering where BLM stood on the AstroTurf versus grass roots scale when I read an essay published three years ago in The Feminist Wire by Alicia Garza, one of BLM's three black, lesbian and veteran public-interest careerist founders. ..."
"... Why the prickly, hyperidentity-politicized and proprietary attachment to the "lives matter" phrase? Garza seemed more interested in brand value and narrow identity than social justice. Did she want a licensing fee? Wouldn't any serious, leftist, people's activist eagerly give the catchy "lives matter" phrase away to all oppressed people and hope for their wide and inclusive use in a viciously capitalist society that has subjected everything and everyone to the soulless logic of commodity rule, profit and exchange value? Who were these "charismatic Black men many are rallying around" in the fall of 2014? ..."
"... I couldn't help but wonder about the left-progressive credentials of anyone who gets upset that others would want to have a "conversation" (as Garza put it) about how their lives matter too. Is there really something wrong with a marginalized Native American laborer or a white and not-so "skin-privileged" former factory worker struggling with sickness and poverty wanting to hear that his or her life matters? For any remotely serious progressive, was there anything mysterious about the fact that many white folks facing foreclosure, job loss, poverty wages and the like might not be doing cartwheels over the phrase "black lives matter" when they experience the harsh daily reality that their lives don't matter under the profits system? ..."
"... My concerns about BLM's potential service to the capitalist elite were reactivated when I heard a talk by Garza's fellow BLM founder, Patrisse Cullors (another veteran nonprofit careerist). Cullors spoke before hundreds of cheering white liberals and progressives in downtown Iowa City in February. "We are witnessing the erosion of U.S. democracy," she said, adding that Donald Trump "is building a police state." Relating that she had gone into a "two-week depression" after Hillary Clinton was defeated by Trump, Cullors said she wondered if BLM had "done enough to educate people about the differences between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton." She described Trump as a fascist. ..."
Oct 29, 2017 | www.truthdig.com

The black revolution is much more than a struggle for the rights of Negroes. It is forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws -- racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism. It is exposing evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of our society. It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced. -- Martin Luther King Jr., 1968

You don't have to be one of those conspiratorial curmudgeons who reduces every sign of popular protest to "George Soros money" to acknowledge that much of what passes for popular and progressive, grass-roots activism has been co-opted, taken over and/or created by corporate America, the corporate-funded " nonprofit industrial complex ," and Wall Street's good friend, the Democratic Party , long known to leftists as "the graveyard of social movements." This " corporatization of activism " (University of British Columbia professor Peter Dauvergne's term) is ubiquitous across much of what passes for the left in the U.S. today.

What about the racialist group Black Lives Matter, recipient of a mammoth $100 million grant from the Ford Foundation last year? Sparked by the racist security guard and police killings of Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown and Eric Garner, BLM has achieved uncritical support across the progressive spectrum, where it is almost reflexively cited as an example of noble and radical grass-roots activism in the streets. That is a mistake.

I first started wondering where BLM stood on the AstroTurf versus grass roots scale when I read an essay published three years ago in The Feminist Wire by Alicia Garza, one of BLM's three black, lesbian and veteran public-interest careerist founders. In her "Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement," Garza wrote:

"Black lives. Not just all lives. Black lives. Please do not change the conversation by talking about how your life matters, too. It does, but we need less watered down unity and a more active solidarities with us, Black people, unwaveringly, in defense of our humanity. Our collective futures depend on it."

Denouncing "hetero-patriarchy," Garza described the adaptation of her clever online catchphrase ("black lives matter") by others -- "brown lives matter, migrant lives matter, women's lives matter, and on and on" (Garza's dismissive words) -- as "the Theft of Black Queer Women's Work."

"Perhaps," she added, "if we were the charismatic Black men many are rallying around these days, it would have been a different story."

From a leftist perspective, this struck me as alarming. Why the prickly, hyperidentity-politicized and proprietary attachment to the "lives matter" phrase? Garza seemed more interested in brand value and narrow identity than social justice. Did she want a licensing fee? Wouldn't any serious, leftist, people's activist eagerly give the catchy "lives matter" phrase away to all oppressed people and hope for their wide and inclusive use in a viciously capitalist society that has subjected everything and everyone to the soulless logic of commodity rule, profit and exchange value? Who were these "charismatic Black men many are rallying around" in the fall of 2014?

And how representative were Garza's slaps at "hetero-patriarchy" and "charismatic Black men" of the black community in whose name she spoke? Would it be too hetero-patriarchal of me, I wondered, to suggest that maybe a black male or two with experience of oppression in the nation's racist criminal justice system ought to share some space front and center in a movement focused especially on a police and prison state that targets black boys and men above all?

I defended the phrase "black lives matter" against the absurd charge that it is racist, but I couldn't help but wonder about the left-progressive credentials of anyone who gets upset that others would want to have a "conversation" (as Garza put it) about how their lives matter too. Is there really something wrong with a marginalized Native American laborer or a white and not-so "skin-privileged" former factory worker struggling with sickness and poverty wanting to hear that his or her life matters? For any remotely serious progressive, was there anything mysterious about the fact that many white folks facing foreclosure, job loss, poverty wages and the like might not be doing cartwheels over the phrase "black lives matter" when they experience the harsh daily reality that their lives don't matter under the profits system?

My concerns about BLM's potential service to the capitalist elite were reactivated when I heard a talk by Garza's fellow BLM founder, Patrisse Cullors (another veteran nonprofit careerist). Cullors spoke before hundreds of cheering white liberals and progressives in downtown Iowa City in February. "We are witnessing the erosion of U.S. democracy," she said, adding that Donald Trump "is building a police state." Relating that she had gone into a "two-week depression" after Hillary Clinton was defeated by Trump, Cullors said she wondered if BLM had "done enough to educate people about the differences between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton." She described Trump as a fascist.

[Jun 29, 2020] ANTIFA- The truth behind the mask - YouTube

Jun 29, 2020 | www.youtube.com


Fox News
5.51M subscribers SUBSCRIBE A look into the domestic terror organization ANTIFA and how it is attempting to take over the current peaceful protests of the George Floyd death. #FoxNews


plmvirginiauva
, 2 weeks ago

College students are the most easily manipulated

[Jun 28, 2020] Barr creates task force focused on 'anti-government extremists' TheHill

Notable quotes:
"... In the memo, Barr identified members of the right-wing "Boogaloo" movement and the anti-fascist movement known as Antifa as the top targets of the task force. ..."
"... The task force's mission will be to develop information about "extremist individuals, networks, and movements," share data with local authorities and provide training to local prosecutors on how to wage cases against anti-government extremists. ..."
"... people associated with Antifa. ..."
"... "There are some groups that don't have a particular ideology, other than anarchy. There are some groups that want to bring about a civil war -- the Boogaloo group has been on the margin of this as well," he said earlier this month , adding that the Justice Department would find "constructive solutions." ..."
Jun 28, 2020 | thehill.com

y Tal Axelrod - 06/26/20 08:13 PM EDT 1289 Comments Attorney General William Barr on Friday directed the Justice Department to form a task force dedicated to combating "anti-government extremists," according to a memo obtained by The Washington Post , raising the stakes in the government's response to nationwide protests.

Barr argued in the memo that anti-government agitators had infiltrated peaceful demonstrations against police brutality and systemic racism and "engaged in indefensible acts of violence designed to undermine public order."

"Among other lawless conduct, these extremists have violently attacked police officers and other government officials, destroyed public and private property, and threatened innocent people," Barr wrote. "Although these extremists profess a variety of ideologies, they are united in their opposition to the core constitutional values of a democratic society governed by law. ... Some pretend to profess a message of freedom and progress, but they are in fact forces of anarchy, destruction and coercion."

In the memo, Barr identified members of the right-wing "Boogaloo" movement and the anti-fascist movement known as Antifa as the top targets of the task force.

Craig Carpenito, the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, and Erin Nealy Cox, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, will head the task force, which will also include representatives from the FBI and other prosecutors' offices.

The task force's mission will be to develop information about "extremist individuals, networks, and movements," share data with local authorities and provide training to local prosecutors on how to wage cases against anti-government extremists.

"The ultimate goal of the task force will be not only to enable prosecutions of extremists who engage in violence, but to understand these groups well enough that we can stop such violence before it occurs and ultimately eliminate it as a threat to public safety and the rule of law," Barr wrote.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill regarding the memo.

Barr said in an interview with NPR on Thursday that the Department of Justice has launched "approximately 300 investigations" nationwide, including into some people associated with Antifa.

Barr has sought to take a tough posture on anti-government groups since some early protests over George Floyd's death in Minneapolis turned violent.

"There are some groups that don't have a particular ideology, other than anarchy. There are some groups that want to bring about a civil war -- the Boogaloo group has been on the margin of this as well," he said earlier this month , adding that the Justice Department would find "constructive solutions."

[Jun 28, 2020] THEY AIN'T NOTHING BUT DEVILS'

Jun 28, 2020 | www.rt.com

20 Jun, 2020 Ali Jr., who lives in Florida, also singled out Antifa, the group recently recognized by Trump as a terrorist organization.

"They're no different from Muslim terrorists. They should all get what they deserve. They're f**king up businesses, beating up innocent people in the neighborhood, smashing up police stations and shops. They're terrorists – they're terrorizing the community. I agree with the peaceful protests, but Antifa, they need to kill everyone in that thing," he said.

[Jun 28, 2020] Conservative Journalist Jack Posobiec Assaulted By DC Antifa

Some comments show that black community might not benefit from those events. but on the contrary. The same is true for Antifa memvbers and left radicals. Sttments like " Antifa is an anti-white Marxist revolutionary group" does not promise them anything good.
What is funny in no way financial oligarchy is threatened by those events. And for them that's all that matter. They will sell all US statures to China for the cost of metal, if that suit them.
Notable quotes:
"... Assault, battery & attempted robberty commited by antifa/blm on @OANN 's reporter @JackPosobiec in DC earlier this evening. ..."
"... One of Posobiec's assailants has been identified as 25-year-old Jason Robert Charter , an Antifa terrorist who has a history of agitating at political events . ..."
"... Posobiec has filed a report with US Park Police and will be pressing charges ..."
"... Kuhn made headlines in 2017 when Project Veritas busted him in an undercover sting at Comet Ping Pong pizzeria - plotting to attack a DC Trump inauguration party. The sting resulted in the arrest of Kuhn - who once made several pedophilic posts to usenet internet groups. Kuhn was sentenced to probation in exchange for agreeing not to attend future Antifa events - however he was caught on camera in April, 2017 when Posobiec was assaulted by another member of Antifa . ..."
"... @JackPosobiec assaulted by Antifa - and pedo advocate Paul 'Luke' Kuhn caught on cam apparently violating probation! https://t.co/a96zafeIA0 pic.twitter.com/1fWAmAUC5p ..."
"... The man who punched Posobiec, Sydney Alexander Ramsey-Laree, served 60 days in jail. ..."
Jun 28, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Post Millennial reports: " The situation escalated when a black-clad Antifa insurgent wearing a pair of red ski goggles and bicycle helmet identified Posobiec and accused him of "founding the alt-lite" and of being a "literal Nazi," drawing a larger group of Antifa to approach and surround the journalist."

Assault, battery & attempted robberty commited by antifa/blm on @OANN 's reporter @JackPosobiec in DC
earlier this evening.

Clip courtesy of @BreitbartNews edited by moi .. God Bless https://t.co/qXrO1MgGg8 pic.twitter.com/QLYiDCks0c

-- wlctv.ca (@wlctv_ca) June 27, 2020

More video of violent black bloc militants attacking @JackPosobiec in D.C. They dumped liquid all over him, hit him and tried to steal his phone. pic.twitter.com/DCrOq8ZUtB

-- Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) June 27, 2020

For a detailed account of the sequence of events, see here .

One of Posobiec's assailants has been identified as 25-year-old Jason Robert Charter , an Antifa terrorist who has a history of agitating at political events .

Literally shaking right now from his intimidating presence. pic.twitter.com/vXEInIylyl

-- Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) June 27, 2020

Based chad DC cops vs dork face pic.twitter.com/Cnm9jF1bmD

-- Cassandra Fairbanks (@CassandraRules) June 27, 2020

Posobiec has filed a report with US Park Police and will be pressing charges. Meanwhile, noted Antifa agitator Luke Kuhn was reportedly spotted at the protest.

Yes https://t.co/piaXfAWzvA

-- Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) June 27, 2020

Kuhn made headlines in 2017 when Project Veritas busted him in an undercover sting at Comet Ping Pong pizzeria - plotting to attack a DC Trump inauguration party. The sting resulted in the arrest of Kuhn - who once made several pedophilic posts to usenet internet groups. Kuhn was sentenced to probation in exchange for agreeing not to attend future Antifa events - however he was caught on camera in April, 2017 when Posobiec was assaulted by another member of Antifa .

@JackPosobiec assaulted by Antifa - and pedo advocate Paul 'Luke' Kuhn caught on cam apparently violating probation! https://t.co/a96zafeIA0 pic.twitter.com/1fWAmAUC5p

-- ZeroPointNow (@ZeroPointNow) April 24, 2017

The man who punched Posobiec, Sydney Alexander Ramsey-Laree, served 60 days in jail.


Md4 , 1 hour ago

"The man who punched Posobiec, Sydney Alexander Ramsey-Laree, served 60 days in jail."

Well...you now know who they are...

Freespeaker , 3 hours ago

Militant wing of the Democrat Party.

Freespeaker , 4 hours ago

BLM/Antifa endorsement via Washington state healthcare letter is indicative. Medical professionals in Houston were out marching for Social Justice a week ago.

BrutusTheBomber , 5 hours ago

Everyone remember.

The police are allowing this to happen. In my opinion, if you are not doing anything to stop it, it's because you are in on it.

Thats the only explanation i can come up with.

@therealOrangeBuffoon , 5 hours ago

I repeat myself but: Oligarchy is the problem and BLM is the only real opposition to them. They are taking the lead.

Either get behind them or start an effective movement, and I don't mean jabbering about your stupid guns.

Perry Colace , 5 hours ago

So will I:

It's an anti-white agenda, backed by avowed Marxists intent on overthrowing this government, and I will meet them in the street armed and ready to speak to them in the only language they respect: Extreme violence.

VWAndy , 6 hours ago

Stupid on this scale dont happen by chance. At this scale its always well funded. These kids cant even wipe their own asses without some else buying the tp.

Rest Easy , 6 hours ago

In general black people have amply demonstrated, almost universally, that they are unable to peacefully co-exist. The collateral damage, if it can be called that, and blind hate do not inspire future saintly behavior. Nor is it intended to.

But who is to say? They are the only ones fighting presently. Against a system that makes slaves of us all. Or attempts to.

Perry Colace , 5 hours ago

Antifa is an anti-white Marxist revolutionary group that must be eliminated physically.

Rest Easy , 6 hours ago

Wow. Completely deleted another post. No swearing. No bad terms. That I can recall. Just opinion. And some scrip.

This to be precise.

Ephesians 6:12 King James Version (KJV)

12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Jesus is the way.

ThomasJefferson69 , 6 hours ago

Always carry. With spare mags. And stay out of **** cities. The collapse has already started there.

Anonymous IX , 6 hours ago

I can't afford a weapon yet, but I'm getting some pepper spray + tear gas and a stun gun to carry with me at all times until I can get out of this city.

Lonesome Cowboy Burt , 6 hours ago

Can get a subcompact for $250.

Jeff-Durden , 4 hours ago

Ruger Security 9 with a box of 50 shells is 325

numapepi , 7 hours ago

This from the article above...

"Kuhn made headlines in 2017 when Project Veritas busted him in an undercover sting at Comet Ping Pong pizzeria - plotting to attack a DC Trump inauguration party. The sting resulted in the arrest of Kuhn - who once made several pedophilic posts to usenet internet groups."


Isn't it odd, the supposedly "debunked conspiracy theory" based on the Podesta emails, that was debunked without having to go to the the tedious work of actually investigating it... democrats orbit pedophilia and pedophiles?

fersur , 7 hours ago

Just wait until the already released unreleased still pictures captured ( all on a single page ) of children in Orgy Island dungeon, identify the Lady and identify what the Children were forced to do, Childrens Lives Matter will then be the Worlds Outcry !

numapepi , 7 hours ago

If that is true... I pray it all comes out in the open before November.

(Although, I also pray it isn't true, but fear it is).

Rest Easy , 7 hours ago

The 1st is only applicable if you are not an enemy of them. Otherwise, if your identity and that of your family is known. You, and they will suffer. They will punish you. Severely for not conforming. At all times. To what they determine is acceptable.

Punish them in return. Severely.

This movement has sponsors. Deny them your support financially. Bad mouth them at every opportunity. Universities are not immune to finances. They do not wish to uphold 1st Ammendment rights. Of students doxxing other students for a tweet. Calling for expulsion. For a tweet, For 1/2 poor taste, 1/2 truth very likely. Sue them.

This behavior is so rampant. So pervasive. So unAmerican. So thoroughly one sided. It should terrify any real Americans.

https://twitter.com/KState/status/1276551914755362816?s=19

fersur , 7 hours ago

Soros's 'Act Blue' funds Antifa and funds Black Lives Matter while being in existance to be the Arm of Democrat Political Campaign Fundraising Organization, everything is all out in the open, even early releasing convicted Criminals to advance Democrat Death and Distruction Mandate !

ToSoft4Truth , 7 hours ago

Republicans are going to get a Final Stand.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said there should be a "review" of historical statues for possible removal, perhaps even those of the Founding Fathers.

[Jun 25, 2020] A Brief History Of Antifa Part II

Looks like antifa members is recruited and trained using the same methods as members of opposition in countries where the USA plans to stage a color revolution. One important constituency are students. What is important all of them are paid. Adapting Maoism with its cult of violence for those purposes is not a big deal.
I think that like is the case with the Red Brigades the level of infiltration by intelligence agencies is iether considerable or total.
Notable quotes:
"... "By 1969, the Panthers began to use fascism as a theoretical framework to critique the U.S. political economy. They defined fascism as 'the power of finance capital' which 'manifests itself not only as banks, trusts and monopolies but also as the human property of FINANCE CAPITAL -- the avaricious businessman, the demagogic politician, and the racist pig cop.'" ..."
"... Other ideological anchors of the modern Antifa movement in the United States include a left-wing terrorist group known as the Weather Underground Organization, the American equivalent to Germany's Red Army Faction. The Weather Underground, responsible for bombings and riots throughout the 1970s, sought to achieve "the destruction of U.S. imperialism and form a classless communist world." ..."
"... In June 2018, Republican Representative Dan Donovan of New York introduced Bill HR 6054 -- "Unmasking Antifa Act of 2018" -- that calls for prison sentences of up to 15 years for anyone who, while wearing a mask or disguise, "injures, oppresses, threatens, or intimidates" someone else who is exercising any right or privilege guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. The bill remains stalled in the House of Representatives. ..."
"... "Antifa are terrorists, violent masked bullies who 'fight fascism' with actual fascism, protected by Liberal privilege," said Cassidy. "Bullies get their way until someone says no. Elected officials must have courage, not cowardice, to prevent terror." ..."
"... Antifa radicals increasingly are using incendiary events such as the death of George Floyd in Minnesota as springboards to achieve their broader aims, one of which includes removing President Trump from office. ..."
"... "We believe that a significant amount of people who came here from out of the area, who have come here as well as the advance preparation, having advance scouts, the use of encrypted information, having resupply routes for things such as gasoline and accelerants as well as rocks and bottles, the raising of bail, the placing of medics. Taken together, this is a strong indicator that they planned to act with disorder, property damage, violence, and violent encounters with police before the first demonstration and/or before the first arrest." ..."
"... "It's in 40 different states and 60 cities; it would be impossible for somebody outside of Antifa to fund this. It's a radical, leftist, socialist attempt at revolution. ..."
"... "What Antifa is doing is they're basically hijacking the black community as their army. They instigate, they antagonize, they get these young black men and women to go out there and do stupid things, and then they disappear off into the sunset." ..."
"... Across the country, in Bellevue, Washington, which was also hit by looting and violence, Police Chief Steve Mylett confirmed that the people responsible were organized, from out of town, and being paid: ..."
"... AFGJ has received substantial funding from organizations often claiming to be the mainstream of the center-left. The Open Society Foundations, Tides Foundation, Arca Foundation, Surdna Foundation, Public Welfare Foundation, the Ben & Jerry Foundation and the Brightwater Fund have all made contributions to AFGJ, according to Influence Watch. ..."
Jun 24, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Soeren Kern via The Gatestone Institute,

This is Part II of a series on the history of the global Antifa movement. Part I described Antifa and explored the ideological origins of the group. Part II examines the history, tactics and goals of the movement in the United States.

U.S. President Donald Trump recently announced that the American government would designate Antifa -- a militant "anti-fascist" movement -- as a terrorist organization due to the violence that erupted at George Floyd protests across the United States.

The Code of Federal Regulations (28 C.F.R. Section 0.85) defines terrorism as "the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives."

American media outlets sympathetic to Antifa have jumped to its defense. They argue that the group cannot be classified as a terrorist organization because, they claim, it is a vaguely-defined protest movement that lacks a centralized structure.

As the following report shows, Antifa is, in fact, highly networked, well-funded and has a clear ideological agenda: to subvert, often with extreme violence, the American political system, with the ultimate aim of replacing capitalism with communism. In the United States, Antifa's immediate aim is to remove President Trump from office.

Gatestone Institute has identified Antifa groups in all 50 U.S. states, with the possible exception of West Virginia. Some states, including California, Texas and Washington, appear to have dozens of sub-regional Antifa organizations.

It is difficult precisely to determine the size of the Antifa movement in the United States. The so-called " Anti-Fascists of Reddit ," the "premier anti-fascist community" on the social media platform Reddit, has approximately 60,000 members. The oldest Antifa group in America, the Portland, Oregon-based " Rose City Antifa ," has more than 30,000 Twitter followers and 20,000 Facebook followers, not all of whom are necessarily supporters. " It's Going Down ," a media platform for anarchists, anti-fascists and autonomous anti-capitalists, has 85,000 Twitter followers and 30,000 Facebook followers.

Germany, which has roughly one-quarter of the population of the United States, is home to 33,000 extreme leftists, of whom 9,000 are believed to be extremely dangerous, according to the domestic intelligence agency ( Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, BfV ). Violent left-wing agitators are predominantly male, between 21 and 24 years of age, usually unemployed, and, according to BfV, 92% still live with their parents. Anecdotal evidence suggests that most Antifa members in the United States have a similar socio-economic profile.

In America, national Antifa groups, including "Torch Antifa Network," "Refuse Fascism" and "World Can't Wait" are being financed -- often generously, as shown below -- by individual donors as well as by large philanthropic organizations, including the Open Society Foundations founded by George Soros.

To evade detection by law enforcement, Antifa groups in the United States often use encrypted social media platforms, such as Signal and Telegram Messenger, to communicate and coordinate their activities, sometimes across state lines. Not surprisingly, the U.S. Department of Justice is currently investigating individuals linked to Antifa as a step to unmasking the broader organization.

Historical Origins of American Antifa

In the United States, Antifa's ideology, tactics and goals, far from being novel, are borrowed almost entirely from Antifa groups in Europe, where so-called anti-fascist groups, in one form or another, have been active, almost without interruption, for a century.

As in Europe, the aims and objectives of the American Antifa movement can be traced back to a single, overarching century-long ideological war against the "fascist ideals" of capitalism and Christianity, which the Antifa movement wants to replace with a "revolutionary socialist alternative."

The first so-called anti-fascist group in the United States was the American League Against War and Fascism, established in 1933 by the Communist Party USA. The League, which claimed to oppose fascism in Europe, was actually dedicated to subverting and overthrowing the U.S. government.

In testimony to the U.S. Congress in 1953, CPUSA leader Manning Johnson revealed that the American party had been instructed by the Communist International in the 1930s to set up the American League Against War and Fascism:

"as a cover to attack our government, our social system, our leaders... used as a cover to attack our law-enforcement agencies and to build up mass hate against them... used as a cover to undermine national security... used as a cover to defend Communists, the sworn enemies of our great heritage... used as a cover for preparing millions of people ideologically and organizationally for the overthrow of the United States Government."

A precursor to the modern Antifa movement was the Black Panthers, a revolutionary political organization established in October 1966 by Marxist college students in Oakland, California. The group advocated the use of violence and guerilla tactics to overthrow the U.S. government.

Historian Robyn C. Spencer noted that Black Panther leaders were deeply influenced by "The United Front of the Working Class Against Fascism," a report by Georgi Dimitroff delivered at the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International in July and August 1935:

"By 1969, the Panthers began to use fascism as a theoretical framework to critique the U.S. political economy. They defined fascism as 'the power of finance capital' which 'manifests itself not only as banks, trusts and monopolies but also as the human property of FINANCE CAPITAL -- the avaricious businessman, the demagogic politician, and the racist pig cop.'"

In July 1969, the Black Panthers organized an "anti-fascist" conference called "United Front Against Fascism," attended by nearly 5,000 activists:

"The Panthers hoped to create a 'national force' with a 'common revolutionary ideology and political program which answers the basic desires and needs of all people in fascist, capitalist, racist America.'"

The last day of the conference was devoted to a detailed plan by the Black Panthers to decentralize police forces nationwide. Spencer wrote :

"They proposed amending city charters to establish autonomous community-based police departments for every city which would be accountable to local neighborhood police control councils comprised of 15 elected community members. They launched the National Committees to Combat Fascism (NCCF), a multiracial nationwide network, to organize for community control of the police."

In 1970, members of the Black Panthers created a terrorist group called the Black Liberation Army, whose stated goal was to "weaken the enemy capitalist state."

BLA member Assata Shakur described the group's organizational structure, which is similar to the one used by today's Antifa movement:

"The Black Liberation Army was not a centralized, organized group with a common leadership and chain of command. Instead there were various organizations and collectives working together out of various cities, and in some larger cities there were often several groups working independently of each other."

Other ideological anchors of the modern Antifa movement in the United States include a left-wing terrorist group known as the Weather Underground Organization, the American equivalent to Germany's Red Army Faction. The Weather Underground, responsible for bombings and riots throughout the 1970s, sought to achieve "the destruction of U.S. imperialism and form a classless communist world."

Former FBI Counterterrorism Director Terry Turchie has noted the similarities between Black Lives Matter today and the Black Panther Party and Weather Underground groups of the 1960s and 1970s:

"The Black Panther Party was a Marxist Maoist Leninist organization and that came from Huey Newton, one of the co-founders, who said we're standing for nothing more than the total transformation of the United States government.

"He went on to explain that they wanted to take the tension that already existed in black communities and exacerbate it where they can. To take those situations where there is a tinderbox and light the country on fire.

"Today we're seeing the third revolution and they think they can make this happen. The only thing that is different are the names of the groups."

American Antifa

The roots of the modern Antifa movement in the United States can be traced back to the 1980s, with the establishment of Anti-Racist Action, a network of anarchist punk rock aficionados dedicated to fist-fighting neo-Nazi skinheads.

Mark Bray, author of " The Antifa Handbook ," explained :

"In many cases, the North American modern Antifa movement grew up as a way to defend the punk scene from the neo-Nazi skinhead movement, and the founders of the original Anti-Racist Action network in North America were anti-racist skinheads. The fascist/anti-fascist struggle was essentially a fight for control of the punk scene during the 1980s, and that was true across of much of north America and in parts of Europe in this era.

"There's a huge overlap between radical left politics and the punk scene, and there's a stereotype about dirty anarchists and punks, which is an oversimplification but grounded in a certain amount of truth."

Anti-Racist Action was inspired by Anti-Fascist Action (AFA), a militant anti-fascist group founded in Britain in the late 1970s. The American group shared the British group's penchant for violently attacking political opponents. ARA was eventually renamed the Torch Network , which currently brings together nine militant Antifa groups.

In November 1999, mobs of masked anarchists, predecessors to today's Antifa movement, laid waste to downtown Seattle, Washington, during violent demonstrations that disrupted a ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization. The Seattle WTO protests birthed the anti-globalization movement.

In April 2001, an estimated 50,000 anti-capitalists gathered in Quebec to oppose the Third Summit of the Americas, a meeting of North and South American leaders who were negotiating a deal to create a free trade area that would encompass the Western Hemisphere.

In February 2003, hundreds of thousands of anti-war protesters demonstrated against the Iraq War. After the war went ahead anyway, some parts of the so-called progressive movement became more radicalized and birthed the current Antifa movement.

The Rose City Antifa (RCA), founded in Portland, Oregon, in 2007, is the oldest American group to use "Antifa" in its name. Antifa is derived from a group called Antifaschistische Aktion , founded in May 1932 by Stalinist leaders of the Communist Party of Germany. Antifa's logo, with two flags representing anarchism (black flag) and communism (red flag), are derived from the German Antifa movement.

The American Antifa movement gained momentum in 2016, after Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described Socialist, lost the Democratic Party's nomination to Hillary Clinton. Grassroots supporters of Sanders vowed to continue his "political revolution" to establish socialism in America.

Meanwhile, immigration became a new flashpoint in American politics after Donald Trump campaigned on a pledge to reduce illegal migration. In June 2016, protestors violently attacked supporters of Donald Trump outside a rally in San Jose, California. In January 2017, hundreds of Antifa rioters tried to disrupt President Trump's inauguration ceremony in Washington, DC.

In February 2017, Antifa rioters employing so-called black bloc tactics -- they wear black clothing, masks or other face-concealing items so that they cannot be identified by police -- shut down a speech by Milos Yiannopoulos, a far-right activist who was slated to speak at the University of California at Berkeley, the birthplace of the 1964 Free Speech Movement. Antifa radicals claimed that Yiannopoulos was planning to "out" undocumented students at Berkeley for the purpose of having them arrested. Masked Antifa vandals armed with Molotov cocktails, bricks and a host of other makeshift weapons fought police and caused more than $100,000 in property damage.

In June 2018, Republican Representative Dan Donovan of New York introduced Bill HR 6054 -- "Unmasking Antifa Act of 2018" -- that calls for prison sentences of up to 15 years for anyone who, while wearing a mask or disguise, "injures, oppresses, threatens, or intimidates" someone else who is exercising any right or privilege guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. The bill remains stalled in the House of Representatives.

In July 2019, Antifa radical Willem Van Spronsen attempted to firebomb the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Tacoma, Washington. He was killed in a confrontation with police.

That same month, U.S. Senators Ted Cruz and Bill Cassidy introduced a resolution that would label Antifa a "domestic terrorist organization." The resolution stated :

"Whereas members of Antifa, because they believe that free speech is equivalent to violence, have used threats of violence in the pursuit of suppressing opposing political ideologies; Whereas Antifa represents opposition to the democratic ideals of peaceful assembly and free speech for all; Whereas members of Antifa have physically assaulted journalists and other individuals during protests and riots in Berkeley, California;

"Now, therefore, be it resolved, that the Senate ... calls for the groups and organizations across the country who act under the banner of Antifa to be designated as domestic terrorist organizations."

"Antifa are terrorists, violent masked bullies who 'fight fascism' with actual fascism, protected by Liberal privilege," said Cassidy. "Bullies get their way until someone says no. Elected officials must have courage, not cowardice, to prevent terror."

Antifa Exploits Death of George Floyd

Antifa radicals increasingly are using incendiary events such as the death of George Floyd in Minnesota as springboards to achieve their broader aims, one of which includes removing President Trump from office.

Veteran national security correspondent Bill Gertz recently reported that the Antifa movement began planning to foment a nationwide anti-government insurgency as early as November 2019, when the U.S. presidential campaign season kicked off in earnest. Former National Security Council staff member Rich Higgins said :

"Antifa's actions represent a hard break with the long tradition of a peaceful political process in the United States. Their Marxist ideology seeks not only to influence elections in the short term but to destroy the use of elections as the determining factor in political legitimacy.

"Antifa's goal is nothing less than fomenting revolution, civil war and silencing America's anti-communists. Their labeling of Trump supporters and patriots as Nazis and racists is standard fare for left-wing communist groups.

"Antifa is currently functioning as the command and control of the riots, which are themselves the overt utilization of targeted violence against targets such as stores -- capitalism; monuments -- history; and churches -- God."

Joe Myers, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official and counterinsurgency expert, added :

"President Trump's election and revitalization of America are a threat to Antifa's nihilist goals. They are fomenting this violence to create havoc, despair and to target the Trump campaign for defeat in 2020. It is employing organized violence for political ends: destruction of the constitutional order."

New York's top terrorism officer, Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller, explained why the George Floyd protests in New York City became so violent and destructive:

"No. 1, before the protests began, organizers of certain anarchist groups set out to raise bail money and people who would be responsible to be raising bail money, they set out to recruit medics and medical teams with gear to deploy in anticipation of violent interactions with police.

"They prepared to commit property damage and directed people who were following them that this should be done selectively and only in wealthier areas or at high-end stores run by corporate entities.

"And they developed a complex network of bicycle scouts to move ahead of demonstrators in different directions of where police were and where police were not for purposes of being able to direct groups from the larger group to places where they could commit acts of vandalism including the torching of police vehicles and Molotov cocktails where they thought officers would not be.

"We believe that a significant amount of people who came here from out of the area, who have come here as well as the advance preparation, having advance scouts, the use of encrypted information, having resupply routes for things such as gasoline and accelerants as well as rocks and bottles, the raising of bail, the placing of medics. Taken together, this is a strong indicator that they planned to act with disorder, property damage, violence, and violent encounters with police before the first demonstration and/or before the first arrest."

In an interview with The Epoch Times , Bernard B. Kerik, former police commissioner of the New York City Police Department, said that Antifa "100 percent exploited" the George Floyd protests:

"It's in 40 different states and 60 cities; it would be impossible for somebody outside of Antifa to fund this. It's a radical, leftist, socialist attempt at revolution.

"They're coming from other cities. That cost money. They didn't do this on their own. Somebody's paying for this.

"What Antifa is doing is they're basically hijacking the black community as their army. They instigate, they antagonize, they get these young black men and women to go out there and do stupid things, and then they disappear off into the sunset."

After photos appeared to show protesters with military-grade communications radios and earpieces, Kerik noted : "They have to be talking to somebody at a central command center with a repeater. Where do those radios go to?"

Across the country, in Bellevue, Washington, which was also hit by looting and violence, Police Chief Steve Mylett confirmed that the people responsible were organized, from out of town, and being paid:

"There are groups paying these looters money to come in and they're getting paid by the broken window. This is something totally different we are dealing with that we have never seen as a profession before. We did have officers that were in different areas that were chasing these groups. When we make contact, they just disperse."

Antifa Financing

The coordinated violence raises questions about how Antifa is financed. The Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ) is an organizing group that serves as a fiscal sponsor to numerous radical left-wing initiatives, according to Influence Watch, a research group that collects data on advocacy organizations, foundations and donors.

AFGJ, which describes itself as "anti-capitalist" and opposed to the principles of liberal democracy, provides "fiscal sponsorship" to groups advocating numerous foreign and domestic far-left and extreme-left causes, including eliminating the State of Israel.

The Tucson, Arizona-based AFGJ, and people associated with it, have advocated for socialist and communist authoritarian regimes, including in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. In the 2000s, AFGJ was involved in anti-globalization demonstrations. In the 2010s, AFGJ was a financial sponsor of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

AFGJ has received substantial funding from organizations often claiming to be the mainstream of the center-left. The Open Society Foundations, Tides Foundation, Arca Foundation, Surdna Foundation, Public Welfare Foundation, the Ben & Jerry Foundation and the Brightwater Fund have all made contributions to AFGJ, according to Influence Watch.

One of the groups funded by AFGJ is called Refuse Fascism , a radical left-wing organization devoted to promoting nationwide action to remove from office President Donald Trump, and all officials associated with his administration, on the grounds that they constitute a "fascist regime." The group has been present at many Antifa radical-left demonstrations, also according to Influence Watch. The group is an offshoot of the Radical Communist Party (RCP).

In July 2017, the RCP bragged that it took part in violent riots against the G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany. The RCP has argued that capitalism is synonymous with fascism and that the election of President Trump would lead the U.S. government to "bludgeon and eliminate whole groups of people."

In June 2020, Refuse Fascism took advantage of the death of George Floyd to raise money for a "National Revolution Tour" evidently aimed at subverting the U.S. government. The group's slogan states : "This System Cannot Be Reformed, It Must Be Overthrown!"

Antifa's "Utopia"

Meanwhile, in Seattle, Washington, Antifa radicals, protesters from Black Lives Matter, and members of the anti-capitalist John Brown Gun Club seized control of the East Precinct neighborhood and established a six-square-block "autonomous zone" called the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, "CHAZ," recently renamed "CHOP," the Capitol Hill Organized (or Occupied) Protest. A cardboard sign at the barricades declares : "You are now leaving the USA." The group issued a list of 30 demands, including the "abolition" of the Seattle Police Department and court system.

"Rapes, robberies and all sorts of violent acts have been occurring in the area and we're not able to get to them," said Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best. Several people have been wounded or killed .

Christopher F. Rufo, a contributing editor of City Journal , observed :

"The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone has set a dangerous precedent: armed left-wing activists have asserted their dominance of the streets and established an alternative political authority over a large section of a neighborhood. They have claimed de facto police power over thousands of residents and dozens of businesses -- completely outside of the democratic process. In a matter of days, Antifa-affiliated paramilitaries have created a hardened border, established a rudimentary form of government based on principles of intersectional representation, and forcibly removed unfriendly media from the territory.

"The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone is an occupation and taking of hostages: none of the neighborhood's residents voted for Antifa as their representative government. Rather than enforce the law, Seattle's progressive political class capitulated to the mob and will likely make massive concessions over the next few months. This will embolden the Antifa coalition -- and further undermine the rule of law in American cities."

Antifa in its Own Words

The American Antifa movement's long-term objectives are identical to those of the Antifa movement in Europe: replacing capitalism with a communist utopia. Mark Bray, one of the most vocal apologists for Antifa in the United States and author of "Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook," explained :

"The only long-term solution to the fascist menace is to undermine its pillars of strength in society grounded not only in white supremacy but also in ableism, heteronormativity, patriarchy, nationalism, transphobia, class rule, and many others. This long-term goal points to the tensions that exist in defining anti-fascism, because at a certain point destroying fascism is really about promoting a revolutionary socialist alternative."

Nikkita Oliver, former mayoral candidate of Seattle, Washington, added :

"We need to align ourselves with the global struggle that acknowledges that the United States plays a role in racialized capitalism. Racialized capitalism is built upon patriarchy, white supremacy, and classism."

Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, confirmed that the immediate goal is to remove President Trump from office:

"Trump not only needs to not be in office in November, but he should resign now. Trump needs to be out of office. He is not fit for office. And so, what we are going to push for is a move to get Trump out. While we're also going to continue to push and pressure Joe Biden around his policies and relationship to policing and criminalization. That's going to be important. But our goal is to get Trump out."

Rose City Antifa tweeted :

"As antifascists we know that our fight is not just against organized fascism, but also against the capitalist state, and the police that protect it. Another world is possible!"

Seattle Antifascists added :

"This is the revolution, this is our time and we will make no excuses for the terror."

A group called PNW Youth Liberation Front, Antifa's youth organization, tweeted :

"The only way to win a world without police, prisons, borders, etc. is to destroy the oppressive systems which we are currently caught in. We must continue the fight against the state, imperialism, capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and so on if we ever want to be free."

A pamphlet distributed in the Seattle "Autonomous Zone" stated :

"The idea that the working class can control our own lives, without states, governments or borders, is also called anarchism. But how do we get from our current capitalist society to a future anarchist-communist one? .... In order to destroy the current order, there will need to be a revolution, a time of great upheaval."

A poster in the Seattle "Autonomous Zone" stated :

"Oh, you thought I just wanted to defund the police? This whole system needs to go."

One of the leaders of the Seattle "Autonomous Zone" said :

"Every single day that I show up here I'm not here to peacefully protest. I'm here to disrupt until my demands are met. You cannot rebuild until you break it all the way down. Respond to the demands of the people or prepare to be met with any means necessary. By any means necessary. It's not a slogan or even a warning. I'm letting people know what comes next."

A group called the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement, which has nearly 15,000 Twitter followers, called for an insurrection:

"Revolutionary greetings from the insurrection sweeping throughout the occupied territories of the so-called United States of America.

"As the history of this miserable nation repeats itself once again, what has become clearly evident is that black people have been and will continue to be the only revolutionary force that is capable of toppling the oppressive status quo.

"Everywhere the pigs [a derogatory term for police] have lost their will to fight. Their eyes, which only yesterday were windows to empty hatred and contempt, now display stultifying self-doubt and cowardice. For once, their behavior portrays their weakness as every step they take back is marked by hesitation.

"Together, if we keep pushing, this land of chattel slavery, indigenous genocide, and foreign imperial aggression can finally be wiped out so that it will only be remembered as one of the more ugly chapters in human history."

An Antifa radical from Maryland tweeted :

"This isn't protest. This is rebellion. When rebellion gets organized we get revolution. We are seeing the beginnings of that and it's glorious."

An Antifa agitator from New York comments on the American flag:

"That sh*t is a fucking cloth with colors on it. It doesn't live or breathe and is nothing but a representation. Any Black, Latinx, or Native person looking at that thing being respected, should be offended at that flag that represents genocide, rape, slavery, and colonization."

An Antifa media platform, "It's Going Down," wrote :

"Looting is an effective means of wealth redistribution."

An Antifa activist from North Carolina on free speech :

"The idea that freedom of speech is the most important thing that we can protect can only be held by someone who thinks that life is analogous to a debate hall. In my opinion, 'no platforming' fascists often infringes (sic) upon their speech, but this infringement is justified for its role in the political struggle against fascism."

Torch Antifa Network, in response to President Trump's announced plans to designate Antifa as a terrorist group:

"Antifa will be designating the United States of America as a terrorist organization."

[Jun 22, 2020] Is Antifa a branch of ADL, or it is a abother "Red Brigates"?

This is mainly alt-rght opinions. But as Oscar Wilde noted "Objective opinion is our opinion about people we do not like"
"What is the essential quality of an Antifa? What is that attribute which, if you took it away, would result in the person on the street wearing black clothes and a face mask no longer being a member of the Antifa?" Can connection of ADL and Israel be such an essential quality? Both far right and far left usually are infiltrated and sometimes even controlled by intelligence agencies. So it is impossible for antifa to act as bold as they acted without covert blessing from intelligence agency that control them
Jun 22, 2020 | www.unz.com

Corporal Punishment , says: Show Comment June 17, 2020 at 5:32 pm GMT

You bring up some great questions. No doubt that the violent protesters in cities across America were planning this and outmaneuvered police who were still using crowd control tactics and equipment from 20 years ago. Do you think that ANTIFA and BLM were born out of the "Occupy Movement" from 2011-2012?
Exile , says: Show Comment June 17, 2020 at 7:48 pm GMT

My Bet: the DNC

You misspelled ADL.

ThreeCranes , says: Show Comment June 17, 2020 at 11:27 pm GMT
Okay, boring, but let's get back to that stuff Intelligent Dasein brought up a month ago.

What is the essential quality of an Antifa? What is that attribute which, if you took it away, would result in the person on the street wearing black clothes and a face mask no longer being a member of the Antifa?

A skateboard? A five dollar latte? A sign bearing a seven-word slogan that encapsulates their entire life's thought process?

I submit that the essential characteristic of an Antifa is that they blame white people for every ill which besets everyone of every race worldwide.

Why they do this is a different question, but the answer is "Because "white people" is what they know." It's who's closest to them. It's who frustrates them. (Not plural because that would mean they dealt with white people individually, i.e. fairly). So they are peoples whose experience is severely circumscribed. What's the word I'm looking for? Of limited breadth. Virtual isolates. Unable to compare dispassionately because they lack exposure to other civilizations. Prone to blow up their frustrations to world-wide proportions. Delusions of grandeur.

Anyway. If anyone has a better essential characteristic, hammer it out on the keyboard and share it.

mark tapley , says: Show Comment June 17, 2020 at 11:48 pm GMT
The fake virus was the cover for another huge theft by the elites like the bailout for the super rich in 08-09. People were starting see the Corona fraud so they had the media change scenes back to the race card and do the fake Floyd.

The left and the right are both elements of control from the top. The goal of the Zionists is to demoralize and destabilize western societies using the techniques from the Jewish Frankfurt School. Most of the riots are instigated by paid activists. It appears that some police departments are in on it too.

The Elite's aim to instigate enough problems so that people will demand action from the federal gov. The plan is to remove local control of the police and to nationalize them.

All totalitarian states have a centrally controlled police to do the bidding of the bosses at the top. The Zionists have many key positions under their control. The Presidency has been since Woodrow Wilson, and none in the Senate will defy aIPAC and the other Jew groups and very few in the House will. It is easy for the CIA or other intelligence Agencies to stage false flag events like fake murders and Los Vegas type shootings since The Jews control all of the MSM. Everything the gov. does is a lie and a fraud. From the contrived world wars and the War on Terror to 911 and WMD's it's the same Zionist criminal syndicate at work.

mark tapley , says: Show Comment June 18, 2020 at 12:08 am GMT
@ThreeCranes Yes, most of them are useful idiots as Lenin called them. Many are paid actors in the Soros (Swartz Gyorgy) ANTIFA group. All of this is from the top down, planned and coordinated by the Zionist criminals. They must have conflict, hatred and war to achieve progress. A society of contented people does nothing for them. Once the destabilization process has resulted in chaos then the rabble will be swept from the streets. Order will be restored. Order of the totalitarian state.
mark tapley , says: Show Comment June 18, 2020 at 12:25 am GMT
@Corporal Punishment They were born out of the establishment of the NAACP in 1907 by Jew International Banker Jacob Schiff. This began the process of radicalizing the blacks to become proxy warriors for the Jews. It was supercharged by the so called civil rights mov. of the 60's to gain more federal control within the unconstitutional 14th Amedment and open the door to the antisemitism, and hate speech laws along with the anti white culture promoted by our Zionist politicians and the Jew controlled MSM.

Gasoline was poured on the fire when the negroes were baited with minority set asides, affirmative action and the general corrosive effects of the welfare state.

Ann Nonny Mouse , says: Show Comment June 18, 2020 at 6:09 am GMT
My bet, the CIA for sure. The ADL also, highly likely.
mark green , says: Show Comment June 18, 2020 at 6:13 am GMT
Excellent article. Once again, our glorious (((MSM))) is playing a pivotal role in attempting to deflect attention away from the actual perpetrators of an organized campaign to produce culture-wide mayhem and destruction. Entrenched media dishonesty in America is breathtaking.

The BLM endgame is extortion, pure and simple. The agitated perps want boatloads of justice in the form of a massive wealth transfer. Cash and capital is to be shifted from big corporations as well as the American taxpayer to underperforming POC.

Look for 'affirmative action' (anti-white hiring practices) to ramp-up as well. The cops and pols are running scared. Disagree with this 'new normal' and you could be doxxed, 'un-hired', or branded a white supremacist.

Meanwhile, left wing activists posing as observers and journalists want us to believe that all this George-Floyd-inspired violence is actually another vast right-wing conspiracy to topple Confederate statues, loot Targets, and take over entire sections of US cities. Oh sure.

Antifa are neo-Bolsheviks with a rainbow flag.

Digital Samizdat , says: Show Comment June 18, 2020 at 12:10 pm GMT
The fact that the Lügenpresse are now trying to deflect blame for the riots onto 'right-wing Boogaloo bois' is probably good news. It means that their internal polling shows what an unmitigated disaster these riots have been for the image of the Democrats. They were probably all assuming that Trump would play to type, send in the Marines and go medieval on the BLM and the Antifa, but he didn't. After making a few provocative tweets, he just decided to sit back and enjoy the show along with the rest of us. And now it's starting to dawn on Trump's enemies that they have completely destroyed their own cities for nothing!

I'm starting to think that this time not only will Trump win the election, but he'll probably win the popular vote, too.

anonymous [400] Disclaimer , says: Show Comment June 18, 2020 at 1:33 pm GMT
The footprints probably lead to the back door of the DNC. There's various billionaires involved but they're tied in with politicians. There's lots of people out there willing to hire on as Antifa thanks to the rotten gig economy where millions of young people are trapped and see very little future for themselves .

You see them all over working service jobs with no future. They tattoo themselves up, use drugs and are open to radicalization. What's to lose?Money, excitement and a cause are being offered by the mysterious paymasters.

Justvisiting , says: Show Comment June 19, 2020 at 8:33 pm GMT
@Ann Nonny Mouse I am laughing at blaming the DNC. They are hapless puppets who can't go to the bathroom without asking permission from their wealthy donors. The "hate whitey" propaganda is in Western Europe, Australia, even Japan. That is far out of DNC land. Who owns and controls the mass media in all "democracies" around the world? It is _not_ the DNC.
Piglet , says: Show Comment June 19, 2020 at 11:53 pm GMT
@Nicholas Stix Here's the video. It's 21 seconds long.

Pelosi: One Thing That Would Remain Is Our Support For Israel
Clip from the conference of the Israeli-American Council in Hollywood, Fla., Dec. 2, 2018. Sen. Chuck Schumer, left, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, center, Haim Saban

https://www.youtube.com/embed/U1LmnQRnw8I?feature=oembed

Nicholas Stix , says: Website Show Comment June 20, 2020 at 9:39 am GMT
@Piglet EyesWideOpen
30 subscribers
Clip from the conference of the Israeli-American Council in Hollywood, Fla., Dec. 2, 2018. Sen. Chuck Schumer, left, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, center, Haim Saban , right.

QUOTE: "if this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain would be our commitment to our aid, I don't even call it our aid, our cooperation with Israel." – Nancy Pelosi, Israel-American Council Conference

Piglet , says: Show Comment June 20, 2020 at 12:46 pm GMT
@Nicholas Stix Sheldon Adelson is the 'go to" man for Republicans in need of campaign cash, and his equivalent on the Democratic side is Haim Saban. You'll find more on Saban here:

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/03/eric-margolis/americas-political-golem/

Excerpt:
Democrats are now largely owned by Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban who calls himself somewhere to the right of the late Ariel Sharon. Saban, a media mogul, recently gave $5-10 million to the Clinton Library and is Hillary's principal backer.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2018/10/phil-giraldi/best-government-money-can-buy/

Exceprt:
In America's corrupt political culture, a monster like Sheldon Adelson can buy both a White House and Congress on behalf of a foreign government for a paltry $150 million or so. It is a reasonable investment for him given his views, as through him Israel is able to control a large slice of American foreign policy while also receiving billions of dollars each year from the US Treasury. And for those who think it would be different if the Democrats were in charge, think again. The Democrats have their own Adelson. His name is Haim Saban, an Israeli-American media magnate who has said he is a "one issue guy and my issue is Israel." He is also the largest individual contributor to the Democratic Party.

[Jun 17, 2020] We're in a sinister new era of totalitarianism, where PC combat units use social media to destroy anyone who disagrees with them by Konstantin Bogomolov

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... These mobs of hating, condemning, moralizing, groupthink hypocrites are modern-day Nazis. They don't wear uniforms or have guns, but their weapon of online psychological abuse is proving frighteningly effective. ..."
"... Psychological abuse is one of their classic methods, as they exploit a person's fear of ending up alone against a crowd. Instead of a prison cell or a concentration camp, they put people in social isolation. They can even prevent the victim from being employed – classic state repression of an individual. ..."
"... Without work, the geniuses will fade into obscurity, and the new PC brigade will make them kneel in solidarity. Individually, members of these combat units of political correctness are often smart and sophisticated people, but when they close ranks in the fight for or against something, they turn into an ignorant and aggressive mob. ..."
"... China has been testing a new system in several provinces via which the citizens and their community are encouraged to assess the social behavior of individuals by assigning scores for respecting the rules and values practiced in this society. If you don't achieve a high score, your ranking is low and your prospects are limited. Isn't this just perfect for the new stormtroopers?! It's a modern reincarnation of the Munich gang, when a mediocre, covetous burgher pretends to be a civilized, progressive thinker. ..."
"... They put labels on everyone who disagrees. They love drama and straightforwardness. But they are incapable of engaging in rational argument. It's only natural that they began with declaring lofty values and ended with riots. They have started fires and justified arson. But you can't rein in the freedom to love or hate using a set of rules established by the new ethics committee. Today, being free means being outside this mob of attacking, hating, condemning, moralizing, angry hypocrites. ..."
Jun 17, 2020 | www.rt.com

These mobs of hating, condemning, moralizing, groupthink hypocrites are modern-day Nazis. They don't wear uniforms or have guns, but their weapon of online psychological abuse is proving frighteningly effective.

Totalitarianism didn't disappear when the Nazis were defeated. It hid, stealthily, only to come back later. The US and Europe intuitively built a new elaborate type of dictatorship. The state delegated the functions of surveillance, persecution, isolation and judgment to society. Initially, it looked very innocent: fighting against intolerance, defending the mistreated and the oppressed. Noble goals.

But with time, these values turned into idols, while intolerance of evil transformed into intolerance of a different opinion. And social media is making things worse. Public opinion is now a repressive machine that gangs up on people, booing and destroying anyone who dares to challenge its value system and moral compass.

The staff members of this repressive machine do not wear uniforms, they don't carry batons or tasers, but they have other weapons, such as herd instinct and groupthink, as well as deep insecurities and a desire to dominate – at least intellectually.

Psychological abuse is one of their classic methods, as they exploit a person's fear of ending up alone against a crowd. Instead of a prison cell or a concentration camp, they put people in social isolation. They can even prevent the victim from being employed – classic state repression of an individual.

In a Nazi state, a creative type such as Lars von Trier could lose his job and life over his "degenerate art." In the beautiful modern state that people with beautiful faces are building, a Lars von Trier could lose his job, because he can be a politically incorrect troll who sometimes supports the wrong value system. And a Robert Lepage won't get funding for his new theatrical production, because all the parts in the previous one were played by white actors.

You no longer need to take their lives. Without work, the geniuses will fade into obscurity, and the new PC brigade will make them kneel in solidarity. Individually, members of these combat units of political correctness are often smart and sophisticated people, but when they close ranks in the fight for or against something, they turn into an ignorant and aggressive mob.

And there's no point arguing with them. They have only one criterion: are you with us or not? That's an ideal tool for the new way of abusing individuals – it's not physical, it's psychological.

China has been testing a new system in several provinces via which the citizens and their community are encouraged to assess the social behavior of individuals by assigning scores for respecting the rules and values practiced in this society. If you don't achieve a high score, your ranking is low and your prospects are limited. Isn't this just perfect for the new stormtroopers?! It's a modern reincarnation of the Munich gang, when a mediocre, covetous burgher pretends to be a civilized, progressive thinker.

They put labels on everyone who disagrees. They love drama and straightforwardness. But they are incapable of engaging in rational argument. It's only natural that they began with declaring lofty values and ended with riots. They have started fires and justified arson. But you can't rein in the freedom to love or hate using a set of rules established by the new ethics committee. Today, being free means being outside this mob of attacking, hating, condemning, moralizing, angry hypocrites.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

Konstantin Bogomolov is an award-winning Russian theater director, actor, author and poet.

[Jun 16, 2020] The Antifa leadership is heavily Jewish, and it is hence no surprise that you find them fighting for causes that benefit Israel

Jun 16, 2020 | www.unz.com

Not coincidentally, many of those who use the Antifa vexillum are enthusiastic supporters of and even volunteer mercenaries fighting with the YPG/SDF in an 'International Freedom Battalion' which claims to be the inheritors of the legacy of the International Brigades which volunteered to defend the Spanish Republic from fascism in the Spanish Civil War.

Unfortunately, these cosplayers forgot that the original International Brigades were set up by the Communist International, not the Pentagon. Meanwhile, despite their purported "anti-fascism", there are no such conscripts to be found defending the Donetsk or Luhansk People's Republics of eastern Ukraine against literal Nazis in the War in Donbass where the real front line against fascism has been. Instead, they fight alongside a Zionist and imperial proxy to help establish an ethno-nation state while the U.S. loots Syria's oil.

jbwilson24 , says: June 15, 2020 at 12:33 am GMT

One can find signs and banners saying 'Antifa is for Israel'. The Antifa leadership is heavily Jewish, and it is hence no surprise that you find them fighting for causes that benefit Israel.

I rather suspect the Occupy Wall Street movement quickly grew into a hot potato that the largely Jewish wall street oligarchs wanted to suppress. Americans were fresh off the great financial crises and obscene bailouts that allowed the big banks to maintain bonuses while avoiding any culpability for crashing the economy.

The anger of the street was quickly directed to race and gender issues. Conveniently since it took the heat off the Jewish oligarchy that runs the USA and placed it squarely on middle class white Americans. (Jews can magically become 'not white' when they choose). Of course, the idea that some Deli manager in Duluth has more power than a Jewish B'Nai Brith member and hedge fund manager in NYC is laughable, but with enough dollars and Jewish control of the media, it was easy to pump race baiting and to let OWS wither away.

[Jun 16, 2020] Infiltrating Antifa: the Feds and Their Long History of Subversion by T.J. Coles

The working hypothesis should be that Antifa is already subverted and externally controlled (often for nefarious purposes) organization, Not that different in principle from Red brigades.
Jun 12, 2020 | www.counterpunch.org
On May 31 st , President Trump (or his people) tweeted: "The United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization." Attorney General, William Barr, said: "The violence instigated and carried out by Antifa and other similar groups in connection with the rioting is domestic terrorism and will be treated accordingly."

Trump and Barr were referring to the Antifascist collective that has supported the ongoing, international Black Lives Matter (BLM) demonstrations. Mary McCord, an ex-Department of Justice official, reminds Trump that "no current legal authority exists for designating domestic organisations as terrorist[s]." At the time of writing, Trump has taken no action to officially designate Antifa a terror group.

Antifa is a leaderless, direct action platform, making it unusually easy for police, intelligence groups, and rival organizations to infiltrate and frame for violence. For example, on the same day that Trump tweeted his wish to see Antifa banned, a livestreamer was forced to run away after he incited a New York BLM group to "flip" over a truck before the crowd called him out.

So, let's see how the federal authorities infiltrate, provoke, and subvert.

ANTI-FASCIST ACTION & THE ANTI-NAZI LEAGUE

In Britain, Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) officers "Colin Clark" and "Paul Gray" (cyphers HN80 and HN126) infiltrated the Socialist Workers' Party and the Anti-Nazi League between 1977 and 1982. "Geoff" (HN21) raised money for Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League in the 1970s, but was an undercover SDS officer. Anthony Lewis ("Bobby Lewis" HN78) posed as an anti-racist in the 1990s to gather information about Doreen and Neville Lawrence, whose son, Stephen, was murdered in a racist attack. The Lawrence family campaigned against the police cover-up of the institutional racism behind their son's death. In his undercover role, Lewis had relationships with at least two anti-racist women, Bea and Jenny.

The British group, Anti-Fascist Action, was infiltrated by the Metropolitan Police's Mark Jenner, who posed as "Mark Cassidy" (HN15). Jenner worked for the Special Demonstration Squad. Jenner fathered children with a left-wing activist, Alison, whom he later dumped.

In the US in 2001, it was alleged that the former Roman Catholic priest and anti-fascist, Bill Wassmuth, was a de facto double-agent, using his Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment (NWCAMH) as a front to spy on Antifa. Following attacks against Idaho's Anti-Racist Action (ACA) by a splinter of the racist Aryan Nations, it was alleged that Wassmuth, who died in 2002, had used his sympathies with ACA as a pretext to gather information later shared with the police. Disclosure suggests that Wassmuth passed faxes, flyers, and letters on to Coeur d'Alene's Police Chief, Dave Scates.

It would also appear that Wassmuth worked wittingly or unwittingly with an FBI informant. Activist and author Jay Taber writes of the broader left-wing groups with which the NWCAMH was associated: "planted in the midst of the board of this group of social reformers and opponents of US foreign policy was an FBI informant," whom the authorities could manipulate because of her status as an immigrant ( Blind Spots , 2003).

THE GLADIO CONNECTION

After WWII, the US and Britain set up "stay behind" networks to fight the Soviets in case of an invasion of NATO countries. Broadly known as Gladio, the other objective was to use far-right and fascist groups in Italy, Spain, and elsewhere as a proxy against the pan-European left. One alleged Gladio operative, Roberto Fiore, was wanted by the Italian authorities for questioning over the blowing up of the Bologna railway station, Italy, in 1980: an act of terrorism which killed 80 people and was blamed on the left. But Fiore was an MI6 asset who went on to mentor British racists, including members of the National Front. The Thatcher government protected him from extradition.

Fiore alleges that one Carlo Soracchi ("Carlo Neri" HN104), who was working for the Met Police's Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), tried to provoke two Antifa activists into firebombing Fiore's London property. Soracchi was later confirmed to be an SDS spy. In July 2001, he drove Anti-Nazi League activists to a protest in Bradford, which led to the infamous riots, as the left clashed with the National Front and the British National Party (led by Fiore's protégé, Nick Griffin). In 2004, Soracchi attended a protest organized by the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers' union, where it was feared that he was passing on information about activists to industry black-listers. While spying on the Socialist Party, Soracchi had relationships with at least three lefty women: Andrea, Beth, and Lindsey.

THE BLACK BLOCK

Since the anti-World Trade Organization "Battle of Seattle" in 1999, gangs of young, masked vandals have descended on international protests, causing divisions between protestors and police. These are broadly known as the Black Block, in reference to their dress code. Their leaderless tactics and choice of attire lump them in with Antifa. But time after time, evidence exposes their followers as agents provocateur .

In 2007, Heiligendamm, Rostock, Germany, hosted the Group of Eight (G8) meeting. Around 80,000 demonstrators protested that month, only to be met with then-unprecedented state-violence: "pre-crime" raids, arrests, kettling, and eventual prohibition. After the Black Block caused trouble, the Federal Constitutional Court banned the demonstrations. Welt reports: "police have admitted the use of black-clad civilian officers during the summit protests." Witnesses said that the undercover cop "incited to collect stones from the gravel bed of the Molli Railway." Another said: "he hurled a stone at the fence and called: 'Get on the cops!'". Statewatch counted at least five black-clad provocateurs, some of whom were questioned by peaceful protestors about their agendas and backgrounds, to which they replied in formal German and refused to answer questions.

Also in 2007, the political leaders of the US, Mexico, and Canada met in the latter country in Montebello, near Ottawa, to discuss the Security and Prosperity Partnership 2005. Two thousand people gathered at the chateau to protest. Despite swearing that they were not provocateurs ("[a]t no time did the police of the Sûreté du Québec act as instigators or commit criminal acts"), the Quebec provincial police acknowledged that they had planted at least three, black-clad, masked, undercover officers among the protestors. Their police-issued boots gave them away. One of the coppers was seen carrying a rock. Videographer, Paul Manly, caught one of the undercover cops slapping the face of a riot squad officer.

In 2010, Vancouver hosted the Winter Olympic Games. The Olympic Resistance Network was there to protest. Constable Lindsey Houghton of the Vancouver Police described : "people dressed in all black who were encouraging the vandalism." Harsha Walia described what activists believed was a provocateur: "He was pushing forward and forcing people into the police."

CONCLUSION: ANTIFA TODAY

After Trump "won" the election in 2016, a young Baja Fresh manager, June Davies ("Tan"), donned black to join Antifa in Lake Oswego, Portland, Oregon. Within weeks, "Tan" was working with Portland Sgt., Jeff Niiya, telling him about planned protest routes.

Alberta-based teacher, Kurt Phillips, set up a website, Anti-Racist Canada, to track far-right groups. But the far-right Rebel Media alleged that Phillips was also an informant spying on the left. Phillips strenuously denies Rebel Media 's claim that he was a "member" of Antifa, but in an interview, Phillips does not deny or even raise the issue of being an informant against Antifa. The term "member" does not apply to the member-less, leader-less Antifa. It would be helpful if Phillips could clear this up.

Antifa came out in support of the recent and ongoing Black Lives Matter protests.

Referring to FBI Director, Christopher Wray, the National Security Advisor, Robert O'Brien, stated: "The president and the attorney general want to know from [Wray] what the FBI has been doing to track and dismantle and surveil and prosecute Antifa And if that hasn't been happening, we want to know what the plan is going forward." In early-June, media reported on "a law enforcement official with access to intelligence" about Antifa.

Also in early-June in Minneapolis, #UmbrellaMan trended on Twitter after a man dressed in black, carrying an umbrella and wearing a mask, gloves, and boots, was caught by peaceful protestors breaking AutoZone windows with a hammer shortly before the establishment was set ablaze. When asked if he is a policeman, Umbrella Man replied: "Does it matter?" The St. Paul Police Department denies that he's one of their officers. But it's not just the feds. More recently, @ANTIFA_US incited violence on Twitter. The fake account was traced to the white supremacist group, Identity Evropa, and deleted by Twitter.

As usual, the state is the most violent of all the institutions involved. It subverts and oppresses as methods of its survival. The state typically directs its energy against left-wing groups while allying with far-right and fascist elements as proxies against progressives. None of this can be uttered in mainstream media, lest one is accused of conspiracy theorizing. Grassroots activists, on the other hand, are all-too-aware of these tactics. Join the debate on Facebook More articles by: T.J. Coles

T. J. Coles is director of the Plymouth Institute for Peace Research and the author of several books, including Voices for Peace (with Noam Chomsky and others) and Fire and Fury: How the US Isolates North Korea, Encircles China and Risks Nuclear War in Asia (both Clairview Books). New from
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[Jun 14, 2020] Trojan horse in BLM camp (superpredators in her terminology): With friends like Hillary (she pushed Joe Biden's 1994 Crime Bill), who needs enemies; she is simply salivating at another opportunity to take revenge on Trump

Highly recommended!
Neoliberalism promotes identity wedge to spit "despicable" in a classic startegy "devide and conqure".
Notable quotes:
"... She supported her husband and Joe Biden's 1994 Crime Bill that led to an explosion in mass incarceration across the country. ..."
Jun 14, 2020 | www.mintpressnews.com

The former New York senator published her thoughts on her on Medium blog , where she appeared to endorse the Black Lives Matter movement, something she has previously stayed well clear of doing. "George Floyd's life mattered. Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor's lives mattered. Black lives matter," she began by stating.

"I promise to keep fighting alongside all of you to make the United States a place where all men and all women are treated as equals, just as we are and just as we deserve to be," she added, positioning herself on the same side as the protestors, many of whom are demanding the abolition of the police. Clinton commended the amazing "power of solidarity" she had seen and promised to "speak out against white supremacy in all its forms," declaring that America is long overdue for "an honest reckoning" with its racism problem.

However, an honest reckoning with Clinton's past unearths a myriad of troubling incidents and positions that are difficult to square with her newfound radical antiracist stance. She supported her husband and Joe Biden's 1994 Crime Bill that led to an explosion in mass incarceration across the country.

[Jun 14, 2020] These Aren't Protests, They're Religious Ceremonies

Notable quotes:
"... The New York Times ..."
"... Wokeness is a gnostic cult that asks its sectaries to adopt a platform of national self-loathing. These are not protests. They are religious celebrations. The cult needs to be consistently classified as a religion, and conservatives must resist the temptation to view it as merely a silly sideshow distraction. Its bizarro liturgy is increasingly enshrined in all of our institutions, and conservatives must act as if a cult has hijacked the nation. ..."
Jun 14, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

At a park in New York City, I witnessed something odd. A group of women silently formed a circle in the middle of a large lawn. Their all-black outfits contrasted with the surrounding summer pastels, and they ignored the adjacent sun bathers as they began to kneel and slowly chant. They repeated a three word matin. The most striking feature of this scene was its familiarity. Any half-decent anthropologist would label this a religious ritual.

Yet, few are willing to explicitly describe these events as part of a religion. The women may have been kneeling in a circle while chanting, but they repeated the words "black lives matter." Politics obscures the obvious. Wokeness is a religion, and conservatives must act as if large parts of our institutions are run by this cult.

Americans are united in their disgust at what happened to George Floyd. Everyone agrees: A minor run-in with the police should never lead to death. Yet, the past two weeks do not actually seem connected to the events in Minneapolis. Most East Coast yuppies would have trouble placing Minneapolis on a map. Does it really make sense to gather in a mass crowd during a pandemic because of something that happened a half-continent away? It does when you recognize that it's a religious movement.

Wokeness has been identified as a religion by several writers and commentators. Linguist John McWhorter wrote an article on " Antiracism, Our Flawed New Religion " several years ago. Harvard professor Adrian Vermeulle wrote a must-read analysis of the liturgical nature of liberalism in 2019. And all the way back in 2004, historian Paul Gottfried wrote a prescient book on the topic with the subtitle "towards a secular theocracy." The increasing intensity of woke culture suggests that this is no longer just a curiosity, or a point of ridicule. It is the most clear-eyed way of viewing current politics, and this is most obvious when viewing the protests.

The nationwide protests are best understood as religious ceremonies, and this can be seen in the way they keep engaging in off-brand Christianity. In Portland, Maine, protestors lay stomach down on the sidewalk in order to ritualistically reenact Floyd's arrest. They prostrated themselves in the exact way Catholic priests do in their ordination ceremony. Journalist Michael Tracey noted the religious feeling in New Jersey protests. Protestors knelt and held up their hands in a mirror image of how Evangelicals pray over each other at revivals. The Guardian ran an article on how people must keep repeating the names of police victims, and protestors routinely chant a list of names as if it is a litany of the saints. It is a transparent attempt to transform the victims into martyrs. And while Floyd's killing is a tragedy and an outrage, he had no agency over his death.

Perhaps the appropriation of Christian liturgy is just coincidental, and not evidence that the woke have become a cult. It's not like they're trafficking in classic cult behavior, like trying to separate devotees from their family, right? Wrong: Taking a cue from the Scientologists, The New York Times ran an op-ed encouraging readers to stop visiting, or speaking to family members until they pledge to "take significant action in supporting black lives either through protest or financial contributions." Very normal! Shaking down family members for money by threatening not to talk to them is classic cult behavior and is not how well-adjusted adults voice political opinions. The insidious engine of this religious impulse can be seen in the most egregious ripoff from Christianity so far.

In North Carolina, a pastor organized an event where white police officers knelt before her and washed her feet. She claimed God told her directly to do this. Only the most delusional would try to call this a protest. This is a pathetic perversion of Christian liturgy. To state the obvious: washing feet is a Christian tradition with Biblical origins. Washing feet was a chore reserved for the lowest servants. Jesus, God himself incarnate as man, washed the feet of his disciples at the Last Supper. The disciple Peter objects to this and doesn't want Jesus to lower himself. Jesus replies "if I don't wash you, you don't really belong to me."

The white people washing feet are only pretending to lower themselves. In reality, they're symbolically placing themselves in the role of God. For white people, woke anti-racism offers a way to worship themselves. "White privilege" is a purely subjective concept that allows unremarkable white people to recast their own ordinary lives in a flattering light. It's not enough to simply point this out and laugh at it. The religious nature of the woke has real policy implications.

The woke make policy decisions in reference to the values of their religion. Back in January, it was considered racist to be concerned about the coronavirus. CNN ran headlines about how racism was spreading faster than COVID, Al Jazeera ran an op-ed with a headline suggesting racism was the more dangerous epidemic, and New York City politicians encouraged people to join crowds in Chinatown. Now, after months of stringent social distancing, suddenly the "experts" are telling us that massive crowds gathering in every city around the globe won't impact the ongoing pandemic. A certain type of person pretends to be above all culture war topics, and always wants to get back to the "real issues." Yet it should be clear that in any long and protracted economic struggle with China, the woke cult has the ability to distort priorities and jettison all good sense. You may not be interested in the culture war, but the culture war is interested in you.

In 2014, and 2015, many conservative pundits made a name for themselves laughing at the "SJW" phenomenon on college campuses. Older conservatives loved to make jabs about "snowflakes" who they predicted wouldn't be able to tough it in the real world. This was a complete misreading of the situation. Woke Yale graduates do just fine in their careers, and these extremist students are now rising through institutions of power. Ivy League-educated lawyers are throwing molotov cocktails in New York. The scholastics grew out of an institutional arrangement where Christianity was the official religion of the university. Wokeness is the scholastic form of anti-racism. It is enshrined in our institutions because the Civil Rights movement coincided with the formation of our new upper class.

In the 20th Century, corporations and government grew to unforeseen scale. Experts, managers, bureaucrats, and new types of lawyers were required to run these organizations, and this changed the nature of the middle class, and how people achieved power. As Fred Siegel argued in his book "Revolt Against the Masses," this new class became conscious of itself as a distinct class through the Civil Rights movement. The South was a poor and backwards place, and the new class of experts could use their position to correct a grave injustice.

Civil Rights legislation then needed more lawyers, managers, and bureaucrats to enforce. The concrete forms of discrimination in the Jim Crow south slowly disappeared as racism was openly confronted, but we are left with a class structure that still defines itself around these issues. Those with power have a vested interest in finding ever new forms of racism because this allows them to create new instruments to fight racism. Universities and corporations create more and more administrative jobs that produce a brahmin class whose only purpose is to keep vigilant for bigotry. This is why the woke capital phenomenon cannot be dismissed as posturing. One implication of this is that striving political leaders who seek to enter the upper class must prove their anti-racism bonafides again, and again. Another, much darker, implication is that we may live in a theocracy.

Wokeness is a gnostic cult that asks its sectaries to adopt a platform of national self-loathing. These are not protests. They are religious celebrations. The cult needs to be consistently classified as a religion, and conservatives must resist the temptation to view it as merely a silly sideshow distraction. Its bizarro liturgy is increasingly enshrined in all of our institutions, and conservatives must act as if a cult has hijacked the nation.


Zweifler a day ago

It's a religion without reconciliation and redemption.
PeteZilla Zweifler a day ago
It's a force and a movement.

Folks who are labeling as mere religion are downplaying religion and worse ignoring history of constant protest in the pathway of human history.

Not all movements are religious based. That's a gross simplification to the complexity of culture and life.

Warts and all.

Null PeteZilla 18 hours ago
Yeah, there's nothing 'mere' about religion. It organized two of premodern society's major cultural spheres (Christendom and dar al-Islam) and started countless wars. You could make a pretty good case for Communism as a religion.
Connecticut Farmer Null 16 hours ago
According to Bertrand Russell Communism WAS a religion! Indeed, ideologies are, at bottom, indistinguishable from religions. The French Revolution was Exhibit One of that phenomenon.
YT14 Ron_Goodman 5 hours ago
Definitely element of supernatural involved in Communism and Nazism. Empirical evidence contradicts these beliefs.
Connecticut Farmer PeteZilla 16 hours ago
"That's a gross simplification to the complexity of culture and life."

Speaking of which, is there anything more simplistic or banal than a slogan..."Black Lives Matter" for example?

YT14 PeteZilla 5 hours ago
Spanish Inquisition was a religion
English Civil War was about religion
Abolitionism was a religion
Communism was a religion and National Socialism was a religion too

Every religion has its sacred content, though not every religion involves God, reconciliation or redemption

Dr. Professional Jonathan 16 hours ago
The real question is, "What is wrong with false religion?"
Jonathan Dr. Professional 16 hours ago
Ah, but in America, we are not supposed to pay too much attention to the supposed truth or falsity of each other's religions.

You can't fight something with nothing. The traditional religions seem to be spent forces. The wokeness seems to attract devout, or at least fervent believers.

kenofken Dr. Professional 14 hours ago
The same thing that's wrong with Christianity and Islam: the need to validate the belief system by forcing it upon others.
Gio Con 12 hours ago
I prefer to see it as mass hysteria.
FL Transplant 11 hours ago
I'Ve seen much larger and more involved ceremonies worshipping capitalism, if that's how we're determining religions now.

And the worshipping capitalists had a complete theology, with their religion driving their ethics and behavior much more than almost all professed Christians I've met.

Daniel Baker 8 hours ago
A religion with heresy trials and excommunications as well. And, at least In some states, well on its way to becoming the established state religion. In March and April, practitioners of the old religions from Christianity to Judaism to Islam discovered that their religions were non-essential and subject to lockdown. In May, they learned that the new religion is essential and not subject to lockdown.
Time4Truth 5 hours ago
What a crock of (^()(**&

Want to talk about cults? Let's talk about the New Apostolic Reformation cult and right wing evangelicals who are part of and/or closely associated with this fake Christian cult. Let's talk about 7 Mountains Mandate heresy and the right wing evangelicals who have bought into and even preach that heresy. I can't find anywhere in the Bible where it says these fake Christian and cult members have to take over the world to make it safe for Jesus to return. Until they do this, Jesus CANNOT return? Yes, Ted Cruz's father preaches the 7 Mountains heresy as do many other evangelicals.

How about the false teacher and fraud that Trump claims is his closest Christian advisor, Paula White. Why would he say such a thing when Paula White is nothing more a prosperity gospel fraud who said Jesus is not the only Begotten Son of God. Who has been investigated several times by the IRS. Who commanded 'All Satanic Pregnancies to Miscarry'

Maybe we should talk about some of those who are part of Trump's evangelical advisory council.
One of the leaders, Kevin Copeland, said "God is the biggest failure in the Bible" and his wife, Gloria, who has said her husband controls the weather and can make tornadoes and storms disappear.

Or the man Trump asked to come to DC, lay hands on and pray for him. Sick weirdo Rodney Howard Brown who says he is Jesus' bartender.

I also seem to remember Franklin Graham and Robert Jeffress and a few right wing evangelicals promoting frauds Paula White, Kenneth Copeland and few other fake Christians.

If you are going to express concern about people and their "religion", how about talking about the evangelicals who are a threat to the Christian faith and that Romans 16:17-18, 2 Corinthians 11:13-15, 1 John 1:5-10, 2 Timothy 3:1-5, 1 Timothy 6:4-5 and others warn about.

http://www.renewamerica.com...

Play Hide
Tom Riddle Time4Truth 38 minutes ago
Those are real cults. The author is talking about the fake cults that he made up using things he saw on twitter.
Ruth Harris 2 hours ago
People ritualized lots of things. Humans are ritualistic creatures. Take sports, for instance. Some pretty goofy rituals there.

[Jun 14, 2020] There is a counter-insurgence operation ongoing to demonize and hijack the original genuine leaderless protests sparked by the murdering of Floyd

Jun 14, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

H.Schmatz , Jun 13 2020 21:29 utc | 47

There is a counter-insurgence operation ongoing to demonize and hijack the original genuine leaderless protests sparked by the murdering of Floyd in broad day-light by a gang of policemen.

In this, the US is an expert, having mastered its expertise through the past Cold War through its Gladio operations.

If you followed the videos linked by the people and independent journalists through social media, there were lots of young, and not so, white and black people of various ways of life demonstrating against policial violence and race hatred instigated to unknown heights in decades by the current occupant of the WH.

After the first peaceful protests, riots started, riots which we witnessed being started by police plants and infiltrators, and then followed by usual neighborhood gangs who always fish in chaos.

The counter-insurgence operation started just after first days of protests, as the authorities saw this was not a passing phenomena, but merely the drop which filled the glass of US citizenry stamina to cop with Trump´s presidency´s ravage of the country.

After some days of riots, some figures, impersonating BLM or Black Panthers started appearing heading the demonstrations which, by their modeling look, suggested all the way an intent on hijacking the protests for the political benefit of the Democratic Party, that is the US establishment. The obvious fake support to the protests by Democrat politicians who have never done anything for equality and to put an end to policial violence, only comes in benefit of Trump, whose election was in danger after his disastrous management of the Covid-19 pandemic in the US left his polls acceptance in thel owest marks. The only way to save Trump´s reelection was to push the people´s rage to the limit,by the public summary execution of Floyd, to then push chaos and violence, by the riots started by the police and infiltrators, so that Trump can appear, since the Democrats appear supporting the protests, as the only one who could bring "law and order" again, the only way he could win the election after having proved inept for anything else, except applying fascist methods needed to counter with the awareness by the people which will take place around September on that they have been robbed of anything thye had left, this time at armed hand.

US "Antifa" movement, is probably to the real international antifascist movement as the Democratic Party is to the real international left, a fake built by TPTB to deprestigiate, demonize and disband the left and genuine protests by justified causes.

"Antifa" allied with the YPG kurds supported by the US in the Syrian war against the legitimate government of Syria.

No antifascist will ally ever with an Imperialist fascist nation like the US is today anywhere by whatever reason....As a proof, you could find real antifascists fighting along the Donbass people which was in the way of being exterminated by the fascist junta unleashed on them by the US through "color revolution" so called Maidan...

With this, I do not want to say there could not be genuine antifascist people who, by ignorance or naivety join "Antifa" in the US. With this may happen as with the NGOs, of which many of us have fallen victims out of lack of information and naivety proper of our youth days.


[Jun 13, 2020] A Brief History Of Antifa Part I

Jun 13, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

U.S. Attorney General William Barr has blamed Antifa -- a militant "anti-fascist" movement -- for the violence that has erupted at George Floyd protests across the United States. "The violence instigated and carried out by Antifa and other similar groups in connection with the rioting is domestic terrorism and will be treated accordingly," he said.

Barr also said that the federal government has evidence that Antifa "hijacked" legitimate protests around the country to "engage in lawlessness, violent rioting, arson, looting of businesses, and public property assaults on law enforcement officers and innocent people, and even the murder of a federal agent." Earlier, U.S. President Donald J. Trump had instructed the U.S. Justice Department to designate Antifa as a terrorist organization.

Academics and media outlets sympathetic to Antifa have argued that the group cannot be classified as a terrorist organization because, they claim , it is a vaguely-defined protest movement that lacks a centralized structure. Mark Bray, a vocal apologist for Antifa in America and author of the book "Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook," asserts that Antifa "is not an overarching organization with a chain of command."

Empirical and anecdotal evidence shows that Antifa is, in fact, highly networked, well-funded and has a global presence. It has a flat organizational structure with dozens and possibly hundreds of local groups. Not surprisingly, the U.S. Department of Justice is currently investigating individuals linked to Antifa as a step to unmasking the broader organization.

In the United States, Antifa's ideology, tactics and goals, far from being novel, are borrowed almost entirely from Antifa groups in Europe, where so-called anti-fascist groups, in one form or another, have been active, almost without interruption, for a century.

What is Antifa?

Antifa can be described as a transnational insurgency movement that endeavors, often with extreme violence, to subvert liberal democracy, with the aim of replacing global capitalism with communism. Antifa's stated long-term objective, both in America and abroad, is to establish a communist world order. In the United States, Antifa's immediate aim is to bring about the demise of the Trump administration.

Antifa's nemeses include law enforcement, which is viewed as enforcing the established order. A common tactic used by Antifa in the United States and Europe is to employ extreme violence and destruction of public and private property to goad the police into a reaction, which then "proves" Antifa's claim that the government is "fascist."

Antifa claims to oppose "fascism," a term it often uses as a broad-brush pejorative to discredit those who hold opposing political beliefs. The traditional meaning of "fascism" as defined by Webster's Dictionary is "a totalitarian governmental system led by a dictator and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism, militarism, and often racism."

Antifa holds the Marxist-Leninist definition of fascism which equates it with capitalism. "The fight against fascism is only won when the capitalist system has been shattered and a classless society has been achieved," according to the German Antifa group, Antifaschistischer Aufbau München .

Germany's BfV domestic intelligence agency, in a special report on left-wing extremism, noted :

"Antifa's fight against right-wing extremists is a smokescreen. The real goal remains the 'bourgeois-democratic state,' which, in the reading of left-wing extremists, accepts and promotes 'fascism' as a possible form of rule and therefore does not fight it sufficiently. Ultimately, it is argued, 'fascism' is rooted in the social and political structures of 'capitalism.' Accordingly, left-wing extremists, in their 'antifascist' activities, focus above all on the elimination of the 'capitalist system.'"

Matthew Knouff, author of An Outsider's Guide to Antifa: Volume II , explained Antifa's ideology this way:

"The basic philosophy of Antifa focuses on the battle between three basic forces: fascism, racism and capitalism -- all three of which are interrelated according to Antifa.... with fascism being considered the final expression or stage of capitalism, capitalism being a means to oppress, and racism being an oppressive mechanism related to fascism."

In an essay, "What Antifa and the Original Fascists Have In Common," Antony Mueller, a German professor of economics who currently teaches in Brazil, described how Antifa's militant anti-capitalism masquerading as anti-fascism reveals its own fascism:

"After the left has pocketed the concept of liberalism and turned the word into the opposite of its original meaning, the Antifa-movement uses a false terminology to hide its true agenda. While calling themselves 'antifascist' and declaring fascism the enemy, the Antifa itself is a foremost fascist movement.

"The members of Antifa are not opponents to fascism but themselves its genuine representatives. Communism, Socialism and Fascism are united by the common band of anti-capitalism and anti-liberalism.

"The Antifa movement is a fascist movement. The enemy of this movement is not fascism but liberty, peace and prosperity."

Antifa's Ideological Origins

The ideological origins of Antifa can be traced back to the Soviet Union roughly a century ago. In 1921 and 1922, the Communist International (Comintern) developed the so-called united front tactic to "unify the working masses through agitation and organization" ... "at the international level and in each individual country" against "capitalism" and "fascism" -- two terms that often were used interchangeably.

The world's first anti-fascist group, Arditi del Popolo (People's Courageous Militia), was founded in Italy in June 1921 to resist the rise of Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party, which itself was established to prevent the possibility of a Bolshevik revolution on the Italian Peninsula. Many of the group's 20,000 members, consisting of communists and anarchists, later joined the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39).

In Germany, the Communist Party of Germany established the paramilitary group Roter Frontkämpferbund (Red Front Fighters League) in July 1924. The group was banned due to its extreme violence. Many of its 130,000 members continued their activities underground or in local successor organizations such as the Kampfbund gegen den Faschismus (Fighting-Alliance Against Fascism).

In Slovenia, the militant anti-fascist movement TIGR was established in 1927 to oppose the Italianization of Slovene ethnic areas after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The group, which was disbanded in 1941, specialized in assassinating Italian police and military personnel.

In Spain, the Communist Party established the Milicias Antifascistas Obreras y Campesinas (Antifascist Worker and Peasant Militias), which were active in the 1930s.

The modern Antifa movement derives its name from a group called Antifaschistische Aktion , founded in May 1932 by Stalinist leaders of the Communist Party of Germany. The group was established to fight fascists, a term the party used to describe all of the other pro-capitalist political parties in Germany. The primary objective of Antifaschistische Aktion was to abolish capitalism, according to a detailed history of the group. The group, which had more than 1,500 founding members, went underground after Nazis seized power in 1933.

A German-language pamphlet -- "80 Years of Anti-Fascist Actions" ( 80 Jahre Antifaschistische Aktion )" -- describes in minute detail the continuous historical thread of the Antifa movement from its ideological origins in the 1920s to the present day. The document states :

"Antifascism has always fundamentally been an anti-capitalist strategy. This is why the symbol of the Antifaschistische Aktion has never lost its inspirational power.... Anti-fascism is more of a strategy than an ideology."

During the post-war period, Germany's Antifa movement reappeared in various manifestations, including the radical student protest movement of the 1960s, and the leftist insurgency groups that were active throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

The Red Army Faction (RAF), also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang, was a Marxist urban guerrilla group that carried out assassinations, bombings and kidnappings aimed at bringing revolution to West Germany, which the group characterized as a fascist holdover of the Nazi era. Over the course of three decades, the RAF murdered more than 30 people and injured over 200.

After the collapse of the communist government in East Germany in 1989-90, it was discovered that the RAF had been given training, shelter, and supplies by the Stasi, the secret police of the former communist regime.

John Philip Jenkins, Distinguished Professor of History at Baylor University, described the group's tactics, which are similar to those used by Antifa today:

"The goal of their terrorist campaign was to trigger an aggressive response from the government, which group members believed would spark a broader revolutionary movement."

RAF founder Ulrike Meinhof explained the relationship between violent left-wing extremism and the police: "The guy in uniform is a pig, not a human being. That means we don't have to talk to him and it is wrong to talk to these people at all. And of course, you can shoot."

Bettina Röhl, a German journalist and daughter of Meinhof, argues that the modern Antifa movement is a continuation of the Red Army Faction. The main difference is that, unlike the RAF, Antifa's members are afraid to reveal their identities. In a June 2020 essay published by the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung , Röhl also drew attention to the fact that Antifa is not only officially tolerated, but is being paid by the German government to fight the far right:

"The RAF idolized the communist dictatorships in China, North Korea, North Vietnam, in Cuba, which were transfigured by the New Left as better countries on the right path to the best communism....

"The flourishing left-wing radicalism in the West, which brutally strikes at the opening of the European Central Bank headquarters in Frankfurt, at every G-20 summit or every year on May 1 in Berlin, has achieved the highest level of establishment in the state, not least thanks to the support by quite a few MPs from political parties, journalists and relevant experts.

"Compared to the RAF, the militant Antifa only lacks prominent faces. Out of cowardice, its members cover their faces and keep their names secret. Antifa constantly threatens violence and attacks against politicians and police officers. It promotes senseless damage to property amounting to vast sums. Nevertheless, MP Renate Künast (Greens) recently complained in the Bundestag that Antifa groups had not been adequately funded by the state in recent decades. She was concerned that 'NGOs and Antifa groups do not always have to struggle to raise money and can only conclude short-term employment contracts from year to year.' There was applause for this from Alliance 90 / The Greens, from the left and from SPD deputies.

"One may ask the question of whether Antifa is something like an official RAF, a terrorist group with money from the state under the guise of 'fighting against the right.'"

Germany's BfV domestic intelligence agency explains Antifa's glorification of violence:

"For left-wing extremists, 'Capitalism' is interpreted as triggering wars, racism, ecological disasters, social inequality and gentrification. 'Capitalism' is therefore more than just a mere economic order. In left-wing extremist discourse, it determines the social and political form as well as the vision of a radical social and political reorganization. Whether anarchist or communist: Parliamentary democracy as a so-called bourgeois form of rule should be 'overcome' in any case.

"For this reason, left-wing extremists usually ignore or legitimize human rights violations in socialist or communist dictatorships or in states that they allegedly see threatened by the 'West.' To this day, both orthodox communists and autonomous activists justify, praise and celebrate the left-wing terrorist Red Army Faction or foreign left-wing terrorists as alleged 'liberation movements' or even 'resistance fighters.'"

Meanwhile, in Britain, Anti-Fascist Action (AFA), a militant anti-fascist group founded in 1985, gave birth to the Antifa movement in the United States. In Germany, the Antifaschistische Aktion-Bundesweite Organisation (AABO) was founded in 1992 to combine the efforts of smaller Antifa groups scattered around the country.

In Sweden, Antifascistisk Aktion (AFA), a militant Antifa group founded in 1993, established a three-decade track record for using extreme violence against its opponents. In France, the Antifa group L'Action antifasciste , is known for its fierce opposition to the State of Israel.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of communism in 1990, the Antifa movement opened a new front against neoliberal globalization.

Attac, established in France in 1989 to promote a global tax on financial transactions, now leads the so-called alter-globalization movement, which, like the Global Justice Movement, is opposed to capitalism. In 1999, Attac was present in Seattle during violent demonstrations that led to the failure of WTO negotiations. Attac also participated in anti-capitalist demonstrations against the G7, the G20, the WTO, and the war in Iraq. Today, the association is active in 40 countries, with more than a thousand local groups and hundreds of organizations supporting the network. Attac's decentralized and non-hierarchical organizational structure appears to be the model being used by Antifa.

In February 2016, the International Committee of the Fourth International advanced the political foundations of the global anti-war movement, which, like Antifa, blames capitalism and neoliberal globalism for the existence of military conflict:

"The new anti-war movement must be anti-capitalist and socialist, since there can be no serious struggle against war except in the fight to end the dictatorship of finance capital and the economic system that is the fundamental cause of militarism and war."

In July 2017, more than 100,000 anti-globalization and Antifa protesters converged on the German city of Hamburg to protest the G20 summit. Leftist mobs laid waste to the city center. An Antifa group called "G20 Welcome to Hell" bragged about how it was able to mobilize Antifa groups from across the world:

"The summit mobilizations have been precious moments of meeting and co-operation of left-wing and anti-capitalist groups and networks from all over Europe and world-wide. We have been sharing experiences and fighting together, attending international meetings, being attacked by cops supported by the military, re-organizing our forces and fighting back. Anti-globalization movement has changed, but our networks endure. We are active locally in our regions, cities, villages and forests. But we are also fighting trans-nationally."

Germany's domestic security service, in an annual report, added :

"Left-wing extremist structures tried to shift the public debate about the violent G20 summit protests in their favor. With the distribution of photos and reports of allegedly disproportionate police measures during the summit protests, they promoted an image of a state that denounced legitimate protests and put them down with police violence. Against such a state, they said, 'militant resistance' is not only legitimate, but also necessary."

Part II of this series will examine the activities of Antifa in Germany and the United States.


Coram Justice , 34 minutes ago

One can see why Antifa comrades conceal their identities. If in the coming dog days of summer, the rule: "Nine meals to anarchy," is exceeded, and Civil War-2 breaks out, the Antifa instigators of violence could be in grave trouble.

Maltheus , 49 minutes ago

Any right-wing group, attempting to do what antifa has done, would have been broken up long ago. The fact that they've been able to engage in violence, with little to no accountability, tells me that this is a state-sponsored group.

LightBeamCowboy , 1 hour ago

I had a chance to talk once with a young 82nd Airborne army officer who was fresh back from a posting in intelligence in Eastern Europe where he had to interface regularly with his CIA counterparts. He described them thusly: "To a man, they were boneheads."

Iconoclast27 , 59 minutes ago

Operation Gladio would prove otherwise, they use these groups on the left and right for political purposes, namely to maintain the existing gov't structure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3zbDptbZIk

Operation Gladio - BBC documentary from 1992, they even interview the CIA director at the time (I believe William Colby? It has been awhile) about their role in these groups activities.

Drop-Hammer , 1 hour ago

Of course these Antifa rabble are organized and supported by outside benefactors. A young person with no visible means of support can not travel cross-country or to other countries to 'protest' without money. Same holds true for all terrorism. Money is the life-blood. We know that in the past, it was countries such as the Soviet Union, East Germany, Cuba, et al that provided money to leftists/terrorists to destabilize western nations and governments. Today, it is NGO's and individuals with king-pins such as the demonic *** vampire (((George Soros))) who fund this chaos/mayhem.

LightBeamCowboy , 1 hour ago

...remember that the entire push to take down Trump has been tax-funded. From the FBI and DOJ, to the Mueller Report, to the Obama White House, to Congress itself, hundreds of millions of tax dollars have now been spent to obstruct or remove a duly elected president based on nothing but lies. But when the arrests begin for all the lies, subversion, and sedition, wait for the Dems to claim that it's all "political", not hard evidence of crimes these people can be prosecuted for "by the book" as Obama would say.

Iskiab , 1 hour ago

What's most troubling is the widespread democrat acceptance of these tactics. Try and get a Democrat to say someone's a looter and not a demonstrator, it's next to impossible.

It was also pretty genius to recruit so hard amongst rich white kids. If these autonom zones or looters were black or poor kids there'd have been a crackdown by now. Instead we have the police being asked to de-escalate.

It's no wonder police are so confused. They've been trained to control a situation at all costs for the last 20 years, now it's white kids so they're being told to use different rules.

Sandmann , 1 hour ago

When the two Brooklyn lawyers get to meet their future in the US penal system it might create some reality check

Aquamaster , 1 hour ago

Because Democrats are totalitarians as well. They have always had their military wing. First it was the KKK, who, in fact, killed whites as well as blacks. Now it is Antifa. They have no problem with radical left wing groups terrorizing the population as long as it will translate into more votes. They will buy your vote, steal your vote, change your vote, or coerce your vote by any means necessary.

silverwolf888 , 2 hours ago

It was established in the 80's that Meinhof was Gladio, A creation and asset of German Intelligence. The goal was to discredit the Ostpolitik movement.

This is an established fact, yet the article attempts to deceive you by ignoring it. The Red Brigades in Italy were the same, part of Operation Gladio.

Antifa in America has been untouchable since 1986, when Reagan gave the Jews control of American policy.

Many believe a new kind of Gladio has been in play since that time. Certainly the feds have worked hand in glove with Antifa for decades.

Now Trump says he wants to designate them a terrorist group. But he only has a few months left, and cannot get any orders obeyed, and his administration is stocked to the gills with Globalists.

Perhaps the FBI wants to sever that relationship. It is true that since Comey was fired the mass shootings that had been happening for decades have stopped. So there is hope.

But this article is deliberate disinformation. Antifa was a Soviet creation to begin with.

Sandmann , 1 hour ago

Red Brigades were CIA directed to kill Aldo Moro so he would not bring Communists into Coalition in Rome

Iconoclast27 , 1 hour ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3zbDptbZIk

Operation Gladio BBC documentary from 1992, all sides are clearly subverted.

TheOutlander , 2 hours ago

Antifa is Zionist *** sponsored fascist organization, period. Their sponsor, Soros, should be executed first, prosecuted later.

Jacksons Ghost , 2 hours ago

The Feds are not going to do squat. Trump has done nothing to stand up to his enemies in his whole term. Build Wall=Nope Drain Swamp=Nope indict Hillary=Nope Take on Globalist= Nope He talked a great game and in the end did nothing. Now granted, he has been hamstrung by impeachment and his enemies, but at what point does he say "**** it" and lay waste. He has failed us. I will vote for him again, because the alternative is insane. Still, I am disappointed.

LightBeamCowboy , 1 hour ago

Even in the above article it talks of these "anti-fascist" groups using the tactic of goading the police/government into an over-reaction that will turn the public against them. Trump has wisely left responding to these riots to the local governors and mayors so that they own the results, not him. There is already evidence that this tactic is turning people against their Dem elected officials and towards Trump. Q has repeatedly said that sometimes you have to let people see exactly who these people are before you can win the silent majority to your side. Antifa and BLM were just handed enough rope to hang themselves -- no sane American could support them now.

Vernon_Dent , 2 hours ago

There's still slavery in Africa . Now. In the 21st. Century. And it has NOTHING to do with whitey.

What do all the jive *** BLM hypocrite assholes and cuck boy Antifags have the say about it?--absolutely nothing.

All those little SJW black and white *** boys should just stick to fellating each other.

Time to get huge' , 2 hours ago

That's a lot to write when you could have just said CIA/DHS/FBI....It's another ISIS creation....Originally from:

SoDamnMad , 3 hours ago

Given that our FBI 's main goal is to protect and defend the United States, to uphold and enforce the criminal laws of the United States but couldn't overthrow the duly elected President of the United State using their international contacts in the UK, Australia and Ukraine, how about they find and break antifa before the Republic is destroyed. If the FBI now finds that supporting Antifa will destroy Trump then they have to ask themselves who in this broken Republic will pay their salaries and pensions. It will all be gone.

hootowl , 2 hours ago

The FBI is/and probably always has been a broken/unconstitutional national policing agency, which our founders assiduously avoided providing in the U.S. Constitution, has run amok ever since the early days of homosexual J. Edgar Hoovers leadership. It will certainly NEVER become a lawful, trustworthy, agency under Christopher Wray and his cadre of ne'er'do'wells in the Hoover Building coven of operatives + 17 Deep State fauxjew/Edomite/Khazarian/Mossad/dominated alleged intelligence agencies.........That is absolutely preposterous!!!

DaBard51 , 3 hours ago

Hmmm... are Antifa the new Trotskyites?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trotskyism

robobbob , 3 hours ago

Antifa exists because elements in government allow it.

recent events should prove that. the mayor of DC all but handed out arms to encourage an attack on the white house. the mayor of seattle refused to act, and even vowed to protect protesters if Trump intervenes. in city after city, governments have refused to do more than observe the violence. search, and there are entire web sites with hundreds of accounts filled with coordination efforts. there are hundreds of groups and hundreds of millions of dollars sloshing about.

all of this with a security state that monitors internet chatter, emails, cell calls, and bank transfers?

antifa, and by extension, the current turmoil, can only be operating with the tacit approval of certain elements of the establishment.

it is literally impossible for the government to not know what is going on.

Max21c , 3 hours ago

Sorry but Baader-Meinhof does not control the New York City Mayor's office.

This is entirely on a faction of radical screwball left wing Liberal Elites atop and inside the Democrat Party.

tangent , 4 hours ago

What part of fascism are they supposed to be against? Certainly they enjoy censorship, randomly beating the **** out of people who have different opinions than they do, and their headquarters in Seattle shows strong border controls against unwanted classes of people by warlord Raz who you can only defeat by rap battle.

OTMPut , 4 hours ago

Academics and media outlets sympathetic to Antifa have argued that the group cannot be classified as a terrorist organization because, they claim , it is a vaguely-defined protest movement that lacks a centralized structure.

Ain't Al Qaeda like that? We have developed a a large body of laws and "special judiciary" procedures to deal with them. We just need to apply them! Who is in favour of a Guantanamo bay in Portland?

Le Baron , 3 hours ago

Having viewed and studied the Anarchist movement in Europe over several decades, and long before Antifa showed up as a force in U.S. politics, I have concluded that Antifa is one and the same as the European Anarchist movement. The Anarchists have a long history in Europe. Other than chaos and destruction used to promote social unrest, they have no agenda beyond destruction of whatever government is in power in the areas where they operate. History shows that, in the few cases where they have successfully grabbed power on a limited basis, the result is the same as Seattle is now experiencing: creation of a power vacuum into which the most thuggish and brutal step. The fact that Anarchists/Antifa supporters do not operate in Communist counties or true Dictatorships is that these power structures do not tolerate dissent, brutally suppress it and the Anarchist/Antifa supporters know it. To summarize: unlike true freedom fighters (e.g.: Thomas Payne, Martin Luther King, etc.) Anarchists/Antifa supporters are cowardly thugs who offer nothing to overall society

nodhannum , 4 hours ago

KKK = democrats with white masks that burn crosses

Antifa = democrats with black masks that burn black businesses

What they both have in common is they are racist and totalitarian. The KKK goes for overt racism. Antifa goes for the soft sneaky kind of racism of low expectations and the development of dependency in the group to be subjugated.

Summers Eve , 4 hours ago

Downvoter doesn't like you leaking the truth

Oboneterm , 3 hours ago

How many Black owned businesses around the county were burned to the ground by antifa?

Answer.......All of them.

Commodore 1488 , 3 hours ago

This concept of comparing the Democratic ideology of 1850's to the anarchists/Democrats of today is ​​​​​​FLAGRANTLY false! First off the Republicans ever since 1865 have empirically controlled America. The Democrats immediately following 1865 couldn't even hold office. The KKK was a civil defense group when the average Southerners had no voice after their defeat. The KKK helped to prevent northern extortion plans, lawlessness, and in general was trying to protect against overreaching aggression in a post apocalyptic war torn zone.

These anarchists on the otherhand are doing the exact opposite. They are tearing down an established order with MAYBE a future order in mind. But even if they have a future order in mind it seems that implementing it against the will of the majority is ok.

Caliphate Connie and the Headbangers , 1 hour ago

The KKK was formed by the southerners who were completely disillusioned by both the confederates and the Union. Neither one offered anything before or after the war. The wealthy owned the slaves, 95% of southerners did not own slaves, and after the war now they had even more competition just to survive. They originally formed the Klan because they wanted to reimplement the CLAN system, as in the Scottish Clans. Remember the Scots Clans were opposed to the Union, meaning the United Kingdom and it was only 100 years earlier that the British destroyed the Clans in Scotland. Most were rounded up and deported to the Americas as slaves by the Union of the Crowns, The United Kingdom. As kids these Southerners would have heard of all of it as children from their parents and grandparents. The Clan systems worked for 1000's of years and provided security and a certain standard of living. We don't have a country anymore, we just are diverse peoples being controlled and manipulated by Internationalists.

IvannaHumpalot , 4 hours ago

Dangerous and violent

daily Mail group sent out an email to staff saying they would donate to black lives matter

Ted Baker , 4 hours ago

another way to sell news..i think they should close the newspaper down or do an independent enquiry.

Infinite QE , 4 hours ago

E. Michael Jones `The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit'. Can't understand any of this without that book's wisdom.

White Nat , 3 hours ago

Listen to it free at:

https://vnnforum.com/showthread.php?t=488599

Along with many other books the ADL has censored for inordinate truthiness.

Arch_Stanton , 3 hours ago

Jews have served our owners as tax farmers for centuries. "Revolution" is another product they supply to our owners.

Sparehead , 4 hours ago

"decentralized and non-hierarchical organizational structure appears to be the model being used by Antifa."

Arch_Stanton , 3 hours ago

BS.

Sparehead , 2 hours ago

I'm not denying that these are well-organized and well-funded largely criminal political organizations. Just that it's structured in a way to allow its supporters the denial of support.

Arch_Stanton , 1 hour ago

Yes. They are compartmentalized. Like the Masons, for example.

IvannaHumpalot , 3 hours ago

Thrr Er y have a structure of cells similar to multilevel marketing or Hizb ut tahrir

no official leader or member list For safety

a cell of 5 will have one recruiter / head who reports up to the next cell of five

nobody not in the cell knows the names of that cell and everyone uses fake names anyway

Just a guess

847328_3527 , 5 hours ago

Anteefer (white kids dressed in black) and BLM burned down a significant portion of the Bronx in NYC. 83% of the businesses destroyed in the Bronx by these white kids were black owned.

"Yes we can!"

The black people be played. Keep voting Demorat liberals and that's what you get.

truthalwayswinsout , 6 hours ago

Antifa is the easiest thing in the world to end.

Why?

Because they are spoiled wanna be white brats who live in a dream world created by activist left of left professors at universities and funded by the Soros crowd.

How do you end them? It can all be done in about 6 months max.

#1 Long term: Create an online university that is very hard and free. All you do is pay for your exams. From $100 to $400 per exam. Have corporations sponsor special degrees that are harder than the already difficult base degree. Those corporations would have to hire at least 200 interns in their 3rd and 4th year of school and for the summer. All students must work a part time job of at least 10 hours per week. A degree would cost $4000 to $16000 and no student loans and no debt. Students can live at home or live in dorms for a monthly fee to experience the social and connection aspect of college. This will bankrupt 95% of the current private colleges and universities and get 100,000 radical left of left professors without a job.

#2 Short Term: Cut the amount of funding for college loans by 50%. Almost overnight 1/2 the radical faculty at every school will be fired and 70% of the administrators will be gone as well.

#3 Put the leaders in jail. The leaders are Hillary and the Half-Breed Muslim ****** along with Soros and all the rest of the funders. Trump's worst mistake was in not putting Hillary in jail from the very start of his presidency. As a result, she threw the first brick and now you have 100's coming at us. Put her in jail where she belongs along with the coup conspirators and the ****** and freeze all of Soros' money and watch how fast it all ends.

#4 Take the most vocal of all the Antifa local groups and infiltrate and arrest them and put them in jail for 30-40-50 years making sure they go to isolated prisons and are locked down 23 hours per day. 10 or so in jail should do the trick.

What is important is the order you do things. To set the right tone announce the school first so you can tell all the Woke that school will now be free. Then a month or two later right before the start of the next school year cut the loan amounts, and then target the people.

Oh and target just one violent Antifa demonstration and make sure you surround them with 1000's of law enforcement and arrest them all and kill any who violently resist. Then charge them all with terrorism and try them all with no plea deals and make them and their parents pay money to defend them. The sucker deal is whoever helps fund their legal defense is now on the radar for elimination.

Let them go on go fund me and then seize the money raised.

chelydra , 51 minutes ago

Yet Barry Soetoro had the FBI designate Juggalos as a gang.

desertboy , 7 hours ago

The Atlantic and NYT just announced that Antifa is a grass-roots organization, and (literally) that anyone who opposes their agenda is by definition a "white supremacist".

So that pretty much clears up the funding source.

Fireman , 7 hours ago

Aunty *** fascists are thugs and murderers. So if Agent Orange is serious about fighting terrorism in Slumville (he isn't) then why doesn't he outlaw and arrest the filth on the street and the Soros slash Rothschild filth financing these controlled whore punks?

The answer should be obvious to all who know who financed Orange's white House sojourn.

Like BLM (Bowel Movements Matter) and the rest of the unwashed masses running riot across Slumville....it's all part of the Hegelian con to take US all down to the next level of outright tyranny. But try explaining that to the black shirted mobs and useful braindead white assed idiots prostrating themselves on the streets in front of skateboard losers and meth addled clowns.

As Shlomo Gatestein proves over and over again......If it's good for the juice...it's good enough for everyone else by default.

https://www.projectveritas.com/

Blanco Diablo , 8 hours ago

We are looking at South Africa 2.0 and if the white community does not stop this, the white community is going to be toast. Going after the attackers is not going to be productive. Instead, we have to go after the manipulators.

We know where they are
They are over at Channel 3, or wherever your local news and radio stations are. They are on CNN, and running Twitter, Facebook, Google and all the rest -

They are your city council, raping you for exorbitant taxes, working in secure areas, leaving secure parking garages and then going home to gated communities.

IvannaHumpalot , 3 hours ago

Daily mail newspaper group is now funding BLM

hugin-o-munin , 8 hours ago

I want to apologize for calling you an idiot, that was uncalled for.

The reason I get upset is because I see the agenda being played out here. There was recently a report about someone within the Seattle CHAZ area that wielded a machete and that follows the script perfectly. If the government (in this case Trump) doesn't take the bait they will switch tactic and start using operatives/patsies like this to force some kind of resolution. The Soros clan use these types of tactics all the time, it's what they've done for decades. I just want people to be awake to see it for what it is.

Southerly Buster , 8 hours ago

Gatestone Institute = didn't bother reading.

My theory from the froth and bubble generated by ANTIFA chatter is that they are obvious a boogeyman for the right or fifth column organisation for the left. Either way they are an irrelevance.

Keep your eye on those that have the real power.

supermaxedout , 9 hours ago

The article is complete ******** except for the fact that the modern Antifa was created in Germany appx 20 or 25 years ago. But one can be assured that such a movement would have never gathered any importance if it would have not been backed up by the Secret Services of the US and the UK.

You can not let even a political fart go unnoticed by the powers still occupying Germany. They controll Germany. That is a fact. So the logical conclusion is the US and the UK are behind Antifa otherwise it would have been eradicated already longtime ago.

The actual conclusion regarding the US is that we see already the start of a Civil War in the US. Antifa backers in the administration against Trump backers. Its that simple.

hugin-o-munin , 8 hours ago

Antifa is part of a spectrum of movements directly sponsored and funded through NATO and it's Gladio network. This has always been the case and this article is full of propaganda bullsh!t. It is well known that the Baader-Meinhof terrorists were directly led and funded by western intelligence groups. Some people, especially clueless Americans may wonder why and it is quite straight forward. Europe has since the end of ww2 developed a strong social-democratic form of political movements which the US is quite afraid of.

Just look at my country Sweden which during the early 60's started very large scale plans to allow organized labor unions, state funded programs to provide housing, education and healthcare to everyone. A very socialist sounding program that relied on private capitalist industries to work. The model proved successful and even profitable overall and this is what US and UK powers absolutely did not want to see. Germany, France, Italy and many other countries had similar trends and this is what sparked the Gladio operations to perpetrate terror inside these countries and provide a reason for the governments to clamp down on these 'communists'.

A big part of the overarching agenda here is to keep in place the separation between Europe and Russia. Russia today has many faults but it is hardly a communist dictatorship like China and this is a problem for the mind controllers. It's all about economic power in the end and all these politically flavored games are all meant to keep people fighting with themselves. The US very often goes full throttle into things without even thinking and that's the case right now with the American Antifa movement. They are exposing themselves for the simple tools they are and I suspect they will get absolutely decimated soon.

webmatex , 8 hours ago

Merkel allows/uses them as push against the new right in Germany which is what her and her party are afraid of.

They both share Stasi roots.

hugin-o-munin , 8 hours ago

I agree with your point on Merkel but I disagree with the notion that this is/was a Stasi operation, it was orchestrated and funded by western intelligence. Merkel is now way behind the curve and what may have worked in the past no longer does. What Antifa is doing in Germany is actually bolstering AfD who are gaining ground in many Länder. The problem is that the CDU/CSU are becoming stale and lack ideas. They still have a large portion of the older generations but younger generations view them as rudderless and clueless. It is the same in many European countries right now.

hootowl , 5 hours ago

Just another manipulative academic/Deep State/fauxjew dual state/Mossad/ israhell-American Deep State/intelligence horror for the American people to have to deal with.

Egao , 9 hours ago

Current ANTIFA has nothing to do with pre-WW2 anti-Fascists. Those people were fighting Fascism and Nazism risking their lives, and not all of them were Communists or even Left. And history has proven that they were right.

As we move towards next economical and political crisis there will be drift towards Fascism but modern ANTIFA are just bunch of fight clubs for people looking for thrill.

donkey_shot , 9 hours ago

much as we all should deeply abhor antifa, the gatestone institute is probably even worse: this is like modern-day nazis criticising modern-day nazis for being modern-day nazis: the gatestone institute is a far-right, neo-con "think tank" aka propaganda outlet and a known zionist mouthpiece that has included the likes of john bolton (an architect of the iraq war and as such a mass murderer) amongst its directors. please, boycott the gatestone institute! please, don`t print their tripe on zerohedge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatestone_Institute

https://militarist-monitor.org/profile/gatestone_institute/

Salisarsims , 9 hours ago

Neocons being in the Trotskyite tradition.

One should point out Capitalists are the ones who came up with Communism and Fascism in the first place.

All the systems are tools of the elite.

B52Minot , 9 hours ago

In the LEAST it is a GLOBAL TERROR NETWORK no different than ISIS...and any other terror group that needs not just outlawing but a full disclosure of all of its donors and inner workings....How about it DOJ/FBI and CIA...and the CONGRESS....Why are you Congress spending your time on the items related to the Durham Prob when we the people want to know this group and its relationship to BLM....How about NOW Congress??? Get off your asses and START your investigation NOW.....and until we see who is/is not being indicted then we can always go back to the 3+ yr ago issues with the Coup.

Meatballs , 9 hours ago

The stench is pretty thick around Gatestone.

Nina Rosenwald , President
Naomi H. Perlman, Vice President

Just sayin'

*But wait! There's more! Nina- " She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations".Prolly AIPAC too. GTFO with this ****.

Lazy, Tylers. WTF?

webmatex , 8 hours ago

I read these articles purely to keep an eye on neo-con policy making.

Their policies are much more dangerous than Antifa can smoke up.

These articles serve a purpose.

Most of us see thru their stale propaganda.

debunker1 , 10 hours ago

That's funny, a bunch of young unemployed loser/vandal/cowards that live in their parents basement have become the latest "terrorist organization".

ANTIFA is what you get with massive youth unemployment. Keep letting corporations employ cheap compliant third world labor, keep pushing young people out of work and ANTIFA is what you get.

captain-nemo , 11 hours ago

We know they are labeled a terrorist organisation, yet nobody is arrested for it.

We know they uses campuses in schools to recruit people. Yet nothing is done to prevent and put a stop to it.

we know that they are funded nationally by hundreds of big businesses and also large political organizations to the left (Democrats), clinton foundation etc. and also international groups , like Soros and others. Yet nothing is done to stop it (even when they openly know they are funding a terrorist organization)

we know they have support among mayors, police, governors, senators, congress members of all parties. Yet nobody is arrested or prosecuted for it.

There are 18 intelligence agencies in America , and they all seems to do nothing. We also have BARR who is only talking and doing nothing. He recently sais this:

"The violence instigated and carried out by Antifa and other similar groups in connection with the rioting is domestic terrorism and will be treated accordingly,

Still, nothing is happening. Isn't silence the same as compliance??????

notppcperson , 11 hours ago

They want this whole thing to go out of control. They setup the beer virus **** to start things off. Didn't go as plan. So BLM/Antifa ********.

It's set up either Orange Monkey to declare martial law or someone else to declare marital law.

WorkingClassMan , 10 hours ago

Hopefully investigations are ongoing behind the scenes. I used to have some measure of faith in the FBI and DoJ to act least act against low-level groups (if not their child raping buddies), but even that seems beyond them now.

quanttech , 10 hours ago

faith in the FBI and DoJ??????? loolololololololololololoololoolololo .... Antifa is likely run by the ******* FBI ffs.

Even J. Edgar's corpse got a laugh out of that one.

WorkingClassMan , 10 hours ago

Hey, I was naive once. I believed in Santa Claus too.

Victor999 , 9 hours ago

They could stop this if they wanted to. So it is much more than 'compliance', it is complicity: it is control - to create chaos from which their New World Order will arise.

desertboy , 7 hours ago

"There are 18 intelligence agencies in America , and they all seems to do nothing."

Are you f'ing kidding me?

Who TF did you think was passing talking points to the MSM and Hollywood since before the Church commission?

quanttech , 11 hours ago

...After 1968, the government determined that ONE OUT OF SIX rioters in Chicago 1968 was a cop or a fed. Who the **** do you think "Antifa" is??? Suckers.

captain-nemo , 10 hours ago

How many people are working in the NSA? Doesn't the NSA have access to pretty much everything there is that exist electronically? If i were given the job, It would take me a few days to roll up the entire network and a week to destroy them.

quanttech , 10 hours ago

Exactly.

And yet it doesn't happen.

So who's Antifa again?

Joe A , 11 hours ago

If they are against capitalism, why don't they go after Wall Street, banks, big corporations, etc. but instead go after small businesses downtown? Small businesses are easier targets I guess and crimes against them more likely to go unpunished. I guess they learned from the RAF in Germany: if you go after big businesses and important business people then you get the full weight of the state on you, as happened with the RAF. But with their actions of targeting small businesses they only alienate the average citizen.

By no means I want to say they should go after Wall Street, big corporations and business people. But by destroying Main Street they show what they have in store for everybody should they ever get into power (God forbid).

Real capitalism btw. is about small businesses, not the rogue capitalism of Wall Street and big corporations.

G. Wally , 11 hours ago

Hmmmmm...so Germany's political parties seemingly aligned with the US Democratic party fund Antifa?

"Bettina Röhl, a German journalist and daughter of Meinhof, argues that the modern Antifa movement is a continuation of the Red Army Faction. The main difference is that, unlike the RAF, Antifa's members are afraid to reveal their identities. In a June 2020 essay published by the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Röhl also drew attention to the fact that Antifa is not only officially tolerated, but is being paid by the German government to fight the far right :

"The RAF idolized the communist dictatorships in China, North Korea, North Vietnam, in Cuba, which were transfigured by the New Left as better countries on the right path to the best communism....

"The flourishing left-wing radicalism in the West, which brutally strikes at the opening of the European Central Bank headquarters in Frankfurt, at every G-20 summit or every year on May 1 in Berlin, has achieved the highest level of establishment in the state, not least thanks to the support by quite a few MPs from political parties, journalists and relevant experts.

"Compared to the RAF, the militant Antifa only lacks prominent faces. Out of cowardice, its members cover their faces and keep their names secret. Antifa constantly threatens violence and attacks against politicians and police officers. It promotes senseless damage to property amounting to vast sums. Nevertheless, MP Renate Künast (Greens) recently complained in the Bundestag that Antifa groups had not been adequately funded by the state in recent decades. She was concerned that 'NGOs and Antifa groups do not always have to struggle to raise money and can only conclude short-term employment contracts from year to year.' There was applause for this from Alliance 90 / The Greens, from the left and from SPD deputies.

"One may ask the question of whether Antifa is something like an official RAF, a terrorist group with money from the state under the guise of 'fighting against the right.'"

Isn't curious, then, that with all the videotaped violence... who does the FBI (the org that tried to frame the sitting president and his staff) arrest? Let's LOOK:

" FBI arrests 3 suspected white supremacists on federal gun ...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fbi-arrests-3-suspected-white-supremacists-on-federal-gun-charges/

The FBI arrested three suspected white supremacists on firearms charges on Tuesday, the Justice Department announced Thursday. Brian Lemley, Jr., and William Garfield Bilbrough IV, alleged to be ...

Right-wing 'Boogaloo' men arrested on terror charges ...

https://www.businessinsider.com/3-boogaloo-men-terror-charges-george-floyd-protest-riot-conspiracy-2020-6?op=1

According to a June 2 filing, the men discussed "causing an incident to incite chaos and possibly a riot" in response to George Floyd's death.

FBI arrests 3 connected to white supremacist group who ...

https://www.richmond.com/news/virginia/fbi-arrests-3-connected-to-white-supremacist-group-who-were-headed-to-richmond-gun-rally/article_33449ddf-5eaf-5ec0-8b31-7e5fef4f05fa.html

Three men connected to a white supremacist organization are facing federal charges related to plans ... June 4, 2020 @ 8:21 pm. ... FBI arrests 3 connected to white supremacist group who were ..."

So these "White Supremacists " had plans " to commit violence...anyone here think the FBI weren't tracking them, infiltrating them...yet "for some reason" the FBI "could not find" anyone actually COMMITTING VIOLENCE during this looting and pillaging???

Defund and eliminate the FBI.

How many US MSM journalists called for assassinating the sitting president? How many got arrested?
Now, we learn donating to BLM means it is transferred to the DNC to elect Democrats! The DNC was party to TREASON, with the FBI, CIA and NSA as willing accomplices...and what is Barr doing about it?

SQUAT.


[Jun 11, 2020] Polls are political weapon: who controls the poll controls part of electorate

Jun 11, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Mao , Jun 11 2020 6:13 utc | 91

President Donald Trump's campaign is demanding CNN retract and apologize for a recent poll that showed him well behind presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

The demand, coming in the form of a cease and desist letter to CNN President Jeff Zucker that contained numerous incorrect and misleading claims, was immediately rejected by the network.
"We stand by our poll," said Matt Dornic, a CNN spokesman.

The CNN poll conducted by SSRS and released on Monday shows Trump trailing the former vice president by 14 points, 55%-41%, among registered voters. It also finds the President's approval rating at 38% -- his worst mark since January 2019, and roughly on par with approval ratings for one-term Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush at this point in their reelection years -- and his disapproval rating at 57%.
In the letter to Zucker, the Trump campaign argued that the CNN poll is "designed to mislead American voters through a biased questionnaire and skewed sampling."

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/10/politics/trump-campaign-cnn-poll/index.html

[Jun 10, 2020] Is it possible that the USA is becoming a [neo]fascist state?

Jun 10, 2020 | www.unz.com

Ultrafart the Brave , says: Website Show Comment June 4, 2020 at 12:06 am GMT

Last night on the Australian ABC current affairs program "The Drum", the host actually asked a guest "Is it possible that the USA is becoming a fascist state?".

The guest replied that he thought the USA has been traveling down this path for the last 20 years.

The unusual aspect of this exchange was that a host on an Australian mainstream news program had the courage to ask such a question at all.

Interesting times.

Curmudgeon , says: Show Comment June 8, 2020 at 9:55 pm GMT
@Ultrafart the Brave

"Is it possible that the USA is becoming a fascist state?".

Not until this happens:

"USURY is the cancer of the world, which only the surgeon's knife of Fascism can cut it out of the life of the nations." ~ Ezra Pound

If the guest who replied thought the USA has been traveling down this path for the last 20 years, it would follow that the plight of those who are not elites, would be better, not worse.

[Jun 08, 2020] Jordan to Rosenstein- Why are you keeping info from us

Jun 08, 2020 | www.youtube.com



Sandor Nelu
, 5 months ago

Rosenstein looks like a snake in front of an eagle.

Frank D. Long , 7 months ago

Rosenstein is a traitor and his wife is Crooked Hillary's lawyer.


Mitch Pickett
, 6 months ago

This guy is a weasel plain and simple. He knows something and is doing everything in his power to keep it a secret.


Tom Floor
, 1 year ago

Rosenstein is lying! This is what's pissing me off! If Rosenstein is a piece of work. Why didn't they try to follow the rules for the Clinton investigation and Trump Russian investigation! They pick and choose what they want to follow according to rules.

[Jun 08, 2020] Antifa- Left Wing Fascism by Kevin Barrett

Notable quotes:
"... Kevin Barrett's political incorrectness recently got him un-invited from a radio program. Here he argues, "The two biggest factors behind the demise of First Amendment America are the rise of identity politics, and the 9/11-launched "war on terror." Identity politics has made political correctness into the monster it has become, but "the dirty little secret" the American public is finally realizing, in spite of mainstream media's deception, is that, "It is not white identity advocates who are instigating the violence at these rallies, but their antifa opponents." ..."
"... The two biggest factors behind the demise of First Amendment America are the rise of identity politics, and the 9/11-launched "war on terror." Identity politics brought political correctness and the fear of offending this or that "disadvantaged" group. 9/11 and the war on terror destroyed America's self-confidence, led to the shredding of constitutional liberties, and created a toxic atmosphere of fear and hysteria. ..."
"... Trump's "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) agenda was in many respects a reaction against America's post-9/11 decline. In reaction to the prevailing leftist identity politics, heterosexual, white, working-class males began asserting themselves, often identifying with Trump and MAGA. Trump's attacks on the U.S. decision to invade Iraq ("the worst decision ever made") and his incoherent but provocative insinuations questioning the official version of 9/11 resonated with a broad segment of the population that vaguely sensed something in America had gone badly wrong. ..."
"... The Chicago Tribune ..."
"... This is the dirty little secret that is slowly leaking out to the American public: It is not white identity advocates who are instigating the violence at these rallies, but their antifa opponents. This was clearly the case at Charlottesville, where the police shut down the pro-Robert E. Lee statue rally, forced ralliers to exit through an antifa mob that had come primed for violence, and then disappeared as the provocateur-driven riot broke out. (For a detailed analysis of the events in Charlottesville, read Political Theater in Charlottesville ..."
Jun 08, 2020 | americanfreepress.net

Kevin Barrett's political incorrectness recently got him un-invited from a radio program. Here he argues, "The two biggest factors behind the demise of First Amendment America are the rise of identity politics, and the 9/11-launched "war on terror." Identity politics has made political correctness into the monster it has become, but "the dirty little secret" the American public is finally realizing, in spite of mainstream media's deception, is that, "It is not white identity advocates who are instigating the violence at these rallies, but their antifa opponents."

On Thursday, March 8, I was informed that my scheduled appearance the next day on Portland's KBOO community radio had been cancelled by station management -- over the strong objections of the host, John Shuck. The reason? Portland's antifa chapter, led by a graduate student named Alexander Reid Ross, had led a defamation campaign calling me an "anti-Semite," "holocaust denier," and "conspiracy theorist" who shouldn't be allowed to speak.

Since when could mindless insults shout down free and fair debate based on logic and evidence? Since when did America become such a fearful place that non-mainstream ideas had to be silenced rather than refuted?

The two biggest factors behind the demise of First Amendment America are the rise of identity politics, and the 9/11-launched "war on terror." Identity politics brought political correctness and the fear of offending this or that "disadvantaged" group. 9/11 and the war on terror destroyed America's self-confidence, led to the shredding of constitutional liberties, and created a toxic atmosphere of fear and hysteria.

Trump's "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) agenda was in many respects a reaction against America's post-9/11 decline. In reaction to the prevailing leftist identity politics, heterosexual, white, working-class males began asserting themselves, often identifying with Trump and MAGA. Trump's attacks on the U.S. decision to invade Iraq ("the worst decision ever made") and his incoherent but provocative insinuations questioning the official version of 9/11 resonated with a broad segment of the population that vaguely sensed something in America had gone badly wrong.

Many leftists (as well as much of the centrist establishment) view the rise of the Trump-supporting alt-right as a national emergency. The most extreme among them have joined antifa.

Antifa shows little interest in critiquing or debating its opponents in order to explain why they are wrong. It is dedicated to shutting them down, silencing them, making sure they can't be heard -- using slanderous witch hunts, mindless name-calling, and even violence.

At universities all across America, antifa thugs are physically attacking speakers identified with the alt-right, and even brutalizing audiences who come out to hear them. The Chicago Tribune reported on March 14:

"At Michigan State University last week, anti-fascist protesters marched toward the venue where (Richard) Spencer planned to speak, intent on keeping his supporters out. Fights quickly broke out, and people were shoved to the ground, punched, and pelted with sticks and dirt. Some people wanting to attend Spencer's speech were forced back. More than 20 people were arrested, most of them people protesting Spencer."

This is the dirty little secret that is slowly leaking out to the American public: It is not white identity advocates who are instigating the violence at these rallies, but their antifa opponents. This was clearly the case at Charlottesville, where the police shut down the pro-Robert E. Lee statue rally, forced ralliers to exit through an antifa mob that had come primed for violence, and then disappeared as the provocateur-driven riot broke out. (For a detailed analysis of the events in Charlottesville, read Political Theater in Charlottesville , edited by Jim Fetzer and Mike Palecek, available from Moon Rock Books.)

How can self-styled anti-fascists be rioting in the street and attacking people to shut down free speech? Isn't their behavior . . . well, fascist ? After all, fascism is based on using mob violence to shut down opposition and install a tyranny of one party and one opinion that tolerates no dissent.

Antifa's violent, authoritarian attack on free speech exemplifies the core essence of fascism. Other characteristics of historical fascism include: extreme glorification of the race or nation, scapegoating of internal and external enemies, militarism, and socialism, including an attempt to replace private bank-issued usury currency with national currency. On all but the last of these counts, Zionism represents by far the biggest and most dangerous fascist movement on Earth. Antifa, a subsidiary of Zionism, carries the Zionists' fascist thuggery into the streets.

As an American loyal to our Constitution, and to our history as a tolerant "melting pot" of different cultures, religions, and worldviews, I am strongly opposed to most aspects of fascism. I loathe intolerance, authoritarianism, censorship, racism, extreme nationalism, militarism, and scapegoating. But I do think some fascists, such as America's greatest 20 th -century poet. Ezra Pound, were right in their critique of usury and their support for overthrowing the dictatorship of the international bankers. And I think much of the so-called alt-right consists of patriotic Americans -- not fascists -- who are gradually waking up to oppose the global Zionist dictatorship in the making sometimes known as the New World Order.

Oppose fascism; support free speech! I have challenged Alexander Reid Ross to debate me on the nature and history of fascism. Please urge him to accept my challenge. Email: [email protected] or Tweet https://twitter.com/areidross.

Kevin Barrett, Ph.D., is an Arabist-Islamologist scholar and one of America's best-known critics of the War on Terror. From 1991 through 2006, Dr. Barrett taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin. In 2006, however, he was attacked by Republican state legislators who called for him to be fired from his job at the University of Wisconsin-Madison due to his political opinions. Since 2007, Dr. Barrett has been informally blacklisted from teaching in American colleges and universities. He currently works as a nonprofit organizer, public speaker, author, and talk radio host. He lives in rural western Wisconsin.

[Jun 06, 2020] Trump is to right 'to label Antifa as a terrorist organisation'

Jun 06, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Anarchist group Antifa is engaging in "text book terrorism" and deserve to be labelled as such, according to Sky News contributor Daisy Cousens.



CommanderRich
, 3 days ago

lol everyone scared of corona till its time to protest huh?

Information Warfare , 1 day ago (edited)

Typically, when a black man gets killed he's presented as some kind of angelic hero. I wonder if people knew George Floyd's criminal history, including breaking into a pregnant woman's home and threatening her unborn child by pointing a gun at her belly, whether they'd be so willing to abandon their recent hysteria over catching Covid-19 in favour of a virtue-signalling march. https://youtu.be/JtPfoEvNJ74

G ISALL , 2 days ago

The media is 100% responsible for this entire event.


David Galloway
, 2 days ago

Charge and convict George Soros and his foundations for his crimes against humanity.


The Gatekeeper
, 3 days ago

Designate, then decimate Antifa. "The Fascists of the future will call themselves Anti Fascist." Winston Churchill. "Judge a man not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character." Martin Luthor King Jr. We can see by their actions that Antifa are Fascists and have no character other than that of psychopathic morons.

Makai Mauka , 2 days ago

Looks like it took three Antifa cowards to beat up an unarmed woman...


Hectorfarm
, 5 days ago (edited)

Thanks for telling the truth. I live in Minnesota. The local media is covering for these criminals and terrorists.

graham orr , 5 days ago

AntiFA getting bussed in to burn the city down. Left's narrative : it's white supremacists. Sociopaths use 180 degree lies to deflect blame And the MSM are complicit.


Thatsright Jack
, 2 days ago

Why are we not using "contact tracing" to locate and eradicate Antifa?

[Jun 06, 2020] Antifa and its KKK tactics beating people up, trashing the homes of academics, shutting down discussion on campus speak for themselves. Goons hardly better than their sworn opponents.

Jun 06, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

gwilliard , Jun 6 2020 5:12 utc | 99

@25 & @27 & @51 & @69

I think NemesisCalling nails it here best of all, with keen nuances. I can't hear the sax without thinking of Bill Clinton, Mr. Mass Incarceration himself, playing on Saturday Night Live, and seducing black America and its turncoat elite, including Obama, for the next two decades of neoliberal ruin. The malcontribution to American black society of its entertainment and sports aristocracy could be fat treatise. So nice to see James Baldwin getting at the heart of things in his 1965 lecture.

Sorry, Antifa and its KKK tactics – beating people up, trashing the homes of academics, shutting down discussion on campus – speak for themselves. Goons hardly better than their sworn opponents.

Some items worth reading:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/antiracism-our-flawed-new-religion
https://unherd.com/2020/01/the-rise-of-identitarian-liberalism/
https://johnhalle.com/adolph-reed-on-sanders-coates-and-reparations/
https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/judith-butler-force-of-nonviolence-interview/ > see comment taking her down

@69 - The Verso ebooks on policing are free if you register an account. You have to pick ebook only, not paired with paperback.

anonymous , Jun 6 2020 5:15 utc | 104

@norecovery | Jun 5 2020 23:48 utc | 64

Anyone familiar with the Church Committee hearings knows that government agencies use agent provocateurs to corrupt movements from within. Knowing that doesn't prove any of the claims made herein. Without evidence it's all speculation. Speculation can be fun but when it gets taken seriously we have idiots shaping the narrative.

[Jun 06, 2020] The Worse the Better Why Antifa Wants Trump to Win by James Pinkerton

Jun 04, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

many thoughtful observers on the right -- including Ross Douthat , Rod Dreher , and Dan McCarthy -- have pointed out that the current protesting and rioting is likely to help Donald Trump and the Republicans. That is, the ongoing violence, fomented by leftist elements, including Black Lives Matter and Antifa, could boomerang against Joe Biden and his Democrats.

However, the planted assumption here is that the vandals and looters want Joe Biden to win. And that's not so obvious. Indeed, maybe the truth is just the reverse.

To be sure, the protesters and looters all hate Donald Trump. And yet actions speak louder than words, and their actions on the street suggest a kind of anti-matter affection for the Bad Orange Man. That is, each act of violence obscures the memory of George Floyd, who died at the knee of a Minneapolis policeman, and raises the prospect of a national backlash against both peaceful protestors and violent looters, offering a ray of hope for Trump.

Indeed, Douthat quotes Princeton political scientist Omar Wasow, whose research shows that back in the 1960s, peaceful civil rights protests helped the Democrats, while violent protests (also known as riots) hurt the Democrats. In Wasow's words, "proximity to black-led nonviolent protests increased white Democratic vote-share whereas proximity to black-led violent protests caused substantively important declines." And that's how Republican Richard Nixon defeated Democrat Hubert Humphrey in 1968.

We might add that Humphrey was a lot like Biden. Both were gabby senators turned vice presidents, regarded as reliable liberals, not as hard-edged leftists.

So now we're starting to see where Biden, a pillar of the smug liberal establishment -- he once told a group of donors that if he's elected, "nothing would fundamentally change" -- veers away from the far-left ideologues amidst the mobs.

Let's let Andy Ngo –who has shed blood , literally, while chronicling bullyboy leftists -- define the ideology of Antifa and Black Lives Matter: "At its core, BLM is a revolutionary Marxist ideology. Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors, BLM's founders, are self-identified Marxists who make no secret of their worship of communist terrorists and fugitives, like Assata Shakur. They want the abolition of law enforcement and capitalism. They want regime change and the end of the rule of law. Antifa has partnered with Black Lives Matter, for now, to help accelerate the breakdown of society."

We can observe that by "regime change," these revolutionary leftists don't mean replacing Trump with Biden -- they mean replacing capitalism and the Constitution. In the meantime, if one looks at a Twitter feed identified by Ngo as an Antifa hub, It's Going Down , one sees plenty of anti-Trump rhetoric, along with general hard leftism, but nothing in support of Biden.

However, here's something interesting: The Biden campaign shows no small degree of support for the street radicals. As Reuters reported on May 30,

"At least 13 Biden campaign staff members posted on Twitter on Friday and Saturday that they made donations to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which opposes the practice of cash bail, or making people pay to avoid pre-trial imprisonment. The group uses donations to pay bail fees in Minneapolis."

We might observe that these 13 employees posted their pro-rioter sympathies on Twitter; in other words, not only did they make no effort to hide their donations, but they also actively bragged about them.

It could be argued, of course, that these are just 13 vanguard employees out of a campaign staff that numbers in the hundreds, maybe even thousands. And yet as the Reuters piece adds, Team Biden is not practicing political distancing from its in-house radicals: "Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement to Reuters that the former vice president opposes the institution of cash bail as a 'modern day debtors prison.'"

When pressed by Reuters -- which is not exactly Fox News in its editorial stance -- the official spox for Middle Class Joe was unwilling to say more: "The campaign declined to answer questions on whether the donations were coordinated within the campaign, underscoring the politically thorny nature of the sometimes violent protests."

So we can see: The Biden campaign is trying to maintain its equipoise between liberals and mobs, even as the former is bleeding into the latter. Indeed, a look at Biden's Twitter feed shows the same port-side balancing act. On May 30, for instance, he tweeted , "If we are complacent, if we are silent, we are complicit in perpetuating these cycles of violence. None of us can turn away. We all have an obligation to speak out."

There's enough ambiguity here, as well as in his other tweets, to leave everyone parsing, and guessing, as to what, exactly, Biden is saying -- except, as he said on June 2, that he opposes the use of chokeholds to restrain violent suspects, and also opposes more equipment for the police. The only other thing we know for sure is that he hasn't tweeted an iota of specific sympathy for the people other than George Floyd who have died in the recent violence. One such is Patrick Underwood , an African American employee of the Federal Protective Service; he was shot and killed in Oakland, Calif. on May 29.

Yet while the Biden campaign attempts to keep its relationship with Antifa and its ilk fuzzy, other Democrats have made themselves clear. For instance, in 2018, then-Congressman Keith Ellison tweeted out a photograph of himself holding a copy of a book, Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, which the radical-chic types at The New Yorker described as "A how-to for would-be activists, and a record of advice from anti-Fascist organizers past and present." Ellison is now the attorney general for the state of Minnesota.

And on May 31, Ellison's son, Jeremiah, a Minneapolis city councilman, tweeted , "I hereby declare, officially, my support for ANTIFA."

Still, if the Democrats can't quite quit Antifa, most are smart enough to recognize the danger of being too closely associated with hooligans and radicals. Moreover, they need some theory of the case they wish to make, which is that they loudly support the protests, even as they mumble about the violence.

And Democrats have found their favored argument -- the one that conveniently takes them off the hook. Indeed, it's an argument they increasingly deploy to explain everything bad that happens: The Russians did it.

Thus on May 31, former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice said on CNN of the tumult, "In my experience, this is right out of the Russian playbook."

We might allow that it's possible, even probable, that the Russian government has been taking delight in this spate of violence in America. And it's similarly probable that the governments of China, Iran, and Venezuela, too, have been pleased, to say nothing of varying portions of the public in every country. And so sure, more than a few tweets and Facebook posts have probably resulted -- after all, stories ripping the U.S. were right there, for instance, on the front page of China's Global Times .

Still, it's ridiculous to think that hundreds of thousands -- maybe millions -- of Americans are taking their cues from a foreign power; we've got plenty of home-grown radicalism and anger.

Yet even so, the Democrats have persisted in their Russia-dunnit narrative, because it serves their political, and perhaps psychological, need -- the need to externalize criminal behavior. In other words, don't blame us for the killings and lootings -- blame Moscow.

Okay, so back to Antifa and Black Lives Matter. The left wing of the Democratic Party -- including elements within the Biden campaign -- might like them, but there's no evidence that they like Democrats back.

Indeed, if the violence keeps up, it will become obvious that the leftist radicals are not trying to help Biden. To put it another way, the rads would become the objective allies (a political science term connoting an ironic congruence of interest) of Trump.

To be sure, right now, Trump is running five or six points behind Biden in the RealClearPolitics polling average . And yet, just as Dreher, Douthat, and McCarthy suggest, if the violence continues and Trump goes firm while Biden stays mushy, that could change.

Indeed, as we think of genuine radicalism, we would do well to look beyond the parochial confines of American politics, Democrat vs. Republican. Instead, we might ponder the epic panorama of leftist history, which offers radicals so much more inspiration than historically centrist America.

For instance, we might look to Russia. But not to the Russia of Vladimir Putin , but rather, to the Russia of Vladimir Lenin .

In the early 20th century, Lenin's Bolsheviks, awaiting their revolutionary moment, operated according to a simple slogan: "The worse the better." That is, the enemy of Bolshevism was incremental reform, or progress of any kind; the reds wanted conditions to get so bad as to "justify" a communist revolution. And that's what Lenin and his comrades got in October 1917, when they seized power in the midst of the calamities of World War One.

Yes, of course, the communists made conditions worse, not better, for ordinary Russians. And yet things weren't worse for Lenin and his Bolsheviks -- they were now in power. So today, that's the sort of dream that inspires Antifa radicals.

To be sure, an America dominated by Antifa and Black Lives Matter is a distant prospect. But radicals figure that four more years of Trump in the White House will move the nation to even higher levels of chaos -- and thus move them closer to power.

With all that in prospect for radicals -- that is, the worse, the better -- the prospect of Joe Biden losing this year is a small price to pay. Actually, for them, it's no price at all.

In the meantime, for America, there is no better. Only worse.

[Jun 06, 2020] National Justice Exclusive Brooklyn Based Antifa Network Helping Organize Violence Across The Country by Eric Striker

Antifa can't function without covert support of FBI. That's given.
Notable quotes:
"... According to reporting in a Brooklyn publication from 2013, the "anarchist collective" is run by Elysa Lozano, an assistant professor at LaGuardia Community College who wears her violent extremist views on her sleeve, and Khalid Robinson, a man who according to an interview on an anarchist podcast is the organizer of the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement in New York City. ..."
"... Robinson, pictured above with Lozano, can be seen wearing an "antifa" t-shirt sold as part of a fundraiser for the "Tinley Park 5," a group of anarchists who were arrested for brutally injuring 10 people in a premeditated hammer attack in the Illinois suburb of Tinley Park in 2012. ..."
"... It is unknown how much criminal activity is planned at this venue, but it is a bug light for left-wing extremists from across the country and abroad. The group uses images of explosions as its logo , and has close ties to the Kurdish terrorist militia in Syria, the YPG, which has provided many American anarchists with military training undoubtedly being used in the riots as we speak. ..."
"... National Justice ..."
"... National Justice ..."
"... National Justice ..."
"... It's obvious from surveillance video that Floyd was dealing drugs out of his parked car on the corner that fateful morning. The cops apprehending him appear nonchalant, quietly going about their business with a routine arrest. Only when Floyd begins physically resisting do things begin to go south. ..."
"... How is Floyd's life worth all this havoc? The guy was a criminal deviant who brought his demise upon himself. He was not a sterling example of a freedom fighter or a high-minded social reformer. He playacted not being able to walk, collapsing on the sidewalk as he was being escorted to the cop car. Went all jelly-legged. Winced when a cop merely steered him by one of his burly arms which, while handcuffed behind his back were obviously not overly constrained. Play acting. Oh, the poor 230 lb. black boy, built like Hercules himself, acting all hurt when an Asian male puts a little directing pressure on his arm. ..."
Jun 03, 2020 | www.unz.com

As American cities burn and people are murdered in the street with impunity by groups protesting the death of George Floyd, very little reporting has been done on who exactly is responsible beyond tweets from Donald Trump about the mobs being led by "Antifa" (Anti-Fascist) -- an umbrella term anarchist organizations use as propaganda when trying to win liberal support for paramilitary attacks they conduct on nationalist protesters and Trump supporters.

The mainstream media has played its role in intentionally obfuscating who exactly the groups inciting the rioting and killing are by claiming "antifa" is not a group, which is a malicious half-truth. Law enforcement sources, Andy Ngo , and Fox News have identified two organizations as playing an active role in the carnage: The Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement and The Base .

These two groups are interlinked, and currently encouraging and organizing the violence in the New York City area.

Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement and The Base

The Base, whose Facebook page is now explicitly telling people to commit acts of violence, is an above ground "organizational space" located at 1286 Myrtle Ave in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

According to reporting in a Brooklyn publication from 2013, the "anarchist collective" is run by Elysa Lozano, an assistant professor at LaGuardia Community College who wears her violent extremist views on her sleeve, and Khalid Robinson, a man who according to an interview on an anarchist podcast is the organizer of the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement in New York City.

Robinson, pictured above with Lozano, can be seen wearing an "antifa" t-shirt sold as part of a fundraiser for the "Tinley Park 5," a group of anarchists who were arrested for brutally injuring 10 people in a premeditated hammer attack in the Illinois suburb of Tinley Park in 2012.

According to Robinson's interview on the "Solecast," he helped start The Base as "a place for anarchists to meet."

It is unknown how much criminal activity is planned at this venue, but it is a bug light for left-wing extremists from across the country and abroad. The group uses images of explosions as its logo , and has close ties to the Kurdish terrorist militia in Syria, the YPG, which has provided many American anarchists with military training undoubtedly being used in the riots as we speak.

The front is also an operating space for groups like the NYC Anarchist Black Cross, which is composed of "antifa" members and used as an above ground way to raise money and write prisoners letters.

A photograph obtained by open source intelligence shows masked "antifa" members the media claims don't exist posing in front of The Base.

As for Khalid Robinson's Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement, they do not hide what they are about. As Fox News' Lara Logan has reported , they believe in engaging in racial violence against white people and random police officers in the name of overthrowing "white supremacy."

The group has two flags, one featuring a red AK-47 on a black banner, and another showing a red star with the acronym "RAM."

An image of masked RAM members posing with shotguns, AK-47s, machetes and an "antifa" flag was obtained by National Justice .

This group has been operating for years, spreading violent propaganda with the help of social media companies, all while the FBI devotes all of its resources to chasing around imaginary "white supremacist terrorists."

The extent of their terrorist activities is unknown, but they have been very active in the George Floyd riots -- calling it a "black liberation revolt" -- and have chapters across the country.

Related "Antifa" Extremists In Brooklyn

Christian Erazo is another important figure in organizing anarchist violence in New York City.

Erazo, pictured above on the far right in the red and green bandana filming a video announcing plans to disrupt public transportation, was profiled for his activities by National Justice last January for his part in planning the J31 subway riots . In spite of this reporting, the NYPD and the FBI took no action either against the people who planned this chaos, or the Synagogue who allowed them to host their planning sessions.

Erazo, the lead singer of punk band (A) Truth pictured above clutching the "antifa" flag, helps lead multiple violent anarchist projects, such as Brigada 71 (a left-wing soccer hooligan group associated with the New York Cosmos) and NYC Antifa . Brigada 71 spends a lot of time at the East River Bar, a popular hangout for left-wing soccer hooligans, on 97 South 6th Street in Brooklyn,

Both groups are also currently encouraging the violence on social media and are close to the owners of The Base, who let them use the venue for their activities. Meet up spots like The Base play an important role in providing fresh recruits due to its storefront visibility, which invites curious and bored hipsters and radicalizes them in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood.

For years, Erazo used a warehouse on 258 Johnson Ave in East Williamsburg nicknamed "The Swamp" to host punk rock shows that would serve to recruit new anarchists. While Erazo and his friends did their best to keep the spot a secret, a Brooklyn hipster publication listed "The Swamp" as a cool place to see music as recently as 2015. Erazo is specifically named as its "founder."

According to a source familiar with the anarchist community, when music wasn't playing, the building had a gym and was used to conduct paramilitary training. While there doesn't seem to be any more concerts happening at The Swamp, it is unknown if these anarchist groups are still utilizing the space for other activities.

The Real Reason Its Difficult to Prosecute "Antifa"

Many Americans have complained that neither the police nor the FBI appear interested in investigating or prosecuting anarchist paramilitary groups, even when they are leading the worst and most deadly riots in modern history.

This isn't because it is hard to find out who these people are. It is due to state corruption and privilege. A large number of anarchists are the sons and daughters of politicians, bankers, judges, and other connected elite figures, thus immunizing from the consequences of their crimes.

Recently, New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio's own daughter was arrested among the rioters in the city he governs. Vice presidential contender and Virginia Senator Tim Kaine's son is another example. An "antifa" organizer was exposed by National Justice as the grandson of a judge and nephew of a Congressman who is also now a judge.

Ken Klippenstein, a digital blogger who is a fan of the anarchist groups dubbed "antifa," was leaked documents by FBI agents about with details about an ongoing investigation into the activities of these violent extremists.

With virtually every institution in America expressing support for these terrorist groups, along with their connections to powerful officials, Donald Trump's bluster about labeling them a terrorist group appears to be nothing but a gust of hot air.


ThreeCranes , says: Show Comment June 3, 2020 at 1:18 pm GMT

It's obvious from surveillance video that Floyd was dealing drugs out of his parked car on the corner that fateful morning. The cops apprehending him appear nonchalant, quietly going about their business with a routine arrest. Only when Floyd begins physically resisting do things begin to go south.

So this is the hill that liberals choose to take a stand and die on. Defending a low-life, street drug dealer, who has three cocaine priors on his rap sheet. And when legitimate, unrelated businesses burn, they say, "Good. That's justice for Floyd."

And they can't see how insane this is? How is Floyd's life worth all this havoc? The guy was a criminal deviant who brought his demise upon himself. He was not a sterling example of a freedom fighter or a high-minded social reformer. He playacted not being able to walk, collapsing on the sidewalk as he was being escorted to the cop car. Went all jelly-legged. Winced when a cop merely steered him by one of his burly arms which, while handcuffed behind his back were obviously not overly constrained. Play acting. Oh, the poor 230 lb. black boy, built like Hercules himself, acting all hurt when an Asian male puts a little directing pressure on his arm.

What a despicable farce. There's no hope for a nation in which different sides play by different Rules. The Left obeys no Laws. Acknowledges no limits to their behavior. Acts according to what will best advance their cause. Has no compunction about lying, about destroying their enemies by any means, fair or foul, possible.

If factions within a Nation will not and do not agree on basic Rules of the Contest, then no governance is possible. That Nation will, indeed, degenerate into anarchy. This just is . For some reason, someone wants America to fracture into smaller units.

JimDandy , says: Show Comment June 4, 2020 at 7:17 pm GMT
@ThreeCranes I mean, he did five years in Prison for bursting into a woman's house with 5 other thugs and jamming a gun into her gut during an attempted robbery. (I heard she was pregnant, but I'm not sure.) She was battered, though. This is their great Saint.
Alden , says: Show Comment June 5, 2020 at 4:25 am GMT
@JimDandy She was pregnant black and had a miscarriage because of the beating that huge man gave her.
jbwilson24 , says: Show Comment June 3, 2020 at 1:51 pm GMT
" the NYPD and the FBI took no action either against the people who planned this chaos, or the Synagogue who allowed them to host their planning sessions."

Well, surprise surprise. Violent left wing groups hold planning sessions in Synagogues.

The 'Russian' revolution and others in Eastern Europe followed the same pattern.

It's all political theatre. Antifa, supported by Jewish money, rails against 'white privilege', never daring to point out that most of the powerbrokers and influencers (eg, bankers, Hollywood studio owners, blackface performers, publishing house owners) are Jews.

Beavertales , says: Show Comment June 3, 2020 at 2:25 pm GMT
Leftist revolutionary radicals enjoy the support and protection of the establishment which appoints them 'the good guys'.

If you are a conservative, you have no overt support from professors, journalists, politicians, or trend-setting celebrities. You're labeled 'the bad guys'.

If given an informed choice, the Silent Majority of Americans would side with young conservatives over young anarchists. The problem is that the other side is ahead in a culture war, and the right is only just getting on its feet to fight it.

fnn , says: Show Comment June 3, 2020 at 5:47 pm GMT
@anonymous It just takes a few seconds to search "kurds +antifa" and find more than a few stories.

[Jun 05, 2020] Neoliberal Fascism and the Echoes of History

Both national socialism and neoliberalism are flavors of corporatism, so they have a common parent...
Jun 05, 2020 | www.truthdig.com

... ... ...

Fascism by Trial in the Age of Trump

In a thoughtful analysis, the Irish journalist O'Toole asserts neoliberalism creates the conditions for enabling what he calls a trial run for a full-blown state of contemporary fascism:

To grasp what is going on in the world right now, we need to reflect on two things. One is that we are in a phase of trial runs. The other is that what is being trialed is fascism -- a word that should be used carefully but not shirked when it is so clearly on the horizon. Forget 'post-fascist' -- what we are living with is pre-fascism. Rather than overthrow democracy in one full swipe, it has to be undermined through rigged elections, the creation of tribal identities, and legitimated through a 'propaganda machine so effective that it creates for its followers a universe of "alternative facts" impervious to unwanted realities.' . Fascism doesn't arise suddenly in an existing democracy. It is not easy to get people to give up their ideas of freedom and civility. You have to do trial runs that, if they are done well, serve two purposes. They get people used to something they may initially recoil from, and they allow you to refine and calibrate. This is what is happening now and we would be fools not to see it. 40

Ultra-nationalist and contemporary versions of fascism are gaining traction across the globe in countries such as Greece (Golden Dawn), Hungary (Jobbik), India (Bharatiya Janata Party), and Italy (the League) and countless others. ...

... ... ...

Trump has elevated himself as the patron saint of a ruthless neoliberalism. This is evident in the various miracles he has performed for the rich and powerful. He has systemically deregulated regulations that extend from environmental protections to worker safety rules. He has enacted a $1.5-trillion tax policy that amounts to a huge gift to the financial elite and all the while maintaining his "man of the people" posture. He has appointed a range of neoliberal fundamentalists to head major government posts designed to serve the public. Most, like Scott Pruitt, the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, and Betsy DeVos, the secretary of Education, have proved to be either corrupt, incompetent, or often both. Along with the Republican Congress, Trump has vastly increased the military budget to $717 billion, creating huge financial profits for the military-industrial-defense complex while instituting policies that eviscerate the welfare state and further expand a war machine that generates mass suffering and death.

Trump has reduced food assistance for those who are forced to choose between eating and taking medicine, and his policies have prevented millions from getting adequate health care. 43 Last but not least, he has become a cheerleader for the gun and security industries going so far as to call for the arming of teachers as a way to redress mass shootings in the nation's schools. All of these policies serve to unleash the anti-liberal and anti-democratic passions, fears, anxieties and anger necessary to mainstream fascism.

... ... ...

The United States is in a dangerous moment in its history, which makes it all the more crucial to understand how a distinctive form of neoliberal fascism now bears down on the present and threatens to usher in a period of unprecedented barbarism in the not too distant future. In an attempt to address this new political conjuncture, I want to suggest that rather than view fascism simply as a repetition of the past, it is crucial to forge a new vocabulary and politics to grasp how neoliberal fascism has become a uniquely American model for the present. One way to address this challenge is to rethink what lessons can be learned by interrogating how matters of language and memory can be used to illuminate the dark forces connecting the past and present as part of the new hybridized political nightmare.

The Language of Fascism

Fascism begins not with violence, police assaults or mass killings, but with language. Trump reminded us of this in 2015 while announcing his candidacy for president. He stated, without irony or shame, that "when Mexico sends its people, they're not sending the best. They're sending people that have lots of problems and they're bringing those problems. They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime...

... ... ...

Neoliberal fascism converges with an earlier form of fascism in its commitment to a language of erasure and a politics of disposability. In the fascist script, historical memory becomes a liability, even dangerous, when it functions pedagogically to inform our political and social imagination...

Unsurprisingly, historical memory as a form of enlightenment and demystification is surely at odds with Trump's abuse of history as a form of social amnesia and political camouflage,,,

... ... ...

At the same time, the corruption of language is often followed by the corruption of memory, morality and the eventual disappearance of books, ideas and human beings. Prominent German historians such as Richard J. Evans and Victor Klemperer have made clear that for fascist dictators, the dynamics of state censorship and repression had an endpoint in a politics of disappearance, extermination and the death camps.

...neoliberal fascism has restructured civic life that valorizes ignorance, avarice and willful forgetting. In the current Trumpian moment, shouting replaces the pedagogical imperative to listen and reinforces the stories neoliberal fascism tells us about ourselves, our relations to others and the larger world. Under such circumstances, monstrous deeds are committed under the increasing normalization of civic and historical modes of illiteracy. One consequence is that comparisons to the Nazi past can whither in the false belief that historical events are fixed in time and place and can only be repeated in history books. In an age marked by a war on terror, a culture of fear and the normalization of uncertainty, social amnesia has become a power tool for dismantling democracy. Indeed, in this age of forgetfulness, American society appears to revel in what it should be ashamed of and alarmed over.

... ... ...

Trump's selective appropriation of history wages war on the past, choosing to celebrate rather than question fascist horrors. The past in this case is a script that must be followed rather than interrogated. Trump's view of history is at once "ugly and revealing."....

The production of new narratives accompanied by critical inquiries into the past would help explain why people participated in the horrors of fascism and what it might take to prevent such complicity from unfolding again. Comparing Trump's ideology, policies and language to a fascist past offers the possibility to learn what is old and new in the dark times that have descended upon the United States. The pressing relevance of the 1930s is crucial to address how fascist ideas and practices originate and adapt to new conditions, and how people capitulate and resist them as well.

...Neoliberal fascism insists that everything, including human beings, are to be made over in the image of the market. Everyone is now subject to a paralyzing language of individual responsibility and a disciplinary apparatus that revises downward the American dream of social mobility. Time is now a burden for most people and the lesson to draw from this punishing neoliberal ideology is that everyone is alone in navigating their own fate.

At work here is a neoliberal project to reduce people to human capital and redefine human agency beyond the bonds of sociality, equality, belonging and obligation. All problems and their solutions are now defined exclusively within the purview of the individual. This is a depoliticizing discourse that champions mythic notions of self-reliance and individual character to promote the tearing up of social solidarities and the public spheres that support them.

All aspects of the social and public are now considered suspect, including social space, social provisions, social protections and social dependency, especially for those who are poor and vulnerable. According to the philosopher Byung-Chul Han, the subjects in a "neoliberal economy do not constitute a we that is capable of collective action. The mounting egoization and atomization of society is shrinking the space for collective action. As such, it blocks the formation of a counter power that might be able to put the capitalist order in question." 65

At the core of neoliberal fascism is a view of subjectivity that celebrates a narcissistic hyper-individualism that radiates with a near sociopathic lack of interest in others with whom it shares a globe on the brink of catastrophe. This project is wedded to a politics that produces a high threshold of disappearance and serves to disconnect the material moorings and wreckage of neoliberal fascism from its underlying power relations.

Neoliberal fascism thrives on producing subjects that internalize its values, corroding their ability to imagine an alternative world. Under such conditions, not only is agency depoliticized, but the political is emptied of any real substance and unable to challenge neoliberalism's belief in extreme inequality and social abandonment. This fosters fascism's deep-rooted investment ultra-nationalism, racial purity and the politics of terminal exclusion.

We live at a time in which the social is individualized and at odds with a notion of solidarity once described by Frankfurt School theorist Herbert Marcuse as "the refusal to let one's happiness coexist with the suffering of others." 66 Marcuse invokes a forgotten notion of the social in which one is willing not only to make sacrifices for others but also "to engage in joint struggle against the cause of suffering or against a common adversary." 67

One step toward fighting and overcoming the criminogenic machinery of terminal exclusion and social death endemic to neoliberal fascism is to make education central to a politics that changes the way people think, desire, hope and act. How might language and history adopt modes of persuasion that anchor democratic life in a commitment to economic equality, social justice and a broad shared vision? The challenge we face under a fascism buoyed by a savage neoliberalism is to ask and act on what language, memory and education as the practice of freedom might mean in a democracy. What work can they perform, how can hope be nourished by collective action and the ongoing struggle to create a broad-based democratic socialist movement? What work has to be done to "imagine a politics in which empowerment can grow and public freedom thrive without violence?" 68 What institutions have to be defended and fought for if the spirit of a radical democracy is to return to view and survive?

[Jun 05, 2020] A large number of anarchists are the sons and daughters of politicians, bankers, judges, and other connected elite figures

Jun 05, 2020 | www.unz.com

SunBakedSuburb , says: Show Comment June 5, 2020 at 4:02 pm GMT

"A large number of anarchists are the sons and daughters of politicians, bankers, judges, and other connected elite figures"

Says a lot about the managerial class that serves the wicked elites.

[Jun 05, 2020] Antifa in Theory and in Practice

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... In recent weeks, a totally disoriented left has been widely exhorted to unify around a masked vanguard calling itself Antifa, for anti-fascist. Hooded and dressed in black, Antifa is essentially a variation of the Black Bloc, familiar for introducing violence into peaceful demonstrations in many countries. Imported from Europe, the label Antifa sounds more political. It also serves the purpose of stigmatizing those it attacks as "fascists". ..."
"... Bray's "enlightening contribution" is to a tell a flattering version of the Antifa story to a generation whose dualistic, Holocaust-centered view of history has largely deprived them of both the factual and the analytical tools to judge multidimensional events such as the growth of fascism. Bray presents today's Antifa as though it were the glorious legitimate heir to every noble cause since abolitionism. But there were no anti-fascists before fascism, and the label "Antifa" by no means applies to all the many adversaries of fascism. ..."
"... The implicit claim to carry on the tradition of the International Brigades who fought in Spain against Franco is nothing other than a form of innocence by association. Since we must revere the heroes of the Spanish Civil War, some of that esteem is supposed to rub off on their self-designated heirs. Unfortunately, there are no veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade still alive to point to the difference between a vast organized defense against invading fascist armies and skirmishes on the Berkeley campus. As for the Anarchists of Catalonia, the patent on anarchism ran out a long time ago, and anyone is free to market his own generic. ..."
"... Since historic fascism no longer exists, Bray's Antifa have broadened their notion of "fascism" to include anything that violates the current Identity Politics canon: from "patriarchy" (a pre-fascist attitude to put it mildly) to "transphobia" (decidedly a post-fascist problem). ..."
"... The masked militants of Antifa seem to be more inspired by Batman than by Marx or even by Bakunin. ..."
"... The main technique is guilt by association. High on the list of mortal sins is criticism of the European Union, which is associated with "nationalism" which is associated with "fascism" which is associated with "anti-Semitism", hinting at a penchant for genocide. This coincides perfectly with the official policy of the EU and EU governments, but Antifa uses much harsher language. ..."
"... The moral of this story is simple. Self-appointed radical revolutionaries can be the most useful thought police for the neoliberal war party. ..."
"... In reality, immigration is a complex subject, with many aspects that can lead to reasonable compromise. But to polarize the issue misses the chances for compromise. By making mass immigration the litmus test of whether or not one is fascist, Antifa intimidation impedes reasonable discussion. Without discussion, without readiness to listen to all viewpoints, the issue will simply divide the population into two camps, for and against. And who will win such a confrontation? ..."
"... The idea that the way to shut someone up is to punch him in the jaw is as American as Hollywood movies. It is also typical of the gang war that prevails in certain parts of Los Angeles. Banding together with others "like us" to fight against gangs of "them" for control of turf is characteristic of young men in uncertain circumstances. The search for a cause can involve endowing such conduct with a political purpose: either fascist or antifascist. For disoriented youth, this is an alternative to joining the U.S. Marines. ..."
"... American Antifa looks very much like a middle class wedding between Identity Politics and gang warfare. Mark Bray (page 175) quotes his DC Antifa source as implying that the motive of would-be fascists is to side with "the most powerful kid in the block" and will retreat if scared. Our gang is tougher than your gang. ..."
"... In the United States, the worst thing about Antifa is the effort to lead the disoriented American left into a wild goose chase, tracking down imaginary "fascists" instead of getting together openly to work out a coherent positive program. The United States has more than its share of weird individuals, of gratuitous aggression, of crazy ideas, and tracking down these marginal characters, whether alone or in groups, is a huge distraction. The truly dangerous people in the United States are safely ensconced in Wall Street, in Washington Think Tanks, in the executive suites of the sprawling military industry, not to mention the editorial offices of some of the mainstream media currently adopting a benevolent attitude toward "anti-fascists" simply because they are useful in focusing on the maverick Trump instead of themselves. ..."
"... Antifa USA, by defining "resistance to fascism" as resistance to lost causes – the Confederacy, white supremacists and for that matter Donald Trump – is actually distracting from resistance to the ruling neoliberal establishment, which is also opposed to the Confederacy and white supremacists and has already largely managed to capture Trump by its implacable campaign of denigration. That ruling establishment, which in its insatiable foreign wars and introduction of police state methods, has successfully used popular "resistance to Trump" to make him even worse than he already was. ..."
Oct 11, 2017 | www.counterpunch.org

Photo by jcrakow | CC BY 2.0

" Fascists are divided into two categories: the fascists and the anti-fascists ."

– Ennio Flaiano, Italian writer and co-author of Federico Fellini's greatest film scripts.

In recent weeks, a totally disoriented left has been widely exhorted to unify around a masked vanguard calling itself Antifa, for anti-fascist. Hooded and dressed in black, Antifa is essentially a variation of the Black Bloc, familiar for introducing violence into peaceful demonstrations in many countries. Imported from Europe, the label Antifa sounds more political. It also serves the purpose of stigmatizing those it attacks as "fascists".

Despite its imported European name, Antifa is basically just another example of America's steady descent into violence.

Historical Pretensions

Antifa first came to prominence from its role in reversing Berkeley's proud "free speech" tradition by preventing right wing personalities from speaking there. But its moment of glory was its clash with rightwingers in Charlottesville on August 12, largely because Trump commented that there were "good people on both sides". With exuberant Schadenfreude, commentators grabbed the opportunity to condemn the despised President for his "moral equivalence", thereby bestowing a moral blessing on Antifa.

Charlottesville served as a successful book launching for Antifa: the Antifascist Handbook , whose author, young academic Mark Bray, is an Antifa in both theory and practice. The book is "really taking off very fast", rejoiced the publisher, Melville House. It instantly won acclaim from leading mainstream media such as the New York Times , The Guardian and NBC, not hitherto known for rushing to review leftwing books, least of all those by revolutionary anarchists.

The Washington Post welcomed Bray as spokesman for "insurgent activist movements" and observed that: "The book's most enlightening contribution is on the history of anti-fascist efforts over the past century, but its most relevant for today is its justification for stifling speech and clobbering white supremacists."

Bray's "enlightening contribution" is to a tell a flattering version of the Antifa story to a generation whose dualistic, Holocaust-centered view of history has largely deprived them of both the factual and the analytical tools to judge multidimensional events such as the growth of fascism. Bray presents today's Antifa as though it were the glorious legitimate heir to every noble cause since abolitionism. But there were no anti-fascists before fascism, and the label "Antifa" by no means applies to all the many adversaries of fascism.

The implicit claim to carry on the tradition of the International Brigades who fought in Spain against Franco is nothing other than a form of innocence by association. Since we must revere the heroes of the Spanish Civil War, some of that esteem is supposed to rub off on their self-designated heirs. Unfortunately, there are no veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade still alive to point to the difference between a vast organized defense against invading fascist armies and skirmishes on the Berkeley campus. As for the Anarchists of Catalonia, the patent on anarchism ran out a long time ago, and anyone is free to market his own generic.

The original Antifascist movement was an effort by the Communist International to cease hostilities with Europe's Socialist Parties in order to build a common front against the triumphant movements led by Mussolini and Hitler.

Since Fascism thrived, and Antifa was never a serious adversary, its apologists thrive on the "nipped in the bud" claim: "if only" Antifascists had beat up the fascist movements early enough, the latter would have been nipped in the bud. Since reason and debate failed to stop the rise of fascism, they argue, we must use street violence – which, by the way, failed even more decisively.

This is totally ahistorical. Fascism exalted violence, and violence was its preferred testing ground. Both Communists and Fascists were fighting in the streets and the atmosphere of violence helped fascism thrive as a bulwark against Bolshevism, gaining the crucial support of leading capitalists and militarists in their countries, which brought them to power.

Since historic fascism no longer exists, Bray's Antifa have broadened their notion of "fascism" to include anything that violates the current Identity Politics canon: from "patriarchy" (a pre-fascist attitude to put it mildly) to "transphobia" (decidedly a post-fascist problem).

The masked militants of Antifa seem to be more inspired by Batman than by Marx or even by Bakunin.

Storm Troopers of the Neoliberal War Party

Since Mark Bray offers European credentials for current U.S. Antifa, it is appropriate to observe what Antifa amounts to in Europe today.

In Europe, the tendency takes two forms. Black Bloc activists regularly invade various leftist demonstrations in order to smash windows and fight the police. These testosterone exhibits are of minor political significance, other than provoking public calls to strengthen police forces. They are widely suspected of being influenced by police infiltration.

As an example, last September 23, several dozen black-clad masked ruffians, tearing down posters and throwing stones, attempted to storm the platform where the flamboyant Jean-Luc Mélenchon was to address the mass meeting of La France Insoumise , today the leading leftist party in France. Their unspoken message seemed to be that nobody is revolutionary enough for them. Occasionally, they do actually spot a random skinhead to beat up. This establishes their credentials as "anti-fascist".

They use these credentials to arrogate to themselves the right to slander others in a sort of informal self-appointed inquisition.

As prime example, in late 2010, a young woman named Ornella Guyet appeared in Paris seeking work as a journalist in various leftist periodicals and blogs. She "tried to infiltrate everywhere", according to the former director of Le Monde diplomatique , Maurice Lemoine, who "always intuitively distrusted her "when he hired her as an intern.

Viktor Dedaj, who manages one of the main leftist sites in France, Le Grand Soir , was among those who tried to help her, only to experience an unpleasant surprise a few months later. Ornella had become a self-appointed inquisitor dedicated to denouncing "conspirationism, confusionism, anti-Semitism and red-brown" on Internet. This took the form of personal attacks on individuals whom she judged to be guilty of those sins. What is significant is that all her targets were opposed to U.S. and NATO aggressive wars in the Middle East.

Indeed, the timing of her crusade coincided with the "regime change" wars that destroyed Libya and tore apart Syria. The attacks singled out leading critics of those wars.

Viktor Dedaj was on her hit list. So was Michel Collon, close to the Belgian Workers Party, author, activist and manager of the bilingual site Investig'action. So was François Ruffin, film-maker, editor of the leftist journal Fakir elected recently to the National Assembly on the list of Mélenchon's party La France Insoumise . And so on. The list is long.

The targeted personalities are diverse, but all have one thing in common: opposition to aggressive wars. What's more, so far as I can tell, just about everyone opposed to those wars is on her list.

The main technique is guilt by association. High on the list of mortal sins is criticism of the European Union, which is associated with "nationalism" which is associated with "fascism" which is associated with "anti-Semitism", hinting at a penchant for genocide. This coincides perfectly with the official policy of the EU and EU governments, but Antifa uses much harsher language.

In mid-June 2011, the anti-EU party Union Populaire Républicaine led by François Asselineau was the object of slanderous insinuations on Antifa internet sites signed by "Marie-Anne Boutoleau" (a pseudonym for Ornella Guyet). Fearing violence, owners cancelled scheduled UPR meeting places in Lyon. UPR did a little investigation, discovering that Ornella Guyet was on the speakers list at a March 2009 Seminar on International Media organized in Paris by the Center for the Study of International Communications and the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. A surprising association for such a zealous crusader against "red-brown".

In case anyone has doubts, "red-brown" is a term used to smear anyone with generally leftist views – that is, "red" – with the fascist color "brown". This smear can be based on having the same opinion as someone on the right, speaking on the same platform with someone on the right, being published alongside someone on the right, being seen at an anti-war demonstration also attended by someone on the right, and so on. This is particularly useful for the War Party, since these days, many conservatives are more opposed to war than leftists who have bought into the "humanitarian war" mantra.

The government doesn't need to repress anti-war gatherings. Antifa does the job.

The Franco-African comedien Dieudonné M'Bala M'Bala, stigmatized for anti-Semitism since 2002 for his TV sketch lampooning an Israeli settler as part of George W. Bush's "Axis of Good", is not only a target, but serves as a guilty association for anyone who defends his right to free speech – such as Belgian professor Jean Bricmont, virtually blacklisted in France for trying to get in a word in favor of free speech during a TV talk show. Dieudonné has been banned from the media, sued and fined countless times, even sentenced to jail in Belgium, but continues to enjoy a full house of enthusiastic supporters at his one-man shows, where the main political message is opposition to war.

Still, accusations of being soft on Dieudonné can have serious effects on individuals in more precarious positions, since the mere hint of "anti-Semitism" can be a career killer in France. Invitations are cancelled, publications refused, messages go unanswered.

In April 2016, Ornella Guyet dropped out of sight, amid strong suspicions about her own peculiar associations.

The moral of this story is simple. Self-appointed radical revolutionaries can be the most useful thought police for the neoliberal war party.

I am not suggesting that all, or most, Antifa are agents of the establishment. But they can be manipulated, infiltrated or impersonated precisely because they are self-anointed and usually more or less disguised.

Silencing Necessary Debate

One who is certainly sincere is Mark Bray, author of The Intifa Handbook . It is clear where Mark Bray is coming from when he writes (p.36-7): " Hitler's 'final solution' murdered six million Jews in gas chambers, with firing squads, through hunger an lack of medical treatment in squalid camps and ghettoes, with beatings, by working them to death, and through suicidal despair. Approximately two out of every three Jews on the continent were killed, including some of my relatives."

This personal history explains why Mark Bray feels passionately about "fascism". This is perfectly understandable in one who is haunted by fear that "it can happen again".

However, even the most justifiable emotional concerns do not necessarily contribute to wise counsel. Violent reactions to fear may seem to be strong and effective when in reality they are morally weak and practically ineffectual.

We are in a period of great political confusion. Labeling every manifestation of "political incorrectness" as fascism impedes clarification of debate over issues that very much need to be defined and clarified.

The scarcity of fascists has been compensated by identifying criticism of immigration as fascism. This identification, in connection with rejection of national borders, derives much of its emotional force above all from the ancestral fear in the Jewish community of being excluded from the nations in which they find themselves.

The issue of immigration has different aspects in different places. It is not the same in European countries as in the United States. There is a basic distinction between immigrants and immigration. Immigrants are people who deserve consideration. Immigration is a policy that needs to be evaluated. It should be possible to discuss the policy without being accused of persecuting the people. After all, trade union leaders have traditionally opposed mass immigration, not out of racism, but because it can be a deliberate capitalist strategy to bring down wages.

In reality, immigration is a complex subject, with many aspects that can lead to reasonable compromise. But to polarize the issue misses the chances for compromise. By making mass immigration the litmus test of whether or not one is fascist, Antifa intimidation impedes reasonable discussion. Without discussion, without readiness to listen to all viewpoints, the issue will simply divide the population into two camps, for and against. And who will win such a confrontation?

A recent survey* shows that mass immigration is increasingly unpopular in all European countries. The complexity of the issue is shown by the fact that in the vast majority of European countries, most people believe they have a duty to welcome refugees, but disapprove of continued mass immigration. The official argument that immigration is a good thing is accepted by only 40%, compared to 60% of all Europeans who believe that "immigration is bad for our country". A left whose principal cause is open borders will become increasingly unpopular.

Childish Violence

The idea that the way to shut someone up is to punch him in the jaw is as American as Hollywood movies. It is also typical of the gang war that prevails in certain parts of Los Angeles. Banding together with others "like us" to fight against gangs of "them" for control of turf is characteristic of young men in uncertain circumstances. The search for a cause can involve endowing such conduct with a political purpose: either fascist or antifascist. For disoriented youth, this is an alternative to joining the U.S. Marines.

American Antifa looks very much like a middle class wedding between Identity Politics and gang warfare. Mark Bray (page 175) quotes his DC Antifa source as implying that the motive of would-be fascists is to side with "the most powerful kid in the block" and will retreat if scared. Our gang is tougher than your gang.

That is also the logic of U.S. imperialism, which habitually declares of its chosen enemies: "All they understand is force." Although Antifa claim to be radical revolutionaries, their mindset is perfectly typical the atmosphere of violence which prevails in militarized America.

In another vein, Antifa follows the trend of current Identity Politics excesses that are squelching free speech in what should be its citadel, academia. Words are considered so dangerous that "safe spaces" must be established to protect people from them. This extreme vulnerability to injury from words is strangely linked to tolerance of real physical violence.

Wild Goose Chase

In the United States, the worst thing about Antifa is the effort to lead the disoriented American left into a wild goose chase, tracking down imaginary "fascists" instead of getting together openly to work out a coherent positive program. The United States has more than its share of weird individuals, of gratuitous aggression, of crazy ideas, and tracking down these marginal characters, whether alone or in groups, is a huge distraction. The truly dangerous people in the United States are safely ensconced in Wall Street, in Washington Think Tanks, in the executive suites of the sprawling military industry, not to mention the editorial offices of some of the mainstream media currently adopting a benevolent attitude toward "anti-fascists" simply because they are useful in focusing on the maverick Trump instead of themselves.

Antifa USA, by defining "resistance to fascism" as resistance to lost causes – the Confederacy, white supremacists and for that matter Donald Trump – is actually distracting from resistance to the ruling neoliberal establishment, which is also opposed to the Confederacy and white supremacists and has already largely managed to capture Trump by its implacable campaign of denigration. That ruling establishment, which in its insatiable foreign wars and introduction of police state methods, has successfully used popular "resistance to Trump" to make him even worse than he already was.

The facile use of the term "fascist" gets in the way of thoughtful identification and definition of the real enemy of humanity today. In the contemporary chaos, the greatest and most dangerous upheavals in the world all stem from the same source, which is hard to name, but which we might give the provisional simplified label of Globalized Imperialism. This amounts to a multifaceted project to reshape the world to satisfy the demands of financial capitalism, the military industrial complex, United States ideological vanity and the megalomania of leaders of lesser "Western" powers, notably Israel. It could be called simply "imperialism", except that it is much vaster and more destructive than the historic imperialism of previous centuries. It is also much more disguised. And since it bears no clear label such as "fascism", it is difficult to denounce in simple terms.

The fixation on preventing a form of tyranny that arose over 80 years ago, under very different circumstances, obstructs recognition of the monstrous tyranny of today. Fighting the previous war leads to defeat.

Donald Trump is an outsider who will not be let inside. The election of Donald Trump is above all a grave symptom of the decadence of the American political system, totally ruled by money, lobbies, the military-industrial complex and corporate media. Their lies are undermining the very basis of democracy. Antifa has gone on the offensive against the one weapon still in the hands of the people: the right to free speech and assembly.

Notes.

* "Où va la démocratie?", une enquête de la Fondation pour l'innovation politique sous la direction de Dominique Reynié, (Plon, Paris, 2017).

[Jun 03, 2020] The 10 Most Important Questions For Rod Rosenstein This Morning

Jun 03, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

The 10 Most Important Questions For Rod Rosenstein This Morning by Tyler Durden Wed, 06/03/2020 - 09:10 Authored by John Solomon via JustTheNews.com,

Two years ago, then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein chafed when asked whether congressional Republicans might have legitimate reason to suspect the factual underpinnings of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants that targeted Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in the Russia probe.

Seeming a bit perturbed, Rosenstein launched into a mini-lecture on how much care and work went into FISA applications at the FBI and Justice Department.

"There's a lot of talk about FISA applications. Many people I've seen talk about it seem not to recognize that a FISA application is actually a warrant, just like a search warrant. In order to get a FISA warrant, you need an affidavit signed by a career law enforcement officer who swears the information is true ... And if it is wrong, that person is going to face consequences," Rosenstein asserted.

"If we're going to accuse someone of wrongdoing, we have to have admissible evidence, credible witnesses, we have to prove our case in court. We have to affix our signature to the charging document," he added.

Rosenstein did affix his signature to the fourth and last FISA warrant against Page in 2017. And now in 2020, newly declassified evidence shows the FBI did not have the verified evidence or a credible witness in the form of Christopher Steele and his dossier to support the claims submitted to the FISA court as verified.

In fact, DOJ has withdrawn the very FISA application Rosenstein approved and signed after the department's internal watchdog found it included inaccurate, undocumented, and falsified evidence.

This morning (at 10amET), when he appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Rosenstein is likely to strike a humbler tone in the face of overwhelming evidence that the FBI-executed FISAs have been chronically flawed, including in the Russia case he supervised.

"Even the best law enforcement officers make mistakes, and some engage in willful misconduct," Rosenstein said in a statement issued ahead of his appearance. "Independent law enforcement investigations, judicial review and congressional oversight are important checks on the discretion of agents and prosecutors."

Republicans led by Chairman Lindsey Graham of South Carolina are likely to interrogate Rosenstein extensively as they try to determine whether the glaring FISA failures and the FBI's representations in the Russia probe were a case of misplaced trust or a deeper plot by unelected bureaucrats to unseat and/or thwart President Trump.

Here are the 10 most important questions those senators are likely to set out to answer:

  1. Did Rosenstein read the FISA warrant renewal he signed in summer 2017 against Page, review any evidence supporting it, or ask the FBI any questions about the case before affixing his signature?
  2. Does the former No. 2 DOJ official now believe the FISA was so flawed that it should never have been submitted to the court? Does he regret signing it?
  3. Given what he now knows about flaws with the Steele dossier and FBI probe, would Rosenstein have appointed Robert Mueller as the Russia Special Counsel if given a do-over?
  4. Did Rosenstein engage in a conversation with FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe in 2017 about wearing a wire on President Trump as part of a plot to remove the 45th president from office under the 25th Amendment?
  5. Who drafted and provided the supporting materials that Rosenstein used to create the scope of investigation memos that guided Mueller's probe?
  6. Does Rosenstein have any concerns about the conduct of fired FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe as he looks back on their tenure and in light of the new evidence that has surfaced?
  7. When did Rosenstein learn that the CIA had identified Page as one of its assets -- ruling out he was a Russian spy -- and that information in Steele's dossier used in the FISA warrant had been debunked or linked to Russian disinformation?
  8. Does Rosenstein believe the FISA court was intentionally misled, or can the glaring missteps be explained by bureaucratic bungling?
  9. What culpability does Rosenstein assign to himself for the failures in the Russia case he supervised, and what other people does he blame?
  10. Does the former deputy attorney general believe anyone in the Russia case should face criminal charges?

You can watch Rosenstein's 2018 statement here. https://youtu.be/Daxd1YsNEO0

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Daxd1YsNEO0

[Jun 03, 2020] Rosenstein Admits He Would Not Have Signed FISA Warrant If He Knew Of Exculpatory Evidence, Throws McCabe Under The Bus

Jun 03, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

by Tyler Durden Wed, 06/03/2020 - 11:10 Update (1115ET): It appears, as Jonathan Turley details in a Twitter thread below , that Rosenstein is throwing McCabe under the bus...

Rosenstein just testified that he would not have signed the warrant application in 2017 on Carter Page because of the misconduct of FBI agents and the lack of evidence.

He said he did not know that the Steele dossier was discredited by that time. He said McCabe particularly "was not candid ... or forthcoming."

Notably, we now know that the Flynn investigation found no criminal acts by December 2016 and now Rosenstein said he would have ended the investigation of Page which was the focus of the early justifications of the Russian investigation.

Rosenstein just said he did not know that investigators by the early January 2017 asked for Flynn to be removed from the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. He signed off on these warrants and applications but was never informed of those critical facts.

Rosenstein insists that the information in appointing Mueller was based on that incomplete information at the time. He admitted that by August 2017 when he signed off on the Mueller investigation there was no evidence at all of collusion with the Russians.

Sen. Feinstein did a good job framing the use (or non-use) of the Steele dossier but went off the rails by stressing that none of the prosecutions relied on the dossier. However, the fact is that there was never any prosecution of any Trump person for colluding or conspiring ...

...with the Russians. There was never any evidence of collusion with the Russian, a point reaffirmed by Rosenstein today. This hearing shows the value of oversight and the still unanswered questions in light of recently released material.

Grassley just said Rosenstein misled him and the public on the Flynn case. Rosenstein insisted that he did not know about the exculpatory evidence on Flynn and "that was news to me." Rosenstein also said that he supports Durham investigating the dossier matter.

* * *

Authored by Daniel Payne via JustTheNews.com,

Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that he would not have signed the renewal of the FISA warrant for Trump associate Carter Page if he had been aware of exculpatory information withheld from the FISA court.

Rosenstein was responding to a question from Sen. Lindsey Graham, who asked him:

"If you knew then what you knew now, would you have signed the warrant application?"

"No, I would not," Rosenstein said.

"And the reason you wouldn't have is because ... exculpatory information was withheld from the court?" Graham asked, to which Rosenstein responded:

"Among other reasons, yes."

Appearing before the committee on Wednesday for a hearing concerning the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane investigation, Rosenstein told senators that the Justice Department "must take remedial action" against any misconduct it uncovers within its ranks, a bracing statement made in reference to investigative reviews that found "significant errors" in official procedures related to the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

Rosenstein in prepared remarks noted that internal investigations had revealed that the FBI "was not following the written protocols" in its execution of Crossfire Hurricane.

"Senators, whenever agents or prosecutors make serious mistakes or engage in misconduct, the Department of Justice must take remedial action. And if existing policies fall short, those policies need to be changed. Ensuring the integrity of governmental processes is essential to public confidence in the rule of law," he said.

[Jun 03, 2020] Rule of law in Murrika is kaput

Highly recommended!
Jun 16, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

freedommusic , 23 minutes ago link

DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Agent Smith, you testified that the Russians hacked the DNC computers, is that correct?

FBI AGENT JOHN SMITH: That is correct.

DEF ATT: Upon what information did you base your testimony?

AGENT: Information found in reports analyzing the breach of the computers.

DEF ATT: So, the FBI prepared these reports?

AGENT: (cough) . (shift in seat) No, a cyber security contractor with the FBI.

DEF ATT: Pardon me, why would a contractor be preparing these reports? Do these contractors run the FBI laboratories where the server was examined?

AGENT: No.

DEF ATT: No? No what? These contractors don't run the FBI Laboratories?

AGENT: No. The laboratories are staffed by FBI personnel.

DEF ATT: Well I don't understand. Why would contractors be writing reports about computers that are forensically examined in FBI laboratories?

AGENT: Well, the servers were not examined in the FBI laboratory.

(silence)

DEF ATT: Oh, so the FBI examined the servers on site to determine who had hacked them and what was taken?

AGENT: Uh .. no.

DEF ATT: They didn't examine them on site?

AGENT: No.

DEF ATT: Well, where did they examine them?

AGENT: Well, uh .. the FBI did not examine them.

DEF ATT: What?

AGENT: The FBI did not directly examine the servers.

DEF ATT: Agent Smith, the FBI has presented to the Grand Jury and to this court and SWORN AS FACT that the Russians hacked the DNC computers. You are basing your SWORN testimony on a report given to you by a contractor, while the FBI has NEVER actually examined the computer hardware?

AGENT: That is correct.

DEF ATT: Agent Smith, who prepared the analysis reports that the FBI relied on to give this sworn testimony?

AGENT: Crowdstrike, Inc.

DEF ATT: So, which Crowdstrike employee gave you the report?

AGENT: We didn't receive the report directly from Crowdstrike.

DEF ATT: What?

AGENT: We did not receive the report directly from Crowdstrike.

DEF ATT: Well, where did you find this report?

AGENT: It was given to us by the people who hired Crowdstrike to examine and secure their computer network and hardware.

DEF ATT: Oh, so the report was given to you by the technical employees for the company that hired Crowdstrike to examine their servers?

AGENT: No.

DEF ATT: Well, who gave you the report?

AGENT: Legal counsel for the company that hired Crowdstrike.

DEF ATT: Why would legal counsel be the ones giving you the report?

AGENT: I don't know.

DEF ATT: Well, what company hired Crowdstrike?

AGENT: The Democratic National Committee.

DEF ATT: Wait a minute. Let me get this straight. You are giving SWORN testimony to this court that Russia hacked the servers of the Democratic National Committee. And you are basing that testimony on a report given to you by the LAWYERS for the Democratic National Committee. And you, the FBI, never actually saw or examined the computer servers?

AGENT: That is correct.

DEF ATT: Well, can you provide a copy of the technical report produced by Crowdstrike for the Democratic National Committee?

AGENT: No, I cannot.

DEF ATT: Well, can you go back to your office and get a copy of the report?

AGENT: No.

DEF ATT: Why? Are you locked out of your office?

AGENT: No.

DEF ATT: I don't understand. Why can you not provide a copy of this report?

AGENT: Because I do not have a copy of the report.

DEF ATT: Did you lose it?

AGENT: No.

DEF ATT: Why do you not have a copy of the report?

AGENT: Because we were never given a final copy of the report.

DEF ATT: Agent Smith, if you didn't get a copy of the report, upon what information are you basing your testimony?

AGENT: On a draft copy of the report.

DEF ATT: A draft copy?

AGENT: Yes.

DEF ATT: Was a final report ever delivered to the FBI?

AGENT: No.

DEF ATT: Agent Smith, did you get to read the entire report?

AGENT: No.

DEF ATT: Why not?

AGENT: Because large portions were redacted.

DEF ATT: Agent Smith, let me get this straight. The FBI is claiming that the Russians hacked the DNC servers. But the FBI never actually saw the computer hardware, nor examined it? Is that correct?

AGENT: That is correct.

DEF ATT: And the FBI never actually examined the log files or computer email or any aspect of the data from the servers? Is that correct?

AGENT: That is correct.

DEF ATT: And you are basing your testimony on the word of Counsel for the Democratic National Committee, the people who provided you with a REDACTED copy of a DRAFT report, not on the actual technical personnel who supposedly examined the servers?

AGENT: That is correct.

DEF ATT: Your honor, I have a few motions I would like to make at this time.

PRESIDING JUDGE: I'm sure you do, Counselor. (as he turns toward the prosecutors) And I feel like I am in a mood to grant them.

( source )

hooligan2009 , 14 minutes ago link

Brilliant! that sums it up nicely. of course, if the servers were not hacked and were instead "thumbnailed" that leads to a whole pile of other questions (including asking wiileaks for their source and about the murder of seth rich).

[Jun 03, 2020] The Philosophy of Antifa

While that talk has many interesting points, it is basically wrong. Fascism is a political movement centered on political party with far right nationalist political ideology and that use mobilization of people.
Inverted totalitarism does not use distinct political party and reject mass mobilization for reaching its goals. That's an important difference.
Notable quotes:
"... ANTIFA defines fascist as, a cult of purity, victimhood, abandonment of liberty, and redemptive violence. Doesn't it sound like they are defining themselves? (Antifa - The Handbook for Antifascists) ..."
Dec 01, 2017 | www.youtube.com

... ... ...

Part 1 - Meet the Antifascists - 0:53 Part 2 - Fascism - 8:18 Part 3 - Violence - 20:47 Part 4 - Free Speech - 39:58 Part 5 - There Is No Peaceful White Nationalism - 53:30

Bibliography:
Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion - http://tinyurl.com/y9a569vy
Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism - http://tinyurl.com/yab2r3sm
Auden & Isherwood – On the Frontier - http://tinyurl.com/y8c8w3sc
BadMouse Productions: Spotting Fascism – ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0rRg... )
Bray, Antifa: the Antifascist Handbook - http://tinyurl.com/y7nwsr6c
Burgdörfer: "Sterben die weißen Völker?”
Cacho, Social Death - http://tinyurl.com/yalbdhkb
Contrapoints –
“Debating the Alt-Right,” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPa1w... ),
“Decrypting the Alt-Right” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx4BV... ),
“The Left” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuN6G... ),
“Does the Left Hate Free Speech?” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGTDh... ),
“Why White Nationalism is Wrong” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyV0y... )
D’Souza, The Big Lie - http://tinyurl.com/ydavsb82
Faludi, Backlash - http://tinyurl.com/ycnjhv5s
Fang, Delete Your Account Podcast, E63, “Punching Nazis”
Herman & Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent - http://tinyurl.com/ybd3rots
Hermansson, “My Year Inside the Alt-Right” https://alternativeright.hopenothate....
Hitler, Mein Kampf
Hobbes, Leviathan - http://tinyurl.com/y98m5tf7
Kesīqnaeh, Fascism & Anti-Fascism: A Decolonial Perspective http://tinyurl.com/y9m36ckv
King Jr. - Letter From A Birmingham Jail - http://tinyurl.com/ovcktqb
Mill, On Liberty - http://tinyurl.com/y9ajospk
Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism - http://tinyurl.com/y7s6u3xt
Purkis & Bowen (ed.), Changing Anarchism - http://tinyurl.com/y9sdobpp
Raz, “Authority, Law, and Morality” - http://tinyurl.com/ybm5fmhb
Richardson, What Terrorists Want - http://tinyurl.com/y82wpbj6
Robets, Fatal Invention http://tinyurl.com/ybdfgvwh
Satre, “Anti-Semite and Jew” - http://tinyurl.com/y9qmncya
Schmitt, Political Theology and The Concept of the Political http://tinyurl.com/ycsgxlga & http://tinyurl.com/y7v2vojl
Shaun – “The Great Replacement Isn’t Real - ft. Lauren Southern” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUbxV... )
Ture, Stokely Speaks - http://tinyurl.com/y7fz2hpj
Vasquez, “The Poor Person’s Defence of Riots” https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/...
Wilson, “What I Discovered From Interviewing Imprisoned ISIS Fighters” https://www.thenation.com/article/wha...
A Short Documentary About the Battle of Cable Street: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiZFy...

apprenticehera , 1 day ago

I remember reading in my Abnormal Psychology textbook that in the early 1900s, the mentally ill in the United States were forcefully sterilized to prevent them from "breeding" which made me take a step back and realize that I was never once taught this in school and I was only ever taught that the United States were (almost) always the good guys. Eugenics has a deep rooted history in America and it's terrifying.

Gluemonkey , 6 hours ago (edited)

NOT being taught something in school is not automatically insidious and disturbing. BEING taught something toxic or deflective in school IS automatically insidious and disturbing. In school I was taught roughly 0.000000000000000001% about things that are and things that have been.


Carolina Madeira , 1 day ago

Hello! I´m from Brazil and your videos have helped me to deal these awful days and, also, to understand how Bolsonaro supporters think (if this is possible!) Neonazi and fascists movements were marginal and formed only for small groups in Brazil in last decades, despite always considered dangerous. Now, these movements have been appeared in pro-bolsonaro parades and it´s really scare! Much of this video match with it has happened right now in Brazil!

Kirikan Kuu , 1 week ago

div> We shouldn't give up on the entire system due to amendable flaws and corruption (debt-based commercial banks, multinational companies, cheap labor, etc), and attempt to replace it with a weak and unstable mob rule. People always find a scapegoat, whether it's another ethnic group, authorities, or smart and prosperous individuals, which escalates the situation. Class wars are like other wars, and we'd all end up living in tents and flats, eating powdered crickets and working to death "for the common good" and in order to "end exploitation". Many countries have a mixed economy regulated and supervised by the state, and you have a chance to negotiate a proper wage or become an entrepreneur. Social democracies provide all citizens tax-funded healthcare and university level education, while allowing competition, and being capable of maintaining peace and order, even if the exact same model wouldn't work everywhere, and there could be improvements.

Al Muarikh , 1 week ago div

> 54:30 fun fact: In 1964 Brazil suffered a Military Coup backed by the CIA/US. At the time leading to the coup, the petite-bourgeois that thought themselves "the people" organized some marches. The names of the marches were something like "March of the Families with God for Liberty", and they marched bearing several posters accusing the then President Jango of being a communist, saying that "Brazil wouldn't turn into a Cuba". Brazil was in a decade-long turmoil and the President at the time decided to take some Nationalization attitudes and whatnot, so he was obviously accused of being a communist, despite not even being a socialist. So the great fear of communism was implanted in the Brazilian people's mind via those marches and subsequently, less then a month later, the Fascist Military Coup was widely accepted as the unfortunate best solution against communism. Needless to say that TO THE DAY there's a great denial of a Coup, they created a narrative in which they lead people into believing the Military Junta really saved Brazil from becoming Cuba. The result of it is that it's 2020 and the Brazilian President is an Army Captain, his VP is an Army General, and several of his Ministers are also Generals, during the COVID-19 Pandemic we have an "Operational President" named by the High Command of the Armed Forces who is a General, and guess what? The President and his lackeys are AGAIN shouting about the imminent Communist threat, this time forming armed Paramilitary Groups trained in Ukraine by the Pravyy Sektor. If anyone out there sees this comment, keep it in mind and save it, for in about 1-2 years we'll be having an unambiguous Military Dictatorship in Brazil, AGAIN.

Rackergen , 5 months ago (edited) div tabindex="0" role="arti

cle"> 12:22 "It's important to note that fascism is not a wholly different government from the one you might know and it did not end in 1945. For instance, most of these features I described would also, in milder forms, describe a certain American presidency. That's right. The Reagan administration" *glaces to date of the video*

Ben Rogue , 5 months ago

So, by the 'textbook definition' of Fascism, pretty much every right-leaning politician in the U.S and almost every right-wing pundit is a Fascist. Which isn't surprising, considering how far the overton window has moved rightward and how far right the Democratic party is. You can probably attribute this shift to how pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist the donor class is and how that affects the make-up of the political parties.

Thaïs Caprio , 2 months ago div tabindex="0" role="a

rticle"> 41:20 just wanted to add another example that I know a lot about. In France, the only protest that haven't been repressed by the police are the protests from fascists (La manic pour Tous, Syndicats de Police, Generation Identitaire). Other protests like the Yellow Vests, Feminist night marches, strike protests, etc... (we've had a lotta protests in France these past years) are always repressed. But what I want to talk about is the violence that counter protesters are facing from the police. We have to be careful not to get hit or hurt by fascists but also be careful of violence and arrests from the police. The very violent far right organization (and very very racist) Generation Identitaire got to protest with thousand of policemen to protect them. My girlfriend and I were asked (forced) to leave because we had a gay flag. The police in France is extremely violent, and maybe not as much as in other countries such as Chile, but the violence keeps increasing and it keeps getting more dangerous. As someone who regularly goes to protests, I consider myself very lucky and very privilege for never getting badly hurt by a cop. My lungs do suffer the consequence of the constant breathing of lacrymo gas ahah Anyway, I just wanted to develop an example of another rich European country. (sorry for English mistakes)

Chris Woycik , 1 year ago

"Every border implies the violence necessary to maintain it..." That's a throw-away line that had me stopping and thinking like god damn. LeftTube has definitely made me a more thoughtful person as a whole.

Mark Von , 12 minutes ago (edited)

ANTIFA defines fascist as, a cult of purity, victimhood, abandonment of liberty, and redemptive violence. Doesn't it sound like they are defining themselves? (Antifa - The Handbook for Antifascists)

Matt NA , 1 day ago

I've just started to watch and I'm concerned about that facist checklist. Trump meets quite a few of the criteria with his response to what's going on at the moment...so it is somewhat hypocritical that he wants to label antifa as a terrorist organisation when in fact anti facist movements are not an organisation (as you explained in the beginning). Possibly another diversion tactic so people don't look at at Trump and his reaction to the violence.

The Procastinators , 3 months ago

"Fascism is not a wholly different kind of government from the one you might know ..." Laughs in 2020

Stephanie Jean , 1 hour ago

Trump: Antifa is a terrorist group Intellectuals: It's not a specific group tho...

[Jun 02, 2020] The Antifascist Fascists in Our Streets

Looks like antifa members is Maoists not Fascists.
Notable quotes:
"... Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook ..."
"... These people are self-defeating morons, yes, but they still have the potential to do great damage ..."
"... Last night, here in Washington, the unrest they helped fuel saw a church lit on fire, LaFayette Park near the White House set ablaze, the AFL-CIO building attacked, and the Lincoln Memorial defaced. ..."
Jun 02, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Back in 2018, my friend Zachary Yost suffered his way through Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook , a primer on the group written by (but of course!) Dartmouth lecturer Mark Bray. What he found was a chillingly lucid call to revolution that subordinated all else to the goal of overthrowing capitalism and the "Far Right." So free speech, for example, is dispensable, valuable only to the extent that it enables the coming flames. Yost writes:

By the time he's finished, Bray has thrown everything and the kitchen sink into the category of fascist ideologies that must be targeted, ranging from whiteness to "ableism, heteronormativity, patriarchy, nationalism, transphobia, class rule, and many others." Though cloaked in calls to stop oppression, Bray's book at its core makes the case for the exercise of raw, unbridled power. Under this revolutionary ideology, no dissent can be tolerated. There can be no live and let live -- it is all or nothing.

In fairness, Antifa is a wide and somewhat amorphous umbrella, some of whose members may not subscribe to everything Bray says. But what the more committed among them seem to understand is that, come lawlessness, power will flow naturally to he who has the most muscle, he who's most willing to pick up a brick and throw it, at the expense of the poor and vulnerable. Remember that tonight when we inevitably see more violence in the streets. Senselessness is the point. Preying on the innocent is the goal.

Remember after Charlottesville when some on social media compared these guys to the American soldiers who fought the Nazis at Normandy? I don't want to hear another word about that. Antifa may stand for antifascist, but Yost's piece makes it clear that they're fascist to their marrow. And as with many latter-day fascists and extremists, Antifa are simultaneously cogent at the manifesto level and utterly delusional as to likely outcomes. They aren't going to overthrow capitalism or Donald Trump. They may, however, affect the election in five months, with the most likely beneficiary the president they so despise.

These people are self-defeating morons, yes, but they still have the potential to do great damage.

Last night, here in Washington, the unrest they helped fuel saw a church lit on fire, LaFayette Park near the White House set ablaze, the AFL-CIO building attacked, and the Lincoln Memorial defaced.

This is how a Franco ends up in power: because even churches are being targeted, even the moderate leftists aren't safe. Bully people long enough and they long for a bully of their own. That Antifa has desecrated the protests over George Floyd's death this way is appalling and I wish them nothing but the worst.

Matt Purple is a senior editor at The American Conservative .

Scroop Moth 19 hours ago

I can picture anarchists setting fire to Minneapolis, but I was always under the clear impression that ANTIFA was really, really, focused on outing neo-nazis, punching marchers in the face, and deplatforming the ALT-RIGHT. God's work! Why in the world would they torch Popeyes?
J Villain 18 hours ago
One of the Fox news affiliate stations had reported looking at the paper work for people arrested in their city and said that 80% of the people arrested were from in state. That was after both Trump and Barr had claimed they were almost all from out of state. If they lied about that what reason is there to believe that the rest of their claims are true? What evidence is there other than a report of a pallet of brick (how do you unload it with out a forklift?) being left some where what evidence is there that all of this is co-ordinated and not just random thugs? Why is the assumption that they are left leaning or tied to the Democratic party? At least one of the people caught breaking windows, carrying an umbrella and masked was an off duty police officer which generally lean to the right. I know a 25 year old man was arrested for burning a court house. The young tend to lean left but also tend to act irrationally with out a cause. Is there any actual evidence to point to this being Antifa or are we just supposed to take POTUS's word for it?
RCPreader J Villain 15 hours ago
Trump and Barr merely picked up on claims from the governor of MN and mayor of Minneapolis. They did not originate the claim that the rioters were from out-of-state.

Uh, the assumption that they are left-leaning comes from the fact that they spray-paint left-leaning things, and shout left-leaning things.

I haven't heard anyone claim that they are tied to the Democratic Party, but many Democratic Party politicians have avoided condemning them, and many Democratic Party-backing commentators/journalists have openly defended them.

The NYC Police Dept. reports that they have in their possession communications among Antifa units making detailed plans for riots in places like NYC days before the riots occurred.

Something like a thousand people have been arrested now in these riots. How many of them have been identified as right-wing or right-leaning? I don't know of a single one. You don't think these lefty Dem mayors and the MSM would be parading any evidence they had of right-leaning rioters?

madamX RCPreader 14 hours ago
The Minnesota Freedom Fund is also being funded by politically correct Hollywood leftists. If Minneapolis really is a right-wing insurrection highly disguised, it's fooled the woke crowd unmercifully.
Zgler 14 hours ago
"The destruction of businesses we're witnessing across the US is not mere
opportunism by looters. It plays a critical role in antifa and BLM
ideology"

Grouping Black Lives Matter together with Anti-Fa is a good propaganda effort, but those groups have different focuses. Anti-Fa is a reaction to the neo-Nazis, but it is also home to a lot of anarchists.

Black Lives Matter is focused on African American rights and an opposition to police brutality. If you look at their web site, it is all about civil rights both in the U.S. and internationally. They also have a stated agenda of supporting LGBTQ rights. It's hard to find any ideology in favor of looting. In fact, they are on-record in support of minority-owned (capitalist) businesses and economic development.

WilliamRD 4 hours ago
Lessons from Weimar Germany for the Portland Extremists

https://fee.org/articles/le...

[Jun 01, 2020] How to misindentify fascism by Andrew Joyce

Fascism is an ideology that presuppose mass mobilization (often of the base of previous humiliation and current difficulties) by an ultranationalist party with populist program. Just being ultranationalist is not enough. If element of mass mobilization is absent this is also not a fascism.
Notable quotes:
"... The same administration provoked similar ill-conceived and unhelpful monographs on Fascism from Cass Sunstein ( Can it Happen Here? ), Madeleine Albright ( Fascism: A Warning ), and Harvard duo Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt ( How Democracies Die ). All of these individuals are Jews, and this is not a coincidence. In fact, since the production of Leon Trotsky's Fascism: What it is and How to Fight It (compiled between 1922 and 1933) and the Frankfurt School's project on the "Authoritarian Personality," Jews have been at the forefront of paving the cultural, as well as political, path to Antifa activity. ..."
"... They do so by bastardising public understanding of the nature of Fascist politics, thereby shaping "anti-Fascism" as a vehicle for the undermining of the White nation. When it comes to Fascism, "Jews know it when they see it," a pronouncement we are all encouraged to accept without question. ..."
"... His lack of education and reading in the subject is therefore apparently more than compensated for in the fact he is emotionally distressed by it. Right. ..."
"... Stanley, Sunstein, Levitsky, Ziblatt, and Albright have produced quite typical examples of Jewish propaganda disguised as "anti-Fascist" literature. The key features of such works are invariably a vague definition of Fascism, an attempt to relate "warnings" to some aspect of contemporary politics, melodramatic admonitions about a putative future violent catastrophe that must be avoided, and maudlin appeals to personal family history and "emotional baggage." ..."
"... The family, the acknowledgement of heterosexuality as culturally and biologically normative and preferential, the desirability of mono-ethnic cultures, and the acknowledgement of inequality among human beings are reframed in this kind of "warning literature" as inherently Fascistic. ..."
"... Fascism's unforgivable sin was its spot-on critique of the failure of liberal democracy, which, it argued, was the inevitable result of its corruption by capitalism. ..."
"... In this way, fascism is the thinking person's version of Marxism, stripped of the latter's absurd mismeasures of human nature. Fascism restored the traditional fabric of society, placing the needs of the national community above the selfish whims of the individual. In so doing it gave to otherwise alienated individuals the sense of common purpose and connection to others that are so vital to mental health. ..."
"... And only a strong authoritarian state can claim and effectively wield the power necessary to undo the damage that capitalism does ..."
"... No wonder the mortal adversaries, western imperialism and Soviet communism, were so terrified of this existential challenge to their oppressive systems that they made temporary common cause of ruthlessly annihilating Germany in history's most destructive war. ..."
"... Fascism is the cry of the lower middle class who do not understand how things work or where they came from. It is an urban tryharder phenomenon. Very short attention spans. ..."
"... George Orwell understood this: he was tolerant but realistic, and "conservative" in a natural way, all the time grasping the nature of Capitalism, that man needs to be set free not governed by others. Liberal Democracy is just a means to stablise government instead of civil wars. ..."
"... Vulture Capitalism and Marxist Socialism have the same elite masters and revolting against it in the interest of the people. ..."
"... Paul Gottfried's Fascism: the Career of a Concept. Although Jewish, Prof Gottfried is a paleoconservative and his books are always carefully written. His work on Fascism is probably the best recent work on the subject. I don't know why Dr Joyce didn't mention it. ..."
"... Interesting (and alarming) essay by Dr.. Joyce. Alarming because the sheer relentlessness and vindictiveness of these people is matched only by the vacuity, shallowness and spite of their ostensible "intellectual" product. ..."
May 29, 2020 | www.unz.com

Concluding one of America's more infamous obscenity trials in 1964, Justice Potter Stewart absolved a controversial French motion picture with an opinion that has since passed into common parlance: "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it , and the motion picture involved in this case is not that."

The opinion was celebrated at the time as a victory for freedom of expression, and paved the way for a later deluge of Western cultural degradation. Of greater significance, however, is the fact that almost 60 years later "I know it when I see it" has become a political philosophy in its own right, adopted and pursued by a radical Left intent on curtailing that very same freedom by claiming an exclusive and unaccountable ability to define Fascism. This was the starkest message from The Burkean 's unprecedented recent Irish Antifa Project , which was designed to infiltrate and expose self-styled Antifa networks in mainstream Irish academia and politics.

In my view, the most predictable revelation from the Irish Antifa Project was the extent of historical and cultural ignorance among the profiled activists. None of the intellectually and professionally mediocre individuals exposed by The Burkean appeared capable of articulating what Fascism was, or is alleged to be today. Fascism instead seems to have been adopted by these non-entities as a vague catch-all for anything touching upon capitalism, conservatism, religion, or tradition. Equally vague are the proposed activist methodologies of these individuals, which range from the compiling of databases with the names of those deemed to be Fascists, to tentative but deniable support for violence. With the exception of a small number of fanatical Jews like Trinity College student Jacob Woolf , "anti-Fascism" has evidently been adopted by the majority of those concerned as a kind of half-hearted virtue signaling hobby or political side gig, albeit one with sinister potential.

Unfortunately, the problems posed by an uninformed, unaccountable, and unhinged "anti-Fascist" radical Left aren't helped by the fact confusion about the nature of Fascism is endemic in society as a whole. There are essentially three traditions when it comes to explaining Fascism. One can be found within Fascism itself, and demonstrates how self-defined Fascists see themselves. This material is overwhelmingly historical. Another tradition can be found in contemporary mainstream academia and, although biased, it is at least academic in style, serious, and relatively comprehensive. The work of the late Roger Griffin is perhaps the best available in the English language in terms of this tradition, and is also largely concerned with history.

The third tradition, on the other hand, is popular, highly politicised, always concerned with contemporary politics, and is abridged to the point of being a pop-Left caricature of serious studies of Fascism. It is particularly problematic because it has tremendous traction among the masses and, despite being propaganda for extremist politics of its own sort, always presents itself as objective and neutral.

The individuals profiled by The Burkean are unquestionably disciples of the latter tradition, a recent example of which is Jason Stanley's How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them (2018). Stanley, a Jewish professor at Yale whose background is in language and epistemology and not history or politics, hasn't published any peer-reviewed material on Fascism or anti-Fascism, but his 2018 book proved a moderate publishing sensation because it represented a thinly veiled attack on the Trump administration.

The same administration provoked similar ill-conceived and unhelpful monographs on Fascism from Cass Sunstein ( Can it Happen Here? ), Madeleine Albright ( Fascism: A Warning ), and Harvard duo Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt ( How Democracies Die ). All of these individuals are Jews, and this is not a coincidence. In fact, since the production of Leon Trotsky's Fascism: What it is and How to Fight It (compiled between 1922 and 1933) and the Frankfurt School's project on the "Authoritarian Personality," Jews have been at the forefront of paving the cultural, as well as political, path to Antifa activity.

They do so by bastardising public understanding of the nature of Fascist politics, thereby shaping "anti-Fascism" as a vehicle for the undermining of the White nation. When it comes to Fascism, "Jews know it when they see it," a pronouncement we are all encouraged to accept without question.

Jewish Definitions of Fascism

A common theme in influential books like Stanley's, destined for a modicum of success in the paperback mass market thanks to dramatic titles and relentless marketing, is their incredibly -- and deliberately -- vague definition of Fascism. These Jewish activists know this, of course, but they push ahead regardless. Stanley, for example, excuses the gaps and logical leaps inherent in his dubious study by arguing that "generalization is necessary in the current moment." But if he is defining the "current moment" as Fascist under his generalized definition, isn't he simply using generalization to excuse the same generalization? Isn't this tantamount to saying to his readers: "The present moment is so obviously Fascist that we really don't need to define Fascism"?

Such considerations don't slow Stanley down for a second, and this celebrated Yale professor slips off the hook to pronounce, even more unhelpfully, "I have chosen the label "Fascism" for ultranationalism of some variety." What variety? What's his definition of "ultranationalism"?

It doesn't matter. What is clear in texts like Stanley's is that you aren't here to be encouraged to think or ask questions, but to absorb a discourse and accept a dogma. The authority behind such demands stems predominantly from emotional blackmail -- Stanley cashes in his card as the son of "Holocaust survivors," and explains that "My family background has saddled me with difficult emotional baggage. But it also, crucially, prepared me to write this book."

His lack of education and reading in the subject is therefore apparently more than compensated for in the fact he is emotionally distressed by it. Right.

... ... ...

Conclusion

Stanley, Sunstein, Levitsky, Ziblatt, and Albright have produced quite typical examples of Jewish propaganda disguised as "anti-Fascist" literature. The key features of such works are invariably a vague definition of Fascism, an attempt to relate "warnings" to some aspect of contemporary politics, melodramatic admonitions about a putative future violent catastrophe that must be avoided, and maudlin appeals to personal family history and "emotional baggage."

Underlying the surface veneer, these works are highly focussed efforts to pathologise aspects of White culture and politics deemed oppositional to Jewish interests. These efforts, and their framing, are quite obviously derived from Cultural Marxism, especially Adorno's work with the Frankfurt School on The Authoritarian Personality , and from earlier forms of Jewish activism witnessed from the end of the 19th century and culminating in Weimar Germany (e.g. the work of Magnus Hirschfeld).

The family, the acknowledgement of heterosexuality as culturally and biologically normative and preferential, the desirability of mono-ethnic cultures, and the acknowledgement of inequality among human beings are reframed in this kind of "warning literature" as inherently Fascistic.

It is very worrying that our culture has bequeathed a great deal of respect and legitimacy to Jewish intellectuals, especially in relation to the subject of Fascism. We have allowed them to assert that "they know it when they see it." The fundamental crisis of our civilization is that they see it everywhere, and they won't rest until this phantom of their paranoia, and us with it, are abolished.

Notes

[1] J. Whittam, Fascist Italy , (New York: Manchester University Press, 1995), 81-2.

[2] See, for example, S. Chakotin, The Rape of the Masses: The Psychology of Totalitarian Political Propaganda (1940).


Paul , says: Show Comment May 29, 2020 at 6:54 pm GMT

Given the Zionist treatment of the indigenous Palestinian people, it is odd to hear Jews complain about fascism.
Priss Factor , says: Website Show Comment May 30, 2020 at 12:22 am GMT
True fascism is about exposing and exploring the true nature of power.

Jews are crypto-gangster-fascists who project 'fascist' fantasies on the other.
A diversionary trick.

Observator , says: Show Comment May 30, 2020 at 12:22 am GMT
Fascism's unforgivable sin was its spot-on critique of the failure of liberal democracy, which, it argued, was the inevitable result of its corruption by capitalism. Eighteenth century liberalism broke the power of absolutism but in time it devolved into a reactionary movement, redirected specifically to defuse the popular revolutionary socialism of the nineteenth century, which Germany revived.

The elephant in the liberal living room is the embarrassing reality that capitalist society is organized on the exploitation of one class by another. Fascism spoke the inconvenient truth that the ideals of the Enlightenment – equality, individuality, democracy – must collapse into institutionalized injustice under the all-pervasive directive of the primacy of the private accumulation of capital over all other concerns.

In this way, fascism is the thinking person's version of Marxism, stripped of the latter's absurd mismeasures of human nature. Fascism restored the traditional fabric of society, placing the needs of the national community above the selfish whims of the individual. In so doing it gave to otherwise alienated individuals the sense of common purpose and connection to others that are so vital to mental health.

And only a strong authoritarian state can claim and effectively wield the power necessary to undo the damage that capitalism does and to contend with the many domestic and foreign adversaries which a truly class-free social revolution inevitable creates.

No wonder the mortal adversaries, western imperialism and Soviet communism, were so terrified of this existential challenge to their oppressive systems that they made temporary common cause of ruthlessly annihilating Germany in history's most destructive war.

Johnnie Tumbleweed , says: Show Comment May 30, 2020 at 5:02 am GMT
This is one of the best written, most informative and useful articles ever published here. But the photograph of Madelaine Albright in particular should have been accompanied by some sort of warning. "Hideous crone" understates the horror.
obvious , says: Show Comment May 31, 2020 at 1:53 am GMT
@Observator You lost me at "strong authoritarian State". Which human monkeys were those? How is the already strong authoritarian State bad but if only a new set of talking human monkeys is "recognized", that will make everything better and different?

Fascism is the cry of the lower middle class who do not understand how things work or where they came from. It is an urban tryharder phenomenon. Very short attention spans.

George Orwell understood this: he was tolerant but realistic, and "conservative" in a natural way, all the time grasping the nature of Capitalism, that man needs to be set free not governed by others. Liberal Democracy is just a means to stablise government instead of civil wars.

Personal liberty and private order are much more important and effective than grasping schemes.

Malla , says: Show Comment May 31, 2020 at 9:32 am GMT
@obvious "Hitler" is realizing that Vulture Capitalism and Marxist Socialism have the same elite masters and revolting against it in the interest of the people.
Verymuchalive , says: Show Comment May 31, 2020 at 12:55 pm GMT
@Pheasant True, and he makes no mention of Paul Gottfried's Fascism: the Career of a Concept. Although Jewish, Prof Gottfried is a paleoconservative and his books are always carefully written. His work on Fascism is probably the best recent work on the subject. I don't know why Dr Joyce didn't mention it.
The Germ Theory of Disease , says: Show Comment May 31, 2020 at 7:41 pm GMT
Interesting (and alarming) essay by Dr.. Joyce. Alarming because the sheer relentlessness and vindictiveness of these people is matched only by the vacuity, shallowness and spite of their ostensible "intellectual" product.

A few thoughts

1. Actual real Fascism is of course dead as a doornail, and has been since the 1950s at the absolute latest. The word "fascist" is simply a bogeyman, used by Jews and their playthings to frighten the public, to sell books, and to denote whatever naughty thing they don't happen to like at the moment -- as Dr. Joyce shows. (So-called "Islamo-fascism" is, if possible, even funnier as a name-calling stunt, and more mistaken, than calling Trump a fascist.)

2. In macro-historical terms, the only reason we pay any attention at all to real fascism is that it ended in a massive train-wreck, as so many things do (who fusses over the far more impact-laden bloodbaths of Timur the Lame these days?). But unluckily, since the Jews' ox got gored as well in the general wreckage, the Owners Of All Megaphones will never ever shut up about it. That's all this really ever is, innit.

3. Again in macro-historical terms, what Fascism really was, in the broadest sense, was simply one among several rather crude and clumsy attempts made in the early Twentieth Century to make some sort of sense out of the confusing, and very very recent, transformation of economic, political and industrial terms brought about by the sudden onset of the Machine Age. In the same way that it was the unknown effects of the Machine Age which made the Great War such a vaster cataclysm than previous wars, the Machine Age rattled every single bar in every single cage of the European order. Fascism was only one of the rather brutish attempts to navigate the new terrain. (to be continued)

The Germ Theory of Disease , says: Show Comment May 31, 2020 at 8:10 pm GMT
4. We no longer worry about fascism, or have to deal with it, for two reasons. One, it was decisively defeated militarily and discredited ideologically; and two (and more importantly), we no longer live in the Machine Age! We moved very quickly into the Technological/Information Age, and from there into the Immigration/Industrial Outsourcing Age. Fascism was an attempt to solve the problems of undernourished semi-literate White men with large families who lived in urban slums and who worked in giant factories full of deafening machinery. That political constituency has ceased to exist.

5. Centuries from now, the Peruvian robot historians will tell a very different story about the Second World War, which was of course the apotheosis and endgame of fascism, than the story we tell ourselves now -- or rather, allow the Jews to tell for us, when they aren't screaming it at us and drilling it in with sleep-deprivation techniques.

Levels of apportionment can be argued over, but it's certainly true that the Jews bore substantial responsibility for the actions and circumstances that led to the war. It could be argued that one of its chief architects was none other than Henry Morgenthau. In any event, the robots will view the early career of Hitler as a sort of premature German version of Gandhi -- Hitler kicked the Jewish Empire out of Germany, and got the Germans out from under the Jewish yoke, in the same way that Gandhi kicked the British Empire out of India. But the Jewish Empire (which did and does exist in Europe although not on maps, controlling institutions rather than territory, yet making war and peace just like other nations all the same) did not go quietly, and instead mustered its British, American and Soviet satrapies to pursue proxy revenge. The Hitler regime of course then degenerated through its own failures into madness, incompetence, stupidity and evil, but the ball was already in play.

The point of bringing this up is the role of Jewish vindictiveness in keeping Fascism afloat as a zombie all-purpose threat to all and sundry. The "threat of fascist evil" is simply the threat of a nation or people getting the zany unacceptable notion into their heads that their country might after all be better off without Jews in charge.

And that calamity cannot of course even be thought about or spoken of, much less implemented.

Colin Wright , says: Website Show Comment June 1, 2020 at 4:37 am GMT
Defining fascism's easy. 'Antifa' is out there reprising early fascism right now.

You physically attack people who disagree with you. It's not complicated.

[May 31, 2020] Our Grim Future by Pepe Escobar

A pretty silly rant, but some point might worth your attention...
Notable quotes:
"... I don't believe Marxist Social/Communism is the answer, as it has proven to always fail, as it is at complete odds with human nature. It drains creativity and productivity because they aren't rewarded ..."
"... Protests and Maidan open up fabulous opportunities for protest leaders. Chocolate oligarch Poroshenko became president. The little-known leader of the party faction in the parliament, Yatsenyuk, became prime minister. ..."
May 31, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Meanwhile, what is going to happen to assorted fascisms? Eric Hobsbawm showed us in Age of Extremes how the key to the fascist right was always mass mobilization: "Fascists were the revolutionaries of the counter-revolution".

We may be heading further than mere, crude neofascism. Call it Hybrid Neofascism. Their political stars bow to global market imperatives while switching political competition to the cultural arena.

That's what true "illiberalism" is all about: the mix between neoliberalism – unrestricted capital mobility, Central Bank diktats – and political authoritarianism. Here's where we find Trump, Modi and Bolsonaro.

...Even if neoliberalism was dead, and it's not, the world is still encumbered with its corpse – to paraphrase Nietzsche a propos of God.

And even as a triple catastrophe – sanitary, social and climatic – is now unequivocal, the ruling matrix – starring the Masters of the Universe managing the financial casino – won't stop resisting any drive towards change.

... Realpolitik once again points to a post-Lockdown turbo-capitalist framework, where the illiberalism of the 1% – with fascistic elements – and naked turbo-financialization are boosted by reinforced exploitation of an exhausted and now largely unemployed workforce.

Post-Lockdown turbo-capitalism is once again reasserting itself after four decades of Thatcherization, or – to be polite – hardcore neoliberalism. Progressive forces still don't have the ammunition to revert the logic of extremely high profits for the ruling classes – EU governance included – and for large global corporations as well.


-- ALIEN -- , 2 minutes ago

Allowing the continued uncontrolled exploitation of planetary resources will lead to global ecosystem collapse, killing most humans.

Cheap Chinese Crap , 10 minutes ago

Good God, it 's like this guy is giving a seminar in technocratic buzzword salad recognition.

"It takes someone of Marx's caliber to build a full-fledged, 21st century eco-socialist ideology, and capable of long-term, sustained mobilization. Aux armes, citoyens."

Aux armes, indeed. But not to erect an oligarchy of self-appointed experts to rule us with an iron hand. I rather prefer the idea of pulling them off their comfy, government-compensated sinecures and dragging them down into the mud with everyone else.

Anyone who thinks they are better qualified to run your life than you yourself is an enemy of the Enlightenment. Away with them all.

Leguran , 1 hour ago

Something worthwhile to note is missing among Pepe's carnage....

What has happened is that every imaginable organized group from doctors to pilots to lawyers, to farmers, to pharma companies, etc. has carved out a special slice of the economy especially for themselves.

In Feudal times rivers could not be navigated because cockroach lords would charge fees to use the rivers. That is exactly the same arrangement today but instead of using force of arms, laws are used. Our economy is choking on all these impediments.

mtumba , 2 hours ago

I agree that we need a revolution, and that the .01% globalist "elites" have proven to be not only craven, arrogant and greedy - but also stupid beyond redemption.

But I don't believe Marxist Social/Communism is the answer, as it has proven to always fail, as it is at complete odds with human nature. It drains creativity and productivity because they aren't rewarded, and it rewards laziness and inertia, because the absolute minimum of effort results in the barest level needed to survive, which - oddly - is enough for many.

I think it would be great to give actual capitalism a try, with extremely limited govt - a govt that ONLY provides for the common defense and enforcement of contract laws and protection against crimes of violence and property theft. NOT crony-capitalism that takes command over the resources of a nation's klepotcratic govt by the .01% richest and their sycophantic bottom feeder lawyers, lobbyists, corrupt politicians and other enablers.

Snout the First , 3 hours ago

That was sure a lot of words, needlessly making something simple difficult. Here's what it all boils down to:

PKKA , 3 hours ago

Protests and Maidan open up fabulous opportunities for protest leaders. Chocolate oligarch Poroshenko became president. The little-known leader of the party faction in the parliament, Yatsenyuk, became prime minister.

You know that on the project of an epic wall between Ukraine and Russia, Yatsenyuk stole $ 1 billion but did not build a wall. A moron with a certificate from a psycho hospital Andrei Parubiy became the speaker of parliament. You did not know that Parubiy had a certificate of moronity from a psycho hospital? Now you know. Boxer Vitali Klitschko became mayor of Kiev. Vitaly pronounces the words in syllables and wrinkles his forehead for a long time before expressing a thought. You can even physically hear the creak of gears as they spin and creak in Klitschko's head. Do you know what rabble passed in the Ukrainian parliament? Bandits, crooks, nazis, morons, thieves and idiots! So the protests open up fabulous career opportunities and enrichment!

play_arrow
Phillyguy , 4 hours ago

The American public has a front row seat, watching US economic decline. This process has been ongoing since the mid 1970's, as corporate profits slumped. In response the ruling elite enacted a series of Neo-liberal economic policies- multiple tax cuts for the wealthy, attacks on the poor and labor, job outsourcing, financial de-regulation, lack of spending on public and private infrastructure and spending $ trillions of taxpayer money on the Pentagon and strategic debacles in Afghanistan (longest war in US history), Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen. In total, these policies have been a disaster for the average American family.

The ruling elite are well aware of American economic decline, accelerated by the Coronavirus pandemic. Fascism comes to the fore when capitalism breaks down, and under extreme conditions, the ruling elite use fascism as an ideological rationale to harness state power- Legislature and police, to maintain class structure and wealth distribution. Western capitalism is incapable of reversing its economic decline and as a result, we are seeing fascism reemerging in the US, EU and Brazil. Donald Trump is the face of American fascism. Michael Parenti provides an excellent historical analysis of fascism. See: Michael Parenti- Functions of Fascism (Real History) 1 of 4 Jan 27, 2008; Link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0Bc4KJx2Ao

Vigilante , 4 hours ago

How come 'fascist' Trump is being attacked 24/7 by the Deep State though?

They should be on his side if your assertions are correct

Fascism resides mostly on the Left end of the spectrum...and 'Woke' capital is throwing its lot with the 'progressives' these days

bshirley1968 , 4 hours ago

It's your perception he is being attacked. Dude, wake up.

The best the deep state has to run against Trump is Joe Biden? They are that stupid? They are that weak? If they are that stupid and weak, how can they be a conceivable, real threat.

You are being played. You imagine there are good guys that you can trust......and that is why you are being played.

HomeOfTheHypocrite , 3 hours ago

The ruling class is currently divided between those who are ready to prepare fascism and those who want to continue on with neoliberalism. Trump represents one faction of the ruling class. His political opponents in the Deep State represent another. None of them have any genuine concern for the fate of the American worker. Trump, if judged by his actions and not his words, is nothing but a charlatan who mouths populist phrases while appointing billionaire aristocrats to political positions and lavishing investment bankers with trillions of tax dollars.

CatInTheHat , 2 hours ago

This is the problem with both sides cult followers: the insanity behind the idea that these elite somehow have their hands tied behind their backs as they ALL move is toward fascism.

The 2 party system is a ONE party right wing fascist one. Trump is merely a figure head. People listen to what a politician says and NOT what he does behind their backs.

Trump is 1000% Zionazi just like the rest of them

HomeOfTheHypocrite , 2 hours ago

"basically it looks alot like the age old battle between fascism and communism"

Perhaps on the streets, but not within the ruling class. The ruling class, including the Democrats, are utterly opposed to communism or socialism. Every Democratic congressperson with maybe one exception stood and applauded Trump's anti-socialist rants during his State of the Union addresses. Nancy Pelosi: "We're capitalist and that's just the way it is." Elizabeth Warren (supposedly a radical): "I'm capitalist to my bones."

"Let's say for example these protesters managed to organize well enough to stage a coup d'etat and take over - what next ?"

There's little chance of that. They are completely disorganized and lack any sort of political program. But, if you're giving me the task of developing a political program for them, I'll try to offer some suggestions that could be accomplished without a Pinochet or Stalin-style bloodletting.

1. Busting up the monopolies and cartels
2. Raising taxes on the rich
3. A government jobs program to combat unemployment
4. A massive curtailment of the military budget
5. A massive curtailment of the policing and prison budget
6. Free government healthcare (without banning private-sector healthcare)

The first three of these political tasks were accomplished in the US in the 1930s without the need for "black ops, gulags, secret police, and all the rest of it." Major policy changes have not always required mass repression. But they do require a serious enough political party to disassociate itself entirely from the ruling class Democrats and Republicans. During the 30s there was a significant rise in various populist and socialist parties. Much of FDR's policies and statements were a response to the threat they posed to established power. There is a famous quote where he talks about having to "throw a few of these [millionaires] to the wolves" in order to save America from the crackpot ideas of the "communists" and "Huey Longians."

I completely share your concern related to the use of repression to implement social and economic policies. Neither the fascists nor the communists have a thing to offer a free people so long as they rely on tyranny to enforce their program. Above all democracy and the natural rights of individuals must be preserved.

Jedclampetisdead , 5 hours ago

If this country has any chance, we have to execute the Zionist bankers and their minions

new game , 5 hours ago

What is and will be: Corporate Fascism.

I defy anyone to explain other wise.

Go to the World Economic Forum web page and meet your masters.

Billionaires shaping YOUR future with their fortunes from corporations.

Their wealth was had by joint ventures with bought and paid for politicians and lobbyist

crafted legislation to maximize their wealth. This fakdemic absolutely consolidates more wealth

to fewer corporations by design. Serf and kings/queens. The club personified by immense wealth disparity.

In a continuing process, the social scoring via digital systems will limit freedoms to state approved corporate diktats

that clamp like a boot to the neck. **** here, 6 tissue sections and recycled bug **** for food.

brave new gatsy world right now with the roll out out of 3 pronged vaccine controlling your brains emotions.

It is all so obvious to anyone with an ability to see two steps into the future. navigate the future accordingly.

They are in control, the first denial that must be removed to see clearly the next step. sad but true.

simple **** maynard...

[May 26, 2020] fascists are the communist counterpart at the bourgeois mass movement front. They neutralize communism in a way traditional liberalism can't, because of the very nature of class exploitation. That's why fascism is irrational

May 26, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

vk , May 25 2020 15:19 utc | 83

Mussolini then realized something very simple: the human being is not inherently rational. Reason is something that does not occur naturally to human beings, but is rather something human beings must learn. Therefore, communism could be defeated in elections and in the streets if the massification of reason was contained in due time. Hence the crude, irrational violence of fascism. And it worked: the communists were defeated by violence in Italy, and Hitler would do the same in the 1932-3 elections (who was leading the persecution of communists at the time? Future second-in-command Hermann Göring).

If I could sum up fascism and all its different variants in one word, it would be this: irrationality. Fascism must resort to irrational arguments and narratives in order to manipulate the masses and gain monopoly of violence and, once its hegemony is secure, resort to art and aesthetics to keep the consensus, in the sense that political domination must be presented to the public as a form of art, and not as a field of class struggle. This can be clearly illustrated by the Nazi chain of command: Hitler (political leader, mastermind), Göring (violence, armed forces), Goebbels (propaganda) and... Albert Speer, the ideal Nazi (architect cum military).

[May 24, 2020] Guccifer 2.0 was always John Brennan 1.0

Highly recommended!
Images deleted.
False flag operation by CIA or CrowdStrike as CIA constructor: CIA ears protrude above Gussifer 2.0 hat.
Notable quotes:
"... Guccifer 2.0 fabricated evidence to claim credit for hacking the DNC (using files that were really Podesta attachments) . ..."
"... Guccifer 2.0’s Russian breadcrumbs mostly came from deliberate processes & needless editing of documents . ..."
"... Guccifer 2.0’s Russian communications signals came from the persona choosing to use a proxy server in Moscow and choosing to use a Russian VPN service as end-points (and they used an email service that forwards the sender’s IP address, which made identifying that signal a relatively trivial task.) ..."
"... A considerable volume of evidence pointed at Guccifer 2.0’s activities being in American timezones (twice as many types of indicators were found pointing at Guccifer 2.0’s activities being in American timezones than anywhere else). ..."
"... The American timezones were incidental to other activities (eg. blogging , social media , emailing a journalist , archiving files , etc) and some of these were recorded independently by service providers. ..."
"... A couple of pieces of evidence with Russian indicators present had accompanying locale indicators that contradicted this which suggested the devices used hadn’t been properly set up for use in Russia (or Romania) but may have been suitable for other countries (including America) . ..."
"... On the same day that Guccifer 2.0 was plastering Russian breadcrumbs on documents through a deliberate process, choosing to use Russian-themed end-points and fabricating evidence to claim credit for hacking the DNC, the operation attributed itself to WikiLeaks. ..."
"... Guccifer 2.0 chose to use insecure communications to ask WikiLeaks to confirm receipt of “DNC emails” on July 6, 2016. Confirmation of this was not provided at that time but WikiLeaks did confirm receipt of a “1gb or so” archive on July 18, 2016. ..."
"... The alleged GRU officer we are told was part of an operation to deflect from Russian culpability suggested that Assange “may be connected with Russians”. ..."
"... Guccifer 2.0 fabricated evidence to claim credit for hacking the DNC, covered itself (and its files) in what were essentially a collection of “Made In Russia” labels through deliberate processes and decisions made by the persona, and, then, it attributed itself to WikiLeaks with a claim that was contradicted by subsequent communications between both parties. ..."
"... While we are expected to accept that Guccifer 2.0’s efforts between July 6 and July 18 were a sincere effort to get leaks to WikiLeaks, considering everything we now know about the persona, it seems fair to question whether Guccifer 2.0’s intentions towards WikiLeaks may have instead been malicious. ..."
"... Guccifer 2.0 was always John Brennan 1.0 ..."
"... Was Guccifer II part of the Stefan Halper organization that lured Papadopoulos and maliciously maligned others? ..."
"... I believe Guccifer 2.0 was created by the CIA to falsely pin blame on the Russians for info that Seth Rich gave to WikiLeaks. Read for yourself: http://g-2.space/ ..."
May 24, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Tim Leonard via ConsortiumNews.com,

Why would an alleged GRU officer - supposedly part of an operation to deflect Russian culpability - suggest that Assange “may be connected with Russians?”

In December, I reported on digital forensics evidence relating to Guccifer 2.0 and highlighted several key points about the mysterious persona that Special Counsel Robert Mueller claims was a front for Russian intelligence to leak Democratic Party emails to WikiLeaks:

On the same day that Guccifer 2.0 was plastering Russian breadcrumbs on documents through a deliberate process, choosing to use Russian-themed end-points and fabricating evidence to claim credit for hacking the DNC, the operation attributed itself to WikiLeaks.

This article questions what Guccifer 2.0’s intentions were in relation to WikiLeaks in the context of what has been discovered by independent researchers during the past three years.

Timing

On June 12, 2016, in an interview with ITV’s Robert Peston, Julian Assange confirmed that WikiLeaks had emails relating to Hillary Clinton that the organization intended to publish. This announcement was prior to any reported contact with Guccifer 2.0 (or with DCLeaks).

On June 14, 2016, an article was published in The Washington Post citing statements from two CrowdStrike executives alleging that Russian intelligence hacked the DNC and stole opposition research on Trump. It was apparent that the statements had been made in the 48 hours prior to publication as they referenced claims of kicking hackers off the DNC network on the weekend just passed (June 11-12, 2016).

On that same date, June 14, DCLeaks contacted WikiLeaks via Twitter DM and for some reason suggested that both parties coordinate their releases of leaks. (It doesn’t appear that WikiLeaks responded until September 2016).

On June 15, 2016, Guccifer 2.0 appeared for the first time. He fabricated evidence to claim credit for hacking the DNC (using material that wasn’t from the DNC), used a proxy in Moscow to carry out searches (for mostly English language terms including a grammatically incorrect and uncommon phrase that the persona would use in its first blog post) and used a Russian VPN service to share the fabricated evidence with reporters. All of this combined conveniently to provide false corroboration for several claims made by CrowdStrike executives that were published just one day earlier in The Washington Post.

[CrowdStrike President Shawn Henry testified under oath behind closed doors on Dec. 5, 2017 to the U.S. House intelligence committee that his company had no evidence that Russian actors removed anything from the DNC servers. This testimony was only released earlier this month.]

First Claim Versus First Contact

On the day it emerged, the Guccifer 2.0 operation stated that it had given material to WikiLeaks and asserted that the organization would publish that material soon:

By stating that WikiLeaks would “publish them soon” the Guccifer 2.0 operation implied that it had received confirmation of intent to publish.

However, the earliest recorded communication between Guccifer 2.0 and WikiLeaks didn’t occur until a week later (June 22, 2016) when WikiLeaks reached out to Guccifer 2.0 and suggested that the persona send any new material to them rather than doing what it was doing:

[Excerpt from Special Counsel Mueller’s report. Note: “stolen from the DNC” is an editorial insert by the special counsel.]

If WikiLeaks had already received material and confirmed intent to publish prior to this direct message, why would they then suggest what they did when they did? WikiLeaks says it had no prior contact with Guccifer 2.0 despite what Guccifer 2.0 had claimed.

Needing To Know What WikiLeaks Had

Fortunately, information that gives more insight into communications on June 22, 2016 was made available on April 29, 2020 via a release of the Roger Stone arrest warrant application.

Here is the full conversation on that date (according to the application):

@WikiLeaks: Do you have secure communications?

@WikiLeaks: Send any new material here for us to review and it will have a much higher impact than what you are doing. No other media will release the full material.

@GUCCIFER_2: what can u suggest for a secure connection? Soft, keys, etc? I’m ready to cooperate with you, but I need to know what’s in your archive 80gb? Are there only HRC emails? Or some other docs? Are there any DNC docs? If it’s not secret when you are going to release it?

@WikiLeaks: You can send us a message in a .txt file here [link redacted]

@GUCCIFER_2: do you have GPG?

Why would Guccifer 2.0 need to know what material WikiLeaks already had? Certainly, if it were anything Guccifer 2.0 had sent (or the GRU had sent) he wouldn’t have had reason to inquire.

The more complete DM details provided here also suggest that both parties had not yet established secure communications.

Further communications were reported to have taken place on June 24, 2016:

@GUCCIFER_2: How can we chat? Do u have jabber or something like that?

@WikiLeaks: Yes, we have everything. We’ve been busy celebrating Brexit. You can also email an encrypted message to [email protected]. They key is here.

and June 27, 2016:

@GUCCIFER_2: Hi, i’ve just sent you an email with a text message encrypted and an open key.

@WikiLeaks: Thanks.

@GUCCIFER_2: waiting for ur response. I send u some interesting piece.

Guccifer 2.0 said he needed to know what was in the 88GB ‘insurance’ archive that WikiLeaks had posted on June 16, 2016 and it’s clear that, at this stage, secure communications had not been established between both parties (which would seem to rule out the possibility of encrypted communications prior to June 15, 2016, making Guccifer 2.0’s initial claims about WikiLeaks even more doubtful).

Claims DCLeaks Is A Sub-Project Of WikiLeaks

On June 27, 2016, in an email chain to the Smoking Gun (exposing Guccifer 2.0 apparently being in the Central US timezone), Guccifer 2.0 claimed that DCLeaks was a “sub-project” of WikiLeaks.

There’s no evidence to support this. “Envoy le” is also a mistake as standard French emails read: “Envoye le.” Claims allegedly made by Guccifer 2.0 in a Twitter DM to DCLeaks on September 15, 2016 suggest that he knew this was nonsense:

There was no evidence of WikiLeaks mentioning this to Guccifer 2.0 nor any reason for why WikiLeaks couldn’t just send a DM to DCLeaks themselves if they had wanted to.

(It should also be noted that this Twitter DM activity between DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 is alleged by Mueller to be communications between officers within the same unit of the GRU, who, for some unknown reason, decided to use Twitter DMs to relay such information rather than just communicate face to face or securely via their own local network.)

Guccifer 2.0 lied about DCLeaks being a sub-project of WikiLeaks and then, over two months later, was seen trying to encourage DCLeaks to communicate with WikiLeaks by relaying an alleged request from WikiLeaks that there is no record of WikiLeaks ever making (and which WikiLeaks could have done themselves, directly, if they had wanted to).

The ‘About 1GB’ / ‘1Gb or So’ Archive

On July 4, 2016, Guccifer 2.0 contacted WikiLeaks:

@GUCCIFER_2: hi there, check up r email, waiting for reply.

This was followed up on July 6, 2016 with the following conversation:

@GUCCIFER_2: have you received my parcel?

@WikiLeaks: Not unless it was very recent. [we haven’ t checked in 24h].

@GUCCIFER_2: I sent it yesterday, an archive of about 1 gb. via [website link]. and check your email.

@WikiLeaks: Wil[l] check, thanks.

@GUCCIFER_2: let me know the results.

@WikiLeaks: Please don’t make anything you send to us public. It’s a lot of work to go through it and the impact is severely reduced if we are not the first to publish.

@GUCCIFER_2: agreed. How much time will it take?

@WikiLeaks: likely sometime today.

@GUCCIFER_2: will u announce a publication? and what about 3 docs sent u earlier?

@WikiLeaks: I don’t believe we received them. Nothing on ‘Brexit’ for example.

@GUCCIFER_2: wow. have you checked ur mail?

@WikiLeaks: At least not as of 4 days ago . . . . For security reasons mail cannot be checked for some hours.

@GUCCIFER_2: fuck, sent 4 docs on brexit on jun 29, an archive in gpg ur submission form is too fucking slow, spent the whole day uploading 1 gb.

@WikiLeaks: We can arrange servers 100x as fast. The speed restrictions are to anonymise the path. Just ask for custom fast upload point in an email.

@GUCCIFER_2: will u be able to check ur email?

@WikiLeaks: We’re best with very large data sets. e.g. 200gb. these prove themselves since they’re too big to fake.

@GUCCIFER_2: or shall I send brexit docs via submission once again?

@WikiLeaks: to be safe, send via [web link]

@GUCCIFER_2: can u confirm u received dnc emails?

@WikiLeaks: for security reasons we can’ t confirm what we’ve received here. e.g., in case your account has been taken over by us intelligence and is probing to see what we have.

@GUCCIFER_2: then send me an encrypted email.

@WikiLeaks: we can do that. but the security people are in another time zone so it will need to wait some hours.

@WikiLeaks: what do you think about the FBl’ s failure to charge? To our mind the clinton foundation investigation has always been the more serious. we would be very interested in all the emails/docs from there. She set up quite a lot of front companies. e.g in sweden.

@GUCCIFER_2: ok, i’ll be waiting for confirmation. as for investigation, they have everything settled, or else I don’t know how to explain that they found a hundred classified docs but fail to charge her.

@WikiLeaks: She’s too powerful to charge at least without something stronger. s far as we know, the investigation into the clinton foundation remains open e hear the FBI are unhappy with Loretta Lynch over meeting Bill, because he’s a target in that investigation.

@GUCCIFER_2: do you have any info about marcel lazar? There’ve been a lot of rumors of late.

@WikiLeaks: the death? [A] fake story.

@WikiLeaks: His 2013 screen shots of Max Blumenthal’s inbox prove that Hillary secretly deleted at least one email about Libya that was meant to be handed over to Congress. So we were very interested in his co-operation with the FBI.

@GUCCIFER_2: some dirty games behind the scenes believe Can you send me an email now?

@WikiLeaks: No; we have not been able to activate the people who handle it. Still trying.

@GUCCIFER_2: what about tor submission? [W]ill u receive a doc now?

@WikiLeaks: We will get everything sent on [weblink].” [A]s long as you see \”upload succseful\” at the end. [I]f you have anything hillary related we want it in the next tweo [sic] days prefable [sic] because the DNC is approaching and she will solidify bernie supporters behind her after.

@GUCCIFER_2: ok. I see.

@WikiLeaks: [W]e think the public interest is greatest now and in early october.

@GUCCIFER_2: do u think a lot of people will attend bernie fans rally in philly? Will it affect the dnc anyhow?

@WikiLeaks: bernie is trying to make his own faction leading up to the DNC. [S]o he can push for concessions (positions/policies) or, at the outside, if hillary has a stroke, is arrested etc, he can take over the nomination. [T]he question is this: can bemies supporters+staff keep their coherency until then (and after). [O]r will they dis[s]olve into hillary’ s camp? [P]resently many of them are looking to damage hilary [sic] inorder [sic] to increase their unity and bargaining power at the DNC. Doubt one rally is going to be that significant in the bigger scheme. [I]t seems many of them will vote for hillary just to prevent trump from winning.

@GUCCIFER_2: sent brexit docs successfully.

@WikiLeaks: :))).

@WikiLeaks: we think trump has only about a 25% chance of winning against hillary so conflict between bernie and hillary is interesting.

@GUCCIFER_2: so it is.

@WikiLeaks: also, it’ s important to consider what type of president hillary might be. If bernie and trump retain their groups past 2016 in significant number, then they are a restraining force on hillary.

[Note: This was over a week after the Brexit referendum had taken place, so this will not have had any impact on the results of that. It also doesn’t appear that WikiLeaks released any Brexit content around this time.]

On July 14, 2016, Guccifer 2.0 sent an email to WikiLeaks, this was covered in the Mueller report:

It should be noted that while the attachment sent was encrypted, the email wasn’t and both the email contents and name of the file were readable.

The persona then opted, once again, for insecure communications via Twitter DMs:

@GUCCIFER_2: ping. Check ur email. sent u a link to a big archive and a pass.

@WikiLeaks: great, thanks; can’t check until tomorrow though.

On July 17, 2016, the persona contacted WikiLeaks again:

@GUCCIFER_2: what bout now?

On July 18, 2016, WikiLeaks responded and more was discussed:

@WikiLeaks: have the 1 Gb or so archive.

@GUCCIFER_2: have u managed to extract the files?

@WikiLeaks: yes. turkey coup has delayed us a couple of days. [O]therwise all ready[.]

@GUCCIFER_2: so when r u about to make a release?

@WikiLeaks: this week. [D]o you have any bigger datasets? [D]id you get our fast transfer details?

@GUCCIFER_2: i’ll check it. did u send it via email?

@WikiLeaks: yes.

@GUCCIFER_2: to [web link]. [I] got nothing.

@WikiLeaks: check your other mail? this was over a week ago.

@GUCCIFER_2:oh, that one, yeah, [I] got it.

@WikiLeaks: great. [D]id it work?

@GUCCIFER_2:[I] haven’ t tried yet.

@WikiLeaks: Oh. We arranged that server just for that purpose. Nothing bigger?

@GUCCIFER_2: let’s move step by step, u have released nothing of what [I] sent u yet.

@WikiLeaks: How about you transfer it all to us encrypted. [T]hen when you are happy, you give us the decrypt key. [T]his way we can move much faster. (A]lso it is protective for you if we already have everything because then there is no point in trying to shut you up.

@GUCCIFER_2: ok, i’ll ponder it

Again, we see a reference to the file being approximately one gigabyte in size.

Guccifer 2.0’s “so when r u about to make a release?” seems to be a question about his files. However, it could have been inferred as generally relating to what WikiLeaks had or even material relating to the “Turkey Coup” that WikiLeaks had mentioned in the previous sentence and that were published by the following day (July 19, 2016).

The way this is reported in the Mueller report, though, prevented this potential ambiguity being known (by not citing the exact question that Guccifer 2.0 had asked and the context immediately preceding it.

Four days later, WikiLeaks published the DNC emails.

Later that same day, Guccifer 2.0 tweeted: “@wikileaks published #DNCHack docs I’d given them!!!”.

Guccifer 2.0 chose to use insecure communications to ask WikiLeaks to confirm receipt of “DNC emails” on July 6, 2016. Confirmation of this was not provided at that time but WikiLeaks did confirm receipt of a “1gb or so” archive on July 18, 2016.

Guccifer 2.0’s emails to WikiLeaks were also sent insecurely.

We cannot be certain that WikiLeaks statement about making a release was in relation to Guccifer 2.0’s material and there is even a possibility that this could have been in reference to the Erdogan leaks published by WikiLeaks on July 19, 2016.

Ulterior Motives?

While the above seems troubling there are a few points worth considering:

Considering all of this and the fact Guccifer 2.0 effectively covered itself in “Made In Russia” labels (by plastering files in Russian metadata and choosing to use a Russian VPN service and a proxy in Moscow for it’s activities) on the same day it first attributed itself to WikiLeaks, it’s fair to suspect that Guccifer 2.0 had malicious intent towards WikiLeaks from the outset.

If this was the case, Guccifer 2.0 may have known about the DNC emails by June 30, 2016 as this is when the persona first started publishing attachments from those emails.

Seth Rich Mentioned By Both Parties

WikiLeaks Offers Reward

On August 9, 2016, WikiLeaks tweeted:

ANNOUNCE: WikiLeaks has decided to issue a US$20k reward for information leading to conviction for the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich.

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) August 9, 2016

In an interview with Nieuwsuur that was posted the same day, Julian Assange explained that the reward was for a DNC staffer who he said had been “shot in the back, murdered”. When the interviewer suggested it was a robbery Assange disputed it and stated that there were no findings.

When the interviewer asked if Seth Rich was a source, Assange stated, “We don’t comment on who our sources are”.

When pressed to explain WikiLeaks actions, Assange stated that the reward was being offered because WikiLeaks‘ sources were concerned by the incident. He also stated that WikiLeaks were investigating.

Speculation and theories about Seth Rich being a source for WikiLeaks soon propagated to several sites and across social media.

Guccifer 2.0 Claims Seth Rich As His Source

On August 25, 2016, approximately three weeks after the reward was offered, Julian Assange was due to be interviewed on Fox News on the topic of Seth Rich.

On that same day, in a DM conversation with the actress Robbin Young, Guccifer 2.0 claimed that Seth was his source (despite previously claiming he obtained his material by hacking the DNC).

Why did Guccifer 2.0 feel the need to attribute itself to Seth at this time?

[Note: I am not advocating for any theory and am simply reporting on Guccifer 2.0’s effort to attribute itself to Seth Rich following the propagation of Rich-WikiLeaks association theories online.]

Special Counsel Claims

In Spring, 2019, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who was named to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. general election, delivered his final report.

It claimed:

Guccifer 2.0 contradicted his own hacking claims to allege that Seth Rich was his source and did so on the same day that Julian Assange was due to be interviewed by Fox News (in relation to Seth Rich).

No communications between Guccifer 2.0 and Seth Rich have ever been reported.

Suggesting Assange Connected To Russians

In the same conversation Guccifer 2.0 had with Robbin Young where Rich’s name is mentioned (on August 25, 2016), the persona also provided a very interesting response to Young mentioning “Julian” (in reference to Julian Assange):

The alleged GRU officer we are told was part of an operation to deflect from Russian culpability suggested that Assange “may be connected with Russians”.

Guccifer 2.0’s Mentions of WikiLeaks and Assange

Guccifer 2.0 mentioned WikiLeaks or associated himself with their output on several occasions:

  1. June 15, 2016: claiming to have sent WikiLeaks material on his blog.
  2. June 27, 2016: when he claimed DCLeaks was a sub-project of WikiLeaks.
  3. July 13, 2016: Joe Uchill of The Hill reported that Guccifer 2.0 had contacted the publication and stated: “The press gradually forget about me, [W]ikileaks is playing for time and have some more docs.”
  4. July 22nd, 2016: claimed credit when WikiLeaks published the DNC leaks.
  5. August 12, 2016: It was reported in The Hill that Guccifer 2.0 had released material to the publication. They reported: “The documents released to The Hill are only the first section of a much larger cache. The bulk, the hacker said, will be released on WikiLeaks.”
  6. August 12, 2016: Tweeted that he would “send the major trove of the #DCCC materials and emails to #wikileaks“.
  7. September 15, 2016: telling DCLeaks that WikiLeaks wanted to get in contact with them.
  8. October 4, 2016: Congratulating WikiLeaks on their 10th anniversary via its blog. Also states: “Julian, you are really cool! Stay safe and sound!”. (This was the same day on which Guccifer 2.0 published his “Clinton Foundation” files that were clearly not from the Clinton Foundation.)
  9. October 17, 2016: via Twitter, stating “i’m here and ready for new releases. already changed my location thanks @wikileaks for a good job!”

Guccifer 2.0 also made some statements in response to WikiLeaks or Assange being mentioned:

  1. June 17, 2016: in response to The Smoking Gun asking if Assange would publish the same material it was publishing, Guccifer 2.0 stated: “I gave WikiLeaks the greater part of the files, but saved some for myself,”
  2. August 22, 2016: in response to Raphael Satter suggesting that Guccifer 2.0 send leaks to WikiLeaks, the persona stated: “I gave wikileaks a greater part of docs”.
  3. August 25, 2016: in response to Julian Assange’s name being mentioned in a conversation with Robbin Young, Guccifer 2.0 stated: “he may be connected with Russians”.
  4. October 18, 2016: a BBC reported asked Guccifer 2.0 if he was upset that WikiLeaks had “stole his thunder” and “do you still support Assange?”. Guccifer 2.0 responded: “i’m glad, together we’ll make America great again.”.

Guccifer 2.0 fabricated evidence to claim credit for hacking the DNC, covered itself (and its files) in what were essentially a collection of “Made In Russia” labels through deliberate processes and decisions made by the persona, and, then, it attributed itself to WikiLeaks with a claim that was contradicted by subsequent communications between both parties.

Guccifer 2.0 then went on to lie about WikiLeaks, contradicted its own hacking claims to attribute itself to Seth Rich and even alleged that Julian Assange “may be connected with Russians”.

While we are expected to accept that Guccifer 2.0’s efforts between July 6 and July 18 were a sincere effort to get leaks to WikiLeaks, considering everything we now know about the persona, it seems fair to question whether Guccifer 2.0’s intentions towards WikiLeaks may have instead been malicious.


xxx 2 minutes ago (Edited)

Everything involving the Russian hoax was set up by the Deep States around the world. Implicate, discredit and destroy all those like Rich, Assange, Flynn and those who knew the truth. Kill the messenger....literally.

xxx 10 minutes ago

here's what really happened:

an American hacker breached Podesta's gmail on March 13 2016 and then uploaded it to Wikileaks via Tor sometime between April and May.

the NSA and CIA have hacked into Wikileaks' Tor file server to watch for new leaks to stay ahead of them to prepare. they saw Podesta's emails leaked and launched a counter infowar operation.

Brennan's CIA created the Guccifer 2.0 persona, with phony Russian metadata artifacts, using digital forgery techniques seen in Vault7. Crowdstrike was already on the premises of DNC since 2015, with their overly expensive security scanner watching the DNC network. Crowdstrike had access to any DNC files they wanted. CIA, FBI and Crowdstrike colluded to create a fake leak of DNC docs through their Guccifer 2.0 cutout. they didn't leak any docs of high importance, which is why we never saw any smoking guns from DNC leaks or DCLeaks.

you have to remember, the whole point of this CIAFBINSA operation has nothing to do with Hillary or Trump or influencing the election. the point was to fabricate criminal evidence to use against Assange to finally arrest him and extradite him as well as smear Wikileaks ahead of the looming leak of Podesta's emails.

if CIAFBINSA can frame Assange and Wikileaks as being criminal hackers and/or Russian assets ahead of the Podesta leaks, then they can craft a narrative for the MSM to ignore or distrust most of the Podesta emails. and that is exactly what happened, such as when Chris Cuomo said on CNN that it was illegal for you to read Wikileaks, but not CNN, so you should let CNN tell you what to think about Wikileaks instead of looking at evidence yourself.

this explains why Guccifer 2.0 was so sloppy leaving a trail of Twitter DMs to incriminate himself and Assange along with him.

if this CIAFBINSA entrapment/frame operation ever leaks, it will guarantee the freedom of Assange.

xxx 11 minutes ago

According to Wikipedia, "Guccifer" is Marcel Lazar Lehel, a Rumanian born in 1972, but "Guccifer 2.0" is someone else entirely.

Is that so?

xxx 20 minutes ago (Edited)

The guy from Cyrptome always asserted Assange was some type of deep state puppet, that he was connected somehow. This wouldn't be news to me and its probably why he was scared as hell. The guy is as good as dead, like S. Hussein. Seth Rich was just a puppet that got caught in the wrong game. He was expendable obviously too because well he had a big mouth, he was expendable from the beginning. Somebody mapped this whole **** out, thats for sure.

xxx 28 minutes ago

I am sick and tired of these Deep State and CIA-linked operations trying to put a wrench in the prosecution of people who were engaged in a coup d'etat.

xxx 29 minutes ago

********

xxx 33 minutes ago

At this point what difference does it make? We are all convinced since 2016. It is not going to convince the TDS cases roaming the wilderness.

No arrests, no subpoenas, no warrants, no barging in at 3 am, no perp walks, no tv glare...

Pres. Trump is playing a very risky game. Arrest now, or regret later. And you won't have much time to regret.

The swamp is dark, smelly and deep,

And it has grudges to keep.

xxx 37 minutes ago

Meanwhile- Guccifer 1.0 is still?

- In prison?

- Released?

- 48 month sentence in 2016. Obv no good behavior.

Nice article. Brennan is the dolt he appears.

xxx 41 minutes ago

+1,000 on the investigative work and analyzing it.

Sadly, none of the guilty are in jail. Instead. Assange sits there rotting away.

xxx 44 minutes ago

Why would an alleged GRU officer - supposedly part of an operation to deflect Russian culpability - suggest that Assange "may be connected with Russians?"

Because the AXIS powers of the CIA, Brit secret police and Israeli secret police pay for the campaign to tie Assange to the Russians...

xxx 45 minutes ago

@realDonaldTrump

A lot of interest in this story about Psycho Joe Scarborough. So a young marathon runner just happened to faint in his office, hit her head on his desk, & die? I would think there is a lot more to this story than that? An affair? What about the so-called investigator? Read story!

xxx 45 minutes ago

Why make it harder than it is? Guccifer II = Crowdstrike

xxx 51 minutes ago

Guccifer 2.0 was always John Brennan 1.0

xxx 58 minutes ago (Edited)

Was Guccifer II part of the Stefan Halper organization that lured Papadopoulos and maliciously maligned others?

xxx 1 hour ago

"His name was Seth Rich." The unofficial motto of ZeroHedge...

xxx 1 hour ago

James Guccifer Clapper.

xxx 1 hour ago

Mossad. And their subsidiary CIA.

xxx 1 hour ago

Crowd Strike CEO'S admission under oath that they had no evidence the DNC was hacked by the Russians should make the Russian Hoax predicate abundantly clear.

Justice for Seth Rich!

xxx 1 hour ago

Any influence Assange had on the election was so small that it wouldn't move the needle either way. The real influence and election tampering in the US has always come from the scores of lobbyists and their massive donations that fund the candidates election runs coupled with the wildly inaccurate and agenda driven collusive effort by the MSM. Anyone pointing fingers at the Russians is beyond blind to the unparalleled influence and power these entities have on swaying American minds.

xxx 1 hour ago

ObamaGate.

xxx 1 hour ago (Edited)

Uugh ONCE AGAIN... 4chan already proved guccifer 2.0 was a larp, and the files were not "hacked", they were leaked by Seth Rich. The metadata from the guccifer files is different from the metadata that came from the seth rich files. The dumb fuckers thought they were smart by modifying the author name of the files to make it look like it came from a russian source. They were so ******* inept, they must have forgot (or not have known) to modify the unique 16 digit hex key assigned to the author of the files when they were created..... The ones that seth rich copied had the system administrators name (Warren Flood) as the author and the 16 digit hex key from both file sources were the same - the one assigned to warren flood.

Really sloppy larp!!!

xxx 1 hour ago

This link has all the detail to show Guccifer 2.0 was not Russia. I believe Guccifer 2.0 was created by the CIA to falsely pin blame on the Russians for info that Seth Rich gave to WikiLeaks. Read for yourself: http://g-2.space/

xxx 1 hour ago

This is what people are. Now the species has more power than it can control and that it knows what to do with.

What do you think the result will be?

As for these games of Secret - it's more game than anything truly significant. The significant exists in the bunkers, with the mobile units, in the submarines. Et. al.

But this is a game in which some of the players die - or wish they were dead.

xxx 1 hour ago

And.....?

Public figures and political parties warrant public scrutiny. And didn't his expose in their own words expose the democrats, the mass media, the bureaucracy to the corrupt frauds that they are?

xxx 1 hour ago

Other than the fact that they didn't steal the emails (unless you believe whistleblowers are thief's, one mans source is another mans thief, it's all about who's ox is being gored and you love "leaks" don't you? As long as they work in your favor. Stop with the piety.

xxx 15 minutes ago

That's not the story at all. Did you just read this article?

The democrats were super duper corrupt (before all of this).

They fucked around to ice Bernie out of the primary.

A young staffer Seth Rich knew it and didn't like it. He made the decision to leak the info to the most reputable org for leaks in the world Wikileaks.

IF the DNC had been playing fair, Seth Rich wouldn't have felt the need to leak.

So, the democrats did it to themselves.

And then they created Russiagate to cover it all up.

And murdered a young brave man ... as we know.

xxx 1 hour ago

Assange, another problem Trump failed to fix.

xxx 1 hour ago

Sounds like it came from the same source as the Trump dossier ... MI5.

[May 21, 2020] Mefobills

May 21, 2020 | www.unz.com

says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 8:59 pm GMT 100 Words @Phaeton I pushed the agree button for you.

Here is a link that is more fair to what fascism is.

http://immigration-globalization.blogspot.com/2011/09/what-is-fascism.html

We have a plutocracy which is in bed with corporations, including finance corporations. Our totalitarianism is not fascism.

Fascism arose to fight finance capital. It was the third way between communism and finance capitalism.

People keep bandying the word fascism around because it was changed in meaning post ww2 something like conspiracy after JFK was murdered. The meaning was changed to have a negative reaction in our brains.

Conspiracy is merely people getting together to hatch a plot, or scheme. Fascism was the putting of the polity over capital.

[May 21, 2020] Brave New Normal (Part 2) by C.J. Hopkins

May 21, 2020 | www.unz.com

My columns haven't been very funny recently. This one isn't going to be any funnier. Sorry. Fascism makes me cranky.

I don't mean the kind of fascism the corporate media and the fake Resistance have been desperately hyping for the last four years. God help me, but I'm not terribly worried about a few hundred white-supremacist morons marching around with tiki torches hollering Nazi slogans at each other, or Jewish-Mexican-American law clerks flashing "OK" signs on TV, or smirking schoolkids in MAGA hats.

I'm talking about actual, bona fide fascism, or totalitarianism, if you want to get technical. The kind where governments declare a global "state of emergency" on account of a virus with a 0.2% to 0.6% lethality (and that causes mild, flu-like symptoms, or absolutely no symptoms whatsoever, in over 97% of those infected ), locks everyone down inside their homes, suspends their constitutional rights, terrorizes them with propaganda, and unleashes uniformed goon squads on anyone who doesn't comply with their despotic decrees.

I'm talking about the kind of totalitarianism where the police track you down with your smartphone data and then come to your house to personally harass you for attending a political protest , or attack you for challenging their illegitimate authority , and then charge you with "assault" for fighting back, and then get the media to publish a story accusing you of having "set up" the cops .

I'm talking about the kind of totalitarianism where the secret police are given carte blanche to monitor everyone's Internet activity , and to scan you with their " surveillance helmets ," and dictate how close you can sit to your friends , and menace you with drones and robot dogs , and violently pry your kids out of your arms and arrest you if you dare to protest.

I'm talking about the kind of totalitarianism that psychologically tortures children with authoritarian loyalty rituals designed to condition them to live in fear, and respond to absurd Pavlovian stimuli, and that encourages the masses to turn off their brains and mechanically repeat propaganda slogans, like "wear a mask" and "flatten the curve," and to report their neighbors to the police for having an "illegal" private party and to otherwise reify the manufactured mass hysteria the authorities need to "justify" their totalitarianism.

Yeah, that kind of stuff makes me cranky.

And you know what makes me really cranky? I'll tell you what makes me really cranky. It is people who publicly project themselves as "anti-authoritarians" and "anti-fascists," or who have established their "anti-establishment" brands and "dissident" personas on social media, or even in the corporate media, either zealously cheerleading this totalitarianism or looking away and saying nothing as it is rolled out by the very authorities and media propagandists they pretend to oppose. I don't know exactly why, but that stuff makes me particularly cranky.

I'll provide you with a few examples.

The militant "Portland anti-fascists" who the corporate media fell in love with and made famous for bravely fighting off the Trump-loving Putin-Nazi Menace over the course of the last four years, as soon as the Corona-Totalitarianism began, did what all true anti-fascists do when the state goes full-blown fascist no, they did not "smash the state," or "occupy the streets," or anything like that. They masked-up and started making vegan hand sanitizer .

Popular Internet "anti-imperialists" started accusing everyone opposing the lockdown of being part of some far-right Republican plot to "promote mass death under the banner of freedom" or to "normalize death" to benefit rich people, or being members of a "death cult," or something. Celebrity socialists took to Twitter to warn that we would " shortly have the blood of thousands of people on our hands ," and call us " anti-vaxxers " and " flat earth fucks ." Indie political and military analysts patiently explained why governments needed to be able to pull people out of their homes against their will and quarantine them . Anarchist anthropologists averred that the lockdown wasn't damaging the productive economy; it was only damaging the "bullshit economy," and those complaining about being out of work were people whose work is "largely useless."

Others simply looked away or sat there in silence as we were confined to our homes, and made to carry " permission papers " to walk to work or the corner grocery store, and were beaten and arrested for not "social-distancing," and were otherwise bullied and humiliated for no justifiable reason whatsoever. (We are talking about a virus, after all, that even the official medical experts, e.g., the U.K.'s Chief Medic , admit is more or less harmless to the vast majority of us, not the Bubonic Fucking Plague or some sort of Alien-Terrorist-Death-Flu so spare me the "we-had-no-choice-but-to-go-totalitarian" rationalization.)

My intent is not merely to mock these people (i.e., these "radical," "anti-establishment" types who fell into formation and started goose-stepping because the media told them we were all going to die), but also to use them as a clear example of how official narratives are born and take hold.

That's somewhat pertinent at the moment, because the "Brave New Normal" official narrative has been born, but it has not yet taken hold. What happens next will determine whether it does.

In order to understand how this works, imagine for a moment that you're one of these people who are normally skeptical of the government and the media, and that you consider yourself an anti-authoritarian, or at least a friend of the working classes, and now you are beginning to realize that there is no Alien-Terrorist-Death-Flu (just as there were no "WMDs," no "Russian hackers," no "pee-tape," etc.), and so it dawns on you that you've been behaving like a hysterical, brainwashed, fascist minion of the very establishment you supposedly oppose or at the very least like an abject coward.

Imagine how you might feel right now.

You would probably feel pretty foolish, right? And more than a little ashamed of yourself. So OK, what would do about that? Well, you would have a couple of options.

Option Number One would be admit what you did, apologize to whomever you have to, and try like hell not to do it again. Not many people are going to choose this option.

Most people are going to choose Option Number Two, which is to desperately try to deny what they did, or to desperately rationalize what they did (and in many cases are still actively doing). Now, this is not as easy at it sounds, because doing that means they will have to continue to believe (or at least pretend to believe) that there is an Alien-Terrorist-Death-Flu which is going to kill hundreds of millions of people the moment we stop locking everyone down, and forcing them to "social distance," and so on. They will have to continue to pretend to believe that this Alien-Terrorist-Death-Flu exists, even though they know it doesn't.

And this is where that Orwellian "doublethink" comes in. People (i.e., these "anti-authoritarians," not to mention the majority of the "normal" public) are not going to want to face the fact that they've been behaving like a bunch of fascists (or cowards) for no justifiable reason whatsoever. So, what they are going to do instead is desperately pretend that their behavior was justified and that the propaganda they have been swallowing, and regurgitating, was not propaganda, but rather, "the Truth."

In other words, in order to avoid their shame, they are going to do everything in their power to reify the official narrative and delegitimize anyone attempting to expose it as the fiction that it is. They are going to join in with the corporate media that are calling us " extremists ," " conspiracy theorists ," " anti-vaxxers ," and other such epithets. They're going to accuse those of us on the Left of aligning with " far-Right Republican militias ," and " Boogaloo accelerationists ," and of being members of the Russian-backed " Querfront ," and assorted other horrible things meant to scare errant leftists into line.

Above all, they are going to continue to insist, despite all the evidence to the contrary , that we are "under attack" by a "killer virus" which could "strike again at any time," and so we have to maintain at least some level of totalitarianism and paranoia, or else well, you know, the terrorists win.

It is this reification of the official narrative by those too ashamed to admit what they did (and try to determine why they did it), and not the narrative or the propaganda itself, that will eventually establish the "Brave New Normal" as "reality" (assuming the process works as smoothly as it did with the "War on Terror," the "War on Populism," and the "Cold War" narratives). The facts, the data, the "science" won't matter. Reality is consensus reality and a new consensus is being formed at the moment.

There is still a chance (right now, not months from now) for these people (some of whom are rather influential) to stand up and say, "Whoops! I screwed up and went all Nazi there for a bit." But I seriously doubt that is going to happen.

It's much more likely that the Brave New Normal (or some intermittent, scaled-down version of it) will gradually become our new reality. People will get used to being occasionally "locked down," and being ordered to wear masks, and not to touch each other, and to standing in designated circles and boxes, like they got used to the "anti-Terrorism measures," and believing that Trump is a "Russian asset." The coming economic depression will be blamed on the Alien-Terrorist-Death-Flu, rather than on the lockdown that caused it. Millions of people will be condemned to extreme poverty , or debt-enslaved for the rest of their lives, but they'll be too busy trying to survive to mount any kind of broad resistance.

The children, of course, won't know any better. They will grow up with their "isolation boxes," and "protective barriers," and "contact tracing," and they will live in constant low-grade fear of another killer virus, or terrorist attack, or Russian-backed white supremacist uprising, or whatever boogeyman might next appear to menace the global capitalist empire, which, it goes without saying, will be just fine.

Me, I'll probably remain kind of cranky, but I will try to find the humor in it all. Bear with me that might take a while.

C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing and Broadway Play Publishing, Inc. His dystopian novel, Zone 23 , is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. Volume I of his Consent Factory Essays is published by Consent Factory Publishing, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amalgamated Content, Inc. He can be reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org .


eD , says: Show Comment May 20, 2020 at 8:53 pm GMT

On this particular event, I researched COVID-19 a few months ago, before the lockdowns hit my part of the United States, and realized that it was BS. However, since I am powerless this had no effect on my day to day life. I didn't have the money to spend a year in a non-lockdown country, not that many exist, or retreat to some estate in the countryside. I neither own or control a business or facility that I could defy the lockdowns and keep open. I still need to have to wear a mask to go grocery shopping or starve.

This was the case with other hoaxes such as WMD, so I am not sure who these things are aimed out. I also don't know how many proles (who, remember, mostly don't vote) really believe in them. Since they have no power, it makes no difference if they do or not. Unless you own or operate a business or something like a church that can be closed by a lockdown order, the most you can do is avoid wearing the mask that signals your compliance, and even then they get you if you have to enter a store.

The hoaxes might be aimed at the lower level functionaries, the gym owners, the lower level administrators, the cops, the inspectors who are still needed to physically enforce the edicts on the local level. However, even here, there is a collective action problem with disobedience, its only effective if a mass of them disobey, a lone individual disobeying will face retaliation.

Levtraro , says: Show Comment May 20, 2020 at 9:17 pm GMT

My intent is not merely to mock these people (i.e., these "radical," "anti-establishment" types who fell into formation and started goose-stepping because the media told them we were all going to die), but also to use them as a clear example of how official narratives are born and take hold.

Do you read scientific articles? I know you are not a medical doctor or a scientist so no point asking about your actual experience in dealing with the virus, but you can read. Many informed and intelligent people have formed their opinion of this epidemics by reading the reported scientific evidence, experiments, epidemiological modelling, not the media. I have posted several articles published in top-ranking journals demonstrating the effectiveness of containment in China (recently a new work has been published with an analysis of the dynamics in Germany). These articles also offer the data and computer code freely to reproduce the results or adapt them to other situations.

I don't know where you live and I am sorry that you are experiencing the fascist apocalypse (obwandiyag, above) while sitting at your desk typing out your pieces. Where I live in Europe there was a serious epidemics that is now getting under control thanks to the strategy of containment. There has been no fascist uprising and there have been no politicians suddenly sig-heiling people into the totalitarian nightmare that you describe. We are all tired of this shit but as I can see around me nearly all agree that the infections have to be contained and that the effort to achieve containment has been worth the pain. I guess to stop pathogens that kill or cause great suffering to people from spreading further is a humanitarian demand, regardless of the age or health of the victims.

Also, contrary to the nightmarish situation you describe in your country, here politicians seem to be too eager to come back to their normal routine. They are not looking to perpetuate a state of emergency, quite on the contrary, scientific committes are advising them to carry on a bit further (with many postdocs doing to modelling in the background) and de-escalate in a gradual manner.

But what you describe is truly nightmarish. I see you quote a lot of twitter posts and other media to susbtantiate your fears. So either you go out and fight the fascists hordes sig-hailing you into totalitarianism from twitter, or instead you read scientific papers and calm down.

l
The Kremlin Stooge , says: Show Comment May 20, 2020 at 9:45 pm GMT
Don't forget 'Covidiots'. The frontline-worker-lovin', government-narrative-believin' social-distance welcomin' simpletons are endlessly inventive when it comes to coining contemptuous nicknames for those who don't buy into their embrace of madness. I am happy to be able to say I thought the virus was bogus from the first, and said so to anyone who would listen.

So, now there's a big demographic who stuck paper hearts in their windows the way gold-star mothers used to advertise that Someone In This House Has Gone To War. A demographic that clapped like seals every evening at 7:00 PM to show its support for everyone who was still allowed to do their job. That happily buckled down to a war mentality which excused the withdrawal of individual rights in favour of the public good. As you suggest, embarrassment is on the near horizon – what will the reaction be?

The first thing that should happen is that everyone who was in a political leadership position during this debacle, and went along with it, should be unceremoniously kicked out of office. The WHO leadership should all be fired. Police chiefs should be invited to resign, effective immediately. Everyone who willingly went along with this farce and has a responsibility to more than themselves and their immediate families should be made to publicly apologize, or wear a paper mask with "I'm an idiot" printed on it in lipstick.

Tsar Nicholas , says: Show Comment May 20, 2020 at 9:46 pm GMT
@Levtraro

I live in Europe there was a serious epidemics that is now getting under control thanks to the strategy of containment. There has been no fascist uprising and there have been no politicians suddenly sig-heiling people into the totalitarian nightmare that you describe.

Well, in Britain (which is still part of Europe geographically) all protests, demonstrations and the like have been banned. Local elections have been delayed by one year.

The virus has been circulating since November and the excess mortality rate over and above the background rate did not start until after the lockdown commended in March. Part of this is due to the cancellation of elective surgery for at least three months – no transplants, much reduced diagnoses of new cancer cases, people with heart attacks and stroke staying away from hospitals and so on.

There has been a veritable holocaust in care homes – caused by lack of visits from GPs and a lack of availability of hospital care, and the rush to empty hospitals of older people back to care homes regardless of whether or not they had the infection. Care homes were by (emergency) law not permitted to refuse entry.

Every Thursday we are encouraged to spend several minutes of our house arrest going outdoors and clapping for the National Health Service. It's a bit like a love version of the Two Minutes of Hate in Nineteen Eighty-Four .

Well done on getting your articles published. That boast does little for the reputation of these "top ranking publications."

The Kremlin Stooge , says: Show Comment May 20, 2020 at 9:52 pm GMT
@Levtraro Did you say, "epidemiological modelling'? You mean, like the epidemiological model that started the whole jaw-dropping overreaction in the first place? This epidemiological model?

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/professor-lockdown-modeler-resigns-in-disgrace/

The one that varied by as many as 80,000 deaths over 80 days in subsequent runs without changing any of the feed parameters? That epidemiological model? Yes, that's the sort of scientific work that calms me down every time.

Bragadocious , says: Show Comment May 20, 2020 at 10:03 pm GMT
It's funny how American-expat-in-Germany Hopkins has generally been a huge supporter of European democratic socialism, as opposed to the Trumpian or neoliberal America which he finds so distasteful. And yet, those European countries actually locked down more ruthlessly than America. In Spain, France and the UK you couldn't even get in your car and drive 50 miles without the risk of being stopped. That was never the case here. Freedom of movement was never under threat in the U.S. I wonder what he thinks about that.
SteveK9 , says: Show Comment May 20, 2020 at 10:24 pm GMT
C. J., whatever hope there is in the US, lies in the fact that the country is not homogeneous. I don't think most people have yet realized that this was an epidemic in NYC and nowhere else. There were deaths, but a very small number. Los Angeles County has 11 million people and ~ 1700 deaths. Not every place is requiring a 'mask' of shame yet. Hopefully, a few states 'open up' and nothing happens, and then more, and finally if New Yorkers and a few other places want to cower and cringe for the rest of their lives, they are free to do so.
SteveK9 , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 1:36 am GMT
Example: Florida vs New York (from RT): DeSantis is the Republican Governor of Florida.

Florida has been one of the first states to roll back lockdown orders and allow many non-essential businesses to reopen.

Many critics in the media predicted that Florida would end up "just like Italy" two weeks after reopening, DeSantis continued. "Well, hell, we're eight weeks away from that and it hasn't happened."

New York, with a population of over 19 million, has had over 250,000 cases and more than 28,000 deaths from the coronavirus. Though it has a larger population – 21 million – and more high-risk elderly residents, Florida has registered just over 47,000 cases and some 2,000 deaths.

And yet the MSM praises Cuomo to the skys, and lambasts DeSantis. Also, ignored is Cuomo's decision to empty hospitals of elderly patients and send them back to nursing homes (to die).

Pissedoffalese , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 2:33 am GMT
Face Diaper.

Can't remember where I read that (maybe Taki), but every time I see a picture of these fools, I laff my ass off, 'cuz, as described, the masks just keep getting BIGGER. Now, even in my hokey little town of 1,500, well off the beaten-track, idiots are wandering around the streets and the ONE store wearing plexiglass welding face shields (is that even a THING? Would've thought welders needed something more substantial, but thereya go). Mostly, we here don't give a shit, and since there's no business here anyway, nobody was fired or laid off. Sadly, however, there's no chickens at the hardware store until June.

Guess it'll give me time to build a coop if I can get the relatives to move out before I hang myself–7 people in a single-wide, and six of them hate me.

Joy.

nsa , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 4:51 am GMT
Style Advice Please. Don't have a wu-wu virus face mask, so plan to wear girl's panties over my head when leaving the house with the ears sticking out the leg holes . But am perplexed as to whether the hash mark should go in the front or the back. Sartorial counsel appreciated as do not want to look foolish.
Hail , says: Website Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 4:57 am GMT

The kind where governments declare a global "state of emergency" on account of a virus with a 0.2% to 1% lethality

Most of the studies are converging on the 0.1% range; any above 0.2% are now unusual outliers. In the words of Swiss Propaganda Research's "A Swiss Doctor on COVID19" series (which is the link provided in this essay):

According to data from the best-studied countries and regions, the lethality of Covid19 is on average about 0.2%, which is in the range of a severe influenza (flu) and about twenty times lower than originally assumed by the WHO.

From the Lethality page:

Covid-19 infection fatality rates (IFR) based on antibody studies

Population-based antibody seroprevalence studies.

Global May 19 12 countries 0.02% – 0.40%

A single case was at 0.4%, Geneva, reporting as of a certain point in April; given that this is an outlier, I expect that a follow-up done now would report it down in Geneva. Wuhan reported 0.3%. Gangelt, Germany, 0.25% (small study; early outbreak).

The other nine studies in the meta-analysis average <0.1% deaths to those who are corona-positive (0.085%; range: 0.02% to 0.17%). Of course, this is Just The Flu territory, but the Corona-True-Believers still think that's laughable and worthy of derision. But there it is: <0.1%.

The virus is not going to cause any noticeable full-year mortality rise almost anywhere. The Panic-induced deaths might, in some places.

Hail , says: Website Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 5:17 am GMT

in order to avoid their shame, they are going to do everything in their power to reify the official narrative and delegitimize anyone attempting to expose it as the fiction that it is. They are going to join in with the corporate media that are calling us "extremists," "conspiracy theorists," "anti-vaxxers," and other such epithets.

they are going to continue to insist, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that we are "under attack" by a "killer virus" which could "strike again at any time,"

What you are describing, and the whole Corona-Reaction phenomenon broadly, is a religious cult. The Corona Cult.

"Is Corona a religious cult? An anthropological study." (Corona as virus-centered apocalypse cult; its ascent to state religion; the mass-conversion event to the cult; a study of the cult) , by me, May 18. (See also, " The Modern-Day Cult of Corona ," by Helen Buyinski.)

I have come to understand that only in terms of religion can Corona be understood. A close look shows Corona fits all the indicators of a cult in the anthropological sense, and vert well. It is a literal religious cult (as in, non-metaphorical).

"Postmodern Western people don't do religion, don't do religious movements, so people haven't realized this is what it is."

Marshall Lentini , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 5:37 am GMT
@Levtraro

I live in Europe there was a serious epidemics that is now getting under control thanks to the strategy of containment.

He's had "articles published", but can't remember the golden rule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation

Mr. Anon , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 6:12 am GMT

They're going to accuse those of us on the Left of aligning with "far-Right Republican militias," and "Boogaloo accelerationists," and of being members of the Russian-backed "Querfront," and assorted other horrible things meant to scare errant leftists into line.

This been mirrored on the alt-right, where people like Hunter Wallace at Occidental Dissent derides anyone who doesn't share his by now weeks-long hyperventillating panic attack as a muh-freedom-loving-cuck, or a leftist fellow-traveller, or a crazy conspiracy-theorist (which is funny given that his commentariat seemed to largely consist of knee-jerk false-flag idiots and flat-earthers).

Biff , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 6:20 am GMT
@Pissedoffalese

in a single-wide,

I'm guessing you got a double-wide.

Mr. Anon , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 6:22 am GMT
@Tsar Nicholas

Every Thursday we are encouraged to spend several minutes of our house arrest going outdoors and clapping for the National Health Service. It's a bit like a love version of the Two Minutes of Hate in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Remember our boys bravely fighting on the Malabar Front!

As you implied, it's just a different side of the same coin. If a second-wave hits, people will be encouraged to go out on their balconies and shout out their hatred for "covid-deniers" and "anti-vaxxers".

obwandiyag , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 6:31 am GMT
@Levtraro He lives in Germany. Who have a low incidence of the disease, and so he doesn't get it in his face like he would in some other countries.

And I swear to god, for like a whole year before the epidemic, he was writing these "humorous" articles mocking people for thinking that fascism was on the rise.

I guess it's too much to expect consistency.

Biff , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 6:33 am GMT
@R.C.

throes of the world's free economies.

What is a "free" economy?

Levtraro , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 6:48 am GMT
@The Kremlin Stooge No, I mean this:

https://doi.org/10.1126/science.368.6488.218 (world)
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abb3221 (China)
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aba9757 (world)
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abb9789 (Germany)
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2004911117 (Italy and S. Korea)
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2284-y (China)
https://foi.org/10.1126/science.abb5793 (USA)
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2293-x (China)
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abb4557 (China)
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abc3517 (France)
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abb6105 (China)
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abb8001 (China)

But you can continue getting your info from The National Review and other outlets of the MSM.

JSlade , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 6:50 am GMT
@Levtraro It's not going back to normal Even the politicians realize that there's no point in lying to us that it will. Many small businesses won't return. Men like Bill Gates and Eric Schmidt will be able to force their autistic view on reality on the rest of us. Just watch CNN for 5 minutes and you'll get a good idea of what the "new normal" is gonna look like. Break through that denial now. Shit is about to get real, or should I say , virtual. Right now you can't even tell difference.
chris , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 7:17 am GMT
@Adam Smith It's also absolutely brilliant!!!
anonymous [400] Disclaimer , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 7:30 am GMT

did what all true anti-fascists do when the state goes full-blown fascist

Curious, isn't it? These Antifa and other supposed loony lefty groups suddenly are all in with government totalitarianism. I saw some Maoist-RCP front group counter-picket an anti-lockdown rally. It tends to confirm my feeling that those groups are infiltrated and run by government agencies. This certainly was the most successful fear-mongering propaganda campaign of all time, full-spectrum 24/7 hysteria what with their death counts and all. This was also a training exercise. They'll analyze how this played out and refine it for the next time just as 'color revolutions' were refined and turned into a how-to textbook. Any doubt about there being a next time?

Achmed E. Newman , says: Website Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 7:32 am GMT
Mr. Hopkins, from this 4th article of yours that I've read, I see you are really going places with the truth. I'd have probably made an effort to back-read your older stuff, maybe a couple of columns per day, had I not just seen that you are a lefty, by your own admission. As one expert on this insanity , blogger/commenter E.H. Hail has noted, this Panic/anti-Panic divide cuts across normal political divides though.

You bring up the Cold War as some sort of made-up thing like the "War on Terra" and the "War on Drugs" (my addition), and this War against this "virus of mass destruction", which is wrong (about the Cold War, not the rest), and it seems GloboCap(TM) is your trademark term (making no sense – I have not seen Capitalism operating without Big-Gov anywhere in the world lately, outside the illegal-Mexican run flea markets). However, I will leave that behind, as you may learn something else as you see some of the behavior you note in the antifa people and others of the left that you rightly are disgusted by here.

Therefore, I will keep reading your latest, greatest rants, "rants" said in a most admiring way, and pointing them out to friends and on the Peak Stupidity blog. Can the rest of the non-hysterical among us on the left and right around the world possibly realize from this Panic-Fest response what totalitarianism is all about? I mean, before it's too late, that is – that'd sure be nice. Maybe ideological definitions should be created from scratch out of this.

I like the 2nd half of this article, in which you explain very well, in my opinion, that 2nd option that people who have been so far wrong on this issue will almost all pick. There is no way you will get an "I was wrong" admission, much less an apology, from anyone without the integrity of a Steve Sailer, meaning, well, here on unz, nobody but Steve Sailer. Those people will be obligated to stick to their original story and do that double-thinking, even supporting Totalitarianism when they know quite well what it entails. People don't like to be wrong.

A prediction of mine is that, once it is realized that deaths of old people around the world will be pretty much the same in 2020 as in other years, along with telling us that this is because we DID properly LOCKDOWN and SHELTER-IN-PLACE! per Big-Bro's instructions and then they will bring up "it's baaaack" every so often.

Thank you for another great article, Mr. Hopkins.

Achmed E. Newman , says: Website Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 7:45 am GMT
@eD There is plenty you can do, Ed, by example. Maybe it's my State, in which people are pretty laid back about this, whatever side they are on, but nobody ever told me to wear a mask, even though I didn't right up through last week*. I can go into the Target store right now, and if I get any BS, I'll let myself get pulled out of the store.

It won't happen like that here though, Ed. People are in friendly defiance all over the place. I suggest you do the same thing. All it takes is 300,000,000 people saying "there is nothing I can do", to let this shit get worse. It only takes a couple of dozen or so people in one place – a little too big a crowd for the police to handle without some real trouble – to lead the rest out of this stupidity.

You read the column – I take this just as seriously as Mr. Hopkins.

.

* I've written about this elsewhere, that, because I promised my wife, I've finally worn one of these in stores (part-time), on an airliner, and in busy places. This is solely because she was getting very upset, with a lack of sleep being a factor, with that always ready phone-infotainment around. It was either start lying to her (I wasn't going to), not go to stores or travel for work, have us on extremely bad terms, causing grief to the whole family, or wear it for a while. It's the same stupid blue thing I've kept in my pocket for a week – yes, it's probably spreading more germs that it filters – I don't care.

Amon , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 7:47 am GMT
Okay boomer.
The Alarmist , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 8:11 am GMT
Cheer up, CJ: You can always try to smuggle a pen into the gulag to write your pieces on toilet paper. Wait! Between the body cavity searches and the lack of toilet paper, you might not be able to keep calm and carry on, but if you're lucky, they'll give you The Complete Works of Paul Krugman , and you can use some of that to wipe and some of it to cut out letters to tell your story.
Parfois1 , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 8:25 am GMT

I guess to stop pathogens that kill or cause great suffering to people from spreading further is a humanitarian demand, regardless of the age or health of the victims.

I fully agree that the first reaction of a decent health system in an epidemic breakout is to contain the infection, look after the sick and protect the most vulnerable. Containment and isolation is the first line of defence when the threat is real or imminent and that has been learned from the historical record when plagues got out of control and decimated towns and villages.

This epidemic was first reported by China as of a particularly nasty virulence, easy transmissibility and causing multi-organ pathologies to such an extent that the Wuhan epicenter's medical facilities were overwhelmed with victims and had to erect two hospitals in record time to look after them. Facing a new and, then unknown, threat, the responsible authorities acted swiftly to isolate the threat, study it and contain it to the regional source of the virus to protect the rest of the country. As a result of a firm policy of containment, the rest of China was barely touched by the epidemic, worked as normal and the number of deaths for the most populated country on Earth was limited to under 4,000. It worked, saved many lives and the Chinese economy only suffered a short hiccup.

While China was in the throes of a potential calamity because of its population's high density, almost all other countries, except its most immediate neighbours, looked on (many in the US with glee), made jokes about the Chan-virus and the ruling elites did nothing to protect their respective peoples. When it hit them, all they could do was to blame China and, too late, followed the Chinese way when the horse had already bolted. What makes this tragically farcical is that the US think-tanks, wheeler-dealers and medical experts had recently "gamed" such scenario in their computer modelling exercise Event 201, almost coincidentally with the beginning of the, still undetected, infections, which were reported later. That delay in taking firm and drastic action to effectively prevent infestation led eventually to high mortality in the densely populated countries of Western Europe (namely Spain, Italy, France, Belgium, Holland and UK) and New York. Amongst all that callous inefficiency there are some "miraculous" exceptions, such as Australia ( casual lockdown, 24 million, only 100 dead) and New Zealand, almost untouched by the coronavirus.

So, timely and systematic containment and isolation as the first defence for the protection of the people works and enables the country to resume normal life again within a short time (look at China's full-steam ahead for weeks now). It was a very efficient short and sharp treatment of a public health issue. In some other countries, particularly the US, it become a heartless political game of point-scoring, the people being the ball to kick around the field.

When the post-morten is done (but even now some lobertarians are already claiming the fictional SS, the "Sweden Success") the political football game will be replayed with unruly vigour instead of having a hard-headed look at the disaster and its lessons and how a public health issue was transformed into a political one, or was it the other way around? A political scheme of sorts transformed into a public health issue to serve as cover for some ulterior purpose as I suspect.

I have no doubts that the CV-19 is a real danger for any unprotected population and reports from the coalface about the victims' suffering are a sobering reminder of our mortality, therefore the measures, if taken by the health authorities for the welfare of the people, are legitimate and deserving our approval. But the politicization of a disaster for a hidden agenda is another matter altogether and Hopkins is right to highlight the totalitarian facet lurking behind the promoters of the pandemic, whether the source of it or the opportunistic gain of function from it.

Kratoklastes , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 8:30 am GMT
@eD

I am not sure who these things are aimed at

Karens and Cucks. That's who these things are aimed at: obese dim-witted middle-aged she-beasts whose sexual value has gone through zero and who want to scold the world and the beta-males who are 'head' of their households.

The Karens buy in immediately because it gives them social power; the cucks are cucked and so are largely irrelevant (except to the extent that their beta-ness prevents them from offering a counterbalance).

The net effect on the household is that the kids get – via Karen – the worldview of retards like Sanjay .Gupta and Dr Phil.

The net effect on society is that finger-wagging fat 40-something women becomes a norm outside of middle-school classrooms (it's been a norm inside classrooms for a generation, which is why kids can't read despite spending $15k of public funds per student per year).

This is why I refer to CNN etc as HousewifeTV . Like women's magazines, it has less intellectual content than Dora the Explorer – but stupid obese 40-something women lap it up. (Stupid obese 40-something men are also a waste of space, but they're benign by comparison – because nobody cares if you tell them to fuck off).

Jim Richard , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 9:51 am GMT
The real illness out there: The need to be led.
Parfois1 , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 9:51 am GMT
@Levtraro My comment #30 is a reply to Levtraro's comment #5.
Yusef , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 10:04 am GMT
@Levtraro "Many informed and intelligent people have formed their opinion of this epidemics by reading the reported scientific evidence, experiments, epidemiological modelling, not the media."

I applaud you for reading the scientific literature rather than getting your information from the MSM.

However, something fishy is going on in the world of science. If this goes on much longer, I will no longer refer to it as "the world of science."

Have you seen this? https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6490/489.full "Study claiming new coronavirus can be transmitted by people without symptoms was flawed"–Kai KupferschmidtFeb. 3, 2020.

One of the contributors to the flawed study is quoted as having said, " people felt this had to be communicated quickly." This is shocking and absolutely unacceptable. These guys should be dismissed and facing criminal charges. People panicked over these kind of reports. They can almost be justified because if the virus could have done all the things reputable scientists were attributing to it, we were dealing with something the nature of which we'd never dealt with before. "There's no doubt after reading [the NEJM] paper that asymptomatic transmission is occurring," Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told journalists. "This study lays the question to rest." Heads need to roll.

It is interesting to me you mention studies demonstrating the efficacy of the Chinese lockdowns after the lockdowns took place. Shouldn't we have had those studies in hand beforehand , and isn't there a possibility, in this new more lax climate of releasing results without peer review or complete disclosure (a la Moderna and others) of "covering their posteriors" to avoid admission of failure and cowardice?

You think the containment measures saved us, not that the virus's virulence was hyped. ( NB https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6490/489.full . "These findings explain the rapid geographic spread of SARS-CoV-2 and indicate that containment of this virus will be particularly challenging." The virus appears to have already spread throughout the world before containment measures were enacted. Do we care about that when we evaluate the effectiveness of the containment measures?)

I would just like to ask: How sure are you this is not all because you fit the category Mr. Hopkins describes here, "In other words, in order to avoid their shame, they are going to do everything in their power to reify the official narrative and delegitimize anyone attempting to expose it as the fiction that it is. "?

onebornfree , says: Website Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 10:34 am GMT
"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force." ~ Ayn Rand

"The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater. " Frank Zappa

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." William Pitt the Younger, former British prime minister

"Opium and morphine are certainly dangerous, habit-forming drugs. But once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments. A good case could be made out in favor of the prohibition of alcohol and nicotine. And why limit the government's benevolent providence to the protection of the individual's body only? Is not the harm a man can inflict on his mind and soul even more disastrous than any bodily evils? Why not prevent him from reading bad books and seeing bad plays, from looking at bad paintings and statues and from hearing bad music?" Ludwig Von Mises

"The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite." Thomas Jefferson

"When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty." Thomas Jefferson

"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases. The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first." Thomas Jefferson

"When you abandon freedom to achieve security, you lose both and deserve neither." Thomas Jefferson

"Because they are all ultimately funded via both direct and indirect theft [taxes], and counterfeiting [central bank monopolies], all governments are essentially, at their very cores, 100% corrupt criminal scams which cannot be "reformed"or "improved",simply because of their innate criminal nature." onebornfree

Regards, onebornfree

Levtraro , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 10:45 am GMT
@obwandiyag I noted that. Those pieces mocking the Russiagate-Nazi-Putin-Fascist hysteria were very funny indeed. But now he is yelling that the fascist regime is here because of the virus. It's kind of second order funny.
Vojkan , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 10:47 am GMT
@Marshall Lentini There's no purpose in arguing with those people. As said in the comment just above yours, they're a cult and facts have no grip on cultists.
Levtraro , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 10:51 am GMT
@Marshall Lentini The studies are no correlational. Read them to correct your error. I posted a cool set of top-notch research in another comment on this thread. Normally these articles are behind a paywall but publishing houses are letting all of them free for everyone to read.
CJ Hopkins , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 11:07 am GMT
@Hail I have revised (and asked Ron Unz to revise) the "0.2% – 1% lethality" cited in my original text to read "0.2% – 0.6% lethality" to reflect a low/high range of estimates, from the Swiss Propaganda Research data on the low end to the revised Imperial College IFR on the high end. Because so many people are jumping down each other's throats with numbers, I thought both ends of the range should be sourced.
Herald , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 11:24 am GMT
@obwandiyag Maybe Unz should have an "obwandiyag" button. It would likely be a very popular feature.
Levtraro , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 11:36 am GMT
@Parfois1 Thanks for your thoughtful reply to my comment. I agree there is substantial risk of opportunistic state aggrandizement due to the pandemics. But state-apparatchiks are nearly always looking for aggrandizement opportunities, especially in the USA where apparatchiks think they are exceptional, like to meddle in other people's businesses, go on pontificating incessantly, and essentially work for powerful minorities.
Vojkan , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 1:07 pm GMT
@Hail Great piece by Helen Buyniski. I wonder how the Bill Gates' pro-vaxx cultists at rt.com feel about it.
Johnny Walker Read , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 1:10 pm GMT
Yes C.J, Bolshevism and its evil twin Fascism have come to America. It has come openly through the Democrat Party Governors who are using the current scamdemic and the gullibility of well over half the population to destroy their state economies. It has come covertly through a president who promised to return America to its former glory days by draining the swamp, but instead has refilled it and gone along with every insider policy there is. A president who is now promising forced vaccinations via our military and "others"(UN troops?).
So get ready America, hell is coming to breakfast

https://www.youtube.com/embed/e63Tk-5UKPc?feature=oembed

Digital Samizdat , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 1:12 pm GMT
@Hail I call them the Branch Covidians -- 'We ain't coming out!'
onebornfree , says: Website Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 1:19 pm GMT
@onebornfree "The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first." Thomas Jefferson

Lockdown the entire Federal government to the "chains of the constitution", plus all local and state governments NOW!

" Section 242 of Title 18 makes it a crime for a person acting under color of any law to willfully deprive a person of a right or privilege protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.For the purpose of Section 242, acts under "color of law" include acts not only done by federal, state, or local officials within the their lawful authority, but also acts done beyond the bounds of that official's lawful authority, if the acts are done while the official is purporting to or pretending to act in the performance of his/her official duties . ".

See [@ 2/3rds of way down page] : "Sue The Mayors, City Governments, State Governors! A Coronavirus Plandemic Lockdown Solution?":
http://onebornfree-mythbusters.blogspot.com/2020/05/onebornfrees-special-scam-alerts-no141.html

See: "Why Government Doesn't Work"
https://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Why_Government_Doesn%27t_Work

Regards, onebornfree

nickels , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 1:24 pm GMT
Alexander Dugin nailed it.
Welcome to the Medical Narco Facist States of Amerikkka.
anon [194] Disclaimer , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 1:36 pm GMT
Leftotards are just waking up to the realization that they are the Billionaire Establishments Bxtch. These Antifa / anti-facist idiots are the useful idiots of the Billionaire funded Democratic party., and also their warped and pampered college professors.

What drives these fools is their need of a UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME period !!! none of these idiots give a rats arse about fascism as most dont even know what it is, else they wouldnt cry for Totalitarian Communism.

onebornfree , says: Website Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 1:37 pm GMT
"What if the government has it wrong -- on the medicine and the law?

What if face masks can't stop the COVID-19 virus? What if quarantining the healthy makes no medical sense? What if staying at home for months reduces immunity?

What if more people have been infected with the virus in their homes than outside them?

What if there are as many credible scientists and physicians who disagree with the government as those who agree with it?

What if the government chooses to listen only to scientists and physicians who would tell it what it wanted to hear? What if the government silences scientists and physicians, and even fires one, who attempt to tell it what it didn't want to hear?

What if the government wants to stoke fear in the populace because mass fear produces mass compliance? What if individual fear reduces individual immunity?

What if a healthy immunity gets stronger when challenged? What if a pampered immunity gets weaker when challenged? What if we all pass germs and viruses -- that we don't even know we have -- on to others all the time, but their immune systems repel what we pass on to them?

What if the COVID-19 virus has run its course and run into natural immunities? What if many folks have had symptom-free episodes with many viruses and are now immune from them? What if the government refuses to understand this because it undermines the government's power to control us? . What if -- when the pandemic is over -- folks sue the government for its destruction of life, liberty and property only to learn that the government gave itself immunity from such lawsuits? What if -- when the pandemic is over -- the government refuses to acknowledge its end? "

From: "What If the Government Has It Wrong?":
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/05/andrew-p-napolitano/what-if-the-government-has-it-wrong/

Regrds, onebornfree

theMann , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 1:40 pm GMT
I am not sure how anything is going to play out at this point, but I will make two observations

1. People don't like being played, or made fools of. Maybe most of them will pretend they weren't completely suckered, same as after 9/11, but maybe a critical mass of anger is building.

2. I begin conversations with every mask wearing moron by commenting "I liked social distancing better under its original name – segregation. But let us practise standing apart, or in Afrikaans, apartheid." Then I follow up with pointing out any mask is contaminated once you take it off, so, go work on radioactives, or something. The point is, no rational argument is going to work with the hysterical little girls pretending to be adults.

Marshall Lentini , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 1:41 pm GMT
@Levtraro

The studies are no correlational.

I'd say this has no relevance to what I said, but first it would have to make some normal sense. To be extra clear: that "lockdowns" stopped the spread of this virus is an assertion , and one disproved by Sweden and Belarus.

Somehow the two facts of a) two-week or greater incubation period and b) delayed or "adequate" response by various nations do not add up in the covidiot's mind to "the virus was already running its course by the time of lockdowns", because it's better for you to play chicken and the egg since you've already committed to the melodrama of coronamania. It's hard admitting one was wrong, especially when the price tag isn't presented right away.

I posted a cool set of top-notch research in another comment on this thread.

Indeed, I've looked at each these top-notch articles. But let me start with the first.

The title of the first top-notch article is The lockdowns worked -- but what comes next? . Now I'm unaware of any other field but Coronavirus Studies in which it's acceptable simply to announce , rather than propose , the thing which an alleged research paper is supposed to examine and substantiate. But when it comes to the rona, the rules (like that pesky one about correlation not implying causation) go out the window.

The second line is: The world is holding its breath. I'm also not aware of any other field which permits a cheap, moralistic tagline in its papers to preface alleged research. This is, of course, a huge red flag which you're not supposed to question. "A specter is haunting Europe "

(Well, technically the second line is: Science's COVID-19 coverage is supported by the Pulitzer Center – very gracious of them to mention, and pretty much tipping their hand as far as their motives. Ever looked at the Board of Directors at Pulitzer? Lots of NYT "assistant managing editors".)

The rest is more of the same – a mix of petitio principii, moralism, bad metaphors, and ominous assumptions about how civilization should work in the opinion of this "Kai Kupferschmidt". Here's a charming example of the totally non-fascist, un-totalitarian "model" supported by your author:

For now, the most likely scenario is one of easing social distancing measures when it's possible, then clamping down again when infections climb back up, a "suppress and lift" strategy that both Singapore and Hong Kong are pursuing. Whether that approach can strike the right balance between keeping the virus at bay and easing discontent and economic damage remains to be seen.

What you're doing here is passing off opinion pieces as research, while ignoring the mountain of actual research that the opposition have been doing in the meantime as lunatics like you preach never-ending cycles of lock-and-lift, or excuse me, "suppress and lift", as Herr Kupferschmidt would have it.

But that's all immaterial to me. I do not care about research. I am totally comfortable with a ~1%, even a 5% death rate affecting the elderly and grossly infirm. I don't care about R or any other variable. I care about not having to wear masks or stand in boxes or read moralistic tripe like this that ham-handedly tries to justify it. I am not interested in "research" whose aim is my bondage to prophylactic theater, as someone here put it – not that any of what you're offering qualifies as anything other than sunk cost fallacy propaganda, in my book.

Phaeton , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 1:43 pm GMT
Things are very easy.

Smoking kills 8 million people per year in the world (plus many more millions of addicts). Have they forbidden tobacco? No.

Alcoholism kills 3 millions people per year in the world. Have they forbidden alcohol? No.

(these numbers according to WHO).

"Covid-19", with all the fraudulent data, have killed (sure?) 331.000 people up to this date. What have they done? All what Mr. Chopkins have said (i.e. shutting down the world's economy, taking out our freedom, and much more).

In other words: they don't freaking care about our health. Why is that so difficult to understand for people?

Old and Grumpy , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 2:01 pm GMT
I live here in PA, where the new normal resistance is real. The cops for the most part are looking the other way, except in Philadelphia. My local Amish hardware store was thankfully mask free zone. There is no social distancing at the ag auctions, nor are there masks. Someone (a pissed off Democrat no less) told me a "Karen" was at the Monday hay auction snapping pictures, and the auctioneer had people escort him out. Who'd a thunk the Amish and Mennonites leading the big old FU to Tommy Wolf and his freak health secretary? Those two clowns might just give Trump PA in the fall.
Blip Blop , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 2:16 pm GMT
Could we quit the constant libeling of "muh fascism?" Fascism was just an objectively more decent system than what we have now. At least those leaders made some attempt to benefit their people. Our current anarcho-tyrannical capitalist-socialist order squeezes us like rags to get the last drop of shekel from our crushed souls. You also cannot ignore the undercurrent of child abuse by our elites. The Fascists were quite moral and kind in comparison.
anonymous [235] Disclaimer , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 2:18 pm GMT
@Digital Samizdat This needs to go viral.
Johnny Walker Read , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 2:19 pm GMT
Hope you don't mind, I'm definitely using that one
theMann , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 2:27 pm GMT
@Marshall Lentini Helen Buyinski's article is exceptionally accurate and detailed.

Any chance Unz Review can reprint it?

Anonymous [102] Disclaimer , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 2:34 pm GMT
@Adam Smith This whole Covid 19 thing has been a giant Pain in the Ass to everyone. Unfortunately it is too real to ignore. What bothers me is the whining by folks like Mr. Hopkins, who failed to speak up about the Patriot Act and the complaints by the intelligence depts because Apple security is too tight, or countless intrusions by our government masking anti-terrorism activities or any number of wasted political investigations, the list is endless. We are as close to Fascism and Totalitarianism as we have ever been. Lets face the fact that our government is no better than the countless regimes we have criticized over the years. We are a screwed up nation that has drifted so far from the constitution, that we no longer resemble the United States of America.
Che Guava , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 2:36 pm GMT
Your comment is the one thing that truly made me LOL today.

Thank you.

Two reasons I did not use the button. I want to hit agree with a later comment and am tired now. Also, LOL with or LOL at?

nsa, you sure hit the first category there!

Agent76 , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 2:40 pm GMT
May 21, 2020 How Governments Are Hunting the Infected

https://www.youtube.com/embed/HfqdSG4dtsg?feature=oembed

05 Apr 2020 Dr. Fauci revealed his fears of a 'surprise outbreak' back in 2017 and warned the upcoming Trump administration would face 'challenges' with infectious diseases in a Georgetown speech

In his speech titled 'Pandemic Preparedness in the Next Administration,' Dr. Fauci told attendees at Georgetown University in January 2017 that the upcoming presidential administration would face 'challenges' with infectious diseases.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8188429/Dr-Fauci-revealed-fears-surprise-outbreak-three-YEARS-pandemic.html?ito=email_share_article-top

Agent76 , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 2:44 pm GMT
@Phaeton This is where all of the fake numbers are coming from in this Plandemic.

Nov 4, 2019 Event 201 Pandemic Exercise: Segment 4, Communications Discussion and Epilogue Video

Event 201 is a pandemic tabletop exercise hosted by The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. The exercise illustrated the pandemic preparedness efforts needed to diminish the large-scale economic and societal consequences of a severe pandemic.

http://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/media

https://www.youtube.com/embed/LBuP40H4Tko?feature=oembed

schnellandine , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 2:49 pm GMT
@Digital Samizdat

I call them the Branch Covidians -- 'We ain't coming out!'

I don't see that's it's funny or sane to use as disparagement of cowards a reference to folks who evinced more balls than you ever will.

Che Guava , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 2:54 pm GMT
@Herald I agree, but already used my hourly button.
botazefa , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 2:59 pm GMT
@Achmed E. Newman

* I've written about this elsewhere, that, because I promised my wife, I've finally worn one of these in stores (part-time), on an airliner, and in busy places. This is solely because she was getting very upset, with a lack of sleep being a factor, with that always ready phone-infotainment around.

Collectively failing to stand up to our wives for the past 60 years is what got us into this mess. We've somehow managed to normalize hysterics.

David , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 3:03 pm GMT
A couple days ago Brattleboro, Vermont made wearing masks in stores mandatory for customers. A lady at the select board meeting said masks need to be normalized, "Because it's just such a simple visible sign that people are being safe in our community."

Vermonters are natural jackbooted hippies and are really getting off on covid-19.

I wish Judy Chicago were alive to design these masks.

Brattleboro, population 12,000, had ten fatal opioid overdoses in 2019 and four in April 2020. There have been three deaths in the whole county due to covid-19. Two were from NYC.

Andrew Sullivan had a post about Pepys in 1665, a year of plague in London. He recounts Pepys living life to the full -- working, partying, womanizing -- while whole families drop dead around him. Pepys lists off dozens of people in his day to day life dying while he himself does nothing, or very little, to "stay safe." His morale was never better.

Sullivan then concludes his piece, "And today, in the richest country on Earth, with medical technology beyond Pepys's wildest imagination, and a plague killing a tiny fraction of the population, some are wielding weapons in public to protest being asked to stay at home for a few more weeks and keep a social distance. Please. Get a grip."

See Pepys didn't stay home, wear a mask, or keep social distance. And he was fine, while a quarter of London's population died. So objecting to being forced to do those things is foolish since almost nobody knows anybody who's died from this "pandemic."

Miro23 , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 3:08 pm GMT
@Hail

The other nine studies in the meta-analysis average <0.1% deaths to those who are corona-positive (0.085%; range: 0.02% to 0.17%). Of course, this is Just The Flu territory, but the Corona-True-Believers still think that's laughable and worthy of derision. But there it is: <0.1%.

Well, now we know. So what was it all about? Was it a genuine mistake – or was it a bio-weapon that fizzled (but still delivered the anti-Chinese pre-prepared media frenzy).

Probably the latter. Recent CIA projects are more successful at raising media frenzies than delivering results (for example: full MSM and Western government support for the miserable Venezuelan coup attempt).

nsa , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 3:13 pm GMT
@onebornfree Yo, onebornfree,
Did you cash your free-shit-from-the-guv check like all the rest of us unscrupulous $1200 whores (used to be $20 whores but there has been considerable inflation since that magic year, 1913)?
aandrews , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 3:19 pm GMT
" and those complaining about being out of work were people whose work is 'largely useless.'"

It's not the being out of work part that's actually the problem. It's the being broke part, which is a consequence of the being out of work part, that sucks.

onebornfree , says: Website Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 3:21 pm GMT
@onebornfree "Blue Pill People":

https://www.youtube.com/embed/dC_lZLzCrOI?feature=oembed

Regards, onebornfree

onebornfree , says: Website Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 3:26 pm GMT
@nsa "Did you cash your free-shit-from-the-guv check like all the rest of us unscrupulous $1200 whores "

Sorry to disappoint – I don't take "free", "shut up and be a good slave", fake money from governments. I make my own way [barely] and got off the slave plantation gravy train to hell a long time ago.

Regards, onebornfree

botazefa , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 3:29 pm GMT
@Kratoklastes I think you can ditch the obesity correlation.

Maybe what you are noticing is that the gen-x children of 70s and 80s single moms are often man hating bitches or self hating faggots. Divorce on demand has consequences, such as an instinct to blame men for everything possible.

*my use of 'faggots' is in the gen-x vernacular to mean a wimpy little sissy

Emslander , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 3:39 pm GMT
@onebornfree See, I think your questions are very good, but it's like asking a 27-year-old fat woman with a BA degree what she'd think if it could be shown that there had been no gas chambers at Dakau. The question is an aggressive challenge to her weak brain cells and is, therefore, a crime.

What if the moral history of the twentieth century were the exact opposite of what we were all taught? What if unpasteurized milk is better for you? What if the substantive content of modern life adds up to a negative number?

The problem with conversion is that you have to admit that everything you think you know is incorrect.

Culpepper , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 3:55 pm GMT
@schnellandine Perhaps it is the aspect of paranioa that makes it apt
Nancy Pelosi's Latina Maid , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 3:56 pm GMT
Hopkins can't make the connection between belittling the "white-nationalist morons" and this "new normal" he now decries. What did you think was gonna happen in America once white people were kicked to the curb?

I'm a proud supporter of those white men who put their lives and reputations on the line in Charlottesville to stand up for my people. Our "new normal" happened many years ago, with

• gay marriage
• "hate" speech
• socialized medicine inc. federally-funded abortions
• central and fractional banking
• taxation slavery
• the enforced associations and affirmative action of civil rights

Our nation was founded on the voting rights of white male landowners. Everything since then is abnormal.

Vojkan , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 4:01 pm GMT
@obwandiyag One certainly can't reproach you inconsistency in disingenuousness. It is pretty much obvious to everyone except you that the fascism the author is seeing rising and the fascism he dismisses as a fantasy are distinct.
botazefa , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 4:07 pm GMT
@Johnny Walker Read

A president who is now promising forced vaccinations via our military and "others"(UN troops?).

I heard about the Trump floating the idea of the military *assisting* with vaccines.

But forced vaccinations? What's your reference.

DuckDuckGo has no relevant matches on 'trump forced vaccinations'.

Are you making it up?

Whitewolf , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 4:24 pm GMT
@anonymous

Curious, isn't it? These Antifa and other supposed loony lefty groups suddenly are all in with government totalitarianism.

Not curious or surprising in the least. They have always been funded by the same people that control the government.

anonymous [400] Disclaimer , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 4:31 pm GMT
@Yusef

something fishy is going on in the world of science.

Scientists are for sale as they are usually on one payroll or another. Interested parties shop around for ones that will say what they want them to say. Sure there's independent ones and those who report the facts but the waters get muddied and the average person doesn't know whose word to trust. Ditto with so-called studies which often have a predetermined outcome according to those financing them. Lots of academic corruption and fraud goes on. Don't take what the folks in white lab coats tell you as gospel but match it up against your own common sense. Just look at the history of the harmful quack nonsense the 'experts' of the day have promoted in the past hundred years or so.

SolontoCroesus , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 4:35 pm GMT
@Achmed E. Newman ""because I promised my wife, I've finally worn one of these in stores (part-time), on an airliner, and in busy places. This is solely because she was getting very upset,""

A Corona Marano.

Yusef , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 4:35 pm GMT
@onebornfree "What if we all pass germs and viruses -- that we don't even know we have -- on to others all the time, but their immune systems repel what we pass on to them?"

This one isn't a "what if" but a known and important fact about our amazing world. We are slathered in bacteria, viruses, and many, many other micro- and macro- organisms. At one time I was even able to see several species of benign lice on my skin and the skin of others, without using a magnifying glass or microscope. If I recall correctly, there are at least seven species of these Not only are they not harmful, they are helpful. They live on dried, dead skin, among other things.

That's the general case, friends. The bacteria and viruses surrounding us are not usually detrimental. We must have them around. They are a part of the general good health of the planet and all living things.

The viruses are absolutely fascinating. They play a role in the evolution of life on planet earth we are only beginning to fathom. It is a form of madness to think they are all pathogenic. Overwhelmingly they are not.

The viruses can't be eradicated the way we eradicated small pox, for example.

I have my own theory about this mess, which I hold only with remorse. We only know about it because we looked for it. We wouldn't have observed anything out of the ordinary this year based on the epidemiological distributions and incidences of sicknesses and deaths. There's nothing wrong with looking around and discovering new things, but this is clearly not a realm readily usable for forming immediate public policy, especially not drastic and unprecedented public policy.

Everyone who played a part in making this into immediate, drastic and unprecedented public policy needs to be held accountable. We need a very thorough review of the interplay of these multiple factors, and a good house cleaning is in order. I don't know what I will do if once more I see us refusing to admit our mistakes, but even worse will be refusing to learn from them.

As always, these two steps are the only way forward. I can't believe we in the USA are failing in this area. It seemed to me it was here, if anywhere, our form of society had an advantage. (Well, maybe not the politicians, but in business, make a big mistake and in the USA, you're out. That was not a bad thing. The others in business saw the mistake, avoided it, learned and went on.)

Regards,

Getaclue , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 4:41 pm GMT
@Anonymous The Face Mask "Study" that was released in the New England Journal of Medicine has now been DEBUNKED as a FRAUD and as garbage even by the Scientists who put it out -- they've admitted this now. However, you probably haven't heard this because the Mainslime Media has ignored it and is still using it to cause us to be forced to wear these insanely stupid Masks.

As you say this is whole thing is "too real to ignore" -- but the reason it is? Because it is a complete and total pre-planned "Elite" FRAUD on the Peons, to strip them of all rights and impoverish them, being hoisted on a Cold Virus the NWO ChiComs released that is about as bad as a Seasonal Flu. People need to wake up–especially supposedly intelligent people who come to this site and publish articles and comments. Here is the retraction of the phony "Study" used to Face Mask us all (never done as to a Cold Virus– as even Dr. Fauci said on TV–because it does nothing –might even make you sick .): https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/paper-non-symptomatic-patient-transmitting-coronavirus-wrong

Getaclue , says: Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2020 at 4:46 pm GMT
@onebornfree The reason for ordering/coercing Face Mask wearing by the Public has now been DEBUNKED as a FRAUD! The actual Scientists have admitted it was total and complete garbage. The Mainslime Media, no surprise, is ignoring this and still using the debunked "study" that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine on January 30th– the CDC used it to reverse the ALWAYS applied standard based on Science that wearing in mass Face Masks by the Public does NOTHING as to a Cold Virus. Here is the article as to the what happened: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/paper-non-symptomatic-patient-transmitting-coronavirus-wrong
Hail , says: Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2020 at 4:48 pm GMT
@Achmed E. Newman

friendly defiance

Good phrase. Good thought.

We know that Corona is a giant with feel of the softest clay you can find, but that's just on the facts and the science. Corona-Alternative-Facts just don't care.

Is the Corona With Feet of Clay defeated by a thousand small acts by nobodies doing friendly defiance?

Such as, declining to take those extra few steps to avoid someone. Walking in a straight line as a dissident act .

While on the subject. Please, Corona-Believers, no more of that halting entirely to keep well out of the way, followed by glowering at the other person as he passes; that's just bizarre. The Corona Halt-and-Stare.

Hail , says: Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2020 at 4:53 pm GMT
@Levtraro

Where I live in Europe there was a serious epidemics that is now getting under control thanks to the strategy of containment

[Disagree.]

Dumbo , says: Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2020 at 4:59 pm GMT
Covid-19 is really Rohrschach-19. It seems that the "panic" went both ways. One one side the extreme hysteric reaction with the "lockdown" of healthy people, the theatrics of the authorities and media with a disease that apparently kills mostly people over 80, but on the other hand also the protesters about "fascist takeover" and "totalitarianism". Look, it wasn't that bad, as far as totalitarianism goes. Except perhaps in North Korea, no one was shot. Maybe with Bill Gates' vaccine things will get worse, but, so far, it wasn't that bad. I think the "Transdemic", i.e. pretending that transexuals are "women" and all the craziness about "anti-racism" is much worse.

Now, for those who had a small business, yes, it was bad, and being locked at home for weeks has not been fun (also, rather pointless). But in Germany, where I believe the author lives, the lockdown has been quite light, and while many places closed there was never a prohibition to be outside. Even masks were only used later on and only in supermarkets, shops, etc. So, while inconvenient, it was not really Nazi Germany II.

Anyway, it's a quite strange situation really, and I wonder what will happen next, my impression is that people are becoming more cynical and will not accept a "second wave" lockdown, which makes me think if either there is a great conspiracy, or our elites are really dumb and incompetent. Or maybe it's both things? Like in the title of that book, a "conspiracy of dunces". They are evil and Machiavellic but they are also a bit dumb.

Poco , says: Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2020 at 4:59 pm GMT
@Bragadocious Hopkins is a leftist. Leftists like big government. He fails to realize that big government always means more authoritarianism.
Hail , says: Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2020 at 5:00 pm GMT
@Mr. Anon

If a second-wave hits

Knut Wittkowski ( writing April 26 and May 5 ) on the "second wave":

With 30% already immune, the next wave, if any, will be minor, at most.

[Studies] show that there is enough immunity to make sure that a second wave – if any – is mild.

A "second wave" CAN be created artificially created by the media by hyper focus on a few stories (much like the original wave; it was another foretold-apocalypse-washout as proved by the easy handling of the whole thing in Stay-Open Sweden).

Media-filtered reality.

__________

From a comment I wrote elsewhere on April 5 :

The media cannot keep its Corona Cocaine Binge, and its ongoing CoronaBloodlust, going for months on end. But it may well get a "second wind" at it, when the "second wave" of Corona cases comes in the fall. A CoronaPanic Second Wave .

I'll tell you what would be ironic, is if the Nov. 2020 presidential election ends up being a referendum on Corona Shutdowns:

Yes Corona Shutdowns: BIDEN

No Corona Shutdowns: TRUMP

This scenario seems at once so crazy as to be laughable, and yet also plausible to actually happen. Somehow both at the same time. God help us.

I'm not sure how realistic this exact scenario looks now. Does anyone care about Biden anymore? Would he really position himself as the Pro-Shutdowns guy if the media begins artificially creating a second panic wave?

Phaeton , says: Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2020 at 5:06 pm GMT
@Blip Blop I can't "agree-button" at you yet but I completely agree with you. I live in Spain and this is complete madness. I see so many kids wearing masks, that I would get depressed if it weren't because I see other parents avoiding all this stuff, which give me hope. Today I saw a pregnant woman wearing a mask, and I have wondered if this unborn human being is suffering because of her (of course she is probably thinking that she is doing the best for him/her).

Here in my country masks have been mandatory everywhere in public areas (unless you can keep the famous 2 meters with others) since yesterday, but people have used them for almost two months already.

J. Gutierrez , says: Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2020 at 5:07 pm GMT
@Achmed E. Newman – I have not seen Capitalism operating without Big-Gov anywhere in the world lately, outside the illegal-Mexican run flea markets).

I agree with you, and will add the many self operating street vendors throughout Mexico. Capitalism at it's finest

From beautiful Deer Park, Texas with love, J.G.

Dumbo , says: Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2020 at 5:11 pm GMT
@Dumbo Of course, I say this if this is just an exception, but if this really becomes the "new normal", then it's not good. And in fact I think this was just a "laboratory", in preparation for something worse later on
Poco , says: Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2020 at 5:20 pm GMT
@Levtraro Third order funny is that you two can't tell the difference. He's essentially mocking hysterical reactions to two seperate hoaxes that reify already existing authoritarianism.
Getaclue , says: Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2020 at 5:21 pm GMT
@Levtraro Tired of the "Models" and Statistics of all the NWO bought off "Experts" funded by Gates Foundation and Rockefeller -- all of them are little more than Prostitutes/Whores.

I have actually hired "Experts" for decades -- who pays them and funds their "grants" etc. directly effects their "opinions". You can literally get them to "Model" whatever and testify to anything–for $$$ -- grant or otherwise– and I am talking about World Class Credentialed "Experts". This is the REALITY -- if you argue otherwise you are either an Agenda driven partisan, ignorant or have never dealt with them.

As the other person stated above -- "Expert" Neal Ferguson has been completely discredited (boffing the Married Leftist "Activist" proved he totally did not believe in the "Social Distancing" garbage either -- it appears in NO infectious disease Textbook and no one in the Field has ever taught it) -- this TOTAL BS of claiming the lock downs worked in periodicals/magazines run by them? Please peddle it elsewhere! -- We in fact know they don't work -- you don't Quarantine Healthy People -- and in some cases, thankfully proving this, the timing showed that the lock downs clearly could not have been the reason for downturns (California etc. -- clearly Herd Immunity was already in play one of the greatest Scientists ever in the past as to Small Pox and other pandemics stated they should not be used, do some research?) -- what people like Ferguson do is put themselves in a position so that regardless of what happens they can claim they are right. Funny how that works? His "Models" were garbage–the actual data he used as "garbage in" has now been analyzed and, yes, it was garbage.

So we have the same networked "Experts" now covering for themselves and Ferguson, and putting out, in their own Magazines/Periodicals they control, what you then cite in your comment -- it is all CYA BS -- peddle it elsewhere.

Here is another example of the "Experts" at work. On January 30th the New England Journal of Medicine published a "Study" that claimed, unlike any Cold Virus EVER, this one was different– that there were "asymptomatic spreaders" -- the "Study" was then used by the CDC to put out the "wear Face Masks" change of position directive (Dr. Fauci also used it as he had previously said publicly on TV they were useless– which they have always been known to be in the past .). It is still being used to this day to order and coerce the wearing of Face Masks. Problem? It was a total and complete FRAUD.

Even the Scientists who actually did it have now admitted it was "FLAWED" and total garbage. Unfortunately, the NWO Globalist Media and "Experts" are still using it to justify forcing the Face Mask wearing and resulting fear mongering. They need to arrest Ferguson for what he did and start really penalizing these "Experts" who are nothing but Agenda driven shills. Here is the retraction as to the phony "flawed" Study: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/paper-non-symptomatic-patient-transmitting-coronavirus-wrong

Sick of Orcs , says: Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2020 at 5:39 pm GMT
@Nancy Pelosi's Latina Maid Who does Hopkins think will defend White interests? Here's a short list of who won't:

(((ACLU)))
(((SPLC)))
(((fake news)))
(((local news)))
Faux news
Trump
Gop
commiecrats
flubbertarians
The courts
The (((courts)))
police departments
academia
(((advertisers)))
(((social media)))
celebutards

Good luck to orcs, mestizos and chingchongs who think they'll do better.

Yusef , says: Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2020 at 5:48 pm GMT
@Getaclue I had to think about it a bit, but you've got a point. That flawed study did promote face mask wearing in public even though there is not a word in it about face masks or ordering/coercing their wearing.

(There's a picture with a Chinese-looking woman who is wearing a face mask at the top of the page.)

The NEJM is an interesting publication. I believe it serves an important function within the medical community but it is important not to take its reports as authoritative or necessarily even scientific.

Before the results were debunked the studious would have noticed how very small the sample size was. Am I right to see there were less than ten people in that group, and that one woman– one woman!– was at the heart of the "evidence." Wow. This was used to support a novel (for the USA) public policy affecting millions and millions of people.

Also note the irreplaceable genius of our hero and savior Dr. Anthony Fauci as he is quoted at the end of the article. He still believes asymptomatic transmission occurs even after the slender thread of evidence upon which that belief might have been supported has been kicked out from under him. He obviously didn't need scientific support in the first place– he has an agenda.

It is lucky I am a nobody in nowhereville and will never be anywhere near these creeps. I don't think I could restrain myself if I had any opportunity whatsoever to, um, commit a terrible violent crime. (Can I admit this? My posts are moderated and if this offends, please feel free to delete that one part. Please allow me to say the rest.)

450.org , says: Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2020 at 6:01 pm GMT
I can't believe how many CDC and WHO employees are on here advocating no face mask.

https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/491725-who-no-evidence-wearing-a-mask-can-protect

The World Health Organization (WHO) says healthy people don't need to wear face masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, and masks should only be for those who are sick, their caretakers and health care workers.

In guidance released by WHO Monday, the United Nations public health agency said "there is currently no evidence that wearing a mask (whether medical or other types) by healthy persons in the wider community setting, including universal community masking, can prevent them from infection with respiratory viruses, including COVID-19."

WHO said the use of medical masks among the general public could create a false sense of security and cause people to ignore social distancing measures and hygiene practices. Currently in the U.S., the overwhelming majority of states have issued stay-at-home orders to stop the spread of the virus, and federal guidance advises citizens to stay home and not gather in groups of more than ten through April 30.

https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-do-face-masks-work.html

This is from late March before the CDC changed its tune.

The CDC currently states that healthy people do not need to wear face masks unless they are caring for someone who is ill with the new coronavirus.

So, it appears the WHO and the CDC are indeed fascist as is noted that they are in agreement with the fascists at this venue.

Also, nothing is more fascist than the government ordering slave wage peasants back into filthy disease-infested slaughterhouses (slaughterhouses are incubators for COVFEFE-19 -- they are America's wet markets) under the aegis of the Defense Protection Act.

Curmudgeon , says: Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2020 at 6:23 pm GMT
@Bragadocious Sweden is more "left" than Germany, France or the UK. They didn't lock down anyone. The UK government is more "right" than any UK government since John Major was PM.

The notion that the US government, or Trump for that matter, isn't authoritarian, is absurd. Presidents, by nature of the position, are authoritarian. The same goes for legislative bodies. The only issue is whether you recognize the authority they exert.

Stan d Mute , says: Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2020 at 6:25 pm GMT
@Phaeton

In other words: they don't freaking care about our health. Why is that so difficult to understand for people?

I'm sure that was rhetorical, but I'll answer it anyway. People (in general) don't understand because they are stupid. Profoundly and probably irreversibly stupid, compounded exponentially by a media propaganda barrage praising the retards for their great intelligence. When more than half the total US population has an IQ below 100, yet thinks itself brilliant because the talking heads on MSNBC tell them so, the CoronaCaust is the logical outcome really.

I'd bet my favorite dog that significantly fewer than 50% could adequately explain the germ theory of disease, infectious pathogens, or the human microbiome. They could, however, expound interminably on the glories of Beyonkey's latest autotuned hit or point out how you are a racist for noticing the facts in evidence that they pretend not to see.

Given the dysgenic trends in human reproductive rates compounded by modern medicine enabling every retard to survive and reproduce, we should all get ourselves very used to being governed by the irrational terrors of simpletons.

Curmudgeon , says: Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2020 at 6:28 pm GMT
@Biff Probably not what R.C. is referring to, but my definition would be an economy free of the international banking cartel and its big casinos like Wall Street.
schnellandine , says: Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2020 at 6:29 pm GMT
@Culpepper

Perhaps it is the aspect of paranioa that makes it apt

You remind me of an absurd TV special years ago that played audio of some wiretapped guys theorizing that ATF was out to get them and their guns. The underlying video was of their guns, stolen, in an ATF warehouse . The lead-in narration discussed how paranoid these crazy gun nuts had been. They now sat in concrete and steel cages, their guns taken, gleeful psyop tool mocking their wiretapped concerns as 'paranoid' for being 100% correct regarding a threat which was active at the time they expressed concern that it might be happening .

In other words, pretty much the same psyop that media ran on you successfully re the Mt. Carmel invasion and massacre, assuming you're sincere. Associating paranoia with them is beyond ignorant. They had an irrational/delusional fear that they were going to be persecuted worse than they were?

Curmudgeon , says: Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2020 at 6:31 pm GMT
A good column overall, Mr. Hopkins, but what is going on now is not "real fascism". Real fascists would have taken care of the usurious bankers by now, not given them more money to f*ck us over.
Stan d Mute , says: Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2020 at 6:32 pm GMT
@botazefa

Collectively failing to stand up to our wives for the past 60 years is what got us into this mess. We've somehow managed to normalize hysterics.

This is indeed the root cause. I have yet to spot a Man in a mask (except for the brilliant trolls wearing pantyliners and klan hoods).

Yusef , says: Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2020 at 6:33 pm GMT
@450.org "Also, nothing is more fascist than the government ordering slave wage peasants back into filthy disease-infested slaughterhouses (slaughterhouses are incubators for COVFEFE-19 -- they are America's wet markets) under the aegis of the Defense Protection Act."

I happen to agree with you here, and am offended if you think I or most people commenting against you would disagree. The gov't shouldn't be able to order people to work any more than the gov't should be able to order people not to work.

"I can't believe how many CDC and WHO employees are on here advocating no face mask."

You can't believe– or understand– but that's because you are not paying close attention. And that's a shame.

Do you see the CDC and WHO were advocating no face mask for the reason there was no evidence of their being effective? Do you see the CDC and WHO changed and began advocating face masks when very slim evidence which turned out to be faulty emerged? Do you see the CDC and WHO have not reversed their position now we are again in the situation of there being no evidence of the effectiveness of face masks?

Jake , says: Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2020 at 6:37 pm GMT
Bravo.
Alden , says: Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2020 at 6:59 pm GMT
@Hail Good news, The Atlantic just laid off 68 employees due to lack of advertising revenue. Noticed my local newspaper is half the size it was in February due to lack of advertising pages.
Alden , says: Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2020 at 7:11 pm GMT
@Kratoklastes Just because your age, ugliness, obesity, stupidity and a surly personality means you can't get laid is no reason to hate women.
Alden , says: Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2020 at 7:16 pm GMT
@Yusef End of February I asked 2 Drs about wearing a mask when flying. One said don't wear a mask or worry. The other said as long as you're not in the international terminal near the Chinese airlines sections, don't wear a mask or worry.
idrankwhat , says: Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2020 at 7:57 pm GMT
@CJ Hopkins There are credible estimates of much lower IFR:

https://unherd.com/2020/05/oxford-doubles-down-sunetra-gupta-interview/

Joe Levantine , says: Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2020 at 8:05 pm GMT
@eD There are things that regular people can do to fight the the new abnormal. I still offer my hand to anyone who is willing to take it. I go for my daily walks in a group of two or three without keeping any social distancing and I argue my case with any cop who tells me that I am disobeying the law, reminding him that we are in the same side against the crooks, the cowards, the fools, the freaks and the tyrants who are trying to mould us into obedient slaves. Though in the interest of full disclosure, I should clearly state that I sensed the totalitarianism of the American government around thirty years ago and left the United States on a one way ticket to a third world whose virtue is a government that is weak enough not to overpower its society.

Resistance should be primarily in your mind. While I would not blame anyone for avoiding a confrontation with American mad dog policemen, having watched with horror how four of those brutes attacked retired ex long time CIA high official Mr. Ray McGovern when he asked the senators in charge of vetting Gina Haspel a legitimate question only to be attacked by these senseless brutes, dragged out the room and pulled down to the floor suffering a dislocated shoulder, I would not allow myself to admonish American citizens for avoiding any attempt at talking reason to these goons in blue uniforms. But I think that you will have won at least a half victory if you simply play the routine without making yourself hostage to the fear mongering and by clearly stating to your company that you are wearing the mask for the sake of putting the gullible at ease.

Unless the United States moves into a system of decentralisation with more empowerment to the state and local communities, the Fascist clutches of the federal government backed by the technocracy will keep whittling away at the freedoms of the citizens dooming them to a life of slavery.

Phaeton , says: Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2020 at 8:14 pm GMT
@Stan d Mute As you said, it was retorical. I have to say that I am extremely surprised to see how irrational people can be, though. Because it is not only that they are ignorant about a topic, which is something normal. It is that you can't argue with them. And I am not talking only about people who watch mainstream media, but also many people from the so-called alternative world.

Just an example: yesterday a relative was worried because her friends had "attacked" her in a Whatsapp group (because in person most of them are a cowards who wouldn't say anything) for criticizing the measure of making masks mandatory in all Spanish public places if we can't have a separation of 2 meters. They were all defending that all people should wear masks in public, doesn't matter if you are alone in the street (strangely enough, none of them talk about Sweden and Iceland). THIS IS THE LEVEL in the country where I live. These people are attacking people without knowing, as you say, even the most elemental knowledge of mainstream immunology. If they, instead of watching news 24/7, would have read a couple of chapters of any good book about this topic, they would see, at least, some of the lies regarding vaccines (I feel like crying everytime someone confuses "treatment" with "prevention").

The last sentence in your comment is quite scary. For some reason I have recalled about one of the stories about what happened to Laozi. I copy this fragment from Wikipedia (yeah, I know ): "The third story in Sima Qian states that Laozi grew weary of the moral decay of life in Chengzhou and noted the kingdom's decline. He ventured west to live as a hermit in the unsettled frontier at the age of 80."
I wonder what he would do if he would see the unbelievably decline of today.

To be honest, the only thing that give me hope today is seeing young people, around 16-20, completely ignoring the social distancing and masking psyop.

[May 17, 2020] Crisis of Character A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience with Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate

May 17, 2020 | www.amazon.com

>


Brian K. Miller , Reviewed in the United States on October 12, 2016

The people who need to read this book won't even open the cover

Even as I sit down to type these words I know I am wasting my time. The people who need to read this book will not read it, and even if they did, they would refuse to believe it. They are so blinded by their sycophantic adoration of Secretary Clinton that they cannot accept as real any fact which serves to contradict their assumption of her divinity. I do not understand this depth of willful ignorance. All my life I have been a truth seeker and a fact checker. I know exactly how screwed up my own internal landscape is, and I even know how it got that way. Therefore, when I form an opinion on the real world I force myself to go and seek alternatives, to verify every fact, and to always seek the greater context those facts live within. Context is everything.

"Crisis of Character" by Gary J. Byrne is an exceptional book. It is one man's version of reality and it never pretends to be anything else. The constant search of the writer is in his seeking to define the moral context of everything he experiences. He does not expect perfection. He does expect accountability.

The "Introduction" opens with some background describing how and why he decided to write this book. In the first chapter he immediately jumps to a telling event that happened on a typical day of his tenure as a Secret Service Uniformed Division (SSUD) officer trusted with the last line of defense of the First Family and the White House itself. The chapter goes deeper into his background, chronicling how his father's influence and his childhood travels formed his internalized value system. There are multiple anecdotes from his time as an enlisted member of the Air Force Security Police (AFSP). These stories are both personally revealing and very solid examples of the many diverse situations the AFSP finds itself in. This is a real-life account of one man's service as an elite member of an elite fighting group.

Chapter 3 begins the main portion of the book. This is the story of his career with the SSUD which opens with his powerful memories of beginning his career protecting President G. H. W. Bush and the Bush family during the tenure of our 41st President. Life under the Clintons begins in Chapter 5 and carries on for about the next third of the book. One of the most interesting aspects of this story for me was how hard he worked to protect both the reputation of the Clintons and the security of the White House. As the story unfolds it becomes clear that during this period of time his attitude was much different than it is now. Events surrounding Monica Lewinsky, the ill-fated relief mission to Somalia, and the dramatic shift in priorities between the Bush administration and the Clinton administration challenged his assumptions about American life, American politics, and the values he learned from his father. It was only after he grew trapped between his own internalized moral code, the requirements of his job, and the complete lack of a moral code displayed by the Clintons that he finally sought to be transferred out of the White House. A good man driven to despair by the morally bankrupt couple chosen to lead the free world.

Chapter 14 begins his retelling of the fallout from the Ken Starr investigation into the activities of Bill and Hillary Clinton. This portion of the book struggles very hard to come to grips with how the Clintons managed to manipulate the media, the legal system, their inner cadre of loyalists, and the American people, into believing they were something other than criminals who failed in their responsibility to live up to the expectations of the American people. There is a great deal of information here about how the Clintons managed time and time again to avoid the consequences of their own corrupt and perverse behaviors. I found this portion of his story both genuinely heartbreaking and deeply infuriating. For the past three years my faith in our political process has been fighting to stay alive. Sadly, Gary Byrne's retelling of the Clinton impeachment proceedings has destroyed any small spark of faith I had remaining in our system. Clearly we have become a failed state. All that is left is for the right crisis to push us into a brutal, bloody, implosive collapse.

Chapter 16 begins the next phase in his life. Now he is working as an instructor, teaching advanced tactical training to federal agents from multiple law enforcement agencies as well as state and county agencies who contract with James J. Rowley Training Center (JJRTC). There are a couple of small anecdotes about his life as both an instructor and an in-rotation SSUD officer who still must from time to time serve protection details. Then 9/11 happens and his world turns upside down once again. As the SSUD is reorganized from top to bottom and political will surpasses policing as their core structure, he moves into the Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) hoping that here he will have the tools and opportunities to genuinely help people and make a real difference in the world. Unfortunately, just before he makes the jump, the FAMS also falls victim to post 9/11 reorganization and even here, politics surpasses mission as the core foundation for policy creation and implementation. Nonetheless, the greater salary and the occasional victory are enough to keep him going until he retires.

The book closes with one last dire warning about the consequences of putting the Clintons back into the White House. His firsthand experience with the Clintons multiple and massive failures both within federal administrations and under Hillary Clinton's service as Senator and Secretary of State have given Gary J. Byrne a unique and deeply moving perspective on how political power functions in the United States of America. Honestly, there is a great deal to be learned by reading, "Crisis of Character". There are lessons here that are relevant to Hillary Clinton's unsuitability for the role of President, and there are lessons here for each of us individually in understanding the consequences that result from making decisions based on pure emotion, on poor comprehension of the situation we find ourselves in, and on trusting others to do our thinking for us.

A powerful book that needs to be read by everyone who supports Hillary Clinton, but won't be, because none of them want to see beyond the false front she has convinced them is real. It's not just that Hillary Clinton is a con artist and a criminal. The greater context of this book is the horrifying results that occur when we ourselves refuse to face the real world consequences of our own ignorance.

Texas Sweetheart , Reviewed in the United States on August 1, 2016
She really is a nasty person

Great book. She really is a nasty person. They are both severely lacking in the morals, ethics, character and truth departments. Always interesting to get the perspective of a secret service agent. The Clintons were lucky to be surrounded by dedicated agents willing to give up their lives, despite the way they were treated and what they were subjected to covering up. Gary Byrne earned every penny this book brings him. Shame on the Clintons. They are a disgrace.

K. Olgren , Reviewed in the United States on July 1, 2016
you'll be disappointed, but if you are open to read a ...

While it is true that the book covers his whole life, and the Clintons were just a small part of it, I found the entire book riveting. I couldn't put it down and read it in a matter of days. I also disagree with the reviewers who said there was nothing new in it. I never would have imagined Hillary Clinton was as hateful as she was, and the things people on her detail had to do to deal with her temper -- I felt sorry for them, and knowing that they are still following her and always will, I will always feel sorry for the people working beneath her.

This book is a worthwhile read. If you want a Clinton scoop from cover to cover, you'll be disappointed, but if you are open to read a man's fascinating life-story, you will enjoy it. I agree with another reviewer who said the low ratings were people who want to vote for Clinton. Honestly, I don't think either candidate we have to choose from has the right temperament for the Presidency, but we got stuck with the choice that we got.

In terms of the book itself, it was well done, a riveting page-turner throughout his entire life story. It is worth what it cost to read it.

[May 16, 2020] Globalist Totalitarianism has been erected upon the frame created by the British Empire, which created the nascent forms of globalist corporatism right down to corporations owning entire nations and sub-continents: see the East India Company

May 16, 2020 | www.unz.com

Jake , says: Show Comment May 11, 2020 at 12:34 pm GMT

"An obvious explanation was the ongoing Covid-19 epidemic."

That was just the convenient excuse. Every little totalitarian, like very humongous totalitarian, knows to never let a crisis go to waste. And that goes double for a fake crisis or an overblown crisis or managed crisis.

Globalist Totalitarianism – which could make the USSR at its worst seem almost pastoral – intends to murder all populist opposition. Globalist Totalitarianism is much more Brave New World than it is 1984. Globalist Totalitarianism intends for large swaths of the hoi polloi to have easy access to becoming stoned, because the doped are very easy to control in ways that matter to billionaires. Globalist Totalitarianism requires Sexual Revolution in all its facets, because that too makes multitudes easy slaves to control.

Globalist Totalitarianism requires total control of mass media, big tech, big pharma, food production and distribution. If the masses keep avoiding the propaganda, they can be starved into submission and denied medicines. They even can be weeded out, their numbers cut significantly, by illnesses created in labs owned and operated by the Globalists.

Historic nationalities, ethnicities, and folk cultures have no meaning, no rights, before Globalist Totalitarianism. Masses of humans – slaves to the economic desires of the Empire's Elites – are moved around the Empire as its Elites desire, both to produce cheap labor and to disrupt, implode, any entity that could become more than a minor irritant to the Empire's Elites.

Globalist Totalitarianism has been erected upon the frame created by the British Empire, which created the nascent forms of globalist corporatism right down to corporations owning entire nations and sub-continents: see the East India Company.

[May 14, 2020] NYT Falsely Blames Russia For Cyberattack Committed By British Hacker

Chancellor Angela Merkel that stupid? "Chancellor Angela Merkel used strong words on Wednesday condemning an "outrageous" cyberattack by Russia's foreign intelligence service on the German Parliament, her personal email account included. Russia, she said, was pursuing "a strategy of hybrid warfare."
Notable quotes:
"... That alleged attack happened in 2015. The attribution to Russia is as shoddy as all attributions of cyberattacks are. ..."
"... Intelligence officials had long suspected Russian operatives were behind the attack, but they took five years to collect the evidence, which was presented in a report given to Ms. Merkel's office just last week. ..."
"... This is really funny because we recently learned that the company which investigated the alleged DNC intrusion, CrowdStrike, had found no evidence , as in zero, that a Russian hacker group had targeted the DNC or that DNC emails were exfiltrated over the Internet: ..."
"... CrowdStrike, the private cyber-security firm that first accused Russia of hacking Democratic Party emails and served as a critical source for U.S. intelligence officials in the years-long Trump-Russia probe, acknowledged to Congress more than two years ago that it had no concrete evidence that Russian hackers stole emails from the Democratic National Committee's server. ..."
"... The DNC emails were most likely stolen by its local network administrator, Seth Rich , who provided them to Wikileaks before he was killed in a suspicious 'robbery' during which nothing was taken. ..."
"... The whole attribution of case of the stolen DNC emails to Russia is based on exactly nothing but intelligence rumors and CrowdStrike claims for which it had no evidence. As there is no evidence at all that the DNC was attacked by a Russian cybergroup what does that mean for the attribution of the attack on the German Bundestag to the very same group? ..."
May 14, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

The New York Times continues its anti-Russia campaign with a report about an old cyberattack on German parliament which also targeted the parliament office of Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Merkel Is 'Outraged' by Russian Hack but Struggling to Respond
Patience with President Vladimir Putin is running thin in Berlin. But Germany needs Russia's help on several geopolitical fronts from Syria to Ukraine.

NYT Berlin correspondent Katrin Bennhold writes:

Chancellor Angela Merkel used strong words on Wednesday condemning an "outrageous" cyberattack by Russia's foreign intelligence service on the German Parliament, her personal email account included. Russia, she said, was pursuing "a strategy of hybrid warfare."

But asked how Berlin intended to deal with recent revelations implicating the Russians, Ms. Merkel was less forthcoming.

"We always reserve the right to take measures," she said in Parliament, then immediately added, "Nevertheless, I will continue to strive for a good relationship with Russia, because I believe that there is every reason to always continue these diplomatic efforts."

That alleged attack happened in 2015. The attribution to Russia is as shoddy as all attributions of cyberattacks are.

Intelligence officials had long suspected Russian operatives were behind the attack, but they took five years to collect the evidence, which was presented in a report given to Ms. Merkel's office just last week.

Officials say the report traced the attack to the same Russian hacker group that targeted the Democratic Party during the U.S. presidential election campaign in 2016.

This is really funny because we recently learned that the company which investigated the alleged DNC intrusion, CrowdStrike, had found no evidence , as in zero, that a Russian hacker group had targeted the DNC or that DNC emails were exfiltrated over the Internet:

CrowdStrike, the private cyber-security firm that first accused Russia of hacking Democratic Party emails and served as a critical source for U.S. intelligence officials in the years-long Trump-Russia probe, acknowledged to Congress more than two years ago that it had no concrete evidence that Russian hackers stole emails from the Democratic National Committee's server.
...
[CrowdStrike President Shawn] Henry personally led the remediation and forensics analysis of the DNC server after being warned of a breach in late April 2016; his work was paid for by the DNC, which refused to turn over its server to the FBI. Asked for the date when alleged Russian hackers stole data from the DNC server, Henry testified that CrowdStrike did not in fact know if such a theft occurred at all : "We did not have concrete evidence that the data was exfiltrated [moved electronically] from the DNC, but we have indicators that it was exfiltrated," Henry said.

The DNC emails were most likely stolen by its local network administrator, Seth Rich , who provided them to Wikileaks before he was killed in a suspicious 'robbery' during which nothing was taken.

The whole attribution of case of the stolen DNC emails to Russia is based on exactly nothing but intelligence rumors and CrowdStrike claims for which it had no evidence. As there is no evidence at all that the DNC was attacked by a Russian cybergroup what does that mean for the attribution of the attack on the German Bundestag to the very same group?

While the NYT also mentions that NSA actually snooped on Merkel's private phonecalls it tries to keep the spotlight on Russia:

As such, Germany's democracy has been a target of very different kinds of Russian intelligence operations, officials say. In December 2016, 900,000 Germans lost access to internet and telephone services following a cyberattack traced to Russia.

bigger

Ahem. No!

That mass attack on internet home routers, which by the way happened in November 2016 not in December, was done with the Mirai worm :

More than 900,000 customers of German ISP Deutsche Telekom (DT) were knocked offline this week after their Internet routers got infected by a new variant of a computer worm known as Mirai. The malware wriggled inside the routers via a newly discovered vulnerability in a feature that allows ISPs to remotely upgrade the firmware on the devices. But the new Mirai malware turns that feature off once it infests a device, complicating DT's cleanup and restoration efforts.
...
This new variant of Mirai builds on malware source code released at the end of September . That leak came a little more a week after a botnet based on Mirai was used in a record-sized attack that caused KrebsOnSecurity to go offline for several days . Since then, dozens of new Mirai botnets have emerged , all competing for a finite pool of vulnerable IoT systems that can be infected.

The attack has not been attributed to Russia but to a British man who offered attacks as a service. He was arrested in February 2017:

A 29-year-old man has been arrested at Luton airport by the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) in connection with a massive internet attack that disrupted telephone, television and internet services in Germany last November. As regular readers of We Live Security will recall, over 900,000 Deutsche Telekom broadband customers were knocked offline last November as an alleged attempt was made to hijack their routers into a destructive botnet.
...
The NCA arrested the British man under a European Arrest Warrant issued by Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) who have described the attack as a threat to Germany's national communication infrastructure.

According to German prosecutors, the British man allegedly offered to sell access to the botnet on the computer underground. Agencies are planning to extradite the man to Germany, where – if convicted – he could face up to ten years imprisonment.

The British man, one Daniel Kaye, plead guilty in court and was sentenced to 18 month imprisonment :

During the trial, Daniel admitted that he never intended for the routers to cease functioning. He only wanted to silently control them so he can use them as part of a DDoS botnet to increase his botnet firepower. As discussed earlier he also confessed being paid by competitors to takedown Lonestar.

In Aug 2017 Daniel was extradited back to the UK to face extortion charges after attempting to blackmail Lloyds and Barclays banks. According to press reports, he asked the Lloyds to pay about £75,000 in bitcoins for the attack to be called off.

The Mirai attack is widely known to have been attributed to Kaye. The case has been discussed at length . IT security journalist Brian Krebs, who's site was also attacked by a Mirai bot net, has written several stories about it. It was never 'traced to Russia' or attributed it to anyone else but Daniel Kaye.

Besides that Kennhold writes of "Russia's foreign intelligence service, known as the G.R.U.". The real Russian foreign intelligence services is the SVR. The military intelligence agency of Russia was once called GRU but has been renamed to GU.

The New York Times just made up the claim about Russia hacking in Germany from absolutely nothing. The whole piece was published without even the most basic research and fact checking.

It seems that for the Times anything can be blamed on Russia completely independent of what the actually facts say.

Posted by b on May 14, 2020 at 14:38 UTC | Permalink


J Swift , May 14 2020 15:05 utc | 1

Good article!

Along the same lines, it always bothered me that among all the (mostly contrived) arguments about who might have been responsible for the alleged "hacking" of DNC as well as Clinton's emails, we never heard mentioned one single time the one third party that we absolutely KNOW had intercepted and collected all of those emails--the NSA! Never a peep about how US intelligence services could be tempted to mischief when in possession of everyone's sensitive, personal information.

Petri Krohn , May 14 2020 15:26 utc | 2
The "Fancy Bear" group (also knowns as advanced persistent threat 28) that is claimed to be behind the hacks is likely little more than the collection of hacking tools shared on the open and hidden parts of RuNet or Russian-speaking Internet. Many of these Russian-speaking hackers are actually Ukrainians .

Some of the Russian hackers also worked for the FSB, like the members of Shaltai Boltai group that were later arrested for treason. George Eliason claims Shaltai Boltai actually worked for Ukrainians. For a short version of the story read this:

Cyberanalyst George Eliason Claims that the "Fancy Bear" Who Hacked the DNC Server is Ukrainian Intelligence – In League with the Atlantic Council and Crowdstrike

Cyberanalyst George Eliason has written some intriguing blogs recently claiming that the "Fancy Bear" which hacked the DNC server in mid-2016 was in fact a branch of Ukrainian intelligence linked to the Atlantic Council and Crowdstrike. I invite you to have a go at one of his recent essays...

Patrick Armstrong , May 14 2020 15:27 utc | 3 Wow! You've done it again. I was just writing my Sitrep and thinking what an amazing coincidence it is that, just as the Russian pipelaying ship arrived to finish Nord Stream, Merkel is told that them nasty Russkies are doing nasty things. I come here and you've already solved it. Yet another scoop. Congratulations.
Brendan , May 14 2020 15:41 utc | 4
The NYT has removed that sentence about the attack on internet/phone access:

"Correction: May 14, 2020

An earlier version of this article incorrectly attributed responsibility for a 2016 cyberattack in which 900,000 Germans lost access to internet and telephone services. The attack was carried out by a British citizen, not Russia. The article also misstated when the attack took place. It was in November, not December. The sentence has been removed from the article. "

That was there for at least 13 hours from yesterday evening onwards. The page was archived this morning though before that edit:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200513221700/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/world/europe/merkel-russia-cyberattack.html

Norwegian , May 14 2020 15:45 utc | 5
From this we can learn that anything can be blamed by MSM, completely independent of what the facts are. It is not limited to allegations related to Russia or China, but any and all claims by MSM that have no direct reference to provable fact.
james , May 14 2020 15:45 utc | 6
great coverage b... thank you... facts don't matter.. what matters is taking down any positive image of russia, or better - putting up a constantly negative one... of this the intel and usa msm are consistent... the sad reality is a lot of people will believe this bullshit too...

i was just reading paul robinsons blog last night - #DEMOCRACY RIP AND THE NARCISSISM OF RUSSIAGATE .. even paul is starting to getting pissed off on the insanity of the media towards russia which is rare from what i have read from him!

@ 3 patrick armstrong.. keep up the good work!! thanks for your work..

Brendan , May 14 2020 15:48 utc | 7
OK I don't know how to fix the formatting in my last link but you can look up https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/world/europe/merkel-russia-cyberattack.html on https://web.archive.org for 10:46 May 14 2020
m droy , May 14 2020 15:51 utc | 8
There is already a correction made to the DT attack - someone reads MofA! Shame they don't get more of their new interpretation form here.

Whole piece reads here like it started as a Merkel gets close to Russia piece, shown around to colleagues and politicians for feedback, and a ton of fake "why Merkel actually hates the Russians" nonsense was added in.

After all pretty much everyone has tapped Merkel's phone by now.

tucenz , May 14 2020 16:22 utc | 9
Fairy tales told by Danny Kaye....

[May 14, 2020] Tucker on Obamagate

May 14, 2020 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

Patient Observer May 11, 2020 at 8:50 am

Don't fuck with the Tuck:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/fHh19Baj_pM?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

The guy is on fire. Per Carlson, Obama orchestrated the Russian collusion propaganda. I suspect that the lovely Ms. Hilary was a conspirator as well.

Carlson has the number 1 television news show with 4.56 million viewers on average.

https://www.nytimes.com/svc/oembed/html/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2020%2F04%2F28%2Fbusiness%2Fmedia%2Fvirus-tucker-carlson-sean-hannity-fox-ratings.html

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Mark Chapman May 11, 2020 at 9:54 am
Absolutely remarkable; in fact, 'stunning', as he uses it, is not too much of a stretch. The 'liberal elites' just go right on lying even though the sworn testimony of FBI interviewers is available for anyone to read, as well as the chilling manipulations of Strozk and Page, both of whom should be in prison and perhaps will be. And that fucker Schiff should swing. I can't believe the transformation of Carlson from Bush shill to the reincarnation of Edward R. Murrow. He makes this case so compellingly that nobody could watch that clip and not believe that Flynn was railroaded from the outset. And what were they allegedly going to jail Flynn's son for? Does anyone know? Were they just going to make something up? That is terrifying, and almost argues for the disbanding of the FBI, although it demonstrably still contains honest agents – as Carlson asks rhetorically, how many times have they done this already, and gotten away with it?

It's hard to imagine anyone would vote Democrat now.

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Cortes May 11, 2020 at 10:10 am
The son was being lined up for prosecution for alleged FARA violations regarding work on Turkey, I think. The son was working with the General.

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Mark Chapman May 11, 2020 at 11:45 am
Couldn't have been too much of a crime, if they offered to let him go in exchange for Flynn pleading guilty to lying. Actually, you'd kind of think their business was prosecuting crimes whoever committed them, and that offering to excuse a crime in exchange for a guilty plea is .kind of a crime.

Man, they have to clean house at the FBI. And there probably are several other organizations that need it, too. Not the political culling based on ideology that was a feature of the Bush White House, but the crowd that's in now just cannot be allowed to get off with nothing.

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uncle tungsten May 12, 2020 at 2:55 am
Greetings Mark and all, I am a new arrival as Jen suggested the company is fine here for barflies to ponder the world. Can I surmise that if Flynn and son were the FBI targets for nefarious business dealings then surely Biden and son fall in to that same category. After all Biden and son filched millions after arranging a USA loan of $1Billion to Ukraine and then did it again after the IMF loaned a few million more. Carpetbagging and its modern day practice is a crime in the USA last I looked.

If that conspicuous bias isn't enough cause to dismember the FBI then consider the Uranium One deal that Hillary Clinton and family set up or perhaps the Debbie Wasserman Shultz fostering the Awan family spy and blackmail ring.

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Mark Chapman May 12, 2020 at 9:37 am
Good day, Uncle, and welcome! For some reason I can't fathom, the Democrats seem to own or control all the 'respectable' media in the USA. FOX News is an exception, and has been a mouthpiece for the Republicans since its inception. But the Democrats control the New York Times and the Washington Post, which together represent the bulk of American public feeling to foreigners, and probably to the domestic audience as well. They are extremely active on conflicts between the two parties, ensuring the Democratic perspective gets put forward in calm, reasonable why-wouldn't-a-sensible-person-think-this-way manner. At the same time they cast horrific aspersions at the Republicans. Not that either are much good; but the news coverage is very one-sided – the position of the Democrats on the sexual-assault furor over the Kavanaugh appointment compared with their wait-and-see attitude to very similar accusations against Biden is a classic example.

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rkka May 13, 2020 at 9:33 am
Mark,

I don't think its the Democrats that control the NYT &WP, so much as plutocrats. They're also the ones who fund both the Democrats & the Republicans. The only significant difference between the parties is largely in the arena of the social "culture war" issues. But on the issues plutocrats care about, like economic policy & foreign policy, the differences are shades of grey, rather than actual distinctions.

Just remember the coverage of both papers in the run up to George W Shrub's catastrophic Iraq war. They're stenographers, not journalists.

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Mark Chapman May 13, 2020 at 11:12 am
That may well be true, but the NYT and WP historically champion the Democrats, endorse the Democratic candidate for president, and pander to Democratic issues and projects. The Wall Street Journal is the traditional Republican print outlet, and there might be others but I don't know them. CNN is overwhelmingly and weepily Democratic in its content – Wolf Blitzer's eyes nearly roll back in his head with ecstasy whenever he mentions Saint Hillary – while FOX News is Repubican to the bone and openly contemptuous of liberals. It could certainly be, on reflection probably is, that the same cabal of corporatists control them all, and a fine joke they must think it. And I certainly and emphatically agree there is almost no difference between the parties in execution of external policy.

[May 14, 2020] Dirty Dozen: The 12 revelations that sunk Mueller's case against Flynn

Notable quotes:
"... Ideally, they should each be prosecuted with an attempt to discern their connections to the political establishment, and specifically to the Clintons. What does that woman have to do to get jailed – blow somebody away on the 6 o'clock news? ..."
May 14, 2020 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

et Al May 11, 2020 at 8:22 am

JusttheNews.com: Dirty Dozen: The 12 revelations that sunk Mueller's case against Flynn
https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/dirty-dozen-12-revelations-sunk-muellers-case-against

After a prescient 2017 tip from inside the FBI, a slow drip of revelations exposed the deep problems with the Flynn prosecution.
####

All at the link.

I should add that the author, seasoned investigative reporter John Soloman, wrote much of this over at TheHill.com and was targeted for review over his clearly labelled 'opinion' pieces reporting on the Bidens in the Ukraine. The Hill's conclusion is piss weak and accuses him of what just about every other journalist in the US does and reads in particular of holding him up to a much higher standard than others. As you will see from his twatter bio, he's worked for AP, Washington Post, The Washington Times and The Hill. Some things you are just not supposed to investigate, let alone report.

https://thehill.com/author/john-solomon

https://thehill.com/homenews/news/483600-the-hills-review-of-john-solomons-columns-on-ukraine

Mark Chapman May 11, 2020 at 9:37 am
At an absolute minimum, the FBI officials involved – except those who did their jobs properly and stated their judgments at the outset that there was no evidence Flynn was not telling the truth, or believed he was – should be fired and their pensions, if applicable, rescinded.

Ideally, they should each be prosecuted with an attempt to discern their connections to the political establishment, and specifically to the Clintons. What does that woman have to do to get jailed – blow somebody away on the 6 o'clock news?

[May 11, 2020] Tucker: Adam Schiff should resign

This is nationwide gaslighting by Clinton gang of neoliberals who attempted coup d'état, and Adam Schiff was just one of the key figures in this coupe d'état, king of modern Joe McCarthy able and willing to destroy a person using false evidence
What is interesting is that Tucker attacked Republicans for aiding and abetting the coup d'état against Trump
May 11, 2020 | www.youtube.com

RionE23 , 2 days ago

I'm sick of politicians getting a free pass by "resigning" no, they break the law they go to jail.. just like the rest of us.

shannon11590 , 1 day ago

Adam Schiff simply needs to be criminally prosecuted and imprisoned for the countless number of criminal acts that he committed while in Congress.

[May 11, 2020] Anti-Russian hysteria as the key feature of American neofascism. In a way RussiaGate is a neofascist putsch

May 11, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

FDR warned his son before his death of his understanding of the British takeover of American foreign policy, but still could not reverse this agenda. His son recounted his father's ominous insight:

"You know, any number of times the men in the State Department have tried to conceal messages to me, delay them, hold them up somehow, just because some of those career diplomats over there aren't in accord with what they know I think. They should be working for Winston. As a matter of fact, a lot of the time, they are [working for Churchill]. Stop to think of 'em: any number of 'em are convinced that the way for America to conduct its foreign policy is to find out what the British are doing and then copy that!" I was told six years ago, to clean out that State Department. It's like the British Foreign Office ."

Before being fired from Truman's cabinet for his advocacy of US-Russia friendship during the Cold War, Wallace stated:

"American fascism" which has come to be known in recent years as the Deep State. "Fascism in the postwar inevitably will push steadily for Anglo-Saxon imperialism and eventually for war with Russia. Already American fascists are talking and writing about this conflict and using it as an excuse for their internal hatreds and intolerances toward certain races, creeds and classes."

In his 1946 Soviet Asia Mission , Wallace said " Before the blood of our boys is scarcely dry on the field of battle, these enemies of peace try to lay the foundation for World War III. These people must not succeed in their foul enterprise. We must offset their poison by following the policies of Roosevelt in cultivating the friendship of Russia in peace as well as in war."

[May 10, 2020] Ehret For Victory Day, It's Time To Think About Finally Winning WWII

May 10, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Matthew Ehret via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

75 years ago Germany surrendered to allied forces finally ending the ravages of the Second World War.

Today, as the world celebrates the 75th anniversary of this victory, why not think very seriously about finally winning that war once and for all?

If you're confused by this statement, then you might want to sit down and take a deep breath before reading on. Within the next 12 minutes, you will likely discover a disturbing fact which may frighten you a little bit: The allies never actually won World War II

Now please don't get me wrong. I am eternally thankful for the immortal souls who gave their lives to put down the fascist machine during those bleak years but the fact is that a certain something wasn't resolved on the 9th of May, 1945 which has a lot to do with the slow re-emergence of a new form of fascism during the second half of the 20th century and the renewed danger of a global bankers' dictatorship which the world faces again today.

It is my contention that it is only when we find the courage to really look at this problem with sober eyes, that we will be able to truly honor our courageous forebears who devoted their lives to winning a peace for their children, grandchildren and humanity more broadly.

The Ugly Truth of WWII

I'll stop beating around the Bush now and just say it: Adolph Hitler or Benito Mussolini were never "their own men".

The machines they led were never fully under their sovereign control and the financing they used as fuel in their effort to dominate the world did not come from the Banks of Italy or Germany. The technologies they used in petrochemicals, rubber, and computing didn't come from Germany or Italy, and the governing scientific ideology of eugenics that drove so many of the horrors of Germany's racial purification practices never originated in the minds of German thinkers or from German institutions.

Were it not for a powerful network of financiers and industrialists of the 1920s-1940s with names such as Rockefeller, Warburg, Montague Norman, Osborn, Morgan, Harriman or Dulles, then it can safely be said that fascism would never have been possible as a "solution" to the economic woes of the post-WWI order. To prove this point, let us take the strange case of Prescott Bush as a useful entry point.

The patriarch of the same Bush dynasty that gave the world two disastrous American presidents (and nearly a third had Donald Trump not annihilated Jeb at the last minute in 2016) made a name for himself funding Nazism alongside his business partners Averell Harrimen and Averell's younger brother E. Roland Harriman (the latter who was to recruit Prescott to Skull and Bones while both studying at Yale). Not only did Prescott, acting as director of Brown Brothers Harriman, provide valuable loans to keep the bankrupt Nazi party afloat during Hitler's loss of support in 1932 when the German population voted into office the anti-Fascist General Kurt von Schleicher as Chancellor, but was even found guilty for "Trading with the enemy" as director of Union Banking Corporation in 1942!

That's right! As demonstrated in the 1992 Unauthorized Biography of George Bush , eleven months after America entered WWII, the Federal Government naturally conducted an investigation of all Nazi banking operations in the USA and wondered why Prescott continued to direct a bank which was so deeply enmeshed with Fritz Thyssen's Bank voor Handel en Scheepvart of the Netherlands. Thyssen for those who are un-aware is the German industrial magnate famous for writing the book "I Paid Hitler". The bank itself was tied to a German combine called Steel Works of the German Steel Trust which controlled 50.8% of Nazi Germany's pig iron, 41.4% of its universal plate, 38.5% of its galvanized steel, 45.5% of its pipes and 35% of its explosives. Under Vesting Order 248, the U.S. federal government seized all of Prescott's properties on October 22, 1942.

The U.S.-German Steel combine was only one small part of a broader operation as Rockefeller's Standard Oil had created a new international cartel alongside IG Farben (the fourth largest company in the world) in 1929 under the Young Plan . Owen Young was a JP Morgan asset who headed General Electric and instituted a German debt repayment plan in 1928 that gave rise to the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) and consolidated an international cartel of industrialists and financiers on behalf of the City of London and Wall Street. The largest of these cartels saw Henry Ford's German operations merging with IG Farben, Dupont industries, Britain's Shell and Rockefeller's Standard Oil. The 1928 cartel agreement also made it possible for Standard Oil to pass off all patents and technologies for the creation of synthetic gasoline from coal to IG Farben thus allowing Germany to rise from producing merely 300 000 tons of natural petroleum in 1934 to an incredible 6.5 million tons (85% of its total) during WWII! Had this patent/technology transfer not taken place, it is a fact that the modern mechanized warfare that characterized WWII could never have occurred.

Two years before the Young Plan began, JP Morgan had already given a $100 million loan to Mussolini's newly established fascist regime in Italy- with Democratic Party kingmaker Thomas Lamont playing the role of Prescott Bush in Wall Street's Italian operation. It wasn't only JP Morgan who loved Mussolini's brand of corporate fascism, but Time Magazine's Henry Luce unapologetically gushed over Il Duce putting Mussolini on the cover of Time eight times between 1923 and 1943 while relentlessly promoting fascism as the "economic miracle solution for America" (which he also did in his other two magazines Fortune and Life). Many desperate Americans, still traumatized from the long and painful depression begun in 1929, had increasingly embraced the poisonous idea that an American fascism would put food on the table and finally find help them find work.

A few words should be said of Brown Brothers Harriman.

Bush's Nazi bank itself was the spawn of an earlier 1931 merger which took place between Montagu Norman's family bank (Brown Brothers) and Harriman, Bush and Co. Montague Norman was the Governor of the Bank of England from 1920 to 1944, leader of the Anglo-German Fellowship Trust and controller of Germany's Hjalmar Schacht (Reichsbank president from 1923-1930 and Minister of Economy from 1934-1937). Norman was also the primary controller of the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) from its creation in 1930 throughout the entirety of WWII.

The Central Bank of Central Banks

Although the BIS was established under the Young Plan and nominally steered by Schacht as a mechanism for debt repayments from WWI, the Swiss-based "Central Bank of Central Banks" was the key mechanism for international financiers to fund the Nazi machine. The fact that the BIS was under the total control of Montagu Norman was revealed by Dutch Central Banker Johan Beyen who said "Norman's prestige was overwhelming. As the apostle of central bank cooperation, he made the central banker into a kind of arch-priest of monetary religion. The BIS was, in fact, his creation."

The founding members of the Board included the private central banks of Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Belgium as well as a coterie of 3 private American banks (JP Morgan, First National of Chicago, and First National of New York). The three American banks merged after the war and are today known as Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase.

In its founding constitution, the BIS, its directors and staff were given immunity from all sovereign national laws and not even authorities in Switzerland were permitted to enter its premises.

This story was conveyed powerfully in a 1998 History Channel documentary entitled Banking with Hitler.

A Word on Eugenics

Nazi support in the build up to, and during WWII didn't end with finance and industrial might, but extended to the governing scientific ideology of the third Reich: Eugenics (aka: the science of Social Darwinism as developed by Thomas Huxley's X Club associate Herbert Spencer and Darwin's cousin sir Francis Galton decades earlier). In 1932, New York hosted the Third Eugenics Conference co-sponsored by William Draper Jr (JP Morgan banker, head of General Motors and leading figure of Dillon Read and co) and the Harriman family. This conference brought together leading eugenicists from around the world who came to study America's successful application of eugenics laws which had begun in 1907 under the enthusiastic patronage of Theodore Roosevelt. Hiding behind the respectable veneer of "science" these high priests of science discussed the new age of "directed evolution of man" which would soon be made possible under a global scientific dictatorship.

Speaking at the conference, leading British Fascist Fairfield Osborn said that eugenics:

"aids and encourages the survival and multiplication of the fittest; indirectly, it would check and discourage the multiplication of the unfitted. As to the latter, in the United States alone, it is widely recognized that there are millions of people who are acting as dragnets or sheet anchors on the progress of the ship of state While some highly competent people are unemployed, the mass of unemployment is among the less competent, who are first selected for suspension, while the few highly competent people are retained because they are still indispensable. In nature, these less-fitted individuals would gradually disappear, but in civilization, we are keeping them in the community in the hopes that in brighter days, they may all find employment. This is only another instance of humane civilization going directly against the order of nature and encouraging the survival of the un-fittest".

The dark days of the great depression were good years for bigotry and ignorance as eugenics laws were applied to two Canadian provinces , and widely spread across Europe and America with 30 U.S. states applying eugenics laws to sterilize the unfit. Eugenics' successful growth was due in large measure to the fierce financial support of the Rockefeller Foundation and the science magazine Nature which had been created in 1865 by T.H. Huxley's X Club. The Rockefeller Foundation went onto fund German eugenics and most specifically the rising star of human improvement Joseph Mengele.

The Nazi Frankenstein Monster is Aborted

Describing his January 29, 1935 meeting with Hitler, Round Table controller Lord Lothian quoted the Fuhrer's vision for Aryan co-direction of the New World Order saying:

"Germany, England, France, Italy, America and Scandinavia should arrive at some agreement whereby they would prevent their nationals from assisting in the industrializing of countries such as China, and India. It is suicidal to promote the establishment in the agricultural countries of Asia of manufacturing industries"

While it is obvious that much more can be said on the topic, the Fascist machine didn't fully behave the way the Dr. Frankensteins in London wished, as Hitler began to realize that his powerful military machine gave Germany the power to lead the New World Order rather than play second fiddle as mere enforcers on behalf of their Anglo masters in Britain. While many London and Wall Street oligarchs were willing to adapt to this new reality, a decision was made to abort the plan, and try to fight another day.

To do this a scandal was concocted to justify the abdication of pro-Nazi King Edward VIII in 1936 and an appeasing Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was replaced with Winston Churchill in 1940. While Sir Winston was a life long racist, eugenicist and even Mussolini-admirer, he was first and foremost a devout British Imperialist and as such would fight tooth and nail to save the prestige of the Empire if it were threatened. Which he did.

The Fascists vs Franklin Roosevelt

Within America itself, the pro-fascist Wall Street establishment had been loosing a war that began the day anti-fascist President Franklin Roosevelt was elected in 1932. Not only had their attempted February 1933 assassination failed , their 1934 coup d'etat plans were also thwarted by a patriotic General named Smedley Darlington Butler. To make matters worse, their efforts to keep America out of the war in the hopes of co-leading the New World Order alongside Germany, France and Italy was also falling apart. A As I outlined in my recent article How to Crush a Bankers' Dictatorship , between 1933-1939, FDR had imposed sweeping reforms on the banking sector, thwarted a major attempt to create a global Bankers' dictatorship under the Bank of International Settlements, and mobilized a broad recovery under the New Deal.

By 1941, Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor polarized the American psyche so deeply that resisting America's entry into WWII as Wall Street's American Liberty League had been doing up until then, became political suicide. Wall Street's corporatist organizations were called out by FDR during a powerful 1938 speech as the president reminded the Congress of the true nature of fascism:

"The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism – ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing. This concentration is seriously impairing the economic effectiveness of private enterprise as a way of providing employment for labor and capital and as a way of assuring a more equitable distribution of income and earnings among the people of the nation as a whole."

While America's entry into WWII proved a decisive factor in the destruction of the fascist machine, the dream shared by Franklin Roosevelt, Henry Wallace and many of FDR's closest allies across America, Canada, Europe, China and Russia for a world governed by large-scale development, and win-win cooperation did not come to pass.

Even though FDR's ally Harry Dexter White led in the fight to shut down the Bank of International Settlements during the July 1944 Bretton Woods conference, the passage of White's resolutions to dissolve BIS and audit its books were never put into action. While White, who was to become the first head of the IMF, defended FDR's program to create a new anti-imperial system of finance, Fabian Society leader, and devout eugenicist John Maynard Keynes defended the Bank and pushed instead to redefine the post-war system around a one world currency called the Bancor, controlled by the Bank of England and BIS.

The Fascist Resurgence in the Post-War World

By the end of 1945, the Truman Doctrine and Anglo-American "special relationship" replaced FDR's anti-colonial vision, while an anti-communist witch hunt turned America into a fascist police state under FBI surveillance. Everyone friendly to Russia was targeted for destruction and the first to feel that targeting were FDR's close allies Henry Wallace and Harry Dexter White whose 1948 death while campaigning for Wallace's presidential bid put an end to anti-colonialists running the IMF.

In the decades after WWII, those same financiers who brought the world fascism went straight back to work infiltrating FDR's Bretton Woods Institutions such as the IMF and World Bank, turning them from tools of development, into tools of enslavement. This process was fully exposed in the 2004 book Confessions of an Economic Hit man by John Perkins.

The European banking houses representing the old nobility of the empire continued through this reconquering of the west without punishment. By 1971, the man whom Perkins exposed as the chief economic hit man George Schultz, orchestrated the removal of the U.S. dollar from the Gold-reserve, fixed exchange rate system director of the Office of Management of Budget and in the same year, the Rothschild Inter-Alpha Group of banks was created to usher in a new age of globalization. This 1971 floating of the dollar ushered in a new paradigm of consumerism, post-industrialism, and de-regulation which transformed the once productive western nations into speculative "post-truth" basket cases convinced that casino principles, bubbles and windmills were substitutes for agro-industrial economic practices.

So here we are in 2020 celebrating victory over fascism.

The children and grandchildren of those heroes of 1945 now find themselves attached to the biggest financial collapse in history with $1.5 quadrillion of fictitious capital ripe to explode under a new global hyperinflation akin to that which destroyed Weimar in 1923 , but this time global. The Bank of International Settlements that should have been dissolved in 1945 today controls the Financial Stability Board and thus regulates the world derivatives trade which has become the weapon of mass destruction that has been triggered to unleash more chaos upon the world than Hitler could have ever dreamed.

The saving grace today is that the anti-fascist spirit of Franklin Roosevelt is alive in the form of modern anti-imperialists Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and a growing array of nations united under the umbrella of the New Deal of the 21st Century which has come to be called the "Belt and Road Initiative".

Had Prescott's grandson Jeb (or Prescott's spiritual grand daughter Hillary) found themselves in the position of President of the USA at this moment, it is unlikely that I would be writing this now, as I'm fairly certain WWIII would have already been launched. However, with President Trump having successfully survived nearly four years of Deep State subversion, and having called repeatedly for a positive alliance with Russia and China, a chance still exists to take the types of emergency actions needed at this moment of existential crisis to do what FDR had always intended, and win World War II.

[May 05, 2020] How the Dems have cancelled democracy and decency

Dems are a joke.
May 05, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
The dems are incapable of finding a credible stand in for Biden. Some flunky might come to the fore but thet will most likely be the result of a 'committee' decision as the dems have cancelled democracy and decency.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | May 5 2020 18:31 utc | 4


Jackrabbit , May 5 2020 20:31 utc | 15

Seeing everyone get worked up over Biden is funny. Do you think you'll get a better candidate? Bernie dropped out for a reason. He was never a real candidate. There will not be any real candidate for change.

Killary's pretended "health problems" in 2016 seem like a fore-shadowing of Biden's. May be she really is the ultimately "the one" in 2020.

All we can do is watch and LOL.

!!

ptb , May 5 2020 19:09 utc | 9

nah, as long as DC Democrats run the show, it'll be Biden all the way.
VP nominee: Jeb Bush in drag.

burnemall , May 5 2020 19:17 utc | 10
Burn em all!
Elephant , May 5 2020 19:20 utc | 11
It doesn't matter who the nominee is, and that's true for both parties. As I believe we all know, Wall Street, the military-industrial complex and, to some extent, the bureaucracy, are what drives the agenda. The goons heading up the parade are simply an odd form of bread and circus.
Lozion , May 5 2020 19:30 utc | 12
I say its time for Cthulhu.

https://cthulhuforamerica.com/

After all, Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn..
Right?

Jen , May 5 2020 20:08 utc | 14
Lozion @ 14:

Cthulhu couldn't destroy the US any more than its politicians and other leaders in its other institutions (in education, in the entertainment and media industries, in the financial sector, in the defence industry) have already done so perhaps his time has come.

Yog Sothoth for Vice President!

[May 05, 2020] I find it amazing to see someone who is Jewish, like George Soros, allying with anti-Semitic and even neo-Nazi movements in Latvia, Estonia, and most recently, of course, Ukraine

That strange alliance is typical for neofascist movements.
May 05, 2020 | www.unz.com

Mefobills , says: Show Comment May 2, 2020 at 6:15 pm GMT

@FB The Baltic Countries have fallen for neo-liberal BS economy.

Hudson describes the mechanism:

https://michael-hudson.com/2015/10/rewriting-economic-thought/

__________________

They are not only making the election over resentment against the Russian-speaking population, but the fact that many are Jewish.

I find it amazing to see someone who is Jewish, like George Soros, allying with anti-Semitic and even neo-Nazi movements in Latvia, Estonia, and most recently, of course, Ukraine. It's an irony that you could not have anticipated deductively. If you had written this plot in a futuristic novel twenty years ago, no one would have believed that politics could turn more on national and linguistic identity politics than economic self-interest. The issue is whether you are Latvian or are Russian-Jewish, not whether you want to untax yourself and make? Voting is along ethnic lines, not whether Latvians really want to be forced to emigrate to find work instead of making Latvia what it could have been: an successful economy free of debt. Everybody could have gotten their homes free instead of giving real estate only to the kleptocrats.

Adûnâi , says: Show Comment May 2, 2020 at 11:49 pm GMT
@Mefobills > "I find it amazing to see someone who is Jewish, like George Soros, allying with anti-Semitic and even neo-Nazi movements in Latvia, Estonia, and most recently, of course, Ukraine."

What is anti-semitic about Ukrainian nationalists? What is Nazi about them? They lick Kolomoyski's ass. They elect Zelenski the Jewish clown. They are fine with their women's whoring themselves in the universities and in Poland. What gives?

> "Voting is along ethnic lines, not whether Latvians really want to be forced to emigrate to find work instead of making Latvia what it could have been: an successful economy free of debt."

One word: NazBol. Not popular. I guess, we'll die then. Because nationalists would rather lick Negros' anuses than be racist. Our nations are retarded, suicidal, and worship a Jew on a cross, would you expect a sense of self-preservation of them?

Our race in its current state is far more boring than the Muslims. You have no kings, no leaders, no politics, no parties. Only Christianity. You cannot act, you cannot think when your skull's content has rotted away, and Christianity has taken the brain's place.

[May 03, 2020] Flynn told the investigators that he knew that the call was inevitably monitored and that a transcript existed. However, he did not recall discussing sanctions with Kislyak. There was no reason to hide such a discussion

Highly recommended!
For any intelligence professional, especially for a person who was the head of DIA, Flynn behaviour is unexplainably naive. The idea that he did not understand that he is dealing with Clinton mafia, as well as that Clinton mafia will try to implicate him is just absurd. So his behaviour is mystery. As well as the fact that he allowed them to come bypassing regular channels in President administration.
As we do not have the whole picture we can only speculate. Probably he was already on the hook for his Turkish lobbing and that was exploited.
May 03, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

"New Documents Show Strzok Countermanded Closure Of Flynn Case For Lack Of Crime" [ Jonathan Turley ]. "It was previously known that the investigators who interviewed Flynn did not believe that he intentionally lied. That made sense. Flynn did not deny the conversations with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Moreover, Flynn told the investigators that he knew that the call was inevitably monitored and that a transcript existed. However, he did not recall discussing sanctions with Kislyak. There was no reason to hide such a discussion.

Trump had publicly stated an intent to reframe Russian relations and seek to develop a more positive posture with them. It now appears that, on January 4, 2017, the FBI's Washington Field Office issued a 'Closing Communication' indicating that the bureau was terminating "CROSSFIRE RAZOR" -- the newly disclosed codename for the investigation of Flynn. That is when Strzok intervened." • Read on for detail, which is ugly.

[Apr 29, 2020] Historians increasingly see the term totalitarian as polemical, used more to discredit governments than to offer meaningful analyses of them

Notable quotes:
"... New York Times ..."
"... The Origins of Totalitarianism ..."
"... Origins of Totalitarianism ..."
"... Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy ..."
"... These seeming paradoxes illustrate that the idea of totalitarianism is a useless tool in assessing the decency of governance in any twenty-first-century state. If we are to survive in this brave new world, in which technology makes it ever easier for governments to manipulate individual decisions, but in which we also demand that the state take an ever-larger role in ensuring our safety from ourselves, we must acknowledge that the Manichean worldview implied in the term totalitarianism is an outdated relic of the Cold War. ..."
Apr 29, 2020 | bostonreview.net

Last Thursday, Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman issued a warning in the New York Times . "The pandemic will eventually end," he wrote, "but democracy, once lost, may never come back. And we're much closer to losing our democracy than many people realize." Citing the Wisconsin election debacle -- the Supreme Court ruled that voters would have to vote in person, risking their health -- Krugman argued that Donald Trump and the Republican Party are using the crisis for their own, authoritarian ends.

This is the perennial critique of Trump: that he is a totalitarian at heart and, if given the chance, 'would want to establish total control over society.'

Krugman is not alone. As early as last month, when cases of COVID-19 first began to surge in the United States, Masha Gessen wrote in the New Yorker that the virus was fueling "Trump's autocratic instincts." They argued, "We have long known that Trump has totalitarian instincts . . . the coronavirus has brought us a step closer." This is indeed the once and future critique of the Trump presidency: that Trump is a totalitarian at heart and, if given the chance, "would want to establish total control over a mobilized society." A few days ago, Salon published an article arguing that the president is using the virus to prepare "the ground for a totalitarian dictatorship." Even Meghan McCain, as unlikely a person as any to agree with Gessen, indicated recently that Trump has "always been a sort of totalitarian president" and that he might use the virus to "play on the American public's fears in a draconian way and possibly do something akin to the Patriot Act."

These critiques make ample use of the term totalitarianism -- "that most horrible of inventions of the twentieth century," in Gessen's summation . They and other commentators also use it to describe Fidel Castro's Cuba to Vladimir Putin's Russia, which Gessen left in 2013. As right-wing populism has surged around the world in recent years, the term has had something of a renaissance. Hannah Arendt's 1951 classic The Origins of Totalitarianism became a best seller again after Donald Trump's election in November 2016.

This uptick in the term's use runs counter to the trend among historians, for whom the idea of totalitarianism carries increasingly little weight. Many of us see the term primarily as polemical, used more to discredit governments than to offer meaningful analyses of them. Scholars often prefer the much broader term authoritarianism, which denotes any form of government that concentrates political power in the hands of an unaccountable elite. But the fact that historians who study such governments eschew the term totalitarianism, even as it enjoys wide public currency, points not only to a disconnect between the academy and the general public, but also to a problem that Americans have in thinking about dictatorship. And it underscores our collective uncertainty about the proper role of government in crises such as these.

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Historians increasingly see the term totalitarian as polemical, used more to discredit governments than to offer meaningful analyses of them.

The terms totalitarian and totalitarianism have a winding history. In 1922 King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy appointed Benito Mussolini, leader of the Italian fascist party, as prime minister. In subsequent years, Mussolini established an authoritarian government that provided a roadmap for other twentieth century dictators, including Adolf Hitler, and made the term fascist an enduring descriptor of right-wing authoritarianism. A year after Mussolini's appointment, Giovanni Amendola, a journalist and politician opposed to fascism, used the term totalitario , or totalitarian, to describe how the fascists presented two largely identical party lists at a local election, thereby preserving the form of competitive democracy (i.e., offering voters a choice), while, in reality, gutting it. Other writers soon took up the idea and it became a more generic descriptor of the fascist state's dictatorial powers. Mussolini himself eventually adopted the term to characterize his government, writing that it described a regime of "all within the state, none outside the state, none against the state." In the next two decades, the terms began to circulate internationally. Amendola used them in 1925 to compare Mussolini's government and the young Soviet regime in Moscow. Academics in the English-speaking world began to employ them in the 1920s and '30s in similar comparative contexts.

In a sign of how much the meaning of the words drifted, however, those who later adopted them into political philosophy did not necessarily consider fascist Italy to have been totalitarian. Hannah Arendt, for instance, dismissed Mussolini's movement: "The true goal of Fascism was only to seize power and establish the Fascist 'elite' as uncontested ruler over the country." Even now, scholars point to the survival of pre-fascist government and bureaucratic structures, as well as lower levels of terror and violence directed against the populace, as evidence that Mussolini's Italy was not genuinely totalitarian.

Instead, Arendt considered totalitarianism to be a way of understanding fundamental similarities between Stalinism and Hitlerism, despite their diametrical opposition on the political spectrum. This archetypal comparison remains the bedrock of studies of totalitarian dictatorship. In Origins of Totalitarianism , Arendt laid out what she saw as its internal dynamic:

Totalitarianism is never content to rule by external means, namely, through the state and a machinery of violence; thanks to its peculiar ideology and the role assigned to it in this apparatus of coercion, totalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating and terrorizing human beings from within.

This state of affairs, which Arendt diagnosed as the result of an increasingly atomized society, bears a striking resemblance to the state described in George Orwell's 1984 (another bestseller in the Trump era). Airstrip One, as Orwell renamed Great Britain, is dominated by an omniscient Big Brother who sees, hears, and knows all. Through a reform of language, Airstrip One even tries to make it impossible to think illegal thoughts. Newspeak, it is hoped, "shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it." Orwell and Arendt considered the obliteration of the private and internal life of individuals to be the ne plus ultra of totalitarian rule.

Of course, what Arendt and Orwell described are systems of government that have never actually existed. Neither Nazism nor Stalinism succeeded in controlling or dominating its citizens from within. Moreover, while later scholarship has partially borne out Arendt's analysis of National Socialism, her understanding of Stalinist rule has proved less insightful.

The other classic account of totalitarianism is Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy , published in 1956 by Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski. In it, the political scientists developed a six-point list of criteria by which to recognize totalitarianism: it has an "elaborate ideology," relies on a mass party, uses terror, claims a monopoly on communication as well as on violence, and controls the economy. Like Arendt, Friedrich and Brzezinski believed totalitarianism to be a new phenomenon -- to take Gessen's words, an invention of the twentieth century. Their goal was to understand structural similarities between different modern dictatorships.

Even Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union -- the two archetypal examples -- were so different that historians wonder if their comparison as totalitarian really yields interesting insights.

While scholars critiqued Friedrich and Brzezinski's model -- for example, its one-size-fits-all list fails to appreciate these regimes' dynamism -- the debate over the usefulness of the term totalitarianism continued. In the decades since, historians and political scientists have gone back and forth, defining the concept in new ways and showing how those definitions fail in one way or another.

But, at base, these definitions have typically assumed, in the words of historian Ian Kershaw, a "total claim" made on the part of the totalitarian state over those it rules. That is, Arendt's basic characterization -- that totalitarian regimes aspire to total control over the public, private, and internal lives of their citizens -- continues to inform scholarly debate.

Arendt's, I would venture, is also the term's folk definition: that is, in people's minds, totalitarianism distinguishes a subset of authoritarian regimes that seek to (and perhaps even sometimes succeed at) dominating the individual in every conceivable way. China's new social credit score, which curtails the rights of people who engage in so-called antisocial behaviors, is a current example of this sort of thing. It is also a clear illustration of the role technology plays in totalitarian fantasies. But China's government also has many other characteristics, such as a market economy, that traditional understandings of totalitarianism explicitly reject.

This pared-down definition of totalitarianism is still only of dubious utility. Even Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union -- the two archetypal examples -- were so different that historians wonder if their comparison as "totalitarian" really yields interesting insights. Studies of everyday life in both countries have underscored the limits of the totalitarian model. These revisionist histories, in the words of Soviet historian Sheila Fitzpatrick, "introduced into Soviet history the notions of bureaucratic and professional interest groups and institutional and center-periphery conflict, and they were particularly successful at demonstrating inputs from middle levels of the administrative hierarchy and professional groups. They were alert to what would now be called questions of agency." Similarly nuanced approaches to Nazism have uncovered ways power worked within the regime that throw the totalitarian hypothesis into doubt.

In my own area of research, Germany after World War II, totalitarianism plays a fraught role. During the Cold War and its immediate aftermath, politicians, journalists, and scholars all painted East Germany as a totalitarian government on par with the Nazi state. But that characterization is simply wrong. For instance, the East German and Nazi secret police forces, the Stasi and the Gestapo, functioned in fundamentally different ways. The Gestapo was a relatively small organization that relied on thousands of spontaneous denunciations. It practiced brutal torture and was embedded in a system of extralegal justice that was responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of German citizens (not to mention the millions more killed in the Holocaust). The Stasi was quite different. It employed a vast bureaucracy -- three times larger than the Gestapo in a population four times smaller -- and cultivated an even larger network of collaborators. Around 5 percent of East Germans are estimated to have worked for the Stasi at some point, blurring the lines between persecutors and persecuted. Against those unlucky enough to wind up in a Stasi prison, the secret police employed methods of psychological torture. But it never induced the same level of terror as did the Gestapo. Nor was it responsible for anywhere near the same number of deaths. For most East Germans, the Stasi's presence was more of a nuisance -- a "scratchy undershirt," historian Paul Betts argues.

Of course, the Stasi's ubiquity and its vast surveillance apparatus have equally been taken as proof that the totalitarian hypothesis does indeed apply to East Germany. But there is ample evidence that East Germans enjoyed robust private lives, along with a sense of individual self. East Germans wrote millions of petitions to their government, for instance, complaining about everything from vacations to apartments. They showed up to quiz members of parliament about government policy. When the regime tried to outlaw public nudity in the 1950s, as historian Josie McLellan has described, East Germans disobeyed, protested, and eventually forced the government to relent. Kristen Ghodsee, among others, has contended that in many ways life was better for women in Eastern Bloc countries than in the West. And the dictatorship never tried to bring the Protestant Church, to which millions of East Germans belonged, under its full control. My own research reveals that gay liberation activists were able to pressure the dictatorship to make significant policy changes.

In short, whatever criteria one uses to define totalitarianism, East Germany does not fit. It was a dictatorship, but certainly not a totalitarian one. In fact, the classification of East Germany has proved such a nettlesome problem, it has spawned a veritable cottage industry of neologisms. Scholars describe it, variously, as a welfare dictatorship, a participatory dictatorship, a thoroughly dominated society, a modern dictatorship, a tutelary state, and a late totalitarian patriarchal and surveillance state.

If the obliteration of the wall between public and private is the defining characteristic of totalitarianism, can any contemporary society be described as other than totalitarian?

This brings us back to current usage. The problem is that the term totalitarian fulfills two quite different purposes. The first, as just discussed, is taxonomic: for scholars, it has helped frame an effort to understand the nature of various twentieth-century regimes. And in this function, it finally seems to be reaching the end of its useful life.

But the term's other purpose is ideological and pejorative, the outgrowth of a Cold War desire to classify fascist and communist dictatorships as essentially the same phenomenon. To catalog a state as totalitarian it to say it is radically other, sealed off from the liberal, capitalist, democratic order that we take to be normal. When we call a state totalitarian, we are saying that its goals are of a categorically different sort than those of our own government -- that it seeks, as Gessen suggests, to destroy human dignity.

The ideological work that the term totalitarian performs is significant, providing a sleight-of-hand by which to both condemn foreign regimes and deflect criticism of the regime at home. By claiming that dictatorship and democracy are not simply opposed but categorically different, it disables us from recognizing the democratic parts of dictatorial rule and the authoritarian aspects of democratic rule, and thus renders us less capable of effectively diagnosing problems in our own society.

We love to denounce foreign dictatorships. George W. Bush invented the " Axis of Evil ," for example, to provide a ready supply of villains. These "totalitarian" regimes -- Iran, Iraq, and North Korea -- we were told, all threatened our freedoms. But the grouping was always nonsensical, as the regimes bore few similarities to one another. While Iran, in particular, is authoritarian, it also bears hallmarks of pluralistic democracy. Pointing out the latter does not diminish the former -- rather it helps us understand how and why the Islamic Republic has shown such tenacity and staying power. To simply call such regimes totalitarian not only misses the point, but also whitewashes American complicity in creating and propping up authoritarian regimes -- Iran not least of all. Indeed, the United States supported a number of the past century's most brutal right-wing dictatorships.

Moreover, by thinking of totalitarianism as something that happens elsewhere, in illiberal, undemocratic places, we ignore the ways in which our government can and has behaved in authoritarian ways within our own country. Black Americans experienced conditions of dictatorial rule in the Jim Crow South and under slavery, to name but the most prominent examples.

The language of totalitarianism thus obscures how dictatorship and democracy exist on the same spectrum. It is imperative that we come to a clearer understanding of the fact that hybrid forms of government exist which combine elements of both. These managed democracies, to take political theorist Sheldon Wolin's term -- from Putin's Russia, to Viktor Orbán's Hungary, to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Turkey -- have hallmarks of democratic republics and use a combination of new and old methods to enforce something akin to one-party rule. These states are certainly not totalitarian, but neither are they democracies.

Likewise, the Republican Party's efforts to manage U.S. democracy through gerrymandering and voter suppression is similar to Putin's, Orbán's, and Erdoğan's tactics of securing political power. Its strategies push the republic further toward the authoritarian end of the political spectrum. And, indeed, the sophisticated data-mining techniques of Cambridge Analytica , which assisted the 2016 Trump campaign to manipulate voter choices, would have made the Stasi, the Gestapo, or the NKVD green with envy.

In fact, if the obliteration of the wall between public and private is the defining characteristic of totalitarianism, can any contemporary society be described as anything other than totalitarian? What, after all, does agency mean in a world in which Facebook aspires to know what we want before we know it ourselves or in a country in which the NSA collects vast troves of data on our own citizens? To my mind, totalitarianism's usefulness as a distinctive category of government simply evaporates when we begin to look at all the ways in which technology has compromised individual privacy and agency in the twenty-first century.

Fear of totalitarianism gives the right cover to denounce measures to control the virus: if freedom means freedom from government, then the worst government is one that makes a total claim on its citizens, even in the interest of saving them from a plague.

Use of the term also prevents us from thinking productively about COVID-19 and how governments ought to respond to it. For a state of quarantine necessarily forces everyone to give up -- whether voluntarily or no -- their rights of movement, assembly, and, to some extent, expression. It requires the private choices individuals make -- whether to have friends over for dinner, go on a morning jog, or buy groceries -- to become public in painful and sometimes even embarrassing ways. Technology companies are starting to employ their products' tracking features to trace the virus's spread, an application that many worry poses an unacceptable breach of privacy.

Yet, the destruction of the private sphere in the interest of the public good is precisely what theorists tell us lies at the heart of totalitarianism. Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben made precisely this point, arguing recently that the extraordinary response to COVID-19 is totalitarian: "The disproportionate reaction . . . is quite blatant. It is almost as if with terrorism exhausted as a cause for exceptional measures, the invention of an epidemic offered the ideal pretext for scaling them up beyond any limitation." Of course, we now know the measures the Italian government introduced went neither far nor fast enough. Now there are over 160,000 confirmed cases in Italy and over 20,000 confirmed deaths from the virus.

The confusion the idea of totalitarianism sows over responses in the United States has also been evident since last month. On March 22, right-wing commentator Andrew Napolitano asserted that measures to combat COVID-19 were motivated by "totalitarian impulses." Meanwhile, state officials have been busy postponing primary elections, a measure that under normal circumstances would undoubtedly be denounced as totalitarian in nature.

If we are going to arrive at a more sophisticated answer to the question of how to govern democratically in the twenty-first century, we must begin by acknowledging that all modern governments attempt to control and influence the lives of their citizens, and all governments make use of exceptional powers to combat crises. The problem with the idea of totalitarianism is that it makes no accommodation for the reasons behind such exercise of coercive power.

It is, of course, quite right to worry about Donald Trump's response to the virus. His dilly-dallying, his narcissism, and his inability to take responsibility for anything may cost one hundred thousand or more lives. Commentators like Krugman are correct, insofar as Trump and his cronies are indeed trying to use the crisis to cement their authority. But the ways they are going about it are not totalitarian in any sense of the word. In fact, the idea of totalitarianism, as commentators such as Napolitano reveal, gives the radical right cover to denounce measures to control the virus. It is the last stage in the late-twentieth-century neoliberal critique of government: if freedom is only ever freedom from government interference, then the worst form of government is that which makes a total claim on its citizens, even in the interest of saving them from a plague. Thinking in terms of totalitarianism -- instead of the broader and more flexible term authoritarianism -- leads one into such frustrating mental thickets, in which democratic policies can plausibly be denounced as totalitarian.

These seeming paradoxes illustrate that the idea of totalitarianism is a useless tool in assessing the decency of governance in any twenty-first-century state. If we are to survive in this brave new world, in which technology makes it ever easier for governments to manipulate individual decisions, but in which we also demand that the state take an ever-larger role in ensuring our safety from ourselves, we must acknowledge that the Manichean worldview implied in the term totalitarianism is an outdated relic of the Cold War.

[Apr 28, 2020] MoA - To Finally Kill The Nuclear Deal With Iran The U.S. Will Try To Rejoin It

Notable quotes:
"... I guess when an administration has shown over and over again that it does not respect, international law, domestic law, the US constitution, logic, meaning or the English Language then it can say anything and do anything. ..."
"... The power of the United States is rapidly fading. The country is on the eve of a massive social crisis, as its ruling class fails even to understand the extent of the system's failure. ..."
"... Israel is nobody's real need. Zionism is a philosophical oddity stranded by the tides of history, a mid Victorian nonsense entirely composed of racism and silly ideas about human inequality. ..."
Apr 28, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

, Apr 27 2020 16:54 utc | 9

!! a "deal" with "Not Agreement-Capable" entity.

... is that akin to the portion of a George Carlin comedy sketch ?

"From 1778 to 1871, the United States government
entered into more than 500 treaties with
the Native American tribes;
all of these treaties have since been violated
in some way or outright broken by the US government,

while at least one treaty was violated
or broken by Native American tribes."


Red Ryder , Apr 27 2020 17:07 utc | 11

The EU rapprochement with Iran is all about the huge market the EU wants. Their interest in the JCPOA was always about Iran developing, and the EU benefiting for its trade and investment potential.

Crippling Iran again with snapback sanctions certainly would end Iran-EU relations for a decade or longer.

With the EU economy in the toilet due to the pandemic, now more than ever the EU needs Iran free of sanctions, not laden with crippling new ones.

Only one country benefits from the economic strangulation of Iran--Israel.

Huginn , Apr 27 2020 17:16 utc | 12
In these times of memory holes, sometimes it pays to remember:
As much as I'd like to be optimistic that justice might actually be served for both Epstein and his myriad clients/co-conspirators, I think the powers-that-be will again squash this - or liquidate Epstein - before things get out of hand for them.

The American justice system has been corrupted in much the same way the political system has been, and it's primary objective is to protect the rulers from the common folk, not to actually deliver true justice.

I'll watch with anticipation, but I haven't had any satisfaction from either a political or justice perspective since at least the 2000 coup d'etat, so I won't hold my breath this time.

Does this seem precient?

Peter AU1 , Apr 27 2020 17:17 utc | 13
Glasshopper

You have got to be a paid to be putting to be putting that shit up here. US doesn't accept peace deals.

Nathan Mulcahy , Apr 27 2020 17:22 utc | 14
Economist Michael Hudson explains how American imperialism has created a global free lunch, where the US makes foreign countries pay for its wars, and even their own military occupation.

https://moderaterebels.com/transcript-economics-american-imperialism-michael-hudson/

Stonebird , Apr 27 2020 19:17 utc | 28
Background reading on Pompeo and his mafia.

This is part of Tom's description of the Article on Pompeo, Esper and the gang of 1986 (west pointers). They are well embedded.
In fact, one class from West Point, that of 1986, from which both Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo graduated, is essentially everywhere in a distinctly militarized (if still officially civilian) and wildly hawkish Washington in the Trumpian moment.
In case you missed it the first time, I repeat this link from the beginning of April,
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176686/tomgram%3A_danny_sjursen%2C_trump%27s_own_military_mafia_/

-----------------
Red Ryder | Apr 27 2020 17:07 utc | 14

One addition there. The EU lost "market share" in Iran due to US sanctions. (As they did with Russia). What they would like to do is to get it back. (France was one of the bigger losers)

El Cid , Apr 27 2020 19:24 utc | 29
Before any aggression, the United States want Iran to be hermetically sealed with sanction just like Iraq was before our invasion. Everybody knows the US's intentions because we've seen it before. There will be NO domestic support for war on Iran as Americans die due to no public healthcare and massive unemployment and poverty. Iran and the Middle East view a war on Iran as an Israeli wet dream. Israel is viewed as the intellectual author of aggression against Iran, and Iran will respond appropriately. So, is AIPAC willing to get Israel destroyed? Is AIPAC on a suicide mission? Looks that way.
Noah Way , Apr 27 2020 19:38 utc | 33
@ #8 Grasshopper

Israel and Saudi Arabia are de facto allies aiming to carve up the entire Middle East between them. Forget about Sunni / Shia / Hebrew, that is a manufactured excuse to war for resources (oil first, then water).

Proof? Mutual "enemies" (oil-rich Iran and Syria, which is the nexus for pipelines) and mutual ally (Uncle Sam). Also not a single complaint from Israel over the $100b US-Saudi Arms deal. As to Palestine, that is a human rights issue and has no weight because water is not recognized as a strategic resource (yet).

RT , Apr 27 2020 19:56 utc | 35
I guess when an administration has shown over and over again that it does not respect, international law, domestic law, the US constitution, logic, meaning or the English Language then it can say anything and do anything.
bevin , Apr 27 2020 20:11 utc | 38
"The Iranians are not helping the Palestinians one iota. They are splitting the opposition."
Glasshopper@29

Whoever has been helping Hezbollah has been helping the Palestinians. And whoever has been holding Syria together, despite the pressure of the imperialists and their sunni-state puppets, has also been helping the Palestinians by bringing some kind of balance into regional power calculations.

It is imperative that Iran continues not only to provide political support to the Palestinian cause but to democratise the Gulf, to the extent of bringing about the demise of the autocracies, and the Arabian world generally.

Israel has already exerted its maximum influence. The power of the United States is rapidly fading. The country is on the eve of a massive social crisis, as its ruling class fails even to understand the extent of the system's failure. (There will be no war to divert attention from the crisis.) And Israel will be left to solve its own problems as its 'allies' find themselves increasingly pre-occupied with real problems.

Supporting Israel and building it up as an imperialist base has been part of an era in which the empire was hegemonic and thus able to define international events in terms of domestic politics.

That era has ended. The USA is still powerful but it is no longer anything more than one of the major participants in geopolitical competition. Even to maintain its position it is going to have to do, what other powers have done and concentrate its resources on its real needs.

Israel is nobody's real need. Zionism is a philosophical oddity stranded by the tides of history, a mid Victorian nonsense entirely composed of racism and silly ideas about human inequality. Israel has one choice, to divest itself of its fascist government and its fascistic culture and seek accommodation within the neighbourhood or to wither away as its population emigrates leaving only the committed fascists to play with Armageddon.

Long before that happens the imperialists will have taken its weapons away from it.

It may very well be the case that the ordinary Iranian is no more committed to fighting on behalf of Palestinians than the average American is committed to risking all, or anything, for the sake of Israel. But Iran's commitment to Palestine is a powerful political statement and one that counters the divisive tactics of the wahhabis and their imperial friends. Iran has taken up the mantle that Nasser briefly wore, in the vanguard of a muslim and Arab nationalist movement. This makes it very difficult for the sunni tyrants actually to commit forces to defend Israel or attack Iran. Their duplicity is a measure of their own weakness.

Does anyone imagine that the pro-Israeli policies pursued by the Sauds are actually popular? The Gulf and Saudi policies of sucking up to Israel are far more damaging to them than Iran's stance is to it.

Arch , Apr 28 2020 5:12 utc | 61
@jiri #75

The United States announced its withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the "Iran nuclear deal" or the "Iran deal", on May 8, 2018.

This document discusses the legal rationale for the US withdrawal from tje JCPOA in detail:


https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R44761.pdf

Since when does announcing your "withdrawal" from a contract NOT mean "leaving the agreement" ?

Piotr Berman , Apr 28 2020 6:26 utc | 65
Iran should sign a peace deal with the Israelis.
Posted by: Glasshopper | Apr 27 2020 16:42 utc | 8

Some people should stick to what they do well, like hopping on glass. A simple observation: peace deal with "the Israelis" is not possible. Gulfie princes tried. No cigar. They genuinely tried to be nice with Israel, out of "anti-Semitic delusion that Jews control USA". I conjecture that Glasshopper made a similar assumption -- why would Iran consider a "peace deal with the Israelis" if its direct conflict is with USA (and the Gulfies)? How it would help them unless "Jews control USA"?

As a mental experiment, let Grasshopper sketch a putative "deal with Israelis". Kushner plan?

Yeah, Right , Apr 28 2020 6:36 utc | 66
@70 BraveNewWorld, you haven't added up the numbers correctly. Take China, Russia and Iran out of the equation leaves you with five (including the EU as a whole, which is not a given). Take the USA out as well and it doesn't matter how sycophantic the Europeans are, Pompeo can only muster four votes.

And he needs five to refer the issue to the UNSC.

That's why Pompous wants to waddle his way back in: no matter which way he looks at this, without the USA sitting at the table he is one-short.

John Bolton, the gift that keeps giving.....

Yeah, Right , Apr 28 2020 7:12 utc | 67
Actually, I've just read the JCPOA and UNSC Resolution 2231 and neither has any mention of a "majority vote" requirement for a referral to the UNSC for a vote on "snapping back" sanctions. It appears that any one JCPOA participant can refer the issue of alleged non-compliance to the UNSC, provided that they first exhaust the Joint Commission dispute mechanism.

But I do note this in the JCPOA (my bold): "Upon receipt of the notification from the complaining participant, as described above, including a description of the good-faith efforts the participant made to exhaust the dispute resolution process specified in this JCPOA , the UN Security Council, in accordance with its procedures, shall vote on a resolution to continue the sanctions lifting"

Seems to me that there is a procedural "out" there for the UN Secretariat i.e. it may use that highlighted section to decide that the participant is a vexatious litigant whose participation in the Joint Commission was not in good faith, ergo, the UN can refuse to even take receipt of the complaint.

Everything else then becomes moot.

The USA would raise merry-hell, sure, it would. But that would be no more outrageous a ploy by the UN than was the USA's own argument that it can have its cake and eat it too.

After all, if a participant to the JCPOA referred its complaint to the UNSC without first going through the Joint Commission then it is a given that the UNSC is under no obligation to receive that complaint. No question.

So why can't the UNSC also refuse to accept a complaint when it is clear that the complainant has not gone through the Joint Commission process in "good faith"?

One for the lawyers and ambassadors to argue, I would suggest, but it is not a given that the USA can ram this through even if everyone were to agree that it were still a participant in the JCPOA.

Yeah, Right , Apr 28 2020 7:50 utc | 68
@61 Arch: "This document discusses the legal rationale for the US withdrawal from tje JCPOA in detail"

Arch, the crux of that CRS legal paper boils down to this:
.."under current domestic law, the President may possess authority to terminate U.S. participation in the JCPOA and to re-impose U.S. sanctions on Iran, either through executive order or by declining to renew statutory waivers"..

All the other fluff in that paper is inconsequential compared to this question posed by that quote: can the US claim to be half-pregnant?

I suspect not.

Note that at the time the CRS paper was written (May 2018) it did have a valid point i.e. while Trump *had* refused to re-certify Iranian compliance, he had *not* reimposed US sanctions on Iran, and so the CRS paper could credibly argue that Trump wasn't pregnant, he just talking dirty to the Congress.

But that was then, and this is now, and - as b points out - Executive Order 13846 is the smoking gun because in it Trump is OFFICIALLY stating that he has decided to " cease the participation of the United States in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action ".

That EO is clearly the killing blow to Pompeo's nonsense, and even the CRS legal paper you linked to would agree.

Zeug , Apr 28 2020 12:29 utc | 74
As I see it, the historical problem with European fascism has been that when push comes to shove the knife comes out and its either give in to enforced collaboration or take a stabbing, it's your choice. Even if that means helping murder millions of your neighbours or being murdered. As Celan said "Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland."

The US has been enforcing a morally sanitised Disney Adult version of this old world order since at least the 2003 Supreme Crime of Aggression against Iraq. Sooner or later as this global pandemic, political, and financial crisis unfolds, the US leaders will be forced to choose whether or not the UN is a viable vehicle through which to continue the elite lunatic project for planetary full spectrum dominance of 21st C financial and military affairs.

So I reckon the Pentagon at some point either gets to finally execute the long awaited 'Operation Conquer Persia' or the politicians and their chickenhawk ideologues will back off again and continue the death by a thousand cuts of the last 40 years. I'd probably bet the latter but that's the trouble with genuine psychopaths, push comes to shove they will go for it if they think they'll get away with it.

This last 2 decades has been like watching a reality TV series about a fat drunken psychopath with a bloody knife going around and stabbing people at a party, but now the psycho is starting to stagger and everyone in the house is watchful trying to keep their distance. House rules are that anyone starts an actual fight to the death with the psycho then everyone dies!

I more or less trust that if we ever get there, a multipolar world order won't collapse into outright fascism but we're closer to collapse every year, especially from this year on, and most especially in the Persian Gulf.

jared , Apr 28 2020 12:44 utc | 75
In current US political system, it is not necessary to propose a valid claim, or proposal or argument - they intend to act from a position of authority. They know where you live.

[Apr 24, 2020] There is no serious question that the some aspects of neofascism initially tend to help a government to operate more efficiently for the same reasons army operates efficiently in battle conditions, but with time the corruption of the fascist elite takes those gains back

Is not "make America great again" a re-birth slogan ?
Apr 24, 2020 | www.unz.com

Been_there_done_that , says: Show Comment April 23, 2020 at 9:59 am GMT

" What better way to achieve that than to blame it all on China? "

The premise of fingering China arises from the fact that this is primarily about China [duh]:

• The initial rapid viral spread occurred in the Chinese city of Wuhan;
• A Wuhan bio-lab had the expertise to engineer such enhanced viruses;
• Authorities allowed viral carriers to fly to other regions of the world.

To then spin a conspicuously strained counter-narrative that denies these three key facts and instead tacitly or directly blames the United States as the primary culprit for the current world viral pandemic is clear evidence of a Chinese sponsored redirection campaign; or else voluntary promoters of such propaganda efforts are surely dedicated fascists.

Since the term " fascist " is nowadays often used as a rather nebulous term of slander, I want to emphasize that I am using it correctly here, and not maliciously, because it is consistent with key attributes of the original Fascism in Italy, under Mussolini, as well as somewhat later and concurrently in Germany, under Hitler, so I will provide my definition of the term below.

On the basis of these characteristics, I maintain that the world's two most fascist countries (both the government and a prevailing attitude of its people) are both Israel and China. Therefore, people who glorify these countries and eagerly support their actions, as is evident on this site, should at least be honest and understand that they are essentially fascists in this regard. My use of the term here is thus merely a straightforward political appellation.

Five Key Characteristic Elements of and Criteria for State Fascism

• Hyper-Nationalism, State Worship, Dynastic and Cultural Glory
• Cult of Militaristic Strength and Desired Territorial Conquests
• Historically Rooted in Basic Socialist Principles and Revolution
• Strongly Authoritarian Behavioral Control of the Entire Population
• Pursuit of Corporatist Economics with State Guidance of Business

If challenged, I would be happy to provide specific examples. There may be a few countries that fulfill only some of these five attributes or that follow all or most of them to a weaker extent (Turkey, Russia, Iran, Ukraine), but Israel and China clearly reflect all these five characteristics most strongly.

So readers should consider whether their strong support of Israel or China (or both) is something they can feel proud of or not. There is no serious question that the aforementioned aspects tend to make a government operate more efficiently, if allowed to remain unchallenged, which may be the primary goal.

ThreeCranes , says: Show Comment April 23, 2020 at 1:32 pm GMT
@Been_there_done_that Another characteristic of fascism is "rebirth". The appeal of fascism to the mass of discontent people is in pointing out that the prevailing bourgeois society/economy is the source of the nation's weakness and corruption.

Fascists use the 5 traits you outlined to redirect people's anger and frustration into hope and belief in their promise to act as midwives in the birth of a new nation/civilization that embodies the people's true and essential character. The Phoenix rising out of the flames is a fitting symbol of their party. This promise of rebirth has a deep appeal to the human psyche, one that goes back to our earliest agricultural roots. It is Archetypal.

Been_there_done_that , says: Show Comment April 23, 2020 at 2:31 pm GMT
@ThreeCranes

Another characteristic of fascism is "rebirth".

Yes, that is especially important during the consolidation phase, upon having come to power, but this characteristic is not unique to fascism.

This promise of rebirth has a deep appeal to the human psyche

It is an important aspect in various religions too; afterlife, reincarnation, confession, new year

[Apr 17, 2020] Google Subpoenaed For Hillary Clinton Emails Believed To Contain Backup To Records Scrubbed With "Bleachbit"

Apr 17, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

librul , Apr 16 2020 4:44 utc | 107

Some happy news for a change...

Google Subpoenaed For Hillary Clinton Emails Believed To Contain Backup To Records Scrubbed With "Bleachbit"

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/google-subpoenaed-hillary-clinton-emails-believed-contain-backup-records-scrubbed

[Apr 11, 2020] History repeats

Apr 11, 2020 | off-guardian.org

John Flanagan ,

I am probably a case in point for this article. When Trump was elected, I got a "sharing my grief" letter from Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR). This was my response to his letter, posted November 18, 2016:
Thank you, Sen. Merkley, for the reassurance and encouragement.

Although I voted a straight Democratic ticket, I had no enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton.

I was angry that the Democratic Party has allowed itself to fall into the neo-con, neo-liberal, globalist approach/understanding of our most important issues and gave up the nationalism and populism that was so important to the Progressive movement. This morphing of the Party is something I've watched with considerable dismay for many years. The powers and influences that have taken over the Party are bringing it to ruin, and are ultimately responsible for this mind-boggling defeat.

We are all going to have to pay a lot more attention to politics in the coming years. We no longer have the luxury of tending to our own families and affairs, trusting that our government is in good hands, led by people who will do the right thing and not let anything catastrophic happen. I did not have such confidence in Hillary Clinton, by the way. From the outset I was in favor of a Biden/Warren ticket, and hoped that Elizabeth would be our first female President, not Hillary. But then, I grew up in Oklahoma, and believe she's a progressive, Oklahoma populist down deep.

The news coverage of the election by NPR was abysmal, in my view. This defeat was not a revolt of the "losers," of the declining White middle class males, and the rise of misogyny, racism and isolationism. (Those words were not used, of course, but that understanding appeared to me to be embedded in the analysis.)

Isn't it possible that liberal, progressive, educated Americans might be unhappy with the way American power, prestige, money and "soft" power has been squandered, and towards what ends? Do you think educated

Americans are in favor of paring down the Constitution, beginning with the First and Second Amendments? Do you believe that ordinary American citizens are to be feared, are the enemy? Do you think they are all on board with spending trillions of dollars on Middle East wars, creating destabilized states and the refugee crisis, and letting our own infrastructure deteriorate and

Social Security go bankrupt? Will the SS funds borrowed to fund these and other wars, and to balance budgets, ever be repaid? Do you think Americans are so dumbed down and cynical that they would look to the Clintons as "wholesome" examples of what is best in America and for uncorrupted leadership? Do you think no one either heard or remembered "We came, we saw, he died! Ha, ha, ha"? Or have not heard Hillary's intent to establish a no-fly zone in Syria, knowing full well that such an action could lead to war with Russia? Do you think educated Americans really bought the "killing of Osama bin Laden" theater? Did you? I admit that the tired "Osama" specter had to be laid to rest, but why not do it in an upright and out front manner? Why all the deceit? It is this kind of deeply embedded dishonesty and resulting corruption of justice, integrity and open political process that has brought the Democratic Party into disrepute. Do you think people remain ignorant of the Clinton Foundation's pay-for-play method of enriching themselves, or that the Foundation transferred $1.8 billion to Doha? Where did all that loot come from? We are not talking here of Bill Gates, or the CEO of Google. Where did the money come from?

I do not put you in the same camp. My first encounter with you was when you gave the keynote speech at the first graduating class of the MET in Tigard. You have never tainted yourself with lies and falseness. Maybe it is easier to retain your integrity being from Oregon, since I have the same high regard for Rep. Earl Blumenauer and Peter DeFazio. You are the exemplars of liberal, progressive values and grassroots democracy, not Hillary Clinton.

As much as I have grown to dislike Hillary Clinton, listening to her concession speech, I had a sense of tragedy. She seems such an intelligent, lovely woman.

It could and probably should have ended differently. Was it ambition that destroyed her, or hubris and lack of humility? What happened to her respect for the intelligence and basic decency of the American people? Where has simple honesty gone?

She appears to me to have taken the "left-hand path," and perhaps it is better that she be personally ruined than allowed to take the country to ruin along with her, since that path always ends in ruin.

I hope for the best. We will, I trust, survive a Donald Trump administration. There will be damage, of course. Trump has to repay supporters who put their own political careers at risk to back him. This is frightening all by itself–imagine a Sarah Palin in charge of the Department of Energy! I fear the dismantling of all the federal regulatory agencies that five generations of Americans have worked so hard to put in place–one of the great achievements of the Progressive movement. Imagine BPA sold off to the highest bidder, or our public lands bartered off to pay for the ruinous wars we have been visiting on the Middle East!

By writing you in this frank way, I do not mean to be disrespectful. As I said, I hold you, Rep. Blumenauer and Rep. DeFazio in high regard, and believe Oregon has the best congressional delegation in the nation, bar none. More tThan ever, we all depend upon you to be honest, vigilant and courageous, and prevent the worst possible outcomes from this disaster from being realized.

Best of luck!

Sincerely,

John D. Flanagan

[Apr 07, 2020] Three big claims of 'Russian disinformation' and 'Russian trolls/bots' on social media.

Apr 07, 2020 | consortiumnews.com

John A , April 7, 2020 at 04:09

Over the last week, there have, to my knowledge, been three big claims of 'Russian disinformation' and 'Russian trolls/bots' on social media.
1. Last week, Russian equipment and support sent to Italy to help fight Covid-19. Nato stenographers claim and spread the disinformation that '80% of the equipment was useless', citing one anonymous source. Total lies.

2. Swedish minister claims social media campaign against a 5G network in Sweden is run by russian trolls. Turns out it is a 64 year old grandmother living in Stockholm who is behind the campaign.

3. Yesterday afternoon, russia media report, according to a National Health Service source, Boris Johnson is on a ventilator in hospital. Utter nonsense say MSM, Russian disinformation. Overnight headlines in British media – Boris in intensive care.

The western media are so totally venally corrupt in serving the 1% yet get found out in their lies time after time and yet carry on. I try to read as many different media as possible, but have no doubt, which are more credible, and it aint NATO stenographers

AnneR , April 7, 2020 at 14:33

Yes, John A. Truly there is something warped about the western ruling elites' mindset. But I guess they have to have a bugaboo and Russia (then China, sometimes Iran and others) is the primary, western created, go-to one. Even among those who did not grow up, or were only young, during the cold war.

I am only thankful that, despite my father's Tory politics (all but regarding the land, which he believed should be nationalized and 50 acres given to every male [well, he was sexist]; an curious, decidedly not Tory viewpoint) the USSR as was then never was on either his or my mother's agenda. Indeed, we used to watch with much pleasure the Red Army choir, once we got a television (not till 1958, when I was 10), which toured the UK, I *think*

No ducking under school desks. Nor any other weird thing

[Apr 04, 2020] This Anti-Semitic newspaper should be banned.

Apr 04, 2020 | www.unz.com

Hippopotamusdrome , says: Show Comment April 3, 2020 at 7:18 am GMT

"Israel's ultra-Orthodox endanger the public" was the headline of yesterday's Jerusalem Post opinion piece. The article points to the ultra orthodox community as a menace both to the general society and itself.

This Anti-Semitic newspaper should be banned. When are the ADL and Antifa going to get on this?

[Apr 04, 2020] There are over one hundred Hassid groups, some of which started recently in America

Apr 04, 2020 | www.unz.com

ploni almoni , says: Show Comment April 3, 2020 at 3:20 pm GMT

@Wizard of Oz There are over one hundred Hassid groups, some of which started recently in America. Hassidism is one of the direct results of the Shabbatai Zvi movement. Shabbatai Zevi was a Satanic Messiah born in 1626 died 1676. He was a Spanish Jew born in Izmir Turkey, and out of him came the Donmeh who ran the Turkish government in the 20th century. Why Satanic? He said that what was prescribed by law is is now prohibited by him and what is forbidden is made permissible by him. Mainly this means orgies, and "a doing a-what comes naturally." Shabbatianism and Hassidism are based on Kabbalah, materialist antinomial Satanism. The Hassid Rebbi is considered, for all practical intents and purposes to be God Himself. This is understood only by the elect. For the Lubavitchers this was diluted down -- for the fringe -- to the idea that Schneersohn is Moshiach, and of course half the Lubavitchers are not sure. The founding Rebbi results in a dynasty of his descendants or the group is taken over by a successor in a power struggle. Only the Rumanian-Hungarian Satmar group claims to be anti-Zionist on paper, because of a pet idea of Teitelbaum's. The Satmar march "in protest" against the Salute to Israel day Parade under special protection of the New York Police. But their opposition to Israel is only on paper and they go to Israel like everyone else. They also show solidarity to the Iranians and show up in Teheran as guests of the government.

Another development out of Shabbatai Zevi are the Frankists. Jacob Frank said, besides orgies and promiscuity, it is perfectly safe to convert: Lightning will not strike you. These Frankists include Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin (*his grandfather and great grandfather), Benjamin Disraeli, Heinrich Heine, and thousands, thousands, perhaps millions more. As Shabbatai Zevi said the forbidden is permitted, Jacob Frank applied this in particular to conversion to the religion of convenience as the path to success. Frank converted in 1759 with the Polish King as his godfather. 26,000 Polish and Ukrainian Jews followed and received Polish nobility, and money. The process is still going on. And this must be why Poland and Ukraine are so screwed up. Frank died calling himself the "Baron of Offenbach."

Frankists who did not convert include Sigmund Freud who started his own religion, and Louis Brandeis who had a trinity of Zvi, Frank, and Frank's daughter Eva. I think it is correct to say that Hollywood, where Jews married Shiksas and had Christmas trees, was a Frankist development. (Irving Berlin and Samuel Goldwyn come to mind. Remember the MGM lion of Judah lying on a torah?) Frankism Lite is the Reform Judaism of Temple Emmanuel and the Society for Ethical Culture. Read. There is a lot to learn about the world around you.

[Apr 04, 2020] Flavours of Orthodox Judaism

Apr 04, 2020 | www.unz.com

Fran Taubman , says: Show Comment April 3, 2020 at 3:02 pm GMT

@Gilad Atzmon Gilad I am shocked you can not give a better answer then this.

Judaism from the time of the Temple destruction through out Medieval Europe, and the ME was Orthodox Judaism and Hassidic dynasties (each having their own customs.) The same for Mizrahi, Separdic and Ashkenazim Jews.

It's center was the Vilna Goan in Lithuania, not sure about the ME. Jews wore fringes, had beards and women covered their heads (shaytl, tichal). It was not called Orthodox since those customs and rules were universal. You were either a practicing Jew or not. The basic rules were as follows:

Orthodox Judaism:
-Keeping the sabbath
-Keeping Kosher
-Family ritual purity
-Women covering their heads.
-Men covering their heads.

After the enlightenment other sub divisions occurred.

-Reform Judaism
-Conservative Judasim
Modern Orthodox Judaism.

Modern Orthodox Judaism (I was raised), included keeping the sabbath, keeping kosher, family purity was optional. Women do not cover their heads and men usually do not cover their heads outside of the Synagogue or at home. The main difference between Orthodox and Conservative is in the Synagogue. In Orthodox Synagogue men sit separately from women divided by a high barrier.

Today those differences are defined by Orthodox (modern) , and Ultra Orthodox (traditional from the middle ages) ,

Then you have the various Hassidic sects which are family dynasties, the most prominent being the Lubavitcher Hassids which run the Chabad movement and all the Kabbalah centers.

[Apr 04, 2020] A theory of natural selection in action

Apr 04, 2020 | www.unz.com

AnonFromTN , says: Show Comment April 3, 2020 at 3:19 pm GMT

The orthodox community's complete dismissal of modern medical advice and its negligence in social distancing and modern hygiene are a health catastrophe in the making.

Well, there is a theory of natural selection, which Orthodox Jews reject. Yet it is natural selection that is likely to cull those unfit to live in human society.

[Apr 03, 2020] Orthodox Judaism as supremacist ideology

Apr 03, 2020 | www.unz.com

NPleeze , says: Show Comment April 3, 2020 at 6:13 am GMT

@Fran Taubman

The religious community is luminous in its spirituality, and you feel it when you are there.

Orthodox Judaism is bar none the most filthy, evil, disgusting supremacist hate ideology the world has ever known – nothing whatsoever about it is "spiritual". All you have to do is read the deplorable Torah and especially the satanic beast this community "worships".

You are obviously also a worshiper of this dark "prince", the Synagogue of Satan (*as Jesus aptly described it). That makes you a Jew supremacist, and not just in a symbolic way, but by dint of real action: it is the duty of Jews, in the Torah (and of course also the Talmud), to conquer the planet and enslave humanity, except in Greater Israel, where all non-Jews are to be slaughtered.

It's all stated, most succinctly, in 20 Deut. 10-18. And again in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which is just a repeat of 20 Deut. 10-18.

As Karl Marx said, the only way for Jews to escape their satanic life is to assimilate, i.e., reject Jewish supremacism. Of course someone like you is incapable of that. To you, the most wretched evil is "spiritual".

ExRabbi , says: Show Comment April 3, 2020 at 9:32 am GMT
@Fran Taubman Dear Fellow Jewish people,

I will be blunt. I think it's definitely time for us Jews to recognize our sacred religion for what it really is – a supermacist cult and to denounce it. The Mosaic Covenant must be broken. The oh-so awaited promised Moschiah hasn't come for thousands of years and we have only up until the year 6000 for him to show up and to elevate us as the ultimate leaders of the World. Fortunately or not, this is not going to happen. All our efforts to prove otherwise will only reveal the fallacious and highly irrational essence of Judaism to the critical thinker, a cult that emerged from Ancient Canaanite worship. I am aware that blind and irrational belief in our traditional religion is what is required from us, but inquiring one's deepest and most sacred beliefs is what makes one human and not a robot.

Ann Nonny Mouse , says: Show Comment April 3, 2020 at 10:53 am GMT
@ExRabbi " the fallacious and highly irrational essence of Judaism".

Thanks, ExRabbi. Well put. And it has terrible side-effects. Because it's fallacious and highly irrational, Jews in denial of that must resort to lying and deception, so lying and deception become the mark of the Jew. Simply abandon all Jewish ritual and be proud that, having abandoned it, you are not a Jew.

geokat62 , says: Show Comment April 3, 2020 at 11:11 am GMT

Every perplexing narrative about Jewish history (including the birth of Zionism and the initial rejection of Diaspora/Religious identity) is resolved by this 6 second clip https://t.co/WvmGrZduji

-- Gilad Atzmon (@GiladAtzmon) April 3, 2020

[Mar 21, 2020] Why Is CrowdStrike Confused On 11 Key Details About The DNC 'Hack'

Mar 21, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Why Is CrowdStrike Confused On 11 Key Details About The DNC 'Hack'? by Tyler Durden Sat, 03/21/2020 - 21:20 Authored by Larry Johnson via Sic Semper Tyrannis blog,

Here is the bottom-line - despite being hired in late April (or early May) of 2016 to stop an unauthorized intrusion into the DNC, CrowdStrike, the cyber firm hired by the DNC's law firm to solve the problem, failed abysmally. More than 30,000 emails were taken from the DNC server between 22 and 25 May 2016 and given to Wikileaks. Crowdstrike blamed Russia for the intrusion but claimed that only two files were taken. A nd CrowdStrike inexplicably waited until 10 June 2016 to reboot the DNC network.

CrowdStrike, a cyber-security company hired by a Perkins Coie lawyer retained by the DNC, provided the narrative to the American public of the alledged hack of the DNC, But the Crowdstrike explanation is inconsistent, contradictory and implausible. Despite glaring oddities in the CrowdStrike account of that event, CrowdStrike subsequently traded on its fame in the investigation of the so-called Russian hack of the DNC and became a publicly traded company. Was CrowdStrike's fame for "discovering" the alleged Russian hack of the DNC a critical factor in its subsequent launch as a publicly traded company?

The Crowdstrike account of the hack is very flawed. There are 11 contradictions, inconsistencies or oddities in the public narrative about CrowdStrike's role in uncovering and allegedly mitigating a Russian intrusion (note--the underlying facts for these conclusions are found in Ellen Nakashima's Washington Post story , Vicki Ward's Esquire story , the Mueller Report and the blog of Crowdstrike founder Dmitri Alperovitch):

  1. Two different dates -- 30 April or 6 May -- are reported by Nakashima and Ward respectively as the date CrowdStrike was hired to investigate an intrusion into the DNC computer network.
  2. There are on the record contradictions about who hired Crowdstrike. Nakashima reports that the DNC called Michael Sussman of the law firm, Perkins Coie, who in turn contacted Crowdtrike's CEO Shawn Henry. Crowdstrike founder Dmitri Alperovitch tells Nakashima a different story, stating our "Incident Response group, was called by the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
  3. CrowdStrike claims it discovered within 24 hours the "Russians" were responsible for the "intrusion" into the DNC network.
  4. CrowdStrike's installation of Falcon (its proprietary software to stop breaches) on the DNC on the 1st of May or the 6th of May would have alerted to intruders that they had been detected.
  5. CrowdStrike officials told the Washington Post's Ellen Nakashima that they were, "not sure how the hackers got in" and didn't "have hard evidence."
  6. In a blog posting by CrowdStrike's founder, Dmitri Alperovitch, on the same day that Nakashima's article was published in the Washington Post, wrote that the intrusion into the DNC was done by two separate Russian intelligence organizations using malware identified as Fancy Bear (APT28) and Cozy Bear (APT29).
  7. But, Alperovitch admits his team found no evidence the two Russian organizations were coordinating their "attack" or even knew of each other's presence on the DNC network.
  8. There is great confusion over what the "hackers" obtained. DNC sources claim the hackers gained access to the entire database of opposition research on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump. DNC sources and CrowdStrike claimed the intruders, "read all email and chat traffic." Yet, DNC officials insisted, "that no financial, donor or personal information appears to have been accessed or taken." However, CrowdStrike states, "The hackers stole two files."
  9. Crowdstrike's Alperovitch, in his blog posting, does not specify whether it was Cozy Bear or Fancy Bear that took the files.
  10. Wikileaks published DNC emails in July 2016 that show the last message taken from the DNC was dated 25 May 2016. This was much more than "two files."
  11. CrowdStrike, in complete disregard to basic security practice when confronted with an intrusion, waited five weeks to disconnect the DNC computers from the network and sanitize them.

Let us start with the very contradictory public accounts attributed to Crowdstrke's founder, Dmitri Alperovitch. The 14 June 2016 story by Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post and the October 2016 piece by Vicki Ward in Esquire magazine offer two different dates for the start of the investigation:

When did the DNC learn of the "intrusion"?

Ellen Nakashima claims it was the end of April:

"DNC leaders were tipped to the hack in late April . Chief executive Amy Dacey got a call from her operations chief saying that their information technology team had noticed some unusual network activity... That evening, she spoke with Michael Sussmann, a DNC lawyer who is a partner with Perkins Coie in Washington. Soon after, Sussmann, a former federal prosecutor who handled computer crime cases, called Henry, whom he has known for many years. Within 24 hours, CrowdStrike had installed software on the DNC's computers so that it could analyze data that could indicate who had gained access, when and how.

Ward's timeline, citing Alperovitch, reports the alert came later, on 6 May 2016:

At six o'clock on the morning of May 6, Dmitri Alperovitch woke up in a Los Angeles hotel to an alarming email. . . . late the previous night, his company had been asked by the Democratic National Committee to investigate a possible breach of its network. A CrowdStrike security expert had sent the DNC a proprietary software package, called Falcon, that monitors the networks of its clients in real time. Falcon "lit up," the email said, within ten seconds of being installed at the DNC: Russia was in the network.

This is a significant and troubling discrepancy because it marks the point in time when CrowdStrike installed its Falcon software on the DNC server. It is one thing to confuse the 30th of April with the 1st of May. But Alperovitch gave two different reporters two different dates.

What did the "hackers" take from the DNC?

Ellen Nakashima's reporting is contradictory and wrong. Initially, she is told that the hackers got access to the entire Donald Trump database and that all emails and chats could be read. But then she is assured that only two files were taken. This was based on Crowdstrike's CEO's assurance, which was proven subsequently to be spectacularly wrong when Wikileaks published 35,813 DNC emails. How did Crowdstrike miss that critical detail? Here is Nakashima's reporting:

Russian government hackers penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee and gained access to the entire database of opposition research on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to committee officials and security experts who responded to the breach.

The intruders so thoroughly compromised the DNC's system that they also were able to read all email and chat traffic, said DNC officials and the security experts. . . .

The DNC said that no financial, donor or personal information appears to have been accessed or taken, suggesting that the breach was traditional espionage, not the work of criminal hackers.

One group, which CrowdStrike had dubbed Cozy Bear, had gained access last summer (2015) and was monitoring the DNC's email and chat communications, Alperovitch said.

The other, which the firm had named Fancy Bear, broke into the network in late April and targeted the opposition research files. It was this breach that set off the alarm. The hackers stole two files, Henry said. And they had access to the computers of the entire research staff -- an average of about several dozen on any given day. . . .

CrowdStrike is continuing the forensic investigation, said Sussmann, the DNC lawyer. "But at this time, it appears that no financial information or sensitive employee, donor or voter information was accessed by the Russian attackers," he said.

The DNC emails that are posted on the Wikileaks website and the metadata shows that these emails were removed from the DNC server starting the late on the 22nd of May and continuing thru the 23rd of May. The last tranche occurred late in the morning (Washington, DC time) of the 25th of May 2016. Crowdstrike's CEO, Shawn Henry, insisted on the 14th of June 2016 that "ONLY TWO FILES" had been taken. This is demonstrably not true. Besides the failure of Crowdstrike to detect the removal of more than 35,000 emails, there is another important and unanswered question -- why did Crowdstrike wait until the 10th of June 2016 to start disconnecting the DNC server when they allegedly knew on the 6th of May that the Russians had entered the DNC network?

Crowdstrike accused Russia of the DNC breach but lacked concrete proof.

Ellen Nakashima's report reveals that Crowdstrike relied exclusively on circumstantial evidence for its claim that the Russian Government hacked the DNC server. According to Nakashima:

CrowdStrike is not sure how the hackers got in. The firm suspects they may have targeted DNC employees with "spearphishing" emails. These are communications that appear legitimate -- often made to look like they came from a colleague or someone trusted -- but that contain links or attachments that when clicked on deploy malicious software that enables a hacker to gain access to a computer. " But we don't have hard evidence, " Alperovitch said.

There is a word in English for the phrases, "Not sure" and "No hard evidence"--that word is, "assumption." Assuming that the Russians did it is not the same as proving, based on evidence, that the Russians were culpable. But that is exactly what CrowdStrike did.

The so-called "proof" of the Russian intrusions is the presence of Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear?

At first glance, Dmitri Alperovitch's blog postin g describing the Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear "intrusions" appears quite substantive. But cyber security professionals quickly identified a variety of shortcomings with the Alperovitch account. For example, this malware is not unique nor proprietary to Russia. Other countries and hackers have access to APT28 and have used it.

Skip Folden offers one of the best comprehensive analyses of the problems with the Alperovitch explanation :

No basis whatsoever :

APT28, aka Fancy Bear, Sofacy, Strontium, Pawn Storm, Sednit, etc., and APT29, aka Cozy Bear, Cozy Duke, Monkeys, CozyCar,The Dukes, etc., are used as 'proof' of Russia 'hacking' by Russian Intelligence agencies GRU and FSB respectively.

There is no basis whatsoever to attribute the use of known intrusion elements to Russia, not even if they were once reverse routed to Russia, which claim has never been made by NSA or any other of our IC.

On June 15, 2016 Dmitri Alperovitch himself, in an Atlantic Council article, gave only "medium-level of confidence that Fancy Bear is GRU" and "low-level of confidence that Cozy Bear is FSB." These assessments, from the main source himself, that either APT is Russian intelligence, averages 37%-38% [(50 + 25) / 2].

Exclusivity :

None of the technical indicators, e.g., intrusion tools (such as X-Agent, X-Tunnel), facilities, tactics, techniques, or procedures, etc., of the 28 and 29 APTs can be uniquely attributed to Russia, even if one or more had ever been trace routed to Russia. Once an element of a set of intrusion tools is used in the public domain it can be reverse-engineered and used by other groups which precludes the assumption of exclusivity in future use. The proof that any of these tools have never been reverse engineered and used by others is left to the student - or prosecutor.

Using targets :

Also, targets have been used as basis for attributing intrusions to Russia, and that is pure nonsense. Both many state and non-state players have deep interests in the same targets and have the technical expertise to launch intrusions. In Grizzly Steppe, page 2, second paragraph, beginning with, "Both groups have historically targeted ...," is there anything in that paragraph which can be claimed as unique to Russia or which excludes all other major state players in the world or any of the non-state organizations? No.

Key-Logger Consideration :

On the subject of naming specific GRU officers initiating specific actions on GRU Russian facilities on certain dates / times, other than via implanted ID chips under the finger tips of these named GRU officers, the logical assumption would be by installed key logger capabilities, physical or malware, on one or more GRU Russian computers.

The GRU is a highly advanced Russian intelligence unit. It would be very surprising were the GRU open to any method used to install key logger capabilities. It would be even more surprising, if not beyond comprehension that the GRU did not scan all systems upon start-up and in real time, including key logger protection and anomalies of performance degradation and data transmissions.

Foreign intelligence source :

Other option would be via a foreign intelligence unit source with local GRU access. Any such would be quite anti-Russian and be another nail in the coffin of any chain of evidence / custody validity at Russian site.

Stated simply, Dmitri Alperovitch's conclusion that "the Russians did it" are not supported by the forensic evidence. Instead, he relies on the assumption that the presence of APT28 and APT29 prove Moscow's covert hand. What is even more striking is that the FBI accepted this explanation without demanding forensic evidence.

Former FBI Director James Comey and former NSA Director Mike Rogers testified under oath before Congress that neither agency ever received access to the DNC server. All information the FBI used in its investigation was supplied by CrowdStrike. The Hill reported :

The FBI requested direct access to the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) hacked computer servers but was denied, Director James Comey told lawmakers on Tuesday.

The bureau made "multiple requests at different levels," according to Comey, but ultimately struck an agreement with the DNC that a "highly respected private company" would get access and share what it found with investigators.

The foregoing facts raise major questions about the validity of the Crowdstrike methodology and conclusions with respect to what happened on the DNC network. This is not a conspiracy theory. It is a set of facts that, as of today, have no satisfactory explanation. The American public deserve answers.

[Mar 12, 2020] The Democratic Party Surrenders to Nostalgia by Bill Blum

Highly recommended!
Trump does not have a party with the program that at least pretends to pursue "socialism for a given ethnic group". He is more far right nationalist then national socialist. But to the extent neoliberalism can be viewed as neofascism Trump is neo-fascist, he definitly can be called a "national neoliberal."
Notable quotes:
"... I am nothing if not a realist. The idea that Sanders might have become the Democratic candidate was always a fantasy, not unlike my youthful dreams of one day becoming an NFL quarterback. Even after Sanders' triumph in the Nevada caucuses, I never thought the party establishment would ever allow a socialist -- even a mild social democratic one, such as Sanders -- to head its ticket. ..."
"... Of the two campaigns, Trump's will be decidedly more toxic. The "Make America Great Again" slogan that propelled Trump to victory in 2016 and the "Keep America Great" slogan he will try to sell this time around are neo-fascist in nature, designed to invoke an imaginary and false state of mythical past national glory ..."
"... The fascist designation is not a label I apply to Trump cavalierly. I use it, as I have before in this column , because Trump meets many of the standard and widely respected definitions of the term. ..."
"... Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion. ..."
"... An appeal to a frustrated middle class that is suffering from an economic crisis of humiliation and fear of the pressure exerted by lower social groups. ..."
"... Joe Biden is not a fascist. He is, instead, a standard-bearer of neoliberalism. As with fascism, there are different definitions of neoliberalism, prompting some exceptionally smug mainstream commentators like New York Magazine's Jonathan Chait to claim that the concept is little more than a left-wing insult. In truth, however, the concept describes an all-too-real set of governing principles. ..."
"... Neoliberalism , by contrast, deemphasizes federal economic intervention in favor of initiatives calling for deregulation, corporate tax cuts, private-public partnerships, and international trade agreements that augment the free flow of capital while undermining the power and influence of trade unions. ..."
"... Until the arrival of Trump and his brand of neo-fascism, both major parties since Reagan had embraced this ideology. And while neoliberals remain more benign on issues of race and gender than Trump and Trumpism ever will be, neoliberalism offers little to challenge hierarchies based on social class. Indeed, income inequality accelerated during the Obama years and today rivals that of the Gilded Age . ..."
Mar 11, 2020 | www.truthdig.com
Now that the Michigan Democratic primary is over and Joe Biden has been declared the winner , it's time to read the handwriting on the political wall: Biden will be the Democratic nominee for president, and Bernie Sanders will be the runner-up once again come the party's convention in July. Sanders might influence the party's platform, but platforms are never binding for the nominee. Sanders has lost, and so have his many progressive supporters, myself included.

I am nothing if not a realist. The idea that Sanders might have become the Democratic candidate was always a fantasy, not unlike my youthful dreams of one day becoming an NFL quarterback. Even after Sanders' triumph in the Nevada caucuses, I never thought the party establishment would ever allow a socialist -- even a mild social democratic one, such as Sanders -- to head its ticket.

Funded by wealthy donors, run by Beltway insiders and aided and abetted by a corporate media dedicated to promoting the notion that Sanders was " unelectable ," the Democratic Party never welcomed Sanders as a legitimate contender. Not in 2016 and not in 2020. In several instances, it even resorted to some good old-fashioned red-baiting to frighten voters; the party is, after all, a capitalist institution. Working and middle-class families support the Democrats largely because they have no other place to go on Election Day besides the completely corrupt and craven GOP.

Now we are left with Donald Trump and Biden to duke it out in the fall. Yes, it has come to that.

In terms of campaign rhetoric and party policies, the general election campaign will be a battle for America's past far more than it will be a contest for its future. The battle will be fueled on both sides by narratives and visions that are illusory, regressive and, in important respects, downright dangerous.

Of the two campaigns, Trump's will be decidedly more toxic. The "Make America Great Again" slogan that propelled Trump to victory in 2016 and the "Keep America Great" slogan he will try to sell this time around are neo-fascist in nature, designed to invoke an imaginary and false state of mythical past national glory that ignores our deeply entrenched history of patriarchal white supremacy and brutal class domination.

The fascist designation is not a label I apply to Trump cavalierly. I use it, as I have before in this column , because Trump meets many of the standard and widely respected definitions of the term.

As the celebrated Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht wrote in 1935 , fascism "is a historic phase of capitalism the nakedest, most shameless, most oppressive and most treacherous form of capitalism." Trumpism, along with its international analogs in Brazil, India and Western Europe, neatly accords with Brecht's theory.

Trumpism similarly meets the definition of fascism offered by Robert Paxton in his classic 2004 study, " The Anatomy of Fascism ":

Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

Trump and Trumpism similarly embody the 14 common factors of fascism identified by the great writer Umberto Eco in his 1995 essay, Ur Fascism :

Joe Biden is not a fascist. He is, instead, a standard-bearer of neoliberalism. As with fascism, there are different definitions of neoliberalism, prompting some exceptionally smug mainstream commentators like New York Magazine's Jonathan Chait to claim that the concept is little more than a left-wing insult. In truth, however, the concept describes an all-too-real set of governing principles.

To grasp what neoliberalism means, it's necessary to understand that it does not refer to a revival of the liberalism of the New Deal and New Society programs of the 1930s and 1960s. That brand of liberalism advocated the active intervention of the federal government in the economy to mitigate the harshest effects of private enterprise through such programs as Social Security, the National Labor Relations Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, Medicare, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That brand of liberalism imposed high taxes on the wealthy and significantly mitigated income inequality in America.

Neoliberalism , by contrast, deemphasizes federal economic intervention in favor of initiatives calling for deregulation, corporate tax cuts, private-public partnerships, and international trade agreements that augment the free flow of capital while undermining the power and influence of trade unions.

Until the arrival of Trump and his brand of neo-fascism, both major parties since Reagan had embraced this ideology. And while neoliberals remain more benign on issues of race and gender than Trump and Trumpism ever will be, neoliberalism offers little to challenge hierarchies based on social class. Indeed, income inequality accelerated during the Obama years and today rivals that of the Gilded Age .

As transformational a politician as Barack Obama was in terms of race, he too pursued a predominantly neoliberal agenda. The Affordable Care Act, Obama's singular domestic legislative achievement, is a perfect example of neoliberal private-public collaboration that left intact a health industry dominated by for-profit drug manufacturers and rapacious insurance companies, rather than setting the stage for Medicare for All, as championed by Sanders.

Biden never tires of reminding any audience willing to put up with his gaffes, verbal ticks and miscues that he served as Obama's vice president. Those ties are likely to remain the centerpiece of his campaign, as he promises a return to the civility of the Obama era and a restoration of America's standing in the world.

History, however, only moves forward. As charming and comforting as Biden's imagery of the past may be, it is, like Trump's darker outlook, a mirage. If Trump has taught us anything worthwhile, it is that the past cannot be replicated, no matter how much we might wish otherwise.

[Mar 12, 2020] The Democratic Party Surrenders to Nostalgia by Bill Blum

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion. ..."
Mar 12, 2020 | www.truthdig.com

Mar 11, 2020

Now that the Michigan Democratic primary is over and Joe Biden has been declared the winner , it's time to read the handwriting on the political wall: Biden will be the Democratic nominee for president, and Bernie Sanders will be the runner-up once again come the party's convention in July. Sanders might influence the party's platform, but platforms are never binding for the nominee. Sanders has lost, and so have his many progressive supporters, myself included.

I am nothing if not a realist. The idea that Sanders might have become the Democratic candidate was always a fantasy, not unlike my youthful dreams of one day becoming an NFL quarterback. Even after Sanders' triumph in the Nevada caucuses, I never thought the party establishment would ever allow a socialist -- even a mild social democratic one, such as Sanders -- to head its ticket.

Funded by wealthy donors, run by Beltway insiders and aided and abetted by a corporate media dedicated to promoting the notion that Sanders was " unelectable ," the Democratic Party never welcomed Sanders as a legitimate contender. Not in 2016 and not in 2020. In several instances, it even resorted to some good old-fashioned red-baiting to frighten voters; the party is, after all, a capitalist institution. Working and middle-class families support the Democrats largely because they have no other place to go on Election Day besides the completely corrupt and craven GOP.

Now we are left with Donald Trump and Biden to duke it out in the fall. Yes, it has come to that.

In terms of campaign rhetoric and party policies, the general election campaign will be a battle for America's past far more than it will be a contest for its future. The battle will be fueled on both sides by narratives and visions that are illusory, regressive and, in important respects, downright dangerous.

Of the two campaigns, Trump's will be decidedly more toxic. The "Make America Great Again" slogan that propelled Trump to victory in 2016 and the "Keep America Great" slogan he will try to sell this time around are neo-fascist in nature, designed to invoke an imaginary and false state of mythical past national glory that ignores our deeply entrenched history of patriarchal white supremacy and brutal class domination.

The fascist designation is not a label I apply to Trump cavalierly. I use it, as I have before in this column , because Trump meets many of the standard and widely respected definitions of the term.

As the celebrated Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht wrote in 1935 , fascism "is a historic phase of capitalism the nakedest, most shameless, most oppressive and most treacherous form of capitalism." Trumpism, along with its international analogs in Brazil, India and Western Europe, neatly accords with Brecht's theory.

Trumpism similarly meets the definition of fascism offered by Robert Paxton in his classic 2004 study, " The Anatomy of Fascism ":

Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

Trump and Trumpism similarly embody the 14 common factors of fascism identified by the great writer Umberto Eco in his 1995 essay, Ur Fascism :

Joe Biden is not a fascist. He is, instead, a standard-bearer of neoliberalism. As with fascism, there are different definitions of neoliberalism, prompting some exceptionally smug mainstream commentators like New York Magazine's Jonathan Chait to claim that the concept is little more than a left-wing insult. In truth, however, the concept describes an all-too-real set of governing principles.

To grasp what neoliberalism means, it's necessary to understand that it does not refer to a revival of the liberalism of the New Deal and New Society programs of the 1930s and 1960s. That brand of liberalism advocated the active intervention of the federal government in the economy to mitigate the harshest effects of private enterprise through such programs as Social Security, the National Labor Relations Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, Medicare, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That brand of liberalism imposed high taxes on the wealthy and significantly mitigated income inequality in America.

Neoliberalism , by contrast, deemphasizes federal economic intervention in favor of initiatives calling for deregulation, corporate tax cuts, private-public partnerships, and international trade agreements that augment the free flow of capital while undermining the power and influence of trade unions.

Until the arrival of Trump and his brand of neo-fascism, both major parties since Reagan had embraced this ideology. And while neoliberals remain more benign on issues of race and gender than Trump and Trumpism ever will be, neoliberalism offers little to challenge hierarchies based on social class. Indeed, income inequality accelerated during the Obama years and today rivals that of the Gilded Age .

As transformational a politician as Barack Obama was in terms of race, he too pursued a predominantly neoliberal agenda. The Affordable Care Act, Obama's singular domestic legislative achievement, is a perfect example of neoliberal private-public collaboration that left intact a health industry dominated by for-profit drug manufacturers and rapacious insurance companies, rather than setting the stage for Medicare for All, as championed by Sanders.

Biden never tires of reminding any audience willing to put up with his gaffes, verbal ticks and miscues that he served as Obama's vice president. Those ties are likely to remain the centerpiece of his campaign, as he promises a return to the civility of the Obama era and a restoration of America's standing in the world.

History, however, only moves forward. As charming and comforting as Biden's imagery of the past may be, it is, like Trump's darker outlook, a mirage. If Trump has taught us anything worthwhile, it is that the past cannot be replicated, no matter how much we might wish otherwise.

[Mar 03, 2020] Hillary Clinton regarding the primaries: "Let's follow the rules"

Mar 03, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

librul , Mar 3 2020 15:06 utc | 2

Quote of the Day
or
Quote of the Millennia?

Hillary Clinton regarding the primaries:

"Let's follow the rules"

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/485646-hillary-clinton-responds-to-sanders-on-delegates-lets-follow-the-rules


Trailer Trash , Mar 3 2020 15:49 utc | 6

Is there any other nation state that has 50 separate official elections, mostly run and paid for by the public, just so a private club masquerading as a political party can select its leader? To the rest of the world, this must look completely insane, but few people anywhere even seem to notice how ridiculous it all looks.
Nathan Mulcahy , Mar 3 2020 22:54 utc | 62
Stop calling it USA. It is USO (United States of Oligarchs).

[Jan 22, 2020] Who is a real "Russian asset" is an on-trivial question ;-)

Jan 22, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

pparalegal , 1 hour ago link

Stay out of Arkansas.

Best President Ever , 2 hours ago link

Nobody likes Hillary even liberals like myself won't vote for her and that is why Trump won. She is the Russian asset.

RG_Canuck , 1 hour ago link

Please don't insult the Russians like that.

[Jan 18, 2020] Putin plants to prohibit dual citizens to serve in government

Highly recommended!
Jan 18, 2020 | www.unz.com

Peripatetic Commenter , says: Show Comment January 17, 2020 at 9:43 pm GMT

I don't think it will be long before we see Congress in the US calling for invasion of Russia on the grounds of a lack of diversity, lack of respect for LGBTP and so forth.

[Jan 17, 2020] I knew that if you kept it up, Putler would get around to targeting you.

Jan 17, 2020 | www.unz.com

iffen , says: January 15, 2020 at 5:55 pm GMT

Ban PMs, Ministers, governors, some mayors and judges, from having second citizenships of foreign residencies; moreover, Presidential candidates should have been resident in Russia for 25 years (previously 10 years) and never had a foreign citizenship.

I knew that if you kept it up, Putler would get around to targeting you.

[Jan 08, 2020] Three major Trump accomplishments

Jan 08, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Bubbles , Jan 8 2020 16:29 utc | 103

arby @90

Trump has accomplished 3 things in 3 years.

1. Being Santa Claus to Netanyahu, the far right and the very rich (Generous donors)
2. Doing the impossible, making Hillary look like the better of 2 terrible choices
3. Proving 42% of the American public aren't too swift.


[Jan 06, 2020] Who is in the pockets of Israel First nationalists?

Jan 06, 2020 | www.unz.com

Just passing through , says: Show Comment January 5, 2020 at 9:38 pm GMT

@gotmituns I think we all know the Orange One who is in the pockets of Jews and Israel First nationalists* will not actually pull out troops. I have also heard someone on this comments board says the agreement between the US and Iraq stipulates that the US has 1 year to withdraw if requested to do so by Iraq, so he will no doubt cite that reason for staying there as long as possible – which leaves ample time for more Jewish tricks and swindles à la USS Liberty or Lavon Affair.

The real question is whether or not his room-temperature IQ support base will pick up on the fact that their man in the White House is only increasing troop presence despite being told to piss off by the Iraqis, thus laying waste to the myth that Iraqis are begging the US to stay there. Will this be the broken promise that will finally deprogram the hordes of MAGAtards and awaken them from their slumber?

* – https://lobelog.com/trump-has-a-259-million-reason-to-bomb-iran/

[Jan 03, 2020] Is not it strange that Wikipeaida founder was former pornography seller and Bellingcat founder -- a female underwear salesman

Jan 03, 2020 | www.unz.com

Brabantian says: Show Comment

January 2, 2020 at 6:56 am GMT 200 Words Intelligence agencies recruit pornographers to lead their disinformation operations, apparently because porn purveyors are so lacking in ethics they will tell public lies about anything

The alleged 'founder' of Wikipedia is the arch-Zionist Jimmy 'Jimbo' Wales, who attends intimate birthday parties of Presidents of Israel

Wales was 'selected' for this role after being in the pornography-selling business

[Oct 19, 2019] Russian agents under every bed

Highly recommended!
Oct 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

S , Oct 19 2019 15:33 utc | 24

Okay, let's recap:

1) Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian asset (Clinton).
2) Jill Stein is a Russian asset (Clinton).
3) Donald Trump has been a Russian asset since 1987 ( Intelligencer ).
4) Rand Paul is "working for Vladimir Putin" ( McCain , Greg Olear ).
5) Bernie Sanders is "just a tool" to the Russians ( The Washington Post ).

I'm sure Bernie will turn from "just a tool" into "an asset" in no time if his poll numbers become too high. After all, nobody forgot his fraternizing with the enemy in a sauna in USSR !

Continued

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Top articles

[Jul 30, 2020] One of the key problem with any polls is conformism of the respondents: answering the poll in a certain way does not necessary means that the person intends to vote this way. Published on Jul 30, 2020 | angrybearblog.com

[Jul 21, 2020] Why We Shouldn't Believe Polling About Trump by Lord Pettigrew Published on Jul 21, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

[Jun 17, 2020] We're in a sinister new era of totalitarianism, where PC combat units use social media to destroy anyone who disagrees with them by Konstantin Bogomolov Published on Jun 17, 2020 | www.rt.com

[Jun 14, 2020] Trojan horse in BLM camp (superpredators in her terminology): With friends like Hillary (she pushed Joe Biden's 1994 Crime Bill), who needs enemies; she is simply salivating at another opportunity to take revenge on Trump Published on Jun 14, 2020 | www.mintpressnews.com

[Jun 05, 2020] Antifa in Theory and in Practice Published on Oct 11, 2017 | www.counterpunch.org

[Jun 03, 2020] Rule of law in Murrika is kaput Published on Jun 16, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

[May 24, 2020] Guccifer 2.0 was always John Brennan 1.0 Published on May 24, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

[May 03, 2020] Flynn told the investigators that he knew that the call was inevitably monitored and that a transcript existed. However, he did not recall discussing sanctions with Kislyak. There was no reason to hide such a discussion Published on May 03, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

[Mar 12, 2020] The Democratic Party Surrenders to Nostalgia by Bill Blum Published on Mar 11, 2020 | www.truthdig.com

[Mar 12, 2020] The Democratic Party Surrenders to Nostalgia by Bill Blum Published on Mar 12, 2020 | www.truthdig.com

[Jan 18, 2020] Putin plants to prohibit dual citizens to serve in government Published on Jan 18, 2020 | www.unz.com

[Oct 19, 2019] Russian agents under every bed Published on Oct 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Oldies But Goodies

[Dec 10, 2016] Why the US elite loves so much to demonise Russia

[Oct 12, 2016] NSA whistleblower says DNC hack was not done by Russia, but by US intelligence

[Sep 14, 2016] 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

[Jul 12, 2016] DNI Clapper Denies Paul Ryan Request to Block Clinton From Classified Intel Briefings

[Jul 11, 2016] 5 Reasons The Comey Hearing Was The Worst Education In Criminal Justice The American Public Has Ever Had by Seth Abramson

[Jul 06, 2016] FBI Rewrites Federal Law to Let Hillary Off the Hook by Andrew C. McCarthy

[Jul 30, 2020] One of the key problem with any polls is conformism of the respondents: answering the poll in a certain way does not necessary means that the person intends to vote this way.

[Jul 21, 2020] Why We Shouldn't Believe Polling About Trump by Lord Pettigrew

[Jun 17, 2020] We're in a sinister new era of totalitarianism, where PC combat units use social media to destroy anyone who disagrees with them by Konstantin Bogomolov

[Jun 14, 2020] Trojan horse in BLM camp (superpredators in her terminology): With friends like Hillary (she pushed Joe Biden's 1994 Crime Bill), who needs enemies; she is simply salivating at another opportunity to take revenge on Trump

[Jun 05, 2020] Antifa in Theory and in Practice

[Jun 03, 2020] Rule of law in Murrika is kaput

[May 24, 2020] Guccifer 2.0 was always John Brennan 1.0

[May 03, 2020] Flynn told the investigators that he knew that the call was inevitably monitored and that a transcript existed. However, he did not recall discussing sanctions with Kislyak. There was no reason to hide such a discussion

[Mar 12, 2020] The Democratic Party Surrenders to Nostalgia by Bill Blum

[Mar 12, 2020] The Democratic Party Surrenders to Nostalgia by Bill Blum

[Jan 18, 2020] Putin plants to prohibit dual citizens to serve in government

[Oct 19, 2019] Russian agents under every bed

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The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D


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